Mosama has his revenge..

Deep in thought, Mosama Po Navan stroked his seven-day old stubble. Though he shaved everyday, somehow, he never seemed to be able to clear the backlog.

He was all alone at home. His wife had run away with his best friend last year. It wasn’t that he had a best friend who had shamelessly snatched his wife away from him. It was just that Mosama considered whosoever the person was who ran away with his wife as his best friend and saviour.

But, that was the last time something good had happened to him. In recent months, life had been rather harsh on him. His pet dog had been bitten by the three-month old child next door and no amount of anti-babies injection had helped. Vandals had broken into his house and substituted his Apple iPod with a Pattani pea-pod. The software company he worked for had decided to close down and get into underwear business, where he was told, his code-writing competencies would be redundant.

As Wodehouse put it, it would be a slight exaggeration to say he was disgruntled, but he was certainly far from gruntled.

Yes, he took a vow, that very minute, to teach this inconsiderate society a lesson. Mosama would inflict a terrific blow and extract his revenge.

His first idea was to break into Aavin milk factory on the outskirts of Chennai and inject a strong dose of potassium cyanide into the milk concentrator vat, from which all the sachets would be filled and distributed far and wide. The Chennai citizen liked his morning cup of coffee and what better way to get some cyanide into his blood-stream than by poisoning the milk? Diabolical, but he aborted the plan when the auto-rickshaw driver demanded an astronomical amount of Rs 300 as fare to take him to Madhavaram, over and above the meter reading. Man proposes, auto-driver disposes, Mosama mused.

His next idea was to get on to a plane and carpet bomb the whole city. Unfortunately, Air-Deccan cancelled the flight he was booked on, and the whole plan fell through. Damn all these low-cost airlines, he thought.

Finally, Mosama hit upon the perfect idea. What do all citizens of Chennai have in common, he asked himself. All of them carry mobile phones. If he could somehow manipulate the radio-frequency signals embedded in the electromagnetic waves that emanate from cellular base stations, he could wipe out the whole population. Google search had told him that, “it has been known for many years that exposure to very high levels of RF radiation can be harmful due to the ability of RF energy to heat biological tissue rapidly. This is the principle by which microwave ovens cook food.” As a techie, Mosama knew that all he had to do was to transmit a radio-frequency signal well above the safe limit of 2 watts/kg of body weight and at a frequency of 100 Hz where the rate of absorption was the highest. And, the Chennai mobile users would be cooked alive.

He quickly made it to the Airtel Master Control room which oversees all their base stations, and when the inmates were watching the cricket match on TV, sneaked in and turned the frequency switch to the ‘extreme’ position and walked out unnoticed. This would activate all base stations and all mobile phones simultaneously. It would blanket Chennai with high-frequency RF signals and increase body temperatures drastically

Plan failed. What Mosama had not factored in was that the Chennai citizen was so used to the blazing heat that an addition of another 10-15 deg C around his vicinity did not have the desired effect on the tissues, which had a high melting point.

But, some neuroscientists say that the electromagnetic frequency that Mosama had used was, coincidentally, so close to the frequency of the signals in the neural circuitry of the human brain, and that this resonance could cause serious damage to the mental health of Chennai citizens. Their speech could become incomprehensible and their writing gibberish. They may bgdj maosie kasotr iwoppska &*()%$ wahddklf ooeuwnwnw sskskk ksk; 9ufjakls lillksksk aleosl lalsirr…………………………………………………………………….

What am I?

Via this blogsite, I came across a poll, where people of different countries were asked whether they considered themselves first as citizens of their country or as Muslims/Christians. Except for Indonesia, Muslims in most countries swore first allegiance to their faith. And, among countries dominated by Christians, America was where the most number of people (42%) considered themselves Christians first, citizens next. Though 48% of Americans polled did swear loyalty to the country first, the fact that such a high percentage (42%) of people had primary affiliation to their religion did cause some surprise, even concern.

In one of my posts, I had used the metaphor of a railway compartment- filled with people of different faiths, states, and food habits- to make a point about the amazing diversity in India and the fact that we take unique positions on different issues and find ourselves in different groups at different times.

Is your first loyalty to your nation, your language, your religion or your caste? Do I, for example, see myself first as an Indian or a Tamilian or a Hindu or a Brahmin? As we are divided in so many different ways, there could be a billion different answers if the same question is asked to each person in India. What is the collective identity we have in this melting pot?

Maybe, as the blogger suggests, nationalism itself is an outdated concept and needs to be abandoned in due course.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how mad are you?

In case you missed out the news item, the Assamese chilli, known as Bih Jolokio Chilli, has been adjudged the hottest chilli in the world.

I wonder how the jury came to the conclusion. Did the members test each of the chilli samples on their tongues and set their pants on fire? Then arrive at a consensus? No, that’s not the way it was done.

Apparently, there is a unit of measurement called the Scoville heat Unit (SHU) which tells us how ‘hot’ a substance is. Bih Jolokia Chilli clocked in at 1,041,127 SHUs. The test procedure involves measuring the amount of capsaicin present. (capsaicin is a chemical known to stimulate the nerve endings) Thus, bell pepper which has no capsaicin at all has a SHU value of zero. Tabasca sauce is around 8000, Jamaican pepper 100000-200000 and so on. But, the winner, ladies and gentleman, is Bih Jolokio Chilli.

So, you don’t have to be vague when you describe the ‘hotness’ of a chilli; you can state with arithmetical precision how hot it is, thanks to Scoville.

But why this obsession with reducing everything to numbers. Taking the fun out of chillies and making life complicated for the chillee and the chiller. What kind of sadists inflict such scales on mankind? What a pain they are?

Speaking of pain, have you found it difficult to describe how painful something, is? If so, use the Wong-Baker Faces Pain Rating Scale. The Wong-Baker scale goes from 0 to 5, from 'no hurt' ( zero rating) to 'hurts worst' ( rating of 5)

What about specific pain, like that from an insect sting? Don’t worry. There’s a Schmidt Sting Pain Index which has classified the pain from stings of 78 different species. So, the next time you are stung by a Bullet Ant and experience pure, intense, brilliant pain, like walking over flaming charcoal, with a 3-inch nail in your heel, your doctor will take out the Schmidt scale and assess your pain number as 3.0 on the scale and prescribe medicines accordingly.

And, there is this Dr. Michel Welner, a forensic psychiatrist, who is working on a Depravity Scale that will help courts decide the seriousness of a crime in quantified terms, and decide on the sentence. There is a Goldberg depresssion scale available in case you want to monitor your mood on a daily basis and report to your shrink. There have been light-hearted proposals for emotional distress scale, and insanity quotient.

So, no more guess work. No more talking in vague terms. You have a scale and an index for everything.

Pres does it again

The President, Mr Kalam, has, at different times, come out with mind-blowing insights that never fail to amaze the general public.

Remember his passionate plea to teachers that they should henceforth start teaching their students? Which was followed by some astounding advice to students that they must, with immediate effect, resolve, to learn from their teachers? Or the time he delivered that sensational sermon to scientists to carry out research in their laboratories?

Do you recall his earnest exhortation to the Army to stay alert, keep to the ground and guard our borders; the stunning suggestion to the Air Force to make sure that the planes stayed up in the air when they were flying and the fantastic funda to the Navy to ensure that the submarines remained underwater, especially when at sea?

Now he has done it again. At Coonoor, at the Wellington Hospital, after calling on the ailing Field Marshal Manekshaw, the President met the doctors attending on the Field Marshal and solemnly suggested that they should take good care of this great son of India, as he was not well.

The doctors and the Field Marshal are still in a shocked state, after this visit.

P.S : There is an email campaign that seeks re-election of Mr Kalam for a second term as President. Those of you supporting the noble cause may respond to that mail.

Tape-worms

In their book, “The Definitive Book of Body Language”, authors Alan Pease and Barbara Pease cite the studies done, in the 1960s, by American anthropologist, Edward Hall, on spatial needs of human beings.

Like most animals, each human has his/her own personal space or ‘air bubble’, which he/she carries around with him/her, as if it were an extension of his/her body. When this ‘personal’ space is invaded, people get nervous or aggressive. How much space each person marks out is dependent on the density of the population of the place in which he/she grew up. Personal space is thus culturally determined.

The radius of the air-bubble can vary from country to country, but, in general, can be broken down into four distinct zone distances.

1.Intimate Zone: This is between 6 and 18 inches (15-45cm), where only those who are emotionally close are permitted to enter. These include lovers, parents, spouse, children, and pets.

2.The Personal Space between 18 inches and 48 inches (46 cm- 1.22m). This is the distance we stand from others at cocktail parties, office parties, social functions and friendly gatherings.

3.The Social Zone between 4 and 12 feet (1.22-3.6m). We stand at this distance from strangers, plumber or carpenter doing repairs around our house, postman, the local shopkeeper and people we don’t know very well.

