Modeling Human Behavior?!

Last week, I got a chance to meet a couple of my well-wishers who were blessed to begin their process of enjoying the world a few decades earlier than the day I started...They were almost as old as my aunts and uncles. The two have been introduced well to my antiques, way ahead of time and they certainly had an idea of what they were going to witness. Unfortunately, they were also exposed to the common (mis)understanding of the generic behavioral pattern of a PhD, and obviously was entangled in that line of thought as well. The fortunate part for these people is that I have never met them personally, but I was introduced and been taught about them well enough, so meeting them on a personal level was just a formality.

Now, the meeting part did take place. Yours truly took a few nano seconds to gel in. Upon completion of the few formalities, I was all myself. Spoke to these people non-stop for almost an hour. Made them come outside for a drive in to the town along with a bunch of my friends whom they already knew and have gotten comfortable with, even before they had met me..... Ended up in an icecream joint in a winter evening making sure to show that the world around one can be wilder with just icecreams.... All these time I was ofcourse talking (being myself) and when I was outside in a place with rhythms all over, I took a dip in to the music left straight and right by responding to the beats now and then.

So at the end of the hour long stint, the aunt said that that was somewhat in the grounds like....'oh my god....I really didnt know it was going to be this intense...If you go to India, people wouldnt believe that you have a graduate degree...'

Now, that is almost everyone's comment after they spend few mins with you-know-who in a non-professional environment. Why would that be? Why would we frame preconceived notions that are based on traditional generational behavior of human kinds of different ages. I am glad that the notions that the people I met that day conceived were volatile in a few moments and the folks were versatile and wise enough to comprehend that 'understanding and expecting something that are based on rules that were set from a sample space of diiferent aspects could be absolutely wrong'.

If we move a step back and take a thinking pill we would understand that everyone of us have been there and done that. We expect something based on what we know and told upon. Even sometimes through our own experiences but there are several instances we witness that our expectation have not penetrated the complete sample space.... Sometimes we even comfortably sit back and say 'exceptions are not examples'....

Well to preach the least, I think it would be reasonable to say that it is ideal to use the knowledge that we have gained through pattern recognition and our own personal experiences. However, to extrapolate that to every set of conditions and call the ones that does not fall well with in the predicatable error limits, as abnormalities would be absolutely wrong. I don't think modeling human behavior with high predictability is an easy task to accomplish. Even if that is possible, I would rather stay away from that equation and enjoy the limitations of accepting and appreciating people the way they are!

I guess I am trying to say that Sky is Blue :)

Nothing

1981

Nothing in the world could have made me happier than the cream-and-red-plastic-duo, outsourcing noise to develop love and skills in peace and harmony.

1984

Nothing in the world could have stopped me from spending eternal hours of sheltered rubber and wood workouts rendering support to the search-and-extraction of the best from within.

1987

Nothing in the world could have been better than those few minutes of extended sunlight that would have led me to spend those unfinished businesses as priceless moments of glory.

1990

Nothing in the world could have hurt me more than that last sphere that was lost in the air to end the day of fun and frolic.

1993

Nothing in the world than you could have woken me up at those early Saturday hours to cycle all the way and do what I was doing as I was born to.

1996

Nothing in the world could have distracted me so much more than you from my devastating attempts of exploring my post high school educational adventures.

1999

Nothing in the world could have possibly even brought into the vicinity of the same feeling as holding a virgin to start the blissful few-hour celebration of pure passion.

2002

Nothing in the world could make me believe that there is one other thing than you that is holding my country of such diversity, together in such a tight union.

2005

Nothing in the world could have made me realize that winning in union is more powerful than just winning, and winning is not everything!

Now

Nothing, I repeat, nothing in any form has been with me all my time than you, and I am still searching for that one thing in the world that could possibly fill the voids you have created in my life now.

Cricket. I miss you!

Choices

Recently, I was in one of the situations where I had to make a decision from an available set of options. That situation actually magnified the positives and negatives of having two seemingly right options.

I think I am paraphrasing Rishi Kapoor (or Kunal Kohli) from Fana (Thanks for subtitles). “The choice isn't between good and evil. That's easy. The real choices of life are choosing between...the lesser of two evils, or the greater of two goods”. In a polarized environment I was thinking that I would not have anything to learn from a movie of that caliber…. A Hindi movie of all cases…?! Well, another lesson from the invisibility!

Unfortunately, most of the time, we are not in a planet where we can differentiate options as good and evil. It is possibly a no-brainer when you have to make an option between two choices that are right and wrong. However when it comes to two right (or wrong) options, your choice is all about your character. Again, calling it right or wrong is completely ones own personal perspective…!

But after going through such a state of mind, I can now say that it is definitely not easy to stay focused and believe in what you believe. Especially, with all these different levels of distractions that one is exposed to. But it is certainly achievable. The path that led to my decision sounds pretty simple but in reality it was not so. I laid down all the possible pros and cons of both options. I compared both and the better one of the two wins…! Ala la la la…! I wish it was that simple. The positives and negatives that I had were on a different plane of perception in a way that I could not possibly fathom. Segregating them was a totally different ball game that I did not step in to. Two right paths that would lead to two different destinations of similar caliber.

Well, one of the major factors that helped me pursuing in the direction that I am now, is the feeling called ‘regret’. I have never believed in the word “regret”, not for once I want to go through that in my life, as it would never let me appreciate the experience that I went through, the way I want to perceive. I stood back and asked myself if I would regret making the decision if I am going through the other one..! In one of the options that I had, there was a tinge of that feeling based on ethical arguments. However, the difficulty of the situation was on a standpoint of definitions of ethical guidelines and who is the author of those? Is that ruled by morals or predefined set of rules framed by someone that you have never seen or will never see in the future.

Well, let me not bore you with ‘what’s going on with my life’ post. The take home message from the experience I went through was this,

Taking a stand in your decision defines what you call for yourself as a character. While doing so there could be several distractions that would obstruct your decision pattern. Stick on to your fundamental feeling of righteousness and win the pride of doing the right thing, at least for your own self.

Update!

Folks...

