Looking at things - ab initio

I was re-reading one of my all-time favourites -- Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman. It's been a favourite for a long time -- ever since I got hooked to Physics. In fact, after Yakov Perelman's Physics Can Be Fun, this is perhaps my favourite book on my favourite subject. The first time I read Surely...was more than a decade back -- when I just started majoring in Physics. In the years that passed by, I must have read it at least a dozen times. But this time, it was different. I was reading the book after almost 4 years. And to my surprise and joy, the whole perspective had changed!

The last few times I read the book, it was more to know about the curious adventures of the Physicist-cum-drummer-cum-teacher and to laugh and enjoy. But this time the feeling was about relating to the thoughts, finding analogies in my own life and, of course, thanking my decision of studying (whatever little it may be) the world's best subject - Physics.

Not sure how many of you feel this way, but somehow I have always been interested in looking at things from the very basics. So if it was the prized record player that my father had, I head to open it up and fiddle with the amplifier and stylus. If it was our car, I had to open the bonnette and see what was inside. And if it was the television, I had to know how it operated. And this was not limited to gadgets -- even simple stuff like a tap, a valve, safety pin...the basics of anything and everything appealed to me. Back in school, I was not able to figure out the exact science behind everything, but I could at least find out how it happened. So while I couldn't understand how the petrol engine operated, I could at least figure out how the petrol reached the engine from the tank, how the spark plugs set fire to the engine and how the brake shoes stopped the car!

When I started studying Physics, I got a scientific explanation for all those things. So I started applying Physics to everything in my life. If I had walk on two arms of a rectangle, I would rather walk diagonally. Why? That would mean the least distance travelled and thus less energy spent. In other words, I would be reaching my destination with less work! Similarly, a look at the exhaust fan in the kitchen would leave me wondering about the applicability of Bernoulli's Principle! About how any fluid would be drawn towards an area of low pressure. And why red lights were used in traffic signals and tail-lights of vehicles! Since the wave length of the red light was maximum, it could travel the most distance!

And of course, MLT -- the basic formula of anything and everything under the sun.

And, standing today 34 summers after I came to live, I am proud that I studied Physics. I am thankful that I read Perelman and Feynman. And, I am happy that I look at things ab-initio.

The Seductive Sedan

It's been more than a year since I updated the blog. No specific reason as such - apart from the competency that I have mastered -- procrastination. In this last year, a lot of happened -- I went to the US on an assignment, stayed there for 9 months, came back to India, went to Kolkata on a three-week leave and then have re-settled in Mumbai. Now that I am back with a broadband connection, expect frequent updates from me.
As of now, what has completely taken over me is the car that I want to buy. The first decision was to decide whether to buy or not. Procrastination couldn't get the better of me because of my love for cars right from my childhood. Sitting behind the wheels have always given me a kick which few other things in life could've. In fact, in all the 33 years that I have lived on this Blue Planet, only the last three years have been without a car. Please don't misunderstand me -- it's got nothing to do with status or showing off -- it's just the love to have something that you love!
But the next decision was something that could be procrastinated -- which car to buy. But even that, surprisingly, did not take much time. The loyalty to my employer -- the TATA group -- made me convinced that the car had to be from TATA Motors.
Now the decision was that of whether to go for a hatchback or a sedan. The hatchback seemed more logical considering the road conditions in Mumbai, but the sedan seemed more seductive! And I did fall prey to the seduction of the Indigo -- those perfect curves where impossible to resist!
But that is where procrastination took over from. Now when every thing has been decided -- I am waiting for the right deal and the best offer! Going my previous experience, it's going to take quite some time before I sign on the dotted line for buying the car.

The elastic limit of honesty

I wanted to write something on this ever since the ‘sting operation’ struck the nation. The nation’s hundreds of crores of viewers and readers bored from the staple diet of 70 plus Leftists protesting over the invasion of multinationals immediately latched on to what looked like a sneak preview into the bedrooms of people we iconised.

India TV deserves credit for that. Apart from the fact that they managed to skyrocket their TRPs in a single day. And, last but, definitely not the activating the thought process in fellow journalists that the Fourth Estate was still responsible for investigative journalism and not just for publishing a glorified corporate brochure.

