India, the person

Glancing idly at a world map and marveling at the variety of shapes of different countries, I find myself swelling with justifiable pride.

China may be an economic giant, but its map, alas, resembles a hen in the process of hatching its eggs.

The map of Italy looks like a weak-kneed footballer about to strike the Sicilian ball , rather tamely.

Great Britain, for all its greatness, reminds me of a cartoon character called Baby Huey.

And the map of USA, no offense meant, has the appearance of the posterior of an oversized Uncle Sam.

And India? Ha, she is different and stands tall in all her glory..

No country’s map lends itself so readily to anthropomorphist delight as does India’s. The north-south length and the east-west spread, with Jammu and Kashmir as the head, Punjab and HP the slender neck and peninsular India as the legs, manage to imbue it with such symmetry and grace, as to give it a perfect human-like shape.

Aren’t you proud?

By the way, back in the pre-Internet era, hard copies of Time, Newsweek and Economist used to carry the map of India to reflect the status quo, that is along the LOC,. They had to carry a correction (defacing the map with a rubber stamp) that the map was neither authentic nor correct, or they would be accused of serious cartographical conspiracy. It is still illegal, but the Internet cuts across such geographical boundaries and such instances are far too many, for authorities to track.

But, the point that is of relevance to this post is that without the areas that are called PoK or the Chinese-controlled area, the map of India loses its sense of proportion and resembles a human body with a distorted and vacuumed-out head. At least for this reason, we should not cede this territory.

In fact, carving out Pakistan did us lot of good. We now have perfectly drooping shoulders and outstretched arms, which would have been seriously distorted had we carried the baggage of Pakistan on our back.

Way to go, India.

The power of commodity

A 355 ml can of Coca Cola contains about 10 teaspoons of sugar. About 5 times the amount that an average coffee-drinker in India would use for same quantity,

No, this is not one of those email forwards that warn you of the terrible things that cola can do to your system. Far be it from me to preach on what you should drink or eat.

I was just trying to read up on how the fortunes of business conglomerates or empires often rest on a single, simple commodity. The case of oil and the OPEC countries is well known, but so many other basic items have been controlled by a few parties with vested interests. For several centuries, Arab seafarers and Venetian merchants kept such a tight control over the movement of spices, especially pepper from India.

For Coca Cola, the main raw material and their life line is sugar and they need to secure the supply of this valuable commodity. In India, according to some reports, Coca Cola is the single largest purchaser of sugar. This thesis claims that during World War II, when sugar was rationed in the USA, Coca Cola along with another large sugar consumer, Hershey chocolates, managed to get plentiful supplies of sugar from Cuba and kept its production in full swing, actively lobbying with the Govt at every stage. No sugar, no Coke. And Coke entering the sugar market can drive the prices up or keep the supplies down..

Mcdonalds is believed to be the single largest purchaser of beef, pork, potatoes and apples. Similarly, Heinz is one of the largest purchaser of tomatoes. Supplies of these items are critical to the business and the price of these commodities will determine the profitability.

In his classic book, Bound Together on how traders, preachers, adventurers, and warriors shaped globalization, the author Nayan Chanda, of the Yale Centre for the Study of Globalisation, quotes a Reuters news item which said that the four giant roasters and retailers - Procter and Gamble, Kraft Foods, Sara Lee and Nestle- which together control 40% of the world’s coffee have benefited immensely from the falling price of coffee. They have passed on some of the lower price to consumers but have also fattened their margins considerably. Prices paid to growers have plunged more than 80% since 1997, but average retail prices for ground roast coffee in American cities have fallen only 27 to 37%. The companies that have done well in this downturn are specialty boutique retailers like Starbucks that charge customers up to 5 dollars for a cup of coffee- of which barely one penny goes to the farmer.

In its website, Starbucks claims that twenty-one percent of the Fair Trade Certified™ coffee imported into the U.S. in fiscal 2005 was purchased by Starbucks, making them the largest purchaser of Fair Trade Certified™ coffee in North America. And what does Fair Trade Price mean? The Fair Trade Certified™ label certifies that farmers who grew the coffee received a minimum price.

The story of De Beers and their attempt over the decades to control the price of diamond has been very well chronicled. One of DeBeers’ main roles is to maintain the notion that diamonds are a scarce commodity. This they do by means of advertising and by purchasing excess supplies when that is needed to avoid price decreases: as a matter of principle, prices are never lowered by DeBeers.

So, the most basic of commodities and the most precious can confer enormous power when amassed on a large enough scale and hoarded or released in a controlled manner.

The power of the basic commodity has been used in history; the tea in Boston tea Party to make a point of “no taxation without representation’; the salt in the Salt Satyagraha movement or even the lowly onion in removing the BJP Govt in Rajasthan and Delhi in 1998..

Rash promises

The old story about Alexander the Great, regretting that he had only one world to conquer is, apparently, not the right version. A contemporary of his by name Anaximenes of Lampsacus, had postulated that there were worlds other than earth, and he was the one who put the conceited Alexander in his place and deflated his ego by telling him that he had merely conquered one of the worlds. Big deal.

I wish someone had told Dravid and his team, and also the euphoric fans that, in winning the ODI at the Oval, they had not conquered the world, but had merely won one of the matches.

And, I should learn not to get carried away. When we needed 50 runs off 40 balls, I told my wife that if the young Uthappa took us to victory, I would eat as many uthappams as the number of runs he scored. He ended up scoring 47 runs. And sure enough, when we went to Woodlands this weekend, wife called my bluff and insisted that I should honour my word and eat the 47 uthappams. I managed to extricate myself from the tight spot, but swore that I will not make rash promises in the heat of the moment.

Reminded me of this scene in the Laurel and Hardy classic “Way out west” where Laurel would make a statement that ‘if they didn’t get the deed, he would eat his hat’. That evening, Hardy would remind him of what he had said and insist that he should eat his hat. Laurel takes a reluctant first bite, a second, a third; then adds some salt and pepper and continues….

My lazy ancestors

Queen Elizabeth can trace her ancestry back over many centuries and several generations. So many people in the British Isles believe that one of their forefathers came into the country along with William, the conqueror, in the 11th century. There are many Americans who can claim that some ancestor came over in the Mayflower. The author Alex Haley claimed to be the seventh generation descendant of Kunta Kinte, a native of Gambia who was kidnapped in 1750 and transported to Maryland, to be sold as a slave there. A Finnish colleague of mine takes pride in stating that he has his family tree dating back to the 14th century.

I am always impressed when I hear all this. For, I can barely trace my family tree back to my grandfather’s time. I know nothing of where he came from or what his grandfather did.

While on this forefather business, another thing I notice, with families such as the Tatas and the Birlas, is that somewhere in the family history, some grandfather has broken away from the routine, ventured into uncharted territory, taken risks which paid off, accumulated wealth and dutifully bequeathed all that to their descendants. The grandsons or grand-nephews such as Ratan Tata and Kumarmangalam Birla are enjoying the fruit of the entrepreneurial zeal of their ancestors. Building the fortune further is relatively simple. It is creating the base that is the difficult part and which was handled by the grand fathers.

I am sorry to report that my great grandfathers don’t seem to have had such noble thoughts. So, when the grandparents of Ratan Tata and Aditya Birla were toiling away and creating business empires for their descendants to enjoy, my great grandfather appears to have wasted his time and frittered away a golden opportunity to amass wealth for his great grandson. Just to cite an example, if only he had purchased a few hundred acres of land inside Chennai city those days when an acre of land probably cost a few annas ( equal to two thambis, at today’s exchange rate), and left it behind for my use, life would have been a lot easier.

No, I hear you say, not all wealthy people have inheritance from their ancestors. Didn’t Bill Gates or Dhirubhai Ambani become first-generation billionaires, on their own steam? Good question.

But, that’s exactly my point. My grandfather, like Gates or Ambani, could easily have become a first-generation entrepreneur, if he had tried.

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East meets west

The NewScientist, has a section called Last Word, where readers ask some interesting questions and other readers, including some experts and specialists try to answer the question. Many other publications ( including The Hindu) have this feature, but I am picking out the NewScientist, because I happened to read a compilation of the questions and answers published in a book titled, “ Why don’t penguins’ feet freeze?

One of the questions asked was: “Is it true that the living outnumber the dead?”

The first to send in a reply was a Roger Thatcher, presumably from England. He went into detailed calculations published by the International Statistical Institute and other estimates provided by historians with access to census data over the centuries. He finally concluded that the total number of deaths between 40000 BC and the present comes to something like 60 billion. The present population is around 6-7 billion. Therefore, the belief that the living outnumber the dead is clearly a myth, he submitted..

The final contributor was a Shah Ahmed, presumably from the Indian sub-continent, who explained, “ In the Indian epic, Mahabharata, the eldest Pandava, Yudishtira was asked many questions, including the one posed above, by the God Yama, who was the keeper of the underworld and all that is righteous, to test Yudhistira’s knowledge, power of reasoning and truthfulness. When Yama asked, “Who are the more numerous, the living or the dead?” Yudishtira answered without blinking, “The living, because the dead are no more!” Shah Ahmed did not even state his conclusion; he must have felt that it was a no-brainer.

