The private buses in Maratahalli and the thoughts they provoke

-
If you've tried travelling by bus from Maratahalli to ITPL then you'll easily be able to relate to what I'm saying. Maratahalli to ITPL is the last stretch I have to cover to get to office from the IIM-B hostel if I miss the company bus. During the mornings and evenings there are unimaginable multitudes waiting at Maratahalli to get to their offices in Whitefield, while during the rest of the day the numbers are lesser. And the government buses on this stretch are very very infrequent. So a number of private transporters have cropped up in recent times to ferry passengers in this stretch. This post is about them.

Firstly during the mornings, these private buses don't start moving till they are so full that passengers within have passed beyond the phase of being affected by gaudy perfumes and body odours and are praying solely for suvival during the coming half-an-hour in the limited supply of odoured oxygen.

Once they start (if they start, that is) these private buses will stop anywhere and everywhere; the scent of a prospective passenger is enough to lure the bus to a halt.

And these private buses hardly ply during the day as they engage in the day long wait for the bus to get full.

--
Well what I find disconcerting in all this is that given an opportunity to work by themselves, most private players under such conditions look at short term gains (their reason, I've asked them...they don't know how long they'll be allowed to work before the govt. clamps restrictions...so recover initial costs as soon as possible and keep day to day operations as profitable as possible.)
The govt. in turn uses the mis-service as a pretext to clamp guidelines for so-called public well-being (especially when the election is round the corner or when some big babu has a small score to settle).
And the government and its men know pretty well that these restrictions are difficult to follow so the benevolent "pointsmen" are ready to look the other way (mind you, for public good, they say) as long as palms are greased.

Each involved party is trying to maximise benefits to his/her constituent, yet 'as a whole' the system is falling apart. And for many of us this provides a perfect case for the Big Brother's ( Government, for those who haven't read Orwell's 1984) intervention despite accompanying inadequacies.

But isn't the root cause somewhere else?
The higher the uncertainty you allow in a system, the greater the possibility that solutions beneficial to individual parties are baleful to the system as a whole.

-
Is there a mathematical formuation for this already in Game theory or do I have to go to a bar and gaze at maidens for that 'Nashish' mathematical inspiration ;-).
(Maybe, Maratahalli buses are a better place for that inspiration :-))

Ahead

-
Lush greenery just outside, endless expanse just ahead;
Flying birds soaring high outside, unfettered freedom just ahead;
Cloudy heavens I see clearly from here, gay abandon just ahead;
Cadence of raindrops just audible in my cabin, the sublime song ahead;


Yet the transparent glazed glass of inhibition and comfort around this air-conditioned glass tower,
"They" always remain enticingly ahead...

Some time for me alone

-
Away from work, from play;
From failure or success;
Away from arraignments, from commitments;
From despair or hope;
Away from doubt, from certainty;
From learning or teaching;
Away from hate, from love;
From cowardice or courage;
Away from ludicrous, from logic;
From vacuity or thought...

Some time away, some of my time for Me alone.

Beyond supeficial formalities

-
Itinerant travelers on the unknown road, You and I,
Not a word spoken beyond superficial formalities;
Fears alike, hopes alike, predicament alike;
United by the road, separated by our understanding,
Never a sound beyond superficial formalities.

Sufferings the same, yet we suffer differently;
Joys common, yet we celebrate differently;
The one road, yet we see it differently;

I read your written words; You, my musings,
Disparate themes, yet do we feel differently?

Itinerant travelers we are, united by the road, separated by our understanding,
When will we talk beyond superficial formalities?

-------
Work at Bombay done, moving to Hyderabad to visit the Ranga Reddy district depot.

Distances when none exist!

-
During this B'lore stay, I've gotten in touch with most of my old friends (even friends who I didn't know as friends in college). Was thinking about this at lunchtime and it struck me as a little surprising.

My means of contact with most friends has been phone, mail, orkut and very infrequently a meeting-up. All of these except the last one are possible even when I'm in Lucknow, and anyway I've been too occupied here to meet up with people. Yet it's generally when I'm in B'lore that this plethora of communication happens with the B'lore friends. Similarly only when I'm in Bombay do I end up exchanging notes with friends there.

One way that's good...with acquaintances if you exchange notes infrequently, you atleast have something to exchange other than the 'trivial' or 'excessively involved'. Yet quite often, this is a consequence rather than a reason.

Haven't we yet evolved fully to internalise the 'near' inconsequence of physical distances (or is it, even in this case, I am the odd sample :-))?