Looks like time has showered some positivities across and hence I have renounced some of the tags that I possessed (or the ones possessed me) for a while! For instance, the “Student” and “no- time” tags. Now that I absolutely have only knowledge transfer and vacation to be pursued for the next few weeks….I thought I should get back and do what I like to do when am running short of things to do……Blogging is what I proclaim that as.

It’s been ages since I shared the air in the blogosphere…and it looks like the air is being polluted in the absence of personal consistency. I see a whole bunch of people writing personal diaries online …and randomly ctrl+c and ctrl+v forwards and pictures. .. and calling them blogs. …Well, let me not be judgmental here…all am here to say here is that the air that I shared in the sphere a few months ago has been modified in a way I cannot digest…! So here am trying to do the MJ thing by coming back…not as a Wizard …but as a Bull though!

Thanks for those who kept pushing to write more and visiting. See you all soon with more words!

Now what?!

Image source: Phdcomics

To a certain extent....this is why this space is not updated! ...yet!

Trying to Graduate!

Busy to blog?....Naa...Guess I'm Lazy...Will be back soon before graduation!

Thanks for visiting!

Mono or Di(e)alogue

Let me see if I can articulate what I am thinking now!

Is it possible to talk and make sure that we are not boring the other person by talking whatever we wanted to talk?

Did it come near to what I wanted to say…?

Naaa - not exactly….it's confusing!

Okay…once again!

Is there a faint possibility to talk and not bore the person that you are talking to!!

Now?

How about a ….NO!

Okay…last attempt!

Can I talk to anyone, whatever I want to talk, and can I do that in a way that I don't bore them?

Well! To hell with this!

Why don't I take a post to do this?…Okay..! here I go!

Everyday, there are quite a few instances…I have people talking to me for a while and all I can see is there mouth moving! Because, what they talk is no way related to my vicinity of interest, inclination, knowledge, affinity…or whatever it is. They would just talk and talk and talk without even paying attention to the fact that I am not listening to them!!

I used to scream….

"Oh God! Can't you instill some slightest amount of sense in to this people's brain cells? Can't you see that my responses are just smiles, sounds and start-and-end with just one-word most of the times!"

For once, God laughed the heavenly a** out and said "Try listening to yourself"!!

May be I sound like that to a lot of people! "HELL! YEAH!" ….a crowd shouted right behind me!!!

Good that I have that infinitesimal sense to acknowledge it.

"Could it be possible to change?" I asked myself…!

"Why don't you write a blog on it? May be you will follow atleast for the heck of it once you post it …" said the idealist in me!

A few sensible moments on anything would lead to decent way out of a tough situation.

What do we have here?

Target: Conversation

Constraints:

1. We need to make sure we don't bore the opponent (sometimes it could be a crowd)
2. We need to gain something out of it.

Every situation in this world is not a win-win kind. However, we can try our best and proceed to the maximum extent we can!

The solution here… obviously lies on the Topic of conversation!

The key to talk and not bore someone is to engage them on a topic of their own interest….! The most amazing thing about people around you is that the area of specialization and knowledge is markedly different from one soul to another. And the best part is that, to a certain extent it would overlap with yours, depending upon your versatility and tolerance limit….Well, in this case even if you are not knowledgeable on their interests, you would end up learning something from them…there you go…you gain something.

Now…am I missing something here….if I keep on talking about their interests…? What about mine? How in the world would I get to talk what I want to talk? I mean my interests my hobbies…my inclinations…affinities etc.

I have one word for you! Reciprocation!

Most of the people reciprocate when you listen to them. When you talk about their interests, find a way to connect to your passions, your interests. When you do so? It's easy for the other to respond and react to your affinities. Don't you think? Or am I missing something?

What about the people who don't reciprocate and not listen to your interests and talks? Well, you know what? They really don't know what they are missing! And after all you have gained something by listening to them…don't you think?

Life is simple! All you have to do is to acknowledge your likes and dislikes and practice it on others as well. Once you know how not to something that you dont want to see from others, its get beautiful!

And the next time I bore you…make sure that the sounds, one-word responses and "get the hell outta here" looks ….as obvious as you can!

Educate your way out

A few weeks ago I got to see an ABC episode on India rising, which is pretty old and popular in the blogosphere now. Though this episode had its own pluses and minuses, I liked it! Especially some parts where, the Sardar's response to the host's "Is India catching up?" question, and a don't-judge-the-book-by-its-cover person asking for an email address, so on and so forth! A patriot's view I guess!

The final few seconds of the show is what I was gripped upon.

"In India, education is worshiped…. and parents will skip meals to send them to private schools…."

How true!

A few years ago, a group of us had a discussion on this same issue. So, my connectivity-speed to those lines of thoughts was obvious and immeasurably fast.

To reiterate, in India, it is true that the middle/lower class families, in a way, skip meals to provide a reasonably high quality education to their kids. It is true that the reverence to education and educators are injected into each and every kid's brain from infancy. It is true that education is worshipped!

I was brought up that way! I saw and lived a life where people were sent to schools that were beyond their quality of lifestyle. Most of the time, the monetary struggle to make this happen was transparent that the responsibility automatically seeps in. At that age, with that brought up, the best thing that the kid can do is to educate their way out! The kid without his/her knowledge realizes this at a very early age. A single digit class rank is the most important thing in the world for almost every responsible student in the class. If parents skip meals, students skip fun, sometimes. As I said earlier here, there are a whole bunch of students who did not do what they wanted to do just to fit in this 'educate your way out' lifestyle.

Is this good? Are we in the right direction?....are the obvious questions that pop up. One of the dangerous byproducts of education is sensibility. Well, with exceptions apart, it's simple! Education breeds sensibility and in turn results in responsibility and growth in the right direction. So, a better educated society will proceed in a progressive direction much faster than the one which is less educated!

Presently, the society that we live in is afraid of being left uneducated! The spirit of competitiveness is so strong that we are just doing what we are supposed to do without thinking about what we deserve! "Once you start thinking what you deserve you become soft - Greg Popovich". Do what you are supposed to do and do that in style, what you supposed to get will automatically fall in! I am not talking Karma theory here…! What I am trying to say is to stop cribbing and start living!

