How does one feel being stuck with being oneself?

Obama on Race...a tip on Caste for Indian policy makers

2009-07-03T10:20:00.000-07:00

I think the way to move forward on race is to make sure that every kid from the time they're born is getting good nutrition and good education, is succeeding in K through 12, and we're opening opportunities for all young people. Because when everybody's got a level playing field, everybody's competing, and we've dealt with some of the legacies of discrimination that have resulted in substandard schools or extreme poverty in some communities, then affirmative action ends up being an afterthought and we can really just make sure that everybody's treated fairly in an environment that, in which race is rarely taken into account.

The full interview with the Associated Press.

For lack of a better name

2009-01-05T10:39:00.000-08:00

It's nearly been a year to the day since I wrote last. Glancing back, the time seems to have rushed past. But peering back, I can see the spoors better. Minutes that felt like days tend to be forgotten when the agonizing forces are removed. Hours and days spent in hopelessness are confined to the harder to reach regions of consciousness. The joyous moments, too, bury themselves beneath the concerns of the present. The past usually presents itself as a nebulous, somewhat mystic brume, with the power to distort history, perspectives and purpose. It is into this fog that I stare as I try to relive, event by event, the year past.

By all accounts, 2008 was a difficult year for a very large section of the world's population. Like it's communist counterpart, the capitalist model faced a severe setback (though only after many decades of hegemony). Luckily for it, there were no ideologues hunting for cracks that could demolish the whole system. But the system itself went into a self-destruct mode, and had governments the world over trying to contain the damage. It was a bulimia of sorts. The binge was over, the purging had begun, and slowly, but steadily, the system was hollowing itself. It wasn't just a loss of jobs, though. It was, in some ways an validation of the robustness of simplicity, of the teaching that the "meek shall rule the earth", or of the futile research that cockroaches will survive a nuclear holocaust. India, a relatively new entrant into the world of luxury cars, spas, vast shopping spaces and unbridled spending took the hit of the economic downturn much better than it's more affluent cicerones, and on the back of this ironic achievement, the policy makers congratulated themselves for their home-brew economic policies, which, to many of who they seek to emulate, might appear pariah. Might have it been that India wasn't really affected because a vast majority of people still don't live on credit? Or maybe the organized credit sector in India doesn't lend to the vast majority of those who consume on credit? Or that however bad things get people still can't stop eating and in a country where the largest part of many families' budget consists of food, economic downturn or no economic downturn, spending can't fall beyond a certain minimum? Of course, if you have a degree in economics, you are entitled to stronger, more articulate, esoteric and tendentious opinions. But might there be something to contemplate when people working at investment banks, and possibly doing enough to earn their ridiculously large pay-packets, lost their jobs, but many who were paid a lot less managed to hang on to theirs?

The Indian polity has, historically, been divided about the best economic model for India. There is a distinct free market group, there is a distinct group advocating the communist principle of governmental (and by implication, public) control, and there is the group with no ideology and no understanding of the implications of their policies. The third group, I believe, is the most populous and perhaps the most dangerous. These are the people who change what they advocate depending on what seems the best sound-byte in a given circumstance. Take Satyam, for instance. There was this coterie that brayed about corporate trust and doing away with unnecessary regulation, and now barks sore about the failed regulatory mechanisms. Whether Satyam was an isolated rotten apple, or was just unlucky enough to get trapped, I do not know, but I find it somewhat ironic that precisely when the two most able financial ministers in India were at the helm of affairs, with Chidambram as finance minister and Manmohan as the prime minister, that the economy slows down and the, somewhat later, biggest corporate fraud in India is unearthed. This is not to say that circumstance offers proof of their incompetence, but rather that individual competence is no match for systemic incompetence. This, perhaps, is another lesson I should carry into the next year.

One reason India was allowed many prime minutes on international TV this year was the terrorist attack on Mumbai, which, unimaginatively, and not surprisingly, the Indian media called "India's 9/11", or "26/11" for short. Of course, there might have been many in the Indian media to whom this might have been cathartic, for many a time they might have looked at their American counterparts and felt deprived of opportunities for breaking news and gutsy journalism. India, after all, has seen war only four times, as opposed to the many many times the United States' military has been involved in pulverising haplessly unequal opponents. For that matter, this terrorist attack was probably the first of its kind in that it got, not one, but two names. Many people have talked about this attack being different because of it being brazen beyond anything that India has experienced before, but perhaps what really sets this attack apart from the others is how much media coverage this attack received, both in the domestic and the international media. The international media had an agenda: firstly, their citizens were involved, and rightly, this made important news. Secondly, India had already been making a few ripples because of its improving economic situation and the nuclear deal with America. And thirdly, chaos from developing countries streamed live into affluent bedrooms with glass walls overlooking a quiet American suburb does make the viewers smug about how good they actually have it. The domestic media, though, remains the mystery. In a country where every couple of weeks a bomb blast kills dozens, in a country where a blast is inside-page news, in a country where terrorism is so rampant that it might well be accepted as way of life, in such a country, it is inexplicable that one act of terror that claimed fewer than perhaps a hundredth of lives lost due to terror each year, received, and continues to receive, a thousand times more coverage than all the other acts of terror put together. Of course, terrorism is pathetic and tragic, but one life lost is one life lost, and just because it was lost in a swank hotel and not in a damp and filthy market in Assam does not make it any more grave a loss. The Indian system thrives on heroes and scapegoats, and the management of this crisis, despite the many many hours of footage streamed into our lives, was no different. Apathy is our way of life, and our memories are hopelessly short. The Mumbai terror attack, too, will be relegated to the subconscious, only to surface when something similar happens.

The other reason India made many ripples internationally was its nuclear co-operation with America. Of course, the co-operation is to be operationalized on a vendor-buyer basis (which makes it hard for me to see the cooperativity), but what surprised me immensely was the degree of mis-informed debate that the national media spurred within the country. Of course, a lot of misinformation had to do with the premier himself: according to the universal source of knowledge, the Wikipedia,

While the Hyde Act’s bar on Indian testing is explicit, the one in the NSG waiver is implicit, yet unmistakable. The NSG waiver is overtly anchored in NSG Guidelines Paragraph 16, which deals with the consequence of “an explosion of a nuclear device”. The waiver’s Section 3(e) refers to this key paragraph, which allows a supplier to call for a special NSG meeting, and seek termination of cooperation, in the event of a test or any other “violation of a supplier-recipient understanding”. The recently leaked Bush administration letter to Congress has cited how this Paragraph 16 rule will effectively bind India to the Hyde Act’s conditions on the pain of a U.S.-sponsored cut-off of all multilateral cooperation. India will not be able to escape from the U.S.-set conditions by turning to other suppliers.

It isn't that I am a great fan of nuclear tests. In all probability, one test that establishes credibility might render further tests a waste or resources, and India might well be at a point where further testing isn't necessary, but what bothers me is that a government, especially one that had at its helm people who appear to be the best of the crop, could hide crucial elements of an agreement that it entered into, with no other obvious motive save the opportunity to tout the agreement as a foreign policy success. As it happens, I think the party that should be credited with successful foreign policy is Bush's team. It is surprising that Bush's "foreign policy" which (with the exception of India) would otherwise seem an example of "shock, awe and despair", scored a concession from India that administrations before his had tried very hard to receive and failed.

Interestingly, the Indo-US nuclear nonsense brought to the fore another very intriguing phenomenon. When India tested a nuclear device in Pokharan in 1998, the defenders of the "aam aadmi", our very own Prakash Karat and his ilk cried sore about "roti" and "makaan" being much more important to the people of India than nuclear weapons. It was this same flock that cried hoarse about India "losing" its freedom to conduct nuclear tests if it signed the nuclear agreement. For me, this was a little less than a revelation, but it was a fairly painful realization. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, I had managed to cling to the faith that ideology, even if flawed, was still a mainstay of Indian politics, and this inspired me to believe that if ever we got beyond our petty nitpicking, we might, truly, become a great nation. The Left epitomized the ideological camp, and this revelation through different acts of the drama that culminated in the signing of the deal served as a rude wake-up call.

2008 was unique in that there were issues that inspired strong reactions from me. Many of these were baseless, others immature but the feeling was definitely alien. It might have something to do with growing older.

Going Home

2008-01-13T02:11:00.000-08:00

The association was strongest with dust and poverty. I had often ventured to disagree, but most had told me that I would see it when I visited. After all, if one lives in an environment, one tends to get desensitized to one's surroundings. Filth, like beauty, can only be appreciated through a degree of unfamiliarity. And that unfamiliarity, they said, would come from my time in America, and whenever I would visit, I was told, I would be overcome by the sights and smells than I never gave second thought to.

So this time when I flew Air India, I was already convinced that I was in for a raw deal. That belief was strengthened by the surprise that my flight, which I purchased as 'not stop', had a 90 minute stopover at Heathrow. This was so typical India, I told myself, you never know what you're in for. And when I discovered that my audio system didn't work because the audio jacks and the headphone jacks were not compatible, and that I wasn't the only one with this problem, I began to foresee a trip home that was full of small and irritating inconveniences that could be best attributed to apathy, an Indian attitude that I was already fairly familiar with.

Indira Gandhi International Airport was the next entry in the list of ills; broken and disorganized with a prevailing pervasive smell of urine. While waiting at the carousels for our bags to arrive, I couldn't help but compare the leaky ceiling and chipped walls to those that I had seen at airports in other countries. India, I was learning, was about indifference. When there was a thirty minute hiatus in the unloading of bags from the plane and onto the carousels because the workers changed shifts, India, I learned further, was about incompetence.

But on the drive back, I couldn't help but notice that the roads in Delhi, when one can actually see the roads without the heavy traffic, might compare to the roads in America. The roads were good, the signage was acceptable and it seemed that enough time, effort and money had been spent to ensure that traffic flow as smoothly as possible. On a later day, however, when I revisited Delhi in peak traffic, I could see why, despite the good roads, traffic was slow and disconcerting. Mixed traffic was one reason, and impatience was the other. Two wheeled automobiles paid scant regard to the marked lanes on the road, and frequently one would see them using the lane demarcation as a taxiway centerline. At red lights, too, one could see that cars and other vehicles, whether automated or manual, would try to fill every conceivable gap on the road, following some kind of a thermodynamical law, and getting out of that lattice seemed like a rearrangement puzzle. The traffic in Lucknow was worse, primarily, because of the blustery attitude of the politically muscled.