-----
Another few hours before I'm again off to Bombay...so beware my Bombay friends :-)

Depot & Wavelengths

-
Successful visit...it was an experience, seeing the entire thing work in the ocean of Rin and Wheel and Lux and Fair n Lovely and Surf and Lifebuoy and Sunsilk and Bru and Lipton...and...you name it and there's every possibility that it's HLL's brand.

In the first half it looked the entire thing might fall apart, I was speaking in my language while the manager was understanding in his ...only in the second half could we get the nuances each other's language.

This is always a little tricky...gauging the wavelength of the other person as soon as possible; if it matches fine...if it doesn't then...then what do you do??

Wondering about 'It'

-
Some time left for the car to come as I embark on the first leg of interactions and dakshin bharat darshan to gauge how well those 'doodles in my notebook' and and 'coloured specks on my computer simulation model' work in reality... some time left to write something :-).
--

Have you ever wondered how this entire game (the game we're playing here as we live) would appear to somebody (or something) totally disconnected. Would 'it' stand in awe or laugh at our folly. (Don't jump to the conclusion that I'm talking about ETs, shelter a human till he reaches maturity and then expose him to the world and you're doing 'almost' the same thing....if you can erase the 'generational' notions as well it'll work even better) .

It would be an 'it' right... all these notions, biases, prejudices, breakthroughs are our just our creation. And saying that that the perception would depend on 'it's' intelligence is again controversial because most of our intelligence itself is shaped by our surroundings either during our life-time or over the life times of generations.

It's sometimes good to think of yourself as that 'it'; helps you see the world from a new perspective, helps you see many 'obvious' and 'unobvious' things....

This fascination for CAUSES!

-
Don't you see it my friend...

As an individual, you are violable; you are a miniscule, insignificant pawn, harried, battered and infirm; above all you die - complete annihilation.

Yet the moment you give yourself over to a CAUSE, you can defy all this. By being the ephemeral cell of an organism which might survive to perpetuity, you try to gain significance, power and immortality.
Through absolute surrender you try to gain absolute liberty.
Through absolute slavery you try to attain absolute freedom.

Yet is the 'you' which might attain freedom even related to the 'you' which wants the freedom?

And you've given various names to celebrate 'the CAUSE',

You've called it 'the fight for justice', 'socialism' or 'capitalism' ;
you've called it 'democracy', 'autocracy' or 'theocracy';
you've called it 'the institution', 'the business', or 'the company';
you've called it 'the Colosseum', 'pyramid' or 'Taj Mahal';
you've called it 'Hinduism', 'Islam', or 'Christianity'
and so many other things.
You've called it God...

My friend, can't you see through it all?

What really matters and the purpose of it all...

-
There was a long time, when joining IAS was what I wanted to do when I grew up (some school friends are still surprised that I haven't yet become an IAS officer :-)) . The attainment and rightful administration of power was the chosen way to improve the lot of fellow beings and rooting out the inefficiencies.

But then when pressed a little deeper, things started falling apart. Nehru's socialist policies were hailed in his day, now they are decried as having prevented us from unleashing our full potential....communism was panaecia only a few decades back, it now remains only a closet from which only brutalised skeletons of tin-pot dicatators fall out (maybe it would be just the other way round if the communists succeeded in the cold war)....two generations back you were hailed for urbanising forests, today you'll get the same prize for afforestation...consuming was bad yesterday, today that's what governments want their people to, tomorrow it might be bad again...the list can go on endlessly.

Very few administrators have the humility to accept that they don't know if what they're doing is good; that they're following a momentary paradigm (I'm talking of only the honest leaders here) which in the long run might cause more harm than good, or maybe not...it's a random game, because in reality they don't know. (Most will give you all sorts of ludicrous baloney to convince you otherwise...they'll even show you their momentary laurels in a bid to convice you and you will get convinced).

How many 'generations of moments' have we lost in trying to rectify the heroisms of a few moments....

The moment you're aware of the fallibility of your judgement in the overall scheme of things, the inherent uncertainty and doubt... that's when you're taking your first tentative step towards 'real' administration. But once you frankly admit your ignorance, you will also feel the need to 'know' things, more than administrating fellow beings as intelligent/ignorant as you. Administration, in fact every other activity, will flow as a result of this urge 'to know'...

The more and more I see, the more and more it appears to me this way... that all this song and dance, and poetry and music, and administration and philospohy, love, hate, procreation and annihilation.....it is all for the purpose of pushing that frontier of knowledge.

In the overall scheme of things, that is what 'really' matters.

Will 'free' things make life better?

