Ugly, but Bearable

Good News! OR A blog about a tweet about a Google Reader post

2011-10-28T00:22:00.000+05:30

A long time ago, a year and a week, to be precise, I posted the following tweet:

OK after talking to @beardedbrain (and@rhymedpeanuts) I think if I ever get married I shall notify people on Google Reader.Just because.

Ladies and gentlemen, consider me a man of my word. I'm getting married next April! The exact dates and other details are still being finalized, but what with Google considering removing the social features in Reader sometime soon, I figured I'd drop a note now.

That's pretty much all I'm willing to divulge on a public blog for now, but I can promise those of you that I know personally that I will be in touch soon via phone and/or email with more details. For the rest of you, um, thanks for reading, but I'm kind of private about stuff like this, y'know? I hope you understand.

And now, we return you to our regular programming...

First comes dictatorship, then comes marriage...

2010-12-23T01:39:00.005+05:30

Having hit the age of 28 a few weeks ago, I have now crossed that stage where my parents (and various other relatives and family friends) keep asking me when I'm going to get married and am now at the point wherein said elders (and some youngers, I might add) have decided to take it into their own hands to find me a wife. Now I'm not much of a fan of arranged marriage, both conceptually (too loaded in favour of the guy, etc) and practically (I've lived away from home for over 1o years now and move in a different social milieu from my parents, so it would be pretty difficult for them to find someone I would have independently chosen), but I've gotten tired of fighting the idea outright. Instead, I've given in to allowing them to start looking, while using equal parts of rational discussion and emotional blackmail to ensure they stick to some basic principles while choosing. I'm hoping this will buy me some time, and also put to the test an important principle in economics. That's right - I'm actually trying an experiment, so if I get married in the next 6 months, consider me a martyr to science. Or, at least, social science. Allow me to explain:

(A quick word before I start: kids, don't try this at home!)

It helps that my parents are actually pretty nice about this whole thing, wanting to take into account each other's opinion as well as the opinions of various friends and well-wishers, not to mention my own. If they were more dictatorial, of course, I'd have been married by now. So, anyway, what this means is that any decision that gets made in choosing a potential mate involves aggregating the opinions of a whole lot of people. I suppose I could hold more sway over the final decision by getting more involved in the selection process, but I find it somehow weird, not to mention time-consuming, to sit in judgement over random women based on what they (or, more likely, their parents) have written in a profile on shaadi.com or some such site. So instead I've traded that dubious 'right' for the moral high ground, from whence I only look on smilingly at their efforts, asking only that they follow some simple principles:

That if they decide that they prefer Girl A to Girl B and in turn prefer Girl B to Girl C, they ought to prefer Girl A to Girl C (where A, B and C are of course hypothetical)
That their preference of Girl A over Girl B should not change if they come to the conclusion that Girl B is after all a better choice than that other girl D
That if everyone whose opinion seems to matter prefers Girl A to Girl B (say), then collectively they ought to state that preference; And finally,
That the final choice should take into account everyone's preferences and should not be imposed on the basis of one person's opinions

Now all this might seem only like the decent and sensible thing, and you might wonder why it would prevent me from getting married in the next couple of weeks, leave alone six months. And well you might, if you haven't studied much economics.

Because, ladies and gentlemen, the above conditions are all part of the wonderfully named 'Arrow's Impossibility Theorem' (sounds like something out of a geeky superhero comic, no?). Formally, Arrow's theorem states that if there are 3 or more alternatives and 2 or more decision-makers, no preference aggregation rule exists that would satisfy the conditions of unanimity (condition 3), non-dictatorship (condition 4) and the independence of irrelevant alternatives (condition 2). Alternatively, it can also be stated as: any preference that aggregation rule that respects transitivity (condition 1), unanimity and the independence of irrelevant alternatives is a dictatorship (i.e. it cannot meet condition 4). Or, to put it simply, yours truly can stay single for a while longer while appearing to be a reasonable and logical young man.

For those of you who want a more detailed explanation of the theorem, good old Wikipedia has a good explanation of this including a pretty neat proof, so I'll just point you there.

There are of course a few quibbles that may come to your mind. Firstly, people obviously still get marriages arranged, even reasonable people, so there must be some way around the problem. Usually that happens because at some point a few decision-makers decide that they've had it with trying to get consensus and make a choice i.e. something like a dictatorship (or at least a marital junta of sorts) gets formed. What that usually means is that while a few people get the power to decide, it appears that everyone's choice was taken into account, including the person getting married (though everyone outside the junta is actually being over-ruled). Here's where a bit of emotional blackmail helps - by claiming to cede my right to choose, I'm basically in a position to ensure that no-one else plays dictator either.

The other possibility is what might be termed a 'cake or death' case - if there's one option that's obviously better than the other(s) so that everyone's rooting for it, then it basically means that everyone's preferences are identical, and there's actually a consensus and I have to get married. But that would just mean that I have to marry someone who's so awesome that she impresses my parents and extended family, all of whom have higher expectations than I do, and she's willing to marry me. Well, I guess one could settle for that, I suppose.

On borrowing books versus buying them

2010-10-05T01:48:00.004+05:30

Usually, I end up deciding on which books to buy based primarily on 5 dimensions - learning/self-betterment, overall entertainment value, my current attention span at the time of buying, signaling value and cost-effectiveness, though not always in that order.

Let me explain them further:

A. Learning/self-betterment relates to what I expect the book to teach me, either by introducing me to something new (like say Marcus Aurelius' Meditations) or to expand my knowledge on something I have some idea about already (e.g. various pop-econ books I've accumulated through the years). It typically relates to non-fiction, though some works of fiction have probably gone a long way in helping me define my world-view as well.

B. Overall entertainment value relates mainly to how well-written a book is and/or how much the underlying ideas may tickle my mind. This usually helps when choosing what works of fiction to buy. It's worth considering since I rarely re-read books anyway, so a good writing style may leave as much or more of an impression than the plot (some of Wodehouse' lesser works provide good examples of style trumping plot by a fair distance).

C. My current attention span is defined by how busy I am, and what other books I might be reading at the same time. If I'm already reading something fairly heavy, I might consider picking up something that's easier on the mind, to read in the loo, say, or late at night before I finally go to sleep.

D. Signaling value is sometimes a factor, though I try not to give it too much weightage. this is basically related to deciding whether owning/showing off a book could affect other people's perceptions of me. Now that I have loads and loads of books at home, this isn't much of a concern when considering individual books, though sometimes I admit it can play a role when deciding what non-fiction to buy, in terms of 'if I take this book to office and leave it casually lying around my desk, will that make people think of me as an intellectual, or as a pretentious so-and-so?' Come to think of it, given that I did a Masters in Econ whereas most colleagues are engineers and/or MBAs, both the above views are probably held already, so the additional book won't shift opinions at the margin. This probably is a vestigial trait left over from having posed on main corr at various times in years past with a wide selection of books from the Stephen's library.

E. Cost-effectiveness - This may seem like a vaguely heretical idea for a lot of book-lovers, but every once in a while when deciding between 2 books, I end up considering which one offers greater bang for the buck, so to speak. So, for example, when Tom Friedman came out with 'The World is Flat', I figured that his 'The Lexus and the Olive Tree' was selling at a much cheaper price but still gave an introduction to the same broad set of ideas, and bought that instead. I got half-way through it, decided that he didn't really offer much in terms of points A,B or C above and only partially helped with D, and didn't bother reading any more of him. Saved myself some time and money in the process. Similarly, I've quite often considered picking up new pop-econ books only to leave them back on the shelf for a while until the cheaper paperback comes out. Admittedly, with my credit card and Flipkart at hand, I'm in danger of now being much more profligate.

Anyway, that was all prologue to what is really the point of this post. I've just signed up as a member of a library in my neighbourhood, and as a result it got me to thinking how this changes the way I choose what to read. Since the cost of membership has already been paid, I no longer have to worry about E so much, nor even D. I can instead choose to balance factors A, B and C, which I think is quite freeing. Since the fees are more easily perceived as a sunk cost in this case, I can opt to quit reading books without feeling guilty, and I can hopefully read across a wider range of genres that might interest me. At least, that is, until I run across cute women in the library whence the impulse for D might kick in and I suddenly reach for Kahlil Gibran.

Until that happens, I'm open to suggestions from loyal and not-so-loyal readers on stuff I ought to attempt reading . This might give you an idea of the stuff I typically tend to read, in case you're wondering. Drop a comment or two. I might even write about the books if I like (or dislike) them. I know, I've promised this before as well, but this time I really mean to do it. Dependent on points C and D above, of course.

Bonus book review: Sheena Iyengar's 'The Art of Choosing' is a good read if you're interested in topics related to choice, limited rationality, etc. all discussed with a certain amount of nuance and a few Indian anecdotes.

Match-fixing and the Market for Lemons

2010-09-03T23:45:00.006+05:30

As you most probably know, this week has been a bad one for cricket, what with the spot-fixing controversy and all (see Cricinfo's full coverage here if you have been blissfully aware so far). The news was especially sad because one of the players accused of spot-fixing is Mohammad Amir, easily my (and everybody else's) pick for the emerging player this year. Anyhow, to deal with the shock and the pain, I figured I'd try and come up with a flippant pseudo-economics-based post on what can be done about match-fixing etc. While I was still formulating my ideas, Cricinfo's excellent Surfer blog pointed me to this article by Malcolm Knox on Back Page Lead, which sets up a pretty nice segue into some of what I had to say:

If bookmakers are stupid enough to take spot bets that are fixed, and players are corruptible, then the result will be that the bookmakers will be stung often enough to refuse taking such bets. If the Pakistan players are corrupt all or most of the time, the market would have become a sham and would have ceased to exist. The fact that the market does exist tells us one thing: most of the time, the players are trying their hardest. When they are not, they are choosing their moments selectively. Otherwise there would be no bookies left to fool.

Now before I get into what I had to say proper, there's something that Malcolm doesn't get exactly right (which was also pointed out by one of the commenters on his blog): bookmakers don't usually get on the other side of a bet. They're supposed to set up a market by setting the odds of a particular result and finding two entities who are willing to take either side of a bet, with the bookie usually earning a decent fee from both, and the winner of the bet taking the money. (Note:In a way this is not unlike an investment bank helping to set up a securitization deal by putting together say a bunch of mortgage-backed securities from one set of lenders and getting a rating agency to assign a rating, like a set of odds, that define how risky the resulting CDO's tranches are, and then selling said CDO tranches to some other chump and taking a hefty fee in the process, thus getting a fixed payoff while leaving the buyer to face any risks involved in the deal. Of course, the last few years saw the i-bankers believe their own spiel and holding on to said CDOs, eventually bankrupting their parent companies and more. Sadly, bookmakers seem to be more aware of the risks involved in their bets than i-bankers.) (Note: the previous note was drafted just to show that I've recently read Michael Lewis' 'The Big Short' and now feel like dissing a few i-bankers).

So anyhow, what Knox should have been worrying about is not the bookmakers but the punters who are willing to take the other side of the bet for a spread-bet, even though there was the possibility of fixing. My own guess is that most punters don't take up just one side of one bet - they too would make a string of bets to hedge against losses.

Now one of the factors that would actually encourage punters to think that the bets are fair and they can easily hedge, would be the belief that most players are honest, and the bad ones are weeded out. A life ban for a player who cheated, in this case, could plausibly encourage more betting! How? Here's my pseudo-econ explanation:

Way back in 1970, George Akerlof came up with a seminal paper on asymmetrical information called 'The Market for Lemons' (wiki link). The idea there was that in a market where the sellers of a product -specifically, used cars - knew more about the condition of their cars than buyers. Since buyers were unsure of the quality, the average price they would offer would be lower than the price of a well-preserved used car would be. Now this would in turn mean that the sellers who actually have good used cars would not want to sell at a lower price, which leaves only the sellers of badly-maintained cars willing to sell. This in turn would reinforce the buyers' belief that all used cars are bad (lemons), and would drive their price lower, and so on and so forth in a vicious circle. Now in cricket, we have the opposite situation. Life bans for cheaters would signal that those who are left are quite probably honest which means that the events that are being bet upon aren't fixed and are instead decided by a combination of honest effort and chance. Here's one point where perhaps i-bankers win back a point: if the punters had Phd-toting quants assisting them, they might have more rationally looked at the events of the past and calculated a probability of any given player being dishonest and factored that in when making a bet. However, since most punters are also (probably) die-hard fans, they would confidently (and somewhat irrationally) assume that all players not yet caught are completely honest.

Which brings me to a discussion of the players themselves, and what might be a way of setting punishments for cheats. Knox rightly points out that the bent players don't always cheat, but rather, would pick the moment when they can let their standards slip. We could probably make a conjecture of what the decision-making process in this case would be. Since players stand to gain both money and reputation (which can help if they want to cheat later), they (at least, not the smarter ones) would not cheat in the bigger marquee events - the World Cup, say, or the big Test series. The best occasions are in inconsequential tournaments and matches (think Sharjah and other cricketing backwaters) where the spotlight isn't very much on the players and fans may be more forgiving of a 'loss of focus'. Admittedly, those who got caught were those who cheated at more marquee events (Cronje's Test, this England-Pakistan series), which only goes to prove that they were either a little too greedy or too naive.

So what does this mean? Well maybe instead of an all-or-nothing approach - a life ban or a clean chit, how about handing out graded punishments? Perhaps we could ban players from certain forms of the game for a given period - no World Cups and Tests, but they could be allowed to play first-class cricket and T20 and tournaments-sponsored-by-cell-phone-companies, perhaps. That way, the players with tarnished reputations know that if they want to keep going at quite possibly the only job they know, they will have to play twice as hard and honestly. At the same time, the average punter will know that there are more players who have been dishonest in the past involved, they might actually think twice about taking on a bet that sounds too good to be true. Which might in turn bring down the amount of betting.

On then to another important aspect of cricket: the fans. Would they want to watch games that might involve players with dodgy reputations? Probably not. Maybe (hopefully), we would we see a flight to quality, with people opting instead to see stuff like Test match cricket for the spectacle. Rather than fill up the calendar with hundreds of meaningless ODIs, we could have more series that are eagerly awaited (and monitored) and which actually linger on in our collective memories. More discerning viewers might also mean that broadcasters might have to improve the quality of their programming - more Michael Holding, less Navjot Sidhu, for instance.

So all in all, win-win then. We could make something really positive out of all this, if we just give it some thought.

Yeah right, who am I kidding. This sucks.

UPDATE: K very astutely pointed out in the comments that I hadn't explained the link between match-fixing and the market for lemons too well. I've elaborated a little further in the comments. Going by what I've said, it struck me that the ICC and various administrators would be analogous to used-car salesmen. Which seems about right.

Christopher Nolan, Chronicler of the Broken-Hearted

2010-07-26T01:09:00.003+05:30

So, I got around to watching Inception yesterday, and while thinking about the plot and reading a few of the reviews of the movie, it struck me that a lot of Christopher Nolan's movies Memento onwards seem to deal with the same sort of male protagonist - white, heterosexual, broody, bit of a loner, doing some kid of work that's illegal or at least unconventional - and said protagonist is usually trying to deal with the end of a relationship (mainly romantic, though Insomnia, which I never got around to seeing but which I looked up on IMDB for this post, deals with the end of a different sort of relationship). In fact, if you put the movies in chronological order, you get something like 'The 6 Stages of Dealing with Break-ups' as visualized by Christopher Nolan. Consider:

Memento: Having just seen the end of the relationship, the male protagonist (henceforth MP) is filled with anger at the world at large, generally withdraws into himself and his memories of the relationship he had, and is so caught up in the past that he is hardly aware of the present.
Insomnia: Haven't seen the movie, but the title fits.
Batman Begins: The MP decides that he must try to get back together with the woman by attempting to become a better person. He picks up a few new hobbies, spends time with a few male friends (mainly Michael Caine), tries to feel better by working out, eating right, and asserting his alpha-male-ness
The Prestige: MP is still troubled by the end of the relationship, although it's been a while since it ended. He is desperate to find a clear reason, and someone other than himself to blame for the collapse. He throws himself into his work (mainly with Michael Caine), has a dalliance on the side, but deep down is still really pissed-off
The Dark Knight: Much time has passed, and although the MP still has a thing for the woman and is hoping his new hobbies will prove that he's the guy for her, he sees that she's moved on. He decides to be the better man, supporting her and the new beau (of course by the end of the movie, the new beau is at the Memento stage) (And yes, the mentoring from Michael Caine continues)
Inception: Although the woman is no longer part of his life, MP still has memories of their relationship, and realizes that deep down he blames himself for the fact that it ended. The only way to move on is to forgive himself, which he eventually does, and thus finds peace. And, need I say it, there's more Michael Caine here, although fittingly, since the MP realizes that he needs to look within for peace, he needs less of Caine's mentoring at this point.

Going by this evidence, I expect the next Batman movie to involve Bruce Wayne deciding that he's had enough of getting into relationships that end messily and cause a lot of pain to all involved, plus he's really busy with work, and so he's going to just get hitched to a nice, homely girl. Chosen for him by (you guessed it!) Michael Caine.

Ain't No Dancer

2010-07-11T20:43:00.003+05:30

He felt like he'd been woken from a deep sleep, his mind still groggy and his body stiff, unmoving. He tried to recall what he had done the last night, the last few days, to end up in this sutation, but he couldn't remember. His thoughts were caught up as if in a fog, moving around his brain slowly, feeling their way around. He tried to open his eyes, but hey refused to respond to his thoughts. It struck him that he might be in a dream, that his body was stil lasleep but his mind was somehow conscious. And as that thought seemed to gain a foothold in his mind, the fog again seemed to get thicker, darker, until what little consciousness he had drifted away, leaving behind a dull numbness.

The numbness slowly gave way to a dull pain, then a sharp, prickly sort of sensation as he perceived what seemed to be a bright light, though he realized that his eyes were still shut. It was as if the light bypassed his eyes entirely and projected directly onto some point in his head. He tried to move, to make some noise, shout for help, but he couldn't hear anything. And then the light went out.

He sensed a throbbing somewhere in his head, and slowly he discerned that it was as if he was hearing a sound, or a series of sounds. And as he became more conscious of it, he realized that there was a pattern, a tune to it. He could almost recognize the song. And as the recollection of the song slowly started coming back to him, it also brought with it memories. The music stopped, then started off again, a different tune this time, loud, raucous, building up to a frenzy. He recognized the song, could even piece together some of the lyrics, and found himself anticipating the shout at the end of it with a sense of buried anger. And as it came, it brought with it memories of who he was, of what he'd done.

Watching the scans, the RA immediately sensed he was onto something out of the ordinary. He'd been doing cryonic reanimation research, or thawing-out psychos as they called it in the cafeteria as a wry nod to the typical test subjects, for a year now, and this was beginning to look like the real deal.

"Well?", his supervisor asked.

"The scans show some activity around the amygdala and the insula, it's a bit like when we did those scans for the god project. It's like our test subject here's experienced some kind of epiphany, but it seems to have made him angry. Like, real mad. Though I'll need to analyze the scans in more detail to see what exactly happened."

"OK. I guess I'd be cheesed off too if I woke up 10 years later and found that my brain had been cut out and frozen. What set it off?"

"So I was running through the standard sensory stimulation tests, only this time I thought I'd try more appropriate cultural references to see if they rang a bell, so to speak. The profile they gave us said he was born in the first half of the 20th century, so I figured I'd try playing him video and music from around the time he'd have grown up."

"Interesting", and then, looking at the heads-up display, "so the subject seems to dislike the, umm, Beatles, huh?"

"Well the real jump in activity seems to have been kicked off with just one track, actually."

"Yeah? Which one?"

"Something called 'Helter Skelter'".

__________________________________________

I'm strangely embarrassed to have written this, but also quite tickled by the idea.

Thought it up while sitting through yet another power cut (thanks, BESCOM). It was inspired in part by this NYT article. Incidentally, I remember a Roald Dahl story that was somewhat similar, of a prof whose brain gets preserved along with one eye, and his wife takes him home. Anyone remember the name of that story?

What are you laughing at?

2010-05-29T13:57:00.002+05:30

Humour me a little.
First, watch this:

Now, grab a pen and paper, and watch the whole thing again, and write down what you thought was funny about it.
Here's my (incomplete) list:

The phirangi women dancing - brings up the Indian fascination for white skin, but at the same time it's also funny to see that these particular women are almost dowdy and behenji-esque in their dress - one of them's even wearing a kurti! - and dancing style
The dark-skinned Uday Chopra lookalike's moves
The silly hat the main guy wears to off-set his bushy Mallu moustache
The fact that it's a Mallu song but the refrain is in (slightly messed up) Hindi
All the disheveled guys in the group dance scenes who look like they've had a bit too much of Old Monk and Hercules the previous night and couldn't be bothered to take a bath
The credits - Babydoll Productions, Writer's Forum Alappuzha etc
The fact that they're absolutely sincere about the whole thing - there's something tragicomic about people trying their best to do something and yet appearing as complete losers
The comments - if you're Mallu and have a decent grasp of Mallu abuses, the comments are quite something

So now if you've put together a list, let's move on to the third part of the exercise: try to list out why you think those things are funny.
Putting on my pseudo-Hansonian (and maybe even pseudo-Han-san-ian) hat, let me try to put together some of the reasons why I think this might be funny (again, an incomplete and possibly not completely thought-through list) :

The sense of superiority that comes from looking at people who are trying their best and whose best is not very good, whereas one ('I') could obviously do better if one were to just put in a little effort - case in point: the Hindi pronunciation, the sucky production values, the jerky music
The 'there-but-for-the-grace-of-god-go-I' aspect, where one ('I') knows that one may not have done a much better job and is glad that the camera was trained on them and not on oneself, which lends a sense of relief and hilarity (this combines with the earlier point, since one can say, 'what losers for allowing themselves to be caught on camera'). Case in point: the dance steps. I am ever-thankful that back when I was in college there weren't too many camera-phones around to record me dancing at 'Do Re Mi'.
The incongruities - Bushy moustache-meets-funky hat, dowdy phirangi women dancing, Mallus singing in Hindi (do not bother bringing up Yesudas, you know what I'm talking about here), Babydoll productions and the Writer's Forum being thanked - it's quite a mind-meld
Contextual humour - knowing Malayalam helps to really understand the depth of feeling in the comments, and anyone who's come in contact with Mallus would probably get the humour in the hatted guy's facial hair. I wonder how funny non-Mallus, or for that matter non-Indians would find this video

From the above list, I'd say I almost feel a little guilty about the first point, since they really, sincerely, think they're doing something good. And yet, if they were doing this ironically or as a parody (a la Borat or Wilbur Sargunaraj) it probably wouldn't be as funny.
So what do you think? What were you laughing at? Leave a comment, please.
And if you want homework, analyze this.

