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 –

How I met your mother ? - Part 1

The idea of this blog came from an American TV serial with the same name which is a popular if not a superhit sitcom from their regular lot and is aired on CBS if I can recall correctly (and on Star World in India). In fact I am a big fan of the female protagonist in the serial played out by a hot Canadian actress named Coby Smulders. I guess she has even starred in some Hollywood movies. Anyways, so back to my story – ‘How I met your mother’ is a simple but sweet story I would like to pass on to my progeny (2+ years old now) which would serve him as a proof that his dad wasn’t as boring and unromantic as he would like to believe when he grows up !! So here goes my son - your dad’s ONLY romantic venture which met with 100% success (needless to say the previous attempts were all big time flops and may not even qualify to be called ‘attempts’ at winning over fairer sex during his pre marital struggling days!)

Cut to December 2002. It all started with the news that one of my cousins Yogesh is all set to get married in a remote place called ‘Aamgaon’, a small hamlet near Gondia which is a town near Nagpur which is a city in the geographical center of India, a country in the....(talk about my geographical senses or lack of it!). Initially I had no plans to witness the marriage in person as I am really averse to attending family functions (I hate relatives!) and that too in a hamlet with no probability of even getting a mineral water bottle made me think twice. But a phone call from my parents did the trick – they informed me that they have received a prospective ‘Rishta’ which has come for me from a respectable family settled in Bhilai (a town near the same hamlet which is near ...well you got the idea!!) . My plans to visit the hamlet to attend cousin’s marriage got sealed with my sis sharing the insider info that the girl’s pic (which had landed in her hand as part of initial exchange of ladka/ladki’s biodata/horoscope between the 2 families) was simply ‘outstanding’ and that I should not miss the trip at any cost. So what was the common thread between the hamlet story and the prospective ‘rishta’ stuff – the Bhilai family was a close relatives of the Aamgaon’s bride family and would be present in full attendance in the December marriage in the hamlet and that I would have a chance to meet up with the ‘girl’. Considering my state of mind during that time, it was nothing short of a visit to ‘Mecca Medina’. Meanwhile my sis sent me the soft copy of girl’s pic which made my resolve to visit the hamlet stronger even if it meant risking my precious life due to the absence of potable water (well mineral water I mean!). So my son – your dad went all the way to a remote hamlet to meet your mother inspite of huge perceived threat to his life!! Please be always proud of this fact about your dad and yes, the first moral of the story for you is – a hamlet without the availability of mineral water is the best place to find your girl..!!

December 6th 2002 – I set off for the hamlet from Nagpur in a privately rented bus along with all the Baraatis for my cousin’s marriage. I had mixed thoughts with a good possibility that the whole boy/girl meet affair might just not even happen (too many factors play a role here if you follow the arranged marriage process closely). The Baraat reached the hamlet after an arduous 5 hours bus journey with most of the road being dusty and broken. My first impression about the hamlet was not that bad though – it was a kind of beautiful countryside dotted with a horizon line made up by steep rock hills all around. The flip side was - the roads were ‘pugdandis’ (can’t define this word, you ought to see it yourself to get the right definition) with most of the houses made out of red bricks (‘Kavelus’ in Hindi) and cows/cattle grazing at regular distances but since I was on a mission here, I braved all the odds without uttering a word. The Baraatis got busy in settling down in the ‘Janwasa’ which is a designated high area given out to them for getting ready for the evening marriage ritual. I, along with my father had already got to meet my prospective father in law which at least confirmed the ‘meet’ in the evening function. While the Baraat was getting ready for the marriage, I took out some time and went to a nearby hill rock with a few of my baraati gang members and really enjoyed the fresh breeze of air which is so rare in a cosmopolitan surrounding.