-
The trucks in my model are moving from stockist to stockist distributing the items required, but for some reason no costs are being recorded....it's all gratuity...it's free (and long hours await me as I explore the entrails of matrices and equations :-)).

But tell me, if I could do this in reality, make everything free...would it actually improve the human lot (don't give me those cliched economists' answers).

What is money and what is free? If I banish that note, does that banish money....if I ban gold and silver, does that banish money...if I ban all form of transactions, does that make a difference...can a society exist as a conept without money.....???
Think my friend, think!!!

Well, got to go back to what I was doing, enough of a break for now.

buzzing in my head

-
---

"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four."

---

"Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood."

--

- 1984, George Orwell

My lucky pen :-)

-
Guess most of us, despite all our rationalities, have done this sometime or the other (atleast Ganguly does it, remember him changing his jersey during the world cup match)....that lucky pen for the exam, this lucky shirt for the interview, that lucky seat in the exam hall etc. etc. .....

One approach to this phenomenon would be to dismiss the entire thing as superstitions of poor mortals.
But there's a different way of looking at it which I find more convincing.

There is a limit to the number of "independent" events which the human brain is capable of storing. The easiest way to store 'more and more' info is to link the info up, create causal dependencies and relationships (that's what those 10 day memory techniques teach you). So if the brain can store one link, using the dependencies it can recall the entire chain. In the real world these causal dependencies might not exist it (it's just a ruse which helps the brain store more), yet they exist in the mind (and for good reason too, it's increasing your memory).....so you'll find the portly Mr. Shepherd dancing his unique jig at 111 even though in the real world there might actually be nothing to that number.

Well, I was in and out of that lucky pen thing in school (there's a psychological angle to this thing as well...will deal with that in a later post) but gave it up as a freak irrationality later. Is that the reason I can't seem to remember the names of people :-).

In my present, all alone...

-
The past is dead, the future unknown,
And I struggle in the present, all alone.

Desolate in the midst of friends,
Silent in the midst of voices,
Blind in the midst of colours too many,
Deaf in the midst of sounds uproarious,

Trudging through mists of lonely solitude,
I struggle in my present, all alone.

Beethoven

-
Have you heard Beethoven? They were playing his compositions in the background today in the elevator as we were ascending to our floor from the food court.

That music is crazy....I can lose myself in it for ages...

Breaking an infinite loop

-
You will not truly change, my friend, till you see the benefits of change;
You will not see the true benefits of change till you change...

How do I break this infinite loop of inaction?

Misunderstanding the Mean

The account below is fictional and is a piece of the writer's imagination
-
A: On an average, how many hours do you work in office?
B: 9 hrs
A: How many hours have you already put in today?
B: 5 hrs
A: So you'll be free in the evening today, why don't you join me for dinner?
(Office starts at 09:30 hrs, this talk takes place around 14:30 hrs)

Again a misunderstanding of the meaning of 'mean'. If I work for 9 hrs a day on an average and I've worked for 5hrs today, it tells you nothing about how long I'm going to work today till you know the distribution.

As Taleb writes in that delightful book ('Fooled by Randomness'), if the average life expectancy is 72, then does that mean my grandma who's 80 has a life-expectancy of -8....funny eh?
As your age increases, so does the life-expectancy because there are correspondingly people dying younger and 72 is the expected value (p1*X1+p2*X2+....). So if some of the Xs are small and you've lived long, you still have more years to live...how many...for that you need to know how many have died at exactly what ages.

Similarly for you to get an estimate of how long I'm going to be in office today, knowing that I've worked for 5hrs isn't enough (along with the mean and current time). You need to know over what period the mean is being calculated and the time interval for which I have been working on the other days.
And I won't tell you that :-). So probabilities will earn me my freedom from tasteless food and discussion :-).

Test of patience

-
Commuting from IIM-B on Bannerghatta road to the HLL office at ITPL, Whitefield and vice versa is a test of patience. In the usual course, it must take around an hour, but we always end up commuting for an hour and a half or two (it takes me lesser time to fly down from Mumbai), the extra time being accounted for by a traffic jam.

Why are things like traffic jams a dangerous portent for the society?

Because it's ok when one doesn't don't know the goal and is groping for the way, then he can blame himself. But when everything is crystal clear, yet one is hemmed in without apparent reason, and to add to that there is no clear villian who can be the target of resentment or ire, the mass starts getting restive. And it is boom time for slimy politicians and manipulators who can direct this mass ire according to their partisan purpose by concocting suitable tales.

Well, looks like traffic jams have become a part of life in Bangalore now....is it a silent indicator of things to come?