Five Books I wish I'd read when I was younger

2010-04-21T06:11:00.002+05:30

In response to my post inviting ideas for more blog posts, Murthy suggested that I do the Tyler Cowen thing and list out the 10 books that have inspired me the most. Now I'd already done something similar on Facebook many months ago thanks to one of those tag things from Han, so that didn't seem like something worth rehashing. So instead here's a list of books that I wish I'd read when I was younger. Some of these I have gotten around to reading only in the recent past, while others I've only read in part or not at all, and the longer I delay getting around to reading them, the more I find that I can get by (and indeed have gotten by) passably without reading them or that my attention span is now too short to attempt picking these books up at this point. I dont think these books would have brought about any life-altering changes in my own personality (which is fine, since I quite like who I am), but I feel these would have been good reads at some point, for various reasons. So on with the list:

1. Godel Escher Bach, by Douglas Hofstader - Just as something of a geek-culture touchstone this would have been worthwhile to read and subsequently name-check (note: especially useful when having slightly tipsy Econ PhD-applicants explain computability problems to you), and it also seemed to cover a lot of things that I've never been able to get a real handle on - music, math and art, but also deeper stuff about logic and so on which I only get a peripheral idea about through Wiki-trawling. I haven't read it yet so what little I know about the book too is from Wikipedia and by word-of-mouth, so maybe I'm building it up to be bigger than it is, but given its sheer size itself, it'll probably be a while before I work up the nerve to read it.

2. The Return of Depression Economics, by Paul Krugman - Krugman came out with the first edition of this book way back around the time when I was in college, so it was a little silly of me in hindsight to wait until 2009 to read the updated edition. It wouldn't have transformed me into an economics wunderkind, but I guess it would have helped relate what I learnt in class to the real world, which, hopefully, would have made me pay a wee bit more attention. Instead I did the Delhi Times crossword, doodled or wrote atrocious schoolboy poetry and eventually had to relearn economics via pop-econ books and blogs. And of course Wikipedia.

3. The Story of Philosophy, by Will Durant - I had a copy of this when I got to college way back in 2000 and tried manfully to read through it before getting lost somewhere in the discussions about Kantian thought. I did pick it up again in my 3rd year to refer to for an assignment on Hegel and Dialectical Materialism, which I must admit was probably the best tute I ever wrote, but after that I let the book go again. Maybe I should have started with 'Sophie's World' instead...

4. The Argumentative Indian, by Amartya Sen - This started off as an OK read, but every time I picked it up it reminded me of the absolute mind-numbing horror that was my Social Choice Theory paper at D-School, and the thought that our primary reading material for the course was Amartya Sen's drier theoretical work was enough to prejudice me against him forever. Someday, perhaps, I might be able to get over it and give him a fair chance.

5. Basic Econometrics, by Damodar Gujarati - considering that I've been working in analytics for almost 5 years now, I have to admit that my knowledge of 'trics and stats is a little shakier than I'd like it to be. 'Gujarati' is something of a ready reckoner for most people working in the analytics sector in India, and although I bought myself a copy in a fit of work-related enthusiasm many moons ago, I'll admit to having opened it only sparingly since then.

So that's my list. Murthy, Han and Kanishka, consider yourself tagged. Anybody else want to talk about the books they wish they'd read, feel free to blog about it and leave a link in the comments below.

I've started, so I'll finish

2010-04-12T00:41:00.003+05:30

In my last post, I spoke about one way to think about the possibility of God's existence, and I stopped short of talking about how that meshes with my own day-to-day life as a Catholic. As I had said, I don't have it all figured out, and there are obvious questions that come up on why I continue to identify myself as one, as illustrated in this comic.
I think that part of the reason that I self-identify as a Catholic is simply that since my parents are staunch Catholics and brought me up as one, I choose to stick to the label and explore the more personal aspects of my faith within it, rather than trying to make a clean break from it. I'll admit that if they had been part of some other religion or denomination I would probably have accepted that label willingly too. At the same time, one aspect of Catholicism (as I've experienced it) that I think helps make it easier for people to stay within the fold is that it does not require or expect followers to know or read the Bible in much detail (some of the more evangelical types do make the effort, of course). Other denominations (and a few other religions) require greater knowledge of their sacred texts and consequently a stricter, possibly more literal-minded adherence to them. There is a lot more focus on rituals and symbolism in Catholicism, and I feel that they allow for more individual interpretation - for example, some followers may have a favourite saint whom they hope will intercede on their behalf.
Along the same lines, I find going to mass an interesting contemplative experience, where I can follow my own train of thought while participating in the overall proceedings. Being a creature of habit, I find it easier to be contemplative in church than in most other environs, especially when thinking about my own limitations and errors. At the same time, participating in the service along with the congregation is also something of a soothing experience, making you feel that you are part of a greater entity than just yourself. I think a similar feeling of belonging would also arise from jagrans, retreats or Buddhist chanting. The need to belong is, after all, part of the human essence.
In terms of my personal faith independent of the church, I will admit that I've found it difficult over the last few years to think of a way to properly engage with God,especially since I broke up with someone I was very close to. It called into question what I would consider the standard approach, where we as humans expect something like a quid pro quo relationship, exchanging prayer and supplication for specific outcomes that we desire - 'Not on our deeds, but on your grace, O Lord, though if you could help me out on this small matter, I would be eternally grateful and will light a candle to symbolize this'. Insofar as I do get around to praying these days, it usually revolves around expressing gratitude, and rephrasing what is essentially the Serenity prayer to fit the minor hassles of life- 'God grant me the wisdom to know that there is very little that is entirely under my control, and grant me the serenity to accept that; and perhaps you could grant courage to those who would use it better than me'.

I know the above is neither comprehensive nor entirely convincing, but that's because I've never really contemplated my faith in too much detail either. Deep down, I suspect my spiritual beliefs do get captured by the following lines which appear at the beginning of Vonnegut's 'Cat's Cradle':

'Live by the foma that make you brave and kind
and healthy and happy.'
-The Books of Bokonon 1:5

Did I mention that I sometimes think that God has a sly sense of humour?

Imagining an Ant God

2010-04-07T11:03:00.004+05:30

A few days ago I asked readers of this blog for ideas on what they'd like me to write about, and my cousin Nikhil suggested a post on my religious beliefs (or lack of them). Now that's a tough one, since I find that, for the most part, the best way to retain one's religious beliefs is to not think about them too deeply. What I'd initially planned to do was to just record myself talking about this for a while and then post it as an ersatz podcast, since that would also make it a 'stream of consciousness' type post, which is also something that Nikhil asked for. However, I ended up recording myself at about 2.00 AM, which meant that I wasn't making too much sense when I was talking. Plus I usually sound like a 15-year-old with a blocked nose, and since the whole thing revolved around God and so on, it basically sounded like someone getting doped out of their head and talking nonsense. Not the sort of thing I'd want to post, thank you. Which brings me to this post. Hopefully the meandering prose sounds sufficiently like a stream-of-consciousness narrative so I can tick that off the list as well and not make up something to project my consciousness as being sufficiently arty-farty.
Now on to the topic at hand. I guess when talking about my religious beliefs, I can split the narrative into two posts detailing firstly, how I think about God at a broader rational(izing) level and, secondly, how that relates to my day-to-day life. Let me admit now itself that the links there are tenuous and the arguments inconclusive, and it all eventually comes down to belief and force of habit, so if you're hoping for a cogently argued piece on why everybody should go to church on Sunday, you may as well quit reading now. Consdier yourself warned.
When I was in school in Cochin, we used to have a weekly class on the Gita, taught by the Biology teacher who, incidentally, was an Ottamthullal dancer in his spare time (true story, though I'm a little hazy on whether it was Ottamthullal or Kathakali). One of the few things I remember from that class was that, during a discourse about God's existence, he said that the only people who have a complete definition of God are atheists, because only if you have a complete definition can you put it to the test and then say for sure that God does not exist. That's not entirely true, but I think it is a good way to start thinking about how the way we think about God is constrained by the limits of human comprehension.
Consider this: let's say you have a whole bunch of ants sealed up in an ant farm so you can observe them, but they are pretty much oblivious to the existence of the world outside of the farm. Assuming those ants were developed enough to think about these things, how would they think about a god in this case? Being at the top of the food chain within the farm, they'd probably assume that god was very much like themselves. The funny thing is, as the owner of the ant farm, you could pretty much play god with them if you felt like it, but they'd still think of you in ant terms - perhaps as a deity with six legs and magical pincers or something, until you revealed yourself as a human, at which point they probably would not even be able to comprehend your existence in non-ant terms.
Now that's not a great thought experiment, but what I wanted to bring out was that we as humans are far too vested in trying to think of god in strictly human terms, with broadly human motives and human emotions. Remaking god in our own image, as it were. And yet, if god as an entity really exists, it seems to me that he/she/it would be far too complex a being for us to wrap our minds around, far more complex than the idea of a human being would be to an ant. When we do prove that our earlier beliefs are wrong, that only demonstrates our own small-mindedness and ignorance. This doesn't prove that God clearly does nor does not exist, it's just saying that thinking about Him/Her in terms of human logic may not provide a sufficient answer. It then comes down to a question of belief or faith.
However, if god really is so complex, it does make it tougher to assign emotions or motives. We would like to believe he has a soft spot for us, but the ants in our hypothetical ant farm might also believe the same thing about the humans who own the farm. This is one of the things I definitely haven't figured out completely yet - how to engage with this idea of God. After all, if I don't know if there's a plan or what that plan might be, I may as well live my life assuming that there's no plan, or at best, that I'll play just an incidental role in any larger plan.

At this point, things get really murky, so I'm going to stop for now, and in my next post I'll try to cover how I try to engage with my religious beliefs on a day-to-day basis.
Right now I need to go get a haircut.

Now taking Requests

2010-03-30T00:41:00.000+05:30

What with work getting more and more hectic and my comp crashing and with the IPL, I haven't blogged in ages. There are a couple of half-formed posts in my head, but I'm probably going to let them swim around for a bit till I can type them out on a comp instead of on my phone, which is what I'm doing for this post.
Instead, to spur myself into writing something and to see if anybody still bothers to read the blog, I am going to steal an idea from Tyler Cowen and invite regular readers to nominate topics they would like me write about. Obviously, since I am nowhere near being the sort of stud that Cowen is, I hope the topics will revolve around stuff where it makes sense to have me write something original, rather than pasting stuff from Wikipedia or something. Also, since I'm typing on my phone, stuff that doesn't require me to type out long essays would be preferable.
So far I haven't really established any particular tone or style for this blog, so hopefully this will give me an idea about what sticks with the regular readers, and what aspect of my writing sucks. Let me know what you think.

Buzz, I'd like to meet your uncle, GG

2010-02-24T01:48:00.002+05:30

Remember what life on the web was like in the years before Google became a verb? Back before Orkut Buyu-how-many-Ks-in-kkoten supposedly set out to find his lost love through social neworking, before Mark Zuckerberg supposedly screwed-over a bunch of other Harvard-types to start a site for college kids to ogle at other college kids, before even stuff like Friendster and what not, there was the mailing list. Thanks to e-groups (later Yahoo! Groups) and such-like we tried to keep in touch with friends from school that we'd left behind by signing up for the batch mailing list with much enthusiasm. Similarly when trying to find people with similar tastes or hobbies, we would again sign up for a mailing list. I, for example, was on the mailing list for something called Quiznet for about 9 years, though I stopped reading the mails after 3, and another poetry mailing list called the Wondering Minstrels, which sadly seems to have stopped sometime in 2004 or so.

Now those mailing lists weren't perfect, but they had some redeeming features-they were strictly opt-in, there was a clear reason for their formation (better than, say, being defaulted the 'India' network on Fb), they were reasonably simple to figure out if you knew how to use e-mail and the rules for posting and moderation within the network could be tweaked by the users themselves. Set against that was the pain of having loads of unread mails cluttering your inbox, including flame-wars, personal mails because people replied to the group instead of the sender and even the odd out-of-office auto-reply. Even today, most of the mails in my Gmail account in the last 6 months seem to be from members of a particular mailing list that I'm part of.

So now that Google's come out with Buzz and the initial enthusiasm has worn off, I find myself wondering why they didn't try integrating Buzz with Google Groups. Instead of opting users into one universal social network they could have provided a platform for multiple overlapping networks. People could choose which networks they wanted to join, what permission levels they wanted to set for the group, and they'd only need to share something once to the group. Instead of receiving 10 emails from members of a group with the same attachment being forwarded around with new comments, you could have just one instance of the item, with comments tacked on. Want to keep your work contacts different from your other friends? Set up different networks. With opt-in, there'd be less chances of twitter-style bots. And instead of those irritating messages on fb about '1 new survey for you to answer' etc, Google could simply show some discreet adwords on the side tailored for the network, similar to the ads shown within Gmail (maybe network members could even choose to some extent what types of ads they want to see=> more targeted ads =>happier marketers and customers).
It wouldn't necessarily be as flashy as facebook, but it could lead to more communicative networks, with more useful information.

Not to mention, it would reduce the chances of my being woken up at 1.00 AM because a new mail hit my phone, informing the mailing list that _______ is not in office right now and will be out on vacation with limited access to his e-mail, but we can contact his colleague _______ for any urgent matter.

A little Hemingway in the afternoon

2010-02-12T14:43:00.004+05:30

I just started reading Hemingway's 'Death in the Afternoon' and came across this sentence:

However, if I had waited long enough I probably never would have written anything at all since there is a tendency when you really begin to learn something about a thing not to want to write about it but rather to keep on learning about it always and at no time, unless you are very egotistical, which, of course, accounts for many books, will you be able to say: now I know all about this and will write about it.

I think that 'tendency' is also partly why I blog a lot less these days - as I've gotten more aware about the world in general and about the skill involved in writing, I end up spending more time reading others (and sharing a lot of what I read online through Google Reader) while discarding most of my own output as being not very good.

Big Mama's House

2010-01-19T01:43:00.004+05:30

We interrupt this not-so-steady stream of blog posts to bring you two very important bits of news:

Firstly, the proprietor of this blog has gone and bought a flat in Bangalore and is now slowly coming to terms with his debt profile and the intricacies of plumbing. Once that is done, more regular blogging ~~will~~ may resume.

Secondly, and more importantly, this blogger has been informed that he will become an uncle sometime this year. Yay me! Or rather, yay my sister and brother-in-law.

That is all. We now return to our regularly scheduled lack of of original programming.

Why Twitter is like one of those Morning Walker thingies

2010-01-08T23:34:00.003+05:30

You know what I'm talking about - one of those machines that claim to give you all the benefits of exercise while you basically spend 15 minutes lying on your back twiddling your thumbs. If you're not in very good shape to begin with, you'll probably see some level of improvement for a week or two, but after that, you know you're lying to yourself, but you'll continue using it because it's still easier than, say, actually getting off your bum and working out.

Now I'm a pretty big fan of Twitter, for the most part, but the one thing I dislike about it is that it allows me to slack off on blogging/writing. Now this isn't how it's supposed to be. Twitter's supposed to actually help you write better, by forcing you to get concise and fit everything into 140 characters. Only I find that I'm not just writing less, I'm now also writing less. Let me explain - I like the idea of writing, and that's why I started blogging in the first place, but now I keep telling myself that if I am going to post something on the blog, it had better be good, or I shouldn't bother with it at all. Which eventually means that I hardly post that often on the blog these days (compare, for instance, the number of posts I did per month back in 2008 to the number I did in 2009). Instead, when I do feel the urge to express myself somewhat on the internet, I now type out a quick tweet and I'm done.

And then I go back to gorging at the all-you-can-eat buffet table that is Google Reader. I can almost feel my arteries hardening, metaphorically speaking. And so, since this is still January, I shall now make a resolution to write more, in terms of both, quantity and frequency, this year. Let's see how long that lasts.

How to 'Bangalore' Your Love-Life if You Live in Bangalore

2009-12-01T11:42:00.005+05:30

Being a diligent denizen of the corporate world, every once in a while I surf the net for ways to make myself more productive and achieve a better 'work-life' balance (first thing I've learnt: surfing the net for that sort of stuff sucks time away from both work and life), I happened to read about Tim Ferriss and his book (and blog) 'The Four-Hour Work Week'. There are some pretty fun hacks and stuff that he goes over while talking about 'Lifestyle Design', but what caught my attention was the section on 'Outsourcing Life'. An abridged form of version of the chapter, with a case-study, is available on-line here. It's not just about out-sourcing your work or your appointments calendar, but also stuff like having bed-time stories read to your kids or even having someone else take up the effort of finding women online and setting up dates:

Now while this sounds very cool, you've got to feel for the poor guy sitting in Bangalore who has to go through all those profiles and send out mails and stuff. After all, it's not like he'll be in a position to hand over his Orkut and Facebook profiles to someone in the Philippines or China, and he's too busy with writing code, setting up dates or running errands online to go hit on women himself. So if you're a good Bangalorean ITES employee, what do you do?

Mom-source the work, of course. Delegate all the work of finding the right girl to your mom (and if required, other family members) and let her handle the profiles on the matrimonial websites, the background checks, the meetings etc. You get a fully committed personal assistant and PR rep, so to speak, and all at the fantastic price of zero rupees. It also means that you don't have to spend time actually learning any social skills or etiquette.

Having delegated all that difficult work, you can then devote the extra time you've gained to all those exciting things you've always wanted to do in life, like drinking too much beer, nailing down the code for that pesky macro at work, or even proving conclusively to all those heathens on the the Cricinfo comment pages that Sachin Tendulkar really and truly is God. So what are you waiting for? Life, as John Lennon would have told you, is what happens to you while your mother is busy making other plans.

Lost in Translation, perhaps?

2009-11-19T23:22:00.005+05:30

Remember back when people kicked up a fuss about how the 'slumdog' in 'Slumdog Millionaire' was a derogatory term and there were slum-dwellers who objected to being called 'dogs'? I remember thinking (and I'm sure I wasn't the only one) that they were making too much of a hue and cry over a stupid movie. After all, you'd think that people who don't like slum-dwellers would probably come up with worse epithets, and people who cared about them wouldn't be so insensitive, now would they? Well, think again:

I saw this ad up on the Indian Express' site and took a screen-shot. That's actually an ad for the SOS Children's Villages, a respectable (AFAIK) NGO that does pretty good work for kids the world over. So why in the world would they call these kids 'real slumdogs'? Even if they wanted to tie their work in to the movie to try and get more donations, there's got to be a better way of putting it, right? Right?

A Few Clarifications

2009-10-21T11:17:00.003+05:30

It has recently come to my attention that my mom is now blogging (Yay Mom!), and therefore it is possibly only a matter of time before she finds out about my own blog (if she hasn't come across it already). As a result, I think it is time to make a few clarifications about this blog, specifically with regard to the title, since I don't want to have to answer questions along the lines of 'but monae why do you think you might be ugly..?'. As you might have gathered from that dashing profile pic on the side-bar, the title does not, of course, describe me, and was not ever meant to.

A further clarification: since I started using Google Analytics in April 2008, I've had at least one hit a month on average from someone searching for whether the word 'cute' means 'ugly, but bearable', and I can safely say that it does not (see here for details, or perhaps even here). Having cleared that up, I will admit that I had first heard of the above bit of folk etymology back in college, and that's how I hit upon the title of this blog. The phrase 'ugly, but bearable', for the most part, serves well as a description of my outlook on life in general - ~~shit~~ ~~crap~~ bad stuff happens, but rarely is it ever overwhelming, and you carry on because that way hopefully less, or at least different, ~~shit~~ ~~crap~~ bad stuff will happen in future.

Now at this point I would have linked to my mom's blog as well, however, it seems that ever since I put up a post named 'The Hep Aunties of Khan Market', I seem to attract a few unseemly googlers looking for lascivious details on said aunties, and I'd rather not direct their attention towards my mother, or, for that matter, anyone else's.

G-Men

2009-09-08T10:04:00.003+05:30

"Word on the 'stream is, there's going to be one of those high teas out int he suburbs this weekend."

"Bunch of stupid kids and pseudo-hippies getting drugged out and listening to crappy live bands. Gets on my nerves really."

"Think we should find out more, call in a bust?"

"Yeah, why not? Bunch of wannabes think it's cool to protest against the license fees and all, but cut their broadband for 10 minutes and they're screaming down the phone lines. And don't even get me started on those music-types. Without the fees, they'd be on the streets flogging CDs that nobody wants and holding down two jobs to survive, instead of relaxing at home and waiting for us to mail them their royalty cheques."

"I never really figured that out. You'd think they'd love the scheme."

" Not all of them. It's like the old radio stations, only instead of DJs, it's the algorithms that decide whose music is worth listening to. And it's a lot tougher to bluff the algorithms - you've either got talent or you don't. The computers aren't as taken in by sex appeal."

"Yeah, but that means that we basically get to decide who gets heard and who doesn't, huh?"

"Well, we aren't the Office of Online Guidance, Learning and Education for nothing."

"Funny, that. Back when my dad tried to join the company, I don't think he would have imagined things would turn out like this for them."

"Your dad was an Ogler, too?"

"No, but he did interview with them. That was way back, before the government took over and they changed the name to the recursive backronym and all that. Wonder who came up with that."

"So you're living your dad's dream, huh? Must be proud of you."

"Somehow, I don't think he had Assistant Manager, License Fee Collections, put down as the dream job for his son."

"It could have been worse, y'know. For instance, you could be a food safety inspector trying to figure out which of those regenerated meat things are halaal. That's some weird shit. Just thinking about it makes me feel icky - like it's some kind of immortal sausage or something."

"Hey it's not bad. I think it's pretty cool. Was planning on trying it out for a bit."

"You're going Ronald? Why? For that matter, why's it called reganism anyway, and not re-gen-ism?"

"Well, it's like veganism, only -"

"That's another thing I don't get. It's not like that started in Vegas or something."

"Probably because it sounded cooler than 'vedge', I guess. Anyway, I think the whole concept is pretty cool. Like, you get all the flavour of meat, without having to actually kill stuff, since it's all synthetic. It kind of fits in with our motto, actually. Don't be evil, and all that. Y'know?"

_________________________________________________

Note - I was thinking of a story along these lines for a while, but it all fell together a lot better after reading this transcript of an interview between Krugman and Charlie Stross. Go read that as well, if you haven't read it already.

The Scariest Story I Ever Read/Spoiler Alert

2009-08-25T01:07:00.006+05:30

For a while now, I've been trying to put together a story that starts: "The scariest story I ever read was 'Zuckerman Unbound' by Philip Roth". It's tough to do without making it quite obviously autobiographical (if I ever do put my Plan B into place, I might use it there, I suppose). That's because 'Zuckerman ...' isn't anything like a horror story. It's actually a tragicomedy about a Jewish writer who becomes famous for writing a novel full of sex and snide remarks about other Jews, and ends up being identified with the protagonist of his novel. Not something you'd normally consider scary, to be honest. Then again, I don't read scary stuff normally, so what do I know (come to think of it, I haven't even read any Stephen King).

