The Known Unknowns

Statutory warning: This blog is scientific in nature. If you hate anything to do with science and math (majority of us do), now is the time to close this tab in your browser. If you have slightest of curiosity about our universe, this blog will be a good 5 minutes read.

The idea of this blog had been drifting around in my thinking apparatus (dwelling in the upper most part of the body through which I think I think) for a while. Somewhere I read that the amount of information that was consumable by a man just 200 years ago in his whole life time is now available to us in just a day! This fact has led us to believe that we know it all. Yes, we surely know a lot but do we really know all that is to know? Have we been able to span the whole gamut of knowledge that’s potentially available to us to know/explore? I would like to think of it at 2 different levels – we certainly know a great deal to know whats there is to know? In other words, I believe we know what questions to ask when we want to fathom everything that’s fathomable. This is indeed a great start. The natural follow up to any questions is of course its answer – this is where things start getting interesting. To put it simply, do we know the answer to all the questions that we have asked? To take it to 3rd level (if I am permitted to be adventurous), do we know the truth, and not just the answer!!

The quest to get answers to our questions is in fact a distinguishing characteristic of mankind, something that sets us apart from say animals and other living species. So what kind questions and their answers am I talking about? I don’t mean to refer to questions such as what I am going to have in dinner tonight!! Though I can safely tell you that’s a billion dollar question for me that I am challenged with every day and gets complicated further with the fact that my better half generously gives me 30 seconds to record my answer – failing which I might not be able to ask any question!! Coming back to our train of thoughts, I am referring to the questions that are scientific in nature and beg simple answers. I will skip bigger ones like why we exist or what exists beyond universe or how we came into existence to ask these questions in the first place. These questions certainly have their own merits and while probing them, I realized we need to start with more basic questions to reach to the answers to these literally out of the world questions. So I scaled down to something simpler – what is space, time, gravity et all? What governs them? Do we have full understanding of these basic building blocks of the universe to understand more complex structures? In this quest, I was guided by a simple principle we were taught in the school – that the more you learn, the more you become learned!! This corollary came crashing unfortunately – because the more I read about these phenomenon, the more I realize how little we know about things around us.

Let’s start with the most fundamental thing we all recognize since the time we are born – notice the word ‘time’ in the previous line – yes that’s the 1st thing I wanted to study about, followed by another fundamental concept called space – in theoretical physics (I am emphasizing the word theoretical because believe me these concepts are practically incomprehensible!), the concept of space and time is dubbed as 4 dimensions of the universe where we live. They say there are more complex higher dimensions but as I said earlier, let’s start with the basics. So if I am allowed to jump to the conclusion directly (it would spawn a 1000 page book if we were to go in detail), I can safely say that we don’t understand both time and space completely – what we do know are their characteristics - they are not absolute and change relative to the observer (Einstein’s famous theory of relativity – first 500 leaves in that 1000 page book would be filled up by this one theory alone!). It’s quite counter intuitive to imagine how time can be different for different observers and how space can change its length basis the speed at which you are travelling. This is to say that if I am travelling in a plane, time slows down for me – I am ageing slower than my friend who is at work – wow I get to live more years for doing nothing – just keep flying. Indeed this is true as per special theory of relativity. The more the speed at which you move, the slower the time for you. If you think about it for a moment, there comes a point when you have reached the speed of light (which is the upper limit set on anything that can move in our universe) and theoretically speaking – time should slow down to being still/ frozen in moment – so if we ever are able to fly in a rocket at the speed of light, we would be able to immortalize ourselves! All these are not science fiction stuff but actual facts – though there are severe physical limits on achieving even a fraction of the speed of light – let alone the speed of light. This explanation leads to one edge case – the photons that comprise light are travelling at the speed of light – so is the ‘time’ thing not happening at all for light? Sounds very strange indeed.