Haridwar, geographically a small town, and politically very important, was the beginning of my realization that India was neither all about bad traffic, urine, broken walls and political bullying, nor about the swanky malls that I would visit later and the talk of economic upturn that seemed ubiquitous across the journalistic spectrum, figuring, alike, in gossip columns and financial news. Haridwar was once a part of Uttar Pradesh, the state now in competition with Bihar for generating the most inhospitable conditions for its residents. Uttaranchal, the state Haridwar is in now, broke away from Uttar Pradesh in 2001 after complaining of decades of neglect from the government in Lucknow. Within six years, its capital city, Dehra Dun, was transformed from a small, quaint town, to a center of commercial activity which, while not chichi, serves well as a model of inclusive economics. "There are jobs here for everyone", I was told, "and those who want very highly paying jobs don't stay here anyway." It appears that now, in Dehra Dun, one can find a job, with great ease, which enables one to earn about five thousand to ten thousand rupees a month. Given that livable apartments cost about two thousand rupees and a day's three meals, if cooked and eaten at home, cost about fifty rupees, most people in Dehra Dun are able to actually save money.

Haridwar is little different. Being from Uttar Pradesh, I was astounded at the luminescence of Haridwar. It was hard to believe that I was in a country that continually complained about how short on energy it was. I stayed in a recently built hotel there, and I must admit, that apart from the slight unwillingness of the staff to be helpful, that hotel could have compared to some of my experiences with hotels in the more "advanced" parts of the world. I then shifted hotels to be closer to the river Ganga, and while my new hotel wasn't as ritzy, it gave me nothing to complain of. In the evenings I would walk around taking pictures, and some, when I showed them to my mother, elicited the response, "This looks a little like some of the pictures you sent us" (of places in America).

While I was on my tour of Haridwar, Benazir Bhutto was murdered. I spent an evening watching commentaries and projections. I even heard Zardari speak on TV, and watched as Bilawal sat through his father announcing an addition to his name. My mind went back, perhaps ten years, when Delhi and Islamabad habitually blamed each other for anything, major or otherwise, that occurred in their countries. But today, no one, either in the Pakistani media, or in the international one, was bothering to implicate India in Pakistan's turmoil. After sharing a history of many thousand years, and fighting four wars in just sixty odd years, India had managed to extricate itself from Pakistan. So while analysts predicted a nuclear doom if Pakistan's arsenal fell into even more dangerous hands, analysts in India spoke about the increase in congestion that JRD Tata's dream car would bring about in the Indian roads. India, it seemed, was not worried by Pakistan's instability. India, it seemed, was learning to "ignore", a quality hitherto associated with the powerful.

Shortly after my return from Haridwar, the election results in Gujarat came out. I am not aware of how many political parties have an interest in Gujarat, but I knew that the ruling party, the BJP, was written off by the media as being communally inclined. Incidentally, "communal" is a word that is often uttered by the Left and by everyone in Uttar Pradesh. The Left uses it as an alternative to "not in the favor of the country" just to make it seem that they don't have the same view on every subject, and the politicians in Uttar Pradesh use it to mask their not having any reasonable political opinions at all; excepting that, "communal" was driven to cliché by its constant reference to Gujarat's elections. In what surprised all political pundits in India, Narendra Modi, the man marketed by the media as a demon, came back into power with a clear majority. Overnight, stories changed, and it now appeared that Gujarat was no longer going to polls with issues such as caste and religion: they had mellowed to the more real issue of development. Statistics were published which indicated that Gujaratis were, on average, better educated, had more electricity, cleaner water and a better sex ratio than most of India. Narendra Modi coming back to power was thus seen as an affirmation that Gujarat was growing politically mature and some pundits, the very same who had written Modi off, began to uphold Gujarat as a model of India's democratic process.

On my way back to Houston, I met a Nepali fellow, and while I was talking to him about the perception the Nepalese bear of India, he said, "We're stuck between two phenomena," referring to India and China, "but we're too far behind." Later in the conversation, when I mentioned that India was suffering tremendously from corruption and quoted the a former prime minister saying that, "Of every rupee spent, only 17 paise reach the common man", he asked, with wonder, "Then how has India managed to get ahead?"

This is a question I am sure most Indians ask themselves frequently. On many fronts the government is apathetic. On most fronts, the populace does not bear a sense of ownership over their country. The corrupt bureaucracy is entrenched inextricably into the system. And yet, there is a sense of economic empowerment within the people. Behind the realization that the individual is powerless in front of the state is the new belief that an individual can make a difference, however small. This manifests in the simultaneous expression of fatalism and entrepreneurship. The Indian no longer associates with the reality that is India, he associates more with the India of his wants. He pees by the roadside, then fishes out his mobile phone and places an order for thirty computers. The dirt and urine coexist in a queasy stasis with a desire for "upward mobility" fueled by the hope for a better tomorrow. And what has changed is that the people are developing a tenacity in their search for their better tomorrow.

Whether India manages to lay a rightful claim as a "developed" nation by 2020 is an issue that I'll let the pundits debate. I'll just marvel at the confusion and contradictions that chaperon change.

2007-05-23T14:19:00.000-07:00

From August 2006 to May 2007, it's been a long ride. I find it hard to believe that in just ten months my life has undergone a change as radical as it has, and I wasn't even aware that such a change was possible. From being a proud procrastinator, I've gone to being a reluctant anticipator. From maintaining a facade of cynicism, I've come to keeping one of faith and trust. From a heart of faith and trust, I've morphed into one with a heart nearly full with cynicism. I've gone from actively seeking company to avoiding it on more occasions than otherwise. I've changed from wanting to do something in the world of Finance to doing something in the world of Statistics and Genetics. I've gone from being alone in the middle of company to not noticing the lack of thereof. From sighing at my parents' calls, I've come to appreciating them and looking forward to their calls. I've gone from being guarded about the way I feel about things to being careless with letting people into my feelings.

And in the midst of all this, only one thing hasn't changed. I still don't understand myself.

The Toilet Clue

2007-05-04T19:55:00.001-07:00

I opened the door. On the carpet lay a crumpled sleeping bag. Shoes lay strewn everywhere. Socks were sticking out of some of those shoes, and some of the socks had been kicked around to the other part of the living room. Dead insects stuck to the wall, some that I remembered killing myself, and others that I had no recollection of. But I got the vague feeling that the number had doubled since I had last seen the wall next to the door. The bookcase too falling apart. Papers lay everywhere, with postchits that once specifed what they were, now inverted and misplaced. Food lay on the carpet and a stream of ants made its way from the window to where the food lay.

I walked in. Fabric softener lay on carpet. Next to it was an M&M wrapper. Next to it was this month's receipt for rent. A cockroach scurried past, through the wrapper, to under the fridge. The sink was full of dishes and smelling. The stove, originally white, was red and yellow and contained rice and dal remains that looked a month old. An unmade ommelette sat in a glass next to a hot pan, in which lay an uneaten ommelette. The bread wrapper lay on the floor of the kitchen, ants around it, and on it lay the core of an apple.

I walked into the bedroom. Papers, papers everywhere and not a sign of order. My comforter was bundled up and my sheet was ripped off the mattress. Papers lay under the table too and on my bed. The door of my closet was open, the light was on, and all my clothes were on the floor. The hangers hung, all empty, and swaying gently in the draft of the ac vent.

Wrappers and food spotted the carpet and a big black blob reminded me of when a friend had spilt juice.

I stole a peek into the toilet to confirm my suspicion, and this is where I was shocked. The toilet was sparkling clean. There was no hair in the sink and the water faucet wasn't dripping. And whoever it was had even left the seat down. And so I knew that someone had been into my apartment, because while the rest of the apartment was as I had left it, that person had used the toilet and left it cleaner than they found it.

My roommates and I should really clean up more often.

this is how it happened

2007-04-01T15:08:00.000-07:00

I was up, unusually awake. My head was full of thoughts, though I wasn't actively involved in the process of thought. Many threads expressed themselves simultaneously, though all of them were so tenuous that whichever I tried to hold on to, would just disappear. A new one would take the space left vacant by the abortive chain. It was confusing and disorienting and it only added to my wondering why I was awake. After all, I had been asleep only four hours, and I had the liberty of sleeping the whole day if I wanted to. Today after all was Sunday.

Or maybe that was it. It was Sunday and I had been waiting the whole of the weekend, and it hadn't come. And I was really looking forward to getting it. After all that talking, I thought that matters were more of less settled and the plan had been agreed on. And I was told I would get it some time on the weekend. But the weekend was over. But this wasn't really the first time that the agreement wasn't fulfilled. This was more the norm than the sporadic effort to keep one's promise. So why this disorientation? Why was I so upset about something which I anticipated and accepted as inevitable?

More thoughts surfaced, still tenuous. But they were beginning to take a form now. Each little thread connected loosely with another little thread, and they wove in and out till the nebula became just a little bit less hazy. Still, nothing concrete, but the emotion was negative. The prevailing emotion had been negative for almost six months now. But it wasn't just about the emotion, I had told myself. Some things can't be forced, I had reasoned, you have to give them time. But the doubts were there and with each passing day, they just because stronger. And then when days turned into weeks and weeks evolved into six months, no amount of reasoning could convince me that this agreement was still worth it.

The nebula refined itself further. Yes, the GRE. That incident was definitely indicative of something. I had always had faith till that point, and that was, I think, the first severe jolt to my faith. Things were not the same, they weren't, and this was proof. But at that point, the emotion had only made its way from the one extreme to the middle of the spectrum. It still wasn't substantially disheartening. I had ignored that as a freak incident, but in retrospect, we see 20/20.

Things has been alright briefly, somewhere near the Spring Break. But even then, it wasn't great or anything of that sort, and whatever I tried after that had also borne no fruit. Yes, it was getting clearer all the time, and I should have seen it earlier. The end was near, and I should have planned for it. The ostrich response wasn't the best way out of a situation, and that is what I had done. Faith, too, was proving inadequate to the vagaries of reason, and there was only one thing to do.

I picked up my phone. It was 3 in the afternoon. I didn't want to wait, lest faith win another skirmish and toss me into the torment of uncertainty again. Giving up a part of me was probably the more peaceful way into the future. They said that time healed everything and it was sure to heal the scars that I had sustained because of this. The other option would just prolong the misery. But it could also bring hope, because it wasn't over till it was over. I was facing the dilemma of a relative of a patient requesting euthanasia. Or maybe I wasn't. I don't want to know for sure.

I decided to end it.

I waited till the computer booted. Everything seemed to be moving in bullet time now. I was thinking of a way to say what I needed to without having to explicitly bear the burden of my own follies. I wanted to appeal to the "I couldn't help it emotion" and I was convinced that I had tried. The introduction formed in my head, and it was a good prelude to the conclusion. I poured my confusion on paper, deliberately being obscure so as to avoid cross-questioning. I was looking for a plain, simple, and well-meant goodbye.

And this is where it happened.