How I met your mother ? - Part 2

The Baraat started heading for the marriage venue by around 7 PM. I was wearing a fusion dress code for the event – a black jeans and a black blazer over a yellow colored full neck t-shirt. Surprisingly, I was looking less worse that day as per my own standards. I shook my legs and danced a bit along with other Baraatis and infact enjoyed it too even though I am not so much a ‘dance’ person. The long drawn marriage process started with Baraatis eventually reaching the venue, the first event being the ‘Varmala’ event wherein bride and groom put a big size ‘garland’ around either’s neck. Till this point in time, I had no inkling or clue about the ‘girl’ I was told about. Then suddenly from nowhere, my prospective father in law appeared and took my dad aside and whispered a few words which were inaudible to me. I could see my dad leaning sideward and then exchanging a few words with him before heading back towards me. Watching dad coming towards me, I pretended I had not seen/heard anything (as a son, I was taught not to be enthusiastic about girls in presence of elders). He pointed me towards the crowd at the other end of the marriage lawn and said ‘she is Sonu’ directing his fingers towards a group of girls with one of them wearing pink saree. I said ‘Sonu who?’ He looked at me and smiled and I got the message. As I was trying to have a good second glance at the pink saree clad girl, my dad had already disappeared as I saw him being led away by my father in law. As my eyes started tracing the ‘pink girl’ further, I saw her being introduced to my dad at the other end of the lawn. From this point onwards, it was a cat and mouse game with both of us being aware about what’s happening around. At times, I was following her in the grass lawn with couple of my Baarati gang members and at other times, she was following me and my gang along with her gang. Our eyes met a couple of times and she, contrary to the image of a typical Indian girl in such scenarios, didn’t have any expressions of ‘shyness’ or ‘coyness’ and that to me was unexpected from a town girl though in a way it made me more curious about her. In this cat and mouse game, I had absolutely no inkling about my cousin’s marriage for which I had come here officially. Neither was I getting any urge to drink mineral water in this whole game. So my son, the 2nd morale of the story is – venture in an inhabitable terrain (where there is no mineral water) ONLY and ONLY if there is a beautiful girl around!!

By midnight, all Baraatis had left the marriage venue and were back to Janwasa for the second phase of marriage ritual called ‘saat pheras’ which continues all through the night. Somehow I was feeling physically exhausted and tired as I didn’t have proper dinner/ food (don’t feel like eating in such a mass event) and I actually didn’t have any water as I just couldn’t bring up myself to swallow regular water served there. Though physically exhausted, my mind was racing with what I had seen/gone through and wanted to be back in the ‘mandap’ asap. But being an unathletic person that I am, I crashed in a makeshift bed in the Janwasa and was dreaming big time in my deep sleep. Somewhere around 2AM, one of my cousins came and started waking me up mentioning that my presence was required in the ‘mandap’ for some marriage ritual. I was still in a somnambulant stage to analyze what was happening, I just put my blazer on and went to the nearby ‘mandap’. And behold – I saw Sonu with the entire gang of hers already present in the mandap with the entire mandap brightly lit up and the saat pheras ritual in full swing. It turned out that I was called there to help out the groom save his shoes which were being targeted by Sonu’s gang as part of ‘Juta chori’ ritual which is a lighter side of an otherwise boring marriage rituals. The scene was straight out of ‘Hum Aapke hai Kaun’ movie with Salman/Madhuri having a similar ‘juta chori’ sequence in the movie. In this whole milieu as I was busy protecting the shoes from the evil eyes of the opposite gang, I was called by a couple of elderly people in the distant corner of the mandap. I thought I may just have to go and touch feet of a few elderly people (a typical routine in such functions and be back asap) but it turned out to be something different – before I could realize what’s happening around, I was being introduced to my prospective mother in law. She said a few nice things which I don’t recall now exactly and waived towards Sonu who was still engrossed in drawing up ‘Shoe’ plans with her gang. Mom in law gestured her to come towards where we were standing. My heart was racing at its pulsating high when all these drama was being enacted out. Both of us just said ‘hi’ to each other when introduced formally for the first time. I could not muster enough courage to keep looking/ staring at her as I was surrounded by at least 4 elderly people from all 4 directions. I just said Namaste to all and came back to my seat. The ‘Juta Chori’ episode was back on track and was played out to the climax where the opposite gang had to concede defeat as they could not lay their hands on the groom’s shoes (though my wife till date disputes this version saying her gang just did a favor by not pursuing the ‘juta’ any further). Whatever it might be, I did steal a few moments in that whole ‘juta episode’ with Sonu and tried to strike a conversation or two with her.

I left for Nagpur in the wee hours of morning after the last ritual of marriage called ‘Bidaai’ (bride’s journey to her new home) and upon reaching there, it was almost official that both of us were engaged. The marriage took place around 3 months later in March 2003 and both of us would always treasure and cherish our first meeting forever in our life. So my son, this is how I happened to meet your mother. And finally, the 3rd and the last morale of the story – chase a girl only if you are good at the ‘Juta chori’ business!!