4.The Public Zone is over 12 feet (3.6m). Whenever we address a large group of people, this is the comfortable distance at which we choose to stand.

All these distances tend to increase between two men and reduce between two women. While we tolerate strangers entering our Personal and Social Zones, the intrusion of strangers into our intimate zone causes physiological changes to take place within our bodies. The heart pumps faster, adrenaline is pumped into our bloodstream and blood into our brain as we get ready for a fight or flight situation.

Crowding at concerts, cinema halls, in trains and packed elevators result in unavoidable intrusion into other people’s intimate zones. That is why people taking the elevator avoid eye contact with others, maintain a poker face and keep watching the floor number indicator in a behaviour that is called ‘masking’

Amazing stuff. No, not the insight into human behaviour, but the fact that the Halls and the Peases had the patience to follow people everywhere and gallivant around with a measuring tape in cinemas, cocktail parties, social functions, elevators and when carpenters, plumbers visited different houses, and whenever lovers met, to physically measure the distance between them and include the dimensions in both inches and metres in their final report.

Get a life, Alan Pease. Same with you, Barbara Pease. Get yourselves de-addicted to the tape. You will have withdrawal symptoms initially, but you can do it, if you have the will power. If Linus Van Pelt could be forced out of his blanket, one full day on Oct 14, 1957, you can live without that tape too

The right side up.

Ever wondered why, on world maps, North should always be up? There is no reason why it should be so.

Why should maps show Europe at the centre? In the Victorian era when the sun never set in the British empire, they could get away by referring to Japan as the Far-east, Arabia as the Middle-East, etc. Why should Britain be the point of reference any more?

There are maps printed in Australia, which are upside down, and which show Australia at the very top. Understandable. The Australians must have hated being shown constantly as some kind of appendage in a distant corner of the globe.

Take a look at this interactive map, with the so-called southern hemisphere on top and where you can choose the ‘frame of reference’.

You get to see the world a little differently, don’t you?.

Coming soon. A map of India, where Tamilnadu will be the topmost state.

Update 02/03/07 : Here's a view and perspective from the North Pole. Can you spot India?

Land, ahoy!

Extract from the diary of anthropologist Bjorn Ericsson, written on board the Swedish ship, “Gotheborg” that docked here for a brief while.

In the southern peninsula of the vast country called Dinia, is located the kingdom of Matilnad. Our vessel “Gotheborg” anchored off the shores of a large village that the locals refer to as Nenchai.

When I got out of the ship, just before sunrise, I was alarmed to see hundreds of natives menacingly ‘marking their territories’ on the ground, in a manner reminiscent of the behaviour of African lions of the Masai Mara. When I went cautiously closer, I realized to my relief that the behaviour was not borne so much out of an aggressive instinct to protect their turf as a more biological need to empty their bladders. They were not the facile terminators that I had feared they were, but rather docile urinators. I later learnt that this behaviour was the national pastime of Dinia.

I walked on further and confronted giant cut-outs of what must have been the demigods of the natives. The gods were of different sizes, shapes and were shown sporting outlandish pink and green costumes, not to mention purple shoes. The huge cut-outs reminded me of the massive stone sculptures that my fellow anthropologists had reported sighting in the Easter Islands in the South Pacific Ocean, except that the stone creatures had more benevolent expressions on their faces.

The locals are divided into two groups, the Damakians and Aidamakians. When not involved in actual bloody duels, these factions constantly engage in saber-rattling, war-mongering and logger-heading. Much energy is expended on such posturing and blood-curdling, battle-cries.

I caught hold of two of the natives, handed them a silver coin and told them, “Take me to your leader”, and they obeyed.

The leader of the Damakian group and the current Chief of Matilnad is addressed simply as KuMa. He is constantly seen with a yellow shawl and a pair of dark glasses on. While the shawl is a recent addition to his attire, Old Jungle Saying has it that nobody in Matilnad or outside has ever seen KuMa’s naked eyes directly as he has never ventured outside without his tinted glasses that are designed to keep off the ultraviolet rays of the sun and the extra-jealous stares of his son. Much of his time is spent in uttering choice expletives in a guttural tone and in chaste Matil at a wall painting of his arch rival, AyaJ.

His sworn enemy Ayaj, the leader of the Aidamakians, who lives in a house not far away from KuMa’s, is a strong believer in the occult and in the supernatural. Every morning, before sunrise, she invokes the blessings of the tantric, Swami Jagamugananda to help drive her enemy KuMa out of the country. On the advice of her resident-astrologer and numerologist, she changes her name every now and then, to sound less suspicious and more auspicious. At present, she goes by the name of Ayaaj. Unconfirmed reports say that she is learning voodoo magic and spends much of her time with a sharp pin, with which she keeps jabbing a small replica doll of KuMa, hoping to cause the real KuMa excruciating pain in his lower back.

This, then, is how the natives and the leaders spend a typical day in Nenchai. Such are the bizarre rituals, curious customs and strange symbolisms that are displayed in abundant measure in this corner of the world. I heard later that things are no different in other parts of Dinia.

By the time Gotheborg lifted anchor and set sail again from Nenchai, I had come to the conclusion that the natives were in a permanent trance and timidly submitted to the whims, fancies and machinations of their leaders. They show no willingness or inclination to get themselves de-hypnotised from their daze or exorcised of the spell cast by the leaders. We left them in this state of stupor as, clearly, they were hopelessly beyond redemption.

Be messy, be happy

How often have you wished that if only you were more organized with your possessions, time and resources, you could be more successful and efficient? If you experience these pangs quite often, you are not alone. The unpleasant feeling or guilt that each of us should be more organized, better organized, or differently organized seems nearly ubiquitous.

Hundreds of books, a vast array of home- and office-organizing aids, classes and seminars, software, television shows, magazines and organizational consultants- an entire industry has sprung up that purveys some variation on the theme of straightening up, rearranging, acquiring highly effective habits, planning your day/week/life, restructuring organizations and standardizing processes.

A standard ploy used by consultants is a little demonstration, using two decks of cards, one shuffled and one ordered by suit and rank and given to two different volunteers. The consultants then call out the names of four cards and ask the volunteers to find them in the respective pack. Naturally, the person with the ordered deck always clocks the shorter time and wins.

Therefore it pays to be orderly. Right?

Wrong, say Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman, authors of the book, “A Perfect Mess”. What about the time someone spent in arranging the cards in the first place. Why is that not accounted for? Besides, arranging cards is a complete waste of time, as we make it a point to shuffle the cards before every game, anyway.

The core of their pro-mess argument is that organizing, storing, and maintaining the order in the various aspects of our lives is often more time-consuming, expensive, and restrictive than living with a moderate degree of mess. Besides it stifles innovation. Anyone who has ever sat down in front of a blank sheet of paper and tried to force creativity knows that inspiration doesn’t happen that way. Rather it tends to spring unexpected from novel connections, which in turn goes hand-in-hand with mess.

Remember, first of all, that when you try to be organized, you are going against the grain of Nature, for Nature likes nothing better than to increase the state of disorderliness or entropy, as experts on thermodynamics would love to tell you. If you need more proof, look at the scattered toys in a kid’s room or the mess created by the monkeys in the zoo. These are creatures not indoctrinated with the dogma of orderliness and it is refreshing to see them being their natural selves, with their brains unwashed. Take a cue from them.

And, do you know that Einstein was as well known for his messy desk as he was for his theory of relativity. But, he countered, “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what then is an empty desk?” Answer that, you cleanliness freaks.

There, are you feeling better now that you are a normal, messy person like Einstein ( or that brain-unwashed monkey) and not one of those organized weirdos?

I have done it yet again. I first taught you how to be happy as a person (“lower your expectations .Expect to be fired tomorrow. If you still have a job by evening, you will be very happy”). I then shared with you the secret of a happy marriage (“give a positive spin to whatever your partner does. If she whacks you on the head, it is not to kill you, but to improve the blood circulation to your brain”). I also provided some valuable tips on how to feel lighter. (“if you are 80 kg and feel heavy, keep hogging till you reach 90 kg, then shed 10 kg to come back to 80 kg again. You will feel lighter at the same weight that you were in, to begin with”). Finally, in this episode, I have shown you the path to a blissful, guilt-free life, paved with messiness.

My ambition is to make Plus Ultra the place where people will want to visit whenever they need to be rid of any guilt. At this rate, I am going to acquire the label of “Acharya Rajneesh of the blogosphere”.

Update 05/03/07 : This article reports on an experiment in the town of Drachten in Netherlands, where they scrapped all traffic signals. In the seemingly chaotic system, the accident rate actually went down. ( via)

Conversation with daughter-9

As I outlined, to the family, my travel itinerary for the month, I thought I heard a murmur of protest from my younger daughter, something about me not being there to watch the play that she was acting in.

Would she be happier, I teased her, if I took up a job which would have me rooted to Chennai, seven days a week?

“No, no” she replied, “that would be very odd.”