Reason committed treason. So what if I hadn't had so much to share in the past some time? So what if I was having to tread carefully so as not to bring a premature end to this whole thing? So what if I wasn't as thrilled with this as I used to be at one point? This was about me, wasn't it? So what if the GRE had given me a writing score that was lower than what I had expected? I could go on with this as long as I wanted to and no one was authorized to judge. I couldn't force myself to write, true, but that didn't mean that this blog had to die.

And so it lived for another day.

Spring Break 2007

2007-03-13T15:41:00.000-07:00

Time to waste is a rare commodity in the US of A, and its cost, in terms material and subsequently emotional, is usually deterrent. But came the spring break, and some friends and I decided to blow up some cash and drive around the endless American freeway. So set out we did in a rented Chrysler Sebring for a drive towards San Antonio. For someone who doesn't own a car, is eager to get one without spending the money required to get something better than a lemon (maybe an orange...OK pathetic humor), and is used to riding in hatchback Civics and torn down Camry's, a Sebring with just seven thousand miles on it was the epitome of luxury. So, as the drive began, I was hungry for the road, and I wished it just wouldn't stop coming. And I wasn't disappointed.

But soon, the monotony of the highway got to me and I began to wish that we would get somewhere. Also, I needed to use the restroom, and the copious amounts of liquid that I had consumed wasn't helping. And then, we saw an exit to a town, but we couldn't change lanes to take the exit because there was someone driving at a distance that prevented the changing of lanes and traffic in general prevented speeding up. We drove on, another twenty miles or so, and by this time I was sufficiently edgy. Luckily for me, this time, we managed to make the exit we spotted.

We landed in a town called Columbus, built around a large MacDonald's and Jack in the Box and a small HEB. Apart from that, the main feature of the town was the pervading smell of horse shit, though I am not too sure if the distinction went to horses because we didn't actually see any. Honestly speaking, i think it was them because we did have a small debate over the ownership of the invisible excreta and we concurred on horses. The debate occurred over fried beef burgers and fries with a gallon of coke with free refills (which we realised was their standard meal). Of course, the Tall One had to eat just the fries because he was vegetarian, and so as compensation, we went to HEB to stock up what he loves most: Shiner Hefenweizen. On our way back to the car, we concurred again that it was indeed horses and having done that, set out on the second leg of the drive towards San Antonio.

I don't remember if we stopped anywhere on the way to San Antonio, or if anything interesting happened. We reached our destination a few hours later and decided to eat at their River-Walk. However, as we later realised, for all of San Antonio's night life, the eating joints shut early and the only affordable place that we could eat at, at the time we reached, was Dominoes. Imagine driving two hundred and fifty miles to eat at Dominoes. But we did, and then agreed that a late night movie was the best way to spend the remainder of the night. We drove around looking for a place that was open, and we suddenly hit an intersection where everyone was honking at everyone else. It took us a few minutes to realise that the subject of all the honking was a particular blue pickup truck which contained a few women who had some kind of allergy to fabric. This cynosure wasn't part of the itinerary, and since we had spent a great deal of effort making one, we decided to stick to it. So we drove on in search of a place that was open for all of the night. An hour later, we were still driving around. What we did accomplish in that one hour was the creation of a new plan. We were now going to park at the first parking we got and explore San Antonio on foot.

While we were walking around, the Tall One and his former roommate tried asking the other pedestrian traffic a little about the town. The Complex Geometer went first and met with no success; the guy he accosted just pushed past and walked on. The Tall One then offered to use his charms; a few minutes later he spotted his first prey. She was sitting outside a pub, solitary, looking somewhat pensive. The Tall One stole up to her and said, "Excuse me." In the ten seconds that followed, the damsel turned around, looked into the accoster's eyes, got floored, fell over a neighbouring fence, straightened herself and the displaced fence and stared at him with such complete stupefaction that it would have done the followers of Moses justice when they saw the sea part at his command. She, though, was witness to lesser miracles, and my guess is that she had partaken too generously the Blood of Christ. By the time she stood up to answer the Tall One, who too was enraptured by her beauty and lack of co-ordination, his not-so-attractive friends, namely us, had caught up. One glance at us and she decided that we probably weren't worth it. She sent us off to the nearest theater that was shut and without so much of a glance at the Tall One, managed to regain her seat without losing her balance.

The rest of San Antonio was boring, and the Tall One was engrossed in thoughts about the possibilities lost because he had such ugly friends. His friends though, didn't really care, for all that they could think of at four a.m. was coffee to keep them awake. So we did the usual, found an all night coffee place, drank the coffee, talked some junk-philosophy, drank some juice, talked some more, paid the tab and walked back twenty blocks to where we were parked. We were now en-route to the next destination: the Shiner town. (I might mention that in between all of this we drove across town because I wanted to use the restroom, but that detail makes a trivial aside to the story.)

On the way to Shiner, we crossed a bird sanctuary, and since we figured that it was too early for the factory to be open, we decided to spend some time there. As we went into the welcome office, we were told that Shiner would be shut, the day being Sunday, and that called for yet another session of planning. We were now going to Corpus Christi.

Another seemingly endless session on the freeway brought us to Corpus Christi, where, because I am getting bored of writing this narrative and am inclined to speed it up, we saw a WW-II aircraft carrier: the Lexington, played around on the beach, got lost in search for a restaurant, and, in yet another change of plans, decided to head towards Houston. I fell victim to the freeway hypnosis almost immediately after we left Corpus Christi. A brief period of consciousness ensued when we stopped at a Mexican restaurant somewhere in the middle of nowhere, though, soon after we drove out of there, I lost myself in dreamland again. I woke up for a brief while in between to the screams of the Tall One and the Complex Geometer arguing over simple division. Houston had already engulfed us by the time I woke up next.

As I climbed up the steps to my apartment at one in the morning of Monday, I paused briefly before I reached the door. Inside lay the world symbolic of the quotidian that one is forced to inure oneself to. I don't think the pause was even momentary, but somehow, in my semi-delirious state induced by sleep, that was my way of bidding farewell to the past 48 hours. I then walked in and headed straight to bed. When I woke up late next afternoon, I was still on vacation for the next five days. My spring break was over.

My Friends on Orkut

2006-12-13T23:11:00.001-08:00

The final nail in the coffin came when another email landed up in my mailbox. That was still the time I wasn't too sure of my way around Google mail and the SPAM filters they had in place refused to regard this as junk email. I thought it was junk, though, especially because I didn't know what this whole thing was. There was a time when I was getting more invites to Orkut than emails that I needed to read and respond to. So I decided to put an end to the agony and sign up for Orkut.

It so happened that Orkut had already set an account aside for me. They kind of knew I was coming. It was a little scary, because their confidence in my taking the bait was in some sense testimony to their bait's effectiveness. It felt somewhat like the fly-trap, where the instrument knew the insect was coming and always got one over the insect because of this knowledge. I was even more scared because it turned out that my Google account username and password worked on this website too. Of course, I am one of those semi-paranoid people who believe that the world is out to get them (not always, but I have those moments) and this was a tad disconcerting. Why on Earth should Orkut know that I am the same person who has an email account with Google, an account that receives more SPAM than useful email?

Torn between shutting the browser tab and continuing to get invites, I decided that letting Orkut into my little, embarrassing secret was the lesser of the two evils. I logged in, into a page where approximately thirty friend requests were waiting for me. Now thirty was not the number of friend requests that had found their way into my inbox. I guess these thirty people were really desperate to be friends since the only thing that explained those swarms of invites was that they had been sent repeatedly.

However, there was something interesting about the composition of those smiling faces and celebrity pictures staring at me against the disturbingly blue background. Most of them were people I hadn't been in touch with in a really long time. Most of them were people from school I had lost touch with, a few of them were from people in college I had lost touch with after my first year there, and some of them were from people I was still in the process of knowing. No one I knew and was really good friends with was there in the list. And to think they had bombarded me with invites! I felt so special. It felt like I mattered to these people even when we had lost touch! I felt that probably there was more to the thread that bound us than had been apparent to me, more to that thread than the coincidence of being coevals in an institute!

And so began my tenure on Orkut. I actively involved myself in searching for people I knew. My "Network" grew. And soon I realized that I had entered a competition of sorts. I, the four day old baby on Orkut, was competing with "friends" two weeks old on the number of friends we had in our lists. My list was growing at an alarmingly fast rate, I was told. It wasn't something I had kept a tab on, but just because someone pointed it out, I began to notice it. And I felt cool about it for a while, till one day, I could think of no one else who I knew and who I didn't have on my Orkut list. And I had only about two hundred people there. And that was the bursting of my bubble. It was a realization that would have never occurred if I hadn't actually tried to list down all my acquaintances in the manner that Orkut tempted me to do. I just realized that I had spent 22 years of my life, and the total number of acquaintances that I could think of was just about two hundred. The saving grace, if any, was that these people still considered me important enough to really want me on this forum so that they could keep in touch with me.

I slowly got more familiar with Orkut. I began to notice things that I had never noticed earlier. I noticed little hearts and ice cubes and smiley faces at the top of the page and I didn't know what they were. Later, I found out that they were indications of how "trusty" (whatever that is), cool and sexy people thought you were. I wasn't doing too well on that one. There was a number next to the ice cubes, which, as the programmers later specified, was the number of scraps that people had left you.

In about a week I realized that people compete about the number of scraps they have; there were congratulatory posts on scrapbooks for completing one thousand scraps and suck like.

It took me another week to realize that most birthday wishes on Orkut come from a birthday reminder service that Orkut has.

In a few more days that realized that friendship requests sent to you are resent automatically by Orkut, should you ignore the first one and let it expire. So much for my gloating over my importance to people.

With my growing disillusionment with the greatness of Orkut as a medium of communication between long lost people, I began to get critical about the scraps that people would leave me. I began to dislike the convenience that it offered. It is so much more convenient to write a single line of hello than to write an email, because writing an email requires a certain mental effort. It requires recalling what level one interacted with someone on, it requires one to recall one's impressions of a person, it requires one to decide what one wants to share with a person. And most importantly, it requires an external stimulus that is more substantial than a picture thrown up randomly from a computer database for the actual act of emailing, or calling by phone, to take place. On Orkut, however, you don't need any of the above.

And this convenience is the root of my antagonism towards Orkut. I never know if someone asked me how I was doing because they thought of me because of something or just because I happened to figure in a little window containing a few random friends from their lists. I don't particularly enjoy one line scraps like "Hey Dude! What’s up?" with their one line responses "Not much dude! What’s up with you?" because it’s almost like saying "how do you do" when you don't want to hear about someone's stomach ache.

And for all of my misgivings, I still log into Orkut, faithfully, once a week at least, to see what scraps people have left me, I still update my profile every now and then and post pictures when emailing them becomes too much of an effort and I still search every now and then for people I think of to see if I can add them to my network. I do all of this while simultaneously ruing the superficiality of my social interactions. Well, at least it keeps the SPAM out of my inbox.