The answers, one by a person used to western methods of logical reasoning, measurement and analysis and another by a person steeped in Indian tradition of seeking philosophical explanations, reveal much. Same conclusion was reached, but using two different approaches.

Update 09/09/07 : As pointed out by Usha and anon, I have goofed. Conclusions are actually different. East is east and west is west. Twain shall never meet. Please adjust.

The game of the name.

Can someone tell me why Bombay Jayashri has not changed her name to Mumbai Jayashri, long after the name “Bombay” made way for ‘Mumbai’? Or, for that matter why didn’t ‘Bombay Dyeing’ grab this opportunity to become ‘Mumbai Living’?

I remember how Bombay Electric Supply and Transport, when Bombay became Mumbai, didn’t change their name to Mumbai Electric Supply and Transport. Instead they cleverly assumed the name of Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport. East or West, they decided, they will be BEST always, never MEST. Admirable loyalty to an acronym, but that was cheating. The acronym should actually be BMEST, pronounced by holding one’s breath and releasing the compressed air from the mouth.

Also, why does the historian S.Muthiah call his column, ‘Madras Musings” when Madras became Chennai long back? Surely, this is to keep the 3M title of Muthiah’s Madras Musings alive? Either he should change his name to Chinnaiah and call his column, “Chinniah’s Chennai Cursings” or, if he is so keen on his baptised name and the 3Ms, call it, “Muthiah’s Mylapore Musings”. He can’t have it all.

Change of name is not so simple though. Years back when Madras Refinery Ltd (MRL) was forced to drop Madras from its name, I suspect that all the senior executives met at Fisherman Cove for a week to come up with a different name. After much brainstorming, someone must have come up with the ingenious idea that, why not they change the name to Chennai Refinery Ltd or CRL. Brilliant, everyone said, till one of the typists must have gently pointed out that CRL happened to be the acronym of Cochin Refinery Ltd and that much confusion would result. So, the senior executives must have thought and thought and finally come up with ‘Chennai Petroleum Corporation Ltd” or CPCL.

Too bad, that after all this work by MRL, Cochin became Kochi and CRL became KRL.

One of these days, some Tamil politician is going to stage a dharna outside the Madras Cricket Club and force them to change their name to Chennai Cricket Club. But, hey, this is a much better name. They can call themselves the 3C. Though, they might get into issues with Calcutta Chaat Corner, near my house. These guys chose their name carefully and wanted a minimum of 3Cs too. But, wait. MCC has a chance. I just heard that the Kolkata Kommunist Komrades have warned this bhelpuri shop that the continued use of “Calcutta’ in the name, could have serious consequences. So, poor fellow, he has ordered a new name board which says, “Kolkata Kachori Kiosk”.

As if all this is not enough, cricketer S.Sreesanth has changed his name to S. Sree Santh. He pulled up a reporter recently for spelling his name wrongly. He also listens carefully for the capital S in ‘Santh”, when you call out his name. Reminds me of a character called “Sir Jasper ffinch-ffarrowmere” in one of the short stories of P.G.Wodehouse. A piece of conversation from the story:

"Sir Jasper Finch-Farrowmere?" said Wilfred.
"ffinch-ffarrowmere," corrected the visitor, his sensitive ear detecting the capitals.

Same with Sree Santh. Approach him, if you must, with 3S.

Airlines have caught this bug too. Indian Airlines became Indian and later merged with Air India. This, in my opinion, is quite reasonable. After all, isn’t an Indian part of India? But, the other change, that of Sahara becoming Jet Lite is completely stupid. Do they expect all the maps of Africa to be changed, to show the “ Great Jet Lite Desert” in the northern parts? The other rumour that Kingfisher is going back to its scientific name of Alcedo Atthis is yet to be confirmed as Vijay Mallya, the UB king, has gone fishing, in a lake outside Bangalore.

Sorry, that should read as Bengaluru. Yes, Bangalore is dead. Long live Bengaluru. They wanted to change Mangalore to Mengaluru also, but I have confidential information that the Udupi Hotel Owners Assocation stalled it, as they would have had to incur expenses of crores of rupees to buy chalk pieces to correct the name of the item ‘Mangalore Bonda’ to “Mengaluru Bonda” on the black boards in all their joints scattered all over the world.

At least, Bengaluru doesn’t have to alter any of the acronyms as the first letter remains the same. The fuss that people make about names, acronyms and, not to forget, the 3Cs, 3Ms and the 3Ss. I am disgusted. As All Are Aware, I don’t Approve of these Artificially Arranged, Annoying Acronyms And Alliterative Adaptations.

The longest anthem.

Malayalam movie actor Mohanlal makes a statement in some context that “All Malayalees drink” and soon faces the ire of the Kerala association of Mahatma Gandhians. They want him to apologise as he has insulted the Gandhians of the state. A.R,Rehman is dragged to court, because he had come out with an audio CD in which the national anthem lasted more than the mandated 53 seconds ( or because it lasted less than the mandated 52 seconds, I am not sure).

A blogger is upset at the omission of the word, “dravida’ from the national anthem aired on the Air-tel ad. While another blogger laments the fact that Tagore had compressed the entire South India to just one word, “Dravida’, while assigning a full word each to Bengal, Gujarat, Sind, Punjab…

What kind of an intolerant world and humourless society we seem to live in? (Oops. I just made myself liable to legal action by the Humour Club – Chennai chapter for branding the entire society as humourless, in one grand sweep of my pen, sorry mouse. After all, they have been passionately promoting the cause of humour and so cannot brook any suggestion that they have not succeeded. )

I mean to say, let us grant these artists and poets some licence to indulge in whatever they want to do, without accusing them of acts of commission or omission. Just imagine. If Tagore had decided, while composing the anthem, to include every single state, every district and municipality, we would not have got past the opening stanza even once since 1947. We would have been a nation, whose anthem was a work-in-progress.

Scientists vs cricketers

Sunday afternoon. Switched on the TV. ESPN was telecasting the India-England ODI. The Indians in the crowd were celebrating every run scored by Sachin or Sourav with wild gestures and loud cries.

During a break, I strayed to the Doordarshan channel. There was a live telecast of the GSLV launch that would put the INSAT satellite into space. The countdown had started. At T-15 seconds, the computers suddenly cried halt and the take-off was put on hold. The tension was palpable. The scientists looked worried, but remained calm. Launch delayed by 50 minutes, we were told. It was already 4.21 pm. Another 9 minutes to go for Rahukalam. Will the scientists take the chance, I was curious to know.

Back to ESPN. Yuvraj and Gambhir were batting now. Yuvraj, in particular, was hammering away. The Indian supporters were having the time of their lives.

50 minutes later, went back to Doordarshan. Further delay. That meant the launch would be after 6 pm. Well past the Rahukalam. Good.

So, back to ESPN. Dravid and Dhoni continued the good work. I was quite pleased with the performance. I was in a good mood.

At 6.20 or so, I surfed my way to DD channel again. The countdown had started. Two minutes left. Soon, there was fire and smoke as the rocket took off. It could be seen for a few seconds. Once it disappeared into the skies, the view shifted to the computer monitor which had two counters, one for the elapsed time in seconds and another for velocity in km/sec. The actual trajectory was projected against the predicted one. Several key milestones were crossed and after about 1000 seconds, the satellite was separated and placed in orbit. A flawless performance.

The scientists clapped as the rocket cleared one milestone after another and when it was all over, they got up and shook hands.

The contrast between what was happening on ESPN channel and DD was quite revealing. In the former, some guys in a funny blue attire could stir the whole nation merely by glancing a ball of 4” diameter down the leg side; the Indian spectators were dancing and hooting as if there was no tomorrow.

On DD, a bunch of scientists who had worked round-the-clock for several weeks had achieved something remarkable. Only a handful of countries can claim to have the ability to launch payloads of this size. These scientists had failed in their last attempt; the quiet determination to succeed this time was quite visible. More than Rs 300 crores was at stake, which could literally go up in smoke in 10 seconds.

Yet, when they knew they had succeeded, there was admirable restraint. There was joy, all right, but they were so undemonstrative. It was another day at the office. There will be more launches in the coming months. Hopefully, there will be more successes than failures.

The Hindu faithfully reported the event on page 1. The other newspaper that I buy, the Deccan Chronicle, did not feel it newsworthy enough to post on the front page.

Stick to the group

In his book, Ordinary Man, the historian, Christopher Browning, narrates the gory incident involving German (Order Police) Reserve Unit 101 that was ordered to massacre and round up Jews for deportation to the death camps in Poland in 1942. The orders were to shoot the Jews, if there was not enough room for them on the trains. The commander of the Unit, Wilhelm Trapp, was horrified, and gave his men the choice of opting out of duty if they found it too pleasant.