This argument may have a completely different perception if you take the reservation issues into consideration, which I don't want to delve in to. Nevertheless, we are going great guns on the first step! Educate yourself first to start fighting the next step…!

As I said earlier, lot of people did not have the luxury to do what they want to do to fit in and live a life devoid of mediocrity. We have loads of Sachin's and A.R.Rehmans living a mediocre lifestyle instead of taking the road that's less taken! But education and the fear of it in this generation is a beautiful progression that's going to lead the next to take the leap in what they don't call as just survival. From there may be we can see our way out and talk about other plausible deficiencies, if any.

Hilarious!

How I wish I could!

How I wish!

Dance like none is watching you

"Teach me dancing?" He was in his late 40's, "I have never been a dancer in my life and for some reason it is tougher than getting a PhD. Would you help me sometime?", and did sound sincere.

Two mistakes, I thought. Phd is not tough and I don't dance.

"I just flex something based on the beats, if you call that dancing, you must be kidding", it was something that I know….What I do, cannot be termed as dancing.

"Yeah that's what I call as free style", he said. "Teach me that! Not the steps….Teach me how to loose your mind to the beats"

I still don't know if he was serious or sarcastic. Well, coming to think of it (I don't know if I was doing it the way he thought) but it's not easy to dance that way, especially when you are in a place where you get the feeling that there are a bunch of eyes looking at you. Particularly the mistakes!...Nevertheless, when you lose your mind to the beats and let your body react to it, the product could some times be termed as dancing, for atleast a few in your vicinity!

Dance like none is watching you, lose your mind to the spirit of music and care less on the world that's attempting to see what you have in your moves!

If you are a frequent visitor here, you must have guessed where am going with this.

Life!

The whole "dance like none is watching you" thing goes with our life as well. Recently, a close friend of mine said that her blogs, to an extent, were turning out to be readership based. She had to fight and throw those thoughts that popped up to say "What would so and so think if I write something like that". Well, of course she won those fights. But sometimes most of us lose those without even knowing that there is a fight to be fought. I mean in our lives.

We tend to change our ways of acting, reacting and living for trivial reasons. "What would the world think if I do something like this" is the question that we ask quite a few times every day. The world could be a single person or even a group of people. Sometimes these are the people that we know and most of the other times these are the people that we don't know. And as a matter of fact we quite often even answer them, without our knowledge, by merely reacting to those questions.

The world has too many things to think about and we are certainly not in its priority list. But for us, it's quite different. Sometimes we unfortunately set high priority to the world around us and forget to live our own life. We fail to realize that we are taking those decisions assuming it really matters to the world around. But as I said before, the world has too many things to think about and you are certainly not in its priority list.

To a certain extent, I can agree on improvising our acts for one person or for a bigger act, which has a proportional response to a group. Note that, I use the word improvising here and not changing. In the former case, we do it for Love/affection/concern. In the latter case, we do it for the people who would be directly affected because of our acts. In both cases, it's a privilege. So, the changes that we offer to make to our ways of acting, reacting and living are certainly a privilege that we should give to only the chosen few. If one starts to think of changing what he/she wants to do to every Tom, Ram and Som, we would be losing something that's termed as "individuality".

Is it easy? Certainly not! I have been trying this, but have succeeded only to a certain extent. So, yes, it is tough to follow, but if we do, we would enjoy even the regrets.

Trust me! We would be happier if we do what we want to do rather than thinking about other's thought process on our actions.

Well, someone already said this in a much better way "Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony" Can you guess who this is? Hint: Everyone knows Him.

Idealist Vs Pseudo realist

An excerpt from a conversation between an Idealist (I) and a Pseudo Realist (PR)….


Idealist Vs Pseudo Realist
Image source: modified.

I: Love is in the air

PR: Yeah I can smell it! Did u flush?

I: You are fooling yourself

PR: Well, am I? Enlighten me!

I: Love is everywhere. Love doesn't need language, culture, country etc. Without Love there is no human existence.

PR: Where did u pick these lines from? Each and every thing you just said goes well with Sex as well.

I: You can never live with your own self for the rest of your life. You definitely need some one to reflect yourself to, at the least.

PR: Yeah. Okay! Where does love come here?

I: You aren't enjoying the beauty of this world by being single.

PR: Well, singleness and sickness are two different things that people sometimes confuse themselves with.

I: Fall in love you will know the difference

PR: I will, if you tell me what love is?

I: Love is like god. Incomprehensible yet experiencable, Intangible yet achievable, unexplainable yet agreeable!

PR: Wait… wait… wait! You mean to say one can't understand it, but can just feel it.

I: Precisely.

PR: How typical? So you are advocating something that you don't understand?

I: Yes. That's the beauty of it.

PR: What's your name and where are you from?

I: Idealist and I' m from the inside of you.

PR: Just stay there.

I: Come on. At least wish people! You don't have to be in Love to wish people on the day they celebrate love.

PR: Thanks for pointing it out. I'm neither a fan of St.Valentine nor a lover of Roman or whatever traditions. So I will stay put. It's just another day.

I: Forget Love, celebrate people at least.

PR: Okay! If this is the only way to send you back in. May be for the people who believe in all these! I am sure they will have a great day! Because and only because they believe in it and I believe in them.

Decisions after school

"Students have unenviable task in hand as examination nears"

Public examinations! Standard XII

Couldn’t resist walking down the memory lane to revisit some of the most important decisions!

Regardless of the maturity level, or knowledge, the decision that you take-in at the end of your final year of schooling (or may be even by the tenth grade itself) sort of defines the rest of your life. Some of us have the guts to change the course of action completely even years after the so-called life-time decision was taken. Some of us just branch out and do what we like to do with just a few changes, sticking on to the same field of expertise with the fear of not losing the few years that you had spend in learning something. The rest of us like me, stick on to the thing that started to do, then.

1996- I was given the freedom to choose what I want to do……well, not literally!

“Barath, what you want to do is up to you. You have two options in Engineering now, Chemical or Computer sciences, which one is yours?”

I remember reading a similar kind of a conversation in one of those blogs talking about collegiate education. Whatsoever! This is reality. I was given the freedom to choose one of the two that they short listed from the gazillion ways of living…! Not that I was forced in to this completly without my knowledge....nevertheless my knowledge was less then.