Chivalrous I am not

-
Chivalrous I am not, chivalrous I can't be,
For equality has no place for chivalry,
And equality is what must be...

See through their game dear lady,
Don't turn that odd face at me,
Privileges are meant to keep you inferior,
In sharing the grind must equality be.

Chivalry is a ruse to keep you down,
Yet you never tire asking it of me,
All I can offer you is the equal hand of friendship,
Together we struggle, together, let it be.

Why

-
Why do I struggle, for purpose what,
This churning within, the deserted path;
Hours of struggle, oft reduced to nought,
Bloody battles so many, why have I fought;

Incessant pitfalls, why willingly embrace,
Endless blind alleys, concomitant disgrace;
Yet continued effort, why tireless pace,
Through this rebus endless, manifold maze;

Struggle infinite, for a glimpse of you,
Evanescent beauty and the joy of you,
I learn for my men, they are pointlessly asunder,
For only knowledge can deliver mankind, from this mindless blunder.

Don't leave my friend...

-
Don't leave my friend, stay a while longer,
Few moments more, a little longer...

Spirit of your soul I have felt in glimpses,
Yet your person remains an enigma to me,
Temper of your song I have felt in parts,
Yet their lyric sometimes obscure to me.

So don't leave my friend, stay a while longer,
Few moments more, a little longer...

Your tales of yonder have moved me often,
Though tongue of yours I am still to learn,
Your melancholic words have wrenched my heart,
Still the cause for the pensiveness I can't discern.

Your gaiety often gives me reason for mirth,
Yet meaning of that smile I can only ponder,
Your spoken unspoken words have inspired me often,
Yet why I haven't spoke to you, I can't help wonder.

Please don't leave now my friend with tales unfinished,
Those songs undone, that slate unblemished,
A few moments more is all I ask of you
Moments of life, moments I cherish,
Moments to treasure is all I ask of you...

Commenting and Popperian philosophy

-
One way of convincing yourself of a theory or a belief is, as Popper would say, to try your best to find a counter example. Any belief holds only as long as you cannot find a counter example to it.

Quite often, when I'm reading somebody's blog and am half convinced of the opinion expressed, I see or am able to frame a counter-example. When this happens, one way would be to immdiately dismiss the opinion of that blogger as false, but that would be unfair. There is every possibility that the blogger has an explanation for my counter-example in his/her scheme of understanding, just that I haven't been able to fully comprehend the thread of logic. That's when I post the comment with the counter-example and wait for the blogger's explanation to it.

This scheme has the potential flaw that I might be misunderstood. Sometimes in two different comments to different posts of the same blogger, I provide conflicting counter examples in response to the blogger's different opinions. Potential misunderstanding arises when people assume my comments to be my personal opinion and I am perceived as inconsistent. In many cases those comments are personal opinions, but in many others they are just counter-examples for which I need the explanation before I'm convinced.

The underlying assumption is that the bloggers on whose blogs I'm commenting understand me well enough to realise the subtle difference....this assumption has sometimes proved to be false.

Mumbai's beat

-
Each city, town or village has its own beat and no two places sound the same. It is foolish to look for one city's beat in another. But once you get a hang of the beat of a place it gets really interesting. Understanding the beat also does not mean that you have to like, you might also hate it when you feel it.

I stayed in Mumbai for only a short stretch of 5 months but that is one city whose beat I can't help admire. The sheer range, it's diversity complexity and beauty....very few beats can come even in close to that.

Spend hours in the midst of the human sea at VT, then maybe you'll feel the beauty of that beat ....
Get jostled in the IInd class local train and listen to the songs sung by those trying to earn their living dependent on other's benevolence, then maybe you'll feel the beauty....
See the hawkers at Andheri survive day after day with only two hours sleep (from 3:00 am to 5:00 am when they close shop for a break), then maybe you'll feel the beauty....
Get lost looking at the complete contrast, those millionaire homes and the beggars on the road outside, then maybe you'll feel the beauty...
Have those vada pavs on the street or maybe sip a cup at the Taj, then maybe you'll feel the beauty...
Walk the streets of Dharavi, or maybe go for the morning walk to the Worli sea-face, then maybe you'll feel the beauty....
See those hoardings at stations which make or mar movies and serials, and then maybe you'll feel the beauty...
Look at those wonderful luxury cars and then the urchins that wash them, maybe then you'll feel the beauty...
Feel the swing in emotions of that person putting his everything everyday on dalal street, or the proud spirit of that girl dancing in the bar, and then maybe you'll feel the beauty...
Attend those lectures at the TIFR or otherwise the Shiv Sena rally or maybe the WSF mela, then maybe you'll feel the beauty...
Buy those second hand books at fountain maybe then you'll feel beauty....