I thought over that reply. From the time she was born, she has been so used to the routine of her father travelling every week. This ‘travel’ has been an integral part of the image she had of me and which she is quite comfortable with. A father who stayed at home all the time was something alien to what she was used to and something she could never come to terms with.

So, ‘Brand Appa’ involves one who doesn’t dye his hair, however grey and who keeps travelling three days a week. Any deviation to this set pattern, would meet the same fate as that of New Coke when it was launched with a new formula. Old Coke and Old Appa are vintage stuff you don’t tamper with..

The towering symbolism

I had the good fortune, this week, to stay in a hotel right next to the PETRONAS Towers in Kuala Lumpur and that offered a glorious view of the towers from my room. The twin towers dominated my attention right through the trip and I took many photographs, PETRONAS Towers at sunrise, PETRONAS Towers at sunset, PETRONAS towers at midnight. (In case my boss is reading this, I caught up with some work too, in between.)

Not surprisingly, the souvenir shops do brisk business in PETRONAS Towers timepieces, PETRONAS Towers paper weights, PETRONAS Towers key chains, etc.

This left me wondering why many cities in the world keep projecting such tall, man-made structures as their main symbols. Paris with its Eiffel Tower, London with its Big Ben, Pisa/Italy with its Leaning Tower, New York with its Statue of Liberty and, closer home, Tamilnadu with its tall gopurams, are prime examples. Does ‘tall’ represent ‘might’? Are these pseudo-phallic symbols? Why is Brand Paris built around the Eiffel tower which is just about 100 years old, when France has had a longer and richer history and could pick on other symbols?

Why is Malaysia obsessed with its PETRONAS Towers which were built a decade ago? Can’t it showcase its palm trees and rubber plantations which it has been known for, a much longer time? What were they selling as souvenirs, ten years back, when the Towers were not built?

I guess the answer lies in the fact that cities seek to promote something that is unique to them. You can’t find Eiffel Tower anywhere else. Or, for that matter, the Leaning Tower. So, there is instant association with the city. Instant brand recall. Also, it is far better to show off man-made structures to symbolize one’s strength. The Malaysians merely inherited the palm trees as part of Nature’s bounty, but the PETRONAS Towers symbolize something more- the resurgence and growing economic power of Malaysia.

If a country is as lucky as Australia is and an animal such as the kangaroo is known to live exclusively there, it can use that symbol as its own. If India claims the ‘elephant’ as its own and packs souvenir shops with ‘elephant mementoes’, so do Sri Lanka, Thailand and Malaysia. So, from an advertising standpoint, India is better off with the Taj Mahal or the Qutub Minar as its brand images.

Darwin and religion

In his latest book, “The God Delusion”, the celebrated science writer and evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins presents a hard-hitting rebuttal of all the usual arguments that dyed-in-the wool creationists put across. One of the questions posed by ‘propagandists for intelligent design’ to Darwinians is, “As you claim that everything in this world evolved through natural selection, isn’t it true that religion too was favoured by and was a logical, desired and inevitable outcome of natural selection?”

Dawkins acknowledges that this is a fair question and one that needs to be answered. The point, he says, assumes significance from standard Darwinian considerations of economy. Darwinian selection habitually targets and eliminates waste. Nature is a miserly accountant, grudging the pennies, watching the clock, punishing the smallest extravagance, rejecting that which is bad, preserving all that is good. If a wild animal habitually performs some useless activity, natural selection will favour rival individuals who devote the time and energy instead to surviving and reproducing.

On the other hand, Religion is so wasteful, so extravagant. It is time-consuming, energy-consuming and can endanger the life of the pious individual as well as the lives of others. Millions of people have been killed and hundreds of wars fought in the name of religion. Religion devours resources on a gigantic scale. A massive cathedral may consume several man-centuries to build, but is never used as a dwelling or for any recognizably useful purpose. Devout people have killed and died for their gods, whipped blood from their backs, sworn themselves to a lifetime of celibacy, all in the name of religion. What is it all for? What is the benefit of religion in the Darwinian sense of ‘enhancement to the survival of the individual’s genes”?

After examining various theories and possible explanations, Dawkins concludes that religion is a by-product, an unintended consequence of another natural process, the indoctrination of children in their formative years.

Natural selection builds child brains with a tendency to believe whatever their parents and tribal elders tell them. Such trusting obedience is valuable for survival. We survive by the accumulated experience of previous generations and that experience needs to be passed on to children for their protection and well-being. Theoretically children may learn by themselves not to go too near a cliff or to swim in crocodile-infested waters. But, there is a Darwinian advantage to child brains that possess the rule of thumb: believe, without question, whatever your grown-ups tell you. This is a generally valuable rule for a child and the species. That is why our brains are hardwired to obey elders unquestioningly.

But the flip side of trusting obedience is slavish gullibility. An automatic consequence is that the truster has no way of distinguishing good advice from bad. The child cannot know that an advice of “Don’t play with fire” is good whereas another advice of “You must sacrifice a goat at the time of full moon, otherwise the rains will fail” is a waste of time, as both admonitions are delivered by the same authorities, in a similar tone and sound equally trustworthy. Both have the same solemn earnestness that commands respect and demands obedience. And, it is very likely that when the child grows up and has children of her own, she will naturally pass on the ‘learning’ to her own children- nonsense as well as sense- using the same infectious gravitas of manner.

On this model, Dawkins argues, we should expect that, in different geographical regions, different arbitrary beliefs, none of which have any factual basis, will be handed down, to be believed with the same conviction as useful pieces of traditional wisdom as in “manure is good for the crops”. Superstitions will ‘logically’ evolve- change over generations- either through random drift or by some sort of analogue of Darwinian selection, given a fair wind by the useful programmability of the child brain.

Evolution of religion, Dawkins concludes, has therefore followed the well-known pattern of the Darwinian process, except that it is not the desired result but an unintended by-product. QED.

Update 05/03/07 : The New York Times has a different and interesting take on this issue. ( via)

The terrible betrayal

Entering the house after a long tour, I immediately sensed that something was wrong. My wife was behaving rather strangely. The furtive glance, the avoidance of eye contact, the surreptitious movement of the hands.. all added to my suspicion. Something sinister was afoot. I was convinced that she was cheating on me.

Without a word, I dropped my suitcase and laptop on to the sofa and headed for the bathroom. I washed my face and hands with the soap that I had picked up from Hotel Le Meridien last month, all the while trying to figure out what my wife had been up to. The white towel that I had.. er.. borrowed from Hotel Taj Landsend last week was on the hanger and I wiped myself, with that grim foreboding that precedes an awkward moment in one’s marriage.

The small bottle of talcum powder that I had thoughtfully put into my toilet kit when I had stayed at the Hotel Atria two weeks back, was still there next to the mirror and I applied it on my chest and back, cursing myself for relaxing my vigil and trusting my spouse completely.

Slipping on the bathrobe that I had sneaked out of the Grand Hyatt during my stay there two months back, I wondered what had happened to the good, old values that were the bedrock of marriages in the bygone era. When vows were held sacrosanct. When the spouse’s word was law. How did it all change, I muttered to myself, adjusting my feet into the white, furry slippers that I had brought back from the eco-friendly Orchid Hotel not long back.

It was then that my eyes fell on the incriminating evidence. I had spotted the source of our marital trouble the minute I entered the bedroom. The bedsheets!! They were new. They even had the price tag intact. When I had left on my tour, my wife had actually sneaked out of the house, gone into a shop and paid good money for the bed sheets.

I mean, money for the bed sheets! While exchanging marriage vows, hadn’t I explained to her clearly that, as long as I kept travelling and stayed in fancy hotels, we were assured of free supplies of shampoos, soap, towels, talcum powder, coat hangers, bathrobes, bed sheets? I had made her take a solemn pledge that she would never burn good money on these things ever in her life.

And I have been true to my word. I have flooded the house with shampoos of every colour , pink, blue, green, flicked from hotels from every corner of the world.. I have an entire suitcase filled with soaps of assorted size and shape and each carrying a distinct smell of the hotel it hailed from.. I have more talcum powder in the house than is manufactured by Pond’s in an entire year in all their factories. As for towels, there are enough white towels with insignias of the Taj, ITC, Hilton, etc to drape the entire lot of Chennai College girls with. It is true that I have been a little negligent about the bed sheets, but if only, oh if only, she had given me a hint, I would have picked up a few from the Intercontinental this time………

The tie that kills

In his book “A writerly life”, a collection of essays, R.K.Narayan talked about his passion for good coffee and how he planned to write an entire book on the subject. He would start, he mused, by tracing the origin of the coffee plant, how the Spaniards and Arabs introduced it in India, etc. He would then go on to describe how coffee ought to be prepared, the right temperature, the optimal manner of mixing the different ingredients, the measured way of drinking, etc. But, he cautioned, the book would end on a bitter note and the last chapter would turn grim as he wrote about the high price of coffee, manipulated by the monopolistic Coffee Board.