To my parents, the world was so easy then. The options were very simple. All they wanted me to have is a professional degree! The professional degree at that time, for a typical middle-class family, starts with a MBBS degree and ends with an Engineering one with none between them. In my case, there was a little consideration on Architecture, based on my drawing skills. Nevertheless, I was too lazy to write a separate entrance examination and that displayed my motivation to find the Howard Roark in me!

Anyways, the options that they gave me, sure does sound like I was a born engineer or at least a brought-up one. In reality, I was a born slacker and a brought-up idealist. Like most of us, I was good in a lot of things. I am not sure if engineering was one of them, because I never knew what it was, then. So, I still can’t comprehend the reason behind their thought of me being an Engineer. Call me slow, but in 1996 my decision making capabilities were solely parental and peer pressured….well let me digress from the autobiography!

There are quite a few things that we wanted to do in life. For some of us, it keeps changing, as we progressively learn new things. We like adapting and deriving love to the new-found infatuations and misinterpret those as things that we want to do for the rest of our time. Say, your new found love to sport, dance, a music instrument, reading, reviewing, writing etc. We do the same thing to career as well. Sometimes, half the way we realize that we are in the field that’s not ours and we trace back and go to interest motivated areas. Sometimes we keep doing it more than once, like dating a whole bunch of people until you get to find the love of your life.

It would be idealistic a case if every one of us knows what we want to do for the rest of our life at the age of 17. Most of us are not exposed to the interest derived areas, but are to the purpose derived ones. Just because a parent wants to tell that their son or daughter is an engineer or a doc, doesn’t mean the offspring should be forced to do that. External force is there from the age 15, when they get to choose their group, a math and science with computers or the one with biology. (that sure does sound like an engineer, considering biology less of a science compared to phys and chem) Do we have more groups? Oh.. may be commerce. That’s it. Well, some of us are not even exposed to the options. What the heck happened to art, fashion design, film education et al? It’s certainly not because of the educational institutions but the institutional families that pressure them.

The pressures are sometimes not just from the peers, it could be of any type. Birth may be. How many hereditary doctors do we get to see everyday? Family of engineers! Or may be even actors/actresses now! People sometimes choose their profession, just because their parents were successful in that.

Well, stop for a moment! Let’s see from the parent's perception. Of course the parents are equally concerned on not forcing the kids to take a wrong decision. They are knowledgeable on their age and the exposure. So, when there is a time that the kid needs to take a decision and when they feel that the kid is not matured enough to decide. They take the step for you. Beautifully balanced and amazingly bullet proofed, because their decisions are sometimes based on the successful clan of the then-current era. If they hear success stories on Engineers and doctors only, they will obviously be forced to surrender to their derived urges. On the other hand if they hear only sorry stories of people in the areas that their kids assume to be interested in. They would never want to step in and gamble. After all, we are talking about a life and career here. Hence, most of the people who get to choose a career through parental pressures are in a group that is successfully living or at least thinking so. Doesn’t matter you love it or not because most of the time we quantify success by monetary outputs, rather than personal satisfaction.

There is a big difference between doing something you love to do and trying to love something that you get to do. I was lucky, or may be smart to understand and to have found my love in what I am working on. But lots of people aren’t like that. They would be, if they had taken the right decisions at the age when they were not educated to do. Well, as I said it’s too idealistic a case, you cannot make the right decisions when the knowledge is less. Well, if you let me go back and make those decisions again, may be I want to be counselor or a people-analyst instead of a chemical engineer. Nevertheless, if I get to this same position, where I am now via that parallel universe…may be in that universe, Iam writing a blog that’s saying otherwise.

At ~17 you can’t expect every one of us to be the knowledgeable about the future interests. I know a lot of people who started somewhere and ended somewhere else. The decisions that are made for them did not materialize and hence they moved on.

But if you think more, it’s just not about doing what you love to do or trying to love what you do, it’s about how do you define your love to it. You don’t love something, just because you are successful in it. A beggar is a typical example of that statement. You love something, because you enjoy doing it and because it makes you appreciate and reinvent yourself in all possible ways. Again, as I said earlier, success is not defined by the amount of money you get out of it. It is by the unquantifiable satisfaction you derive out of it.

Had Ramesh and Savitai Tendulkar forced Sachin to take up engineering or something else at his age of debut, do you think we would be watching Indian cricket with this unquantifiable passion? I don’t know about you, but I’m skeptical on the unquantifiable part.

Acclimatization

Apologies for not being able to share the air in the blogosphere for a while. Work has been keeping me busy off late. In any case, better late than never!

Acclimatization! (process of adapting oneself to a new temperature, altitude, climate, environment, or situation)

May be I shouldn't use this word here, as in more cases it just signifies the physical changes that one should get used to rather than the cultural differences. Nevertheless, I liked it, so here I go!

For the past few weeks, I have been thinking about the acclimatization issues that one had to go through in the process of finding peace and harmony, along with monetary pleasures, across borders. One of my friends is going thro' it as we speak. May be that prompted me to write this. Anyways, when I decided to go thro this acclimatization path, years ago, it was not as difficult as I thought it would be. May be I was exposed to the western culture through friends, books, movies etc., and hence no shocks awaited me. Ofcourse, there was a great deal of things that I didn't know. From where I was to where I am now, I should say it's been fun learning and understanding this style of living.

Certainly it would have been much tougher than what it was, if I was not exposed to a lot of things prior to coming here. However, if one has an open-mind and the willingness to learn, I guess anything would be easy.

As I said earlier, learning different cultures and lifestyles is always fun, but,

Do you have the time to learn it?

How important is that to your life?

Most of us want these questions to be answered before even attempting to learn.

From a common person's perspective (not an idealist), if one's chances of working with something is 0%, why waste time in learning it? This theory is sometimes extended to people and culture as well. That's the very reason why most of us don't know a lot about Somalian lifestyle except for the obvious fact that they starve. Who cares? As long am able to help them and do my bit in stopping the starvation am good. This thought certainly beautifies pragmatism, but blocks people comprehension. By this, I mean that some of us don't even attempt to understand some things, just because it appears to be of no direct use to your way of life. But if you think, you would agree that most of the life-lessons that one learn in their time would most probably be from an unexpected source.