Mr J Christ

2006-12-12T07:59:00.000-08:00

Exams leave me in a strange frame of mind, and I am usually not aware of the metamorphosis till the transition is complete. My realization of this transition, hence, is usually stark. Yesterday, while trying to sleep two hours before my usual bed-time at 2:00 am , drifting between the delirium induced by an effort to sleep when not sleepy, and thoughts of getting up and doing some reading, I dozed off into a small nap. I don't think I slept for more than 15 minutes, but I realized that exams were here when I woke up, because I usually do not have such senseless dreams.

I have a friend who lives in Bethlehem, a place near New Jersey. I dreamt of the following conversation:

"Where do you come from?"

"I live in Bethlehem. You know where that is?"

"Yeah..thats where J Christ comes from. That guy with the huge fan following? His biography, whatsitsname, yeah the Bible! Its been on the bestseller's list since like the Renaissance. Apparently that is when they made the first printing presses because the folks couldn't get enough of him and they wanted more. I heard that Britanny Spears got so jealous of his popularity that she got breast implants."

"Britanny Spears has breast implants?"

"Dunno, never seen them. So where exactly is this Bethlehem place?"

"Somewhere in New Jersey."

"They have a New Jersey in Israel?"

"Chinmaya, New Jersey is in USA."

"No wait, I don't get this. JC was born in Bethlehem. Then Herod sent his lackeys to hunt him down. You mean those Romans came all the way to USA? Wasn't Columbus the first to discover the Americas? Or was he before Herod? No way man...there was a gap between them, I am sure."

"Yes there was. There are two different Bethlehems. One in Israel, where all the things with Herod happened, and there is another in NJ, USA."

"What is with naming places after places? I mean I found it funny enough that there is a Delhi in New York, and now you are telling me that there is a Bethlehem in New Jersey! Recently I found out there is a Lucknow in Ontario. And that there is a Hyderabad in Pakistan. Cashmere is a city in Washington. There is a Cashmere in New Zealand. Next you'll be telling me there is a New Zealand in Ohio or something. Hey! Are you even listening to me...?"

This is around where I woke up.

La diferencias

2006-11-28T23:22:00.000-08:00

Every conversation I have had with people in the past three months has, somehow, found its way to the exact same question: How different is India from America? My answer has, invariably, been met with surprise, and in a few cases, downright skepticism. It is not that I am writing this post to dismiss all the disbelief that I have managed to evoke in the past three months. This post might just serve to further that disbelief. However, from the first impressions that I have had of America, there isn't much difference.

Let me hasten to qualify that this country doesn't look the same as India. Indeed, there are better roads, swankier cars and centrally air-conditioned buildings in the ratio of 10 to 1. But so what? I refuse to let these physical differences qualify for differences between countries. They are differencs, yes, and things take getting used to, I don't deny that. But there is nothing so fundamental about them that it takes a complete re-orientation of one's world-view.

Let me dwell on the differences before I get to the similarities. The only difference I have noticed here in the little time that I have had is that people take themselves much more seriously. They define themselves by the work that they do, and they are good people or bad people depending on how well they work. Personal relationships, or so it seems, come second. This difference has many manifestations. The guy blowing the leaves of the pavement seems to take his work seriously. For him, it is imperative that all the leaves get off the pavement. Compare this with an Indian municipal employee who will miss work three days out of seven in a good week, and leave the pavement not substantially better than he found it. For him, there is no dignity in his labour, and hence he isn't ashamed to do a bad job because there is nothing lost. Here, there is a certain minimum dignity in everything.

This minimum dignity explains pretty much everthing: from systems that function, to the services sector that India needs to learn a lot from.

The desire to do ones job well is the only difference I have noticed.

And now we come to the "similarities." The city I am in seems like Delhi, the city I was in last. It is as hard to get about as Delhi is, it is as much on the road as Delhi is, and it is a lot more polluted than Delhi is. This city has as much poverty as Delhi does, just that it isn't quite the same thing to publish the photo of an American beggar as it is to publish one of an Indian beggar in a photojournal. People are hard to relate to, something that potentially qualifies as a major difference, but that is only because I am not sure of they way they think. This, incidentally, is true between different states in India, and for that matter, between different communities in each state; and if you really want to get specific, this differs from family to family and at a still more micro level, from individual to individual. So its relevance as a differentiating factor between countries is kind of dubious anyways.

Still more similarities: People here lie, cheat and pick up money they find on the pavement. People here mug people. Everyone here breaks traffic rules when they know they are not in the vicinity of a camera. People drive drunk. People here do all the things people do in India. They also do a few that they don't do in the more conservative parts of India, but Delhi, as it happens, is not the most conservative of India cities.

My take on my very limited experience is this: the major differences between the two countries are physical; the prominent difference in attitudes is in their work ethic. The two cities, Houston and Delhi, feel the same, and hence I find it hard to say that there are too many differences. Of course, I am assuming that when people ask me that question, they don't want to know about left hand drive and toilet paper.

My view on this might change with time as I see and absorb more of this place. But till such time, I stick by my stand.

Monkey with a Deathwish

2006-10-01T00:49:00.000-07:00


This Monkey is a Friggin' Idiot. - TyPalmer.com - Found this on google video. A must watch for everyone.

2006-08-18T10:03:00.000-07:00

This post is an apology to everyone with whom I've not been in touch.

I am busy because I have now enrolled myself for courses at the U of H. That, at least, is that the people here like calling themselves. It is kind of amusing because this place does seem like a U of Hindustan of sorts because the majority of people here are Indian.

Indians are a very strange people and it is strange that I should be saying this considering there are few people who don't find me strange. Also, I am Indian too and so ideally I should be an aoplogist for others like me. But there is no option but to feel apologetic for your race when during a speech a hand blocks your vision and a voice says, "Hi. Myself Mechanical."

Then there are times when you completely loose yourself in a time pocket of sorts because you suddenly realise that the only people in the elevator are Indians. Your embarrassment begins to set in when the decibel levels in the elevator rise because they are talking. The US of A is a really quiet country, so quiet, that they possibly replaced water by paper because otherwise everyone on the other side of the door would know what stage of the procedure you reached. You begin to turn red in the face when your fellow country men crowd around you seeking the comfort of a familiar skin colour. You get really embarrassd when someone presses the emergency call button in the elevator by leaning on it, and when the operator says "hello?" all that she gets is a muffled giggle.

No wonder Asok is the loser he is. But then again, he is one of us.

It is indeed disturbuing because I am yet to figure out what people here think. People here are multifaced and the quality is not consired a disqualification. The more you can hide you feelings the better. So is it that everyone we talk to on the phone says, "Thank you for calling us, glad to be of help to you............fucking Indian!"? Possibly. Possibly not. I'd never know.

So what is embarrassing me about Indians here? I don't really know. Possibly it is that they don't try to fit in into a culture different from their own. Somewhat like the Bengali people at St. Stephens. Or maybe it is the fact that their idea of fitting into a culture is speaking like the people in whose land they are living. Maybe it is because they either just disparage India or glorify India where it is not even required. Maybe it is all of the above.

Probably it is none of the above.

Maybe it is that I am unsure of myself because I still don't know what kind of an impression I leave where ever I go. Probably, I am yet to get immune to it in this culture. In this place where there is this apparent disinterest in people about your activities, in this place where Big Brother is watching, in this place where things function in a fashion that is so vastly different from things in India, I still need to find that equilibrium between being a personal and a social entity.

It is probably because of this lack of equilibrium that Indians, whose ways I am familiar with and not always approving of, usually end up embarrassing me.

And this is where the need for the apology promised at the beginning of this litany becomes apparent. Friends are central to anyone finding one's equilibrium with society and it is precisely this that I want to thank you all for. I was on firm footing in India because I knew how interpersonal relations worked there. And I need to apologise for ignoring what I know in order to pay more attention to what I seek to learn.

A guide to Not getting an American Visa

2006-07-30T03:33:00.000-07:00

The American Embassy in Delhi is indeed one of the most interesting places I've had the fortune of being admitted into. For those of us who haven't been there, here is how to navigate.

At the entrance to the entrance, there stand some guards. Before they let you in, the conversation will go thus:

"Einterview laetar please."
"Here."
"HDFC Baink slip."
"Here."

The guard will peer into his list.

"Your name there. Go to laine 2."

After this you enter the first entrance, where a guard with a metal detector frisks you. He'll first run over your front, then your back, in between muttering, "Don't waste my time. At least carry something into the embassy so that I have something to do."

At this point you ask him, "Am I allowed to carry a watch inside?"
"Nice watch, where did you get it?"
"Sorry? May I wear it inside the embassy?"
"Today is Tuesday."
"Sorry?"
"Don't waste my time."

At this point, you get confused and walk on, ready to part with your watch should someone object. Other things not allowed inside are sealed envelopes, wallets, food, water, guns, missiles, bombs, digital diaries, burning effigies of George Bush and such like. This list, of course, is not finite.

You queue up in line 2, thankful that you are the only one in the line. This line says, "American Citizens' Services" but you stay in this line because the guard at the first gate said you should. You stay here for half an hour and no one pays attention to you. At this point you seek the attention of a bulky guard that you might have seen at the entrance of the swankiest discotheques and ask him what you're to do next. He looks at you, smiles almost insultingly, and tells you to queue up in line 3. You look at line 3, frown in disappointment, and plead, "But there are around 150 people in line 3."

"I know."
"But the guard there sent me to this line."
"Don't waste my time."

You go to line 3.

A while later, the line moves a few feet. From having the cactus at the back of the line trouble you, you approach the water dispenser. Mysteriously, you're thirsty. Even more mysteriously, everyone else is thirsty too. People push and pull to get to the dispenser. You fight to just stay in line. A while later, the line moves again. You now come within hearing distance of the speakers spewing out praise of America, through songs, presumably American evergreens. You listen, you gawk, you feel irritated and you sweat. All this while, the queue inches forward.

You finally approach a window. Someone sits there behind bullet proof glass.
"Documents?"
"Here."
"Passport?"
"Here."
"Bank Slip?"
"Here."
"Goy tuh gouy jug tuf."
"Sorry?"
"Don't waste my time."

That is your cue to queue up in front of the second entrance. One by one, more guards from behind more bullet proof glass will summon you. You walk in and you are frisked again. All this while you're straining to hear if this guard too wants you to carry something into the Embassy because otherwise his job becomes drab. You then put your passport and other papers through an x-ray machine, just in case you were smart enough to pass a pistol for your marksheets. Once the x-ray has confirmed that your papers are indeed papers and not weapons of mass destruction, you are allowed inside the embassy premises.