Similarly, I plan to write a lengthy book on the sartorial styles that have been followed since the start of the human race.

The first chapter will deal with early Man tearing himself off from his primate ancestry, and beginning to wear fig leaves of different shapes and sizes. I will introduce a comical touch by describing the situations when the leaves were swept away by the howling winds, so common in that age.

The second chapter would go on to describe the dressing habits that existed in different civilizations. I will provide fascinating details, along with illustrations, of how the Egyptians wrapped themselves around in rolls of toilet paper to produce the ‘mummy effect’, how the Sumerians invented the cuneiform and the Harappans, the uniform. I will briefly touch on the genetic mutations that were triggered during this period that eventually led to evolution of jeans in the twentieth century.

The third chapter will be on India and I will write knowledgeably and eloquently about the Arrow shirts worn by the archers of the Ramayana period and the 9000-yard sari popularized by Draupadi in the Mahabharatha era. I will add a quotation from the Bhagvat Gita to show that I am an erudite scholar. Something on the lines of “Fire cannot burn me; water cannot wet me; clothes cannot dress me- Thus spoke Krishna to Arjuna”.

The fourth and fifth chapters will dwell on the elaborate costumes worn during the Maurya and Gupta periods and later when the Mughals ruled over India. Pictures of Babur, the Conanian in flowing robes, Akbar the owner of Akbarallys in his graceful nightie, and the sulking Shah Rukh Jahan, the promoter of the Taj group of hotels, will adorn the pages. Another famous king to be prominently featured in this section will be the inventor of the zip, Aurangezip.

In the sixth chapter, I will turn my attention to the influence of the British on the dressing habits of Indians, when the natives learnt to get into their trousers, how they were fascinated by the pockets, why they discarded their kurtas for the western shirt, etc.

Till this point, the book will contain generous doses of humour and numerous anecdotes and will be ‘light reading’. But, here I will warm to my theme, turn grim and get on to the final chapter.

This chapter will run to 584 pages and will be exclusively on the neck tie that westerners introduced to us. I will begin the chapter by hurling choice abuses at the lunatic who invented this contraption, then provide compelling evidence from medical journals on how the continued use of the tie actually constricted the jugular vein and choked the blood flow to the brain, resulting in overall mental retardation of all the inhabitants of the corporate world. I will summon expert opinion to elucidate the point that the neck tie is the root cause of all the problems in the world, including global warming, terrorism, mad cow disease and social upheavals in different parts of the globe. I will juxtapose the photograph of the final moments of Saddam Hussein with the noose around his neck, along with a photo of me in a neck tie, to drive home the message that the effect is same in both the cases. I will end the chapter with a clarion call to the world to abandon this piece of attire or appendage. “Gentlemen of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your insanity”.

So, coming soon to a bookstore near your house, my Magnum Opus“The tie that kills”.

Some regrets have I

Among the devotional songs that I have listened to, Rajaji’s composition “Kurai Onrum Illai”( “No Regrets Have I”), so beautifully rendered by M.S,Subbulakshmi, stands out for its positive tone. When every composer uses the medium of the song to cry out for help or to seek divine intervention and favour, here is Rajaji writing that he is totally contented and has absolutely no regrets in life.

My appreciation of this song went up even higher when I read this moving piece, four years back, in The Hindu, in which Gopal Gandhi, a grandson of Rajaji's, wonders what exactly was on the latter’s mind when he penned the masterpiece. Rajaji had had his share of misfortune and misery in his days and would he still have no regrets? Gopal Gandhi strongly believes that the song was written in memory of a nameless devotee, a so-called untouchable, who had been arrested for daring to enter the temple of Tirupathi, and whose case Rajaji had argued in Court and secured his release. The song, feels Gopal Gandhi, was in a manner of speaking, co-authored by Rajaji and the devotee, both of whom had ‘no regrets’ at what each had done; the devotee breaking the rule and Rajaji defying social mores of that era and fighting for the cause of securing his release from jail.

I was reminded of this when I read in the Deccan Chronicle recently that Brahmins had been kept out of the management of temples in Tamilnadu because, to quote the DMK secretary, Mr Elangovan, “We are only acting in favour of the people who had been so far kept out of temple administration. We have given such sections a chance now to be in charge of temple administration”.

The logic forwarded each time is the same. For centuries Brahmins suppressed the masses; it is only fair that they are placed under some handicap for a few decades, so that parity is restored”

Brahmins are certainly guilty of such discriminatory practices in the past, but as the story of Rajaji above and examples such as that of Madurai Vaidyantha Iyer prove, several Brahmins also led the fight against the injustice meted out. Second, it would simply not have been possible for Brahmins who constituted 3% of the population to suppress the masses all by themselves without the active support and collusion of the rulers, warriors and traders who were all from other communities. If Brahmins are guilty, so are a host of others. All of them deserve to be placed under some handicap.

This entire logic of correcting the sins of the past by placing handicaps today should be applied uniformly. So, how about stripping the rich Chettiars of the wealth that they have accumulated over the centuries and distributing it to all sections of society? Why should the Pillais be allowed to keep their stranglehold over Bharatnatya traditions? Shouldn’t they be denied the privilege of serving as dance gurus for a century or so? Haven’t the owners of SUN TV enjoyed a monopolistic run for several years now? Don’t they deserve to be placed under a handicap for a couple of decades and the cable rights passed on to others to enjoy?

This is insane. No civilized society should be wasting its collective energy in constantly harping on the past and in correcting selectively the ‘wrongs’ of history. Shouldn’t we be moving on?

The research that the Dalai Lama initiated

A blogger (alas, I forget who) had linked to this fascinating article, that made me hold the Dalai Lama in high esteem. The Dalai Lama alone, among religious leaders, seems to possess the open-mindedness to question old beliefs and subject them to the rigour of scientific scrutiny. Every now and then, he invites a group of scientists to his home in Dharamsala, to discuss their work and how Buddhism might contribute to it.

In 2004, when discussing the subject of neuroplasticity with some visiting scientists, the Dalai Lama asked them a question. Scientists have explained, he said, that mental experiences are a result of chemical and electrical changes in the brain. But something had always bothered him about this explanation. Could it work the other way around? That is, in addition to the brain giving rise to thoughts and hopes and beliefs and emotions that add up to this thing we call the mind, maybe the mind also acts back on the brain to cause physical changes in the very matter that created it. If so, then pure thought would change the brain's activity, its circuits or even its structure. Something as intangible and insubstantial as a thought would rewire the brain.

While some neuroscientists summarily dismissed the suggestion as absurd, there were some who took up further research on Buddhist monks, to check if meditation and mental training produced enduring changes in the brain. Experiments under controlled conditions showed that as the volunteers began meditation, gamma waves of a fairly high intensity could be detected. In each case, monks with the most hours of meditation showed the most dramatic brain changes. That was a strong hint that mental training makes it easier for the brain to turn on circuits that underlie compassion and empathy.

"This positive state is a skill that can be trained," the scientists concluded. "Our findings clearly indicate that meditation can change the function of the brain in an enduring way."

If only some of our indigenous religious practitioners and scientists would collaborate in a similar manner, displaying the same degree of open-mindedness- maybe we could distill some ancient wisdom out of the plethora of myths and superstitions.

Neighbourhood news..

Satya Sai Baba has been camping in my locality and his devotees have descended here in droves. Thousands of people have been queuing up or squatting on the road, to catch a cursory glimpse of his face as his convoy whizzes past. Enterprising vendors have been selling Baba calendars, photograph, chains, posters, etc and making a pile. Eateries have sprung up and are doing brisk business.

I have been quite irritated by this intrusion into our privacy and disruption of our normal routine. How can one man and his devotees take over an entire neighbourhood, hold up traffic and bring life here to a standstill?

Musing thus, I switched on the TV to watch the relay of the cricket match being played in Chennai today. It was then that I realized that 50000 boisterous fans would be setting Chepauk ablaze this afternoon while their 20000 cars would have already choked the bylanes of Triplicane, causing much misery to the residents there. And, by watching the match on TV and by being a fanatical follower of the religion called cricket, I have been a party to the disruption of life in the area around Chepauk. How is this behaviour any different from that of the Baba devotees?

But, what about the questionable methods adopted by Sai Baba, to create an aura around himself and entice gullible people? Again, as I argued in an earlier post, Sai Baba is no more guilty of deceit than many of us in the corporate world. When Coca Cola creates a brand identity and claims in its ads that things go better with Coca Cola; or when TVS Motors makes you believe that just because Sachin Tendulkar drives one of their bikes, we should all buy that model, or when Lux tries to convince you that using their soap would give you the same complexion as Sushmita Sen’s, they are merely creating an illusion and we accept this practice as perfectly legitimate. Why should not Sai Baba build his own brand image then, if there are willing buyers and there is no coercion involved in the process?