Well, I am not suggesting that one should have to learn all kinds of cultures and lifestyles before death, regardless of their connection to it. What I am trying to say here is that one needs to have an open-mind in learning everything, including people/culture/lifestyle.

Confronting ignorance is the best way to start learning. Understand the fact that we don't know a lot about the place, which makes it easier to acclimatize.

People, cultures, lifestyles are like Time. There are no constraints in learning them and it's almost impossible to know it all completely. Unlike Love, Acclimatization gets easier with understanding. The best part about this is that you learn from what you see and understand, not just by assumptions and imaginations. Hence, I guess acclimatization is probably one of the best things that one had to go through in life, so why wait for it?

Media - Credibility

This is not a political article

It is almost impossible for me to start work without updating myself with what's going around. News! Every one of us is so used to reading something that entertains our quest for knowledge. It varies as we grow up! I still remember the days when I wake up and go directly to the sports section in "The Hindu" even before sipping my first morning coffee and would finish the whole paper with just a glimpse on other sections. And it changes as we progress. We include entertainment, national politics, international relationships, book reviews so on and so forth. But we almost never think on the credibility of the information that we read and share.

Well, credibility is not a big deal when it comes to perceptional articles. A book review, a movie review, a sports column (except for the statistical information) etc are all perceptional articles. But when it comes to information transfer with or without a mere thought transfer, credibility is the most important concept that sometimes we fail to recognize. We just believe, blindfolded by the reputation of the source.

Dramatization and hype brings in money for newspapers as well as other information portals. I'm sure that Aamir Khan's 2nd wedding had more hits than Narayana Murthy's blasts on the corrupt politicians today in Rediff. I wouldn't blame Rediff for that. Its just readership! I still remember this on the e-magazine that we started for the Indian community here in Cookeville. A column on the local gossips was more popular than the other sensible sections. We, as the editors of that magazine, took a while to take that section off, until we gained some readership. What entertains one doesn't necessarily have to entertain other. Readership is an important issue that cannot be understood until we are in to that business. So, as of now, I don't understand the general readership, as chemical engineering doesn't offer me that chance. But the most important thing is honesty. The readers should get information that is credible. Regardless of what section it is. Entertainment, business, sports or anything for that matter!

Now, what made me write this article is a small incident that disturbed my respectful thoughts on the magazine journalism! Let me be concise!

I think it was during the 1991 state assembly elections in Tamilnadu. My mother's school was one of the election booths. The counting was over and Dr.Jayalalitha, the present chief minister of the state, had won the elections by a huge margin. Days after the election, my mom, to my father, handed over a ballot paper that she found in her class room. The ballot paper was valid and a vote was casted to the obvious rival of the winner. Now, from what I overheard then, I may be wrong as well, according to the constitution, an incident like that could even push to an extent of canceling the results and order another round of election in the same constituency. My father couldn't think of going to the police without enough knowledge on the political influence that could change the course of action. So, after some shrewd thinking (!) he and his friends contacted a local political Tamil magazine, Nakeeran, and consulted the issue. The next week Nakeeran's issue had this ballot paper as its title cover, and the story explained that they found this ballot paper in one of the Minister's, Mr.S.D.Somasundarm, garden. I was shocked to read this. Yes, of course my parents would be concerned in publishing the sources, so may be they had some constraints on that. Nevertheless, how can someone write something that's totally not connected to the truth? As I said, dramatization! That helped! What did the magazine earned out of this? A huge increase in the circulation number, at the expense of masking the truth! We can argue on the already tarnished image of the minister. Or the ways the journalist fight to display truth that cannot be revealed. All that is fine! But how someone like me would ever believe a magazine from that instance. I understand that we cannot talk/write truth all the times, but a lie would always be a lie no matter what good or what bad it does.

It's even worse with the advent of online media. Blogs and all! People talk about plagiarism on one side, credibility of the information on the other. Well from what I see, if we are married to online media, spend some time before you give birth to trust. Not just based on reputation but on consistency and confirmation! Media is powerful, so is knowledge. As Uncle Ben says in the First of the Spidy series, with great power comes great responsibility, when you think you acquire power through a powerful source, make sure you know that it is the truth and not a perception! If you can't, just don't trust. Accumulate it as just knowledge with a tinge of skeptical illusion before conclusion!

Thanks and Sorry

Probably the first thing that someone who just steps in to my unexpendable acquaintance circle (from what I see, there is no word called 'inexpendable' correct me if am wrong) of friends knows is that I hate 'apologies and thanks' from them.

May be I should address it now.

Common courtesies are very important as you breathe your way out. A small act of appreciation or acknowledgement makes a world of difference to a lot of people. When you get to do a favor and in response you hear a 'thanks', it makes you feel good. Certainly! It does motivate you to help people more. So it is, when it comes to apologies! If there is a situation that warrants an apology, it amazingly makes you feel a little better than it is when left unsaid...

From my perspective, when I thought of these things a little deeper, I understood that it goes well only with macroscopic personalities. I feel completely connected to these common courtesies only with people like my boss, my colleagues, bearers or any new stranger for that matter. But, when it comes to someone I know well, say beyond my unexpendable acquaintance circle, I feel disconnected. I feel awful to hear those 'thanks and apologies' from the people I am connected to, even with slightest possible emotional way.

Now, how would they know that I don't like it? I scream! I try to script it in to their brain cells and make sure that I hate to hear those from them, and also try and make them understand not to expect them from me. I don't know for sure, but it appears to me that most of the people that I know, take this as a compliment, that me 'not expecting a thanks and apologies' and vice versa. Or atleast I will make sure it is something that I expect and give with only a few people. I may sound a little 'attitude'ious, but nevertheless I need to complete the thought transfer.

I don't want to take anything away from the best parts of common courtesies. As I said earlier, being courteous is very important. But, with whom and to what extent is the question. When I looked up Merriam-Webster for the synonyms of courteous it gave me 'marked by respect for and consideration of others'. A sensible human being behaves with respect and consideration to his/her fellow beings. Yes! completely understandable! But when you term someone as your friend haven't you already had those inscribed! The level of consideration and respect increases as we aggregate in to a relationship. Especially, with something involves your true self. So as we propagate towards something like that, don't you want to differentiate it from what we do with common people? The acts of consideration and respect with friends is not by thanking or apologizing to them, is by understanding and relating to them.