Only twelve out of the five hundred stepped out. The others participated in the massacre, though they were later disgusted with what they had done.

So, why did they participate at all, when they were so reluctant? It could not have been mere fear of authority, as in the Milgram experiment, for here they were given the choice to opt out. Anti-Semitism was also not so strong in these men, as they were ordinary middle-aged men of working-class background who hailed from one of the least Nazified parts of Germany and had been drafted but found unfit for military duty and so were placed with the Police unit.

The conclusion of the book was that the men of Unit 101 obeyed a simple rule that had been hardwired in them, namely, that they should stick with their comrades at any cost and not break ranks. This rule prevailed over their moral judgement and values.

Members of any given group feel the need to conform and to cling to the default setting. This gives a greater sense of identity and comradeship. To break away is to act against this comfort-providing rule. Even, if in some situations, obedience is at the cost of a troubled conscience.

What the army and the police try (or claim to) to inculcate for a positive cause, terrorist outfits try to duplicate, while pursuing their own agenda. Members can be convinced to let go of their reasoning powers and even set out on suicide missions, exploiting this programmed instinct for kinship. Call it brainwashing, indoctrination or simple peer pressure.

Gerd Gigerenzer ( he of the ‘catch the ball’ heuristic) discusses the above incident, in his book, “Gut Feelings”, to illustrate that most of the decisions we take in our lives is based not so much on analysis and reasoning, but on simple rules of thumb. The book “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell had blazed this trail, but Gigerenzer gets deeper into the subject.

Dear Diary- 8

Dear Diary,

Today, out of the blue, I recalled a story that I had read many years back. It was about a man who had an amazing memory. He could remember every single detail – names, faces, dates, events. One day, he was admitted in an asylum in a completely delirious state.

Doctors who studied him diagnosed his condition as stemming out of an inability of his brain to forget things. Apparently, our sanity depends on the brain’s capacity to selectively forget the past and to prioritise on what to commit to memory. There is only so much space in the hard disk up there in your head. Overload can cause it to crash.

Wait a minute. Why did I remember this piece of trivia that I had read many years back? Has my brain lost the faculty to selectively forget? Has it suffered irreversible damage? I have been thinking all along that my rapidly diminishing memory is on account of my inability to remember things; whereas the real problem may be that I am unable to forget.

Note to self. Do the reverse of what you have been attempting to do. Work extra hard to forget, instead of trying to remember more.

The foragers of Kollywood.

In a post on Kollywood, two years back, I had mentioned how the Indian film industry took advantage of the national obsession with swaying bottoms.

I have since done extensive research on the origin of this Indian fixation. I have discovered that it’s all to do with the birds and the bees, mostly the latter.

In the first quarter of the twentieth century, an Austrian scientist, Prof. Karl von Frisch, discovered that these insects are able to convey the precise information to their fellow bees about the source of food, whether it is nectar or pollen. Professor Frisch found that the basis for their communication system is their dance language that had remained an enigma until he decoded it in 1923.

Bees perform two kinds of dances - the round dance, used to convey that the food source is not far away from the hive; and the waggle dance to convey the opposite, i.e. the source is far from the hive. As soon as any worker finds the food source, it returns to the nest to tell about his discovery by a ritual dance, each movement of which gives precise information to the fellow bees. (source)

What has all this got to do with Kollywood, you ask impatiently. Hang on. You would have noticed that most of these modern heroines try to be slim, even skinny. In the process, they go on crash diets, to the point of turning anorexic. The net result is that they are hungry all the time and constantly crave for food. But, where do you find food, in the movie studios? The heroines have no clue at all.

Enter the hero. By moving his hips rhythmically and swaying it at different degrees, he manages to convey to the heroine, the precise location of the food and what type of food is available. For example, if he happens to know where Hyderabad biryani is, he executes a simple harmonic motion with amplitude of 61.3 cm, which somehow the heroine correctly interprets as biryani. Heroines who fail to read the signals starve to death and are akin to queen bees who have missed the buzz.

The whole ritual, confers an evolutionary advantage on human beings especially the actors and actresses, and is line with Darwinian predictions on natural selection.

Why do the heroines sway their hips then? After all, the heroes look well-fed and nourished and don’t need to know where food is available? Good question. But, that’s the subject for another blog post. I don’t want to reveal all in one post and overload your brains.

Some of you, I know, are not convinced with my theory. All creative geniuses who have preceded me have had to face the ire of such cynics and skeptics .So, I am not surprised by your reaction. After all, when Newton had the insight that the moon was held in orbit by the gravitational pull of earth, he was pelted with apples. (The culprit has never been nabbed, but the needle of suspicion points towards Leibniz, as he was the only other guy around who knew all the complex calculus involved in pelting projectiles). Similarly, when Einstein first postulated his theory on space-time continuum, he was described as a mad cap too, giving rise to the equation that Einstein= mad cap too or E= mc2.

Update 04/01/08 : Research by New York University, says this BBC article, has shown that to be attractive women must sway their hips while moving and men must move with a shoulder swagger.

The heuristic of the successful catcher

At cricket, back in my school days, I used to be a good fielder. In fact, I don’t remember to have dropped a single catch in my entire career. No, that’s not true. In one of the matches, running all the way from first slip, I failed to get my fingers on to a ball that was just crossing the fence over long on.

Anyway, the secret of my amazing skills as a catcher was that I always carried my geometry box with me, to the playground.

Gerd Gigerenzer, explains my methods, in his book, “Gut Feelings”.

Computing the trajectory of a ball is not a simple feat. Theoretically, balls have parabolic trajectories. In order to select the right parabola, the player’s brains would have to estimate the ball’s initial distance, initial velocity and projection angle. Yet in the real world, balls, affected by air resistance, wind and spin, do not fly in parabolas. Thus, the brain would further need to estimate, among other things, the speed and direction of the wind at each point of the ball’s flight in order to compute the resulting path and the point where the ball will land. All this would have to be completed within a few seconds- the time a ball is in the air….. Clearly, this is too complex a process and something else is at work.

Is there a simple rule of thumb to catch a ball? Studies have shown that experienced players use what is called the ‘gaze heuristic’ which works in situations where the ball is already high up in the air. “Fix your gaze on the ball, start running and adjust your running speed so that the angle of gaze remains constant.” The angle of gaze is the angle between the eye and the ball, relative to the ground.

Thus, good fielders, unconsciously rely on a simple rule of thumb that dictates the speed at which a player runs. Note that the player using this heuristic is not able to compute the point at which the ball will land. Yet the heuristic leads the player to the landing point.

What Gigerenzer does not mention, of course, is my name, but cleverly couches it in expressions such as ‘experienced players’; that’s because I did not give him permission to use it, till I broke the story myself in my blog. Another thing he does not mention, probably because he forgot to, is that , as I fixed my gaze on the ball and started running, I used to quickly open my geometry box, pull out the protractor and keep measuring the angle of gaze and adjust my speed in such a way as to keep the angle constant.

Yes, that was my technique. It’s out in the open now.

There’s just that solitary instance to be explained. Why did I drop that catch at long-on? What happened was that, as I ran from my position at first slip, I tripped over the fielder standing at mid-wicket and dropped my protractor on the ground. I picked it up in a second and started running again, but the angle of gaze had changed by a couple of degrees, rendering the heuristic unworkable.

Now, you know everything..

Dear heart, slow down

Apparently, elephants and mice, or for that matter all the other animals within the spectrum, have one thing in common. In an average lifetime, the heart beats 1.5 billion times and then they die. (source)

The reason the elephant lives longer than a mouse is because its heart beat is much slower. So it conserves energy and manages to stretch its quota of 1.5 billion heart beats over a much longer period.

By this reckoning, human beings ought to be dead when they are 40 years old (assuming 70 beats per minute, the limit of 1.5 billion is reached in 40.7 years). But, we seem to have defied the odds and beaten the system. So, if like me, you are over 40, you have outlasted the warranty that came with the product

The yogis of yore got their fundas right. I read somewhere that one of them could get his heart beat down to single digit and this was verified by medical personnel.

Somewhere, in this news item, I detect a terrific plot for a science fiction novel.

Cluck Cluck

“Have you ever had a fight with a friend that ended with both of you not talking to each other? And with the passage of time, you even forgot what you fought about?” Thus begins an article in today’s edition of Deccan Chronicle.

Yes, I remember a fight I had with a friend when I was in school. And I haven’t even forgotten what it was about. Friend is no more, meaning that he is no more my friend, after the incident that led to our fight. So, friend will hereinafter be referred to as my ex-friend.

It happened during the history class. Our regular history teacher was absent that day; so our science teacher was deputed in his place. Science teacher was making a desperate attempt to teach us all about the Maratha rule, and even asked us to draw a picture of Shivaji and name all the parts. In the midst of all this, ex-friend decided to liven the proceedings a bit and made a loud, funny noise that sounded like “cluck cluck”. Teacher turned around, looked at our faces, found mine with guilt written all over it and promptly asked me to get out of the class. Ex-friend did not even own up. I went out feeling like Sydney Carton.