After having discovered mutating behavior of time and space (read ‘Trespassing on Einstein's Lawn’ by Amanda Gefter for complete low down on variant/invariant universal quantities), the theory of relativity mercifully introduced an immutable constant in universe ‘the speed of light’ – an absolute quantity which to me sounded more like compensation for the variant space and time quantities. One might be tempted to think about light being fully understood entity – sorry to disappoint here too – rather it’s the most confusing and least understood entity which lies between 2 big chasms to begin with – one of them called wave nature of light and the other its particle nature. When you talk about dual nature of light, there is no way you can skip the most esoteric world called the quantum world or quantum theory. I remember in high school days, I participated in a seemingly boring experiment called ‘Double Slit’ experiment. Our education system is such that we are taught with the sole objective to clear the exam, never for the purpose of acquiring true knowledge we are supposed to learn. So the double slit experiment never registered anything significant in me when I first studied it in school days. Then I laid my hand on a book called ‘In search of Schrodinger’s cat’ by John Gribbin, this book changed my view about our world forever. This book introduces the quantum world, the paradoxes and the contradictions and the intuitively opposite things that happen in it just because of us observing something– leading us to believe that we live in a surreal world, a world where reality is observer dependent! The double slit experiment basically describes how light can behave like a wave or a particle merely by the act of us observing/ or not observing it. The experiment throws a mysterious aspect when it shows that light behaves as a particle the moment we try to 'observe' it - yes, somehow light behaves as if it has the intelligence and consciousness to understand what we are upto!! Spooky and creepy totally!! This experiment has multiple variations – one of them is called ‘delayed choice experiment’ while another one called ‘delayed choice quantum eraser’ experiment, do google them and be ready to get your mind blown away with the consequences these experiments throw at us, especially the ‘Quantum Entanglement’ phenomenon which tells us that the speed of light is not the ultimate barrier and that universe can play out very differently if we were to consider full implication of quantum entanglement at that scale.

Another fundamental component that I want to throw in here is what we call as ‘matter’ or more common concept called mass. We thought we knew mass well, I read recently that the recent discovery of Higg’s Boson has completely solved the question about matter/mass. What was left unsaid in a hushed voice was the fact that Higg’s Boson is only proven until its proven wrong – in other words, while there is substantial proof in favor of its existence – doesn’t negate the probability that the scale can tilt the other way in future – so I am forced to think that we don’t have full confidence in the understanding of mass as yet! When we talk about mass, one can not not mention its compliment called ‘energy’ – these 2 are convertible and are represented by the most recognizable physics equation e=mc2. Again thanks to the ‘amazing’ education I received during school days, I never knew the true beauty of this equation till I read a book called ‘Why does E=mc2?’ by Brian Cox and Jeff Foreshaw – this is a book written in lay man language and takes herculean effort to drive home the immense contribution this equation has in our day to day life. So far we have declared space, time, light and matter as not completely understood phenomenon. Well the party has just about started.

Let’s move on to the fundamental forces of nature – scientists have made us to believe that there are 4 fundamental types of forces – weak nuclear, strong nuclear (these 2 are responsible for all the nuclear bombs/ reactors we hear about), electromagnetic (almost everything around you utilizes this force to make our day to day life simpler) and gravity (the reason I am not levitating while writing this article). My knowledge about the first 3 forces is limited to their basic definitions and their practical applications. My curiosity in knowing more about the force of gravity led me to read a lot of material available on net – but soon I found out that we are yet to identify gravity’s parallel of Higg’s Boson (the particle which provides mass to matter) called graviton. In simple terms, we don’t know yet why gravity exerts force on any object/matter.