Jai Ho Bollywood

I have never reviewed a movie on my blog but when a certain movie with deshi theme generates so much international/domestic media interest and gets nominated for almost all international movie awards(Oscars, Golden Globe etc), I thought to check out the buzz all by myself. Its a different story how I ended up watching the movie in a slick city theater(my only second movie in a theater after Don2 in 2006!!). Alright so here is my verdict on this movie - Slumdog Millionaire(SM) is an out and out bollywood masala type feel good movie made in a potupurri of hindi/english language. Thats about it folks - nothing less nothing more.
The storyline is so much bollywoodish - hero's childhood trauma, lost love, struggling life, a villain and eventually a happy ending! So how come a movie which is almost a bollywood formula film dished out in the backdrop of notorious Mumbai slums could strike a chord with the world audience? I thought about it for a while longer and soon got messed up in the cobweb of too many plausible reasons which clogged my mind. This blog was an afterthougt of that quagmire which completely hung up my thinking apparatus called brain so to speak and hope it would boot up my brain normally once I am done with the post. So here are those cluttered thoughts in random order enumerating why the movie created history of sorts -
1) The first and foremost reason SM got noticed by the world audience - it is made by a seasoned holywood director Danny Boyle (I saw 'A Life Less Ordinary' a few years back and only realized now that it was one of the 20 odd movies directed so far by him). I would like to put my neck out on the line by making an almost racist statement here-had this movie been made by an Indian director, I bet it would have been just like another run of the mill bollywood movie which might have done a weeks business(or even less) and then would have quickly faded in our ephemeral memory. To prove my point, compare this movie with Oscar referred Lagaan starring Aamir. Both the movies have exactly same common themes - feel good factor, never die spirit, a love angle and an ultimate victory in trying circumstances. Yet Lagaan couldn't make it even in Foreign film category in the then Oscars whereas SM is a hot favourite in almost all mainstream categories spanning the entire gamut of the current Oscar awards. Its very difficult to pin point this anomaly but I have made a few attempts in as many points below. So read on.
2) The movie literally personifies feel good factor with love being its epicenter. Now considering the times we are living in - recession, terrorism etc, it ain't a surprise that anything which feels good would connect with the audience instantly. However it doesn't lessen the goodness of the movie by any means.
3) The biggest contributing factor for making this movie a hit as per my hyposthesis here is the clever interwinding of a T.V show called 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire' with the main plot of the movie. Now for this sole point, I would give entire credit to Vikas Swarup, the author of the book 'Q&A' which is adapted in the movie. The show is a well known T.V show in almost all civilized countries of the world and hence was a common running thread to connect the story with the planet's mortals. I would bet my money in saying that this movie would not have connected so well had it not been for the inclusion of the game show in the movie.
4) A.R Rahman got accolades from all over the world for his music in the movie. Let me be bluntly honest here - he has scored an absolute average routine music as per his own standards for this movie. We in India as Indians know what A.R Rahman is and what kind of sole touching music he can churn out. I would put it this way - the world just got introduced to A.R Rahman's talent through this movie. However the talent as exhibited by him in this movie is not even the tip of the iceberg to put it that way. Its like the world self rejoicing in the discovery of a stoneage wheel when Rahman has already given us(the Indians) formula one cars!!

Notwithstanding all the above mentioned points, the movie is definitely a must dekho for all the movie lovers in India but with a caution line - dont overexpect from this film(we are so used to this genre of films). But to the foreign audience - expect the unexpected, unexperienced thrill of a typical masala bollywood film which you have been unaware about since stoneage!! I was not so gung ho about this movie being nominated at almost all biggies in the Hollywood arena as I fail to find much Indianness in a film made by a foreign director(just as with the much acclaimed movie Gandhi). And I also agree with Big B when he recently said that why we Indians go crazy whenever we find anything India related getting nominated or even mentioned in their affairs? Are we so insecure/unsure about our own identity? I guess I would have another post on this point some other day. However I am absolutely gung ho about the fact that this movie has put the bollywood masala formula on the world map and it wont be a surprise in coming years to find many more India/bollywood centric/themed movies finding their ways to the Oscars.
Jai Ho Bollywood!

