I get by with a little help...

It's nice to write after a long time, mostly because I'm assuming that I'm at that ideal place where I'm not overly concerned with language but haven't lost the will to write altogether. In a single week I have acquired many years of wisdom that I’m eager to share.

I moved to a new city. My "hometown” and I must call it that after the many years of stereotyping. It wouldn't be fair to all the people who stereotyped me otherwise. The people here aren't quite as colourful as the characters one encounters in my other hometown. But it's always a pleasure to have more to crib about. 

I have officially lost my never-been-employed status and have become a non-parasitic human being, which is very upsetting. I've already understood the need for corporate guidelines for reports and other "corporate communication". It's because they use a lot of words that are not real words. So they constantly try to standardise it so that it doesn't become patently obvious that they're making it up as they go along. 

I’ve also stopped liking pictures accompanying the text. As a child, I loved books with pictures in them because it takes less mental engagement than reading does, so it was a bit like being able to take a break between reads without having to put the book down. The “corporate world” manipulates this subconscious preference for pictures by throwing in figures and exhibits all over the reports, which are often more tedious to go through than the actual text. And they're not even pretty. 

Other problems include being unable to let go of the 011 prefix and dialling wrong numbers all the time. However, I did fulfil some childhood aspirations by getting to open my office shutters – I don't know why I've always wanted to do that, but this must be what they call "living the dream". 

I have finally understood the point of “casual Saturdays”. I didn’t think it would really make a difference considering the fact that I insist on calling my flip flops ‘formal footwear’ and wearing them to work every day. But even if you’re upset about your Saturday mornings being spent deciding whether or not something looks “too casual” or “too formal”, a pair of jeans can solve half your problems in life. The world is beautiful again when you’re reminded that it’s possible for you to be so comfortable and look presentable at the same time.

Addiction and Overdose

I have a confession to make: I’m a pop culture addict. And when it doesn't give me the kick I need, I dabble in counterculture and cult classics. I use movies, books and music to drive me to distraction, more so when I’m under stress, quite the same way that others in my position would use alcohol. The condition becomes very acute during exams.

There are moments of lucidity when I can see the world as it is and everything seems so simple and straightforward. But for the most part, I’m just stumbling through life, trying to push time along its way quickly in the hope that something nice will happen, much like trying to peek at the last few pages of a book in anticipation of a happy ending when things look particularly grim. It is a measure of the severity of my condition that I can’t describe reality without references to the details of my addictive behaviour. The only advantage over alcohol and other more popular addictions is the absence of major after-effects like hangovers or permanent brain damage.


I wonder what would happen if you make a pop culture addict go cold turkey. Just the thought sends shivers down my spine. I can see it: pop culture rehab. It must be where bad folks go when they die. 

Potayto Potahto

If we are what we eat, I’d probably be a potato (or a chicken?). I really feel for the potato. It’s one of my favourite vegetables and it is severely discriminated against. There is nothing villainous about it. In fact, if there was a king of vegetables (and clearly mango is the king of fruits), it would undoubtedly be the potato. Your brain loves potatoes. No, seriously. The human brain requires starch to function and what better source than the humble, delicious potato? And yet, we are so ungrateful to it: couch potato, potato head, dumb as a sack of potatoes - what’s so smart about a sack of onions?

I’ve always thought onions are evil and deceptive. They are so brash and overpowering that they make you cry. Broccoli is obviously the smartest vegetable. It’s green, it helps your body absorb calcium, it’s great for your health and it looks like a brilliant professor with crazy hair. And nobody likes it: it's an exceptionally smart anomaly in a family of otherwise stupid vegetables. 

If you want a dumb vegetable, think cauliflower. It looks like such an air-head. It has an even dumber cousin, cabbage, which has more layers of ignorance than anybody else in the vegetable world. Turnip heads are foolish and incompetent. Carrots are ferocious. Brinjals are seedy and not to be trusted. Okra looks a bit like Cruella’s fingers – definitely wicked. So many perfectly acceptable insults and people whale on the potato instead. It's a wild world. 

Tiptoe

I came across an interesting read today. Being more comfortable with skin show rather than talking about sex is by no means a purely Indian problem. You’d think it would be more of a male problem if you trusted enough stereotypes. Apparently it isn’t.

This is probably the only issue I can think of where words can indeed be louder than actions. We get outrageous advice from our politicians. And movies, well, let’s just say our dialogue writers aren’t up to the task of writing out a regular conversation on the subject. We still prefer the flower analogy. Is that why parks are such creepy places? In fact, even our censors seem oddly squeamish on the matter although item numbers are considered perfectly normal.

God knows, our MPs sure could have used some sex education in school. 