There are a couple of more universal entities that I want to write about to elaborate more about the ‘less’ we know about – dark energy and dark matter. Funny they have been named that way, we might as well have named them ‘i-don’t-know-energy’ and ‘i-don’t-know-matter’!! Yes these are 2 phenomenon which we are still grappling to even witness in the first place, lest understand them completely. So one might ask – how do we know about something which we haven’t seen. Let’s talk about dark energy first – it seems we have figured out that we all are speeding away from each other – well in terms of heavenly bodies I mean. So a galaxy is moving away from another galaxy, a star is moving away from a distant planet and so on. However it seems that this should not have been the case – the universe was supposed to expand with big bang and then contract subsequently – well that’s what scientists believed till Hubble (the actual guy, not the telescope) discovered the exact opposite. But when the scientists tried to find a reason as to why the universe is expanding so rapidly, they didn’t find any reason – yes we drew absolute blank. Let’s take a step back and talk about what we called ‘Hypothesis’. Oxford defines ‘hypothesis as “a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation”. In the day to day slang, it’s called ‘WTF-I don’t know a shit!!’. So to reconcile for this unknown phenomenon contributing to the expansion of universe, scientists introduced the concept called ‘dark energy – an energy which is making all the celestial bodies in the universe repel each other. One will be tempted to think that as a corollary, dark matter must be actual content of dark energy – how I wish life was that simple. Dark matter hypothesis is slightly different but equally interesting – hang on tight there. In simplest terms, when you see a ‘merry go round’ – it’s possible to estimate the mass of that giant wheel depending on its rotating speed. Taking this analogy at galactic scale, scientists can estimate the mass of a galaxy depending on its orbital speed. Things threw weird results when scientists could measure both for an observable galaxy – turns out the mass they estimated basis its speed was way too less to account for that speed – thus the hypothesis of dark matter was born! Again the point to note here is – both dark matter and dark energy have never been found till date – and guess what – they constitute a whopping 95% of all the universe that we know of. In other words, we bloody know only 5% of universe, rest is all guessing game!!!

This discussion will be incomplete if we don't touch upon the enigmatic topic of big bang, the phenomenon describing how this whole story started. Its interesting to note how scientists deduced (ala Sherlock Holmes' style) from the fact that universe is acceleratingly expanding - that the expansion must have had a 'starting point' - they call it the 'initial singularity' - the point when all of universe and space and time was contained in one singularity - and some unknown trigger (again please note this is completely unknown, a guess) led to big bang and thus us. Recently (2015/16), scientists have discovered a phenomenon called gravitational waves (its like guitar string vibration in universe to put simply - guitar strings being space/time). This is very useful to understand big bang - why? Because, for about 380,000 years since big bang, light could not emit outside and hence not seen by us today in any form (we are able to get the 'light' relics post 380,000 years from big bang through a phenomenon called 'Cosmic Microwave Background - CMB') - so what exactly was happening in those 380,000 years? We don't yet know - but the gravitational waves from those times called 'Gravitational Wave Background - GMB' can help us 'see' what exactly happened immediately after big bang (this might sound  crazy but it turns out the 1st second from big bang was the most crucial period - its like saying that a 3 hours movie had the most important scene in the very 1st second!!). GMB might help us one day to know what that most important scene was in this 'universal' movie! 

In all the unknown hoopla I have mentioned above, there is one thing that has astonished me to no end - the fact that nature allows itself to be dictated by mathematics literally. What I mean is - we know (or don't know) so much of physics, so much about our universe, all the laws that the universe obeys and the equations it follows - be it e=mc2 or the thermodynamic equations or the equations governing known particles called 'Standard model of particle physics' or the equations that govern force, energy, mass, gravity and every thing that we have discovered so far. In other words, equations or simply put the math that governs these phenomenons doesn't change and is able to predict the physical phenomenon - and mind you - math is abstract quantification of the physical processes/laws that govern universe. This to me sounds very intriguing - how can abstract (mathematics) predict universe (physical in nature)? To quote from the book why e=mc2 - "...this is unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics. Why should the natural world not be far more complex? Why do we have a right to condense so much physics into one equation like that? Nobody really knows why nature allows itself to be summarized in this way, and it is certainly true that this apparent underlying elegance and simplicity is one of the reasons why many physicists do what they do. While reminding ourselves that nature may not continue to submit itself to this wonderful simplification, we can at least for the moment marvel at the underlying beauty..." 