Once inside, you are stared at by a Punjabi woman in bathroom slippers. She accosts you, and in an accent excellent enough to make Condi Rice blush, she says, "Aye Sir, get in line...Sir."

You stand behind the person you see to be the last in the queue.

"Turn around Sir."

You panic, drop your papers, put your hands behind your head and turn around pleadingly. You then feel cheated by the accent and realise that she wasn't going to shoot.

"Pick up your papers, Sir, and face this way. And don't waste my time."

She gets you in the queue the way she wants you to. A little while later, you are fingerprinted. Then you make it to the main section of the embassy where the interviews happen. There is a convoluted queue, and a television. Mikka dances on the TV. Somewhere in the back of your mind, you recall a fuming Rakhi Savant and laugh to yourself. The Punjabi music puts you back in familiar territory and you relax.

"...Teri to, Teri Ta, hamesha Yaad Satave.."

You see the many Visa officers sitting in their bullet proof nests. They are all nice people, ready with their smiles, seemingly eager to help. All, except one. She is the Dreaded One that you might have heard of. She is also the one who calls you for your interview.

"Hi. What can I do for you?"
"Hello. I'm here for a F 1 Visa."
"Can I look at your documents?"
"I-20... Passort....admission letter."
"I see. Where are your GRE scores?"
"My university doesn't require me to take the GRE before I start the semester."
"What?"
"My university doesn't require me to take the GRE before I start the semester."
"No no no no, it does it does. I am an American citizen and when I had to write the GMAT which is a lot harder than the GRE, I don't see how they can exempt you."
"..."
"Where is your TOEFL score?"
"I am exempt from the TOEFL."
"No no no no, they don't exempt students from India from the TOEFL."
"Its there on the I-20. "
"Where? Ah here! See! This sentence states that students need English proficiency."
"Please read the line below that one. It says that the student has the required English proficiency."
"No no no no, what about the line I said?"
"..."
"Come back with your test scores and we can continue talking.."
"But Ma'am.."
"Don't waste my time."

This is your cue to leave without your Visa.

Good Luck!

Not A Requiem

2006-07-10T11:54:00.000-07:00

This is so typical of most relationships, that I feel stupid even mentioning it. That said, I don't intend to generalize or project my proclivities on others. For me it began mostly as a result of nothing substantial to occupy myself with. There was no class work, or little class work at best. Music in college was interesting, but that too took at most a few hours a week. I took my cue from Chandna, who, amongst his other engagements, had started a relationship some time back.

Chandna being Chandna, or at least the version of him that I knew, the version we called Chandna, was one with whom most relationships began in a flurry of suppositions and assumptions, and usually collapsed right when he intended to make them concrete. I later found out that his relationship, the one I emulated, met the same fate as its predecessors. Chandna had many: some he really worked hard over. He spent a fair amount of cash on one of them, if I remember right, but when he decided it was over, it really was. I don't think he even remembers that association now, and if he does, I have a nagging feeling that he is embarrassed about it.

Since I'm free these days, I have ample time to look around, and whatever chain I follow, the ultimate outcome seems to be the same. I come across discarded emotion. Things that were once evocative, pertinent and hence alive, now remain like archaeological pasts. It doesn't even take much to find such examples. They seem to follow me like some kind of chastising chaperones reminding me of my own story.

I really started out on this relationship with a flurry. I devoted a lot of time to it. I was very careful about how I worded things. Communication was of paramount importance. This was, after all, my spiritual center, in a sense. I came to it when I had nothing else to do and it filled me so completely that I didn't feel the need to do much else. But the initial enthusiasm was fairly, if not extremely, ephemeral. It began to flag a lot sooner than I thought it would. The enthusiasm was replaced by a more mundane desire to share, as opposed to the initial desire to impress. But there was meat left in it still, and I held on to it, hoping that things would get better again.

They did get better, but only in patches. There were bursts of renewed vigor. The desire to share morphed incompletely with the desire to impress though this conundrum was masked, to a large degree, by an effort to be funny. But then there were periods of detachment. I had begun to find fulfillment in other things. This simultaneously worried me and gave me a sense of freedom. I was no longer bound by the constraints of being regular. At the same time, I was about to distance myself, possibly for ever, from something that I had once shared the best and the worst of me with.

Of late, I've been errant for far too long. But the more I think about it, the more I feel convinced that this is just a break. I think that eventually this relationship will find another niche for itself in my continuously changing circumstances. After all, it is great to be able to speak one's mind, and that perhaps was the starting point of this whole thing anyways.

So yes, this blog will live, unlike De Rob De Rob De Rob, or the one belonging to Binoy or the many others that lie around on the web like detritus from an emotive past. I was just taking a break, and I might continue taking one, but like someone not worthy of quoting once said, "I will be back."

The Rs. 3000/- Bus Ride

2006-05-11T07:44:00.000-07:00

Last Monday, I had a spark of genius. I was home at Noida, and I had class to attend in college. This is the middle of May when most people start planning their summer vacations. College begins to get empty. The interval between the loos being cleaned starts touching fortnights. All around, one sees only people one is likely to never see again. And I was attending class in such a time. The “why” is a different story. It is for this class, that I needed to get to college, and wanting to beat the mid-day heat, I thought I’d leave early. My genius was my choice of time.

I set out at eight in the morning. At five past eight I was in a fairly empty bus. Sadly, though, there weren’t any seats. But it was comfortable still, specially because it was too early for the familiar armpit smell to take overwhelming proportions. The bus left the Noida Gol Chakkar and made its way to college. It seemed particularly comfortable, as I realised later, and that comfort should have been a premonition for things that were to get worse. But we’re all wiser in retrospect.

The first signs of comfort began to vanish when the bus hit Laxmi Nagar. Some labour got on the bus. Typical to people from that economic strata, there were around ten men, an equal number of women, and approximately twice as many kids as the total number of males and females. The bus moved a few metres till the next bus stop and some more people got on there. Then a few metres more, and still more people got on. This continued, till someone in the back of the bus fainted. Of course, the fainting just provided a brief break, after which the ailing gentleman was debarked and in his place two more people climbed on. The bus continued to move at snail pace.

An important component of this story is a bag that I was carrying with me. It didn’t have anything precious, apart from some laundry that I had taken to Noida to get washed. That Uttar Pradesh doesn’t have enough power for me to wash a few shirts and some items of underclothing is quite another story. I was carrying that bag of laundry, which, though not heavy, had slightly inconvenient dimensions considering the crowd on the bus. Initially, the bag was on my back. There it acted as an impediment to the free passage of goods and people in the aisle. So I asked a kind looking lady sitting right where I was standing if she would be nice enough to take care of it for me. She, old enough to be my mother at least, thought that I was trying to get cosy with her, god bless her poor soul. She just plainly refused. My only option then was to put the bag between my feet and continue standing.

The new location of the bag had the advantage of allowing people to move freely behind me. The disadvantage, as it didn’t take me long to realise, was that it rendered me completely immobile. There was no space in the aisle to shift anyways, and compounded with the bag, I had to stand completely erect with one hand on the handrails to prevent myself from falling at every emergency stop that the driver made. With one hand occupied with the handrail, I had only one hand free to put in my pocket containing my wallet.

As the bus got progressively more crowded, I got more nauseous. Eight thirty, I discovered the hard way, was not sufficient reasons for the armpits to not smell. It wasn’t, I learnt, the best time to travel in a bus in the summer because every genius like me wanted to beat the heat. Placing ones bag between one’s feet was, I realised, one of the most stupid things one could do. In between all the nausea and self-pity at being so uncomfortable, I saw someone jump of my bus and get onto a bus in front. Smart guy, I thought. But we’re all wiser in retrospect.

When I reached Kashmere Gate, I realised my phone was missing. But there is nothing to worry about, I told myself. After all it wasn’t the first time that I had left my phone at Noida. There was this time I’d left my keys there and I’d gone all the way back to get them only to forget my specs. These were minor inconveniences, I told myself. I was still telling myself this when I boarded the metro. I continued telling myself this till the time I reached the CMS and called my phone, expecting my Aunt to answer.

A man answered. “Hello?” he said.

“Hello. May I know who I’m speaking to?”

“Who are you?”

“What number are you talking from?”

“You should know, you dialled it.”

“Well, this is my phone number. How did you get it?”

“I found it on a bus.”

“I see. Well it is my phone. How may I get it back?”

“Well, lets see. I want to keep the handset. If you want, I could throw away the number.”

An extremely obliging gentleman he was. I didn’t know what to say. I guess he realised that I was at a loss for words. Not wanting to embarrass me further, he hung up. It didn’t strike me until a few hours back that the smart guy who changed buses, might, indeed, have been the one who forcibly made me part with my phone. And all without my knowing. After all, saying that he found it could be both active and passive. And he never specified where on the bus he found it; it could have been my pocket. And then again, it could have been anyone—the labour kids, the kind aunty, the bus conductor; anyone. But somehow, I like telling myself that it was that smart guy.

I’ve taken a moral from this all. If one values one’s pockets, one should never try beating the summer heat, for the summer-heat-beating rush is a lot more dangerous.

Customized Dosas: A guide to ordering at South Indian Restaurants

2006-04-29T01:28:00.000-07:00

There is this avarice for non-refundable fees that most institutions in the US are prey to. The company from which we wanted to rent out apartments to live in Houston was no exception. A hundred and fifty dollars they wanted as a non-refundable application fees, and it was this that we were at SBI for.

We were already running behind time, and though the staff at SBI was fairly co-operative, we had come awfully near their closing time. Our drafts were almost made and had we been patient for a few more minutes, we would have had them in our hands. Exactly at this time, a friend, henceforth referred to as Friend, said she was hungry.

"Mujhe Bhook lag rahi hai."
"Just wait for a few minutes. Our work should be done in a few minutes. We can go eat then."
"Nahin, mujhe bhook lag rahi hai. I haven't eaten anything since morning. I'm really hungry yaar."
"You can't even wait a few minutes?"
"Nahin yaar. The last thing I ate was dinner. It is almost 3 pm right now. Actually closer to four. Mujhe kuch chahiye."

And so we informed the person handling our drafts and set out to have lunch. Against his suggestion to eat at a Madrasi, we decided to go to Sarvana Bhawan. Sarvana Bhawan is a pretty busy place. The quality of food is as eccentric as its waiters, but somehow it has become a hub of executive lunches. Luckily for us, though, we got a free table. Unluckily, that table belonged to the most eccentric waiter at the restaurant, a dark, and spectacle wearing, belligerent fellow. As we took our places, he gave us one rapid look, probably let out a sigh of disgust, and disappeared into the kitchen.