Parenting Blues

They say children are a gift of God. I can bet whoever said this never actually went through the arduous journey of raising one all by themselves. I have a 2 year old naughty son (from my legal wife that is !!) and all I can say is that it hasn't been what it's made out to be. Somewhere I read that parenthood is like a secret society, nobody tells you what goes on inside until you get in and when you do, it’s way too late !! Now don’t get me wrong here – I love children and I love mine more than anything else in the world(Note – All men like their own children but other’s wives!!). It’s also true that they bring along with them all the fun and innocence and all the good things which you would have never experienced otherwise. In fact this post is not to contest the pure and cherubic joy children bring to our lives. This post is to ponder over what lies beneath – the whims and fancies of a child which form an integral part of a child’s upbringing package and every parent’s seemingly unending travails.

I might agree that this post is more an outcome of the fact that I am witnessing the timeframe in a child’s initial years which is categorized as ‘Devil’s age’ and ranges typically from 1 year to 3 years. This is the age when they realize they have super powers they were never told before and start becoming naughtier, stubborn and literally ‘out of control’ in the process. Try telling them one thing and they do the exact opposite. Ask them to sit at one place and they start running all over. I have been browsing through the net to understand how to deal with the situation and bring in more discipline in the child. Almost all websites have one common set of points/theme to address the issue– lots of patience, love, affection and more patience. Some sites did go into the specifics as to how a child craves for attention and most of his actions are to attract other’s attention with his behavior/misbehavior. The underlying principle is to reward good behavior while censuring the child subtly for all the misdeeds he causes. I discovered further that the parents need to be consistent in exhibiting their behavior towards their wards lest they misconstrue one time laxity in rules as a manipulative tactic which can be adopted time and again to circumvent the rules and eventually become his/her personality.

All these sound logical and simple. However when it comes to the actual implementation, it’s not as easy. Imagine a situation when you are playing with your child all nicely with the mother gone out for some chores. All is going fine when suddenly Murphy and his mysterious law smiles at you !! The child starts behaving obnoxiously and as you are just about trying to manage him does the door bell go off and the cell phone starts ringing all at the same time. In the middle of all these, you also just realize that you have an ‘urgent’ biobreak to attend to which is giving you last minute warnings !! So how do you keep your cool in such a situation? Not just humanly possible. Another instance I would like to quote. Many a time I have family friends coming over and now almost all of them have same age kids. A very typical situation which almost every parent would identify with is the fight between the kids over sharing of some stupid toy. Now such a situation is quite tricky in the sense that since the toy belongs to my kid, he has the first right of ownership over it but the other kid being a guest too has the right to play with the toy. Now believe me its next to impossible to manage such a situation. There are some prescribed workarounds for such situations but I haven’t seen any of them really working. You should consider yourself lucky if you get any help from the guest parents(very rare), all in all a very tough situation to manage.

It would be inappropriate of me though if I don’t mention a few positive tricks which do work at times. One of them I have seen is to tell them with lot of affection and love about their act of indiscipline and how they should avoid it next time. But the key here is patience and perseverance. It wouldn’t seem to work initially but if you persist, it does have a positive effect. Another trick from my bag which does work to a great extent is to let your ward know that you would stop all means of communication with him/her if they misbehave. I am not sure if it’s a design attribute in a human being but the moment someone ignores you by not talking/communicating with you for a while, you just can’t take it for long. This holds true for children too and you can use this absolute non violent method very effectively for instilling discipline in them. My last tried and tested trick which one should know and implement only if everything else fails – just hold your child firmly when he is not listening to you and take him away to a different room in your house. By this time, the child would be crying at the top of his lungs. Now ensure that you have the most favorite thing/toy of the child kept in this room. Immediately hand it over/show it to the child and start playing with him. The key here is to distract his attention from whatever he was crying for. My 2 year old is crazy for digital camera(seems the boys are crazy for all electronic gadgets from day one of their life!!) and I use it as a diversionary weapon to make him forget whatever he was crying for. It really works. The child would stop crying as if nothing had happened a moment before and you wonder how virtuous their short term memory loss could be!!

While all the things I have penned above can not be done away with(neither do I want to really speaking), the experience is in itself so unique and enriching and one just has to witness it to understand...well the secret society!!