In the above write-up, I have to confess that I haven’t even peeled the upper most layer of a healthy onion, so to speak. There are bigger follow up questions that are yet unanswered – where did life come from? Are we the only ones to ask this question – if the universe is so big, then there should be many more intelligent lives - where are they, it would be so boring to know that we are absolutely alone in such a widely available real estate – seriously ‘god’ (if he exists) didn’t utilize the available resources optimally. Fermi’s paradox talks about this anomaly in great depth. There are many variations to this theory – some say that we might be living in a simulation where we are programed to behave certain way with a few fuzzy rules thrown in in the form of societal/ ethical norms. Others have propounded the theory that we might be time travelers and that we have already advanced so much in technology that we can keep travelling back and forth in time at our will. Then the concept of parallel universe completely throws all of these in disarray – this theory says that we exist in different worlds and that earth happens to be just one of those worlds! If that be the case, I might have completed this blog already in a different world or I might have died already – just one of the myriad probabilities of my existence in those worlds. The multiverse theory is at times tied to black hole – they say that the black holes (inside which we don’t know what exists) are the entry points to other universes (read ‘Black holes and baby universes by Stephen Hawking).

I want to come back to the basic question I started this blog with – are we asking the right questions, getting their answers seems to be secondary priority – one such thing which has made me wonder often is – our universe see
ms to be only ~14 billion years old. When I look at other ‘universe’ scale such as trillions of stars, zillion of celestial bodies, this seems to be awfully small. Did we miss something? Is it possible that the universe always existed, it’s just that we have been able to trace things back only till ~14 billion years in the past – we don’t know yet. A highly recommended book ‘A brief history of time’ by the legendary Stephen Hawking is a must read to understand some of the above and more.

While I am aware about the negative connotation of this article, I didn’t mean to downplay tremendous strides made by the humans in our quest to find the ultimate truth. After all just a few hundred years before, we thought that the earth was the center of the universe and that sun revolved around us. In other words, we have come a long way – but it’s still day one in the realm of infinite knowledge that awaits to be uncovered and revealed.

If you are intrigued with these known unknowns (the things we know we dont know about), the below recommended books will do a great help to understand the riddle called Universe better (also gets mentioned in the blog at different places) –

1. In search of Schrodinger’s cat by John Gribbin
2. A brief history of time by Stephen Hawking
3. Trespassing on Einstein's Lawn by Amanda Gefter
4. Black holes and baby universes by Stephen Hawking
5. Why does E=mc2? by Brian Cox and Jeff Foreshaw
6. One, Two, Three...Infinity by George Gamow
7. Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Ralph Leighton and Richard Feynman
8. The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene
9. The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene
10. Hyperspace by Michio Kaku
11. Quantum: A guide for the perplexed by Jim Al-Khalili
12. Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium by Carl Sagan
13. God and the New Physics by Paul Davies
14. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
15. For the Love of Physics by Walter Lewin

Puzzling Solution to a Puzzle

It’s pure adrenalin rush when you see John McClane running around in narrow by-lanes trying to crack various riddles/puzzles so as to prevent a psycho terrorist from blowing up New York city. Ofcourse I am referring to the ‘ Die Hard’ movie with Bruce Willis playing the smart cop John McClane. I can watch this movie anytime any number of time – not so much because of its hero or the action quotient but more so because of the intricate interweaving of the plot with the puzzles/riddles which seems to have added that extra zing in an otherwise typical masala flick. Puzzles have fascinated me for all of my life and I regret that there is no daily hardcore ‘puzzle’ column in daily newspapers just as they have for crossword section. I have seen some of the smartest puzzles which I could never crack and then had to rely on other sources/ more intellectual friends for getting the solution. Many often than not, it’s the unique framing of the puzzle which adds the ‘grey’ quotient to the whole  conundrum than the solution itself. Words play an extremely significant role here and a slight slip of tongue can spoil the entire puzzle. A simple example that comes to my mind – A boy along with his father meets with a car accident and while the boy survives, his father dies on the spot. When the boy is brought to the hospital, the doctor upon seeing the boy exclaims – ‘He is my son’ – how is that possible?? Now I really have to confess here I couldn't crack this puzzle. The answer is so simple and I kept thinking all the various angles including some supernatural angles (a la ghost theories etc) to explain the riddle. But if you analyze the framing of the puzzle carefully, no where its mentioned or hinted that the doctor was a ‘female’ doc which makes the puzzle so simple to guess.