What freaked me out were actually two big plot points, which seemed to reverberate with my own particular context at that time. [Note: I suppose this is the point where I go 'SPOILER ALERT!']. On the one hand, there was this side character in the story called Alvin Pepler, who is supposed to have been a big winner on the TV quiz shows that were prevalent in the 50's (before being convinced to throw a round by the producers in a similar plot to what was covered in the movie 'Quiz Show'). Roth portrays him as this gasbag living in his past, defined by what happened to him on TV but also trying to escape it (I hope you see where I'm going with this). I read the book in my first year of college, when my identity was still defined to an extent by the fact that I'd been on TV and won the BQC. It scared me then to think of the possibility that my one big life-defining moment might already be behind me at the age of 18.

The other big scary plot point, ['SPOILER ALERT 2!', if you will] was right at the end, when Zuckerman's father, who is dying, uses his last breath to abuse him for writing a book that basically brought shame to their respectable family and made fun of the community. This sounds almost maudlin the way I describe it here, and Roth obviously lays it all out better in the book, but it freaked me out even more. Back then I had pretensions to becoming a full-fledged writer at some point, and to have this whole potential future guilt-trip laid onto my sweet, family-comes-first Mallu Catholic soul was unexpected when I'd started reading the book. I knew I didn't have sufficient imagination to come up with an entire other world a la Tolkien, but I could see myself putting out a decent stream of snappy farces satirizing the world around me. The thought of someone, and that too someone close to me, taking it all personally hadn't occurred to me, until then. Honestly.

Of course, much water has passed under many bridges since the time I first read the book. For one, I'm now no longer known for being a good school quizzer and more for being an above average college one, among other things, so the ghost of Pepler doesn't haunt me so much. As I said, I've been meaning to write about the book for a while now, but lacking sufficient inspiration, I whacked it from my parents' home last time I visited and re-read the book on the flight back. I'm glad to say I found it a much more fun read this time, and not as scary. Then again, that could be because I'm growing old and giving in to convention anyway, so there's less likelihood of giving offence. Come to think of it, that's a scary thought too.

UPDATE: Added in links, and due attribution to Han. Also, if you're interested, here's a review of 'Zuckerman Unbound' from the NY Times. And finally, here's a list of 15 books that I like, which I put together because Han tagged me on Facebook.

'Forever' Means 'I'm Willing to Play this Iterative Prisoner's Dilemma Game Indefinitely'

2009-08-04T01:09:00.007+05:30

While killing time on Google Reader, I came across two posts, one on Marginal Revolution and the other on Overcoming Bias, on relationships. They got me thinking about this idea I had a while ago about how it might be fun to apply the game theoretic framework of the Prisoners' Dilemma to how a relationship might form and survive*. I finally got around to typing it up into a post (sub-scripts and super-scripts are killer), so here goes:

(Important Disclaimer: I'm not taking myself seriously in this post, and neither should you).

Consider an individual x with a utility function broadly as follows:

U(x)= U_xif x is single, and

U(x)= U'_x+ U_x^Rif x is in a relationship

Where

U(x)is x's total utility (Yes, ok that's crappy notation, see disclaimer above)

U_x is the utility that x gets from generally getting on with the day-to-day aspects of his/her life,

U'_xis the utility that x gets from generally getting on with the day-to-day aspects of his/her life when in a relationship, and U_x^Ris the added utility that x gets from being in a relationship because the other person commits.

Assumption 1: Consider that committing to a relationship usually involves some sort of change in one's daily routine and possibly even more sacrifice, so we can assume that usually,

U_x> U'_x

Although, one would presume that

U'_x+ U_x^R> U_x

(call this presumption 1, if you will; without this presumption, of course, further analysis would be meaningless)

Now consider another individual, y, with a similarly formed utility function V(y) with components V_y,V'_yand V_y^R.

Assuming that x and y are of the right gender to suit their respective orientations and are open to getting into a relationship, a one-off encounter between them could be considered within the simple Prisoner's Dilemma framework as follows:

		y
		Commit	Defect
x	Commit	U'_x+ U_x^R , V'_y+ V_y^R	U'_x, V_y+ V_y^R
x	Defect	U_x+ U_x^R , V'_y	U_x , V_y

Here, since the bonus utility ( U_x^Ror V_y^R) comes from having the other person commit to the relationship, if either party defects but the other commits, the defector gets the bonus but not the one who commits. Think of this in terms of the committing partner having to make sacrifices but not getting much of the rewards from being in the relationship. Obviously, then, as long as assumption 1 above holds, both x and y would defect in a one-off encounter, as in the standard single-iteration PD game, resulting in the two getting utilities of U_x and V_y, respectively. That's one way of explaining why it's very rarely that something like 'love at first sight' might happen (perhaps a relaxation in assumption 1 is required?).

The single-iteration PD game can be extended by considering iterative game play. Firstly, let us consider iterative game play with a defined number of iterations, say t. If I remember my introductory game theory classes, this does not arrive at a 'satisfactory' solution. While both players may consider committing since it means that they can get higher gains, since the number of iterations is fixed, it becomes rational to defect in the t-th iteration and aim for the highest possible gain. But if you know that your partner is going to defect at t, you could opt to defect at the (t-1)-th iteration itself, so you can try for the maximum gain in that iteration and avoid being duped in t. Since both parties would think this way, they will end up defecting from the first iteration itself. Not very romantic, but then again there are very few cases where you'll find people getting into a relationship with a clearly defined end-date. (There are examples, of course, but I'll leave you to find them and post them in the comments. I would guess, though, that in most of those cases assumption 1 would not hold).

On then to the next case: the infinitely-repeated PD game. Here, if both the players profess undying love and commit to each other, they get pay-offs of U'_x+ U_x^R and V'_y+ V_y^R in each iteration. They can also set credible threats for the other player, so that any defection by the other player could be met with some sort of punishment- a consequent defection in the next n iterations, say, or a 'grim' trigger strategy where any defection by one player will be met with the other player also defecting for all further iterations. These punishments ensure that the players are better off committing instead of defecting in any one iteration. And how do both players knows that the game is infinitely repeated? By repeatedly asserting the same, and/or locking in the commitment through a contract aka marriage. In such a framework, then, as long as neither player defects, both will maximize utility for all future iterations – or, as they say in the literature, they go on to live happily ever after.

Homework questions (Answer in the comments, if you please):

What happens if one person thinks that the game is infinitely repeated, and the other knows it's going to be finite? Read the post on MR again. How would this analysis apply there?
How does the analysis change if we relax assumption 1? What inferences would you make of a person for whom U_x<>_x?

*Incidentally, I was considering naming this post 'Prem Qaidi', but I wasn't sure how many people would get the joke...

Writing Ugly

2009-07-09T00:08:00.003+05:30

I wonder if there's a case to be made for grinding out a blog post every now and then, as a way of reminding oneself that it can be done. I haven't written anything for a while now, and seem to be averaging about one post a month of late. Not because I'm too busy or anything, of course, just that most of the stuff I start drafting out in my head doesn't meet my own standards for publication. If it isn't good enough for me to read, I reckon it's not something I want to share with anyone else. And that, I think, is really the cause for most cases of writer's block - the problem is not that one can't think of anything to write about, it is just that one can't seem to find the words to express oneself in a way that is gratifying. Maintaining some standards is, of course, necessary, but I do think that sometimes we end up putting too much thought into whether something is worth writing (and posting) or not. Which, if you think about it, is rather ironic when it comes to blogging, because the 'cost' to post one's writing is pretty low (mainly in terms of time rather than money) as is the 'cost' to others to read it. In fact, when I first started blogging, I tried to get a feel for it by checking out one of those 'how-to' type blogs that recommended that I just keep on posting whatever came to mind - with enough quantity, there was sure to be at least some work of quality. I don't think I followed that advice much, but I did manage to get a fair number of posts out of the way pretty quickly.

But that was when I was still just enjoying the whole opportunity to write again and didn't care who read them. As I have become more conscious of the fact that some people actually read my blog (even if it was about 5 regulars and one or two misguided souls searching for naughty pics of aunties or whatever), I think I have become a bit more hesitant. I'm a lot more conscious of how potential readers might react or even if there will be a reaction at all. I find myself (sometimes) obsessing over whether particular posts got comments or not, or how new visitors arrived at my blog. Case in point: I'm now ruing the fact that I named a post "The Hep Aunties of Khan Market", since I now get a few hits each month from the aforementioned MILF-seekers. Google Analytics is more of a hindrance than a help in this regard - it gives me more things to ponder about, like whether that person sitting in Bristol who visited my blog 3 times in the last month is someone I know who's just checking in (though I can't think of anyone) , or if it's a new reader who might like my style and who I need to impress even more so she'll keep coming back and may tell more people about me so I can slowly establish an empire of readers across the South of England (it had better be a she - I don't want to have to find out I'm wasting my time worrying about strange British men...). And all this for a blog that's just a side-project that isn't even going to make me rich or famous or anything.

Of course, I was a worrier about my writing well before I started blogging. Back at College, I could only start writing my essays for tutorials after midnight, when I was just tired enough to not give a damn about how fruity my writing might sound. As a result, for the first 3 'tutes' I wrote for a subject called Comparative Economic Development I quoted, in order, Jesus Christ, Voltaire and Pink Floyd, because I knew that our prof didn't really care what the body of the essay contained as long as it started and ended well, and I actually got pretty good marks for them. I don't think I could have written any of those while completely in control of my senses, since it would have seemed too pretentious and cheesy for me to put my name to it (Yes, I know, trying to 'keep it real' in a tute is pointless, but so is reading an amateur blog so why are you here and what's your point?).

Which brings me to today. I had to write an article on 'Value Addition in Challenging Times' for a newsletter at work (not quite, I grant you, 'What the Well-Dressed Gentleman is Wearing', but we all have to start somewhere), and after letting it slide for a couple of days, I finally ground out the first draft today. I wouldn't normally have thought of myself as writing a 'gyaan'-type article, so I basically imagined the sort of stuff that my former department head at the Bank would have liked reading, and put it down. And as a reminder of my old tute-writing days, I even finished it with a quote from Rahm Emmanuel (you know which quote I'm talking about). It may well be that tomorrow I will find out I have to re-write most of the article, but just the act of writing without judging myself too much was quite enjoyable. And that led to this post.

Quite freeing, in a sense, like after when you've taken a satisfying dump. And now that it's done, I shall post it, and be done with it. Comment if you wish, I don't care.

Well, not too much, anyway.

Spare a thought for Stanford - and Subhash Chandra

2009-06-07T23:05:00.004+05:30

While Chris Gayle took the game away quite conclusively from the Australians at the Oval yesterday, credit is also due to the lesser lights, Andre Fletcher and Jerome Taylor, who set the pace at the beginning of each innings with the bat and ball respectively. Watching them confidently put the Australians in their place made me think of the Stanford 20/20 for 20, when the Stanford Superstars, basically the WI team by another name, dismissed the English to win $20 million. That win was in turn set up by the Stanford 20/20 domestic tournament which helped to identify new talent and hone it through good facilities and coaching. Fletcher, himself, credits Stanford with providing him the platform to showcase his skills, and still thinks highly of him, despite losing some of his winnings due to investments in the latter's firm.

Which brings me to Sir Allen. Despite the supposed Ponzi scheme and the obvious crassness of landing his helicopter at Lord's, it can't be denied that his money did help to bankroll a lot of whatever development there was in West Indian cricket in the last 3-4 years. Given how the WICB has been running things, imagine how much worse things could have been for cricket in the Caribbean (and consequently, cricket in general, given how popular a team they are). So perhaps the ICC should spare a thought for building up the game's base there, before trying to break into the American market.

At this point, let me take off into the realm of wishful thinking/wild conjecture. I wish Subhash Chandra would get involved. Unlike Stanford, Chandra made his initial millions in more prosaic things like exporting rice and manufacturing plastic toothpaste tubes before setting up the Zee TV network which, in turn, begat the Indian Cricket League. Now that the ICL has been squeezed to within an inch of its life by the BCCI, it might be a good fit to see the whole apparatus shift out west. A lot of the Indian players have resigned from the league thanks to the BCCI's 'amnesty' and could all therefore be replaced by local talent, supplemented by the international players (admittedly not the youngest or brightest stars, but still useful) and guided by the coaches and support staff who have been persuaded to stay. Given that Zee has a presence in the US cable TV market already, and the Caribbean is about 1-3 hours ahead in terms of time-zones, the games could readily be broadcast in the US too. That would seem to be an easier way to break into the market than trying to set up a league in the US with hardly any local talent and limited local support.

And since the league would (hopefully) no longer be perceived as competition for the IPL, perhaps it could finally get official ICC recognition. That would only be fair.

The IPL Workout Guide

2009-05-05T01:57:00.005+05:30

Most of us have probably given over our entire evenings these days to watching cricket on TV. But just because the IPL is on doesn't mean you can allow yourself to sit around and get fat and lethargic (that holds for you too, Jesse Ryder). While it may be impossible to resist watching the game long enough to go to the gym or go for a run, there's always the option of working out in the comfort and privacy of your own home. Here are some workout routines that you can follow without missing a second of the game. Whoever said watching TV isn't good for your health?

The Little Master Fat-Blaster sequence
Sachin's managed to torch away all that puppy fat in time to replace it with a more age-appropriate bulge around the midriff and now, so can you! What's more, you can do that while watching him bat. Just follow this simple routine: Whenever Mumbai Indians go out to bat, starting from the first ball to the strategic time-out (or till Sachin gets out, whichever is earlier), get up and do 10 jumping jacks every time Sachin adjusts his crotch guard. On a good wicket, you should get in a pretty intense workout, enough to get you into fighting shape by the finals.

Sixers to Six-packs
Get down and do 6 crunches every time a batsman hits a six. Your abs will be DLF'ed in no time! Bonus tip: Do an extra 3 crunches if Mark Nicholas reacts to the shot with a 'You beauty!'.
Note: Beginners are advised to try this routine only when the Kolkata Knight Riders are batting, to avoid too much strain.

Avoid a Middle Order Collapse
Watching the Rajasthan Royals this year, you would have realized that no matter how strong you are at the top or the bottom, what you really need to win is a strong core. Try doing the Downward Dog pose every time the Royals lose a wicket between the 6th and the 15th over, and you'll have a core stronger than Mohammed Kaif's defensive technique in no time!

Strategic Time-out Fielding Practice
Feel your blood pressure rising every time you see an anchor trying to make inane conversation? Don't let it get to you - instead, use it to improve your hand-eye coordination. Get yourself a (soft) stress-buster ball and try throwing it at the TV screen every time the anchor comes on. Give yourself points for every direct hit. For an extra challenge, try it when one of those Vodafone ads are on, picking up a particular Zoozoo for target practice. Not only will this improve your mood, it'll improve your fielding in the next weekend cricket game.

Too many Cricks, not enough info?
So you're cheesed off because you're still at work instead of home watching the game, and now that the Fake IPL player's posts have become rarer, you're stuck with Cricinfo Page 2 for your daily dose of 'cricketainment'. Try this simple routine: open up Tishani Doshi's column in your browser and gently stretch your back and neck while reading, until you get to the first mention of any of the actual games or the fourth paragraph, whichever is earlier (usually the latter). That should get the blood flowing again.

Please make it a point to consult your physician before trying any of the above exercises. Also, please don't forget to draw the curtains beforehand - you wouldn't want your neighbours looking in to see you ostensibly panting at Mandira Bedi, now, would you?

How would you connect Flamingoes to Maths via sport?

2009-04-25T02:00:00.004+05:30

I've been sitting in the dark at home for the last half hour because it rained a fair bit here in B'lore and the damned electricity has gone out on my street. Since it is still to early for me to go to bed, I figured I'd finish up this post I drafted a pretty long time ago. In case it comes out incoherent or idiotic, please, blame it on the lack of electricity.
Somewhere in the deep recesses of Nanavati Studios in Juhu, or possibly in some archive of Big Ideas Pvt Ltd, there (probably) exists a tape that shows a geeky young boy, all spectacles and toothy grin, sweaty from wearing his school's full winter uniform including blazer and tie in the heat of Mumbai, trying to lip-synch to Toni Braxton's 'Un-Break My Heart', and actually getting the lyrics wrong, only to have it pointed out to all and sundry by Derek O'Brien. That was the Bournvita Quiz contest, 1997, and the boy was me, uncharacteristically exuberant because I actually knew the answer to an audio question. Thankfully, this was in the days before YouTube, so it's unlikely that too many people saw it then or remember it now. Besides, I won the quiz that year, so that was some solace. This post, however, is not about that story.
It is, instead, about quizzing in general, and what I've learnt about,and from, being a (fairly successful) quizzer since the age of 7. Of course, back when I started (the Maggi Quiz, 1990, I think), school quizzing was far more about knowing absolute facts than about being able to figure stuff out (the old BQC as it used to come on radio, for example, had Ameen Sayani hosting it and asking stuff like, 'What is the common name for calcium carbonate?'). It wasn't the most exciting stuff, but given that I was a shy, geeky kid, it was all good, since it allowed me to create a niche for myself.
Around then was when I learnt what to me is one of the basic tenets of quizzing, told to me by a senior who was pretty good in his time and, who I was told I bore a striking resemblance to (basically we were both dark-skinned and wore glasses, which is really all that everyone looks at). His insight was this: quizzing is all about educated guesswork. You can't know everything so you have to guess, but random guesswork won't help much either. The important thing is to relate whatever information you get with whatever you already know, and see what plausible answer you can make from it. That sounds pretty obvious, but for most school quizzers, it's not that simple - most limit themselves to what they know, passing on anything outside what they've learnt/mugged up. That, I think, is partly why so few school quizzers end up going on to become decent college-level quizzers.
At the same time, for educated guesswork to be successful, one also needs a basic level of knowledge on which to base one's guesses.That's another failing that a lot of school quizzers have (or at least used to): sticking to only certain sources of information and not being open to picking up cues in anything else they may see, hear or read in the process of getting along with their daily lives. One of the questions I remember answering from a school quiz is that the Yezdi 250D Roadking was the only production bike (in production at that time) which had the front and back wheels inter-changeable because they were of the same diameter. I picked that up from an Auto India article on which motorcycle would be perfect for the Indian Army. At another time, I remember kicking myself for not answering that the Beatles were the band that performed in Germany before hitting the big-time in England, although I'd read that in Frederick Forsyth's 'The Odessa File'.
A corollary to the above can be found in Sherlock Holmes' maxim: when you have eliminated all other possibilities, whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth. Quite often, once youve' arrived at an answer, you hesitate or second guess yourself. The link seems tenuous, or you cant' remember for sure what your source was, and then you botch it up. Consider this question that was asked in a quiz in 2004 (note: its' a Pornob question, so the provenance may be a little suspect):

'When 'Gandhi' was being filmed in Porbandar, the makers wanted to do an aerial shot of the city around the area where Gandhi was born; however, most houses had TV antennae sticking up out of them, which ruined the period effect. The makers therefore turned to someone who convinced the residents to remove their antennae for the shot within a day, in return for which this person gets a special note of thanks in the movie credits. Who was this person of influence? A name is required, not just a description'

(Murthy, remember this?) The best way to tackle a question like this, is to work out who would wield such power in that area, but would also be famous or infamous enough to make this an interesting question.Power-wielders can be of various sorts - politicians, bureaucrats, gangsters, moviestars, what-have-you. The fact that the person got an immediate response from the residents would indicate that they either really respected the person, or feared them. The final clue lies in the fact that most people may not remember the name: politicians and movie stars whose names are easily forgotten do not make interesting quiz questions. That leaves an interesting possibility: a gangster. Which then leaves the question of which gangster was around in Porbander in the 80s who might be remembered in 2004. Well, there was this movie called Godmother that came out around then... Yep, that gives you: Santokben Jadeja! Ok, not everybody will get that, but I hope that helped to clarify the thought process that goes behind getting an answer like that.
Having mentioned Pornob, I come to the last of the points I feel like mentioning today: namely, the quizmaster. The fact is that most quizzers are incredibly cocky, self-absorbed pricks, who like to prove they are in some way smarter than everybody else. The cockiest of the lot become regular quizmasters, since it stokes their ego to stump their fellow quizzers . It is possible, therefore, to expungu that ego. There are mainly two ways for a quiz master to prove that he or she is better than everybody else: by becoming an expert in a narrow field and asking questions related to that field, or by asking questions that are tricky to figure out, but which seem fairly obvious once you know the answer. Therefore, knowing what a quizmasters' supposed area of expertise is can help: for example, there was this guy who mainly listened to Jim Reeves and other similar stuff as far as Western music went; therefore, for any audio question that had involved recognizing a voice singing vaguely cowboy songs I'd always answer Jim Reeves. Not only would I be right most of the time, the quiz master would be kicked to find someone else who (he thought) listened to the same music that he listened to! As for the second point, of making things work-out-able, it means that the simplest answer is usually the right one. This is especially true in TV shows and such-like, since the larger audience would get bored if the answers get too complicated.
This is why any question that Derek O'Brien asks which involves a number as the answer will almost surely be a trick one with an answer like zero or one.
Now, on to the question in the title of this post. I'm guessing a fair number of you would have figured it out, but for those who haven't, heres' more context: this was asked to me in a Sports quiz by a guy who was studying English (Hons) at that time. Go ahead, put your guesses in the comments (extra points for guessing the quiz master). As Holmes might say - you know my methods...

The Hep Aunties of Khan Market

2009-04-12T00:09:00.003+05:30

It is a well-documented fact that Khan Market is amongst the most expensive places to rent real estate for retail in the world. Going by what I've seen over the intermittent visits to the place over the last couple of years, I can add two other metrics in which Khan Market probably tops the rest of the country - the maximum number of hep aunties per square foot of retail space and the maximum number of stores selling overpriced bric-a-brac within a single complex (in fact, the density of hep aunties peaks in the bric-a-brac stores, so one might even be able to construct some sort of combined metric based on that). South Mumbai might come close in terms of absolute numbers, but Khan tops in density. It's almost impossible to walk around the place without seeing at least one woman somewhere between the ages of 30 and 45 in oversize shades, heels and tight jeans on her way into or out of a shop with scented candles in the display window.

Of course, this was not always the case. Many years ago, back in the mid-90's when liberalization was still in its first flush, we used to live in a government officers' colony a few kilometers down the road from Khan Market (more on that in a later post, hopefully). Back then it was a quiet, little market, with a sprinkling of bookshops- Bahri Sons, Faqir Chand etc - some random sari shops, a bunch of grocery stores and a couple of bakeries and small restaurants. A treat would involve eating Chinese food at China Fare or picking up pastries from Pat-a-Cake. Most of the crowd there would be other civil servants and their families, occasionally punctuated by the odd expat or two coming around to pick up meat and breakfast cereals and stuff and, for the lower rung expats, a cheap haircut at the saloon in the inside corner. By the early 2000's, when I was in college, the boom had just started in Khan market, with international franchises setting up shop and the civil service crowd replaced by what seemed like people who had turned up because they couldn't find parking at the M-Block market in GK.

