Saturday, July 4, 2009

Can you please explain?

Bangalore's weather is AWESOME! My internship is progressing nicely. Weekends have been fun as well!

Last Friday, we (the interns and the research team at Bell Labs India) did a bit of trekking, rowing and river-bathing in the Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary. The trekking was adventurous, the destination (peak of Bheemagiri) was a delight, the banks of river Cauvery presented a serene sight! A psychology game on a tree-hammock on the Cauvery banks surprisingly revealed that Shamik sees 'beauty' in 'beasts' and Adhiraj finds 'thoughts' 'dirty'! :P

What I am more interested in describing articulately in this article are incidents that occurred during the next couple of days. Some of us had been to Puttaparthi to have a darshan of Sri Sathya Sai Baba, considered to be the spiritual guru common to all religions. Frankly speaking, I do not have much belief in the saying that he can perform miracles; what I admire about him though are his teachings, which offer so many good things to learn, his simple messages "Love all, serve all" and "Be good, do good" that have won him followers across the globe and the large number of social initiatives that he has undertaken for the betterment of mankind in general and the people of Puttaparthi in particular.

But a couple of incidents there have left me somewhat disturbed!
  1. After a satisfying morning darshan and just before the evening darshan, I realized that my phone’s battery was totally discharged. Since I had not called home since quite a long time and also had a train-trip to make to Bangalore later that night, I thought it was better to charge it at the earliest. I struggled to find a plug-point (it's not very easy to find one!) and placed my phone for charging. When it had charged to 63% in about 20 minutes, I removed it, switched it off, placed it back in my bag (phones are not allowed into the darshan hall) and ran for the darshan, only to reach late and miss the initial part of the session. When I came back and switched the phone on, the charge was just 6%!! Such a thing had never happened before...and has never happened again since then!

  2. Later that night, when I tried playing songs on my phone-walkman, I could hear no audio. I thought there might be a problem with the walkman. I tried setting an alarm to hear the alarm-tone; there was none. I asked one of my friends to give me a call, there was no sound of the ring-tone! I tried re-inserting the battery and resetting the phone, nothing worked! I believed my phone-speakers had somehow got screwed. Back in Bangalore, I tried connecting an earphone to see if I could hear any sound; I couldn't! The problem then definitely didn't lie in the speakers but somewhere else. A service centre was the only option to get it repaired at.

    Next day, Monday, I went to a nearby service centre but it was closed by the time I reached there. That night, frustrated, I again tried removing the battery to see if I could be lucky. And surprise, the sound was back! Everything worked PERFECTLY!!

I could come up with some sort of an explanation for the first incident. When I removed the charger, it was damn hot! I do not clearly know how a charger or the charging process functions, but perhaps some current limiter somewhere had got screwed up, thereby allowing a large current to flow through and causing the charge-level to be shown high when actually it wasn't! Or probably something similar! Or maybe something entirely different!

But I have absolutely no explanation for the second incident. This, even after having studied cell phones, their hardware and software aspects, for nearly two years!

I’ll be the last person to say that these incidents were miracles or occurred due to divine intervention or anything similar! But they certainly can't happen without an explanation! And I have still not been able to find any. Can you please explain?

17 comments:

Amit said...

rotfl...
yeah, the 1st one was funny, and you can try explaining...
arey baba, my friend's phone had stopped charging and after some weeks , it was fine again...
also, though i am not supposed to doubt demi-Gods as i do not know of Them, but still, i see Him in His various forms all around me. if i have to believe then , i can also claim to have seen God, in the sole man who was there for me, all out of nowhere, when i had a minor accident in a heavy shower. We all can be so, peaceful and serene, if we treat each other as good human beings... and then maybe as individual creations of God, Who has carved each of us with love and bestowed upon us, His blessings.

Rakesh Misra said...