Alright so this blog is about one specific puzzle which I came across recently. This brainteaser is a simple, run of the mill arithmetic puzzle and I do enjoy cracking the underlying logic for such puzzles. So here it is as mentioned below –

If

8 + 8 + 8 = 6

6 + 6 + 6 = 3

1 + 1 + 1 = 0

3 + 3 + 3 = 3

4 + 4 + 4 = 3

What is 1 + 2 + 9?

What is 9 + 9 + 9?

What is 0 + 0 + 0?

My solution was as below –

1)      Divide each of the number by 4

2)      Rounds off any fraction to nearest whole number (keeping in mind ceiling/floor concept, .50 to be rounded off to its ceiling number)

3)      So with above logic, the answer comes out to be –

What is 1 + 2 + 9? = 2

What is 9 + 9 + 9? = 6

What is 0 + 0 + 0? = 0

So far so good. Now I have a good friend Supriya who likes to play around with puzzles a lot and I always share any good puzzle with her (especially if am unable to crack it as she is really good in cracking them anyhow). She replied back with same answers and I beamed with a smile as she too had corroborated my solution. But then things took a dramatic turn – when I asked her if she had used the same logic as I did (providing details as per above solution), she replied back in negative. I was absolutely intrigued – as I know there can be more than 1 solution to any given problem but not 2 approaches to same solution. Her solution was based on arithmetic progression as per below –

1)      First 2 numbers in natural numbers are assumed to be zero – so 1 and 2 both are equal to zero (1,2=0)

2)      Next 3 numbers are assumed to be 1 – so (3,4,5= 1)

3)      Next 4 numbers are assumed to be 2 – so (6,7,8,9=2)

4)      So with above logic, the answer comes out to be same as mine –

What is 1 + 2 + 9? = 2

What is 9 + 9 + 9? = 6

What is 0 + 0 + 0? = 0

I was really puzzled with the puzzle co-incidence here. It was a first for me that 2 different approaches produced same results. May be this is a freak co-incidence but still for me, this is a classic example of serendipity!

Daunting Endodontics!

Most of us hominids have 32 teeth in all. Well, let’s just say we have this instrument called tooth with which most of the mundane tasks such as eating, chewing, attacking (debatable) et all are done. So far this instrument is working fine in your body, you don’t even realize it exists, rather you don’t care it exists. The fun starts when the same tooth makes your life toothless, almost literally. As I realized this hard way, one of my ‘taken for granted’ teeth shifted its natural position and developed a cavity – this is similar to earth plates shifting deep below the ground leading to catastrophic Tsunami. The Tsunami which engulfed my mouth due to this cavity is called ‘Root Canal Treatment’ in medical lingo. I must swear – Dental fraternity was not in good mood when they formulated this treatment for us lesser mortals. Read on to find out why I made this teething statement about them…

“You have a void between your 2nd and 3rd molar” – these were the exact words of my dentist. I put together all my knowledge about English language to process this statement but to no avail. I asked back, trying to sound as smart as possible – “So doc, what would you recommend for me?” (I ain’t bad in pretending – somewhere I read that personality is the art of getting admired for qualities you don’t posses). The doc looked back at me and uttered very casually – “we would go for root canal treatment, as removal of your molars should be the last option”. These words sounded as if I have a last few days left to my life! My medically challenged brain once again started processing the term ‘Root Canal Treatment’ though I did hear a lot about it from many others. Before I could even ask my next question to the doctor, he was already ready with the fees he would charge me for this treatment. My jaws almost dropped after hearing the astronomical amount – 6000 bucks! I realized this is the precise reason that the Medical profession is never seen affected by recession. The thing with doctors is you can’t bargain with them as you would normally do in similar situations – ‘Hey doc, can you give me some discount as I am your repeat customer’ or ‘Doc, this is festival time man, give me some discount’. Somehow this culture of bargaining has not been applied to the medical fraternity, I strongly feel otherwise. I was further told that there will be 3 sessions to complete the treatment. I murmured to myself – so basically they would want you to endure the torture slow and steady – like the ‘Halal’ cut. 