And now it's come to this - hep aunties all over, more faux continental cafe/bistros than you can spend a moderate monthly salary in, and kids who look like they went to sleep with wet gel in their hair so the just-out-of-bed look has additional hold. I suppose it could be worse, though. They could have torn down the whole place and turned it into a mall.

Saving Daylight

2009-03-16T02:12:00.003+05:30

He had first noticed her one morning in January, on the roof of the building across the road from his, sitting next to the water tank with her legs dangling over the side. That was what had caught his attention as he wandered sleepily out onto his balcony. The thought of her falling, or jumping, off the roof passed through his semi-conscious mind, followed immediately by the thought that he would then be compelled to go over and do something. That sort of thing would have put a serious crimp in his schedule.

Of course, he had been aware that the building opposite operated as something of a working women's hostel, alerted to that fact by the steady stream of call center taxis that stopped in front of the gate through the night, invading his own tired sleep, as they ferried its inmates to and from work.But he'd never paid much attention to the women until that fore-noon, when he'd stepped out onto his balcony to catch some sunlight and fresh air as part of his new year's resolution of living a healthier lifestyle. Through January, while reading the papers out in the sun and sipping on green tea in the hope that it would up his metabolism and help him burn flab, he'd been sneaking glimpses across the road to see if she was there. He saw her at least 3 times a week on the terrace, sometimes talking on the phone, sometimes reading the papers, sometimes putting her laundry out to dry.

By mid-February, he'd come to expect to see her in the mornings, and was disappointed on the days when she did not appear. By the end of the month, he knew when she went to the supermarket around the corner to buy groceries (alternate Fridays), that she usually wasn't home on weekends (he'd gotten quite tanned reading the Sunday supplements out on the balcony waiting for her to show), that she probably worked a late night shift and woke up late (she never came out on the terrace before 11.30) and that he had a crush on her.

With that final deduction, though, came the question of what he could, or would, do about it. After a lot of deliberation and searching on the internet for motivational articles and tips on impressing women, he decided that he would go ahead and talk to her. It wasn't according to type for him, but then playing to type hadn't really been too successful for him until now, resulting in 2 one-sided infatuations where he had been too shy to tell the objects of his affection about his feelings and one proto-relationship where the girl too had been afflicted by the problem, and they'd remained 'just' friends for 2 years before she moved to a different city and got married a year later to some guy her parents found.

And so it was that on the first Friday of March he bathed and dressed early and made out a grocery list and set out for the supermarket. He loitered about the aisles in the cosmetics and men's personal health section, trying to avoid the eye of the salesgirl trying to flog a new range of bath products as he scanned the rest of the store. And then, just as he was beginning to lose his resolve and let the sales-girl start talking about the exfoliating properties of micro-granules, he saw the girl. She was standing in the breakfast cereals section, seemingly weighing the merits of corn flakes versus muesli. He thought up a somewhat lame joke as his opening line and tried to psyche himself up into being cocky and funny, like they said in the lad mags. But before he could push his shopping cart across, though, he saw that she was not alone this week. There was another girl, one of the other tenants - he had noticed her sneak up to the terrace every once in a while for a smoke. It was enough to kill his resolve.

And that was the end of that. That Monday, his clients in the US would set their clocks back an hour, which meant that he would also have to get in to office earlier. He would not have the luxury of lingering over tea in the mornings for another eight months, which meant that he'd probably not be seeing her regularly again. It wouldn't have worked out anyway, he told himself. At least the body wash he'd bought that day had made his skin smoother, so it wasn't all a total wash-out.

A Glorified Cafe Coupon Economy

2009-02-19T01:13:00.005+05:30

Back in College, cash-strapped students could get around the fact that they were running down their reserves of money by signing up for 'Cafe coupons', little bits of yellow paper that were worth 5 bucks each and could be redeemed at the Cafe, with the price of each wad of coupons put onto their term bills for their parents to pay off. I wasn't much of a fan of the concept, mainly because I wasn't all that fond of the limited Cafe fare (and really except for the scrambled eggs and the mince, pretty much everything else you could get better and cheaper at the D-school canteen). Far better, then, to get my hands on some real cash (usually through quiz winnings), and spend it as I wished.

Local currencies, in many ways, remind me of those cafe coupons. To quote from Wikipedia, "a local currency, in its common usage, is a currency not backed by a national government (and not necessarily legal tender), and intended to trade only in a small area." While these currencies may differ from each other on certain characteristics, they all usually have at least one thing in common - there's a fixed exchange rate between a local currency and the national one, manipulated by the issuer of the scrip. Their supporters defend them mainly on the following grounds: that they help to boost local purchasing power and hence aggregate demand in the community, encourage local businesses and, since they restrict the transactions to being within the local community, are, supposedly, environment-friendly.

If you think about it though, these aims are either specious, or can be achieved better through just using the usual currency instead. For starters, consider the cafe coupon economy: while the coupons may have allowed students to spend more at the cafe, it did cause them to substitute away from other places that they could have been frequenting - the D-school canteen or Chhung town, for instance, choices that would be available to them if they had cash instead. Further, since man does not live on bread, or even toast and chai alone, they would be limited in their ability to procure other supplies since stores outside of college would not accept the coupons. Thus while the coupons push up demand for the cafe, they don't really help any other businesses in the area, while restricting the consumers' choice. Of course, this is touted as an advantage of a local currency - the fact that it restricts purchasing power to only a smaller set of establishments.

In the case of cafe coupons, since the students aren't directly paying for the coupons, there's a jump in aggregate demand within the campus economy with their increased expenditure, although it's actually due to a transfer of funds from their parents outside the system rather than an increase in the students wealth through productive enterprise. Similarly, in some cases where the community is facing a recession, the local currency, it s is claimed, may stimulate aggregate demand. The Worgl experiment is touted as one such successful case. However, this too may have been partly because it allowed for an additional infusion of funds through the fractional reserve banking system, which boosted aggregate demand. While getting banks to lend is a crucial element to sustaining demand, it is not predicated on having a local currency.

For most situations, though, rather than an infusion of funds, it is usually a case of people converting their actual currency, which they would have spent anyway, to the local scrip at a given exchange rate and then spending it, which basically seems more like a redistribution of demand rather an actual increase in it. Now, the exchange rate can be set in such a way that using the local scrip would provide the customer with a discount. While this is an improvement for the customer, it's a hit that the merchant establishments have to take, hoping to make up in volumes what they lose in price. But then if you really like a local shop, say because your friends work there, then to encourage their business you should be paying in actual currency rather than the scrip so they get full value for their product, right? On the other hand, if they do want to offer a discount, making it clearer in terms of actual currency might make the benefit clearer to the customer, which might stimulate demand further (which would work better - "5% discount on everything", or "Berkshares accepted"?).

Setting the exchange rate the other way around, though, can make matters better for the merchant while making them worse for their employees and/or consumers. By paying employees in a scrip with an inflated exchange rate and then getting them to spend it only at the company store, employers can easily make super-normal profits at their employees' expense (Look up the concept of company stores/the truck system on Wikipedia for more). Strangely enough, this has been quoted as an advantage of the local scrip model - it helps a struggling company get back on its feet by fleecing its workers! Yay!

The ecological angle is a new one. Apparently by spending at a local store rather than a large departmental store, you cut emissions, since the latter would spend a lot on transporting goods. But that's not necessarily true, since your local store would also most probably have sourced its product or raw materials from elsewhere, and it may well be that their transportation logistics are less efficient than the large retailer. Besides, in cases where the local store is more environmentally efficient, paying them full-price in cash would encourage them more, wouldn't it?

Now such coupons aren't always a waste of time. Sodexho coupons, for example, are a better way for employers to subsidize employees' lunches than subsidized cafeterias alone, since the latter option in effect discriminates against anyone who carries their lunch to office. Of course, offering cash would be even more preferable. Similarly, vouchers may be a good idea if you want to restrict customers' choice - school vouchers may be better than giving cash, for example, if you think that people may end up blowing up the cash on things other than their kids' education.As Tim Harford pointed out in an article a while ago, local currencies work better as community-building measures rather than as economically-sound propositions. Otherwise, straight cash trumps cafe coupons pretty much every time.

Yet Another Tumblelog

2009-02-17T23:27:00.003+05:30

A while ago I posted about the blog I created on Tumblr, No.20 Madras Mail, which was about Mallu movies. That's a project that I'll probably wind down in another month or two, once I finish up with my list. In the meantime, here's another experiment - Box-Populi.Tumblr.com. It's basically a link-blog with comments, which I set up by connecting up part of my Google Reader shared items feed with a tumblelog via Yahoo! Pipes, with comments added in through Disqus. I set it up partly to figure out how Yahoo! Pipes works, and partly to see what other people think of the things I find notable online everyday.

So anyway, I'm going to try this for about a month or so to see if anybody actually bothers to comment, and then decide if I should bother with it or not. Drop by and comment if you're interested.

Is this a sign of the times?

2009-02-02T10:52:00.003+05:30

Ed McMahon and MC Hammer shilling for a glorified online pawnshop in a Super-Bowl commercial? Is this how bad things have become in general? Or is this just a sign of how low they have fallen? Someone please explain.

A Secondary Blog, and a little tweeting

2009-01-29T23:25:00.004+05:30

Growing up as a Mallu kid outside of Kerala, part of my affinity to my home state is built on the fact that I watched a lot of Malayalam movies as a kid. While in Delhi we used to rent video-tapes from a guy who would come around every weekend on a scooter, and every time we went to Kerala in the summer, we would go watch at least a couple of movies in the theatre (usually the Pattom Kalpana theatre in Trivandrum). While most movies were fun to watch, Mohanlal’s movies were a special treat. He’d end up playing these fallible, slightly-flawed, very human (as opposed to superhuman) characters stuck in difficult situations where their innate goodness/impish charm/comic timing would (mostly) win through, allowing them to get the girl, sing a couple of songs, cultivate a comic sidekick and, quite often, strike a blow for the proletariat.

A few days ago I found a whole host of clips from Mallu movies on YouTube, which brought back memories. I first thought of doing just one or two posts right here on this blog, but then I figured it could be a whole side project, at least for a while. Hence an all-new tumblelog (a nod to Han for restarting my interest in Tumblr - I'd created an id but ran out of ideas on what to do on it).

I plan to link to a fun scene in the movies I’ve seen and provide a plot outline for them. This isn’t a work of scholarly research, just me posting about movies I enjoyed growing up. So do drop by and leave a comment. Incidentally, if you’re wondering about the URL, that’s the name of one of my favourite Mohanlal movies.

Also, I think I'm going to get active on Twitter again. I'm a little too low on motivation and inspiration to type out longer posts. The little box on the top right on this page has my Twitter stream.

Apropos Nothing

2009-01-20T00:48:00.000+05:30

Trying to teach myself to play the guitar is working out pretty
decently. At some point I might even get around to playing something
tuneful. In the meantime I quite like the focus and discipline
involved in practising. My attention span is usually pretty short, so
it's an interesting challenge to get myself to concentrate fully on
one activity for an hour, undisturbed, especially when it's not
something I have to do, just something I want to do. It's a good
exercise in getting over the usual inertia of daily life which has
been quite overpowering of late. I do have a couple of text documents
floating around my comp with incomplete blog posts typed up in them,
so maybe I'll get around to finishing them and putting them up here
sometime. In the meantime this is just to inform you that this blog
has not been abandoned.

Starting the New Year Right

2009-01-03T20:37:00.004+05:30

Starting today, I'm going to try and teach myself the basics of playing the guitar by the end of March. Nothing fancy, just get to learn a few chords, be able to transition between them on simple songs without getting all my fingers tangled up, and generally not look like too much of a dork while playing*. This is only partly due to the fact that the New Year has begun - it's also because I got my bonus (yes, even in times such as these!) last month and I had a little disposable income to, well, dispose of. Besides, I figured I could do with a new challenge to liven things up at home.

This isn't the first time I'm trying to learn, though. I tried it when I was about 12, but unfortunately my guitar classes were at the same time that all my friends would start playing cricket in the park just outside my house. That always sounded a lot more fun than trying to hold a guitar about the same size as me and trying to read music. I think I quit in about 3 months, then.

I'm hoping that by putting this up on my blog, I'll now have an added incentive to make sure I practise, sort of like a Commitment Contract. The only thing I'm apprehensive about is that I'm going to end up bugging my neighbours, at least until my strumming starts sounding a little more tuneful.

Anybody else out there got any interesting resolutions?

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*How you look is very important in matters such as these. I gave up on smoking within a month of trying it because I realized I didn't look anywhere as cool as Bogart.

While I was away...

2008-12-12T13:40:00.001+05:30

I'm back in Bombay this weekend for a friend's wedding after more than
a year away, and it feels like the whole city has just fast-forwarded
into a state of decay. There's this grey haze rising up all over from
the airport all the way at least to Goregaon and everything looks like
it's crumbling-the roads, the fly-overs, the older buildings. The only
things that seem to be be untouched by the sense of disrepair seem to
be the new malls, full of foreign brands and their cheaper Indian
knock-offs. It's like people just gave up on the city. Kind of sad,
really.

This too shall pass, unfortunately

2008-11-28T09:49:00.004+05:30

For the past two days I've been in a state of slight numbness, trying to keep track of what's been happening in Bombay while going about with work as usual. I worked there for a couple of years before moving to Bangalore, I have friends there, I spent a fair amount of time in and around Colaba, my dad used to take me out to dinner at the Taj or the Oberoi when he used to visit the city. Before me, my sister fell in love with the city, and since I do a fair amount of sibling hero-worship, that would have been reason enough to feel bad about what's been happening. For those around me that do not have that personal connection, this is just another in a series of attacks, to be followed on TV and discussed over coffee and then forgotten like the last attacks and the ones before, relegated to some dark corner of their memories by the time the next cricket series shows up. And I don't blame them for it. This is how we've come to live with the sadness around us. I am benumbed to the pain of those affected by terrorism in Kashmir or in the north-east; I found Amit Varma's poems about farmers dying in Vidharbha mildly amusing. Ask not for whom the bell tolls, just hope that it stops by 10 o'clock so you can get some sleep.

Which is why this particular attack comes as a jolt, set up to grab our attention no matter what. There's no going to sleep thinking that the bodies will be cleared up by morning and we can go back to the old tropes about the spirit of the Mumbaikar. In an era where others out-sourced their work to us, we had out-sourced our willingness to think and form opinions to an increasingly shrill media, which followed the same pattern after each attack - day 1: gory stories of the attack; day 2 - everyone comes on TV saying that India will survive and we will work together; day 3 - the same people come back on TV to blame each other for what happened. Watching the news these last couple of days made me realize just how far we've let things slip in that regard: presenters getting almost orgasmic in their enthusiasm to talk about the latest details, politicians straining to stick to the sort of quotes that come on day 1 and 2 when they want to get started on the day 3 denunciations, Shobhaa De talking rubbish. It almost made me feel like throwing something at the TV.

But that would be wrong, because the fault lies as much with myself and people like me. The sort of terror that was unleashed may not have been predictable or stoppable, but the apathy that lets us get by without facing up to its causes or consequences is something that we could have dealt with. I've lived in this apathetic state for a pretty long time, and I'm sure a lot of my contemporaries have too. I've had the right to vote for almost 8 years now, I've carried out that duty not once in that time. Which is why, it's our own fault. And yet, I was trying to make that change, as were others. I decided to finally get registered as a voter, and signed up online through jaagore.com to get the basic details of how to go about it. I got a mail on the morning of the 25th from the site, saying that they had already signed up one lakh visitors, making it possibly the fastest growing voter registration campaign in India. In a quieter, happier time, I would have pointed out that this wasn't bad for what started out as a CSR exercise for a tea company. Right now, I can only point to the sad irony that the company that is sponsoring it is Tata Tea, whose parent conglomerate also owns the Taj Mahal hotel.

All Ur Lolspeak r Orginaly Belong 2 Indian Criket Fanz!!1!

2008-11-26T22:51:00.006+05:30

In the years to come, as linguists document the rise of Lolspeak as the lingua franca of pet owners with too many cute-sy pictures and too much free time, they will also come to realize that a parallel argot evolved independently amongst the various cricket fans of the Indian sub-continent, almost simultaneously with the rise of cheap text messaging and Cricinfo. It allowed them to vent their their spleen on the various imperialist know-it-alls who dared to make any disrespectful remarks against their cricketing demi-gods, without requiring the patience to identify either constructive criticism or syntactical correctness (to say nothing of the tedium of perfect spelling).

It would seem to be only a matter of time in this vastly inter-linked world before the two language forms would come together, and yet it looks like there's nothing out there yet.

And so, without further ado, I present : LOLballz!! (in case you ask, LOLBatz was already taken).

And Finally,

_______________________________________________________

PS: Han, I thought about the initial part of this post a while back, though seeing the lulz on your blog gave me a definite push in terms of figuring out how to flesh it out.

PPS: Yeah, ok the commentariat's English isn't as badly mangled as all that, I just needed an excuse to put these up anyway.

The sad part about getting older is...

2008-11-25T01:02:00.000+05:30

...You can't wear clothes with years printed on them without thinking thoughts like '1987? Sh*t that's 5 years after I was born!'.

Sorry about the minor hiatus from blogging. I can't think of anything I want to write about that can't wait, and in the meantime I'm trying to get used to the idea that I am now on the other side of 25.
Thankfully, the recession means that I can keep any talks of an arranged marriage at bay by saying that I can't think about it because I'm worried I might lose my job. That's not really true, but it's just scary enough to keep my mom quiet.

..And Bhajji Would be Robin

2008-11-04T00:14:00.006+05:30

Now that Anil Kumble has announced his retirement, it seems odd that so much coverage at the beginning of this series was only about the batsmen, the Fab Four, and how it might be the last time that we might see them all together, but not much was said about him. Consider, for example, this article on Rediff comparing them to the original Fab Four - Sachin as Paul, Sourav as John, Laxman as George and Dravid just falling short of being Ringo because he wasn't as much fun. Thinking over that analogy, I realized that it didn't work for me simply because the author wasn't aiming high enough. Instead, I present to you the true super-group to compare the nucleus of the Indian team to - the Justice League (albeit without Wonder Woman)!

To start with, Virender Sehwag would obviously be the Flash - all quick reflexes and fast scoring, but not necessarily the smartest in the pack. The occasional match-winning innings, but otherwise quick supporting roles, as it were.

Rahul Dravid would be the Martian Manhunter, brooding, introverted and yet with great abilities. He can shape-shift from stodgy Test batsman to innovative ODI-player when the mood becomes him, and yet also be strangely vulnerable at times to fire, or at least fiery fast bowling. His arange of abilities would put him second only to Superman.

Who, of course, would find his parallel in Sachin Tendulkar. Supernaturally talented, expected to carry the hopes and dreams of at least a billion people, and as his testimony after Sydney proved, he is considered to be the defender of Truth, Justice and the Cricketing Way.

Considering that Sourav Ganguly is called the Prince of Calcutta, he would be Aquaman - the King of Poseidonis, the underwater kingdom. He has his own powers, including the ability to withstand a lot of pressure, and to pierce the off-side (even without a harpoon for a left hand, heh), but mostly his powers are supplementary to those of the other members of the team.

The Green Lantern would be personified by VVS Laxman - with the bat in his hands, he has the almost magical ability to visualize strokes and bring them to reality, and yet without it, becomes a mere mortal, dropping the simplest of catches and looking somewhat lost.

Which brings me to the last of the founding members of the JLA (except of course, WW) - Batman. Amongst a group of supernaturally gifted heroes, he is 'only' human. It might seem like he'd get his butt whipped by pretty much anyone else out there, and yet, when the going gets tough, the rest of the team picks up its cues from him. To quote Wikipedia: 'Unlike most superheroes, he does not possess any superpowers; he makes use of intellect,..., physical prowess, and intimidation in his war...'. That would pretty much sum up Anil Kumble quite nicely, too, I would say.

Like all such comparisons, this post too is basically a lot of faff. You could come up with any number of reasons why these comparisons don't hold true, since these are after all merely sportsmen out to entertain, not to save the world. And yet, for at least one player, I think the comparison would hold. I remember watching M. Night Shyamalan's 'Unbreakable' back in college, and coming away tickled by the concept of the Square Jawline of Good, as explained by Samuel L. Jackson's character, Elijah Price - basically, that comic book heroes are always depicted as having sharp, square jaws. In cricket,then, there can have been few men with squarer jaws or greater claims to heroism than Anil Kumble.

Structure and Discipline

2008-10-24T02:26:00.002+05:30

(That's supposed to be time on the X-axis, Enthu level on the Y-axis. It's oriented like that because it wouldn't fit otherwise within my blog template. Also, my handwriting is tough enough to read without having to try and read it with your neck twisted.)

Swaminomics sings a new tune

2008-10-12T11:28:00.003+05:30

In my last post, I talked about how Swaminathan Aiyar was being unfair in blaming the financial crisis on financial inclusiveness in his article 'The Perils of Inclusive Loans'. In this week's article, 'What MFI's can teach Wall Street', he seems to be contradicting himself.

Big financial institutions of all sorts are in dire straits across the globe. But one category remains unaffected - micro-finance. Even as the global financial system freezes and giants like Lehman Brothers collapse, micro-finance institutions (MFIs) are expanding unfazed. Famous financiers face defaults big enough to wipe them out, but MFIs report virtually zero default...
So, the MFI model is small but sound. But don't lavish excessive praise on it. Western banks lend far too much. But Indian lenders - including MFIs -lend far too little. Rural studies suggest that poor rural households need Rs 25,000 of credit per year. MFIs provide far less. The balance is made up by borrowing from relatives and moneylenders. The system cries out for more formal credit...
So, don't get too excited by the fact that we've avoided the excessive lending of Wall Street. Bemoan the fact that our stunted financial system fails to reach hundreds of millions. Microfinance has its merits, but is not enough. The big challenge is to move from micro-loans to mini-loans of Rs 50,000 to Rs 2 lakh. These alone can transform poor borrowers from objects of pity to objects of envy.

So a couple of weeks ago, he thought that giving loans to poor people was a bad idea, this week he says they should be given more and bigger loans. Yeah, whatever.
Almost makes me consider subscribing to 'The Hindu' instead.

Financial Inclusiveness, Now Exclusively for You!