I Wonder

That’s right. I often wonder who really architectured the whole concept of seven wonders of the world. Since childhood, we have been told there are seven wonders in the world and that these represent some of the most intriguing and amazing man made/nature evolved phenomenon which have enthralled the human race since ages. But as I started understanding it better, the whole concept of seven wonders of the world is in itself flawed to a great extent. If you dig into it further, you really start wondering as to who officially authorized the initial list of seven wonders of the world which includes places like Stonehenge, Great wall of Chine etc. Then comes the list of seven naturally existing wonders which includes places like Mount Everest, Grand canyon etc. Again there was no consensus as to what really qualifies to be called a wonder and somebody(read media giants like CNN/BBC etc) just came up with a consolidated list and published them on their media channels. The last straw came when I heard about a supposedly worldwide initiative wherein an organization invited popular votes from the world audience and asked them to vote for their favourite wonders of the world as percieved by them. Well it seems our very own Taj Mahal could make it to the final 7 but I was not too impressed with the overall exercise as it lacked credibility and transparency.

 Alright enough of that ‘what is right/what is wrong’ sermons. My point here was I have been fascinated with this whole seven wonders of the world thing and always used to wonder if I would ever get to witness atleast one of them. Well, the good news is or rather I can claim that I have witnessed a few of the so called wonders of the world and somehow tempted to draw a comparison between them just so to prove that apples can be compared with oranges!! So far I got to see the Grand Canyon, the Niagara falls and our very own the Taj. Let me write a few lines on each one of them and then we get to the comparison mode –

1)   Grand Canyon – Just one word folks – Truly Majestic(well, that’s 2 words I know). This happened when I was on my first US trip though I wasn’t really that excited to witness the wonder. I mean I had read about it a lot but being a part of high school text book syllabi, it kind of kills the excitement I guess. It’s like whatever you read during high school years was pure bookish and never meant to exist in reality. Well then there I was right at the edge of the wonder itself literally speaking. One look at the wonder and you are like ‘what the hell!!’, ‘what really happened here’ and you never get a chance to put your jaw back in its normal position. The first look at the Canyon sends shivers down your spine and makes you wonder how could such a thing ever happened on planet ‘Earth’. The gorge never ends when you look down and never ceases to amuse you when you look up. The scientific explanation is that the Colorado river was responsible for cutting the earth that deep as if somebody had just cut a full size cake. The bottom most point of the Grand Canyon is around 1.8 km deep, you might as well think of catching a cab to reach that deep! It’s almost 6 years that I witnessed the wonder and I still can recall the visuals so vividly. I still doubt if something of that scale can be done by a simple stream of flowing river.

2)   Niagara Falls – This was during my second trip to the US with wify accompanying me. The high point of this trip was that I drove all the way to the Niagara falls which is a good 6 hours drive one way. And we had to be back the same day which makes it 12 hours of drive in a 24 hours day! But as I discovered later, it was worth the efforts. Absolutely mesmerizing and extremely gigantic is how I would describe this wonder. The sheer amount of water flowing through the fall makes you wonder why we still have water shortage in our home ! The fall it seems gets frozen during the winter season when the temperature reaches sub zero levels. I wish I could witness that as well. The Niagara fall ride called ‘Maid of the Mist’ was an experience itself wherein you are taken right at the bottom of the fall in the middle of wild streams making you feel as if the boat you are riding on is about to overturn. 

 3)  Taj Mahal – ‘Sublime’ and ‘Pure’ are the epithets I could think of while witnessing the monument the first time. Absolute beauty, you just go breathless at its first sight. The legend has it that the emperor Shahjahan was besotted by his 17 year old cousin Mumtaj Mahal and just couldn’t take his eyes off of her. He married her eventually and had 14 kids in as many years it seems (please don’t analyze this information in any greater details as it has led me to a lot of unhealthy questions which I am unable to find in spite of being an ‘adult’!!). So when the queen was gone in his life, the emperor thought to immortalize her memories in what we now know as the ‘Taj Mahal’. The saying ‘Love is in the air’ actually gets personified when you visit the wonder and invariably makes you hold the hands of your beloved as you get completely captivated and mesmerized by the moment’s tenderness.