Years ago, I was surviving through a viral fever week. I was so weak and was not even able to stand-up. No source of energy was fed in, what I ate was out in a jiffy through the same way. Sweet mother was trying to get rid of it, by forcing some energy in to me through food. As I said, she failed, I messed up the place and I saw her cleaning it. Helplessly, I couldn't do a thing. I said 'I am sorry ma'. And obviously, the response was in a burning look which said it all. I messed up more with those words than by my intestine reaction. That's the last time, I apologized/thanked her for something trivial.

If you hate to hear/say thanks and apologies to your family now and then, so it is with friends and other important people!

Relationships are beautiful, straining and strengthening it is in your own way of handling. There are 'no duties' and nothing like 'I am supposed to do this' when it comes to relationships. There is no reason behind whatever we do for friends and other important people. We just do it. No expectations and no measuring gauges. Because for some reason, it makes you feel good when you do the right thing, by being there for someone when they need you. It's a privilege you give to those kinds of relationships. And according to me, thanking and apologizing, mocks the importance that I give to those relationships!

'Thanks and Sorry' - I was thinking if I should delete those words from the dictionary of friends or place it marked 'should be used at extreme conditions'. I opted for the latter. So, according to me, Thanks and Apologies are marked as the ones with high power. Never use it with friends!

If (u.eq.friend) then
thanks.and.sorry = sin
end (not endif)

'Love' from a Kodak moment - WY4 - Part 2

Part 1 is here

As days progressed, we understood each other and started to spend time more and more with each other as we finally approached the big stage called Marriage.

Man it sounds great. I wish it was like this. But as you all can guess it was not. I was getting Romeoer day by day, doing stupid things with the motorcycle, sunglasses et al.

One fine day, Mr.Bob, my beloved pop, stopped by my street-cricket stint and told me to get in his transportation device that he calls a scooter. We went towards an unknown destination, as I was enjoying it because the path was towards her house. Within the proximity of her apartment, dad stopped his vehicle and asked me "Where is her apartment?"

"Who?" with a suddenly-developed puzzled look.

"Don't act. You know who am talking about. Priyanka!" he said.

As I realized how my beloved friends, who were there at my house last evening, found their way to appreciate the veg briyani that they had in my place, I said, "Here is her apartment. Don't worry I am not serious or anything, it's just for fun"

"I know, still I wanted to know how she looks like" he was curious and led me to spend our rest of the 10 min journey eventfully describing her, the way I saw her...yes to my dad.

Hence everyone in my family knew about her and also understood that I was not serious and I was in love. Yet again. Whatsoever, they were curious to see her.

Few days later, a pretty close family friend of ours, who lived downstairs, planned to have a Salwar exhibition opposite to my house. Naturally the billing section was few feet way from where I eat everyday. As I said already, Salwars and Dhuppatas means the world to Priyanka as well as her friends, henceforth the laws of attraction prevailed. I knew she was going to be there. Unfortunately, my whole family as well as the friends knew this. She came. She conquered. I pointed who she is from a distance, and left the place without being able to bear each one of my acquaintances walking close by and having a good look at her. It was funny to witness that. The point is that my family was approved by the way she looked and was assuming that it was important to me.

Days passed by, I grew up, went to college, found new interests. As I said, she became a part of my pastence....not history yet!

One day, as usual, I made a new friend over the train journey from Madras to Chidambaram. Needless to say, it was a She. Like I always do, I made the world smaller, and found that she knew Priyanka. I spoke to this girl as if I knew Priyanka, and the rest of the night was spent with the clan trying to explore more and more of each other.

A week later, I saw this girl again in the train. This time she was with a surprise. She said she spoke to Priyanka, and apparently she claimed to know me. For a guy who was assuming to have taken a rogue role in her life, she claiming to know me is a big thing.

"I spoke about you to Priyanka. She seem to know you from somewhere, she said that you are a nice guy. Just that you were caught in a Bad gang" is what she said.

The first thing that came to my mind was my folks. That weekend I got back to rip their lives apart. "Guys, see what's the result of us being naughty and unruly. If not for you guys, may be she would have considered me. It's all in the game, I was not serious and right now I am busy with other interests anyways. But remember I won't forget this…and I know what to do when I am serious with anyone down the line" which is the most seriously funny thing I have ever told to these folks.

Days passed by, Guna was waiting over the weekend. I still don't remember that if I heard this thro Guna or someone-else. Whatsoever, the essence of the story was in there.

"Dei, how do you think that she know your name?", he asked

"May be one of you guys shouted when she was around! Comeon da! We have our own way of finding the girls name we are interested in. May be she had her way of finding the folk's name who was interested in her. How does it matter anyway?", I said.

"Apparently, the guy she was talking about is not you!" he said as I was not surprised. "Remember, my friend Bharath, who hung out with us the other day, it was him she was talking about. She met him a coupla days ago and he found that apparently 'he had claimed to her friend in a train that he knew Priyanka'" - Oops! That was me - "And did you know who the bad gang was? Us As you always claim…the clan reflects the leadership….so do you understand the repercussions of staying in excited state for life"

I was dumbfounded. …Man I am the self-proclaimed leader, as every one of us, of this bad gang…am not even in the vicinity of being in her good books at the least! I was assuming that she thought I was put up with a bad gang ….but now it's needless to stay …that am Bad gang…the next thing was that we were rolling on the floor and laughing at this….. Celebration started…drinks all over….we all went to the bunk shop to drink the infamous "Rs.1.50 Rasna" that comes with a tag line that we stole from Pepsi "nothing official about it"

We were drinking and discussing how bad we are and how we can improve and get worser! Momentarily, I heard the sweetest voice asking for some thing in the bunk shop. Without my knowledge my jaw dropped...I turned around …and looked in to her…The voice, the eyes, the looks…for the 54th time in my life, I claimed that "I am in love for the first time".