2008-10-01T20:08:00.004+05:30

Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar has been writing a regular pop-econ-based column every Sunday in the TOI called 'Swaminomics' for ages now, since well before Freakonomics made pop-econ, umm, popular. This Sunday's article is a bit of clunker though, as he tries to lay some of the blame for the current economic crisis at the feet of financial inclusiveness:

Inclusive finance—giving loans to everybody, including the poor—is desired by politicians in India, and in all democracies. Yet the current US financial crisis shows the perils of taking this goal too far.
The crisis arose from the bursting of a housing bubble. That bubble was created, fundamentally, by government policies and institutions seeking home ownership for all Americans, including low-income ones. Politicians rooted for such inclusive finance. But this “inclusion” extended finance to ever more borrowers with fragile and low incomes, causing disaster. This holds lessons for India.

Opening with that line, he goes off on a general re-telling of what happened, mainly laying the blame on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac via messed-up tax incentives and securitization. While the facts that he lays out are correct, they do not necessarily lead to the conclusion that financial inclusiveness was at the heart of the mess.

To begin with, while the stated intent may originally have been financial inclusiveness, the tax breaks and government regulation eventually set up incentives that were more attuned to getting the middle classes to borrow more than they could reasonably repay - a tax rebate "on the first $ 100,000 of second mortgages", for example, cannot have been targeted at first- generation immigrants just looking for a place to stay. While financial inclusion may be paid some lip service, most banks would rather lend a large amount to a middle-income family looking to buy a second home than a small amount to a poor family with a poor or non-existent credit history. Middle-class Americans were willing to buy larger homes because loans were cheap, and even with a limited ability to repay, they hoped that if the value of their house kept increasing, they could go in for products like reverse mortgages, that would keep them in the clear. These weren't people who needed to be 'included' into the financial system, rather, they formed the sweet spot of commercial banking activity - not low-income households, but households with a decent inflow of money that flowed into the banks' deposit accounts, and a greater outflow of money, accumulated through the banks' lending products like loans and credit cards.

Securitization, per se, was not the problem - after all, without the ability to raise further financing at reasonable rates through transferring their mortgage portfolio to other financial players, the commercial banks would have been limited in their ability to lend anyway (see asset-liability mismatch). For an explanation of securitization, specifically CDOs, see here.The bigger problem was that not enough people who bought the securities knew clearly what the risks associated with them were. That's partly a failure of the credit rating agencies, whose job it was to assign a level of risk to them, the ability of investment banks to sell products that they themselves had no clue about, and the investors' own greed (for an exposition of the latter two points, you could read Michael Lewis' 'Liar's Poker').

The major problem was insufficient regulatory oversight, as banks could get away with taking more risk than was prudent. An alternative approach to the Fed's would have been the one followed by the Spanish central bank (HT Felix Salmon), taking a more active role in monitoring and proscribing where necessary the activities of the nation's banks that it found fault with. To me, this really is what the role of the government (and/or its agencies) should be - setting up the right checks and balances through the regulatory regime that allows the markets to function as they should. The laisse-faire approach meant that people made up the rules as they went along, relying basically on the brand names and selling skills of Wall Street. Nationalization, on the other hand, produces mixed-up incentives for the nationalized firms.

Aiyar concludes his piece, on somewhat flimsy evidence, by saying that financial inclusiveness can be disastrous on a large-scale, and advocates giving the poor grants instead. This is messed-up thinking on two counts: firstly, financial inclusiveness is not just about giving loans to the poor, it's also about allowing them access to other banking facilities like deposits and insurance, which grants do not necessarily accomplish; secondly, grants are not self-sustaining and rely essentially upon the kindness of the rich.

In the Indian context, I don't think the rich are kind enough, or the kind rich enough, for that to go very far.

Is this the beginning of the end?

2008-09-28T22:16:00.004+05:30

No, this is not about market capitalism - this is about Test cricket. Mukul Kesavan in his piece on Cricinfo writes about how Australia's upcoming tour of India may well portend the end of test cricket's hegemony:

"It costs me to say it but this golden age of Australian cricket, from Mark Taylor to Ricky Ponting via Steve Waugh, through which they produced a whole regiment of modern greats, gave Test cricket a longer lease of the cricketing limelight than it might have had in the normal course of cricket history. If we're at the end of Australia's modern heyday, we might well be looking at the end, not of Test cricket, but of its reign as the hegemonic form of the game."

Sounds ominous, except that it's a little over-the top. Test cricket hasn't had much of a hegemony since the beginning of the decade, at least not for most fans. Of course everybody appreciates a good Test series and all that, but that's not the same thing as dominance or primacy. If this series turns out to be less than spectacular, it's not going to suddenly change people's view of Test cricket. Besides, there's another very good series coming up in a few months - England under Pietersen versus South Africa in South Africa, which should also be a good advertisement for Test cricket.

That's not to say that the series won't be exciting. There definitely are a lot of questions that will be asked of both sides, as both Mukul's and Ian Chappell's articles note. One contest they both don't mention strongly enough, though, is how Sehwag and Gambhir take on the Aussie opening bowlers. The last time the Australians were here, the fast bowlers were willing to set conservative fields and choke the boundaries. That worked since the bowlers were of the quality of McGrath and Gillespie, backed up by the experience of Michael Kasprowicz and the spin of Shane Warne. What the Indians may want to look at though, is the tour before that, in 1998, when Australia came with a fairly inexperienced pace attack and the openers along with Dravid at 3 were able to dominate them and neutralize Warne, setting up the series win in the process.

This time around, Gambhir could play a very important role - he's coming off 50's in 3 consecutive Tests in a series where the rest of the batsmen mostly faltered, and he's great at rotating the strike, which is something that will help to stave off the pressure if the boundaries dry up for Sehwag. Given that Dravid doesn't have too many domestic matches in which to find form, how the openers do could decide the fate of the series. And if Dravid doesn't seem to be coping so well at number 3, a case may be made for switching positions with Laxman who is in slightly better form - it's been done before, with some success.

The other aspect that India's going to have to decide on is whether to go in with 5 bowlers or 4. Sourav Ganguly may still make it to the squad, but maybe they should consider 5 bowlers for the first test at least, before the Australians get completely acclimatised. Maybe Irfan Pathan, so there's a bit of batting back-up as well, though a more attacking option would be Munaf. I doubt if they'll be very adventurous with team choices though. My 15 for the squad would be: Sehwag, Gambhir, Dravid, Tendulkar, Laxman, Dhoni, Kumble, Harbhajan, Zaheer, Ishant Sharma - all 10 likely to play, Ganguly, Pathan, Munaf, Piyush Chawla and Badrinath. It would be unfair to keep Ganguly out of the squad - he's been one of the best Test batsmen for India in the last couple of years if you go by the numbers.

Anyway, it should be a fairly entertaining series. Too bad it's all on Neo Sports, though.

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Will resume posting on more comment-inducing subjects later. Just been a while since I talked about cricket, that's all.

Batman minus Bruce Wayne

2008-09-20T17:15:00.004+05:30

I finally managed to get around to watching 'The Dark Knight' today, and I have to say it's pretty good. But you probably knew that already. The one problem with the movie though, is that it comes off not so much as a Batman film as it does a Joker film. That's partly due to the fact that Heath Ledger was perfect as the Joker, but also because it seemed like the Batman, and more importantly Bruce Wayne, got relegated to the sidelines in the story. Which just dims the brilliance of the movie a little, since it means that you could have replaced the Batman with any other generic cartoon superhero/vigilante, (or even edited him out of the film, sort of like this) and it wouldn't have made too much of a difference. But then that's something that you all probably knew too.

So instead, to add a little novelty to the post (and to test out Google Docs), I decided to do a little 'analysis'. I pulled up the memorable quotes from IMDb for both 'Batman Begins' and 'The Dark Knight' - 502 versus 273 - and then droke it down into which character had the most number of memorable lines (in terms of percentage). This is what I got:(source data for charts available here)

For 'Batman Begins' Bruce Wayne had about 25% of all the memorable quotes in the film, and Batman had another 8%. The main bad guys - Henri Ducard/Ra's Al Ghul, Dr. Jonathan Crane/Scarecrow and Carmine Falcone, together made up about 21%.

Now contrast that with 'The Dark Knight':
The Joker alone gets 30% of the best lines, while poor Bruce Wayne comes in second with 11%. Batman, incidentally, has fewer interesting dialogues than Lt. Gordon.
And the few dialogues he does get to mouth are delivered in a voice that makes him sound like he needs to gargle. You'd think someone with the sort of R&D setup that can ostensibly turn mobile phones into sonar equipment would be able to get a better voice masking device made.

But that's another thing about the movie - it's not just that Batman doesn't have too many lines, it's also that Christian Bale just doesn't do much with whatever he's got anyway. He gets upstaged by pretty much everyone else in the cast, including not just Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine, but also Aaron Eckhart, Maggie Gyllenhaal and I dare say even Eric Roberts as Salvatore Moroni. I guess the guys at Warner Borthers/DC Comics decided that they botched up by asking George Clooney to play Batman - why would you become a rubber-clad vigilante when you've got that smile and ooze Danny-Ocean-charm from every pore? - so they went in the opposite direction and picked up Bale, who ends up as being neither suave enough to be Wayne, nor physically imposing enough to play Batman.

So, on the whole, great movie, not-so-great Batman. And Google Docs works pretty well too, if you have a good net connection.

The Anonymous Lurker Weblog Awards

2008-09-19T22:53:00.007+05:30

Last week, Han was kind enough to nominate me for a Brillante Weblog Premio-2008 award, one of the conditions for acceptance of which is to nominate 7 other blogs. Now since there are only about 7 (active) blogs on my blog-roll (the one named 'Other People's Blogs'), that's not really a tough ask. All the friends' blogs that I read regularly (and sometimes comment on) are listed there, except for one who I thought might not welcome the attention. Anyway, most of them appear on Han's list and I second his thoughts on them, so I'm not going to list them all out here. Instead, I'm going to link to a few of the blogs I keep checking out every once in a while - lurk around anonymously, so to speak - which are not full-on 'professional' blogs, but are well-written and worth checking out:

Memsaab Story is a blog I've discovered relatively recently through some random link-clicking across a few other blogs. To quote Mem Saab's story , the purpose of the blog is 'to write about films that aren’t already extensively covered elsewhere', focusing mainly on Bollywood movies from the 60's and 70's, but with other interesting bits thrown in as well. The joy with which she writes about masala films is infectious, and since I rarely have the attention span or time to actually go off and watch movies, the plot summaries are perfect for me. And I've got to say - she has one hell of a cute dog.

The New Friends Colony Community Centre is a blog that I check out every once in a while. It is 'about fifteen minutes from the agency and two from hell'.It is also probably familiar to most readers of this blog - there is at least one Stephanian I know of who contributes to it, which should bring it to the attention of most of you. It can get a little arbit sometimes, but on the whole it's interesting, and worth a read.

The Corridor is a blog mostly devoted to cricket, and is the closest to a 'professional' blog on this list. It's written mostly by Will Luke, who also contributes to Cricinfo, but is a bit snarkier (more snarky?) in its style form the articles you find there. If you're interested in cricket, subscribe to the feed. If not, pass on by.

Daly Haal, the online hub for the Karnataka Quizzing Association, is another site I keep checking regularly. Most of the questions are fairly esoteric, but since this is quizzing in the world of Wikipedia, getting the answer right is as much about typing in the correct search term on Google as it is about 'knowing the funda'. A lot of interesting trivia, though perhaps not enough 'little known facts' of the sort that floated around the Delhi quizzing circuit.

There you go - 4 blogs that should keep you entertained through the weekend at least. What blogs have caught your fancy in the recent past? Do tell.

Happy Onam!

2008-09-12T23:17:00.001+05:30

This is what you get when you get home late from work on Onam and end up watching 'Blade 2' on TV. The name was originally thought of as the punchline to the following not-so-funny joke :"What do you call a Mallu assault rifle?"
Feel free to invent your own back-story in the comments below.

Driving in Cars with Mallus - Part I

2008-09-02T00:06:00.005+05:30

"Don't tell your mother about this. She wouldn't approve", he says. We're driving down through rubber plantations on our way to Ernakulam.
"About what?"
"I'm going to have a 'small'", he replies, and he pulls out a bottle of McDowell's whiskey and a bluish glass tumbler. Booze at 11.30 in the morning, and that too IMFL? Heck, forget about my mom, I don't approve. However, I don't say anything. I have to get into town today and buy a ticket out for a flight this evening and I can't afford to not take the ride. Besides, he isn't driving, so it's not so bad.
"Life in Kerala is a little different", he offers by way of explanation. I murmur something and offer my conciliatory smile - tight upper lip, flash of the teeth, emphasize the pseudo-dimples on either side of my mouth. "We'll have to stop for a second so I can pour a drink", he tells the driver.
We're making pretty good time down the two-lane state highway through the hills, overtaking slow-moving autos and KSRTC buses by playing chicken with on-coming traffic in the opposite lane, ducking back onto our side of the road just in time. I'm pretty impressed with the Lancer - there really is something to that whole rally-based technology thing. Trying to find a place to stop, though, is a bit more difficult on the narrow road. The first open space near the road that we spot isn't suitable - it turns out to be in front of someone's gate, and they're trying to get their car out. The second isn't much better - it's right in front of a chapel, and my host's Syrian Catholic upbringing gets the better of him. The next spot has a similar problem - there's a temple just up the road, and our driver's a Hindu.
Rejecting another spot because it's just after a blind turn, we finally stop in front of a small shop, probably shut because it's a Sunday. A little fumbling with the bottle, a Patiala peg (how's that for North-South integration?) poured into the tumbler with soda and then we're off again.
The only CDs in the car are compilations of old Malayalam movie songs. Chitra's voice skips on the CD player every time we go over a pot-hole, of which there are a fair number. It's like a bad remix, like when she did that arbit album way back in the 90's with the Voodoo Rapper.
"I think I need to pee", he says. We start searching for another place to stop. This time not only does it have to be away from places of worship, other people's gates/fences/walls, and not around a blind turn, it's also got to be a little secluded. Man needs his privacy.
We find a spot, and he asks me if I need to go as well. I say I'm fine, thanks. Since he's gotten out of the car, he decides he may as well smoke a cigarette, so I get out to stretch my legs. I'm wearing a slim-fit shirt, and he looks at me and says - "Do you work out? You should. You've got a good frame." Gyaan on working out follows. Repeat conciliatory smile and mumblings.
We get back into the car. "I might as well pour myself another, save us the bother of finding another spot later", he says. Why not. After all, we're still an hour away from Ernakulam, and lunch.
The music's changed to songs from old black and white films - Prem Nazir in white pants, women in mundu-pavadai, the promise of communism and social revolution in the air.
My mom calls to check on how we're doing. "Everything's fine", I say,"Don't worry."

Expecting to get action? Leave your phone on 'Silent'

2008-08-28T10:44:00.000+05:30

This bit of news is almost surreal:

Chants of “condom, condom” will now intersperse indipop and bhajan ringtones as part of a nationwide campaign to promote safe sex. Conceived to destigmatise condom use and encourage responsible sexual behaviour, the new ringtone targets young people between 15 and 35 years.

I can't think of anyone actually downloading the ring tone, except for maybe 15-year old kids with no hope of getting any action aiming to get cheap thrills by downloading the ring tone onto the phones of unsuspecting, less tech-savvy adults. And to think that the Gates Foundation is bank-rolling it along with the BBC. Bill's probably just trying to get some kind of tax break, I suppose.
As an additional bit of irony, the ring-tone is called 'condom a cappella' which can be loosely translated as 'condoms at chapel' or 'condoms in the style of the chapel'. I wonder what the Catholic church might have to say about that.
To listen and/or download, click here. You can even add an app to your Facebook profile and do your bit to curtail the spread of AIDS in India.

Shh!

2008-08-25T01:28:00.003+05:30

This sign's been up on the wall on the break-out area (basically, that means 'where the coffee machines are'), on my floor in office for well over a year now. Although whoever put it up probably did not mean it that way, the silence really did disturb me the first time, when I visited the place for my interviews. Since then, I've gotten accustomed to it.
I realized that today when I met a former colleague from the Bank who told me I had become much quieter since I changed jobs. I told him that was my default mode, I had to adapt to the Bank. The only problem with the silence is that it can make you forget that you need to speak up sometimes.

In case you were wondering, I took a picture of the sign during the week, before I met him. I was originally planning to weave it into a story of some sort about workplace angst or something. That didn't materialize though. Just not in the frame of mind for that sort of thing, really.
I do have a couple of posts half-typed out for a week now, so maybe I will get back to regular blogging pretty soon. See you then.

Happy to you all Independence Day!

2008-08-15T09:50:00.001+05:30

Rage, rage against the dying of the light

2008-08-02T10:16:00.005+05:30

Han, among others, linked to Wordle a while back and invited others to try it out. The wordle created from my blog posts wasn't too interesting, so I forgot about it at that time. Then, last night, trying to get sleep in the midst of a 6-7 hour power cut in Koramangala, I got to thinking about Dylan Thomas' 'Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night', and wondered what it would look like as a wordle. Here it is:

For a bigger image, click here. The original poem by Thomas goes like this:

'Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night'

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

-- Dylan Thomas

For commentary, see the minstrels page, or good ol' Wikipedia.
So what poems do you think would look good as a wordle?

New Toilet Reading

2008-07-27T19:52:00.002+05:30

It's been a while since I blogged. First I was traveling, then I caught a fever and a sore throat, then I just realized my life was too boring to blog about, and then just when I thought I'd put up a post anyway, bombs went off all over Bangalore and blogging just didn't seem like top priority anymore, y'know. Anyway, yesterday I was at the Landmark bookstore at the Forum mall, and I flipped through the new edition of Rolling Stone India, which I then bought today and hope shall provide sufficiently interesting reading in the loo for a couple of weeks to come. It had this interview with Chris Martin of Coldplay, titled, 'The Jesus of Uncool'. While it's obvious that Martin is quite media-savvy now despite any appearance of un-cool-ness, with interesting sound bytes strewn throughout the interview, I found this quote really interesting:

But despite it all, Martin can't stop feeling like an underdog. 'You've got to be hungry,' he says. 'If your wife went out with Brad Pitt, you'd want to prove yourself, you know what I mean?'

I'm not sure if I should dislike him for being a wannabe with a Hollywood star for a wife, or like him more for being truthful about it. Makes him more human than, say, St. Bono of Sub-Saharan Africa.

Incidentally, after I got back from Landmark I turned on the news to find that a live bomb had been found and defused near the mall that morning. No wonder there weren't that many people around.

Guaranteed to make your Monday more fun

2008-07-21T21:36:00.003+05:30

I came across this video through this article on Slate about cross-genre covers (also listed in my list of shared articles on the right, if you're reading the blog, and which is available separately here if you're viewing this in your RSS reader and want to see what I've been reading on the net lately):

I can't figure out who Alanis was really trying to spoof - Fergie and the Black-eyed Peas, or Alanis herself and her usual woe-is-me vocals. Either way, it works.

If I haven't called you in a while

2008-07-20T19:51:00.002+05:30

If I haven't called you in a while
You can rest assured that I'll
Get around to it sometime
I just have a lot of other stuff to take care of
Work and paying the bills and
Trying to figure out what to do with the rest of the day.

If you haven't called me in a while
I understand, you don't want me around cramping your style
I'm pretty good at piddling on other people's parades
You've got enough other stuff to take care of anyway
Work and paying the bills and
Trying to figure out what to do over the weekend.

If I haven't called in a while
It's because I wouldn't want to impose myself.

Bulls in Bowties: The Koramangala Test Kitchen

2008-07-08T22:17:00.006+05:30

Ingredients:
1/2 a pack of Sunfeast Benne Vita farfalle, though you could use pretty much any pasta
2 coffee mugs of water
1 helping of dry Mallu beef curry (olathiya erachi) that your aunt made for you a week ago and has been lying in your fridge ever since
1 brand new, unopened jar of salsa
2 eggs
1 album by the Rolling Stones, preferably Exile on Main Street

Preparation:
Bring the water to a rapid boil in the deepest vessel you've got. While it's boiling, start playing your Rolling Stones album. This will accomplish 2 things, namely (a) get you in a nice and enthu mood, and (b) remind you that no matter how bad the shit is that you might end up eating today, Mick Jagger's probably ingested worse into himself, and yet he's still bouncing around and getting action from women old enough to be his grand-daughters, so you're probably not going to end up too badly. Once the water is boiling, drop in the pasta and start stirring. You need to stir for about 10-12 minutes, so you better have the music on to keep you entertained. As the pasta gets softer and more cooked, i.e. chewy, drop in the beef and keep stirring till there's hardly any water left.
Serve on whichever plate you've got. It will look like this*:

Serves 2, or 1 if you're really hungry**.

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*Real men don't use garnish.

**Astute readers might notice that 2 of the above ingredients were never mentioned, and may hence consider them superfluous. In fact they serve a most important function: backup. If you can't cook anything else, break a couple of eggs into a pan with some salsa and oil or butter, scramble until cooked, et voila, you have a meal.

I have my freedom, but I don't have much time

2008-07-06T17:23:00.002+05:30

I've managed to set up a Wifi network in my house, which means I can now surf the net anywhere in my little itty-bitty one-bedroom apartment. That is, until my laptop's battery runs out-which, considering that it is about two years old, takes approximately half an hour-at which point I must submit to the tyranny of the power cord. Still it's the principle that matters, and I shall live (somewhat) wire-free till such time as the radio waves from my router combine with the radiation from my cell-phone and my microwave to fry me to a crisp.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost

2008-06-30T22:21:00.014+05:30

To travel from Rochester, NY to Kent, OH, by road, you get onto Interstate 90, a long straight road that runs through flat green countryside, punctuated by tractor-trailers, truck stops, and road-kill, for about 4 hours, and then get onto smaller state highways and keep driving for another half hour or so. If you haven't punched in the destination address into your dinky, little GPS receiver, you also call up any Mallu family friends you know approximately every 5 minutes and ask for directions. At least that's what my aunt and I did, my last weekend in the US. I landed in Rochester late Friday night, and we set out early next morning - 4 AM - aiming to get into Kent by 9 for some kind of orientation program at my cousin's university. Having driven through bucolic, white-dominated, 'fly-over country', it was surprising to land up at the university and see the number of Indian/South Asian and Asian parents with their kids at the place. But then again, my cousin is studying medicine, so I suppose I shouldn't have been too surprised.
Kent had limited options by way of entertainment - a cheap, single-storied multiplex where we watched 'Get Smart', a chipotle chain and a random white woman with mottled skin who was very vocal in admiring my cousin's tan - and having exhausted them in a day, we headed out again the next morning back up the I-90 to see the Niagara Falls and then get back in time for my flight to New York and thence to Boston. This time, the GPS receiver was suitably set up, and we made it to the falls in good time. While the city that's grown around them is a complete tourist trap with, among other things, sari- and salwar-kameez-clad women walking around all over and cheap, vegetarian, Punjabi thalis prominently advertised, the falls themselves are really quite spectacular. I too joined the throng, pulling on the souvenir bright plastic raincoat and yet getting drenched, both at the Cave of the Winds and on the Maid of the Mist. By this time I was perilously close to missing my flight back from Rochester, and so we sped off back up the highway, stopping only to pick up gifts for the people back home and making it to the airport half an hour before the scheduled departure.