I can go on forever....

I've tried most of those things during that short stay and whatever remains, I will do at the first opportunity.

Mumbai to me at least, is ALIVE.

Yep, that is that way

-
Yep, I do find it difficult and pointless to gel into those discussions where they're superficially discussing 'babes' or cracking jokes or exchanging small talk about uninvolved people or engaging in the other forms of brainless dinner table talk...
Over the years, I've developed techniques to sometimes 'look' involved, maybe even contribute occasionally in such groups (without violating my sense of right), but I'm never comfortable.

And many a time it just doesn't make sense and I drop silent and move on mentally (sometimes even physically) to my own world. (Most of my good friends know this well...Ayan's lost again :-)).

Yep, I do have my own world and love it in there :-).

Trade-Off

-
Met my old travel agent today morning to work out the details of the travel for the China conference (don't want to miss it like the other ones I've been skipping since I've joined IIM-L).

Anyway, he had some free time and after business it was time for personal updates (I've known him for six years and barring one, he's arranged the travel for all my foreign trips).

He works for a big and famous travel agency. Over the years people like me have got so used to him, that in fact we have forgotten the identity of the travel agency and it is only him that we recognise. He now wants to move out...maybe start an agency of his own. And he also wants to take along with him, all his faithful customers. And therein lies the catch.

Over the years, to maintain the privacy of his personal life, he has rarely given his personal or other contact details to his clients. And for many of the senior managers of the accounts he handles, he is a very trustable voice on the phone (they hardly have time to drive down). Actually the would agree to move with him to whichever agency he moves.....but all that they know is that phone number. To many of his clients, he is inseparable from that phone number. And the irony that phone number is his office's.

At the beginning of his carrier, the agency had advised him to provide his personal phone number and contact to clients create better long-term relationships but at that he was concerned about privacy. Now he has second thoughts on whether he took the right decision...then.

How difficult it is.... when the beauty of the object depends on the lighting... and you get used to seeing that 'beautiful' object...then one day the lighting changes...

Why I'm not convinced about 'general' Management

-
The operative word in the title is 'general'
-
People find it surprising when an MBA (ok there's another 9 months to go :-)) expresses this opinion. But I have my reasons, and mind you, all MBAs are not 'general' MBAs , irresective of what the format of our final degree says.

When you are superficially skimming a surface, you gain sufficient knowledge only to see the difference. Dive into the depths and you'll gradually see it's all the same. Only when you know the full depth of atleast one thing will you be able to see the underlying unity in all things, not visible to the supeficial eye.

'General' Management by its very nature (currently) doesn't allow this dive. In 'general' management, you move out as soon as you begin to gain expertise (up and as a promotion of course) ending up as a 'jack of all trades and a destroyer of all'. The profession by its very nature does not allow you to explore the full depths of anything, and this reality of the profession gets reflected in the courses in this field as well.

It's the same concepts in Graph and Network theory, I read it since I have to design those SCM algorithms, Kaushik dada uses it in his hardcore database research, ma's colleagues might apply it in their organisational psychology study, baba's friends in their remote sensing and photo interpretation research and musicologists use to create sonatas....you can feel the unity only when you're deep into it.

I'm not saying one has to officially do only research to gain this depth... no not at all. No 'institutional' tag is required to dive the depths, and the depth can be in any field. Many people find it in fields totally unrelated to their profession, maybe music, maybe writing.

But it's always easier if your profession itself gives you this opportunity, and always difficult if your profession is designed not to allow you this.

As I see it, the best potential managers are specialists. Though it might take such people some time initially to relate what's going on around to their framework of specialisation (and similarly for people around to relate to them) , once that happens, the possibilities that will emerge will be impossible with those 'jack of all trades'. Diving the depths does not take away your 'street-smart, intelligent, living in the real world' kind of qualities. It just provides you the additional ability to feel and make best use of that underlying unity in the overall scheme of things.

And that's why I'm not convinced when somebody says he/she selected management because he/she was not cut-out for a technical job...another aspiring addition to that 'jack of all trades, destroyer of all'.

Ok, now maybe even you are confused as to why I am doing an MBA (though it should be apparent if you think). Well I'm not clearing your confusion immediately, learn to be patient :-)...
Don't worry, it will be the subject of some future post...keep reading my friend.