'Love' from a Kodak moment - WY4 - Part 1

Time for some walk down the memory lane…after a series of seemingly serious posts, I thought I should take a break and post something less read-worthy but remember-worthy!

As I claimed before, somewhere in one of my previous posts, I have fallen in love quite a few times. Well, with respect to love, I am not even close to Forrest Gump, because I safely would say that I don't know what Love is. But sure I loved to tell that 'I am in love', without knowing what it is. Yes! That's what I did quite a few times, and this is one of those! Good gods, that it stayed with me and didn't take that humongous amplification, unlike some stupidities, and push me to tell it to those people involved.

For some reason, throughout my life the girls that I come across with the name Priyanka were all on the best looking category. It started from the one that I have been trying to forget but couldn't do so! And henceforth the flashback begins…

Statutory warning: There is no message at the end of this misery called a series of comical sequences in the life of yours truly.

"Dude, I have nothing to do for the next few hours? Do you want to go to the Marina beach?" Guna tried to make it sound as an unusual remark to overcome a fact that we are always jobless.

"Yeah! Let's go there! I know that one of my friends is coming there today with a couple of her friends…! Dude! She is so damn pretty da…quite lately I have been thinking of falling in love with her!" said Santhosh, indicating the motivation factors to step in and start our walk towards the coast.

In a jiffy we were along the coastlines of the Marina, trying to find the three seemingly good-looking girls. After quite a while, looking for them all along the second largest beach in the world, we found them near the waves. We were a group of six notorious young "wannabe" men, at least we thought so. So, everyone around was looking at us for the reasons that we did not want to know. But all we wanted was that one look from her and she did. "Cloud 9!" I screamed within myself!

After few following stints, it started to get monotonous. As for me, I did not find her particularly attractive. She was good. But nothing in her shook me, the way I wanted to be. So I was trying to find someone else to entertain my late-teen self for the rest of the evening, so was the other four with me…. all of a sudden…something stuck us…we thought of using the camera we had ….and may be get a good picture of her.... so she lasts longer than she would!

Now, who is going to take it…and it's important that we need to get a good closer shot…tough job indeed…. and henceforth we needed a scapegoat …someone who doesn't think about the world, rather at that time world is just those girls, or someone for whom it doesn't matter…. well we had one guy who was a perfect fit…and he was the volunteered one…Hemanand…. We went closer….

We stayed a few steps away…and he approached…as he heard the three girls were talking bout what means a world to them, the color combinations on their dhuppatas!! He stepped in closer…jus 3-4 ft distance … with the camera in the right place for the snap….

I don't know if it's the movies or in reality, a beautiful girl always hangs out with a couple of below average ones (dochus) and always stay in the right position! Not that I want to make statement about the other two, but even in this case, she was hanging out with them and sitting exactly in the middle as the side fiddles talking as I said what meant the world to them. She was in the perfect position as if she knew that we were going to take a picture.

"Excuse me" he screamed, the moment they looked at him. Clicked it. Thanked them. Swooshed in 2 seconds.

Obviously the Paprazism doesn't happen to them quite often, hence they were perturbed. They picked all their stuff and started to follow him, as he started running. We all did not know how to react and hence scattered all around the beach. This is not something that we all wanted to do, but something excited us and we followed the gut feeling that turned in to partial guilt. We ran all over the place, and finally finished the evening, meeting back at our usual joint near my place.

After an argument of developing/exposing it…we finally agreed on seeing how it came out to be….right away we paid our visit to the studio.

Few days passed by as we started to forget what happened. One fine evening, Santhosh stopped by to show us those pictures.

The picture was not perfect! But she was! For the 37th time in my life, I claimed that 'I am in love for the first time'. She was ravishingly beautiful, much better than how I saw her in person. But then, Santhosh was interested in her, henceforth as a sacrificial anode, I had to control my emotions that were overflowing.

Days passed by, Santhosh found a new interest. Never told me why he found a quitter in himself. I was more jobless…So I planned to cement my Love. I was exactly like those road side Romeos that you get to see in Tamil movies, making fun of people around me, trying to get her attention in all possible ways. And the fact that she was living a few streets away from me helped to stay within her spectrum of vision and thoughts. Finally, she knew me for all possible reasons that I don't want to know.

As a matter of fact, I asked her once if she needs a ride back home from her software center, where she was waiting on something. She smiled, which by the way shook me the way I wanted to be, and said that she would some other day as she is expecting someone to pick her up that day. I know it sounds stupid now, but then it was bliss then. She smiled!

Part 2 is here

Reputation

I know I have ruined my reputation of regularity in the blogosphere, but couldnt help because of the priority issues. Research and other stuff held the spectrum of my thoughts strictly within the limits of Chemical Engineering and surroundings. Here I am using the few moments I have to try and rebuild my reputation!

The 48 laws of Power byRobert Greene is a book thats hard to digest as well as forget. I guess I was in my 3rd year Engineering when I stumbled upon this. All the 48 laws definetlyworth a read, but I am going to stick on to the one which was occupying my mind for a while now.

Law 5

So Much Depends on Reputation Guard it with your Life

Reputation is the cornerstone of power. Through reputation alone you can intimidate and win; once you slip, however, you are vulnerable, and will be attacked on all sides. Make your reputation unassailable. Always be alert to potential attacks and thwart them before they happen. Meanwhile, learn to destroy your enemies by opening holes in their own reputations. Then stand aside and let public opinion hang them

My agreement with this is just partial. When it comes to power, may be the above law holds true, but for the day-to-day existence and character development its not entirely true. Reputation is something thats developed on a slower basis, especially a good one, while it takes just an instance to spoil it.

Bad reputation:The strength of the reputation is an important factor. For example, the amount of time that would take a common man/woman to believe a new made-up infidelity issue onGeorge Bush and Bill Clinton going to be phenomenally different. The person would believe the Clinton issue much faster than the Bush issue. This is truly because of the reputation the latter possess.

Good reputation: From the sports perspective, take the final seconds of a 90s Bulls basket ball game for instance.The amount of concentration that Michael Jordan would attract just because of his reputation of winning those kinds of games is way beyond the rules of normality.

Well, least said. Reputation is important and guarding it is even more.

Now whats the effect?