We Are All Rock Stars

Mr. Keith Moon was known for blowing up drum kits, toilets and pretty much anything else that took his fancy. It’s a pretty run-of-the-mill thing for us Indians – we set off explosives far more powerful than cherry bombs every Diwali. Even five-year-olds do it. So clearly, that can’t be what sets the Indian rock star apart. People will just jeer at him for not knowing when Diwali is.

Mr. David Bowie thought he was quite the star because he liked to play dress up. Children grudgingly do so for school plays and fancy dress competitions each year. Any rock star who tries to use this route to fame will get laughed off the stage. Mr. Bowie himself had to court this fate sometimes.

Let's consider Ms. Grace Slick's TUI habit: "Talking Under Influence." Would that work? In all honesty, our politicians often say things that make me wish they could use being drunk as an excuse. 

What of getting drunk and throwing things at people? Surely that should qualify as rock star-like behaviour? Nope, sorry. Half of India does that every year on Holi. Kids often do so with more precision than most adults.

On average, I believe that sober Indians drive worse than drunk drivers elsewhere. So this form of recklessness would not get a rock star noticed either. General violence and destruction are things at least some Indians indulge in on a daily basis, and unlike most rock stars, they don’t even pay for the damages. So far, so bad.

We have arrived at the last arrow in the rock star’s quiver: setting things on fire. Oh wait. We’ve got Lohri. And Dussehra. Indian festivals make the most badass western icons appear endearingly childish for taking such joy in doing what we do so regularly, not to mention a bit stupid for spending so much on it.

So what can an Indian rock star do? Oh I know! Wear an unfashionable cap and starve himself.

Stop... er...

I was directed to the Stop Kony movement by a comment on one of my previous posts. As far as writing material for a blog goes, this is the absolute gold standard. But words fail me.  

I was introduced today to a rather interesting paper on the nature of political revolutions. It appears that 2012 is the season for revolutions of a different sort. 2011 set the stage pretty well with our beloved Mr. Hazare and Occupy Wall Street which, for some reason, seem to have eclipsed real (and more violent) protests elsewhere. 

The Invisible Children movement is probably a natural extension of the power trip that social media thinks it is on. But Oprah Winfrey and Justin Bieber's endorsement should have set off alarm bells much sooner. Now, now. Don't judge young Mr. Russell. People have done far worse under stress. 

Bravo

I know I should respect the Indian police. They are brave guys. No, really. They work hard to get where they are and I can only assume their job isn’t a picnic. In fact, considering how many of their comments leave me dumbstruck, I must admit that I’m finally able to see why large organisations spend so much on public relations. Multi-tasking isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.

If you try to search for tales of the Indian police’s valour, however, you’re mistaken about their core competency. As a nation, we’re the brain over brawn sort. The Indian police is known for its intelligence and investigative brilliance, prompt registration of obscenity complaints, winning arguments over jurisdiction and most importantly, their fashion sense. Maybe I should have said style over brawn.

But I do pity them sometimes. Our country is a strange one to police. 

What Economics Wants

So far, I learnt that everything we do is well-reasoned, properly justified and can be modelled using basic calculus and linear algebra. So well-reasoned across all individuals in fact, that it can be correctly and precisely aggregated. We optimise our choices all the time. We can perfectly predict the future. (How come astrologers are frauds when they make that claim but economists are geniuses?) Once we commit to an action, we make sure that we follow it through. All this just contributes towards making us the wonderfully regular, rational, trade-off talking people we are.

But that’s not all. In economics and other social sciences, we have built models for how we choose where to live in terms of access to education, the composition of the neighbourhood and a lot of other factors that I can no longer remember. Based on our identity, cost of education and employer beliefs conditional on social identity, we emit some signal. Based on this signal, we could be assigned some job that we supposedly want with some probability. Considering the amount of mathematics required for these important but relatively straightforward decisions we make, I’m frankly amazed that we manage to breathe without analysing ourselves to death.

I think students of economics should be charged the lowest possible insurance premium. Have you ever seen a reckless economist? We’re dull, boring, predictable and worst of all, rational. Insurance firms couldn’t ask for more. I bet they can’t find another category of people less likely to get into scrapes.

A Valentine Miracle

The Shiv Sena and the MNS decided not to make a spectacle of themselves as they usually do during that special time of the year. I was surprised and confused. Reading about the moral brigade’s new initiatives and applauding their creativity is as much a part of Valentine’s Day as Archie’s oversized teddy bears and heart-shaped balloons.

Perhaps the relatively young Mr. Raj Thackeray has found love? He decided not to harass lovers celebrating Valentine’s Day this year. In fact, the Shiv Sena and the MNS, easily two of the most entertaining parties in India despite stiff competition from their peers in Karnataka and elsewhere, made arrangements to ensure that election campaigns don’t interfere with the celebrations. It appears that these icons of exemplary behaviour are unable to disentangle matters of the heart from matters of the vote.