To an ardent Baba devotee, my patronage of a game like cricket must strike him as pretty weird and senseless, just as I view his belief in the supernatural powers of a fellow human being quite irrational. Of course, the people who fall in both categories and who worship Sai Baba and cricket must be a contented lot, completely at peace with themselves.

Which bank does Lara like?

As I have confessed in the past, I have always been fascinated by these SMS contests on FM Radio. The one I heard today, sponsored by ING Vysya Bank, asked readers to SMS their answer to the question, “Which bank does Brian Lara like the most?” Options were a) Piggy Bank b) River bank and c) ING Vysya Bank.

Now, on the face of it, this looks like a ‘no-brainer’ or rather a ‘yes, Brianer”. But, life has taught me that these advertisers, unlike Humpty Dumpty, don’t choose to mean exactly what they say. There’s always something more, or something else. One has to look beyond the obvious.

As the sponsors have promised an opportunity to meet up with Brian Lara in person, I am naturally keen on getting the answer right. So, I decided to dig and probe further.

A quick Google search on Lara shows that he was born in Trinidad. While there are quite a few rivers there, starting with Arima river and ending alphabetically with Yarra river, and many of these boast of excellent banks on either side, I can’t imagine Lara wasting his time there. He was far too busy playing cricket from the time he learnt to put his gloves on and wouldn’t have ventured within 22 yards of any river bank. So, option A is ruled out.

Option C, ING Vysya Bank, needed closer scrutiny. According to their website, ING`s mission is to be a leading, global, client-focused, innovative and low-cost provider of financial services through the distribution channels of the client’s preference in markets where ING can create value. I know for a fact that Brian Lara’s mission in life is somewhat incompatible with this. In fact, there is nothing that Lara hates more than being a provider of financial services, regardless of the distribution channel. Lara and other product-endorsing cricketers of his ilk, passionately subscribe to the view that the market has to add value to them, not the other way round. So, Option C is completely out of the question.

I need to dig no further, as I have hit pay dirt here. By the principle of reduction ad absurdum , if options A and C are ruled out as false, option B has to be the explanation. So, piggy bank it is.

I have sent the sms to the FM channel, on the strength of which I hope to have dinner with Brian Lara tomorrow. Wish me luck.

R.I.P Series-11

Thomas Alva Edison, prolific inventor, declared pompously in one of his incandescent light bulb moments, “Genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration”. Post mortem later revealed that Edison’s perspiration, when he uttered those words, had not been due to hard work, but was actually a classic symptom of an acute heart attack that eventually led to his 100% expiration.

A carrot among the pigeons

At a dinner, during a recent visit to Manila, our host ordered pigeons, a delicacy that the restaurant was famous for. The cooked pigeons were carved out and dressed in our presence and everybody at the table, except me, dug into the dish with great relish.

The host went on to share details of other interesting culinary experiences. In his province, he said, rats were caught in the rice fields, cooked in an open flame and eaten by the locals. The meat was so tender and tasty. And, whereas the appearance of a python would make a person in the city recoil in fear, back in his province, it would make the farmer’s mouth water in anticipation.

It was a myth, he added, that only the Koreans loved dog meat. In his own province, he said, dog meat was highly valued. He then explained, in painstaking detail, how the dogs were hunted down and cooked.

How could he forget the time he was served scorpions, fried in his presence, when he was visiting China? He was initially quite nervous, he admitted, when he saw that its fangs were still intact, but when he put it into his mouth, it tasted quite delicious and he asked for some more.

But, the best and most exotic meat that he had had the privilege of tasting was the wildebeest meal that he tried out during his visit to Africa. The meatiest meal in his life.

Munching my meal of boiled carrots and broccoli, I wanted to cut him short here and share some interesting vegetarian culinary experiences that I have had. Like the time, I spotted this big purple brinjal in Pondy bazaar, brought it home, had it minced and turned into chutney. Or, about those ripe, juicy tomatoes which were ruthlessly squeezed, and added to boiling rasam. And the episode where we plucked out mangoes with our bare hands, cut them into little pieces and heartlessly pickled them with burning chillies. Not to forget the time we picked up a kilogram of potatoes, skinned them and mashed them out of existence.

I wanted to tell him all this, but I didn’t. All these gory details of brinjals being minced, tomatoes being squeezed, potatoes being mashed and mangoes being pickled were routine stuff for an hardened vegetarian like me. But I had to respect the sensibilities of my host, who could find such finer details highly disgusting and repulsive. No point in upsetting him. After all, he was footing the bill.

R.I.P, Mondays

In the midst of my third 3-day weekend in the last four weeks, I have been engaged in the task of re-designing the calendar, with the avowed objective of liberating humanity from the tyranny of work. Or, at least, reducing the burden.

After analyzing the issue threadbare, I have come to the conclusion that what the world desperately needs to be a better place to live in are shorter weeks and more number of Saturdays and Sundays.

Who doesn’t hate the first day of the work week? Boring rituals to go through. Impatient customers to deal with. Mundane stuff to be endured. At least, from the second day onward, work becomes Tuesdane, Wednesdane…

So, what I propose is that we divide the year into 60 weeks of 6 days each, with each month having 5 weeks. Each week will have 4 working days and 2 holidays. Week will start on Tuesday. Mondays will be eliminated. We will have 12 months of 30 days each. No more worrying about changing the date on the watch when the month doesn’t’ have 31 days. No more 28-day Februaries.

Some of you, I know, are pretty sharp. It must have occurred to you that 6 x 60= 360, whereas it is an unalterable fact that the earth takes 365.25 days to travel around the sun and complete one year.

My first impulse was to get down to basics and single-handedly work at adjusting the planetary orbit of the earth around the sun in a suitable manner. This, I later realized, would be unnecessarily tinkering with the forces of Nature. So, my simple solution to this seemingly unsolvable puzzle is that we declare those 5 days that are dangling loose, as holidays. Every leap year will have 6 such days. These days will not appear in any calendar and will not get recorded in any manner. They will simply get dissolved in the space-time continuum. The world will simply be placed in suspended animation on these days. Only Einstein and I can comprehend how all this works. So, don’t bother to Google.

Some cynics amongst you, no doubt, challenge the very idea. With shorter work weeks, output and productivity will suffer, you point out. That’s nonsense. It’s an accepted fact that half the stuff that gets passed off as work is completely useless. No good to man or beast, as Wodehouse would say. If people work less and are paid less, their consumption of goods will come down, factories will reduce their production proportionately, burn less fuel and emit less CO2. All this will slow down the global warming . This will trigger a virtuous economic cycle that will also be favourable to the environment. Good for everybody, I assure you.

These 5 or 6 days won’t even register as a blip in the history of the 10-billion and 20 year old Universe (I read in an encyclopedia once that the Universe is believed to be 10-billion years old. Since I read this in 1986, I have added another 20 years to its age). Besides, the calendar has always been a matter of convenience and has been altered to suit the need of the times. For instance, there is no evidence that Jesus Christ was born on December 25th. Nor did the months of January and February exist in the Roman times. In the 16th century, the dates October 5, 1582 to October 14th, 1582 simply vanished from the calendar, during the shift from the Julian system to the Gregorian system. The world is certainly not worse off, because this happened. It can be done again. The change will be as inconspicuous and unnoticeable as crossing the International Date Line.

And, my clinching argument is this. When the world transits from the 7-day week to the 6-day week, computers need to be told so, because they don’t have a mind of their own, the idiots. That means more programs. More programs = more software code= more work outsourced to India. Some say that the Indian success in IT owes much to the Millennium Bug that created an urgent need for Y2K-compliant software, an opportunity that the enterprising Indian techies grabbed and never looked back.

So, this could well be the next wave. Millions of Indian software engineers working tirelessly four days a week to make this happen.

Flash news : Prannoy Roy has just announced that he is changing the name of his news channel from NDTV 24 x 7 to NDTV 24 x 6 . Stay tuned for updates

Do worry, be happy

Several prominent people have responded to the annual question asked by Edge Foundation, “What are you optimistic about and why?” These worthies are optimistic about a wide range of issues- better hearing aids, decline of cult and superstition, better understanding of religion, reduction in crime and terrorism, elimination of poverty, discovery of mental illness genes- you name it.

So, with such abundance of optimism and hopefulness, the world is bound to be a happier place and much joie de vivre will result soon. Right?

Well, since I asked that question, and given my warped mind, you know the right answer is “wrong”, right? You are right. Optimism is unwarranted and actually inimical to happiness. Read on. (Source)

It all started with the University of Leicester publishing a World map of Happiness that clearly brought out the fact that the Danes were the happiest people in the world. In fact, for over thirty years, this country with 5 million inhabitants has ranked first in Eurobarometer surveys.

So, the British Medical Journal decided to dig deeper into this and identify the causal factors. In its study, BMJ focused on accounting for why life satisfaction in Denmark substantially exceeded that in Sweden and Finland, the two Eurobarometer countries most similar to Denmark. It looked into various differentiating factors like climate, food, genealogy, hair colour, habits, marriage, prowess in sports, etc .

