Sharing is Caring

I believe a commentary on the public transport system in my new hometown is overdue. I miss the metro. Even the weird uncles who would repeat, "Metro sahi hai" to anyone who looked in their general direction. The buses here are no better than the buses anywhere else in India. But I must admit that the bus conductors here do have a better sense of irony than those in Delhi, who yell, "Andar ho jaao" to passengers who can't even find any space for their hands - in their desperation they put them in other people's pockets. Local trains are just larger versions of buses without the convenience of dropping you close enough to your destination, thereby ensuring that you to turn up for work looking far from presentable. 

Autowallahs here are so awful that I feel like I should start praying for the good health and longevity of the autowallahs in Delhi. On the bright side, autowallahs here don't discriminate. It doesn't matter if you're a local or an outsider; if you take an auto, you will be fleeced. It often costs more to take an auto than a cab. In exchange for the cost advantage, cabs are delightfully unreliable and cab companies are yet to figure out call wait. 

That leaves share autos. Travelling in a share auto is a lot like life. You keep waiting for an auto that will "be right" for you: not too crowded and headed towards the place you want to reach. But when you start feeling like time isn't on your side anymore, you take what you get. You struggle to get your foot in the door. You fight for your space. You let people step on your toes and put up with much discomfort because you have to reach your destination somehow. And as soon as you get comfortable, it's time to get off.

The level of ingenuity and dexterity displayed by most of the people on the road makes driving the sole preserve of those with infinite patience and wisdom. There are two activities that can seriously compromise your psychological health: dealing with bureaucracy and driving. I foolishly undertook both roughly around the same time. As a result, I have become  ridiculously foul-mouthed, at times surpassing my own knowledge of my proficiency in the area. 

Experience has taught me that in order to feel that warm afterglow after you swear, that feeling of being in perfect harmony with the universe, you have to swear in Hindi. Our national language is brilliant, for no other language could permit you to be so concise and still curse in such detail. 

Disappointing Sundays and Manic Mondays

I had big plans for Sunday. No, really. I planned to clean my room, finish a book, watch three movies, go shopping, start jogging and have a fit of inspiration that would solve all the policy issues plaguing the country, and if possible, the world. I needed to prove to myself that I do a better job with everything when I'm goofing off so I set very high targets for having fun, far more unrealistic than any of the exam deadlines I've set for myself. 

As the title of this post suggests, I fell short. It's not that I under-performed on all counts. I didn't perform at all. I spent nearly the entire day sleeping. When I wasn't sleeping, I was eating. Even stray dogs have more productive days than that. At least they get into a fight and chase a car or two. 

Monday morning, understandably, felt like a new era because I seemed to have no sense of time when I woke up. It wasn't a very nice era. I spent much of the morning searching for things and abandoning the effort when I realised that I no longer remembered what I was looking for. I was late for work. I'm not too sure of what I did all day but I did feel awfully sleepy. And I felt like an overall underachiever. 

But I've always been the optimistic sort. I'll do all that I planned to and more. I've made a list of things I'm going to do next Sunday. 

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.

The Hell with Airtel

Airtel has crossed the not-so-fine line between being friendly and being creepy. Their new scheme that “takes care of customer needs” without being asked to do so is nearly as stupid as its advertisement, which has a creepy guy asking a sweet shop to mix a lot of sweets together to match his friend’s revolting taste. In order to customise services to match customer needs, Airtel has decided to take it upon itself to activate Value Added Services automatically if a subscriber uses a facility frequently enough.

This scheme is the anti-Robin Hood: stealing from the poor to distribute to the rich. The epiphany came to me when my domestic help told me that she always runs out of balance within days of a recharge even though she never calls anybody. Someone called Airtel on her behalf and found out that they had “automatically” activated services that she didn’t want and her balance was being eaten away.

A large number of mobile phone owners in India don’t know how to use a phone beyond making and receiving calls. My domestic help is illiterate so she can’t even understand the messages that tell her that a service has been activated. It’s also quite unethical to levy the same rate for a service when the charge is deducted from the talk time as opposed to a cash payment. Not every recharge gives you full talk time so by automatically activating services, Airtel is actually overcharging customers.

Tut tut, Airtel. Shame on you. You’ve become a stalker. A creep. And a thief. Oo you.

Goodbye Standing Around

I’ve encountered many people with a mortal fear of escalators. On the metro, there’s a queue at the ticket counter, a queue at the customer care centre, a queue at the security check, a queue to get in the train, a queue to get off, a queue to get out of the station and just as you’re about to pat yourself on the back for your endurance, there’s a queue to get on the escalator because someone’s trying to summon the courage to step on it. It’s pretty funny at first because they almost behave as if you’re asking them to jump onboard a moving train. But I don’t imagine it’s easy to face your fears when everyone asks you to hurry up.