However, other right-wing groups across the country, eager to add to their core competency, decided to pick up where the story was left off and adopted new measures to combat the social evil of publicly proclaimed love. I hardly think carrying mangalsutras around to insist that any couple celebrating Valentine’s Day be married on the spot is awfully bright. But I'd be a fool not to acknowledge that it does solve the dowry problem quite neatly. 

To Chickens

The Hindus don’t eat beef because cows are to be revered and respected more than other animals. The Muslims don’t eat pork because pigs are far too unholy. I find both forms of discrimination very offensive. Other animals should certainly wonder what cows have that they don’t. Their holiness notwithstanding, they are still forced to eat garbage. Other animals must also wish they were as bad boy as the pig so that they could be detested by all and spared the ordeal of being cooked.

I sure feel bad for chickens. It’s quite unfair that nobody forbids their followers from eating them. Worse still, doctors recommend that they be eaten because they are healthier than red meat, although I do remember having read that goat is even healthier than chicken. I’d feel bad for goats but I’m given to understand that the rest of the world hasn’t taken quite the same sheen to them as Indians have.

I was able to understand the premise for regular vegetarianism which I grew up with – no dead animals are to be eaten, unborn, murdered, accidentally dead or any other form. Being vegan sounds like a prescription for malnourishment. People who don’t eat meat but eat fish, people who eat all meat except beef/pork, people who refrain from eating meat on specific days of the week – they all baffle me. You’re either for eating meat or you’re against it. Temporary abstinence suggests that you consider the act of eating meat “wrong”, so you should probably consider permanently turning vegetarian. Excluding certain animals is akin to building hierarchies in the animal world and attaching different weights to the lives of each group of animals.  It’s just very complex insanity. 

Popular Media Invokes Economics Correctly

Nice story, this. Rawls and Nozick were really political philosophers whose ideas were later applied in economics. Economists like to revere those who don't call themselves economists. Nevertheless, it's nice to know something I studied is applicable in a relevant debate. This is sort of what I had in mind when I started this blog but I suppose I'd be a lot less entertaining if I really wrote such articles. 

The Worst Consumer

I find it quite tiresome to take myself shopping. It would be completely out of line to say that this is because I’m not properly schooled in the joys of exchanging money for something that I believe has greater marginal utility because, as my parents will testify a million times over, of course I am. No, that’s not the problem at all. I’m just a very difficult person to shop with. If I turn up somewhere aimlessly with no intention of buying anything, I end up making several regrettably useless impulse purchases. When I do plan my shopping expeditions, I have such a specific idea in mind that it’s nearly impossible to find what I want. Being a strong believer in the “power of the consumer”, I drag the hapless idiot who agreed to shop with me from store to store, making faces at everything available. Shopping can also instil a very strong belief in love at first sight. 

Consider shopping for formals. This is my least favourite type of shopping because I’m required to spend a lot of money buying clothes I wish I didn’t have to wear. I try my best to find the perfect fit and then wear it as sloppily as possible to register my protest against the practice of coercing adults to wear uncomfortable clothes that rarely look good. I believe formal clothing is a devious corporate agenda that seeks to restrict movement to make employees seem measured and graceful and emphasise every flaw in their body so that they are too self-conscious to be particularly rebellious at work.

All this vileness notwithstanding, I had another “love at first sight” incident when I went shopping for a formal jacket. I fell hopelessly in love with a grey jacket. My sister, staunch believer that she is in the “black is always in” philosophy, insisted that I look for a black jacket because grey would make me “look old” and “unlike someone looking for a job”. Her opposition reinforced my faith in the grey jacket and I argued that I wanted to look wise beyond my years and unlike a typical job-seeker.

We finally ended up looking for a black jacket (just to compare) and when I found it, that was sort of love too. Helped along its way by its reasonable price tag, I settled for it. But it wasn’t my first love. I soon started having misgivings about it and started telling myself that I looked like a funeral director in it.

It’s an absolute joy to be enrolled in an economics course when every rationality assumption  crumbles before you. 

Why I'm not an economist

One of the things I did when I was studying for my exams was making a list of great people I would invite to my imaginary birthday party. Sometimes I'm really thankful for exams because such an exercise won't be excusable under any other circumstances. I looked over the list to see how many economists were on it. Zero. Musicians, authors, actors, physicists, comedians, cartoonists, artists and chefs but no economists. I had only considered two and chose to exclude them, not just because my list was restricted to 25 people, but also because I thought they would bring the party down. 


And that's when I realised that I would never be cool enough to get invited to my own party. 

Australia sets new test record: 47 all out

No, seriously. 

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/sports-fix/aussies-crash-to-47-all-out-their-lowest-test-total-in-109-years/story-fn89guyk-1226189876750

Advani is emotional as Rajnath calls him PM material

No, seriously. 

http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/NewDelhi/Advani-is-emotional-as-Rajnath-calls-him-PM-material/Article1-766498.aspx