Things started going awry at this point. I was told that my flight was an hour late. Then two. Then indefinitely delayed. Apparently New York had been hit by a storm which had disrupted all air traffic along the east coast. I spent the next few hours navigating the JetBlue interactive voice response system trying to figure out if I'd be able to catch my onward flight to Boston, or if I ought to cancel and fight for a refund, until I finally found a woman - a real honest-to-goodness, human being - who told me I ought to try my luck and fly to New York and see if I could catch the next flight out to Boston.

My luck, unfortunately, was not very good. I landed at JFK at 9, only to find that my flight to Boston took off at 8, and the next flight that was supposed to leave at 10 had been canceled. I got a ticket on the next flight - at 7.30 the next morning. At this point, I thought to myself, only partly in irony, "What would Ragupathy do?". My next thought was, "I ought to put that up on the blog". I considered trying to take a train or bus back, and even got to the nearest subway station, before I realized it was rather stupid and pointless.

And so it was that I lugged myself and my 2 bags into the Arrival lounge of Terminal 5. There were already a few people there who seemed to have made peace with the fact that they would be stuck there for the night, and had sprawled out on the floor or across a couple of chairs to sleep as best they could. The coffee shop upstairs had shut, but there were still a few people sitting there trying to last the night, most noticeable amongst them a man of possibly Middle Eastern origin who wore a long black faux fur coat that stretched from his neck down to below his knees, who sat up straight in his chair and dozed, and a another figure, possibly a woman, possibly of Sri Lankan origin, looking a bit like Ranjit Fernando with Albert Einstein's hairdo, who wore a shapeless white shirt and black pants and thumbed through a book, determined not to sleep. More people seemed to trickle in through the night, clustering at the various tables, talking softly, rearranging themselves amongst the furniture till they could find a position where they could give in to their weariness. Half asleep, I couldn't help thinking of 'Tokyo Canceled'. I wondered what stories we would all have shared, if we had spoken to each other. Instead, of course, we shut ourselves off from each other and our predicament as best we could. I looped the straps of my bags together and under the legs of my chair, briefly considered brushing my teeth in the men's room, put my feet up on the chair in front, and slept.

A Geek bearing Gifts

2008-06-25T08:45:00.003+05:30

As kids, my sister and I, and indeed most of the extended family, would get gifts from various aunts settled in the US as they came down to Kerala in the summers to expose their kids to the land of their forefathers, pick up the latest sari styles and attend sundry marriages/funerals/baptisms/engagements/memorial services. Their huge Samsonite suitcases would be filled with stuff that we in pre-liberalisation India could rarely, if ever get our hands on - chocolates (especially KitKats and Toblerones), clothes, make-up for the women, electronic thingummies and grooming products for the men. The chocolates would be finished off in the first couple of weeks, but the clothes would be made to last for years, being passed from cousin to cousin until too frayed or smelly or out-of-fashion to be handed down anymore (I believe I once referred to the hand-me-downs as being 'secondhand imported', a term which my parents thought incredibly funny and smart and repeated for a long time). While the clothes may never have been considered tres chic, I used to find them fascinating - partly because they all had a certain smell and texture (both due to the generous use of fabric softener by the aunts, as I later realized), but more so because they seemed to come from exotic places like Colombia or Ecuador, places I had only read about in back issues of National Geographic or random GK books ( I am not ashamed to admit it - I read a lot of those books as a kid). I had a pair of shorts from Kenya, and they made me feel like a global citizen.

That, however was in the heydays of the Multi-Fibre Agreement. Since then, India has come a long way, and so has China. Which brings me to the point of this post: I'm down to the last 2 days of my US trip (I leave Thursday evening), and I need to figure out what to get for various people back home. It's pretty confusing because
(a) a lot of the stuff you find in the US would probably have been made in India (including man-hole covers, though I would not want to buy them) and is therefore available back home as well;
(b) even more of the stuff is made in China these days, and I find that somehow less exciting than if they were made in, say, Mexico - I have travelled all this way west, after all;
(c) I am fairly clueless about what it is that people would like, or at least, what they would like that I can afford;
(d) Assuming I wanted to buy clothes, I don't know what people's clothes sizes are, for the most part, and US sizes are a little larger anyway; and
(d) I am scared of being stuck with buyer's remorse (I don't actually suffer from it often, I'm just scared I might, which limits my willingness to splurge).
So far I've managed to buy an assortment of caps - Red Sox, one-size-fits-all - and a few shirts at Filene's Basement (thank you, Han). Assorted chocolates are, of course, on the shopping list. But somehow, I find this rather boring. I almost see myself telling the Customs guys at the Bengaluru International Airport,"I have nothing to declare but my lack of imagination", at which point I suppose they would seize a couple of packets of chocolates and some foreign exchange purely for trying to paraphrase Oscar Wilde and getting it wrong.
So, considering that the last bleg did generate some interesting commentary, I'm putting up another one: if you think you're one of the lucky people I should be getting something, leave me a comment with your preferences. Even if you don't personally want anything, drop a comment if you can think of something interesting to spend money on. Black Converse shoes are ruled out, incidentally.

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Incidentally, is anybody checking out my Twitter feed (it's on the right,panel, under the picture, also available at http://twitter.com/uglybutbearable)? Let me know if that's any fun.

Lucy, Jesus, Buddha

2008-06-14T01:39:00.004+05:30

One thing I've done in the US which I haven't gotten around to doing much back home is visiting museums. Unfortunately, most museums in India are looked upon as glorified warehouses, with very little effort taken to engage or educate. Out here, a lot more effort is put in, but I guess that's also because they aren't just under the aegis of some governmental agency with a limited budget. Also, I get the feeling that there's just so much stuff that is of some sort of historical significance pretty much strewn around all over, we get a little jaded by it after a while.
Anyway, back to the story at hand: I've managed to visit two museums so far - the Houston Museum of Natural Science and the Museum of Fine Art in Boston. The major crowd-puller at the former was an exhibit called 'Lucy's Legacy', which ostensibly was about Lucy, the skeleton of a nearly 3.2-million-year-old Australopithecus afarensis, but also had a lot of stuff about Ethiopian culture and history (Lucy was discovered in Ethiopia). The MFA had an exhibition of Spanish painters from El Greco to Velasquez, but since I don't really have any clue about them anyway, I chose to wander the halls on my own (also, they were charging more for the special exhibit).
Here are the highlights, if you will, in bite-size pieces:

Jesus with curly hair
More than Lucy, the images that really stayed with me from the exhibit were the icons that are part of the traditions of the Ethiopian church. What struck me was that although the arrangement of the figures in the icons was similar to Christian imagery elsewhere, the actual depictions of characters like Jesus and the apostles were different from that found elsewhere, where they all have European/Aryan features. That might possibly be because the church was founded based on contact with early Christians from Israel and the Middle East itself, not European proselytizers. It's interesting to see how the standard depictions have spread throughout the world though. I wonder if the early Syrian Catholic/Malankara church also had distinct imagery, at least to begin with. Funny how I never really thought of that till I traveled half-way around the world.

The Buddha didn't bother with maintaining a six-pack
The MFA has some good collections of art and sculpture from South-east Asia, including a lot of Buddha statues. While the Buddha may not be the sort of alpha male beefcake, it's still interesting to see how he is never depicted as having, ahem, chiseled abs. Neither, for that matter, does Michelangelo's David. While David, especially, is fairly buffed-out, he doesn't have the extreme definition of underwear models and body-builders. I guess the ancients knew the futility of getting 'cut'. Note - I have no issues with working out to stay in shape, I just think it's pointless to focus on certain muscles only so as to get attention.

Only rich societies equate skinniness with looking good
Through the ages, most depictions of women show them as being fairly well-fed, irrespective of time or location. Look up Nell Gwyn, for example. I suppose being well-fed is an evolutionary sign of being able to survive through lean times or something. I doubt if it's a coincidence that the size zero figure has come to be considered desirable at the same time that human prosperity is at its highest. Kate Moss doesn't have to worry too much about disease and famine.

There was more stuff I learnt, but most of that would be better discussed by the experts. I'm just a blogger, you know.

Maybe I should get around to reading Zadie Smith sometime

2008-06-13T06:10:00.004+05:30

On the train in to work today, I saw a woman reading 'White Teeth'. She was really engrossed, occasionally smiling to herself, and sometimes, almost subconsciously, running her tongue over her teeth, as if to clean them of any leftovers from breakfast.
A book that simultaneously makes people think, laugh and bring about a change in their behaviour - even 'Das Kapital' only managed 2 out of the 3 at any point of time. Maybe there is something to Zadie after all.

Read any good books lately? - A quick blegging experiment

2008-06-07T07:35:00.005+05:30

I'm out of reading material and I don't want to have to keep staring at my comp screen for intellectual stimulation. Also, I don't have WiFi, so I can't take the laptop (or my spanking new iPod touch) into the loo to read through the RSS feeds on my Google Reader account (673 new items, at last count). I'm making do (or doo-doo, in this case) with a free copy of 'Men's Fitness' someone gave me on the street my first weekend in Boston, which is especially irritating since I prefer 'Men's Health'.
So instead, since all of you readers are such intelligent, cultured, beautiful people, I'm inviting you to recommend stuff for me to read in the comments for this post. It doesn't have to be something you think I will definitely like - just something you wouldn't mind sharing. I won't promise that I will go out and read it, but if I do, I'll post my views here. Let's see how that goes.

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Oh, incidentally, this is what I meant by 'blegging'. But you probably knew that already, right? Right?

I'm not Avoiding Eye Contact, I'm Looking Off Into the Future

2008-06-06T08:18:00.004+05:30

I'll admit I'm a bit of a gawker. If I see something interesting, I stare. If I see someone reading something, I'm consumed with curiosity trying to figure out what it is. In crowds, I get my kicks looking around and observing everyone around me. And I guess back in India, not too many people mind.
Which is why one thing I find really difficult in the US is maintaining that particular, unwavering gaze that's aimed off into the middle distance, meant to be non-threatening, yet not making it obvious that one is avoiding eye contact. It's especially difficult in places where you're packed in tight, like elevators, corridors and subway trains.
A related problem is what to do once eye contact is made - some sort of acknowledgment is usually necessary, yet an actual conversation is too much. It's like the gunslingers of the Wild West, making eye contact, sizing each other up, and then firing off a quick "Hey, how's it going?" and turning your gaze away before the other person makes the mistake of thinking that you actually care. So far the most I can manage is a quick nod and some sort of a gurgle in my throat. It's something I'm working on, though, and, hopefully, I'll get it right in a couple of weeks. Maybe I'll even be able to say "Have a good one" without laughing. I'll just have to stay strong and tell myself, "Yes, I can".

Let me root, root, root for the Red Sox

2008-06-04T09:53:00.003+05:30

I have to say, I really love my job. First, I got to watch a match from the IPL as part of a team outing, and today (that's Tuesday night), I got to watch the Red Sox play the Tampa Bay Rays at Fenway Park, which is sort of like a pilgrimage in Boston.
One of our hosts was sweet enough to give us a quick debriefing on the rules of the game before we left (being the thorough Wiki-trawler that I am, I looked up the rules there as well). As a game, I'd say baseball is a lot less complicated than cricket. No worrying about no-balls and free hits and stuff. There is a certain charm to it though, and as we were told repeatedly, it's very 'American', notwithstanding the fact that a lot of the stars seem to be from the Dominican Republic or Japan.
After an early (all-American) dinner of beer, fries, nachos and sandwiches (chicken for me, veggies for the others from B'lore), we found our way to our seats in the bleachers, which is apparently where the crazier sorts of Sox fans sit. Fenway Park is, (Wikipedia informs us) the oldest of all current MLB stadia, and its got a lot of charm. The size of the ground itself is a little smaller than a few cricket grounds, but that's also because of the shape of a baseball diamond vis-a-vis a cricket ground - you need a lot less space down the sides and back. You sit closer to the action than in most cricket stadia (or at least the ones in India, which leave a fair gap between the crowds and the players). The fans - the Red Sox Nation - are pretty vocal and yet supposedly fickle: they'll willingly heckle one of their own if he doesn't find favour with them. They're also very enthusiastic about showing their loyalty, wearing caps, tees, sweatshirts all emblazoned with the 'B' or with the red socks. Out of about 40,000 people, we were probably the only group not wearing any Sox-related outfits (as an aside, I've noticed that in the city in general, the desis are probably the only group that don't seem to wear much stuff related to the local teams, except for a few people wearing cheap knock-offs of the caps).
The game we saw was fairly exciting as far as regular season games go, with a few home runs, a little bit of decent fielding, some tension in the middle innings and some impressive pitching at the end by the Red Sox' closer, Jonathan Papelbon. On the whole though, I'd say cricket's got a lot more action going on at every minute, especially when it comes to Twenty20. And some of those specialist batters make Sourav Ganguly look athletic. No wonder they wanted Gilchrist to try out.
Based on my limited experience, I'd have to say though that baseball is a lot more fun to watch live than cricket. The fans were loud and foul-mouthed - as one of our hosts pointed out in understatement,"There's one obnoxious American in every crowd"- but they were really into the whole game. One even managed to jump the fence and run across the park, evading three security guards, till he crashed into the seats on the opposite side and got tasered. There were also the quaint traditions that kept the crowd's interest alive just in case the beer high started wearing off, like the seventh-innings stretch and the karaoke-rendition by the crowd of 'Take me out to the Ball-Game', followed by 'Sweet Caroline' in the middle of the eighth. It's a lot more fun than trying to find clean seats and dying of dehydration.
The IPL was supposedly modeled on American sports leagues, but there are are obviously a few lessons more for them to learn. One important lesson is in how to build the fan base. There have been a few quotes along the lines of how it would take time to build up loyalty among the fans, but that sort of loyalty comes only with greater engagement. The Red Sox Nation, for example, also gets involved in charitable causes locally, which fosters a greater sense of community amongst the members. Similarly, some of the 'traditions' themselves have only been around for 5-10 years, built up by shrewd team principals at Fenway Park. Part of the reason, though, why the local fans get more respect is because a fairly large part of the revenues for each baseball team comes from the gate receipts, whereas the IPL mostly gets its revenues from TV. Perhaps as the IPL franchises decide that they need to sell more team memorabilia to the fans to generate money, they might give them a bit more respect, but in the meantime, I'd say the chances of getting clean seats at Chinnaswamy stadium are probably lower than the chances of seeing an Indian version of Sox Appeal.

This calls for a celebration

2008-06-04T09:14:00.002+05:30

I got a little itty-bitty mention on Ultrabrown! Yay!

Where the Streets Have No Names (for the most part)

2008-06-03T07:54:00.008+05:30

Way back in school in Cochin, a friend once told me confidently that the song 'Where the Streets have No Name' was about New York, because the streets were numbered, not named. I am, of course, better informed now thanks to Wikipedia, but it was still a story I liked.
And so it was that this weekend I met with Bansal (may his tribe ever increase) and Kracker (may his blog readership increase). Being neither Yale students nor Cary Grant/Tom Hanks wannabes, we eschewed Grand Central Station and the top of the Empire State Building as possible meeting places and chose to meet in front of the Port Authority bus station at approximately 1 o'clock. Due to a lack of organization/lot of silliness on my part, I ended up waking up late and taking a Chinatown-to-Chinatown bus which, in the fitness of things, deposited me in NYC in the middle of a fairly robust shower. With neither a map nor a clear idea of which direction to head to, I did the manly (i.e. fat-headed) thing, plodding along in the shower in the general direction of the bigger buildings on the horizon, not bothering to ask for directions. I finally managed to find a place that sold me a map, from which I ascertained that I was going in the right direction, after all, and then continued plodding, until I met the others, approximately an hour later than planned.
Having filled up on pizza and Gatorade, we continued to plod, though thankfully the sun had come out. We managed to cover Central Park, the Rockefeller Center and Times Square, all the while enjoying the unique freedom that knowing a second language like Hindi offers, namely the ability to cuss without being comprehended. It's like having a mild super-power (besides the one we already had). After all that, we went to a place called Virgil's for beer and dinner (more of the former, less of the latter) and then packed off to Connecticut for the night (what can I say - I move in less upmarket circles than the Han).
The next day involved further roaming around NYC - a couple of rounds of Grand Central Station trying to figure out how to get south, a walk past the entrance to Wall Street, further wandering in and out of various subway stations (grimier than Boston, more reminiscent of Delhi/Bombay), and then a free ferry ride past Mme Bartholdi herself. Having taken umpteen photographs of the statue and of Kracker grimacing in the glaring sun, we then moved on to Chinatown, where I had my first taste of Malaysian cuisine (yay globalization!). I ordered stir-fried noodles, which tasted a bit like the sort of stuff you get in cheap Punjabi-Chinese restaurants in India, only with better ingredients and not so much of a greasy feeling afterwards. I think I may have impressed the waitress with my chopstick-wielding skills, although I did have a couple of beers, so I may have confused amusement with admiration. Then it was back on the Lucky Star bus to Boston.
So there you have it - My Visit to New York. I suppose I should have done a few more touristy things, like buying an 'I love New York' t-shirt, but then I'm sure I can probably get an equally authentic one back in India itself. They're all probably made in Tirupur anyway.

Await Rescue

2008-05-30T10:00:00.003+05:30

I see the words
Spray-painted on the roof, seven, maybe eight floors up.
Perhaps they're meant for some modern-day Rapunzel, lonely in her high tower,
No longer willing to grow her hair
Knowing that it's futile in a world of
Air conditioning and sealed plate-glass windows.

Rukawat ke liye khed hain

2008-05-26T10:18:00.004+05:30

In case you've been wondering where I've gotten to, I've been gallivanting around America for a little over a week now, and before that was busy running around getting paperwork done for the trip, hence the hiatus from blogging. I'm mainly in Boston on a training stint from work, which basically involves meeting people and explaining to them, among other things, why I have a Christian name although I'm an Indian.

Boston's a nice place to roam around. In a rare instance of truth in advertising, it really is 'the large city that comes in the convenient small city size'. The Red Sox are apparently doing well, and since I'm staying fairly close to Fenway Park (I can see the light towers from out my window, see picture), pretty much every second person I see seems to be wearing Red Sox-related outfits. I'm beginning to get sick of seeing that big 'B' all over the place.

There also seem to be quite a few Indians around, and, since this is New England, I get my kicks classifying them into the kind that would fit into a Jhumpa Lahiri story, and those that would not. It's somewhat unfair, since I've only read Interpreter of Maladies and watched the movie version of The Namesake, besides flipping through this handy guide to Unaccustomed Earth, but it sure is fun. I also got to meet the (Zo(?)) Han over dinner, which involved a lot of interesting conversation with me nodding vigourously in an attempt to look intelligent every time I couldn't think of anything particularly relevant to add. I 'm not sure if he'll make it into a Jhumpa Lahiri story as is, unless she starts writing about cyclists or black Converse shoes, but he is getting a PhD and claims that he may not be averse to an arranged marriage, so maybe he does stand a chance after all.

I'm currently typing this all out in Houston, where I'm spending the long Memorial Day weekend with family. I like how most American holidays are set up around the weekends. I'm yet to get used to the large portions, though, and visiting family has meant that I'm being hit with the double whammy of large American portions and Mallu hospitality which principally involves numerous helpings. I think I shall be carrying a little extra weight back to India, and it won't be in my luggage.

Hopefully more blogging will ensue in the coming days, so y'all keep coming back around, y'hear?

Five years on

2008-05-04T22:42:00.003+05:30

Five years and two days ago, Nikhil Yadav played the song 'Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out' by Bessie Smith on his show, 'All that Jazz' on AIR FM. Five years ago, I had a garbled version of the song's refrain playing in my head as I walked down Josip Broz Tito Marg past the Moolchand flyover.
Five years is a long time, but some things just stay stuck in your head, you know.

At the foodcourt

2008-05-01T14:01:00.002+05:30

I wonder if what they say about the abyss
Holds true for crowds as well:
As I look out at all of them,
Imagining their stories -
Their lives, loves, vices, workouts,
Do they look in to see
The teriyaki sauce dribbling down my chin?

Bird-shit, Beer and Boundaries

2008-04-27T19:05:00.004+05:30

We've got a couple of people from the Boston office in town right now, and they decided that they'd like to watch one of the IPL matches live, so a bunch of us from work decided to go along (read: team outing=company paying). As a result, I got to view my first Twenty20 match live - Bangalore Royal Challengers versus Rajasthan Royals at the Chinnaswamy stadium.

The tickets we got entitled us to a couple of free beers and dinner. However, when entering we found that they didn't allow bottled water in, and worse, didn't sell it inside either. This made things pretty bad for the visitors - they had chosen to walk down from their hotel, and were already red from the exertion. Drinking the water from the available dispensers was not an option, since there was the risk of picking up an infection. Surprisingly, hard liquor was also on sale at the venue, but they refused to sell Sprite without alcohol. Vijay Mallya certainly knows where his money comes from.

We had got seats in what was referred to as the 'Royal Challenge North Terrace' (all the stands were named for booze brands from the UB group, with the janta stands named after Bagpiper, the hep one near the pavilions named after Black Dog and so on), which overlooked the sight-screen from the Cubbon Road end. Getting to our seats, we found that, firstly, although the tickets had seat numbers on them, the seats didn't - you just went and parked yourself wherever you wanted. Worse still, Kailash Kher was performing on a stage next to our stand, and the noise had literally scared the shit out of the birds gathered in the roof overhead. The floor and all the seats in the front rows were white with guano. Considering the amount of money being thrown into getting in cheerleaders and such-like, you would think that they could afford to spend some to at least keep the seats clean. Anyway , after first depositing the visitors and a few others in the back, a few of us decided to sacrifice our jeans to be able to catch a better view of the action, moving right up to the first row. I joked that if we wanted to be shown on TV, we just had to move around while a ball was being bowled - the batsman would surely complain and the cameras would pan to where we sat to show who the offenders were. That didn't really happen though, but it would have been worth a try.

Having got a look at the players practicing (its surprisingly exciting to be able to recognize them purely from how they move on the field, without the aid of the camera close-up), and seen a couple of routines by the cheerleaders, we figured it was time to go get our free beers, only to find that a whole bunch of other people had the same idea. Which meant that there was a line that nearly stretched out to the entrance to get it. By the time we got the beer, we missed the first two balls, which encompassed Rahul Dravid's entire innings.