Finding good poetry

-
There is certain structure which thoughts expressed in the form of poetry have that lends it a special beauty. And sadly this is one reason bad/average poetry can masquerade to uncritical readers as masterpieces.
(Here I'm not talking of those broad poetry frameworks or genres which MAs in English are taught, it's beyond that and much subtler)

If one has learnt to feel between the poet's lines, he/she will see that many poets (even some of the celebrated ones) use a set piece-structure and peddle thoughts which would otherwise be pedestrian. The genius lies in the structure, it deserves all the credit. But in most cases that is borrowed. The true content stripped of that structure is ordinary.

It is a useful skill, if one is looking for a long-term source of really good poetry, to be able to understand early, if the beauty emnating is due to the structure or the stripped content. When the major reason is structure, the beauty will last only till the marginal effects set it. Generally one suffers this natural realisation only after investing time and emotional energy, and then it is even more disappointing. (Many Rehman fans get a hang of his set pieces after years of addiction and then, suddenly all his music sounds similar...I have to admit though, his set pieces are a class apart and most music directors aren't even close)

Anyway this allows dead ordinary poems to slip through as a masterpieces (riding on the back of first time reads of readers, who get that realisation after reading more of that poetry).

So if you're looking for a long term source of good poetry (if it's a one or two time affair, don't bother) learn to feel the structure unless you're used to getting disappointed (and rejected
eh :-))

When Reality hits

-
When you're immersed in a certain activity... lost in it, you can actually do without most of the usual amenities and necessities of humdrum existence like food, sleep etc. for extended periods(but idiosyncracies assume an oblivious importance at this stage, for instance one might have to munch the chips or sip the coffee...unmindful though that he/she is actually engaged in this idiosyncracy) .

And then... when the activity nears completion...
Reality hits...hard...real hard...that suspended tiredness comes back to take its revenge...

Wonder if you have you ever felt this way?

By the way, I had typed x instead of x1 as the array name, that was the error. Had to ask a friend to run through parts of the code with me to find the bug.

It's amazing, how the most pedestrian oversight can bring an entire robust system to a standstill.

On fire at 4:30 am, after a night-out :-)

-
Did you know that excel solver (+ all its add ons downloadable from the net) give only localised optimal values for non-linear concave formulations?

I did not...till yesterday night. So I packed my humungously huge model into that blasted solver and it sweetly told me 'No feasible solutions'. And I spent hours trying to figure out which variable or constraint I got wrong. This local optima thing is crazy, if you have a feasible initial solution, the solver condescends to optimise certain variables (atleast that's what I gathered), so you never know on which side of the fence you're standing.

So what did I do? I coded a mini-solver (solver for the specific kind of problems I'm working on) in VB....that's taken me almost the night. And now the VB compiler is sweetly telling me 'Sub not found'.

I'm on fire, literally. The names of the files are the only mute transitory testimony to this (they are called blasted.xls, death.xls....so on, don't worry it is transitory, I'll try to change those names when I reach saner senses).

For now, to hell with sanity, I'm back to work... at 4:45 am :-)

Familiarity and Shortcuts

-
The auto-wallah sugggests a new turn everyday,
And most of the days I say a nonchalant no,
"Go by the known route", why risk an unfamiliar one,
In travelling the familiar, no shortcuts I know.

Flaws in my thinking

-
Flaws in human thinking have always interested me and this made reading Taleb's book even more interesting(Fooled by Randomness, Nassim Nicholas Taleb).

Well, try a simple test...
Suppose exam results have not yet been declared and there are exactly two possiblities, you might either get hundred - probability 50% , or a zero - probability 50%.
Thus your expected result = 50.

Till the results are declared, you should be in the same mental state as the guy expecting 50.
But that's humanly not possible, you'll be swinging between the ecstacy of a ton and the morbid fear of a wipe-out.
(especially with the babas around this is a real possibility :-)).

Why Bangaliana won't work (with me atleast)

-
Well, finally managed to go to Bangaliana. It's a bengali restaurant on Banerghatta road and Utathya had recommended it to me quite sometime back.

But I'm not going back to it again anytime soon, so spent some time talking to the proprietor in understanding their business model...frankly I'm not convinced. They charge in the range Rs. 45-70 for meals (different prices for egg/fish/chicken/mutton meal). Well, the food is just ordinary by bengali culrinary standards. Their differentiation is the bengali menu but in reality that too is limited to a couple of tarkari s(vegetable).

The proprietor intends to place this restaurant in the everyday-meal segment and that's why the food is ordinary. Yet since the menu is differentiated, he believes he is justified in the higher pricing.