Somewhat like the cheap trick that Tuppy Glossop had played on Bertie Wooster in one of the stories of P.G.Wodehouse.

Anyway, I never saw ex-friend all these years. I heard that he had settled in the USA and visited India only once in 5 years or so. But the incident rankled. The thought that the blighter would have been narrating this incident to his wife and children every second evening and laughing his guts away at my expense, was too much for me to accept.

So, imagine my shock when I bump into this ex-friend at a get-together of the alumni recently. He avoided eye contact with me throughout the evening. Naturally, shame and guilt would have been gnawing his conscience. Towards the end however, he summoned his courage, walked over to where I stood, held my hand, looked into my eyes compassionately and said,

“ Raj, you do remember the ‘cluck cluck’ incident that happened in school, don’t you?

“Of course, it is not something that one forgets easily” I replied coldly.

“ I know that the incident must have rankled in your mind, all these years”

“You bet it has”

“Raj, I want you to know that I have forgiven you long back. I know that it was some mad rush of blood that made you do that ‘cluck cluck’ noise and it certainly wasn’t your fault that that history teacher had punished me instead of you. This must have gnawed your conscience all these years. I hold no grudge against you. So, you can rest easy now. Bye”

And he walked away, sporting a halo over his bald head.

This was too terrible for words. Had I, all these years, mistakenly carried the version that friend had cluck-clucked me into trouble, when, in fact, I was the perpetrator of the plot and he the victim?

Had my faulty memory not reversed our roles, I would have been, all these years, laughing my guts out, at his expense, while narrating the incident, every second evening, to my wife and children, and the ingenious manner I had employed to get ex-friend into trouble with the history teacher. That was not to be. Sigh.

Questions:

1) What tone has the author adopted to narrate this whimsical tale? Identify the characteristics of the style which helps to establish this particular tone.

2) Study the manner in which the author has written about the science teacher taking the history class. Would anything be lost if this entire paragraph is omitted?

3) What purpose is the author desperately trying to achieve by placing the words “cluck-cluck” within inverted commas?

4) We must assume that the author has recorded only a part of the conversation that occurred towards the end of the evening. What filtering principles has he employed in making his selection?

5) This incident that the author talks about happened when he was in school. Do you detect any evidence that pinpoints the exact decade when it took place?

6) In the structure of this essay, what is the function of the exclusive paragraph on Wodehousian characters? Doesn’t the para stick out like a sore thumb?

7) What do you think is the extent of irreversible memory loss suffered by the author?

8) What is your opinion of the author’s choice of newspapers to pick up ideas for his blog posts?

Group discussions:

A friend who turns into an ex-friend is no more a friend. Discuss the implications of this assertion.

Found : male model

A galaxy of female stars has modeled for Lux Soap, over the decades. Just two years back, Lux broke this tradition and cast Shah Rukh Khan as its first male model.

While watching the telecast of the second test match against England last week, it struck me that there is, at least, one Indian cricketer who has all the right credentials to model for this soap.

V.V.S. Luxman.

Why the sky looks blue

When I observe the manner in which science is taught to my daughters today, I am disappointed to find that there is hardly any change in the teaching methods in the last several decades. True, the subject is a lot wider now, lessons have changed and many things that I learned in college are included in the syllabus of the eight standard. But, the lessons are still imparted in the same boring manner; the teacher does nothing to fire the student’s imagination; both do not have the luxury of time.

These thoughts came to me when I read this piece written, in 1931, by Sir James Jeans, a reputed astronomer,. This was originally part of his book, “Stars in their courses”, but I found it in a book called “Province of Prose”, where it was showcased as an example of good prose writing and how a difficult subject can, in the hands of an expert, lend itself to clarification by analogy.

I remember the drab explanation that my own teachers had provided to explain why the sky was blue. With a smattering of Rayleigh scattering, followed by some long equations. Look how Sir James Jeans has handled the same question, seventy five years back.

Imagine that we stand on an ordinary seaside pier and watch the waves rolling in and striking against the iron columns of the pier. Large waves pay very little attention to the columns- they divide right and left and reunite after passing each column, much as a regiment of soldiers would if a tree stood in their road; it is almost as though the column had not been there. But the short waves and ripples find the columns of the pier a much formidable obstacle. When the short waves impinge on the columns, they are reflected back and spread as new ripples in all directions. To use the technical term, they are ‘scattered’. The obstacle provided by the iron columns hardly affects the long waves at all, but scatters the short ripples.

We have been watching a sort of working model of the way in which sunlight struggles through the earth’s atmosphere. Between us on Earth and outer space, the atmosphere interposes innumerable obstacles in the form of molecules of air, tiny droplets of water and small particles of dust. These are represented by the columns of the pier.

The waves of the sea represent the sunlight. We know that sunlight is a blend of many colors- as we can prove for ourselves by passing it through a prism, or even a jug of water or as nature demonstrates to us when she passes it through the raindrops of a summer shower and produces a rainbow. We also know that light consists of waves, and that the different colors of light are produced by waves of different lengths, red light by long waves and blue light by short waves. The mixture of waves which constitutes sunlight has to struggle past the columns of the pier. And these obstacles treat the light waves, much as the columns of the pier treat the sea-waves. The long waves which constitute red light are hardly affected but the short waves which constitute blue light are scattered in all directions.

Thus the different constituents of sunlight are treated in different ways as they struggle through the earth’s atmosphere. A wave of blue light may be scattered by a dust particle and turned out of its course, and so on, until finally it enters our eyes by a path as zigzag as that of a flash of lightning. Consequently the blue waves of the sunlight enter our eyes from all directions.
And that is why the sky looks blue.

Dear Diary-7

Dear Diary,

As someone cheerfully put it , today happens to be the first day of the rest of my life.

As someone else added a corollary to that statement, the day after tomorrow will be the third day of the rest of my life that starts today.

It has just hit me that yesterday was the second last day of the period of my life lasting from my birth till today. And the day before yesterday was the third last day.

So, though there is a fair chance that tomorrow may arrive, yesterday will never return.

Isn’t this a very sobering thought?

Am I slowly turning into Woody Allen?

R.I.P Series- 12

Liv Nomore who when told by his doctor that he had contracted an incurable ailment, asked him, “Give it to me straight, doc. How long do you think I will live?

Doc replied, “Ten….”

Liv cut him short and screamed, “Ten what, doc? Years, months, weeks?

The doc continued, “...9...8...7...6...5...4...”


(Discl : Joke is borrowed)

Dear Diary-6

Dear Diary,

Week started disastrously. Landed in Bangalore and, sticking to standard protocol, drove straight to MTR, hoping to feast on some super-soft idlis and incredibly crisp dosas. Found, to my utter dismay, that the place was closed on Mondays. Have you heard such nonsense in your life? A restaurant closing on Mondays? I mean, don’t they know that people need to eat all seven days a week?

On the other hand, I am happy that somebody’s adopted the calendar that I had painstakingly and single-handedly designed some time back.

While leaving for the airport to catch my return flight, made a quick dash to Blossoms, that great place in Church Street for second-hand books and picked up a couple of classics. Realised later that books, being neither soft nor crisp, are a poor substitute for MTR idlis and dosas.

The ant and the grasshopper

Quite some time back, I had attempted to borrow the format of the golf stories of P.G.Wodehouse, that involved ‘the oldest member” and posted three stories here, here and here. At the risk of testing your limits of tolerance, I nervously add more to the same series.

The Walkie-Talkies were strolling down the pavement, along the Marina, blissfully unaware of the fact that they were blocking the passage for faster walkers and joggers behind them.

Nike Shorts was animatedly recounting how he had enjoyed the movie, ‘Sivaji’, the previous day and how Rajnikanth had surpassed himself. “That man is amazing”, he concluded. “What breathtaking style!”

Adidas track-pants agreed, but wondered, “Amazing all right. All he does is shake his legs a bit, fling a cigarette into his mouth, stroke his hair back nonchalantly and his movies go on to become big hits. Whereas, Kamalahasan, poor chap. Will don ten roles, will change his voice, weight, and mannerisms for each character, valiantly do all the stunts himself without a dupe, energetically sing quite a few songs and generally slog it out, only to see his movies flop in the end..

Polo T-shirt philosophized, “Yes, that’s life. Hard work is not always the mother of good luck. All this talk about success being 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration is pure nonsense”.

Bata Thatha interjected at this point and said, “Ha, let’s not fall into the popular error of supposing that hard work begets success. You have all been influenced by the Aesopian fable of “Ant and the Grasshopper” where the hard-working ant is shown to be better-off in the end than the lazy, fun-loving grasshopper. Whereas, the reality is that incidents in life tend to be more like what happened to Tom and George in Somerset Maugham’s version of the fable, if you have read it. Take the case of my neighbour’s sons.

My neighbour (continued Bata Thatha) had two sons. The elder one was hard-working, did his homework diligently, passed all his exams with flying colours, completed his engineering from IIT, went on to do his MBA in the USA and was grabbed by a top consulting company at a mind-boggling salary, for carrying out complicated financial analysis for clients .