I came back home with a heavy heart – took next 3 weeks to bring up all the courage to get started with the treatment. In my research on this topic during this time, I realized that this medical procedure (root canal) is invasive in nature (meaning they would invade your body in flesh and blood) and is a part of larger dental specialty called ‘Endodontics’ – Daunting Endodontics!

The D day arrived – my first session to face the Tsunami. I was told by the receptionist that the ordeal (she said process, I heard ordeal) would take about 30 minutes. After about 15 minutes of long wait, I was called in. As soon as I entered the dental room, all my fear came true or atleast, seemed to come true. Let me try to describe here what I saw and I leave it to the reader’s discretion to judge on my fear. That room had dim lighting, all the windows were covered with thick curtains through which no light could pass (yes, like a black hole), the shape and size of the room was just about enough to fit in one big sized elephant, in short - it was a dungeon. On three corners of the room stood 3 attendants, each one wearing a white mask and holding some kind of sharp instruments in their hands. The doctor himself was sitting in the middle of the room, face covered with white mask, his breathing sounding quite heavy and both his hands clutching a bunch of even sharper instruments. The 3 attendants were standing still in their respective positions (as if ready to attack the prey anytime), the doctor just signaled me to lie down on the special long sized chair (it looked more like an electric chair). I thought to myself – is this some kind of a trap? Am I being murdered? Why did they not check my BP as usually practiced my other docs? I haven’t even prepared my final will. Damn it. As I was checking these thoughts out, came a shrilling sound – yes, a high speed sharp edged drilling machine had started approaching my mouth. Fortunately the doctor finally spoke before the drilling machine could come any closer – ‘Just relax, this will have some sensitivity kind of pain initially. Please raise your hand if you feel too much of it’. What? Raise your hand! – is this some kind of game where you raise your hand upon someone’s elimination. I remember playing some such game in my school days. What if I get delayed in raising my hand by a few seconds or what if I raise my hand but the doc thinks I  am saying hi to him!  Nevertheless, the doc simply pulled the 2 ends of my ill-fated mouth with his hands and started injecting anesthetic liquid into the cavity (that injection needle was very awkwardly shaped, resembled an L shaped dagger to put it mildly). He sat back on his chair instructing me to let him know when I start feeling numbness in my mouth. By this time, I was quite convinced that I am being ‘eliminated’ in a cleverly orchestrated dental dissection. How else do you explain 4 masked people with sharp weapons in their hands holding you lying down in an extremely vulnerable position and waiting for you to pass out? As the local anesthesia kicked in, I felt numbness in my mind first and then in my mouth. The drill started – literally. First came in the drilling machine, then the pointed knife followed by some more injection of anesthesia and then some more sharper odd looking instruments – all of them going deep inside my mouth with no guarantee that they would come out ever. I was feeling occasional pain, clutched my fists, held on to myself, held on to my life and after 40 grueling minutes, was told to sit-up with my mouth still having no sensation. What I felt was that the built up psychology behind this whole thing psyches you up more than anything else. Probably I thought if my eyes were covered up too, I wouldn’t have felt as much pain since I wouldn’t know what’s going inside my agonized mouth.

I had the remaining 2 sessions done without as much pain as the 1st one. Root canal treatment should be introduced in Army commando training to test the Jawan’s physical and psychological endurance or it can be given out as a punishment for serious criminal offences. Such is the impact of surviving this treatment. I survived the trauma, I am recuperating, I promise I will write my next post with a better mind frame.