Ten minutes passed. No water came. No menu either. We were greeted by a complete lack of attention. Just when we were about to do something attention engaging, the waiter appeared.

"You want order? Where menu?"

He looked at us like we were guilty of having eaten the menus.

"We haven't got a menu. Could we get one please? And some water also."
"You have no menu?" A look of disgust. "Ok!"

The menu and the water came a few minutes later. In about five minutes, but for Friend, everyone had decided what he or she wanted to order. Our orders were relatively simple. Masala Dosa, Onion dosa, Onion Uthapam, but Friend wanted to try something new. She wanted a mixture of dosas. Butter Onion Masala Paneer rava Dosa or something like that.

"You can't get that here, " we told her, "it's not on the menu."
"No no, me and my mom always do this at any south Indian place we go to. People do it for us."
"But they're just going to charge you for all the dosas separately. Besides, on most days you can't even eat half a dosa, what are you going to do with four?"
"No you wait and watch, they are going to prepare a special dosa for me and they're not going to charge extra."

When the waiter came to take the order, we went first. He took our orders with a look of disdain. Then came Friend's order. For a second he looked like we'd got the better of him. Then he regained composure and with as much haughtiness as he could muster, he said,

"That is not on the menu."

We could have laughed at Friend, but it would have been rude. So everyone held their laughter, which at times can be a little more embarrassing than holding one's bladder, and looked expectantly at Friend. We could sense a confrontation coming. Oh! The sweet joys of her company.

"So what if it is not on the menu? Why can't you make it?"
"It is not on the menu."
"Look, all you need to do is add some butter to an Onion rava Dosa that you have on your menu, and just put some filling from the masala dosa that you also have on your menu."
"But show me on menu."
"It is not there on the menu."
"Then not there" said the triumphant waiter.
"No I want it,” yelled Friend.

At this point some people looked in our direction. The waiter started saying something, then stopped himself midway, and left.

Some time later we got our food. It was already close to half past four. The inconvenient fact that the bank shuts at four had escaped all of us. We were too engrossed with customized Dosas. Since all of us were hungry, the food disappeared in no time, but for Friend's, who ate a little more than half her dosa, then looked at us beseechingly to finish the rest.

When, finally, we did reach SBI, the bank had shut. Our drafts had gone into the safe-room, and the earliest we could get them was the next day. Worse, we didn’t even have any receipts on the basis of which we could claim the money. This upset Friend terribly. She got very nervous. But since there wasn’t much we could do, we left.

Claiming the drafts the next day was not a problem at all. And, personally, the concept of customized dosas more than made up for the extra trip that we had to make.

Of References and Referees

2006-03-22T04:56:00.000-08:00

There is a good reason universities, employers, and people asking others to refer you, in general, discourage you from reading the references that you have got. All of them insist on ridiculous measures such as the referee signing on every conceivable blank space on the envelope while others insist on the referees mailing the letters themselves. I, till the day before yesterday, never realized why.

A friend of mine had sought a reference from a teacher a few weeks back. The day before she was bored at home and decided to read the reference. Elaborate preparation was made. A lamp was procured. A table found with a plugpoint handy. Nerves were steadied. The envelope was studied in an effort to figure out how the reference had been folded. Then she felt that the bulb in the lamp was too powerful and a bulb of a slightly lower wattage was found. So on and so forth went the preparations till at last the stage was set for the great breach of trust.

I got a frantic call a few minutes after the perjury took place. I was in class. I cancelled the call, looked around apologetically, and put my phone on silent mode. The caller called again. My phone being an old and roughly handled Nokia phone made a farting sound as it vibrated. My class is a class of eight people. Such farting sounds are not taken to kindly. Turning red, I cancelled the call again. But the caller persisted. Finally someone suggested I take the call.

There was strange news. My friend had succeeded in reading the reference. It was a glowing reference. Her referee thought of the referred as a person capable of great achievement. The referred was a very sincere and hand-working person. The referred was very intelligent. But there was a problem. She wasn't the referred. The referee had placed a reference for someone else in an envelope for her. She wanted to know what to do.

I now realize why one should never read ones references. Probably the universities don't read them either. Neither do the referees. And so shouldn't the referred. References are just a way to make the application process seem difficult. Imagine an institute where you just had to send them your transcript of marks, your email address and phone number, and the course you wanted to enroll for. That is essentially all that anyone wanting to endow you with knowledge needs to know. But most of us would not apply to such an institute because it doesn't make us fill forms in triplicate, get attestations, photographs, references, dinosaur eggs and the works. We would probably think that these institutes are a fake.

So that they remain in business, institutes resort to reverse psychological techniques like making the application process seem difficult, making themselves seem fastidious and us insignificant in their scheme of things. Once we realize that, we can all overcome our innate urges, to uncover anything that is to be kept secret from us, specially if the secrecy is regarding references, with ease.

And while we cogitate on this realization, I request suggestions on how to help my friend.

2006-03-14T22:06:00.000-08:00

Outside, everyone seems to be going mad. People are yelling. My neighbour's dog is barking. The dog yesterday had killed the neighbour's cat. The pets had been together for the past four years, were brought together before either had opened their eyes. But now that the cat is dead, my neighbours don't seem to care. Neither does the dog. It is barking as usual.

Strange people have been coming to visit parents. For that matter, my parents are also strange today. They were up earlier than usual and there has been this excessive activity in the house that is making me dizzy. Even the phone has not been quite since morning. I've often complained that for a family the size of mine, six phones are too many phones. And never has my belief been stronger than today. Not a minute has passed when a phone has not been ringing or receiving messages.

There is nothing interesting on television. Just some strange people dancing around trees. They are so full of beans that they make me sick. Nothing on the music channels either. There is a familiar anchor, but her make up isn't. Usually, she is almost unclothed. Today I can't make out. She looks like some kind of a body canvas.

In college right now, everyone would be going mad. People usually don't need a reason, especially in college. One definitely doesn't need a reason if one is in third year. It is common to feel that the third year is the last time in at least a decade that one can have fun. And precisely for this reason there are senti parties, lots of booze, silly sentimental events, graduation dinner, conti parties and the like. And of course, there is the madness that seems to grip everyone today; not that it is exclusive to third years. For that matter, the first years are the maddest of the lot.

In school too, around this time of the year, people used to touch the nadir of insanity. Clothes would get torn, mud would be thrown and people would be almost buried alive. Uncharacteristically, the administration would stand by and watch. Some of the people would even join in the mayhem. And this lunacy would continue for a whole day. People would tire themselves out to the extent that the next forty-eight hours would be spent sleeping.

Just this morning as I was picking up the newspaper from where the delivery person leaves it, I saw some hideous looking people drive on a motorcycle from in front of the house. They were screaming. They were probably drunk too. And they were not the only ones, because soon a column of motorcycles passed from in front of the house. All of the riders looking scary, their features unrecognizably altered. All of them screaming. All of them drunk. All of them crazy.

My parents have spent the whole morning trying to get me to join in the stupidity, and I've been avoiding it. First I was pretending to read the newspaper, then I was going through some literature scattered on their desk; I even pretended to clean my room. Being on the computer is my last refuge.

What is the big deal about today anyways? My neighbour's dog was barking yesterday too, but then there seemed to be an all-prevailing sanity. People seemed emotionally stable. What has happened overnight? What is it about today that everyone goes mad for? And then, as suddenly as this insanity sets on, it is all over. The day is past. People get back to being normal. Some will carry scars from today, but in a week even those will be gone.

For the next few weeks, till another occasion hits the public consciousness, there will be no desultory celebration. No loudspeakers spewing out unmelodious songs. No unexpected, and I dare say, unwelcome guests. No frenzied activity. Perfect peace. Calm. Sanity.

I don't understand holi.

Pickle, rice and Potatoes

2006-03-08T04:02:00.000-08:00

Like most tragedies, this too began in the Mess, was fueled by reasons pertaining to it, and has now resulted modifying my relationship with it. There was a time when I was consuming a lot of chili pickle in the mess. The reasons were fairly simple. When hungry and confronted with the mess food, I would do anything to make the food edible. Some of the options were eating out, maybe even stocking food, but the practical problems of distance, sustainability and expenditure drove me to test pickle. The experiment worked wonderfully, or so I believed. With pickle, I could almost eat two times the food I would eat otherwise. If Rajdeep was around, there would be milk and obliging gyps too, and all that would make for good meals.

My tryst with pickle continued for almost two years. In this time I not only graduated from college, complained about people not reading my blog and got enrolled in a postgraduate programme, but also developed Andhra Bhawan as an alternative for eating at the mess or at the canteen of VKRV Rao hostel. Andhra Bhawan is a heavenly place as for Rs. 50 only, you can eat till you burst. And this is for real. There was an acquaintance of mine of whom I've heard that after fifteen servings of rice at Andhra Bhawan, he vomited on the waiter who asked him if he wanted more. It was no one's fault, really, because the waiter was just doing his job and my acquaintance was just bursting, but it did, as I heard, create quite a mess. I, for my part, never get to fifteen servings. My favourites are the Rasam and dry sabji and the chili paste and pickle. Between all of the above, I usually finish in just three to four servings.

I first realized there was a problem when, one day, while eating at Andhra Bhawan, I thought I would faint. I felt nauseous and dizzy and claustrophobic. Then there was this other time when I couldn't eat a full McDonald's burger. My rare meals in the Mess began to shrink in size and soon I was surviving on two cheese slices and a few liters of water a day! I didn't want to trouble my mother with all these details, but one day when I had trouble finishing my first cheese slice for the day, I realized I'd have to.

She thought it was worms. So I was dewormed. There followed many conversations about the consistency and composition of my stool, invariably on the phone. One day my room neighbour even asked me, "Dude, I just want to ask you, is everything ok?" Meanwhile, the problem just got bigger and bigger. Even water was precipitating nausea. I had to see a doctor because jaundice was now being suspected. So I made my way to a doctor in Noida, a friend of my mother's. She examined me. "You're really windy these days?" she'd ask. Frankly, I hadn't noticed. I was just too nauseous and hungry to know. She prescribed some test, for which I went to a Ranbaxy laboratory. The lab assistant looked at me and then at the prescription, then back at me just to confirm, then asked, "Pregnancy testkarana hai?"

It was not a pregnancy test, at least that is what the doctor has me believe till date. It was to test for bilirubin to ensure the liver was working fine. It was. The test was normal. There was still no diagnosis.