Now coming to the comparison part – Though all the 3 wonders are sheer magic to your eyes in their own ways, I personally found Grand Canyon having much more profound effect on my psyche than the other 2. Probably it has to do with ‘Fear’ factor that is synonymous with the Canyon and it seems human psychology registers and reacts more strongly to fear factor than beauty factor which is more prominent with the other 2 wonders viz. the Niagara and the Taj. But again, this is purely speaking from human psychology angle. From every other perspective, all the 3 are equals or incomparable and have their own aura so to speak. I would like to conclude saying that even though beauty does lie in the eyes of the beholder, the official/unofficial wonders of the world provide a new meaning to the definition of term ‘beauty’ and have to be witnessed in person to believe that wonders do happen.

A Decade Of Labour

That's right - it was exactly a decade ago on 10th Sep 1998 that I started my career in a company called Tata Consultancy Services. I was to report first day in the training center of the company in a city called Trivendrum which is almost the southernmost tip of India. Seems the extreme location of the training center was chosen more by design as they didn't want anyone to escape easily once trapped !! So there I was - in a completely new place with no known faces around. I had only reached there just a day before after a grueling 36 hours train journey from Nagpur. The place is known as God's own country but to me it seemed to be nothing more than a prosaic countryside with its people looking stuporous who needed to be shaken out of their slumber to put it that way. Well I agree that my perception may have been influenced by the fist day anxiousness and jitters but the place failed to impress me anyways as I discovered later. But back to my story - I was spent and consumed by the time I landed in my hotel from the railway station. It was around 6 in the evening and I had no idea about what to do next and more so about 'things' to come. The game had just started. In an hours time when I was settled in the hotel room, it was dinner time and I was told that the hotel would not serve us any food which basically meant going out in the town(sorry I dont' find Trivendrum be called  a city) and arrange for your own morsels. With a dead set of legs, I headed out to the market area in search of food with an acquaintance who was in the same boat as that of mine. Soon we discovered Trivendrum is not even a town-it's a Village!! No offense meant here to anyone from that part of the country but you would relate with that when you read the next few lines. First thing we observed about that place(lets not call it either town,city or village but lets just use the neutral 'place') was that the market shuts down by around 8 pm(that's like sun rise for me now!!) and nobody understands any language you speak. So with lot of difficulty, we found a dimly lit restaurant which was still open and more importantly serving people!! We went inside and sat on a table which also had a couple of chairs to park the posterior(so thoughtful of them I must say). Next thing I was looking for was a menu card and when I tried to explain that to the waiter(well, lets just say the serving person to protect the dignity of the term 'waiter'), he pointed me to a blackboard in the corner of the room which had a few words scribbled on it which I could not read for obvious reasons. Yes that was indeed the menu card of the restaurant and one was supposed to order food from those listed 8 to 10 godly items. I then saw a man sitting next table eating something similar to dal-rice. I thought atleast something looks familiar and ordered the serving person to get the same dish for myself. In about exactly 3 minutes(pretty good service time!), the serving person came with a big thaali with lot of dal/sambaar served along with something which looked like rice. I prayed to god(that was the first time I realized the importance of praying Him before having your food) and started having my food. With my first morsel just about touching my tongue, I realized that the journey of my career was not going to be a smooth one at all. It seems the rice which was offered on my plate was a variety of rice called 'Boiled rice' and it was way too tough on appetite to be even termed a food item. Kerala is the largest producer of rice in India and I had no doubt that quantity and quality cant go hand in hand. Anyways, I somehow gobbled up whatever amount of food I could from that menu item and headed back to the hotel once again noticing the deserted streets on way back though it was only about 9 pm. Next day was an all important first day of my career and I just wanted to catch some sleep before embarking on the wonderful journey.

Well before I could realize, its 10 years into my career and, believe it or not, I still go to work daily !! Jokes apart, its been an experience in itself and if I were to talk about it, I can go on and on relating those ups and downs of the decade long journey so to speak. And let me also confess that all these years have not been that easy as well though given a chance, I probably would have chosen the same path every time. Its funny but so true that any painful experience is accompanied with lot of pride and a feeling of achievement whereas anything which is pleasurable/fun giving always gives rise to guilt feelings. On this 'Pride' scale, my decade long career would top the list and I guess these 10 years would always be remembered as life defining epoch of my life. Though they say learning is a continuous phenomenon, the first decade of my career would be seen steepest on my learning graph depicting signs of more failures and less of success thus maturing up to the realities of life. But as they say, journey is important and not the destination. On this note, I am ready for the next innings(or decade) of my career with the same elan and enthusiasm as I had on my first day in TCS in Trivendrum as a trainee engineer.