The cricket itself was fairly exciting to begin with. When you've gotten used to watching cricket on TV, it's tough to get used to not having replays and close-ups. Not having to listen to the endless prattle of the commentators is a blessing, though. I was really surprised to see how far the leather ball travels - Ross Taylor managed to top-edge one all the way over the third man boundary. Watching Taylor bat brought two things to mind - one, that he's an amazing talent and you wish he would not just throw it all away after a few bold strokes, and two, that bats these days are just fantastic. The aforementioned top-edge, of course, is an example, but there were also a few sweetly timed strokes that just seemed to keep going when you would expect them to land a few meters inside the boundary. Once he was gone, though, the rest of the batsmen were rather subdued, except for some late hitting by Praveen Kumar, who I think should be sent up the order to shake things up a little - the current Bangalore batting order just looks too slow-moving at times. The other highlight of the Bangalore innings was watching Shane Warne bowl. The waddle to the crease, the wind-up, the twirling delivery - they're all there, just like on TV. I tried to get a couple of pictures on my phone, but most were too blurred, which is just as well - I wouldn't want Lalit Modi coming after me. The Bangalore team was pretty disappointing in their batting, and if not for Kumar's slogging at the end, would have been hard-pressed to get to even the 135 they finally managed. Not too many pom-pom-waving moments for the cheerleaders, unfortunately.

It was approximately dinner-time by then, but since the whole stand decided to head toward the buffet tables, the queue spread across two floors and the intervening staircase, so we decided to chuck dinner. The Rajasthan innings began shortly after, and a few early wickets notwithstanding, it was a fairly easy effort for them. The field settings were a mess at times, with Dravid seeming to make an extra effort to appear different and aggressive, with two slip fielders and loads of people in the 30-yard circle. While aggression is all very well, you have to temper it with common sense - with small boundaries, big bats and little pressure, the opposition batsmen could just swing away in the knowledge that even mis-hits would get them boundaries. Comparing Dravid's captaincy with Warne's, it seemed somewhat forced, especially when trying to build camaraderie within the team. Warne, on the other hand, seems to get along much more naturally, although it must be said that he has a whole bunch of youngsters who are already in awe of him, so its easier to make his presence felt.

We left the stadium early, just as Shane Watson took a liking to Kumar and pasted him for 26 in one over. This time it seemed the crowd didn't anticipate our move, and we could get out easily without having to shove and push our way through. Our visitors had left early since they couldn't survive without the water, so we dropped in on them at the hotel and chatted for a while about cricket and all the ads they'd seen on TV before heading back home.

Overall, what did I think of the experience? Worthwhile only if someone else is paying - which I guess held true for most of the other people in the stand, most of whom seemed to be there with free passes or because they knew someone in the setup. Apparently for the first game the beer had been unlimited, but they realised that too many people just didn't know when to stop. Mukul Kesavan had a long rant on Cricinfo a few days ago about the IPL and Twenty20 in general, and I'm guessing he was in a particularly bilious mood only because he watched the match at the ground. It reduces him to cribbing about the fact that you can't figure out who the players are because the game's too fast, unlike Test ('real') cricket where

you get to know the players, specially if you're at the stadium because you watch them move about when nothing is happening; cricket has lots of "dead" time in between individual deliveries and overs, which helps the spectator into a state of relaxed alertness.

I've never heard someone extol the virtues of dead time before, and really, since the players are all in white (as his blog's name so clearly states), it would have been pretty difficult anyway to identify them without looking at the scoreboard, which is an option available even in Twenty20.

Having said all that and done my little bit of cribbing, however, I have to say that I think the game, stripped of the razzmatazz and the flying Bollywood heroes and all that, is still exciting, fun and does showcase the skills of the participants very well. The fact that the players are playing for personal and professional pride rather than national honour takes some of the pressure off them, and allows them to give their talents free rein. It's still early days for the tournament, and pretty soon the actors will all have to go back to running around trees, the American cheerleaders will be replaced by East European wannabe models, and a lot of the big name foreign players will head back for national duty. That's when the real staying power of the format will be tested, when the young Indian players have to start shouldering greater responsibility, and everyone starts to figure out each other's game. I think there's definitely going to be a dip in viewership at least till the finals, but the hardcore fans will still stay on, and will be rewarded with an early look at some of India's future greats. Now, if only there were some way to replace those annoying commentators on TV.

A Thought Experiment on Gender Stereotyping

2008-04-22T21:17:00.002+05:30

A quick follow-up to my previous post.
Consider this - the model, while being an exercise in sophistry, could just as well have been applied keeping a woman's preferences in mind over the intelligence and looks of the available male population. Even assuming that women may rate intelligence more highly, the recommendations for intelligent, single men would pretty much be the same - get pretty and get out there.
So here's a question - would your reaction to such a prescription be:
(a) that is so true - women would kill for a guy who has exfoliant and isn't afraid to use it;
(b) looks-schmooks - girls just love guys with a sense of humour;
(c) girls select guys? Hai hai what evil, western influences are you perpetuating!; or
(d) where does love fit into all this? Every girl should have the right to fall for the first ugly, dumb jerk who comes her way.
Answer in the comments please, and preferably specify your gender as well, if not your identity.

Who needs Pop Psychology when you've got Pop Economics?

2008-04-19T18:00:00.006+05:30

It looks like (mangled) concepts from economics and game theory are set to take over from pop psychology as the rushed journalists' choice to explain social phenomena. Besides the advantage that economics is more en vogue than psychology these days, sounding more logical and, um, hygienic (no messing around with sexual issues and being badly treated by your mom), it has the added advantage of allowing the journalist to link to incomprehensibly mathematical papers as reference, so it becomes difficult for readers to call their bluff. Take, for example, this article on Slate (linked to by both MR and SM), which tries to explain 'The Eligible Bachelor Paradox', using economics and game theory to 'explain the shortage of available, appealing men'.

You can think of this traditional concept of the search for marriage partners as a kind of an auction. In this auction, some women will be more confident of their prospects, others less so. In game-theory terms, you would call the first group "strong bidders" and the second "weak bidders." Your first thought might be that the "strong bidders"—women who (whether because of looks, social ability, or any other reason) are conventionally deemed more of a catch—would consistently win this kind of auction.
But this is not true. In fact, game theory predicts, and empirical studies of auctions bear out, that auctions will often be won by "weak" bidders, who know that they can be outbid and so bid more aggressively, while the "strong" bidders will hold out for a really great deal...

Where have all the most appealing men gone? Married young, most of them—and sometimes to women whose most salient characteristic was not their beauty, or passion, or intellect, but their decisiveness.

All of this sounds great, except that there's very little related to auction theory in there, especially if you were to go through the paper the author links to. In fact, while the paper does talk of the weak bidders bidding aggressively, that's in the context of bid shaving - bidding less than their total holdings. In effect they're driving a tougher deal with the seller, not settling quickly. Overall, it's a lot of faff dressed up as game theory - after all, just because some women are 'easy', doesn't mean men have to get married to them. Indeed, there's absolutely no discussion of the men's preferences. But I guess it's written to appeal to single, lonely women who read Slate and have a higher opinion of their intelligence, to make them feel better about not finding an eligible bachelor yet. The women who've found guys are all probably too busy to read Slate - the hussies.
But I come to join the ranks of pop economists, not to bury them. So here's my take on the same problem, using good old-fashioned Consumer demand theory and indifference curves.
To begin with, let's start with a utility function describing the preferences of a man over Intelligence and Beauty:

U=U(I,B)

i.e. the individual gets utility from (his partner's) intelligence and beauty, and aims to find a partner with the optimal combination of both (assuming convex preferences). The indifference curves would be as given at right.

For this particular model , let's consider the individual's endowment to be in terms of time, which constrains his ability to choose. The budget constraint can be written as

M=P1I + P2B

Where M is the time available, P1 is the 'price' of intelligence - interpreted as the time spent to search/identify intelligence. Similarly P2 can be considered the 'price' of beauty (given that it's easier to identify beauty, P2 would be less than P1, with the slope of the budget constraint, (-)P1/P2 >1). The budget constraint for one endowment is shown in the diagram as M1, with the individual choosing the combination (that is, partner) A.
Now consider that it's becoming easier for women to look pretty these days - better make-up, shampoos, hair irons and what-have-you, which means that the 'supply' of beauty has gone up, which in turn means the price has gone down-with more pretty women around, the individual has to spend less time to find them. This change in price will affect the final outcome, which can be split into the substitution and income effects.
The (Hicks) substitution effect is the effect of the individual changing his choice, given the new prices, if he had to stay on the same indifference curve - i.e. get the same level of utility, for which he would in fact require only an endowment M1'. This would see him shift from combination A to combination A', opting for a greater level of beauty and substituting away from intelligence.
The change in prices also implies an increase in purchasing power, which is captured by the income effect. The individual's new budget constraint is M2, putting him on a higher indifference curve (i.e. getting a higher level of utility), and his final choice will be the combination B, with greater beauty and less intelligence. (if we considered beauty to be an inferior good, we might have expected the income effect to counter-act the substitution effect to some extent, but, hey, that's not realistic now is it?).
In a nut-shell, that means that as it becomes easier for women to look pretty, men would readily substitute away from intelligence and opt for a partner with greater beauty. And we didn't even need auction theory to explain that.
But we might as well ask what this means for the intelligent, single women who read Slate magazine. One option is to go out there and get themselves noticed - that would reduce the 'price' of finding them, which should cause the price effect discussed above to work in their favour. The other option is to pretty themselves up - that moves them up to a higher indifference curve, and thus more desirable. Of course, both options are not mutually exclusive.
So there you have it, all you intelligent, single women, your prescription for relationship success: look good and get out there.
Hooray for Pop Economics!

Poignant or Pretentious? The Perils of Perusing Poetry

2008-04-17T23:07:00.004+05:30

Background: Over on Millennium Hand (that comes with 2 'n's, and highly recommended), there's a nice little discussion started on poetry, starting with MH/Y/Han Solo asking for suggestions on what poetry to read, to which I responded that '[P]oetry works ... but it’s tough to find good poetry on your own - where do you draw the line between the poignant and the pretentious?'. I figured I'd expand on the point here, since it might get too long to put in the comments.

The point I was trying to make was as follows: Good poetry will evoke a strong response from the reader, as will really bad poetry. However, a lot of poetry falls in the middle - sometimes it feels like the poet couldn't put into words all that was going on his/her head, sometimes you feel like you may be reading too much into the poem, and sometimes you're just going 'WTF?'. It gets worse if you don't have a context to place the poem within. It's a bit like trying to taste a wine and figure out if it's something worth drinking, something you don't like right now but should acquire a taste for, or just overpriced plonk.
For example, consider the following poems. The first is a haiku attributed to Jason Strugnell (more on that later):

November evening:
The moon is up, rooks settle,
The pubs are open.

Now consider this poem, 42 by e. e. cummings

n
OthI
n
g can
s
urPas
s
the m
y
SteR
y
of
s
tilLnes
s

Now go back and read the two again. Hold whatever thoughts you have.
Now go read up on Strugnell and cummings. Does your perception of the two poems change?
I don't think the haiku is great, but I bet if I recommended it enthusiastically enough to people, a fair number would just wrinkle their brow and wonder why they didn't get it. Similarly, the cummings poem makes some sense only in the context of his larger work. Otherwise, it's borderline pretentious.
In short, context can make or break a poem. Also, it helps to have someone you can trust recommend stuff to you.
Incidentally, if you're really interested in reading poetry, you could do worse than joining the mailing list at the Wondering Minstrels. Along with poetry, you get context. I managed to keep up with it for a fair while in college, but I eventually fell too far behind in my reading once I started work to really keep up with them. I remember introducing at least one friend to the list in college, and she became a pretty regular contributor after that.
In lieu of a smart and sassy closing statement, here's a poem from the person who created Strugnell, Wendy Cope:

Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis
It was a dream I had last week
And some kind of record seemed vital.
I knew it wouldn't be much of a poem
But I love the title.

Is that a book in your back pocket, or are you just putting on weight?

2008-04-13T23:55:00.006+05:30

There's this article from the NY Times, which not one, but two of the blogs I subscribe to on Google Reader commented upon, which makes it a matter for serious consideration. The gist of the essay is this:

Anyone who cares about books has at some point confronted the Pushkin problem: when a missed — or misguided — literary reference makes it chillingly clear that a romance is going nowhere fast. At least since Dante’s Paolo and Francesca fell in love over tales of Lancelot, literary taste has been a good shorthand for gauging compatibility.

If this were true, it would mean that I'm destined for a life filled with short, unfulfilling relationships with the fairer sex.

Consider, for instance, the picture at right - that's the first shelf of my (tiny) bookshelf. The authors on that shelf include Ray Bradbury, le Carre, Chuck Palahniuk, Gaiman, Camus, Philip K Dick, Hunter S Thompson, Che Guevara, Ramchandra Guha, Richard Dawkins, Tim Harford, Thomas Friedman, Michael Lewis, Malcolm Gladwell, Amartya Sen and a bunch of others. I doubt if most of the women I know (not that I know too many), or even the ones I may come to know in future, would read all or even most of them. And that's not even considering the remaining shelves, other books I've read but do not own, the collection of comics and graphic novels on my comp, or the masses of automotive magazines I end up accumulating. This is not a criticism of the women I know - most of the men I know won't get around to reading all of them either. It's never really mattered to me, really- reading for me has always been more of a personal indulgence, the way other people listen to music or something. In fact, it's even more personal: I don't think I could ever get around to recommending books (except maybe to younger relatives and such-like). A common like or dislike may have reinforced a few relationships, but I don't think it's ever been a standalone factor in the success or failure of any of them. So thinking of books as a way of scoping out women just seems rather strange to me.
Of course back in college I did try to look all intellectual at times by carrying 'angle' books to class. That was partly inspired by watching this senior of mine drape himself on the steps or in the various nooks and corners in and around the main corridor, wearing crumpled clothes and engrossed in whatever he was reading until distracted by his hot girlfriend. I don't think I ever impressed any women, but I did get around to reading some pretty good stuff. Conversely, though, the only time I've had a woman come and talk to me at a pub was also over a book - a copy of 'Pundits from Pakistan' I had with me one day at Toto's. It turned out she knew the author and was trying to gather feedback for him, and further conversation revealed that she knew much of the crowd at Cricinfo, including 'Young George' as she referred to him, but still, that counts. So maybe carrying a book around does help with the women.
I don't think I've ever met a woman who shares similar reading preferences to mine, except for my sister, and the latter only because she was a major influence on my reading choices growing up. Which does put me in a tight spot, if the essayist is to be believed. I'd have to feign an interest in Paulo Coelho, I guess, to get anywhere. Having said that, I would be somewhat apprehensive about meeting someone who actually reads the same stuff that I do. It would kill some of the excitement of reading something new if I knew she had already read it. And I'm sure there would be petty arguments to establish which one is the bigger Wodehouse fan.
Frankly, I'm just happy to have people around me who read, irrespective of what they read and whether they are friends or prospective dates or whatever, and (hopefully) we don't judge each other based on what we're reading. Having said that, if you're a single woman who knows her Rorschach from her Rorschach, drop me a comment. Heck, if you're a woman reading this blog, drop me a comment. It would be a nice change.

One more reason to watch the IPL

2008-04-11T00:19:00.003+05:30

Apparently the Washington Redskins' cheerleading squad is heading to India, to cheer on the Royal Challengers. So much for those Eastern European women on the ICL.
There's also going to be a talent search to develop a team in India itself. What are the odds that someone in the US is going to start worrying about more American jobs getting Bangalored, I wonder?

Sunny Gavaskar has it all figured out, as always

2008-04-08T00:23:00.002+05:30

Will someone please tell Sunil Gavaskar to get off his high horse? Over the last couple of seasons he's started going overboard in his commentary, playing the gutsy guy who's not afraid to speak his mind and stand up to the establishment. But that's basically a mixture of bravado and (selective) hindsight, considering that (a) he is still part of the establishment and (b) his outbursts often come out after the fact, summarizing the mood of the cricket-crazy Indian public rather than making any original points. By a circular logic, having someone of his stature appear to agree with them only makes the public hold him in higher regard. Take, for example, this piece from Cricinfo, summarizing his latest column where he slams the Indian cricketers for 'dancing at the launch of their [IPL] franchise' instead of having an extra net session. While this may sound great for a lot of disappointed fans, the fact is that he published this after India had been thrashed by South Africa. The launches were, of course, before the Test started, so if he felt so bad about it, he could well have raised the point then. It begs the question, if India had won the Test, or even drawn it, would he have come out and said the same thing? Drawing that logic out further, would he then have said that this is a great bunch of kids because even though they're out partying and dancing, they know their priorities? I doubt it. While I agree that the players seemed lacklustre (at least in the few snippets I saw on the news; my cable operator decided not to show us Neo Sports), Gavaskar really was in a position to bring it to light in advance, rather than opt to kick them when they're down, yet he chose not to. Just to rub it in further, he warns Gary Kirsten that '[he] better crack the whip, else some of the guys will ride roughshod over him.' Let's not forget that these guys have managed to do fairly well without a proper 'coach' for a really long time now (not to discount the work that Venkatesh Prasad and Robin Singh have done, but neither of them were deemed to be the upfront coach/manager which is what Kirsten's role is supposed to be; besides, they're still part of the setup supporting Kirsten, so things have not changed much on that front).
Of course, Gavaskar is not the only former cricketer to suffer from a slightly inflated view of himself combined with selective hindsight. Geoffrey Boycott, in his latest 'Bowl at Boycs' podcast claims that today's cricketers, although they are physically fitter, are not 'cricket fit'. As evidence he puts forth the example of Fred Trueman who apparently bowled over 1,000 overs every summer for 5 years (Boycs checked the statistics!). The problem with that assessment of course is that although it may be factually correct, it doesn't really resolve anything. What would help would be a comparison of how other fast bowlers fared in Trueman's time - it may well be that Trueman was naturally athletic and had an exceptionally injury-proof bowling action, which does not necessarily hold true for a lot of bowlers - and also an assessment of how he performed otherwise on the field, diving around and firing in throws from the outfield - consider that a lot of bowlers pick up shoulder injuries that make it more difficult to throw, rather than to bowl. He also goes off on a diatribe against limited-overs cricket when someone asks him on advice on how to play straighter and finishes that off by telling him to try and play straighter, which is not very helpful advice (a solution that presents itself to me would be to change his grip to keep the bat face more open, and concentrate on using the top hand more, rather than forcing the shot with the bottom hand, but then I am just a tennis ball-thrashing slogger, so what do I know).
I guess it's a problem that plagues a lot of sports - having former players talking off the top of their heads. What is surprising is that given how stats-crazy a lot of cricket fans are, there's very little data-supported, common sense-driven analysis that goes on (excepting of course, The List and such-like; too often you see either too little or too much of data, with little common sense).
Maybe with the coming of the IPL, we might see cricket's equivalent of Sabermetrics. Though I guess what would really help there would be allowing legal betting on cricket in India. But that's a topic for another post which I might get around to writing someday.

Getting in touch with my feminine side

2008-04-06T14:21:00.003+05:30

'My Super Ex-Girlfriend' on Star Movies versus 'Bionic Woman Marathon' on Star World. Super Sunday indeed!

What Kind of Economic Crisis creeps up on you at 3 AM?

2008-04-04T09:39:00.000+05:30

Over on India Uncut , Amit Varma has posted a couple of ads, one from Hillary Clinton and a response from John McCain, on how if ever an economic crises were to befall the US, it would need a President who's ready for the job to take that phone call at 3 AM that presumably sounds the alert.
Setting aside questions on who really is more suitable, one must ask - just what kind of economic crisis crops up at 3 AM? The sub-prime/mortgage crisis mentioned in the ads built up over at least 3 months or so (or even longer if you consider them to be the fallout of actions taken by the Fed under Greenspan). Most (purely) economic crises that would be on a scale that threatens an entire nation would take some time to build up, and you would need an extremely inefficient administration to not realize what was going on till 3 AM one fine day. Of course, neither ad talks about what the candidate would do once they take that call.

Give me Lalu Prasad Yadav playing kapdaphar Holi any day. At least he keeps it real.

The Hard Rock Cafe Book Society

2008-03-31T08:39:00.002+05:30

I suppose I could claim that this picture is a juxtaposition of the old Bangalore with the new,but then I have very little clue about either.
I think I might have been a little over-critical of Bangalore because of a lot of other reasons. Realised that when I met with Mukhi and his wife and saw how optimistic they were about having moved here. Also realised how poorly informed about Bangalore I am. While this does not change my relative rating of the city as being worse than both Mumbai and Delhi, perhaps I will be less harsh on it. No promises, though.
Incidentally, I didn't actually go into the cafe, in case you're wondering.

The Elder Cousin's Guidelines on Drinking

2008-03-27T23:57:00.004+05:30

Back in college, Adit and I came up with a set of guidelines for drinking (fairly) responsibly. They were for a cousin, not for ourselves, of course - we did the research to come up with them. Having done a fair bit of R & D then as well as subsequently, I figure it is now time to put up a slightly expanded list for the benefit of a wider audience (also, I'm a little bereft of stuff to blog about). I originally planned on mailing this out to a couple of cousins only, but then I figured this way I could invite anyone who reads this blog (yes, all 4.5 of you) to put in your suggestions in the comments and build up this list even further. Besides, this way I can direct my cousins here and increase my readership.

So, without further ado, here are my Guidelines on Drinking:

Never drink on an empty stomach: Fairly obvious; it lowers your resistance, also makes you feel worse the next day
Make sure you keep yourself hydrated: That means drinking enough water, not adding a little Sprite to your vodka
Don't mix your drinks: Alcohol is alcohol any which way once it gets into your system (unless it's Lady Di vodka, in which case it's repackaged paint thinner); the issue with mixing your drinks is that it can mess up your estimate of how much alcohol you've imbibed, and accordingly, how much more you can take
Your 'capacity' is not an absolute number: See 1-3 above - all of them make a difference to how drunk you get. Also, lack of sleep, fatigue, stress, etc can mean your threshold is lower. Watch it.
Value quality over quantity: Even (especially) if someone else is paying. It will taste better going down, you'll feel better the next day, and you can claim it's part of your 'education'. None of that holds true for Bonnie Scot.
If you think you're good for another 2 drinks, stop now: Once you've got some booze inside, you're likely to overestimate your singing abilities, sense of humour and sex appeal. What makes you think you can estimate your capacity correctly?
Take a Disprin and a Digene before you sleep: The Digene will help calm the stomach, the Disprin calms the head. More importantly, get sleep.
Drink with people you can trust: It's safer, less embarrassing, and more fun. It's an added bonus if there's someone who can carry you home (trust me on that).
Sometimes it's better to let it out than to keep it in: The booze, not your feelings for your crush from class 5.
It's never just about getting drunk. Enjoy the experience: Even if you don't believe that, it's the kind of gyaan you should come up with when you're drinking. That way you don't come across as a potential alcoholic.