But I'd look at it differently. My menu is different, that's a negative...differentiation can serve as a negative as well, we tend to forget. The majority population around is Kannadiga, they would rather go the Shanti Sagars which provide the meals in the Rs 20-30 range. Bangaliana's consumer is unique, it's the Bengalis scattered all round Bangalore. But people will take the trouble of moving beyond the neighbourhood eaterie only if the food is worth it. Thus the food quality needs to improve, that's the centerpiece of the gambit. There aren't enough Bengalis around here to sustain the place for long and the Kannadigas won't stray to such a place by a long shot. Bangaliana's competitors aren't the Shanti Sagars, it's the other Bengali eaeries in Bangalore (there are quite a few of them, some really good)...Well, there are many other detailed points of concern but I guess this is enough to convey one line of my thoughts.

The other line of thought is this; not only may Bangaliana survive, it may even thrive, just a first push (which might result from randomness) and the non-linear feedback cycle might start making all the above deficiencies irrelevant. It's mother branch at Koramangala, the proprietor told me, has been doing decent business (but I need to see that place to believe).

Marketing professionals are well conversant with the first line of thought but the second line hasn't yet found place in the mainstream marketing literature.
We need to tame the randomness...understand it so that we might take advantage of it.

Anyway, I'm not going back to that place in the near future and there is no randomness involved in this :-).

Pursuing interests

-
It's always been this way, and in fact I've got so used to it being this way that I find it a little difficult if it's different.

It's this business of pursuing my interests irrespective of what is going on in my 'official' academic life. And more often these pursuits either haven't exactly coincided with the curriculum or have been such transmogrified behemoths of the prescribed course that I've tended to think of it as different.

Math became a joy only when it went off the curriculum and the social sciences became worth contemplating only after it was 'officially' out of my study list. (don't worry, my marks didn't get affected...I managed to clock almost a ton even in social sciences in the ICSE 10th, 97, if I remember right...that was a record :-)). So it was/is with most of the other courses I took a fascination for, whether the hardcore course related subjects or the slightly separated ones like philosophy, writing, poetry etc. - it was never in sync, if ever it was taught 'officially'.

And why has this been so? One reason is that a rigid curriculum or framework destroys for me the beauty, if any, in the subject, and even the best professors (and there are very few I would classify as such) end up teaching for that exam. And at some point in time when my digressions get life threatening, I am forced to revert to that exam-focussed study to save my skin (which most friends around me are doing all the time) and that destroys whatever interest there is left in the subject.

There are many other reasons too...I've spent quite some time analysing this...but the bus is due in a few minutes...so I'll close this here for now.

But a closing line...nowadays, when sometimes I get an opportunity to officially do what I like it becomes a little discomforting. I'm so used to doing what I like most of the time, and going through those officially 'prescribed' textbooks when I need a break that when sometimes I officially get to do what I like, I don't know what to do in the break...perhaps blog :-).

Great Maths/Technical Sites

-
Continued from a previous post on in search of the truth...(great sites)

1. A good site to pick up the basics of Monte Carlo method
http://csep1.phy.ornl.gov/mc/mc.html

2. A good mathematics resource with OR, Calculus, Number Theory etc.
http://archives.math.utk.edu/tutorials.html

3. Electronic Library of Mathematics
http://www.emis.de/ELibM.html

4. Feynman Lectures in Physics Vols I, II and III
http://mafihe.hu/~bnc/feynman/

5. Some of the best links to other maths sites
http://www.cut-the-knot.com/collection.shtml

6. A good resource for Computational Techniques/Tools and Optimisation
(including differential equations, simulations and algaebric techniques)
http://csep1.phy.ornl.gov/textalk.html

You’ll never be the best in your peer group!...and more…

-
This was written sometime back, after I learnt that one more of my friends had selected as his profession, what he believed he was good at over what he truly liked.
-----

Well, unless you are Einstein or somebody like that (by which I mean ‘the absolute best’), you’ll never be the best in your peer group, that is, provided you do not intentionally obstruct the flow of social dynamics.

Tried to explain this to Rapai (my younger brother) last week.

And why is that so? Simple, as you ‘move up’ (or down) in life so does your ‘peer group’. This peer group need not represent your best friends. It’s the group with which you have to interact everyday, the benchmark people around use to measure you.

You think you’re good in Math, so you decide to take a Math specialization. And what do you find? The class is filled with all the Math wizards who thought the same way. And the moment you prove (or think) yourself better, you move into an even advanced course and the same story repeats again.

Geniuses like Feynman too couldn’t escape it, he rose from peer group to peer group till he became a part of the most revered peer group (in his domain). Yet Dirac or Schwinger or Gell-Mann or Bethe was probably (and I hope this probably was negative in reality J) of the same intellectual might.