India TV made me proud for that reason. It made me repose my faith in investigative journalism – something that is practiced by few newspapers in the country today.

Unfortunately, I belong to the old school of journalism which thinks there is much more to it than just working for a salary. It is a social responsibility that you are carrying on your shoulders. It is a passion you were fulfilling. How else can you justify 16-hour workdays for a pittance?

My allegiance notwithstanding, I do have my reservations on the way the whole sting operation was executed. Six months, you continue calling a person, forcing him to fall into the trap and be infidel. Please don’t misunderstand me. I am not saying that the casting couch doesn’t exist. Forget Bollywood, the couch perhaps exists in every industry in its own veiled and hush-hush fashion. It’s just that Bollywood is always under the public scanner and thus we come to know and love to read about such scandals. I am just questioning the manner in which India TV did it.

I remember a similar incident that happened during my journalistic days. The local metro page was running out of stories on that day. The crime beat and police control room failed to produce anything and the political correspondent was the last hope. So what does our man do? He calls up top leaders of two factions of the same political party. Talks to the first one and coaxes him into making a statement against the other leader. And once the correspondent gets that, he calls up the other leader and tells her about the kind of statements being made against her by the other faction leader! And, in return gets another quotable quote. The result? A Page 1 story on two factions of the same political party fighting with each other.

Now would you call that investigative journalism? I wouldn’t.

You might ask, what has that got to do with the sting operations? I feel, like in the above example, in the sting operation too, the desired end result was sensationalism. But that’s not what I want to write in this blog.

Correct me if I am wrong, but for the last few weeks I am constantly having this feeling that we humans are like elastic strings. The moment you cross the elastic limit, the string breaks. Perhaps, our conscience has an elastic limit. And, probably, our honesty too.

Take the example of the traffic constable we all love to make fun about. Violate a traffic rule, and you can get away with a 50 buck bribe. If you are caught by an officer, 50 won’t do. You would probably require a 100 rupee note. And the elastic limit increases proportionately with the rank.

If you commit a larger crime, you would probably require hundreds, thousands, lakhs or even crores. The fact of the matter is that everything has a price tag attached to it. Be it in our country or any Western model country.

The point I am trying to make is that all of us have probably become elastic. The limit is what changes from person to person and distinguishes an honest person from a dishonest one. A loyal human being from an infidel one.

Aman Verma and Shakti Kapoor succumbed of six months of seduction. Probably a die-hard loyal guy would need six years. But eventually he too would succumb.

What do you think?

You've got mail...

I still remember the day I opened my first email account. It was a hot and sultry afternoon in the summer of 1997 and I was surfing the Net at the British Council Information Centre. In those days, BCL hosted one of the few cybercafés in Kolkata.

Having an Internet connection was a status symbol that the rich and famous liked to showcase. And why not – one had to pay 10000 bucks for a 500 hour connection! And I had to pay 100 bucks for surfing the Net for an hour in BCL. Sounds unbelievable today, almost a decade down the line, but that is how it was then.

In those pre-Google days, one had to depend on the good old Yahoo for searching the Net. And Sabeer Bhatia and his Hotmail was the coolest thing on the terra firma.

But yours truly had to be different! Because of which I chose a career in journalism despite a degree in physics. And because of which I preferred to open my first mail account with Yahoo and not Hotmail.

It was nothing short of a status symbol, when I went back to office and told my colleagues about my latest acquisition. Till then most of us were using the common office ID. I was one of the first few to get a personal email ID. Immediately I contacted my administration department to get the same printed on my visiting card. But, sadly enough, to be rudely told that it was against corporate policies to print such personal mail IDs on business cards.

The eagerness with which I used to wait for a mail – albeit a spam– in my mailbox seems so ridiculous now. I would make it a point to go through every line of all spam mails to make myself feel more important. And if it was a personal mail from a friend, no one could stop me from skyrocketing to cloud nine – such was the ecstasy. And on days when my colleague got a mail but I didn’t – it was agony raised to the power of infinity!

A year passed by. Cupid struck and spam mails lost their significance. Expectedly, something else took the place. The long wait for a mail from someone special was a very soothing pain (if there is anything like that). Every comma, every full stop and every word weighed so much. One could read it over and over again. Find newer meanings every time he went through the same old words. Get excited at the slightest hint of the four-lettered word that we all want to hear during such times.