Bonus Guideline: If you do get drunk, try not to walk off on your own in the middle of the night.

(That last one will have to be explained face-to-face, in strict confidence.)

Nauseating Mawkishness

2008-03-25T23:32:00.005+05:30

College seems to be having a lot of issues at the moment, first with the sexual harassment case and now the whole "The OSD who would be Principal" saga. Dr. Thampu is a nice person, but it is really idiotic on the part of the college authorities to not do a basic check to see if he had a PhD or not. How tough is that?
Amongst all the coverage I could find on HT's site, this passage really scared me:

M.S. Frank, the 54-year-old vice-principal of the college, is one of the
contenders. He was declared the protem administrator till a regular principal is
appointed. Frank, a faculty member in the chemistry department, said he intended
to apply for the post of the principal.
“I have a doctorate in Chemistry from Andhra Pradesh University and have been associated with the college for the last 27 years,” said Frank.

Difficult days lie ahead, it seems. And they haven't even gotten around to discussing that most vexing question - what will happen to Block Cricket with so many women's blocks?

Will the road to Hell now be paved with Carbon Credits?

2008-03-19T23:47:00.006+05:30

The Catholic Church, in trying to get with the times, has decided to come up with a new list of mortal sins, but, like middle-aged parents trying to look cool in front of their teenaged kids, I think it loses the plot a little. The old ones: Pride, Envy, Gluttony, Lust, Anger, Greed and Sloth have one thing going for them - they are pretty clear and unambiguous. You know when you have been proud or envious or have eaten too much (the belching usually gives it away). The new ones - Environmental Pollution, Genetic Manipulation, Accumulating Excessive Wealth, Inflicting Poverty, Drug Trafficking/Consumption, Morally Debatable Experiments and the Violation of Human Rights- can be somewhat confusing in that respect. For example, if you were to buy carbon offsets, would you still need to go for confession? And just what counts as 'excessive' when accumulating wealth? Would Norman Borlaug and the rest of the team behind the Green Revolution be considered sinners for genetically manipulating crops, or saviours for making food more readily available to the poor?
Now that environmental pollution is a sin, one might well ask where the Church stands in terms of remedial measures. Is the Pope a Pigouvian, I wonder, expecting all sinners to undergo some penance for their sins so as to understand the true 'cost' of their wayward ways, both in this world and the next? Or, alternatively, would we see the revival of papal indulgences, now enhanced with a cap-and-trade system that creates a market for sin offsets? Apparently the Vatican is already the world's first carbon-neutral state, so you never know.

Ironic moment, while shopping

2008-03-17T10:39:00.003+05:30

While on my weekly shopping trip at the supermarket ,I saw a man looking pretty hassled trying to handle the baby in his arms and his little daughter running around, who ended up standing in front of a shelf packed with condoms and looking at them with this resigned look on his face. You could almost see the thought balloon over his head.

In case you're wondering how or why I came to be looking at other men looking at condoms, the latter were placed in an aisle designated ambiguously as containing 'Household Needs', which also stocked air freshener, mosquito mats and other miscellanea. I'm just an observant guy.

The weekend was more fun than this post suggests, including getting pasted by Cricinfo again and also having a barbecue in the middle of a tropical downpour, but that is material for other posts.

And now, for something completely different

2008-03-14T00:39:00.005+05:30

The Economist has an interesting article on the bureaucracy in India. To quote:

Yet the steel frame has now become a serious bind on badly needed reforms. As the author of a typical recent IAS history and former mandarin, Sanjoy Bagchi, puts it: “Overwhelmed by the constant feed of adulatory ambrosia, the maturing entrant tends to lose his head and balance. The diffident youngster of early idealistic years, in course of time, is transformed into an arrogant senior fond of throwing his weight around; he becomes a conceited prig.”

The article goes on to list the many things that ail the bureaucracy, from within and without. (Admittedly, there have been other articles about it in Indian publications, but being a true Indian, I chose to quote the phirangs on this.)

One thing that I have found surprising about calls for reform in the bureaucracy is that hardly anyone talks about overhauling the selection process, specifically, the UPSC examinations and the whole process that follows after that. It's a long, sapping and inefficient system for identifying future civil servants.

No-one realistically claims that being able to mug up facts on Geology or Chemistry is a good indicator of a candidate's potential as an administrator. The only justification is to think of it as a combination of Spence's job market signalling model, (go read it up on Wikipedia, I'm too lazy to describe it here) and a socialistic urge to provide a supposedly level playing field to, in some way, compare people from different backgrounds and disciplines. The latter urge, however, is also its failing. Since marks in any of the optional subject papers are considered equivalent, rational candidates would opt for papers which are easier to clear. Subjects where the answers are fairly unambiguous and easy to mug up would be favoured over subjects where there is room for interpretation and subjectivity. As anecdotal evidence, I can point to a senior of mine from college who attempted the exams twice with History as his optional paper, then decided that Public Administration was easier because there were fewer textbooks (I believe there are IAS tutorials in Delhi that specialize in teaching you Pub Ad, which charge fees in the lakhs, and people have to queue up at 6 in the morning on enrolment day). In the past, those with 'potential' may have been willing to make that sacrifice; now most would be able to find more worthwhile options. Spence's signalling equilibrium no longer applies, because the better candidates can choose to exit the 'system'. Instead, we end up mostly with a bunch of people who cynically chose to spend at least a year of their lives mugging up stuff about a subject they didn't care about, only to pass an examination. Why should we be surprised if that cynicism carries over to when they make it to the services, and look for ways to get the maximum return on that initial investment?

Then there are those who fail to get past the exams. The UPSC website claims that over 150,000 people wrote the Preliminary Civil Service examination in 2002, of which finally 286 were finally recommended (for recruitment, I presume; the site is ambiguous on that). One wonders what happens to the rest. Even assuming that many will make multiple attempts and will try to get into at least the state services, it is fair to say that a majority will not get a government job at the end of the exercise. Which leaves them with having given up a lot of their (and their families') time and money (all those classes and subscriptions to the Hindu and Frontline) to end up with limited job skills and an abiding cynicism.

Having said all that, the obvious question is -what is the alternative? I would suggest the government seriously consider recruiting some officers directly from the better post-graduate institutes (TISS, JNU, DSE, IGIDR, ISI etc) and perhaps the second-rung B-schools, bypassing the Civil Service Examination system entirely (perhaps administering a basic reasoning skills test and going on to interviews). With salaries set to go up for central government employees, they should be somewhat comparable to the compensation packages offered on campus, and the sense of power, experience and perks that the government can provide are pretty much unmatchable by industry. Considering that the students at these institutes would, for the most part, have actually made it to the PG course as a result of their own innate abilities rather than merely beating the system, Spence's signalling equilibrium once again becomes relevant. Further, they are more likely to have been encouraged to use their analytical skills and have a wider level of exposure to different perspectives. Such a system would reduce the opportunity cost involved in getting into (and also improve opportunities to get out of) the civil services, thus making it more attractive to people who are not entirely sure if it is the job they would like to do for the rest of their lives.

One could argue that it is in some way less fair than having one equalizing examination, but the aim of the recruitment process is finally to get the people most likely to provide cometent administration, not to dole out jobs to people best able to game the system.

__________________________________________________________

What do you think? Does anyone who reads this blog think about it at all? The last few posts have generated a lot of comments (by my standards), so I'd like to see how this one does. I'm pretty sick of writing in rhyme, for the moment.

aa bb(?) c

2008-03-11T01:45:00.001+05:30

There was a time
When I could rhyme
Not too sophisticated, mind
And sometimes pretty strained
But it was fun, nevertheless.

Pablo on the flight back home

2008-03-11T01:43:00.002+05:30

Reading Neruda has a soothing effect on me
It fills me with an agape love
For even the worst
Brats and abrupt phrases.

Come out, come out, wherever you are

2008-03-10T23:01:00.003+05:30

That last post was my 50th published one, so I guess this calls for a bit of a celebration. I wound up my last blog after about 10 posts or so, so I'm pretty proud of this. The quality of posts has admittedly not been uniformly good, and I probably have not found my true blogging voice yet, but it still feels good to put some stuff out there. It's also good to know, based on the comments, that there are at least 2 people out there who read this blog reasonably regularly. Getting feedback can get addictive (I'm looking at you, Y), but on the whole, knowing that there's someone out there reading what I write does make me want to write better, which is what this blog has been about.
So, to celebrate 50 posts, I'm inviting everyone (anyone?) who reads this blog to drop me a comment to let me know you're there and what you've liked/disliked so far. Thank you all for being here, and I hope you've not been too bored by my writing.

PS: I'm hoping someone other than the regulars will drop a comment, or else I will have to create dummy Google IDs and leave posts on my own blog so I don't look too stupid...

'Papa, main rabbit hoon, aap bear ho;kya Mummy rabbit thi?'

2008-03-09T23:09:00.004+05:30

Back in Bangalore after a weekend in Cal. Very entertaining all around. Stayed with Mukhi and family. Attended a wedding reception and a wedding (both at the same venue but on different days), had a chicken roll off Park Street and ate a rum ball at Flury's. I've come to the conclusion that Cal would be a delightful place to slowly go to seed in - life is laidback, the food is good (and cheap), the people are helpful and it would be pretty easy to throw pseudo-intellectual angles while blowing up all my money on books and DVDs of French movies which I would never actually get around to watching.
I got to form part of Dhruv's entourage at the press conference for a Bong movie. The press (one cameraperson and 2 journalists) left half-way through a panel discussion between the actors, but they very sportingly went on with it for a bit, with about 3 people in the audience, including me. Much fun, though.
I also got to see an improv 'movie' put up by Mukhi's 7-year-old niece, with stuffed toys playing the lead roles in a total potboiler involving an underworld don (played by Winnie-the-Pooh), his supposed daughter (played by an earless, stuffed rabbit named Namunazhen Nihkhazhen, Namuna for short) and sundry other characters. The title is one of the dialogues from the 'movie'.
You have to admit, it's one of the best masala movie dialogues you'll ever hear.

Kolkata: first impressions

2008-03-08T00:40:00.000+05:30

Felt a bit like central Bombay, specifically like driving via Kurla into the Byculla/Sion/ Matunga type places. Slightly shabby but somehow charming in an old-fashioned sort of way. Possibly because I got here at night. Will roam around tomorrow and get a better idea of the place.

Kolkata calling

2008-03-06T23:49:00.002+05:30

Off to Cal tomorrow, unless I miss the flight (Ive done that twice so far). Got a friend's wedding reception to attend. Will probably not be blogging much this weekend, unless I type stuff out on my phone.
Hopefully I'll actually have more stuff worth blogging about.

Prison Break: Chinese edition

2008-03-06T23:31:00.004+05:30

The delivering of milk powder by no means achieves any sort of propaganda
purpose, nor will it become any sort of noble symbol; delivering milk powder is
just the goal. So, the means are many, and anything goes. The milk powder
delivery method written of in “Rushing Freedom City” reads like a citizen
storming straight into a trap; as brave and praiseworthy as it is, it's not the
approach for me. I remember once being told that even though losing your head
and shedding blood sounds quite heroic, it's just not something worth losing a
head or spilling blood for. So I had to think this action through. The opponents
are security agency professionals, so I must be sufficiently prepared.

That's from "Hack into Freedom City", posted on Globalvoicesonline.org. Link via How the World Works. Well worth a read on a Thursday when you're waiting for the weekend.

Some Books

2008-03-04T01:11:00.002+05:30

Some books I have tried reading
That refuse to yield to my persistence
The writing does me in, the style
Or lack of it
And I find something better to do eventually
Keeping them aside to come back to
When there's a lean period.
Yet, paradoxically,
The thought of having to read them
Makes me want to go out and buy a new book.

For Love or Money

2008-02-29T23:11:00.007+05:30

He knew as she cut the call that he'd never speak to her again. It was inevitable, once he told her how much he earned. It was like a switch had gone off.
That was how it had been with most of the women (she wasn't the first, of course). What had surprised him about this one was how soon it had all ended. Usually he could keep them interested a little longer. That is, till they started talking about money and what he did for a living. He'd tried lying about it a couple of times, but they seemed to get the truth out of him eventually.
He'd now become so inured to the rejection that this one almost didn't sting. Besides, he consoled himself, that girl from GE Money would be calling him back on Monday, and she had that pleasingly-pleading tone in her voice of a girl who was behind on her monthly personal loan sales targets.

__________________________________________________
Happy Birthday, Kracker-boy! This one's for you.

Kyonki Maham Anga bhi kabhi bahu thi

2008-02-28T00:06:00.004+05:30

Watched 'Jodhaa Akbar' last night with Mohit and Mack. Show started at 10.00 PM, ended at 2.00 AM. 4 hours of slow period cinema that basically depicts Akbar as a hopelessly romantic sap who got bossed around by women and spent most of his time mooning around his zenana waiting to get some action from his wife. The acting makes the movie seem like a glorified school play, and given the amount of money spent on the locations , the costumes and the sets, there are hardly any great-looking scenes. The battle scenes look like they got truncated to save on production expenses, and the music's not that great either. Instead, all you've got Ila Arun playing Maham Anga like the evil mother-in-law from some Balaji soap opera.
My key take-away from the movie - work out like crazy, because when all else fails in trying to impress a girl, you can just take off your shirt and pose in front of her balcony and she's sure to get all weak-kneed and mushy in no time. Who said history never teaches us anything?

Speak no Evil

2008-02-27T23:30:00.004+05:30

Mathew Hayden has apparently stirred up the waters again, calling Bhajji an 'obnoxious weed' on radio. As far as I can tell, that's not an Aussie term of endearment, so I suppose he was being critical. Cricinfo now reports that Hayden has been reprimanded by Cricket Australia and, 'in the spirit of the game', has accepted their decision.
While all this is pretty farcical, it does make it pretty obvious that the Aussies are definitely out to get under the metaphorical skin of the Indian team. So the obvious question is, what should the Indians do? They definitely can't sledge back because, let's face it, they're really bad at it. They're not too articulate, which means that they're a lot more likely to say something that's obviously offensive, instead of being clever and using polysyllabic words that the ICC's Code of Conduct does not cover as yet.
Instead, I suggest they get in touch with their Indian roots and start off a well-publicised campaign of Gandhigiri. The CB series finals will be the last few international games for Gilchrist and Hogg, so it gives a readymade opportunity tothrow as many soundbytes out there as possible saying what wonderful competitors they, and by extension the Australian team, are and such-like and clapping for them at every opportunity, even ( or especially,wink wink) when they mess up. They should make it a point to clap for anyone who makes a half-decent score. Perhaps even call Hayden and Ponting 'Uncle' out of respect -after all Haden is nearly twice Ishant Sharma's age. I'd like to see how the Aussies would respond to that. Complaining that the Indians are being insincere would be churlish, being rude would make them look outright boorish and being polite back would mean that they're being taught manners by a bunch of kids half their age.
Of course, it's important that the media is carefully handled in this. Dhoni would need to give an interview on how the team got together and watched 'Lage Raho Munnabhai' and decided that they'd use Gandhigiri to face up to all the negativity, Bhajji would have to say that he's reformed and maybe Robin Uthappa can talk about how he feels connected to his heritage through non-violence. It's the kind of position that they can't lose from - the Aussie media won't be able to criticize it without sounding like they're criticizing Gandhi himself, the Indian media will go crazy showing stock footage of Sanjay Dutt and Arshad Warsi, and even if they mess up, they can always apologize and talk about how bad they feel for letting the team and their fans and everyone else down and give their best repentant-schoolboy look.
It's not a strategy that would have worked under, say, Dravid, but with Dhoni as captain, I'd say it's workable. He's already won plaudits for his charisma and the way he's led the team by example, AND he's got that beatific smile.
It's a perfect strategy, just as long as no-one talks about Gandhiji's three monkeys.

Thoughts from a weekend of mall-ratting

2008-02-24T21:36:00.005+05:30

I spent quite a bit of time this weekend at 2 malls near my house, shopping for groceries, eating a couple of meals and generally watching the populace since that seemed like a wannabe-writer-type thing to do. Came up with a few random thoughts, which probably don't merit entire posts on their own- that just clutters up the RSS feed - so instead, I'm going to lay them out as part of a single, rambling post. So here goes:

Thought 1: There's something very endearing about watching grown people travelling on escalators for the first few times. This is a sight you still see pretty often in places like Bangalore and Mumbai in the malls, especially on the weekends. As they get onto the escalators their faces express apprehension and excitement in equal measure, and then their expression changes to one of wonderment and joy as they get borne up (or down). There's something very child-like and innocent about that, about seeing people find wonder in something that others consider mundane.

Thought 2: The fact that ice-cream sold in the food courts is over-priced may be a good thing. Since any craving for ice-cream is purely for taste, not nutritional value, the marginal utility gained from eating more ice-cream beyond a single scoop is very small. On the other hand, it does impose an additional 'cost' on the consumer in terms of filling him/her up with 'empty' calories and preservatives. The high price of the ice cream at the food court therefore (however unconsciously) internalises these negative aspects, causing the consumer to buy a more optimal amount of ice-cream. At least, that's how I rationalized the fact that I was paying thirty bucks for a tiny little half-scoop of ice-cream at the Swirls stall.

Thought 3: I saw this middle-aged woman with her daughter and (probably) the daughter's boyfriend, waiting to buy a sandwich at Subway. She had the sort of bad haircut (really short and straight) they give women when they've fallen badly ill or got some sort of mental disorder (I hope that's a politically correct way of putting it), and she just seemed rather lost, singing some kind of song to herself. I gave her a bit of a half-smile which no-one else caught, at which point she started smiling back at me. The daughter didn't see me smile, so she scolded the mother for smiling at a stranger. I thought I'd step in and explain, but then I figured he daughter seemed to be having a tough enough time holding it all together without having strangers tell them when it was okay for her mother to smile. It can get pretty tough taking care of people who are ill.

Thought 4: I realized I'm usually very polite to strangers like sales-people and auto-drivers. I'm not sure if that's because I'm just generally a nice guy, or if it's because there's a competitive streak in my Good Mallu Catholic Holier-than-Thou blood that wants to get a few extra points on a scale of relative holiness.

Holy Matrimony

2008-02-24T21:11:00.007+05:30

Kerala, as everybody knows, is God's own country. Like all good Malayalis, however, God too emigrated at the first opportunity, and now sends home monthly remittances to the family. The fact that God has done so well for Himself is a matter of great pride to His extended family as also sundry neighbours and friends. Although God no longer resides there, that has not stopped them from throwing their weight around based on their close proximity to the house of God. Of late, there has been some comment among the more aged relatives that it's about time He settled down, and the search has begun in earnest for a suitable bride. While it is in itself a difficult task to find a good God-fearing girl (for all good Malayali wives must fear their husbands, or at least appear to do so in public), the relatives admit in private that the greater difficulty lies in finding a girl with a father rich enough to afford a wedding reception fit for Divinity.

My notebook

2008-02-23T00:12:00.000+05:30

This is the cover of the notebook I'm using currently at work. More interesting blogging will be done tomorrow, hopefully.

Taken out of context

2008-02-22T20:49:00.002+05:30

We know you, we know your children, husband, neighbors, so these are the
ways to make sure, as best as you can, so that the things that you promise that
you'll do, you're doing exactly that.

Sounds ominous right? Maybe not. Link via How the World Works.

Plan B

2008-02-22T01:15:00.003+05:30

Back in third year of college when I was slogging for CAT, I used to get asked what I'd do if I didn't make it. My back-up plan basically involved lying low till I was 30, trying not to do too much damage to my liver, and wait until all my contemporaries at college hit it big, at which point I'd write a semi-autobiographical book, full of veiled references, innuendo and snarky remarks about all of them. Sort of like 'The Class' meets Shobha De meets 'The Dilbert Principle'. Maybe even throw in some junk about elephants and beggars and Random Phrases capitalized for No Apparent Reason, just for the Booker crowd. Once that came out, I could get onto the Page-3 bandwagon for a while, eating one free meal a day at some party or other and air-kissing with the best of them. Give that a couple of years, gather up enough material, then write another tell-all book which would get me kicked off the party circuit. By this time I'd also find a cause to espouse- I'm guessing Arundhati Roy would be forgotten by then, so there'd be a a niche there that could need to be filled. Another few years of rabble-rousing, denouncing capitalism and so on, then on to the next step - spiritualism (with the customary tell-all book punctuating the shift). My liver would probably need the break by then. After that, I don't know - maybe a couple of books after that where I ask for forgiveness from all the people I've bitched about until then. Things get a little hazy around that point.
So I was thinking about this recently while putting up all these blog posts, and I figured I'm still pretty much on track. It's up to all of you guys now to hit it big. And don't forget to put up embarrassing tidbits about yourself on facebook while you're becoming successful. Remember, I'll be taking notes.

How much is that Hoggy in the window?

2008-02-21T23:46:00.005+05:30

The one in the Australian tail?
Much has been made of the IPL auction and the way money's been thrown about almost indiscriminately at the various players. Cricinfo has a summary on the auction, with a picture of SRK and wife looking like Yash and Avanti Birla -wannabes, and there's another on what the team compositions are like. There's also loads of stuff floating around all over the net on the merits and demerits of the league and stuff, and I've blogged on it as well.
There's been a lot of comparison with other sports and sporting leagues, especially football and the EPL. As it happens, I just finished reading Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby. It's an account of his life as an Arsenal fan, and that too as an Arsenal fan when they were rough, middle-of-the-road plodders rather than the extremely rich Francophone plodders they are now. There's something deeply personal about the way he talks about his total obsession with the club. It gives an insight into one aspect of club football that the commentators on the IPL have not touched on much-namely, the fans. It's different from international sport, where you'd almost always support your own national team. With clubs, you choose whom to support, and it's not necessary that those around you may agree.
The book got made into a movie with Colin Firth, then another movie set in Boston starring Drew Barrymore, with the Gunners replaced by the Red Sox (digression: last year when the Red Sox won the World Series we had a guy from the Boston office here in Bangalore with us, and he was trying to explain how crazy people in Boston were about the Red Sox, so he referred to the movie; I don't think he was too pleased when I told him that the movie was an adaptation of a story originally based on soccer).
The book stops in 1992, the year that the EPL was set up, before money really started flowing into English football through TV rights and all the international players started flooding in. Arsenal has since then become a richer and much more successful team, with a large worldwide, but I wonder if the fans are anywhere as fanatical these days.
Cricket, especially in India, rarely seems to care too much about the fans - as long as you've goto your TV on, it doesn't matter what you really feel about the game. And even the administrators would probably laugh at the thought of going and watching the game at the ground. Maybe with the IPL we might see a change. And with it, we might see some interesting fan literature as well.