The younger son fooled around in school, got into bad company and bad habits, never cleared his exams and was finally thrown out of school. He ended up selling tea in a roadside stall.

Lotto Shoes enquired with a quizzical expression, “But, doesn’t this validate the Aesopian fable? The hardworking guy has been rewarded with success, whereas the lazy one has been punished.”

Bata Thatha couldn’t contain his irritation at this rude and unwarranted interruption, when he was midway in his story.

“Wait, you haven’t heard it all. Two years back, the elder son lost his job, as his company had outsourced the entire operations to an IT company in Sholinganallur, near Chennai. Complicated financial analysis for the Wall Street Journal, these days, is done by kids in back-offices here. Poor chap tried to find employment elsewhere, but the reply was same wherever he sent his CV. All jobs in the USA had been passed on to India. He is still unemployed and is roaming around penniless, having lost all his savings.

“What about the younger son?” asked Polo T-shirt?

“The younger son, as good fortune would have it, had set up his tea stall just outside the IT Company in Sholinganallur. He is doing roaring business. He is looking for franchisees to replicate the business model outside all the companies in the IT corridor. He has quite graciously agreed to pay for an air-ticket for his brother to return home.

Dear Diary- 5

Dear diary,

Had to accompany a friend to the Blue Cross today. His pet dog was not keeping well. The lone veterinary doctor on duty said he couldn’t attend to the dog. He explained the protocol there. When animals such as lions, tigers or elephants are brought in, he is not competent to attend and so delegates the responsibility upward to his boss. When animals such as goats, cats and dogs are brought in, it is below his dignity to treat them and so he delegates the responsibility downward to his junior. As both of them were not there, he asked us to come back on Monday. Made a mental note to follow vet’s philosophy of delegation, in my workplace from next week.

Dear Diary- 4

Dear Diary,

I needed to go to the Bank today to deposit a cheque. I realized, to my dismay, that banking is an insignificant part of a bank’s work.

The place was swarming with all kinds of creatures such as touts and agents, out to nab me. One guy wanted to sell me mutual funds, another some RBI bonds and yet another- some gold bars. The gall. Did they think that a seasoned salesman like me will fall for such obvious gimmicks?

When I finally managed to extricate myself from the bandits, a seedy looking guy buttonholed me and asked if I was interested in medical insurance cover. I said sure and asked if the policy covered terminal illnesses. Without giving me a proper reply that I deserved as a prospective customer, he dematerialized from the scene. Rude fellow.

Dhirubhai's descendant's dull daily diet

I just got the complete details on what Anil Ambani gets to eat everyday.

Apparently, he gets up at 5.00 am, jogs till 6.30 am, and begins his day with a banana and some cereals washed down with protein milk at 8,00 am, At lunchtime, he gets to be a little hungry and so indulges in some sprouts, a cup of dhal and two chappatis . He repeats the same menu for dinner. He goes to bed at 10.30 pm sharp.

What’s the point in accumulating all that wealth amounting to Rs 50000 crores, if all you get to eat are some meagre sprouts and an uninviting banana? Can someone explain?

Dear Diary-3

Dear Diary,

My over-exuberant auditor called this morning to remind me that I had to file my Income Tax returns before July 31st.

I commented wryly that I didn’t see any reason why they should call it ‘returns”, because tax amount, once it leaves your hands, never returns.

Auditor promised me that he will go to Delhi tomorrow, to personally point out the misnomer to the FM.

FM ? Wonder if auditor meant 98.3 or 91.1.

Conversation with daughter- 16

Daughter came back from the bookshop yesterday at 6.45 am, triumphantly clutching her copy of the 7th book in the Harry Potter series. I have rarely seen her up before sunrise, but recognized that this was a special occasion.

The whole of Saturday, she was lost in the book and refused to stir from her sofa. Wife and I wondered whether we should administer some nutrients intravenously and maintain her electrolyte balance.

At 6 pm, I sat down next to her and asked, “Tell me, why is it so critical that the book must be read by today? Tomorrow is Sunday and you will have some time on your hands. Surely, one more day won’t matter?

Daughter gave me the stare which she reserves for her parents and which, if she had been Medussa, would have reduced me to stone and replied, ‘Duh, because, by morning tomorrow, everybody else would have finished the book”.

That figures. Millions of people, in the privacy of their homes, racing to finish the book the same day it was released, because everyone else is doing it.

Geriatrix

So, 72-year old Pratibha Patil (or Pratibha Patti, as my daughter calls her) is the new President.

I can imagine the standard routine that dignitaries visiting India will be subjected to and their resulting plight. First, they will hold wide ranging discussions with Dr Manmohan Singh, who will keep that deadpan expression of his, right through. The humorist, P.G.Wodehouse used to describe how the strict rules of the Butler’s Guild prevented Jeeves from breaking out into a full smile; the maximum, upward movement of the lip allowed was only 1/8 of an inch. It is improbable and even inconceivable that Dr.Singh is a member of the Butler’s Guild, but I simply can’t fathom what stops him from smiling. Hell, the man is quite lifeless; I am sure that if an ECG were taken while he is talking, it would register a flat line. Whatever may be his other merits, this factor alone should get him banished into oblivion. We simply can’t have as PM a man , in whose ECG, the characteristic P-Q-R-S pattern is conspicuous by its absence. We ought to demand from our leaders, clinical evidence of life.

Anyway, let’s get back to our visiting dignitary. After this encounter with the lifeless Dr Singh, he or she will have to follow the protocol of meeting Sonia Gandhi. From the TV footages, it is clear that she is utterly clueless and humourless. Besides, I haven’t heard anything remotely intelligent escaping her mouth, though I admit I like the way she waves her hand as the dignitaries depart from her house. Good riddance, that’s the message that wave conveys.

Next, of course, the dignitary will be whisked away to the Rashtrapati Bhavan for a tea party (a British custom that has outlived the British), where the company of Pratibha Patil will have to be put up with for an hour or so. No doubt she take it upon herself to entertain and regale the guest with stories of Ouija boards and how she communicates with spirits of dead people.

I don’t know if a visit to the Raj Ghat is part of the regular itinerary these days. But, it is reasonable to assume that this ritual is also inflicted on the hapless soul- I mean the visiting dignitary’s, not Gandhi’s. But I will be fair and charitable to Gandhi and consider the extenuating circumstances that he is dead.

At the end of the day, the dignitary is in the severe grip of ennui and swears that he or she will never come back to this wretched country again. When there are far more exciting ways to die, why would they choose to be tortured to slow death through sheer boredom?

It would appear that the whole rigmarole is carried out for the sole purpose of making a documentary for Films Division, or for the news round up on Doordarshan, to be read out by a bearded, Tolstoyish character with a grim, solemn, melancholic voice.

In most other countries, leaders need to demonstrate youthfulness and energy, to stay at the top. Including China and Russia that used to venerate old politicians. Whereas here, we still mistake old age for wisdom and put up with ancient dodderers, who should have long been pensioned off.

Today, with the march of technology, one peaks at the age of 30 or 32, in whatever field one is in. Those of us in the corporate world have certainly realized this. In the sports arena, of course, it is much earlier. If you need to keep learning beyond this age, you don’t look up to people older than you, for distilled wisdom to flow down. You look down and get splashed by the fountain of youth.

It is amazing that a country whose demographics show a very high percentage of voters below 25 years of age would choose to nominate representatives, three times their age, in Parliament.

Dear Diary-2

Dear Diary,

I am just back from the RTO, after renewing my driving licence. After I submitted my forms, along with my birth certificate that clearly and unambiguously certifies that I was indeed born, I was summoned to a seedy little place where they quickly took a photograph of my face.

When the licence was given to me, I noticed that the photograph was terrible. I protested and demanded that they take me to their leader, so that I could get justice.

A second-hand car dealer, who had come there to register a few cars for his clients, took me aside and told me to stop making a fool of myself as , out there, all transactions were on “as-is-where-is” basis.

That was quite a humbling experience.

Dear Diary

Dear Diary,

I flew down to Mumbai today, as I had some urgent work there. Flight was extremely uncomfortable. Lot of turbulence. Thick clouds right through. Poor visibility too.

I decided that I will never again fly when the monsoon spell is on. The next time, I will go in a plane.

Irresponsible reporting.

In one of their editions last week, Deccan Chronicle carried a news story of an illiterate woman in Bihar, beating up her husband when he came home in a drunken state. The accompanying photograph was quite graphic and showed the man badly mauled, poor chap.

I really feel that the media must exercise restraint and desist from publicizing such gory incidents. It has been scientifically demonstrated that stories such as these manage to stir some basic instincts and incite hatred and violence.

Just for the sake of argument, imagine that my wife has just finished reading that story in Deccan Chronicle and is now in the kitchen, where her olfactory senses tend to be in a heightened state of alert. I am a strict teetotaler, but let’s imagine for the sake of this argument, that I am coming out of the bathroom, after applying Gillette after-shave lotion on my face.