Cheers to Life!! 

Liebhaberei

Apologies for using a non English term as the title of this post. That term in German means 'Hobby' and this post of mine is dedicated to it from every angle to put it that way. Dictionary defines ‘Hobby’ (seems this term was the nickname for a small horse named Robert!! Yes, I am still figuring it out.) as any activity which keeps you interested, engaged and busy for a finite amount of time and provides a healthy diversion from your otherwise routine and ‘Groundhog day’ kind of life. I still remember during my school days that there used to be an essay writing section in English paper and ‘My Favourite Hobby’ used to be a sure shot topic to write about. Usually I used to write stamp collection (philatelist) and coin collection (numismatist) as my favourite hobbies and surprisingly, I used to find that every other pupil in the class too wrote about same hobbies. I wonder if there were any other hobbies to pursue during those days!!

As I grew up, I realized there are many more interesting things which one can pursue to keep oneself occupied with. In fact Hobby in a way can have therapeutic effect on you if pursued with passion and vigor. So here I am jotting down another essay about things I would like to do or I am pursuing to keep me interested, engaged and occupied at least for a while (Geminis have a very short attention span, so any hobby can’t keep me hooked up for more than 600 seconds at a stretch!!). One more thing – I now believe hobbies change with age and time. Things which I used to like say at the age of 10 (be it stamp collection) don’t interest me anymore. Probably, it’s like upgrading your hobbies as you get acquainted more with the world though a few of them can still be traced back to your genes. Let’s see if I can discover a few of them in this post –

