ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

                At this auspicious occasion of offering to the humankind this process of fast written expression of human thoughts, I cannot but recall the immense gratitude and indebtedness to the people of past as well as present, who caused to make possible the development of this artifact.

                The primary acknowledgement must go to the tens of thousands of years old human civilization and to its many billions of protagonists. The civilization gave our forefathers the free time of leisure and contemplation that led to the development of our distinct and detailed thoughts, and to the glorious legacy of their written expressions. It gave us science and technology that led to the innumerable innovations starting from electricity to computers, because of which I had the opportunity to sit before a computer and make it work the way I desired.

                Apart from science and technology, I am also equally indebted to the cultural heritage of this human civilization in general, and of South Asia and Assam in particular. It is this cultural milieu that provided me with the motivation, the spirit of enquiry and the passion to become able to do something for the underprivileged people around me; and these emotions were the guiding forces on me in this lone, hard and long endeavor. So in this moment I cannot but recall the towns and villages of Assam as well as their diverse inhabitants to which I belong.

                Coming to more particular aspects, my indebtedness goes to the electronics and computer technicians and engineers of this world, who not only made PCs possible, but raised their speed and capacity in leaps and bounds to such an extent, without which this innovation could not have productively worked. I am also equally indebted to the software professionals of the world who developed the programming languages, database management systems and the operating systems throughout the later half of the twentieth century, in particular the user-friendly wonder operating system called Windows and the wonderfully simple X-base series of programming tools ranging from Ashton-Tate's dBase III Plus to Microsoft's Visual FoxPro. Compared to hardly half a megabyte of the tiny program material that I have created, there exists hundreds and even thousands of megabytes of the operating system and the Visual FoxPro platform, standing only on which I could develop my work. To name one company in particular, I owe an acknowledgement to the Microsoft Inc. in this regard, as the development of Shabda-Brahma in the present user-friendly form would have been almost unthinkable without the modern Windows OS and the VFP6 programming tool provided by it. To quote Isaac Newton, I also feel that if I could see a little further, it is only because I am standing on the shoulders of giants.

                Coming to the personal aspects in this endeavor, I owe acknowledgement to my parents, wife, sisters, brother, brother-in-laws, friends and colleagues for their constant inspiration and advices. In particular, I must mention about my mother who taught me to strive for the stars, computer teacher Murulidharan Unni who introduced me for free to the enchanting simplicity of X-base, friends Bikul (Das) & Britta (Beer) who showered encouragement from another part of the globe, friend Sanjay-da (Dutta) who had never been bored of keeping my computer running through telephonic advices, brother-in-law Bipuljyoti-da who created the logo picture file even without asking, and brother Paraj who developed the number-adder subroutine. Mention must also be made of friend Firoj (Hussain Saikia) for helping with the Hindi auto-suggestions, and of neighbors Pawan-ji (Jha), Arun-ji (Jha), Chhaya, Seema & Giridhar for helping with the Hindi Symbolizer. Particular gratitude must also be expressed to Mr. Maniraj Baruah of the renowned software firm TI Trade (Guwahati), for his valuable suggestions towards making this artifact much more user-friendly; and to the Guwahati-based journalists Ms. Ratna Bharali Talukdar, Ms. Semim Sultana Ahmed, Mr. Pawan Kr. Jha and Mr. Santosh Agarwal for the media coverage that they so kindly offered on their own behalf during early 2004, much before the formal publication of SB.

Rituraj Kalita
July 05, 2004