Somehow, wife gets the impression that the smell of Gillette after-shave is actually that of Scotch whisky. With her impressionable frame of mind, she quickly makes an association between the story of the Bihari woman in Deccan Chronicle and the strong smell of perfume which she assumes is whisky. In a flash, she lifts the pressure cooker from the stove and whacks my head with it. Slow motion replays later show that the pressure cooker cracks into two at the point of impact. The cooked rice spills all over the floor. What will we get to eat then? What will we mix the sambar in?

That’s why newspapers must practice self-censorship and cut out such stories. If cigarette ads can be banned and if names of castes/religion can be withheld to prevent communal flare-ups, why can’t they leave out stories of husbands getting bashed up by emotional wives?

Balancing the Budget

In the circles that I move in, I am known for my awesome skills in balancing my finances and in my amazing ability to get the best bang for every buck that I earn. It’s only fair that I share some of my secrets with you.

Here’s how I apportion my income between essentials and non-essentials.

House maintenance, food, petrol, medicines, milk, newspapers, electricity and telephone bills, salaries for maid, cook, driver, etc consume a full 10% of my salary.

Coming to essentials, I make sure that my daughters limit the expenses on hair clips, bracelets, ear rings, necklaces, anklets, bandanas, shoes, sandals, handbags, lipsticks, eye liner, hair brush, etc to not more than 50% of my salary.

Also, I exercise strict control over the expenses on semi-essentials such as jeans, T-shirts, shorts, tops, salwars, kurtis, dupattas, three-fourths, Bermudas, long skirts, short skirts, visits to beauty parlour, Harry Potter movies on first day of release, purchase of CDs, Airtel re-charge cards, etc. Daughters are forbidden to spend even a rupee more than 50% of my monthly salary.

Shrewd ones among you would have quickly calculated and found that the total comes to 110% of salary. You are right. I borrow 10% every month. Deficit financing as the economists would put it.

Pigeons!

If and when I manage to put an end to the mosquito menace, I need to turn my attention to those pigeons that have dropped anchor just outside my bedroom window. They make a funny, guttural noise with their throats, release tons and tons of droppings on unsuspecting passers-by below and generally make nuisance of themselves.

Via Freakonomics blog, I came across this article in The New York Times on how Wimbledon manages to keep out pigeons. Did they resort to some high-tech stuff or some fancy gadgetry to ward off these creatures? No, they merely hired Davis to drive them out.

Davis walks in with his small flock of hawks, falcons and owls, to shoo other birds using little more than fright tactics. Lesser birds see his birds soaring around, and they find somewhere else to go.

At Wimbledon, he employs falcons, sighting which the pigeons stay away. How simple!

Soon, there will be a flock of falcons hovering over my house. The pigeons don’t know what’s in store for them. But I hope that the falcons will turn out to be less prolific with their droppings than the pigeons. And, I hope that their droppings will contain some insecticide that will drive the mosquitoes away too

The boy in the well.

In July last year, Prince, a 5-year old boy from Kurukshetra who was trapped in a well and was rescued after 48 hours of high drama, had the entire country glued to the television sets. The media went overboard as usual and thousands of people kept sending messages to the TV channels wishing the rescuers luck.

Two weeks ago, there was the story of Suraj, a 6-year old boy from Jaipur , who fell into a borewell and was pulled out by Army personnel. Sadly, he died later. Again, TV channels gave disproportionate publicity to this incident.

What is it about falling in wells that makes it so newsworthy and telecastable? It is tragic, of course, but surely there are other such stories unfolding all over the country? TV channels, these days, have lost their sense of balance and judgement, in their selection of stories.

That’s what I thought till I read this in a book called Black Swan, written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, an author who had grown up in Lebanon :

In the 1970s, a toddler fell into a well in Italy. The rescue team could not pull him out of the hole and the child stayed at the bottom of the well, helplessly crying. Understandably, the whole of Italy was concerned with his fate; the entire country hung on to the frequent news updates. You could hardly walk in the center of Milan without being reminded of his plight.

Meanwhile, the civil war was raging in Lebanon. In the midst of their mess, the Lebanese were also absorbed in the fate of the child. The Italian child. Five miles away, people were dying from the war, citizens were threatened with car bombs, but the fate of the Italian child ranked high among the interests of the population in Beirut. “Look how cute the little thing is” I was told. And the entire town expressed relief upon his eventual rescue.

As Stalin who knew something about the business of mortality, supposedly said, “One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic”. Statistics stay silent in us.

So, that’s the gripping power of the stories of boys falling into wells. It’s been tried out several times in the last few decades. One is almost tempted to believe that whenever there is a dip in viewership, the TV channels themselves hire Little Tommy Thin to push a little boy into the well and then Little Tommy Stout to pull him out, with their camera crew standing by.

Operation Sleep

I summon the whole family for the daily emergency drill. “Operation Sleep” is about to be launched.

With that tone of authority that I am respected for, I issue clear orders. “Switch on both the Good-knight and the All-out devices. If one fails, the other will work. And apply a generous amount of Odomos on your entire body, head to toe. The strong aroma will intoxicate the fellows. Keep the air-conditioners on. Mosquitoes are known to lose their powers, when the room temperature drops below 22 deg C. Windows will remain closed through the night. Night bulb to be kept on as the creatures are known to attack only under cover of total darkness. Hold the battery-operated swatter in your hands, ready to strike at short notice. Everybody ready? Good, let’s go to bed now.”

Meanwhile, at a hideout not too far away, the head mosquito summons the whole gang,

“Enemy will try to freeze us with air-conditioning. Remember to wear your sweaters. We can withstand the cold temperature. And, wait for an hour or so, before you attack. The effect of Odomos will wear off by then. Don’t get frightened by the Good Knight and All-Out. They are just placebos peddled as potent stuff to gullible customers by greedy marketers. Put on your sun glasses. That will protect your eyes from the glare of the night bulb. Ignore the swatter. The chances of it striking you are just one in million. Keep cool and take your fill of blood. Be positive, as well as O positive.

Operation Sleep ends in failure yet again. I can hear the mosquitoes celebrating their victory. My blood is boiling, but inside their bodies.

On being Indian...

Soon after it became known that an Indian could have been involved in the Glasgow incident, Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, advised his British counterpart not to brand the person as an Indian terrorist. Terrorist is a terrorist, he said, and his nationality has no relevance.

A month back when Sunita Williams made a triumphant return from Space, Dr Singh was one of the first to congratulate her. I am sure that he would have told her that the whole nation was proud of her.

Now, the sword of nationalism cuts both ways. You can’t celebrate the Indianness of an astronaut on the one hand, while claiming on the other that the Indianness of the terrorist was not relevant. If a terrorist is a terrorist, an astronaut is an astronaut.

That’s why this whole idea of nationalism is anachronistic and needs to be substituted with a different model. As Bernard Shaw said, “Patriotism is the conviction that your country is the greatest, merely because you were born in it”.

Conversation with daughter's mother -15.

Me: At fifty, every man gets the face he deserves.

Daughter's mother : So I have heard

Me: I can’t believe I am 50 today. I don’t look 50, do I?

Daughter’s mother: No, you don't. You used to, but not any more

Turning 40.

Tonight, at the stroke of midnight, when the world sleeps, I will stay wide awake. Yes, I will turn forty and will need to do some serious introspection.

I remember when I was 7 or 8 years old and when each additional month was special and quite important. So, at different stages, I would be 7-1/4, 7-1/2 or 7-3/4 years old. Tired of being referred to as a half-ticket, one’s sole ambition in life was to somehow crawl and make it to the status of a ‘full-ticket”. One made progress, slowly but surely. One kept count of the months..

At 12, I used to lie that I was actually 13 years old, aware that only then I would be admitted into the ranks of teenagers. When I was really 13, I had bigger things to worry about. For example, was that patch under my nose really the first signs of a moustache ?

After, what seemed eternity, I became 21, although the world didn’t seem to notice it.

Then somebody stepped on the pedal; the clock and the calendar went berserk and before I realized what was happening, I raced to 30, sped further to 35, and now am turning 40. Forty! The warranty certificate issued by my Maker is no longer valid.

Actually, coming to think of it, 40 is not such a bad age to be in. I mean, look at the brighter side. At least, I am not 50, as some of my friends are, with their pot bellies and bald heads and wrinkled faces typical of that age group. Yes, 40 is ok. It’s the big five-o that I need to watch out for.

Author’s note : I had meant to post this on 06-07-1997, but what with the Y2K problem looming large, it slipped my mind. Rather now than never, what?

Calling all patriotic Indians..

As if the fact of Pakistan having a better record against us in hockey and cricket wasn’t humiliating enough, there comes this shocking news that they have beaten us in yet another field.

Yesterday, Google disclosed that search trends show Pakistan, Egypt and India as the top three countries in the world (in that order) where surfers look out for 'sex' on the Internet, and those in New Delhi and Chennai ( in that order) hold the top two rankings among global cities.