Some people create artificial obstructions to remain in the peer group where they are numero uno. But otherwise, you will be pushed up or down or in other directions till you’re finally in a group where, atleast according to societal norms, you’re not distinct (or maybe all members of the group are so distinct that your distinct is no longer distinct). Of course if you are Einstein, you are beyond all groups (and the whole wide world recognizes that). This hypothesis can explain many phenomena like say the rich trying to get richer and richer and richer (and always finds himself a tad bit poorer than his neighbours as he moves from Dharavi to Marine Drive to Manhattan).

What’s the way out (provided, of course, you want a way out; most people around are too much in the rat race to even realize that it’s a race)?

It’s to do what one likes…what one loves…for which he/she would be ready to give up everything else…

It’s only then that this peer thing becomes the nonsense that it deserves to be; both in your eyes and in the eyes of the people who care to think and understand (sadly this is an endangered species). That is when the ‘I don’t care’ does not ring hollow any longer. This also explains why people at the top of their trade strive to get still higher; by then, they’ve begun to love their trade, love their ‘game’. And many of the Einsteins had this attitude from day one.

The problem is, most people end up doing something because they think that they are good at doing it, not because they actually like it. In this case, what they really like is success, not the thing that they’re doing. And after sometime they’re elevated to a different peer group where they’re only average and it’s a matter of time before they don’t love the work (they never loved it too much in any case, it was the success they worshipped).

Very few people have the guts to do something, even when they’re not good at it, just because they love it. It’s great if you’re good at it as well as you love it, nothing like that. The test comes when you love something you’re not good at, and most of us fail to follow our love (that’s one reason we have this whole business of hobbies). The thing is, if you start doing something you love, even if you are not good at it initially, in time, your love for it and joy from it (and not the competitive threat) will bring out the best in you.

And even if you fail there is the joy of doing what you truly loved (though, actually you become impervious to those dumb societal norms of success and failure).

From dust To dust

-
From the dust I’ve come,
To the dust I’ll go,
Those treasured moments…fleeting,
When thee, I got to know,
Joy unbounded, the undammed flow,
Made the journey priceless - worthy, my life-long trow…

…now I’m ready for oblivion, that final bow.

I shall trust my judgement alone

-
If I live my life by what 'you' believe my friend,
'They', shall that life decry.

If I live my life on 'their' ideals based,
That life 'you' my friend shall decry.

So I've decided to trust my acumen in this situation paradoxical,
Success or failure, I shall be to blame alone,
'You' and 'they', my continual sources of feedback,
But for my life's decisions, I shall trust my judgement alone.

The Tyrant and the Benefactor

-
They try their best, that crest of reform,
All that remains is troughs of tyranny,

The 'self-assured' tyrant, for that momentary improvement,
Generations of moments in the future orphaned by that 'benevolent' tyranny,

For how do I distinguish between tyrant and benefactor,
Both play lute divine, charming the same chord in me,
Piecemeal, comprehensible progress, my only guarantee for progress,
And this is my society's greatest irony.

Two steps

-
Two steps from heaven,

Two step from hell,

The last two steps of my journey,


But in hell and heaven I see no difference,

Get me back to earth,

There...only there I'm truly free.

Intoxication

-
If intoxication be the purpose of the drink,

Why not a teetotaller and get intoxicated by thee,


For the effect of drink wears out in time,

Your intoxication...I'll never be free.

This life's curse

-
Each giggle of yours, unbounded ecstasy,
Each sob of yours, my listless curse,
Each step of yours in my heart I feel,
Each breath of yours my consciousness stirs,

Voice of yours, heavenly music of joy,
Your dazzling beauty, my vision blurs,
Yet dear Friend, I can't comprehend you,
And that is this life's biggest curse.

For thee

-
Tied are my hands, pain beyond numbness,
But willingly I'll embrace thy misery;

Speak for myself, I hardly do,
But willingly I'll espouse thy cause for thee;

For a sound night's sleep, ages I have starved,
But the night long vigil I'll keep for thee;

Wounds of mine, let them putrefy,
Wounds of yours, I'll tend them for thee...

For I can't see you suffer, crying out in ignominy...

Sustenance gets a meaning if I can assuage this disowned Sea.

Please don't ask

Please don't ask me why I changed my address (and various other things related to my blog) .

Rest assured that I have not changed :-)

At the opportune time I shall explain the reason for this, please be patient till then.

This shift is a necessary ad hoc arrangement.

Am I violating the spirit of the promise by beginning to write here?