I will skip the part where the actual diagnosis was made. The bottomline: I had gastric ulcers. I could now feel good about being ill because I was affected by something most people my age are not affected by and I was now special. Part of this specialty package was a minor modification in my diet. I could now eat only rice, curd, boiled potatoes and bananas. I was so pleased to know that there was something I could eat without feeling faint that the very first day of this new diet, I ate a dozen bananas. But sense prevailed as time passed, and now I usually don't eat more than two. For the other meals I eat rice and curd and potatoes, every single meal, and I've been on this regimen for the past few weeks. Besides, because I'm not supposed to eat very big meals, I eat up to five small meals the whole day! Rice and potatoes on each one of them! Also, I am not allowed to eat outside the mess because not only is it not possible to order just rice and curd if one is eating out, but even when that is possible, it is futile for the taste of rice and curd doesn't change much with location. Besides,eating out would also give my parents a reason to be irritated with me.

I don't know what to feel about the irony of the situation. The problem arose because the mess food tastes horrible, and its solution has been found in equally horrible tasting mess food. Of course, there is Gelusil to change the flavour in the mouth after meals.

Hmm..err...Well...Happy birthday!

2006-01-29T02:48:00.000-08:00

I don't get these realizations too often, in fact, I get them so infrequently that I never know what to do with them when I do. In a state of almost complete boredom, my options at my local guardians' place were either watching Akhtar massacre the Indian bowling, reading about how elements in a normed algebra lying in the open unit disc are invertible, or just surfing the web. I think I chose to do what most people I know would have chosen to do. Now it is almost a compulsive thing that whenever I'm wasting time on the internet, I feel obligated to visit my blog, not in the least because I feel I'm one of five people on the planet who do so! (If you want to know who the others are, read the comments to any of the previous posts.) The situation wasn't quite so bad when I started out blogging. Every day my blog would receive around ten to fifteen comments. Some were people promoting their own blogs, others were selling lingerie for women, some were even selling women with little lingerie and some were patrons of things even more breathtaking. In between admiring their comments full of innuendoes and feeling ashamed at having such comments on my blog, I used to wonder how people engaged in such esoteric and no doubt pleasurable pursuits found time, or the inclination, to read through the fairly boring text that they most probably didn't even connect with!

Then courtesy a "net-savvy" friend, and there could be many who I owe my thanks to, I learnt of two interesting features the blog-hosts offered. One was that as the "owner" of this blog, I had the right to delete messages I didn't want on my blog. An even more potent tool was that I could turn on "word verification", something that prevents the automated posting of messages and comments. I was happy to be able to rid myself of those not-exactly-offensive messages, but in its aftermath, I realized how unpopular my blog actually was!

Alongside blogging I was also pursuing formal education. I'd finished my bachelors and I didn't quite think myself workplace worthy. Besides, my blog still fetched a pagerank of 0 on the google tools. I decided that I needed to devote time to it and increase its popularity. So I started networking with some popular bloggers I had the privilege of sharing the table with in the St. Stephens' mess. But illiteracy had a way of showing through the best faked facades, and my troubles started when people added me to their "blogroll" and asked me to do the same. While I nodded nonchalantly, I was thinking in my head all the time, " I know what a blog is, but what the hell is a blogroll?"

Wikipedia came to my rescue. "A blogroll," it said ," is a collection of links to other weblogs. When present, blogrolls are often found on the front page sidebar of most weblogs." That was a good start. If I could just confirm if a weblog was the same as a blog, I was almost done.

Finding out that a weblog was the same as a blog was only half the battle. I still needed to figure out how to add people to my blogroll. "It's easy, " said one of my friends, "just edit the html code." So I tried editing the html code. "!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" it said. But where was the blogroll? I scrolled down further. There was "description { margin:0 5px 5px; padding:0 20px20px; border:1px solid #222; border-width:0 1px 1px; font:78%/1.4em "TrebuchetMS",Trebuchet,Arial,Verdana,Sans-serif; text-transform:uppercase; letter-spacing:.2em; color:#777; }. Further down there was still more Greek and still no blogroll. I was at the point of giving up when a friend, now in Norway, came to the rescue.

I was now ready to make it big in the blogworld. I had my own blog with a template designed by Douglas Bowman, and a blogroll created by Gautam Chandna and in the master stroke of seeking Chandna's help, I had even found my first regular reader! As luck would have it and as most billionaires would tell you as part of their life stories, I was in the right place at the right time. Chandna was looking for content to put on his website and he began borrowing from this blog! Independent of the masses who read posts on his website, the traffic on my site increased from a measly one to a whopping five! So much for multiplying fivefold in less than a year.

So this is approximately my first birthday in the blogworld. I'm never good with dates, but the archives link on the blog tells me that my first ever word in the blogworld was said in January 2005! That is almost when I think I signed up on blogspot.

So here am I wishing myself a very happy birthday. And now back to Banach Algebras.

Forward the Foundation

2006-01-10T02:19:00.000-08:00

There is a certain peculiarity in the way the foundation functions. The peculiarity is such that to an outsider, it may come across as paranoia of sorts, and taken to an extreme, it may even seem disorganization. But this peculiarity is not an expression of lackadaisical indifference or of organizational incompetence. It is a reflection of the intrinsic peculiarities of the individuals who comprise this organization.

There was this time when I suspected that I owed the foundation a certain installment of payment. I was unsure of when this payment was due, and so when I came home, I sent them an email asking. That email was responded to when the vacation (the duration of which, incidentally, was decided by them) was over and I was back at work. A few months later when the question of the payment arose, I was left explaining that since I hadn't received a timely response from them, I was not in a position to make the payment upfront. The best I could promise was that I would pay as soon as it was possible for me to do so. Though the argument bought me time, it also helped me realize how organizations such as this try to exonerate their employees of incompetence by moulding situations to seem that people employed with them can do no wrong.

A recent illustration of the peculiar way in which they function was provided when they organized an event in which many visitors from abroad were invited. As graduate students, we were expected to receive these people at the airports. Normally, anyone with an IQ of around 50 can read one's name of a placard and know that they have a reception party waiting for them. Here we had in hand some extremely intelligent people who had received distinction in their chosen fields of study. Yet, we were expected to treat them like five year olds, make sure that they were comfortable and that they didn't get lost! As a result of the paranoia certain people in the organization bore, the following procedure was adopted:

The escorts, usually two per guest, were to stand in different parts of the reception area and were to constantly keep in touch over mobile telephones. Under no circumstances could the guest be missed, we were told, and whatever we did, we had to come back with the guest.
The placards that the foundation gave us bore the names of the guests and anything else that they might have identified us with, in font 14. As most of us would agree, 14 is not visible from a distance of more than a few feet. Besides, in most circumstances, the placards mis-spelt their names. Invariably, we ended up making new placards by hand.
Once the guest was spotted, we were to telephone each other and then telephone the driver of the car. After that, we were to report to someone in the organization.

As is the case with most international flights coming to India, these people would come at unearthly hours at night. Flights, which were scheduled for somewhere around midnight, would land somewhere close to 2 am because of the winter fog and by the time immigration was cleared, it was three. By the time we had tucked our responsibilities into bed, it was four in the morning. Yet, at six thirty every morning, we would be woken from our sleep so that we could make it in time for breakfast (which was at 8:30) or the conference (which was at 9:00).

Many organizations have a very rigid, and usually misplaced, idea of what keeps productivity at optimal levels. I am no organizational behaviour specialist, but I do know that insulting the people who are running around for you is the best way to make them lose interest in your project. This simple fact, however, seemed to be new to the foundation. For the course of the conference, we were lodged at the venue (courtesy some vehemently emotional appeals by some of the graduate students) and our meals were at the venue. However from the very first meal we ate, we could sense each bite we took pulled at the budgetary corsets harder, making the organizers sweat. The waiters would ask us questions like, "You don't want soup, do you?” or every now and then when we had sat down to eat, we were told "this food wasn't for you, it is for the visitors, it is too expensive to order chicken for everyone, but now that you are eating, we'll see how we can accommodate this bill."

These minor insults and inconveniences aside, the conference, the first for most of us, was, to use a cliché, a learning experience. While the mathematical content was either completely absent or too abstruse in most talks, we did carry back the essence of what makes a good presentation, and what can potentially kill a presentation. There were come speakers who could hold their audiences even though what they said was understood by very few present. They were others who seemed like they wanted to lose their audiences, while many seemed like they didn't care either way.

While most of the speakers were witty or technical, the award for the best responded to speech went to a certain member of the organizing committee who we shall refer to here as WCSC. Along with the backstage awards and the cliché of the customary thanks, WCSC wanted to thank, or rather admire, the convener of this conference. He began by saying that there were some people who found success in whatever task they undertook and went on to say that it was so only because of the intervention of God. Thus, in the poignant gap between, "And now I call the assembly to give a big hand for, " and the name of the convener, everybody thought that they would be asked to clap for God. So when we realized that our appreciation was indeed for a mortal entity, there was both a sigh of relief (for most of us hadn't ever given God a standing ovation and we weren't quite sure how to go about it) and a suppressed snigger of amusement at WCSC's coherence from the members of the conference.

DISCLAIMER: I do not pretend that the views expressed here are representative of my views on the conference. I have chosen to mention only certain aspects of the event, and even amongst those, only a certain section of views have found expression. I do not pretend, also, that the emotions expressed here are representative of the intensity with which I felt them in the course of the conference. Lastly, I do not consent to this post being viewed as representative, in any respect, of my appreciation of the conference.

The Quotient Space

2005-12-26T10:27:00.000-08:00

I don't claim any originality to the discovery that the torus is indeed the quotient space (under appropriate quotienting) of the square. That fact in itself is nice, and it is indeed a fun exercise to try and derive a function that gives the desired quotienting. The joy of the exercise is lost, however, when something like this comes in the exams. Such is the nature of this exercise, that to a casual observer, the people in the exam room might seem in need of urgent psychiatric attention. A common scene might involve people drawing imaginary axes in the air, then rotating their fingers so as to form a circle and then with each of the remaining fingers, they might try and

draw more circles. The more athletic in the room might stand up and bend half way down, then cup their hands behind their back and do semi-uncoordinated somersaults. The rest might get busy filling sheets of paper though it is only the rare intellectual who can solve such a problem in the heated tension of the exam.

It often amazes me that while science fiction has drawn from almost every sphere of scientific advancement and played on almost every insecurity of the human race regarding these advancements, the immense possibilities from mathematics have yet to find their way into the imagination of the authors. They are willing to talk about artificial intelligence to the extent that all of science fiction has now come to be identified with AI. Movie after movie is made on the extent to which AI can replace humans in society, indeed, even replace a human civilization with a machine dominated one. Pathetic movies are made on alien invasions of the earth (notably, these aliens land in the US in some obscure countryside, are a threat to the world, are good for nothing, are scientifically more advanced, and it is only the philanthropy of the US that the world survives yet another crisis). Automation finds its way into slick movies involving suave thieves and superheroes. Yet mathematics remains a subject as far removed from fiction as it seems from reality.