If we had even an iota of patriotism flowing through our veins, we should all be putting our heads together to correct this alarming situation.

Come on, fellow Indians, I am not asking you to climb the highest mountain, or swim solo across the Pacific, or pull a 747 with your whiskers. Such stuff that requires panting and sweating are best left to our western brethren, who take the Olympian motto of ‘Citius, Altius, Fortius’, a little too seriously and are destined to self-destruct.

Let us stick to our core competence. When it comes to doing something which requires no more work than sitting on one’s butt, we Indians have demonstrated that we can’t be beaten. Scan the Guinness Book of Records and you will find Indians holding the coveted top position for the longest nails, longest moustache, longest eyebrows, etc- all of which involves minimal physical effort.

So, all I am asking is that as soon as you get up in the morning, log on to Google and search for ‘sex’. Assuming that there are ten million computer users in the country, and if each one of them carries out these instructions diligently, every morning, it will be quite easy to reach the prestigious position at the top.

And, about all you Chennaiites, there’s no point in claiming that one out of five software engineers in the country, comes out of Tamilnadu, if you don’t deliver when it matters most. Act now. Get on to Google fast and type the ‘word’. (I don’t want to mention it again, My blog already has a ‘R’ rating). The next time Google publishes the results, I want Chennai to beat the pants off Delhi.

Rise, salaried class

This rant on how the salaried class is taxed at source and bled dry reminded me of the angry reaction of a tax payer in the famous short story, “The Negotiable Cow” by A.P.Herbert in his book, “Uncommon Law”.

If you haven’t read the story, here’s the outline. The protagonist, Mr Haddock, after a long battle with the Collector of Taxes, was still asked to remit an amount of fifty-seven pounds. One fine morning, soon after, Mr. Haddock appeared at the Collector’s office and delivered a cow of mean looks, with these words stenciled in red on its body:

To the London and Literary Bank, Limited
Pay the Collector of Taxes, who is no gentleman, or Order, the sum of fifty seven pounds (and may he rot!) L 57/10/0
ALBERT HADDOCK

Haddock argued that the British law did not state that a cheque had to be made out only on paper and therefore any medium could be used. The cow was as good a negotiable instrument as any. The Court ruled in his favour.

So, here’s my proposal. If a million Indians wrote out ‘pay orders’ on a million cows for the tax amount that each of them owed the Govt. and sent these bovine cheques to the IT Dept, very soon they will be forced to abolish income tax. The plan sounds almost Gandhian in its simplicity.

So, rise ye salaried class. Don't be cowed down any longer

The Gillettine

The first few years after I started shaving, I used the most basic of implements. A safety razor made of gleaming metal and a clean sharp blade. The razor was meant to last for ever. It had doors on the top and a knob below that needed to be rotated gently to open the doors on the top. The all-metal, double-edged blade needed to be changed once a week. The whole operation was so low-tech and the replacement cost of the blade was probably less than two rupees.

Then Gillette entered my life with its Sensor spring-loaded blades that claimed to retract if the blade came into contact with the facial skin rather than the hair. This was a quantum jump in comfort as well as price. I think the blades cost Rs 15 each and I used to feel so guilty at this extravagance.

A few years passed and, sure enough, Gillette introduced the Sensor Excel, which had two blades. More comfort, more money, more guilt. Possibly Rs 30 a blade.

Then the Mach 3 exploded on the scene. It was the first 3-blade razor and was the ultimate in shaving comfort. It required fewer strokes as it gently caressed the face. I tried to resist the temptation to buy one, but succumbed to the marketing blitzkrieg of Gillette. Once you used a Mach 3, there was no going back to cheaper stuff. You stayed wedded for life. I suspect that Gillette designed it in such a way that the blade would change the contour of the beard to make it cuttable only at a certain angle that the Mach 3 traversed. These blades cost more than Rs 100/- apiece and I have squirmed in remorse everytime I bought them. But, not once in the last 4 years, have I been disloyal to Mach 3 and I thought that I had found my life partner.

Famous last words they turned out to be as Gillette, the serpent, is dangling the apple in the garden again. The new Gillette Fusion has- hold your breath- 5 blades. Gillette says that 'the combination of adding more blades and narrowing the inter-blade span creates a “Shaving Surface” that distributes the shaving force across the blades, resulting in significantly less irritation and more comfort'. Hell, they even have a battery-powered model which has a vibrating head that will make the hair stand up and be slaughtered. And the price, a whopping Rs 300/- for a blade.

I have been eyeing this beauty at the departmental stores for quite some time. I know that sooner or later I am going to buckle under the strain and buy one, I can see it standing there, staring at me, egging me to give it a try, daring me to move on……….

In a few years, I am afraid, Gillette will introduce the ultimate version of the shaving razor. A model with thousands of micromotion blades that will be guided by laser. Each micro-blade will seek out individual facial hair and destroy it without a trace. It will have a micro-chip loaded with a thousand mp3 files and will sense the mood of the face’s owner and play the appropriate music. It will sprinkle after-shave lotion on its reverse stroke. And, all these features will come at a price of Rs 10,000 a blade. I will spend 10 minutes every day shaving my face with this masterpiece of a razor and the remaining 23 hours 50 minutes, slogging my butt out to earn the money to pay for the blades, in a deadly vicious spiral that will last for eternity………

( Disclosure: Picture of guillotine taken from Google Images)

Superstar's Secret.

How do you explain the iconic status of Rajnikanth? Why do people idolize him so? What accounts for his electrifying screen presence?

These are questions that all of you have been asking repeatedly and haven’t found the answers for. The questions are even more relevant these days, when the only topic of conversation is the movie, “Sivaji”.

I set out to find the answers, to get to the bottom of the mystery and put an end to your collective agony.

My first theory was, “Can the popularity be due to his charisma alone?”. I flew down to Mumbai and posed this question to some Bollywood stars. One of them, an ex-star known as Randhir Kapoor, told me with a sad look on his face, “Alas, this is not true. Though I would have liked her to, my daughter Charisma was not involved with Rajni, romantically or otherwise. Given his fabulous wealth, Charisma Ka-poor would have become Charisma Ka-rich by now. Sigh!.”

That ruled out Charisma. So, did the debonair Rajni acquire his stardom by accident? Or was he a natural phenomenon blessed by Providence? To probe deeper into this question, I contacted Mr. South Kurien, Chairman of the Inter-Galactic Malayalee Diaspora, at his home located in Planet Zzzbaum. He checked up and reported back that while their universal data base contained millions of Nairs and Menons, there was nobody enrolled by the name of Debo Nair or Pheno Menon.

So, are fans simply getting enthralled over and mesmerized by his antics, stunts and stylish mannerisms. To test this hypothesis, a controlled experiment was conducted in T.Nagar in Chennai. When a videotape of Rajni movie was shown to fans, there was absolutely no response and they continued to spin in that measured, philosophical manner typical of ceiling fans. Thanks are due to Ratna Fan House who sponsored this study.

So, it was not charisma, or Providence or antics and style. So, what was it then?

Finally, the puzzle was cracked by Prof. Bijlee Kumar, Head of the Dept of Electrical Engineering at IIT-Madras. After a thorough research on the subject, during which he dug deep into Rajni’s past, the learned Professor published his findings which stated that Rajni, prior to joining the film world, had started his career in a public transport corporation and had acquitted himself creditably as a bus conductor. As we all know, a good conductor allows current to flow freely and this is what Rajni seems to have done admirably. This is what accounts for his electrifying presence.

The mystery of the magnetic megastar is thus resolved. The secret of the shining superstar is out.

Hero or Zero?

Scenario A: It is Diwali day. You are standing on your terrace, happily gorging on sweets and dry fruits, peacefully watching (and hearing) the fireworks outside your house. You notice that some of the kids are quite reckless and courting danger. In a few minutes, sure enough, one of the kids gets hit by a cracker and is rolling on the floor in pain. In a flash, you rush to the spot, grab the injured child, put him in your car, drive to the nearest hospital and get him attended to, by the medical staff. You return home and the child’s mother thanks you profusely. You are a hero.

Scenario B: It is Diwali day. You are standing on your terrace, happily gorging on sweets and dry fruits, and peacefully watching (and hearing) the fireworks outside your house. You notice that some of the kids are quite reckless and courting danger. You rush down and caution the children that they ought to be more careful and must not take such liberties with fire. The children scatter; cursing the grouchy, preachy uncle. Next time you cross their house, the mother gives you a look that says. “Keep off my child, you foul-mouthed old man”. You are a zero.

In the introduction to his book, The Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, writes:

It is quite saddening to think of those people who have been mistreated by history… the category of those who we do not know were heroes, who saved our lives, who helped us avoid disasters. They left no traces and did not even know that they were making a contribution. We remember the martyrs who died for a cause that we knew about, never those no less effective in their contribution but whose cause we were never aware of- precisely because they were successful.