In the end they ‘cracked the conundrum of Danish contentment’. The main reason for Danish happiness, according to the study, is that their expectations for the year to come are consistently low. And when they find that things are not more rotten in the state of Denmark than what they had expected them to be, they are jubilant.

So, there it is, the secret to a happy life. Eschew optimism. Peg your expectations lower. Enter into a marriage with the expectation that divorce is imminent; you will find much happiness even if it lasts a month. Take up a job on Monday, accepting the inevitably of being fired any time. Believe me, you will experience such relief and bliss when you still are at your workplace on Wednesday. If you find a feeling of rosiness stealing over you, kill it immediately.

Remember that the Great Dane is one helluva happy dog, because he is one helluva pessimist to begin with.

Intelligence and Intelli-ladies

In an interview yesterday, Kapil Dev remarked that while Indian cricketers had loads of talent, they seemed to lack “cricket intelligence” or CI, as he called it. He said that the fact that Sachin had not won as many matches for India as he should have with his talent, made him believe that he was not in the same CI league as, say, Javed Miandad was.

Kapil makes an interesting point. I have often heard it said that Indians lacked killer instinct, but it is for the first time that I hear the word ‘intelligence’ applied in this context.

Howard Gardner was the first to theorise, in his treatise “Frames of Mind” that human intelligence was not a single entity that could be assessed by simplistic psychometric tests, but had multiple dimensions such as Visual / Spatial Intelligence, Musical Intelligence, Verbal/Linguistic Intelligence, Logical/Mathematical Intelligence, Interpersonal Intelligence, Intrapersonal Intelligence, and Bodily / Kinesthetic Intelligence. Later he added ‘naturalist intelligence’ and ‘spiritual intelligence’ to the list. All these intelligences are important, but each person has a unique blend of these intelligences. Gardner argues that the big challenge facing the deployment of human resources is how to best take advantage of the uniqueness conferred on us as a species exhibiting several intelligences.

Thus, you could have a brilliant mathematician like Ramanujam endowed with much logical/numerical intelligence but who could be completely lacking in musical intelligence. Or, an author like R.K.Narayan high in linguistic intelligence, but poor in inter-personal skills. Some with high spatial intelligence may solve the Rubik cube in a minute, but may flunk the maths test in school the next day. While I, an otherwise intelligent person, can’t crack the Rubik’s cube even if you taught me the steps. Learning/teaching should therefore focus on the particular strength of each person and appropriate teaching modalities applied. If you want me to learn to solve Rubik's puzzle, sing out the solution melodiously.

So, intelligence can be specific to one domain and in a limited arena. Just because a top batsman has bodily/kinesthetic intelligence to execute an exquisitive cover drive or an awesome square-cut, he may not necessarily possess Cricket intelligence or CI, which is something more or that extra bit that is required to win a match.

Maybe, there is something called Bloggers Intelligence (BI) as well. Notice how some bloggers make clever use of the medium, with the right mix of humour, sensationalism and conversational style of writing, while some like me don’t manage to figure it out at all.

On being secular...

This post in the Brittanica Blog discusses the controversy surrounding the Italian law laid down by Benito Mussolini in 1924, and still in effect today, that every school, classroom, hospital, court of law in the country must display a crucifix of Christ. The law has been challenged several times and there have been several disputes, but it has stayed.

On the other hand The French law on secularity and conspicuous religious symbols in schools bans students from wearing conspicuous religious symbols in primary and secondary schools. France had begun to view faith as a matter for each individual citizen rather than for a nation as a whole As a result of this history, religious manifestations are considered undesirable in government-operated schools; primary and secondary schools are supposed to be neutral spaces where children can learn away from political or religious pressures, controversies and quarrels. Because of this neutrality requirement, students are normally prohibited from conducting religious proselytising on the premises.

Both these countries profess to be secular. So does India ,for that matter.

Whereas Italy did not see any inconsistency in the display of the crucifix and in its secular ideals, France felt that to be secular, ostentatious display of any religious symbol was undesirable. To them, secularism meant neutrality.

India , of course, claims to believe that secularism means that all religions must co-exist and that the Govt policy must encourage all religions in equal measure. Religion is so much a part of our lives here and permeates every other activity- business, sports, music- that we take it for granted. For other cultures, such ostentatious display of religious beliefs can be quite strange.

While on a recent visit to a consulting firm in Chennai along with some European colleagues I noticed that the persons sitting across the table were all in black attire, their faces unshaven, and sporting large, colourful marks on the foreheads. They were all set to leave for their annual Sabarimala pilgrimage. My colleagues, of course, were far too diplomatic to express any curiosity, but I wondered what they made out of the whole thing.

I guess, as in everything else, one size will not fit all, and each country will have to choose the appropriate doctrine or brand of secularism that it feels is the best suited. And, then deal with the conflicts.

What do you know?

All you readers out there who spend so many hours of your time, soaking in the wisdom that pours in generous measure out of my writing, don’t you find it strange that I continue to remain an anonymous entity and that you hardly know who I am or what my background is?

It’s only fair that I reveal some secrets of my past, where I hailed from and what my mission in life is. So, here goes.

1) Let me start with the most momentous event - my birth. When the stork came to deliver me, my mother wanted to keep the stork instead. But, SEBI authorities ruled in my favour, pointing out that it was against Stork Exchange rules. So, my parents put me in a basket which they kept outside their house, hoping that some kind-hearted couple will take me away. The next morning, they found that somebody had stolen just the basket and kept me behind. So, here I am.

2) When I was seven, unbeknownst to me, the stork delivered a baby to the couple who were later to become my in-laws. It is said, that when the baby was born, three stars were seen in the Eastern sky. Astrologers felt this was ominous, as on normal nights, there are 37,724 stars seen in the eastern sky. The foreboding proved right .Poor baby ended up marrying me when she grew up. So, here she is with me.

3) When the stork came to deliver our first daughter some years back, she took one look at us and refused to get off. The stork took her back home. Wife and I had to fly down to Sweden, to bring her back from Stork Home. So, here she is with us.

4) When the stork came to deliver our second daughter, we sensed something sinister. We had this growing suspicion that it wasn’t the stork that was producing these babies. It was the birds and the bees. We had been taken on a ride all along

5) These constant trials, tribulations and encounters with the stork have taken a terrible toll on my looks. However I owe it to my readers to, at least, reveal what I look like. So, here is a recent photograph that captures me in one of my rare moments when I am not Stork-raving mad.

There, thanks to the prompting by La Mukhs, I have unburdened all I had to disclose about myself. To continue with the chain, I wanted to tag La Tags, but I understand that she and her husband are currently out on a hunting expedition to the bird sanctuary, where they will shoot down certain rare and endangered species of birds, notably storks.

A centenarian teenager

All you brisk joggers, power-walkers and marathon runners, stop right there, hold your breath for a minute and listen to me.

If you are brisk-jogging, power-walking or marathon-running to stay young, live longer and remain fit, you are simply wasting your time. If these are your objectives, your role model in life should not be the sprinting cheetah or the springing deer or the galloping horse, but the humble, unhurrying turtle.

Jonah Lehrer, editor of Seed magazine, refers to an article in New York Times :

The liver, lungs and kidneys of a centenarian turtle are virtually indistinguishable from those of its teenage counterpart. Turtles have the power to almost stop the ticking of their personal clock. "Their heart isn't necessarily stimulated by nerves, and it doesn't need to beat constantly," said Dr. George Zug, curator of herpetology at the Smithsonian Institution. "They can turn it on and off essentially at will."

So, leave thy panting and gasping and mad pounding of the pavement. The secret to longevity does not lie there. If you really want to have a healthy heart ticking rhythmically like a teenagers’ even at the age of 100, go slow. Crawl. Speed limit must be 100 cmph. Better still, get into your shell and stay there. Aesop was right. Slow does win the race.

What's your footprint?

Ever wondered how much of natural resources your lifestyle requires?

Try this Ecological Footprint Quiz. It estimates how much productive land and water you need to support what you use and what you discard. After answering 15 easy questions you'll be able to compare your Ecological Footprint to what other people use and to what is available on this planet.

My ecological footprint is 8.5 hectares, against India’s average of 0.8 hectares. Worldwide there exists 1.8 biologically productive hectares per person. If everyone lived like me, we would need 4.7 planets of the size of earth!

Hmmm. I guess, it’s time to conquer outer space and inhabit a few more solar systems.

The great African robbery

A paper published by the Institute of Physics Publishing in July’ 06 describes how the Amazon basin is fertilized with nutrients contained in dust blown from a single spot 5000 km away- the Bodele depression in northern Chad, Africa.

While that part of Africa languishes as a part of the Saharan desert, dust from there gets blown to a distant continent to enrich the soil and help create a flourishing eco-sytem. What a noble thing to do.