Another couple of years passed by. Cupid disappeared in the midst of harsh realities and infidel genes.

But the omnipresent (web-based) office mail ensured that the significance of emails still remained. Initially it was welcome. As always, the number of mails you received determined your seniority and position in office. But slowly the want for receiving mails nosedived. The fear factor crept in. Every time the new message flag stood up, one would get scared.

Was it another stinker from the boss? Was it a forwarded joke from the friend you tried to avoid? Or was it from someone you really want to get a mail from?

Keep watching this space till the next phase of email bug hits me.

Why a blog?

Why a blog?

Well, why not, regular bloggers might ask.

Let me take you back by a couple of decades to answer this question. Or probably, come to think of it, let me tell you something else first.

I have been very lucky. And unlucky. Lucky because I have been witness to the entire metamorphosis of a personal diary secretly hidden in a cupboard to a blog put up on the World Wide Web. And unlucky because there is still an element of discomfort with the fact that whatever I write in the Blog is open for anyone and everyone to read and comment on! I feel this is largely due to the fact I am still very used to the top-secret diary that I maintained in my locked cupboard during my teens.

That's when a friend pointed out that a Blog need not necessarily be an online version of the personal diary. It could something that qualified to be ‘public'.

That's what set me thinking – what’s the harm in even posting my ‘highly-classified’ diary as a blog? I have always believed in the Chinese proverb of living life as an open book. Why should I hide anything? (Not sure whether I would have been able to make the same statement in my teens when all of us had so many things to hide!) Friends, or would-be friends, should accept or reject me depending on how I am. Why do I need to put on a façade for my friends?

Anyway, now that courtesy my friend the decision to publish a Blog has been made, I was thinking about the metamorphosis from a leather-bound diary to an HTML-coded blog. For people like me, born in the early Seventies, we have been very lucky in witnessing the role of technology in transforming the world.

During my childhood, vinyl records and Vividh Bharati were the only source of musical entertainment. Come Eighties and the focus shifted to cassettes and Chitrahar. Nineties saw the scene change again. Cable television and CDs provided 24 by 7 entertainment. And the first decade of new millennium has, yet again, changed the face of entertainment. Kazaa, MP3 and iPods have ensured that you need not think beyond them for entertainment. At least, till something else comes up.

Drawing an analogy, the way I wrote diary has also changed a lot over the last three decades. I first started writing my diary when I was in the ninth standard (circa 1987). Last year when I went to my hometown - Calcutta, I had the chance to go through it and couldn’t stop laughing after reading the contents. It’s really interesting to know, how much a glance of the next-door-neighbour girl mattered then. Or for that matter how important it was to be asked for directions by a girl of another school, when you were monitoring the help desk in a school fest! That was how my teenage diary was. One particular year, even had me getting inspired by Anne Frank and writing “Dear Diary…”!

When I grew up, started going to college, the frequency of writing diary came down. But most entries had something to with what I ‘achieved’ – how I saved a goal in a football match, how the batsman was clueless about my googly and, of course, how ‘somebody’ was impressed at my crooning abilities in a social gathering! (Needless to say that somebody would soon be lost in oblivion and somebody else takes the place in the next social gathering) But all this was written in the leather-bound diary that my father got from his office.

Once I started working, things changed further. During my stint with newspapers, I met a leading computer scientist and came to know how he maintained his personal diary. He had created a program that would run in two modes – learning and communicating. In the first mode, you had to write about how you felt, what happened and how you reacted to a particular situation. Basically, you write your diary in the program.

Once the program ‘learns’ about these things, you can run it in the other mode and have someone interact with it. The program would check with its database (your diary) and behave/respond exactly the same way as you would! In a way, it would be your alter-ego and provide you with digital immortality.

The scientist even told me that if you could make the program ‘learn’ about you, by writing your diary regularly for a few years, it could actually behave like you in all situations!

I tried this as well. But as has happened with everything else in my life, this initiative too got buried in the priority list by something else assumed more importance at that point in time.

Isn’t experimenting with blogging the next step?