Taleb then illustrates his point with a thought experiment :

Assume that a legislator with courage, influence, intellect, vision and perseverance manages to enact a law that goes into universal effect on Sep 10, 2001; it imposes the continuously locked bulletproof doors in every cockpit (at high cost to the struggling airlines)- just in case terrorists decide to use planes to attack the World Trade Centre. Not a popular measure, but it would have prevented 9/11.

The person who imposed locks on cockpit doors will get no statues in public squares, not so much as a quick mention of his contribution in his obituary. “Joe Smith, who helped avoid disaster of 9/11, died of complications of liver disease”. Seeing how superfluous his measure was, and how it squandered resources, he might be booted out of office. He will die with the impression of having done nothing useful.

Now, consider again the events of 9/11 that really happened. In their aftermath, who gets the recognition? Those you saw in the media, on television performing heroic acts, and those whom you saw trying to give you the impression that they were performing heroic acts .The latter category includes someone like the New York Stock Exchange chairman, Richard Grasso, who ‘saved the stock exchange’ and received a huge bonus. All he had to do was be there to ring the opening bell.

Yes, I see the point that Taleb is trying to make. We tend to be blind and unfair.

Just think. Who gets more accolades, the Prime Minister who uses diplomacy and tact to avoid a war, or a President who initiates a war and emerges triumphant? Who gets more column space in the news, the tennis player who plays a clinical, error-free game and wins 6-2, 6-2, 6-2 or the player who fumbles in the first two sets, but ‘fights back magnificently’ to win 0-6, 0-6, 7-6, 6-4, 6-4? The latter, in both examples.

Why are Republic Day Awards for bravery given only to those who responded well to a crisis, and not to those who by some quiet action had prevented a crisis? For very heroic person who jumped into a well to save a drowning child, there were five silent heroes who stopped five children from going near the well in the first place.

How come a cardio-surgeon who does a bypass procedure is paid lakhs of rupees and is treated like a hero, while a dietician who quietly counsels people to follow a healthy diet and helps prevent coronary disease not treated like one?

So, sing a silent ode to all these unsung and unheralded heroes of the world. Also, bear in mind, that this Diwali, if you find yourself in a situation I described in the beginning of this post, avoid the sermonising. Let the damn child get hurt and create conditions conducive for your heroic exploits.

Is your parent aound?

My blog has been given a rating of R . Those of you under 17 years of age ( and I suspect most of you are) need a parent or guardian around, while reading my posts. And, those over 17, need to be a parent or guardian.

The rating is based on the presence of these damaging words: death (4 times), dangerous (twice) and missionary (once).

( via)

Alliterative Alligator Attacks Again

Prospective President Prathibha Patil’s Pointless Purdah Prattle Perplexes Public.

If only I had known.....

Stephen Leacock wrote in one of his essays, “You know, many a man realizes late in life that if when he was a boy he had known what he knows now, instead of being what he is he might be what he won't; but how few boys stop to think that if they knew what they don't know instead of being what they will be, they wouldn't be? These are awful thoughts.”

I too have realized late in life that if when I was a boy I had known what I don’t know even now, I might not have been what I am now. If it had so happened that I had not grown up to be what I am now, I would have felt terrible and would have thought that if only I had known as a boy what I had come to realize as a man, I wouldn’t be wasting my time reflecting on what I should have known as a boy………………..These are awful thoughts………..

The wisdom of a billion.

In his essay, "Trial By Jury", Richard Dawkins writes :

Turning to courts of law, why are twelve jurors preferred to a single judge? Not because they are wiser, more knowledgeable or more practised in the art of reasoning. Certainly not. Twelve jurors are preferred only because they are more numerous. Twelve heads are better than one, because they represent twelve assessments of the evidence.

But, for this argument, the twelve assessments really have to be independent. And, of course, they are not. Twelve men and women locked up in a jury room are like a clutch of twelve gull chicks. Whether they actually imitate each other like chicks, they might. That is enough to invalidate the principle by which a jury might be preferred over a single judge.

Oddly enough the bizarre American system of televising trials opens up a real possibility of improvising the jury system, By the end of trials such as those of O.J.Simpson, literally thousands of people around the country would have attended to the evidence as assiduously as the official jury. A mass phone-in might produce a fairer verdict than a jury.

James Surowiecki said the same thing in his book, The Wisdom of Crowds, where he presented evidence that a large group of people, under similar conditions, when presented with a situation that required judgement, had an uncanny ability to predict the right result or come as close as possible to the most appropriate consensus, than would have been possible by any single member of the group. The only condition is that there should be sufficient diversity of opinion to begin with.

Almost every news channel tries to tap into this ‘collective wisdom’, when they ask you to vote for the Indian idol or when they ask you to sms your views ( choice of a, b or c) on a specific question.

So, why not go a step further and use this method to decide on membership to the Lok Sabha or the state council? Simply ask the electorate to sit in the comfort of their drawing rooms on election day, listen to the presentations and sms their choice of candidate to represent their constituency? No more ballot boxes or even electronic machines. No more walking up to the booths and having to reckon with all those seedy characters who infest such places .No more instances of booth capture, proxy voting and spurious ballot paper.

Technology can safeguard us against malpractices and ensure confidentiality. E-identity cards with finger prints or passwords can be issued to each voter, and he or she will need to use this to cast his or her vote.

Post-elections, the same technique can be used to conduct referendums on all major policy decisions. The judgement of the crowd will prevail.

Obviously, this is too fanciful, simplistic and will have its own flaws, but I believe that any method will be an improvement over what we have today.

Update 19/06/07 : The presumption that every Indian voter will own a mobile phone and will have a TV set in his/her drawing room, betrays some insensitivity on my part and needs some moderation. Not every Indian will have a drawing room, but I am quite sure that every Indian will have a mobile phone and a TV set.

The Soap-Matrix

I just saw a trailer of what the Orwellian world of 1984 would have looked like and, for good measure, also had a foretaste of the simulated reality of The Matrix.

While on a walk this morning, I observed a woman a few paces ahead of me, shaking her hands wildly and talking loudly. My first guess was that she was on her mobile phone, in the hands-off mode, and in the midst of an animated conversation with someone at the other end.

It was only when I overtook her that I discovered that there was no mobile phone and that she was merely talking to herself. Feeling sorry for her, I moved on.

Two other walkers who were nearby heard what she was saying, and one of them later commented knowledgeably that she was reeling out some dialogues mouthed by a persecuted daughter-in-law in a popular TV serial.

With millions of people glued to the TV sets, evening after evening, watching and listening to the brain-numbing nonsense, getting themselves indoctrinated with the same soppy sentimentality, the countryside will soon be filled with such zombies staring dreamily into empty space, convinced that their’s the real world and uttering dialogues from soap operas.

If you and I don’t become part of the crowd, we will be viewed as idiots living in a make-believe world. So, better we join them, before we are whisked away to a lunatic asylum.

The G8 summit

The G8 leaders :

and their partners :

Question : Would you rather be a leader or a spouse?

Conversation with daughters- 14

I have a couple of thieves in my house. I can’t even hand them over to the police, because I have fathered them. I am pretty helpless.

Till some time back, I used to sport a thick, black moustache, which required quite a bit of maintenance. Among the many tools and appurtenances that I kept in my ‘emergency care’ kit, was a pair of scissors to trim the moustache. Imagine my agony, when one fine morning, I found them missing, forcing me to go out into the world with an untrimmed moustache and injured Tamilian pride. I decided to nab the culprits. Quick enquiries led me to my daughter’s study and there, amidst the debris and ruin, was my favourite pair of scissors. Daughter had borrowed it. “To cut out a picture to make a birthday card for my dearest friend” she informed me.

One of my friends has two sons and wept inconsolably when I visited him many years back. He had hell at home, he told me, with the brats constantly absconding with his Yonex racquet, his white shorts or his wrist bands. I sympathized with him and left him. Later, I thanked my stars when I was blessed with two daughters. Alas, I found to my dismay, that flicking dad’s shorts and socks was not something that the male offspring alone indulged in. Both the X-X and the X-Y chromosome pairs carry this vital piece of genetic information. Thus, female off-springs are equally prone to and adept in purloining things that belong to male parent.

Envelopes, stapler, nail clippers, track pants, slippers, calculator, handkerchief, hair brush, pens – nothing is safe with these kleptomaniacs around, I have discovered.

Obviously, I won’t be able to lock up all these assorted things in my trusted Godrej almirah, away from the reach of this marauding pair. There are far too many miscellaneous items to collect and fit into one almirah.

Idea ! I will keep the thieves in safe custody inside the almirah. That’s a much simpler solution.

Update : Hardly had I pressed the "enter" button to post this blog, when I discovered that the elder of the two merciless marauders had coolly taken off today with a pair of Nike socks that belonged to me. Compounding the crime, she had taken a 'wrong' pair, one sock ( is that singular allowed?) with a blue band and the other with a red band. So, not only have I lost a pair today, I am stuck with another wrong pair, in my cupboard.