This seems to have been the story of Africa all along. Robbed by greedy human beings from other continents and stripped off her gold, diamonds, oil, rubber, wood and other natural resources. According to the Nobel-award winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz, historically, Africa is the region most exploited by globalization; during the years of colonization, the world took its resources and gave back little in return. Out of the eighteen poorest countries, fourteen are in Africa.

Now, it transpires that Nature has been part of the looting all along, quietly scooping up the Saharan nutrient-rich dust and ferrying it across the Atlantic. Robbing African deserts to enrich forests in other continents.

The Chola bronze

In an article in The Guardian (and reproduced in The Hindu today). William Darlymple writes admiringly of Chola bronze statues:

“Exquisitely poised and supple, these bronze deities stand silent on their plinths, yet with their hands they speak gently to their devotees through the noiseless lingua franca of the gestures (or mudras) of south Indian dance: their hands are raised in blessing and reassurance, promising boons and protection,and, above all, marriage, fertility and fecundity, in return for the veneration that is so clearly their divine right.

In western art, few sculptors - except perhaps Donatello or Rodin - have achieved the pure essence of sensuality so spectacularly evoked by the Chola sculptors; or achieved such a sense of celebration of the divine beauty of the human body. There is a startling clarity and purity about the way the near-naked bodies of the gods and
the saints are displayed. Yet by the simplest and most modest of devices,their spirit and powers, joys and pleasures, and above all their enjoyment of each other's beauty and their overwhelming sexuality, is highlighted

But, to ask a basic question. Why do humans even bother to create or view art? Some years back, Dr. Vilayanur Ramachandran, a renowned neuroscientist, pondered over this question and tried to provide an explanation for the human appreciation of art, in terms of the neural process that goes on in the brain. He wondered if there were any universal laws that transcended cultural barriers or layers, in the appreciation of art. And, for his study, he took up the case of the Chola bronze statues that Darlymple has now written glowingly about.

In his paper, “The Artful Brain”, Dr Ramachandran says that bronze sculptures from the Chola period in India a thousand years ago are revered because they express the epitome of feminine poise and grace, charm and sensuality. But the Victorian art historians of the 19th century judged the statues appalling because they were not realistic: the waists were too narrow, the breasts too big, the posture provocative. But art has nothing to do with realism; it is about producing pleasing effects in the brain

Yet an artist cannot simply randomly distort a human figure and expect to generate a pleasing result. There appear to be some principles that cut across cultural boundaries.

One of these principles, Dr. Ramachandran suggested, is that exaggerated forms invoke a greater response than the natural form. This phenomenon may be explained by studying animal behavior. If a rat learns that a rectangular shape connotes that he will soon be fed, he is likely to prefer shapes that are even more rectangular, longer, and skinnier. This "peak shift" is used in art to create caricatures. Take Nixon's craggy brow and big nose, amplify them, and the result looks more like Nixon than he does! Similarly, the Chola artists of India simply took the average female form and subtracted the average male form- leaving big breasts, big hips and narrow waist- and amplified the difference. The result was one very anatomically incorrect, but a very sexy goddess,


So, coming back to the basic question. Why do humans even bother creating or viewing art? Dr.Ramachandran’s conjecture is that Art may have evolved as a virtual simulation reality. When you imagine something –as when rehearsing a bison hunt or an amorous encounter- many of the same brain circuits are activated as when you are really doing something. This allows you to practice scenarios in an internal simulation without incurring the energy, cost or risk of a real rehearsal.

So, whether it is a Picasso, Van Gogh or a Chola bronze, you willingly allow that piece of art to deceive your brain.

Et tu, Santa?

I have heard it said that 'Valentine’s Day', 'Friends Day', 'Bosses’ Day', 'Doctor’s Day', and other assorted days were invented by the ‘greeting card’ companies to promote the sale of their products.

Via Frontal Cortex, I learn now that even the modern image of Santa Claus, was a creation of the advertising executives of the Coco Cola Company. They had introduced Santa Claus, in an ad campaign in 1931’ as a chubby, jolly, old man dressed in a red suit and that distinctive cap. That image has stayed.

This is what Coke’s official website claims :

“Starting in 1931, magazine ads for Coca-Cola featured St. Nick as a kind, jolly man in a red suit. Because magazines were so widely viewed, and because this image of Santa appeared for more than three decades, the image of Santa most people have today is largely based on our advertising.

Before the 1931 introduction of the Coca-Cola Santa Claus created by artist Haddon Sundblom, the image of Santa ranged from big to small and fat to tall. Santa even appeared as an elf and looked a bit spooky.”

Amazing, the kind of influence these ads and films have on our lives and how they shape our thinking. To the millions of people of the previous generation in Andhra Pradesh and Tamilnadu, who were brought up on a fare of countless mythological movies starring N.T.Rama Rao, the images of Lord Rama and Krishna that appear in their minds even today, would bear the chubby, effeminate face of N.T.Rama Rao. If the real Rama or Krishna were to materialise today, they would be viewed as imposters and handed over to the police.

Conversation with daughter-8

This conservation doesn’t involve me or my daughter, but I enjoyed it so much that I thought I should include it in my “conversation with daughter’ series.

This is from the archives of the Scientific Creative Quarterly. The author is Stephen McNeil, an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at University of British Columbia Okanagan in Kelowna, British Columbia.

The original title was.” A DIALOGUE WITH SARAH, AGED 3: IN WHICH IT IS SHOWN THAT IF YOUR DAD IS A CHEMISTRY PROFESSOR, ASKING “WHY” CAN BE DANGEROUS"

SARAH: Daddy, were you in the shower?

DAD: Yes, I was in the shower.

SARAH: Why?

DAD: I was dirty. The shower gets me clean.

SARAH: Why?

DAD: Why does the shower get me clean?

SARAH: Yes.

DAD: Because the water washes the dirt away when I use soap.

SARAH: Why?

DAD: Why do I use soap?

SARAH: Yes.

DAD: Because the soap grabs the dirt and lets the water wash it off.

SARAH: Why?

DAD: Why does the soap grab the dirt?

SARAH: Yes.

DAD: Because soap is a surfactant.

SARAH: Why?

DAD: Why is soap a surfactant?

SARAH: Yes.

DAD: That is an EXCELLENT question. Soap is a surfactant because it forms water-soluble micelles that trap the otherwise insoluble dirt and oil particles.

SARAH: Why?

DAD: Why does soap form micelles?

SARAH: Yes.

DAD: Soap molecules are long chains with a polar, hydrophilic head and a non-polar, hydrophobic tail. Can you say ‘hydrophilic’?

SARAH: Aidrofawwic

DAD: And can you say ‘hydrophobic’?

SARAH: Aidrofawwic

DAD: Excellent! The word ‘hydrophobic’ means that it avoids water.

SARAH: Why?

DAD: Why does it mean that?

SARAH: Yes.

DAD: It’s Greek! ‘Hydro’ means water and ‘phobic’ means ‘fear of’. ‘Phobos’ is fear. So ‘hydrophobic’ means ‘afraid of water’.

SARAH: Like a monster?

DAD: You mean, like being afraid of a monster?

SARAH: Yes.

DAD: A scary monster, sure. If you were afraid of a monster, a Greek person would say you were gorgophobic.

(pause)

SARAH: (rolls her eyes) I thought we were talking about soap.

DAD: We are talking about soap.

(longish pause)

SARAH: Why?

DAD: Why do the molecules have a hydrophilic head and a hydrophobic tail?

SARAH: Yes.

DAD: Because the C-O bonds in the head are highly polar, and the C-H bonds in the tail are effectively non-polar.

SARAH: Why?

DAD: Because while carbon and hydrogen have almost the same electronegativity, oxygen is far more electronegative, thereby polarizing the C-O bonds.

SARAH: Why?

DAD: Why is oxygen more electronegative than carbon and hydrogen?

SARAH: Yes.

DAD: That’s complicated. There are different answers to that question, depending on whether you’re talking about the Pauling or Mulliken electronegativity scales. The Pauling scale is based on homo- versus heteronuclear bond strength differences, while the Mulliken scale is based on the atomic properties of electron affinity and ionization energy. But it really all comes down to effective nuclear charge. The valence electrons in an oxygen atom have a lower energy than those of a carbon atom, and electrons shared between them are held more tightly to the oxygen, because electrons in an oxygen atom experience a greater nuclear charge and therefore a stronger attraction to the atomic nucleus! Cool, huh?
(pause)
SARAH: I don’t get it.

DAD: That’s OK. Neither do most of my students.

Oh, God!

A colleague and his wife were involved in a fire accident, but after many days of hospitalization, skin grafting, etc recovered slowly and returned to their normal routine.

I called him up the day he reported back for work and asked how he was. He replied, “By God’s grace, I managed to pull through”.