The only movie I have seen that dealt tangentially with something mathematical, and I must admit that it was a horrible movie, so horrible that I don't even remember what its name was, dealt with something called hyperspaces. The idea was nice, but it was lost in the execution. The story, which made little sense to me, was about a few people stuck in some sort of a structure that existed in more than three dimensions, though, at any place inside the structure, more than three dimensions were not perceivable. As a result of this, the people, as they were trying to find their way out, kept traveling between periods of time. I don't remember much of what happened later, but the lasting image from the movie is of this gigantic man gorging out the eye of another and stealing his watch...So much for math fiction.

At times one gets the feeling that there is so little by way of fiction writing in math because to be able to use some of the concepts to make credible fiction, one has to be familiar with a fair amount of mathematics. To attain this familiarity, as a first step, one needs to get over the paranoia math invokes in most. This in itself is a Herculean task. But then what about the fiction once it is written? Will it find readers? Will purple nosed people sit in drawing rooms over scotch and say, "have you read 'Annihilators of the Hyperspace'", or will we ever overhear school kids talk, "You know, I felt really bad when that basis got transformed"? Probably not.

Ok, I guess I got my answer. There is probably a good reason there is no fiction in mathematics.

Please Pass Chappati

2005-10-12T08:30:00.000-07:00

There are some things hallowed about that place though it's hard to put one's finger on them. They could be the variation in the predominant colours with the day of the week, Diwan or Shib Singh, on whose enormous midriff the gong resonates, conversations of a particular genre and about particular people could qualify too, but for me, it's the spectrum of attention-seeking methods people employ.

In my first year, and for most of my time in second year, people dining in the mess knew each other, at least by name. Then somewhere towards exam time in second year, a new wave of faces came, and stayed. As third year progressed, the number of familiar faces fell dramatically. The loss of familiarity in itself wasn't much of a loss, at least to the asocial like myself. This loss had graver implications. I could no longer say, "So-and-so, please pass the dal on." One had to say things like, "excuse me" and "EXCUSE ME" because most people were never listening. Or one had to ask Diwan or the rest like him who were perpetually waiting for Rudra Dinner to harass you like you harass them.

Consequently, language in the mess changed forms. The dull din was replaced with Jat and female laughter because these were the only the two groups left intact by the massive cleansing exercise of the authorities. Use of the word 'please' lost popularity. Requests were now identified by handles such as " Pass the dal" or " I want the dal" or " Is that dal bowl empty?" This was towards exams in second year. In third year, however, I learnt not to complain because language changed forms further. 'Please' regained partial popularity, but the article 'the' lost it significantly. "Please pass dal" became the order of the day. Some groups found this construction too complicated and adopted a modification of the one they were using the year before. They usually ordered, "pass dal." These peremptory commands, though temptingly impolite, never invited rebellion because five feet six inches of me wasn't much rebellion for the six feet something masters. I swallowed my pride and followed their orders.

This year, however, things have taken a completely new turn. Language is more or less outdated. If you want the attention of the person sitting next to you, you usually have two options. Either stretch your hand across his plate in an effort to reach what you know you can't, or tap him on his shoulder. The first is usually more effective because people want to get back to eating as soon as possible and your hand stops that from happening. Consequently, your requests are complied with faster. If someone is sitting diametrically opposite you, just kick. Diagonally opposite you, just tap the table. Once you have the person's attention, just say, "chappati," and it will come. Then again, you might have to say it a few times depending on comprehension abilities.

I'm quite curious to know how this trend will evolve in the future. We're already down to single words, and I'm just twenty-one years old. What when I'm thirty? Forty? If my children land up here to eat yellow paneer with yellow dal, how will they ask for something? Or maybe in a few years time everybody will acknowledge that we have a problem let people serve themselves. Or if we're lucky, Balbir's Dhaba will open again.

Fifteen Minutes of Fame

2005-09-29T01:09:00.000-07:00

It was the show we all wanted to do well on. It was even more important because the SUS had told us just a few days before the date of the show, and because it was something we all wanted to do, a refusal full of attitude was out of the question.

Shaon, one of the violinists, was the star of the practices. He has an amazing talent of forgetting all that has to be remembered. We would spend hours, often very precious hours, just waiting for him to remember what he was supposed to do, or just get what he remembered right. Someone or the other would invariably lose his patience, and then Shaon would get even more obtuse.
"But I was playing this all along," he would say, "I was playing this yesterday too and you didn't say anything."
"No you weren't Shaon. You are hitting G and its not even in the progression."
"I am not hitting G, that is C," he would counter, and then to prove his point, he would play something.
"See Shaon, that's exactly what we are saying. Its not G. Its C."

But Shaon would just shake his head and continue to play what he was playing all along, till someone would start tearing his hair out. At this point Aditya, the other violinist, would figure out Shaon's error, Karam, the drummer, would say, "yaye", Parag, our own Elvis, would do a pelvic thrust combined headbang, Protim would crack an extremely poor joke and practice would resume, only to stop the next minute because Shaon had forgotten again.

"But I can't hear Protim, "he would say. "I get my cue from him."
"No Shaon, you didn't hear Protim because he wasn't playing. You get your cue Parag, not Protim."
"But I couldn't hear Parag because the drums are too loud."
"Yeah, Karam, can you be softer on the drums?" Protim would say, for the hundredth time.
"The drums are not a soft instrument. I'm already as soft as I can be," Karam would counter.
"Just be f'king softer still."
"You want to know what f'king loud is? This is fucking loud!" Karam would say as he pounded on his drums.
"Yeah I know what fucking loud is. I am a part of a band you know, "Protim would scream.
"Yeah, I am a part of a band, then know what loud is. I'm playing f'king soft."
Practice would be adjourned for half an hour.

Things worked differently when Tanmoy, the flautist, was there. His ultimate pitch to us was that while he was there, only his piece was to be practiced. "Don't squander precious time, " he would tell us, "because I may not come later."
"just come later man! Pile on in rez. If you're scared, I'll even ask permission."
"No I can't come."
"Why?"
"I just can't."
"But we've just practiced your piece four times right now, and we're all sick of it." A dull murmuring of agreement would come from the background. "So can we just practice something else and then come back to your piece?"
"No. Can we just do my piece now so that I can go home after that?"

So we would start Tanmoy's piece. A few seconds into it, we would stop.
"something is out, " Protim would say.
"Yeah, Karam the beat is fucked up."
" Nothing is wrong with the beat.You just can't stick to it, Tanmoy."
"No, hear, it fits."
"I heard and it doesn't."
"Ok, we'll just do it faster."
"Fine."
"But faster will get too fast for me."
"Fine."
"So I'll tell you what. We'll slow it down. Then it will be easier to keep beat too."
"Fine."
"But then the piece will drag, I'll tell you what, we'll keep it the same speed."
"Fine. Can we start again now?"
At some point in the immediate future, Tanmoy would storm out.

Somehow we made it to the show and the band hadn't still broken up. Our promised soundcheck of thirty minutes was reduced to, "Ok, you have thirty minutes, sound check included. Best of luck."
It took us ten minutes to hear ourselves on the stage. "Ok guys, get off in twenty minutes," Maya barked.
It took another five minutes for the audience to hear us over the screeching sound system.
"Guys, you're off in 15 minutes."
"But Maya, we haven't even started yet."
"I don't know. I can't help it. Just get off in 15 minutes."

The long story, from this point on, is cut short. Fifteen minutes later, we were offstage. But not all was lost. It was an evening dedicated to fusion music, and the only fusion played that evening was by us. However, we still were the losers. All that practice for just fifteen minutes of fame.

Part Me Hash and other Conversations

2005-09-10T04:52:00.000-07:00

I never thought much of anagrams, till the other day, in class, because we had forgotten to carry the chess board, we were bored. It was Amit's fault really. The chess board was his as was the original practice of carrying it to class. Then we became addicts, to the extent that visiting teachers inculcated the habit of not disturbing a delicately poised game. Part Me Hash was Amit's attempt at redemption.

The day had begun with Prathamesh's medical checkup at Maulana Azad Medical College. There was a quiz there, about the same time we had a class at GK. So he decided to go for the quiz, the checkup being the obvious subterfuge. All was going well. Tirthankar had been summoned from Gurgaon, the two of them being acquainted through their respective "quizzing circles". The logistics of reaching Maulana Azad were worked out too. It was all working out fine till Aarti, the sixteen year old in our class, decided to not show up. In itself, the offense was not much. It just meant we were going to have a more comfortable ride to GK. But small acts such as these have larger implications. It was only because of her that we were still at the Mukh Gate when Vipul called. Dinesh Singh wanted to talk to us. These were troubled times for Stephen's, and by implication, for us. No one knew what he wanted to talk to us about, but all of us were sure that the worst scenario was that the CMS could be asked to leave college, which would leave all of us in the lurch. Furious, Prathamesh came to the cab, and he wanted a smoke. So Amit and he went for one.

Then Aarti erred again. She came as soon as they left for the smoke and Vipul came behind her. She was late because she had confronted her landlord about spices in her food. With no excuse left to be waiting outside the gate, we started our drive to GK. We picked Prathamesh and Amit from the Faculty of Arts gate, both of whom, like thorough gentlemen, offered their cigarettes to anyone who cared for them, and took their place in the van. Then Ila threatened to vomit because the cigarette smoke was bugging her, and again, in a manner true to gentlemen, Prathamesh parted with his just lit Malboro Lite (or is it Lights?). Then in the fashion of most of high society, he smile at Ila and bitched about her in my ear when she wasn't looking.

Such incidents kept the ride alive till we reached N-91, the CMS hideout at South Campus. We rang the bell. There was no response. Fifteen minutes later, a foul looking lady came out and threw a key down at us. It hit Tarun, though he claims it didn't. We unlocked the gates and made our way upstairs. We hadn't finished reaching upstairs, when we were informed that the class we had reached there for was postponed and was to take place later because the class later was cancelled. And if that wasn't complicated enough, Igor came and lectured on Reiez Representation Theorem.

Lunch and general foolery followed, till we came back to the hideout. Then the topic of anagrams came up and Part Me Hash was discovered. It pleased Prathamesh no end, and he swore he'd put it on his blog.

On our way back, Amit and I invented a game. Well, to be honest, we plagiarized and adapted. In Asterix and Gaul, the first of the series, Asterix and the Druid feed the Romans some hair growth potion and then played this game: whoever spotted a bearded man first, scored five. We adapted our game to suit our circumstances because Part Me Hash seems to know at least one person on any given corner of the globe. Our adaptation was that I'd score one if we mentioned someone and he knew and Amit would score five if he didn't. Then being mathematicians, we calculated the expectation of victory and concluded that it was a fair game.

And such ended another wasted trip to GK.