I'm already confused! You're further confusing me :)

Unknown said...

sometimes leaving some thing without explanation is better then wasting time to find one. as these are the things which will let us live in the world that we have made for ourselves. Otherwise our world may become nothing but a collection of facts and reasons.
so just choose an explanation that you like and interpret it the way you like instead to trying to find a truth that has to be universally accepted.
well, of course this cannot be true for everything, for what it is true is again up to you to decide.

life.... its all what we make of it my friend...its all about decisions

Anonymous said...

I don't know what I would have believed if this had happened to me. But I'm tempted to say that this is a coincidence.

I don't believe in a God who has a form, nor do I believe in a super-power. But strange as it may seem, I weakly believe in destiny and fate. When I ride my bike, this belief is what keeps my fear of "what if I meet with an accident today" away :)

I do like to think that all things are written but the outcome that is written is only the most probable one and you can screw with it if you really want to.

Good to hear you went to Puttaparthi. I would be interested to know if Sai Baba talks about after death.

Rakesh Misra said...

@ Shanky: Nice way of thinking! But I somehow find it hard to forget these incidents in a hurry without understanding how they happened, esp. because I have been studying about the working of cellphones since quite sometime and these are things that I should be able to explain...

Rakesh Misra said...

@ Ramanathan: Conincidence is a different issue. I'm surprised not because these incidents took place at Puttaparthi but because these incidents took place in the first place! I would have been equally surprised had these incidents occurred elsewhere.

"...you can screw with it if you really want to.": Wow! I liked this thought. :)

Sai Baba, I was told, doesn't speak to devotees as much as previously these days; he just comes to offer his prayers at the ashram temple and give darshan to the general public. You might have to check books on his teachings and preachings to find out whether he actually talks about after-death.

Meta-words said...

Yeah I agree with Shanky- leave it as one of the unexplainable things-it also takes care of you not believing in Saibaba's miracles :P

Maybe God wanted you to find out that your battery was cupping and wanted you to give another chance- anyway, look for some good outcome of this whole damn thing. There has to be one- it takes real good observation to see God's miracles and his favours to us,but they are all around us for sure..

mukunda said...

baaah! this happens to my laptop all the time, there will be sound from the speakers at all, then i restart it everything will work fine..it might be due to excess heat in ur mobile as u said that would have screwed up your mobile sound drive/card...

and there are a few videos of Sai baba available in lan,if u see them u will be shocked!

i dont think there is more to the incident..

Rakesh Misra said...

@ J Square: I very much agree that God's favours are everywhere around us!

@ Mukunda: Oh! Videos on LAN? You have made me curious!

Taz said...

HaHa
Call it a Miracle :P

Kushal said...

I am sure it was the misdeed of Flying Spaghetti Monsters: :-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster

Jokes apart, there are two rules of trouble-shooting:

1) Don't expect everything to follow logic that can be comprehended easily.
2) In case of doubt, refer to rule no. 1.

Rakesh Misra said...

@ Taz: I couldn't....hence, I wrote this article, to ask for opinions!

@ Kushal: LOL!

kstar said...

Although I do believe that there could be phenomena beyond common sense and present-day science (commonly called as 'miracles'), I don't think the failure of a cell phone need to be ascribed to a miracle in this case. Although they are nice, deterministic systems, electronics is complicated enough to misbehave every now and then.

I think this incident neither substantiates, nor denies the possibility of miracles.

Restless Indian said...

don't waste time in pondering over it, rush to your cellphone's service center before it's warranty period expires... !! which brand btw ?? ;)

Rakesh Misra said...

@ kstar: The question is not whether cellphones can misbehave, rather how this misbehavior can be explained within the purview of electronics!

@ Shobhit: Sony Ericsson W850i :)

Rahul said...

Your cell phone deserved to get damaged !!! After all u made the Baba angry by walking out surreptitiously while the Baba was offering his blessings :)

Rakesh Misra said...

@ Rahul: I didn't walk out of the darshan session...I arrived late for the session and hence, missed the initial few minutes. :)

@ Ujjwal: Babaji ki Jai Ho! :P

(@ Others: Ujjwal Goel is one of my wing-mates at IIT Madras and is fondly referred to as Babaji by us :D)