1. During my childhood days, I had an innate liking for toy guns. I was simply crazy for them what with dad bringing in a new one each time he used to go out on an office deputation. I had a huge collection of them. One such was really cool (I still have it though it doesn’t function anymore) – it was manufactured by Leo toys company and the model was based on real model of a semi automatic gun used by Russians during that time. To explain its functioning in core jargon, when the trigger is pulled, only the hammer and firing pin move, striking and firing the cartridge. The bolt then recoils far enough rearward to extract and load a new cartridge from the magazine into the firearm's chamber, ready to fire again once the trigger is pulled. More simpler ones like the one I used to get during Diwali time was also a special attraction for me and I used to wait for the entire year to get a new pistol gun during the festival time. Somehow the passion for this firearm faded with time, but I still cherish to possess a real one one day though I know it may not be worth it somehow.
2. This one is not really a hobby as by its definition – this activity doesn’t keep me occupied. On the contrary, it unshackles me up from all the hustle bustle of life (I know I am getting philosophical here). I am talking about a simple activity I find extremely engaging – that of enjoying solitude. Mind you, I said solitude and not being lonely. There is a difference and that difference is like the difference between being childlike versus childish (go figure if you haven’t yet). There is indeed bliss in solitude and if you know how to enjoy it, I would say you would never find yourself lonely even when you are alone (I know I am indulging in terminological inexactitude here but the description of this ‘hobby’ warrants it to some extent). Some may say this is like meditation. But to me, meditation sounds more technical in nature whereas solitude is simply being you, being in your own company and enjoying it for no specific reason. As they say, you tire yourself in pursuit of happiness. So just stop pursuing that eternal goal of being ‘perfectly happy’, take a break from your chore and just relax in nothing. This activity once mastered can then be exercised even while you are doing a passive task like watching the idiot box. Though the best ambience I would prefer to enjoy solitude is a peaceful environment with some soothing music being played in the background (of course on your home theatre). A cool breeze adds to the effect for sure.
3. It’s funny sometime to see that things you never realized could interest you suddenly start appealing you and you take an instant affinity for it. Photography is one such thing which I never took very seriously (probably for the lack of the right instrument I would say). But with the advent of digicams in the market in last decade or so, I find myself completely smitten by it and have started taking it seriously in terms of my understanding and exposure to it. As you explore it and get familiar with finer details, you realize photography is so much more than just pressing the button on your cam. I have started enjoying it thoroughly and intend to pursue it with more vigor and rigor. I started out in this world with my first cam which was analogous in technology and its film role had to be manually advanced after each photograph. The technology has come a long way today what with the advanced digicams offering almost all the possible features which one would like to see in a professional level camera. Though I am too happy and proud with my Canon S3IS which I currently own, I do intend to go the SLR way in near future, the only constraint being of course the state of my finances. But a lack of hifidelity instrument is no excuse for not pursuing this hobby in all its earnest. I have started organizing some of the best pics I have on Flickr but I am not satisfied with that site’s performance. Probably I would shift to some other photo blog site or may be have a domain of my own where I can host them.
4. This one is not really a hobby, it’s more of a fascination (you may call it ‘fascinobby’) which has kept me amused for a good part of my life (and many others I am sure as you would see that now). The fascination I am referring to here is about what we call as the Universe and the mysteries surrounding it which we still haven’t comprehended completely. Actually, we can’t even quantify as to how much we really know about our habitat, the small iota of space we claim to occupy and call ours in the Universe. When we say that the universe is boundary less, what exactly we mean here is something that intrigues me to no end. I mean come-on how big the space can be and if we don’t attach any boundaries to it, then where exactly it would lead us to. In other words, where exactly would the journey end if I were to embark on a space odyssey and continue travelling in one direction for forever (assuming I have the necessary means for this hypothetical travel).The other aspect of the universe that has puzzled me is our understanding of it, our perception of it. Think about it – we perceive everything with 5 sensory organs given to us by the god (see we can’t even seem to describe basic attributes of a human body without mention of the ‘Divine’ and we are trying to decipher universe here in a scientific way… hahaha !). Anyways, what it means is – whatever we perceive around us is basically a summation of 5 distinct sensory signals received via the 5 sensory channels or organs we have with us (of course interpreted and processed further by a beautiful apparatus called brain with which we think we think!!). So the underlying question here is – who has told us there are or rather there could be only 5 sensory perceptions any living specie can have? The god (again !!) may have an inventory of hundreds or even thousands of sensory organs and decided to give us only 5 of them! Imagine if we were not given the sense of smell, we would have till date through eons happily accepted the fact that the world is odourless or probably there wouldn’t have been a word defined as a ‘smell’ or an ‘odour’ at all in our dictionaries. All these to me mean that our perception of the universe is limited to what we perceive through the prism of 5 sensory probes we are blessed with. One less or one more (and mind you, this is our perception of perceiving that we have finite sensory organs if you know what I mean) and we just don’t have any idea what it would be like – probably we may not even exist as living beings (our definition of being alive) as we perceive it now or the universe after all may not be infinite at all (Infinite may be easily comprehensible in that other world)!! Who knows?? In fact, to put it in yet another interesting way – we just don’t know (neither we would ever in all likelihood) what is absolute reality about the universe versus our interpretation of it.
5. A few of the other activities which has kept me hooked up lately and which I would not hesitate classify as ‘hobby’ by its definition are as listed below –
1. Blogging – started my affair with it with Chiku’s arrival. As stated somewhere in one of my entries, wanted to leave a kind of foot trail in terms of my thoughts/opinions for the progeny. Would like to continue with it as long as I can.
2. Hacking – Would like to pursue with it with some more seriousness (probably sometime later in my life) but with no negative intentions.
3. Acquiring new gadgets/gizmos – well, this is only limited by the state of my finances and I would try to coincide/align its pursuit more with Chiku’s growing years so that I keep myself paced up with him in the field of technology marvels.
4. Reading is another activity I would like to dedicate more time as I grey my hairs. Somewhere I read that the amount of information a regular guy would have had in his entire lifetime around the 17^th century is available to us in just one day through various media channels. So in other words, we are given the opportunity of living multiple lives (thousands of them actually) when compared with that old guy from 17^th century (old as of now I mean).
5. Politics is another of my hobby/passion I am extremely attached with. Be it international politics or national drama (politics in our country is nothing less than drama and can give a run for money to the ‘Saas-Bahu’ dramas any day), I find myself glued to the news channels 24x7 given favourable circumstances (marriage has made them hostile you see).
6. Philosophy – I do have a flair for this ‘boring’ subject as perceived so by many and find myself inclined towards it quite often. It’s an extremely elaborate topic and I would just stop here with its mention and keep it for another post at a later point of time.
7. Music, food, sleeping, TV, movies are some other pastime activities I would like to call out here (this phrase is so oft used in my company meetings, I hate it now!) but can’t keep me engaged for more than a few units of time (characteristics of Geminis).

All the above ones are healthy hobbies I am/would pursue as life goes along. However, there are a few more which can’t be included here and define a slightly darker side of my persona. But then who is living a ‘white’ life anyways?