Does reputation control the thought process? Yes it does and its important in its own way.

Let me talk from my standpoint, in a room if there is a hot discussion on some topic of common interest, a familiar crowd would feel disturbed if there is no noise from my side. Be it sense or not, an opinion is what people expect from yours truly.Most of the time someway or the other I get to talk less non-sense before the gibberish, but sometimes I have to fight the thought process that urges me to talk something, instead of the best sensible thing that I would come up with a little more time. Fortunately, I was able to win most of my own fights, thought it might not appear so.

Again, from the sports perspective, how many times have we seen high-caliber players succumb to their own reputation-pressure? Sometimes, I am a match-winner thought and I need to win this thing, comes to the mind more than strategizing the victory pattern. Finally, ending up in losing it due to the own pressure. MJ for instance have lost more games than he has won with his last minute antics. But the amount of effort and time that someone with a good reputation spends on safe guarding cannot be quantified. Anyways, let me not attract the ESPN crowd here.

Does the possibility of the rejecting reputation and being ourselves exist?

I guess it does.

If you think a little bit, you would understand that reputation is a derived quantity. Its not necessarily true. Most of the times we dont even know what our reputation is with the concerned people. After all, each one of us is not Michael or Bill. So, whats the point in controlling your thought process, in instances where you dont even know about your reputation? Dont you think that its more of a burden? Try to throw it and act like yourself. I am sure you will definitely appreciate the freedom you get in the thought process. If we can do this with expendable acquaintances, we can do it with everyone else? How tough is this? Trust meon this, its not easy. But once you figure out a pattern to do this and realize that

Your reputation is in the hands of others. That's what a reputation is. You can't control that. The only thing you can control is your character. --Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

Its an amazing ride from then on. People tend to take slow or fast steps in attempting to understand you based on your reputation, but its your character that makes them stay with you longer or shorter. May be we should try and remember that when we walk through our decisions.

Well, will I get any perks for flaunting my weakness today!?

May be the perk would be learning how not to consider it as a weakness anymore.

Anyways, I am talking about my ‘No’-disability! For some reason, ‘No’ was one of the most difficult words for me to pronounce. So most of the time, I opt to skip it and use the easy ‘Yes’ instead. Have I landed in to any problems because of this? Yes, a whole bunch of it, but as I say here, it was all temporary and was never a part of my worry set. My worry set will always include simple things like procrastinating a research assignment or dinner for that matter. So, its just trivial things I worry about, and in most cases, the bigger things are never even considered as a problem in the first place.

There is not a single instant I have said a ‘yes’, when I get this smallest speck of thought on the consequences, which could be huge, but at the same time, it takes an eternity for me to tell a ‘No’ there, even when it is quite obvious from the first instant.

This could have been in one of Wonder Years story, but I guess it would be a great example to deliver my No-disability. I will try and make this short to make life easy for you. Anyways, this happened in the year 2002, I knew this American couple from one of my leadership adventures with the Indian association here. And the couple was not just a normal couple, instead they were living together..... and they also had a kid. Everything is fine, except for the fact that both of them were girls. And the kid was a result of their association with a donor (if you know what I mean). I did not know about this, until I knew them pretty well. Well, doesn’t matter, I don’t discriminate people based on their sexual apparatus, so I was myself as always.

Few months down the lane, an electronic shocker was sitting inbox, in the form of a request. They asked me if I was broad minded. As usual, I lied, I said “Yes”. The next email was something that I should have sent to my ancestors, to show the respect that someone from the western culture had on our cultural values and family traditions! The logical theory was at its best, I knew there has to be unbearable request attached to the much hyped email about India and Indian families. Yes there was! Poor scientists are still not able to figure out a direct way to make babies from the same-sex marriage. So the only option they had was to ask a donor, and since they were in love with the Indian tradition, they asked for it to yours truly. And my response was

I am honored beyond words. I know that this is a big decision for you, and so it is for me. Its going to take a little while before I tell you my decision,but for that I need to know more about what you exactly have in mind…..

A simple “No” would have ended the whole issue then and there. Instead I prolonged it for a while and finally after a bunch of hiccups I had to tell it in a different way. Diplomacy helped, but why was the delay in the telling the obvious NO with much contemplation on how to convey it.

When we say a ‘NO’, we feel like we are letting the other person down if we say it. We feel GUILTY even before we respond! So there we go, a Yes instead of a No. Or sometimes a prolonged NO.

What do we do? How do we get rid of this thing? Is there a way to do it? The only way to do it is to be insensitive? Or could diplomacy help?

Well, my niece, almost 3 years old, thinks for 0.0123 secs before responding with a No. May be that kind of a little knowledge on people’s sensitivites would help!?

Its easy to respond with a No for someone who is trying to sell a crappy T-shirt across the street. But it is not easy to tell a No to some friend who is asking you do something during the busiest span at work. Even just the considerations of sensitivity factors would hinder the No answers.

Or it’s the bond with the consequences of the “Yes”. For example, my friend would never let anyone touch his most priced possesion. Ofcourse that’s his bike (motorcycle). He just hates to see any of the freaky technical changes that he claims to happen when someone else other than him uses it.

Atleast from the professional side, may be we can do this, Practice. Think before we answer. Think about the requests, whether they're for our time, energy, money, or something else? How does it feel to say yes? How does it feel to say no? Which feels better? And when we say it, we should do it with grace – a matter of truth. If you can, refer them to someone else who can help them or show them how to do it for themselves.

Initially, apologies, excuses and guilt would be a part of it. But practice would demolish it. And people will start accepting the fact that we don’t yes all the time. Saying No to things that we don’t want helps us in a lot of ways and gives us loads of time to say yes to things that we want to do.

How to do this to our personal side of life? Teach me! If we can deal our personal side and the professional side in similar ways, may be it will be easy. But as for me that isn’t life. May be the inability of the “No” is what binds people together in the personal life. So on the personal side may be we opt to say 'yes' and stay with minor troubles for major happiness.

PS: Don’t tell me to read Don't Say Yes When You Want to Say No: Making Life Right When It Feels All Wrong by Herbert Phd Fensterheim, Jean Baer. I have been trying to find the book and time together for a long time now.