What amazed me about that reply- and I told him so- was that he was thanking God profusely for saving his life, when he would have been within reason to hold the same God responsible for the nasty accident that almost killed him.

Faith can move mountains, faith is what will sustain you in life, faith in a higher Being will pull you out of a crisis – such beliefs are hardwired into many of our brains. Some others would view such blind faith as misplaced. “Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence” felt Richard Dawkins.

But the point is this. This colleague had as much right to subscribe to his belief as I had in questioning it, so long as each showed genuine tolerance and respected the fact that the other person was entitled to his viewpoint.

I was reflecting on this incident, when I heard about the controversy surrounding the installation of a statue of E.V.Ramaswamy Naicker, a sworn atheist, near the Srirangam temple. While the choice of venue was clearly made by the Dravida Kazhagam (DK) with the idea of provoking the believers, the latter fell for the bait and reacted predictably, in anger. The whole atmosphere became charged because of this mutual intolerance. What the believers should have done was to ignore the statue completely and instead score a point by turning out in large numbers on the same day, to offer prayers at the temple.

True rationalists like Richard Dawkins shun the word “atheist”, because it has a negative spin and pre-supposes that the positive or the default setting was to be a believer or theist. Self-styled atheists such as the DK, on the other hand, will not have any stand-alone purpose for their existence, without the framework of temples and believers to pick on.

I was intrigued by a recent news item that reported on a function organized by the DK to mark the 33rd death anniversary of EVR. The speakers thanked the DMK Govt for the order that allows members of any caste to officiate as priests in temples, but demanded that the rule must be further extended to permit women to become priests as well. I am all for equal opportunity and such noble ideas, but what I found amusing was that a party which has campaigned violently for demolition of temples and which has consistently denounced believers as barbarians, should exhibit so much concern for the caste and gender of the priests indulging in ‘barbaric acts of performing puja’ inside temples that, in its considered opinion, had no right to exist in the first place. It seems to me that the party has as much locus standi to comment on who should act as priests inside temples, as the devotees of the Lord have in expressing an opinion on who should be the General Secretary of the DK party.

Save this planet.

I learnt an important lesson in life, as a boy of 12. I had carelessly discarded a tube of toothpaste, believing that it was empty. An aged relative who was passing by – or rather was keeping vigil- pulled out the tube from the dustbin, rolled it tightly, squeezed it professionally with both his hands, managed to salvage another week’s supply of toothpaste and then delivered a long lecture to me on the importance of getting the maximum bang for the buck. Of course, he didn’t resort to such Americanisms, as he didn’t even suspect that such a place as America existed, but you get the point.

Another aged relative got on to a bus, traveled a mile beyond the point where she actually needed to go and walked her way back, so that she would get maximum value for the 10 paise that was charged as minimum fare those days.

Frugality was strictly practiced by members of these yester-generations and implemented mercilessly. Everything had to be re-used, recycled or handed down. Nothing was to be wasted. When purchasing something- if at all- durability was the only criterion to go by.

Watches served several generations. My first watch was my grandfather’s and if I hadn’t lost it during a cricket match, I would perhaps have passed it on to my grandson. Pens were for keeps and one went through the entire education process from kindergarten to post-graduation using the same pen. Well, not exactly. Till the 4th or 5th standard, you got along with the pencil passed down by your elder sibling.

Food had to be consumed and could never be wasted, even if one was choking inside and sambar was oozing out of the ears and the nostrils.

If you bought a pair of slippers, you not only had to choose the sturdiest and rugged pair in the locality, you also had to walk down to the cobbler across the road to get an attachment (made from old tyres) stitched on, so that the wear-out period would be longer. It was forbidden to buy the next pair, unless the existing one had worn out completely and the soles had disappeared completely.

Such habits don’t die. They stay with you forever. I can never get myself to throw out anything, if it still has got some life in it. I can’t keep water running in the wash basin, a second more than necessary. My wife refuses to buy footwear from Bata because the damn things last forever and never get worn out and she can’t bear to throw them away even after they’ve gone completely out of fashion.

Do all you kids out there realize that you are depleting the earth’s resources so rapidly with your extravagant lifestyles and with all your disposable stuff ? Does it even occur to you, misguided souls, that the environment doesn’t belong to you and we ,of the earlier generation have just given it to you for safe custody till the time it is passed on to your children? Must you cut all the trees, burn all the coal, combust all the oil, ignite all the gas and release all the CO2 in one lifetime? Can’t you show some restraint?

There. It’s finally done. That outburst certainly made me feel a lot better and morally superior. I had my chance to get even. I could take it off on someone.

R.I.P, Art Buchwald; hey he's escaped.

The renowned American humourist, Art Buchwald, when told in January this year that his kidneys had suffered irreversible damage, declined dialysis and checked into a hospice, to spend what he thought were his last days. But things didn’t go as expected and months later he was still alive. And on July 1st, he walked out of the hospice, defying all odds.

While at the hospice, he decided to share his extraordinary experience with his readers and published a book titled, “Too soon to say goodbye” in which he jokes about things that one normally refrains from discussing, plans his funeral, gets his friends to send in eulogies as they would write after his death, so that he could get to read them, talks about wills and the pleasures of disinheriting people and notes with immense satisfaction that, “'the beauty of not dying but expecting to, is that it gives you a chance to say goodbye to everybody”.

Amazing stuff written in a remarkably cheerful tone, despite the specter of death looming large and demonstrating that you can find humour in any situation, if you are so disposed.

He almost made it to my RIP series, but much to my delight, managed to pull out in time !

Update 21/01/07 : Art Buchwald passed on last week. The New York Times posted a video on their website, with Art announcing, " I am Art Buchwald. I have just died."

Bites-6

A film I love to watch on the National Geographic Channel is the one on the Alaskan brown bears and the salmon. By some mysterious homing mechanism, salmon return from the northern Pacific where they have spent two or three years and enter the exact headwater gravel beds of their birth. Here the hungry big brown bear ( HB3) patiently waits for the salmon meal.

Not just the brown bears, but there are other stories of salmon grabbing. Model-actress Padma Lakshmi, for example, managed to grab a Salman, Rushdie. Not surprising, because Padma Lakshmi’s ancestors were also bears. Forebears, they were called.

Another person to grab a Salman is Katrina Kaif. This Salman, Khan is quite a character. When not mowing down pavement dwellers with his jeep, he is hunting down deer in a Rajasthan forest. He has been sentenced to a term in jail, but he may take refuge under the provisions of the Wildlife Protection Act. His lawyers have enough material to show that his life is wild and that he needs protection.

Similar was the case with the other famous Khan, Mansur Ali Pataudi. Was caught red-handed with the corpse of a black buck, again belonging to an endangered species. So, is he in jail? No way. As Groucho Marx said, behind every successful man is a woman. And immediately behind her is his wife. So, his wife Sharmila Tagore got him out of trouble by presenting a powerful case in Court that Tiger was an endangered species as well and that he shouldn’t be caged.

Tiger Pataudi, as some of you belonging to my generation would know, was a famous cricketer in the ‘60s and ‘70’s. This was despite an accident that he was involved in, early in his career. Prior to that, he used to spell his name as Pataudii, but as he lost an eye in the accident, was forced to change it to Pataudi. Now, of course, he has retired from the game. So, while his actress wife Sharmila goes for her shooting at the RK Studios, he goes for his shooting in the jungles of Haryana, looking for a fast buck.

Another Bengali actress making her mark now is Konkona Sen. Her performance in the film, Mr and Mrs Iyer, as you know, won her accolades. Now, she has taken on a challenging role in a film called Traffic Signal, directed by Madhur Bhandarkar. Sen’s sensitive portrayal, in the movie, of the life of a sex worker in Mumbai, has pushed up the Sensex by 200 points already.

This Sensex. Either being pushed up by the Bulls .Or, worse, being pulled down by the Bears, like the salmon in Alaska.

What's the metaphor?

William L Hosch of the Britannica Blog writes :

“,,, different ages develop different metaphors (or memes) to describe man, the universe, and God. In the 17th century, Isaac Newton and his contemporaries developed what came to be called a mechanical, or clockwork, model of reality. For them the universe was built up like the intricate interlocking wheels of an automaton, such that once wound up by the Creator, the universe and everything in it inexorably followed Newton’s laws.

…Since the mid 20th century, the concept of the computer has been one of the most prevalent memes for describing reality… and in the 1960s Konrad Zuse, who built the first program-controlled computer in 1941, asserted that the universe is a computer. More recently, Stephen Wolfram has also claimed that life can be explained as a cellular automaton, and that… the universe is a giant computer program that is continually calculating the unfolding of events.”

So, what is the metaphor of our times and how do we explain the Universe to reflect today’s reality ? As one gigantic iPod player with a huge memory and where each one of us is an MP3 file, with an invisible Hand controlling the central scroll key? The Indian view, perhaps, would be that the Universe is just a Bollywood film being reeled out eternally with each one of us playing bit roles ?