Corporate Mumbo Jumbo

The World Inc. has its own world to thrive in and the Corporate glitterati takes pride in defining its own ‘work’ culture which sometimes defies any known professional boundaries while at times borders on downright slapstick absurdity! But come what may, everyone who belongs to the Corporate echelon is confined to following these unspoken ‘rules’ and ‘laws’ lest they run the risk of offending the Corporate elite!! In my un-eventful career spanning more than a decade and half, I have become a partner in crime while embracing this ‘imposed’ culture and would like to recount and enumerate few of these Corporate tenets which have come to symbolize the white collared civilization and its idiosyncrasies. Here you go, my top 10 countdown –

10) While a normal homo sapiens would ‘start’ his day, a Corporate manager always looks ‘at the end of the day’. So while you have a meeting at 9AM on a dull Monday morning when your breakfast tea hasn’t even got settled down properly, you have your boss yelling at you when comes the most abused term from him - “…so team, no matter what you do or how you do it but at the end of the day, I want to see the result!!” and it goes on and on. I sometimes wonder, why wouldn’t a boss want the same results ‘at the middle of the day’ or ‘at the beginning of the next day’!! Seems it’s just a weapon in their huge armory to implant a psychological terror that if it doesn’t get delivered by the end of the day, it would be the end of the world for you, period.

9) Screaming at someone takes a whole new dimension in the eccentric Corporate world. Consider this – if you write a single word in CAPS in your mail (capital letters for the uninitiated), you are assumed to be screaming at the mail recipient. If the whole line is written in CAPS, you are assumed to be literally yelling at the recipient. I witnessed this screaming business being taken to a whole new level when I saw one particular mail (not directed at me) written in CAPS with red color font. I hope the recipient survived the mail and didn’t suffer a heart stroke!

8) You must have copied someone on your usual mails without much thought, right? Well, copying someone on your mail has its implicit connotations in this world. If you copy your boss while writing a mail to someone, you are trying to cover yourself. If you copy recipient’s boss, it means you are trying to escalate things. If you copy your direct report in your mail, you are delegating the work. If you copy no one in the mail, you are trying to ‘settle’ things with the recipient. Such is the power of carbon copy functionality while following the mail etiquette.

7) When is the last time you were ‘on the same page’ with your friend or your spouse or your parents? I am sure you haven’t exactly got that sentence per se and you are not to be blamed for that either. This ‘same page’ business is a must condition in the Corporate jungle. That’s right – you need to be on same page with everyone else while working with sundry and all. In plain language, it just means that there is a common understanding between you and the audience you are speaking to. Infact this is the most banal phrase dropped most often by the speaker in any regular meeting – “so gentlemen, are we all on the same page? “. It beats me to death to think why we always need to be same page? It smacks of herd mentality – if you are not on same page, you may be the odd one out. Someone was overheard blurting out in frustration “No - I am NOT on the same page with you, infact I am not even on the same paragraph, same chapter OR same book with you !!”

6) Acronyms play an important role on the Corporate planet. If you need to succeed in here, you got to be champion in mastering the short hand! When I first heard a top manager extolling the success the company has achieved, he went something like this “Team, FYI – our PAT for Q1 is $XYZ MM which is a jump of 10% YoY and 12% QoQ!! The GCCIT LoB has lauded our efforts and will be recognizing 5 FTEs in Q2 R&R”. In short, you need to master the art of the abbreviation (The word abbreviation itself needs an abbreviation!!)

5) “If you don’t improve your visibility, I am afraid I wouldn’t be able to elevate you” – there comes another term which is used by the wannabe managers to beat you up whenever they feel like. The term ‘Visibility’ in Corporate jargon signifies the impact of your performance on others (ideally, everyone in the organization). In other words, how famous you are in your office circuit determines how ‘Visible’ you are. Initially when I came across this term, I thought it was being referred to my ‘not so fair’ complexion – “Deven, you are not quite visible off late” – I took it as “Deven, you have darkened off late – or - are you into tanning business or something?” Now as I understand this term better, it has an added connotation – your visibility is directly proportional to the amount of 'shoulder rubbing' you have with the high and mighty in the organization. Well, if you ask me honestly - I am not 'visible' to even my wife yet!!

4) When it comes to having a telephonic meeting, the mention of ‘Mute’ business can’t be missed out. Put simply, every phone instrument has a ‘Mute’ button. Typically in an official telephonic meeting, everyone keeps himself on mute (hence inaudible) while the speaker of the meeting speaks up. One of the most common scene is when one of the attendants starts speaking up but without ‘un-muting’ himself. If there is a prolonged silence in the call, in all probability its due to someone speaking up while on mute. Someone from the audience has to then check with the team if anyone is speaking on ‘mute’. This business reached its height once when in one such meeting, there was a prolonged silence. Then there was some further prolonged silence. Suddenly a voice was heard “ Sorry guys I was checking if anyone speaking up while in mute but I realized I myself was on mute” !

3) OOO – if you have got good with abbreviations by now, then you should be able to get this one. OOO refers to ‘Out of Office’ and refers to an automatic email reply when someone switches on this functionality in his mail (while being not available in office). In my prolific experience dealing with mail etiquette, I have come to realize that the OOO message reflects the personality of the sender. Shorter the OOO message, higher in the hierarchy that person is – “On business trip, reachable on cell” indicates the sender is a heavy weight. If the OOO message runs in 10 lines, the sender is from some operation support team (for A, contact X; for B, contact Y and so on). If the OOO message is somewhat risqué, the person belongs to the HR department. If the OOO message has the minutest details such as what time and second the sender will be back in office, mostly that guy is from Finance team. One of the most ‘effective’ OOO message I came across recently – “I am out of office for this whole week. My replies will be delayed OR may not be replied at all” !!

2) A couple of talking points which are extremely common in Corporate meetings and I can’t miss mentioning them here – 1) Weather talk – yes, that’s right. The easiest way to break ice in a meeting with others or to start the conversation in an informal way is to talk about weather. This is more prominent when the callers (in a telephonic meeting) are in different countries – that makes it much more meaningful than when the 1st caller in 'Ramnagar' is asking about weather condition to the 2nd caller who is in 'Lakshman Nagar', if you know what I mean. 2) Weekend plan – this is another point of discussion more pronounced especially if you speaking with someone from the West. I am amazed to see that some people have an elaborate answer to offer when asked about their weekend plan. It’s as if they live just for the weekends!

1) Most oft repeated phrases or words –

a) I really appreciate your help here

b) My calendar is up-to-date

c) Placeholder for a meeting

d)Leadership (everyone is supposed to be a leader), team spirit/synergy/motivation (nothing can move without the ‘team’)

e) Customer/client comes first

f) ASAP, +1, w.r.t, PFA, PFB, EoD, TBD, IMO, AFIK, URGENT (in subject line), TL;DR

g) and the deadliest – “Boss is always right”

Long live the Corporatti!!

Die Another Day !

It’s been a while I wrote anything on the blog and I was feeling the literary ‘pinch’ for not taking up the mighty pen, err mighty keys (on the keyboard you silly) for a while. It also dawned upon me that my writing has been noticed and appreciated by a few good souls from highly unexpected quarters which gave me enough thrust to take up the mighty pen and resume my blog journey. Also I thought it would be a good omen to start the new year with a blog, which might provide me with enough life fuel in the form of creative catharsis which everyone of us so much long and crave for. This time around I thought of a subject which has been lingering around in my intellectual landscape for quite a while and it’s about a few life experiences which can be categorized as ‘once in a lifetime’ episodes and had me on the edge of life literally. Even though they are hair raising experiences which I went through involuntarily, I found it fun to recall and write them down. I said ‘fun to write them down’ as I have increasingly found it difficult to pen my writings on things which are presumably grave in nature – like politics, philosophy etc. May be I will take some more maturing up to develop a taste for them in writing them down. On second thoughts, I do have a taste for them but somehow haven’t found them palatable enough to be jotted down in ink (err in keystrokes). But for now, back to what I wanted to write about – a few unique life experiences which happened to me over the last 30 years or so (keep guessing my age) and have left an indelible mark on my psyche – some of them were life threatening – some of them were pure fun – some of them are just mentioned here with no particular purpose. Of course there are a few experiences which can be categorized as ‘heavenly or celestial’ which I can’t describe verbatim here for obvious reasons, so I will keep them for my ‘underworld’ writing (yes, I do have one and subscription to it is by invitation only!!). For the rest of the world, here I go –