Patience is at a premium at this point. There are those who are in an awful hurry and have had it with queues. They push everyone aside, pretty annoyed that they can’t part crowds like Moses parted seas, get on the escalator and start running on it. Perhaps they feel rather smart about adding their own speed to the escalator's, but given how crowded most metro stations tend to be, this isn’t any more helpful than leaning forward on a bicycle to make yourself more aerodynamic and imagining that this will get you through the traffic in half the time. These mixed signals are not amenable to any behavioural modelling. An escalator is an expression of laziness. Urgency does not go with it. 

I have also discovered that escalators can double up as shoe polishers. Delhi’s wonderfully quirky populace ensures that I never stop learning new things. People run their shoes on the deflector brushes along the sides of the escalator, often turning around and rotating their foot to make sure their shoes are perfectly clean: intriguingly meticulous for someone who left home wearing dirty shoes. Sometimes I just have to feel proud of our ability to optimise. 

Safety, impatience, rationality and unbridled athleticism – four excellent reasons for people with clean shoes to avoid escalators, but neo-rationalists don’t think quite so linearly. It’s not that I’m afraid of escalators or oppose them on health grounds. I just have trouble believing that you can get where you want to simply by standing around.

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.

Losing my Unemployment

I expected my first paycheque to cover a lot of expenses I had planned. Having a job requires one to sacrifice a lot of the time ordinarily earmarked for doing nothing. To compensate, I made extensive plans to correctly channel money towards buying myself all the joy I want.

But I’m sorely disappointed. My first paycheque can’t buy me a grand piano, a vacation in western Europe, a decent vinyl record collection, a section of a library, a Bugatti Veyron, real estate on the moon, a small Hawaiian island, tuition for a good academic program, a quaint bistro in southern France or youtube. Money can probably buy happiness if you are as shrewd at planning your purchases as I am. But I can’t know for sure. Not within a month of getting a job in any case.

I also feel like I’ve lost some part of my identity by losing my unemployed status quo. My tally of companies that came, saw and left without recruiting anybody was steadily rising, something that made me believe I had a superpower. A larger sample does, after all, indicate more robust results. Receiving a job offer has taken away all my imaginary powers, not to mention the inspiration for many a blog post.

On the bright side, I got bored of worrying last week and decided that things could either sort themselves out or they could go to hell. I’m happy to report things voluntarily chose the decidedly less attractive option of sorting themselves out despite my curtness.

Additionally, the placement cell is truly relieved: far more excited about me having got a job than they seemed to be about their own jobs. Within 3 minutes of sending me my offer letter, the placement cell officially declared the close of the placement season. I was clearly the most difficult case on their hands. I know it took a lot of patience. 

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. 

Lane Walking is Sane Walking

I strongly advocate lane systems for walking inside metro stations. There is usually more traffic inside major metro stations during peak hours than there is on the most important flyovers in the city. I’m really tired of slamming into people or getting stuck behind slow movers.

Here’s how the system works. Elementary. On the staircases, we have three lanes. The right lane is for athletes and dreadfully unpunctual people, the centre lane is for people moving at an average speed and making good time, the left lane is for slow people. Everybody should stay to the left side of the divider on the staircase, just as we drive on the left. Escalators are only for people with luggage, arthritis or other reasonable liabilities. If anybody wants to run up the escalator, they should be forced to do so on those moving in the opposite direction. Elevators are for the elderly. Train doors opening is akin to a red light. Everyone on the platform should stop moving around and let the people from the train quietly file away in the wonderfully efficient lane system. For the incoming traffic, the left lane gets a green signal first because they need seats the most. It is reasonable to assume that anybody who has the energy to stay on the right lane also has the energy to stand on the train. Train doors closing is the next red light. Throw in a couple of roundabouts and some cardboard monuments and the metro will truly be world class. 

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. 

Embracing my Indianness

The exchange students in my college last semester complained about how everything in India happens “tomorrow.” I chuckled like I always do when I hear jokes that I don’t believe are at my expense. “Oh how Indian!” I thought to myself. What I’ve come to realise lately is that I’m more Indian than I think I am. I have been meaning to study “tomorrow” for the last 15 years and I’m yet to get around to it of my own accord. What’s a 2-month delay in installing an internet connection compared to that? I also unnecessarily add “only” at the end of each sentence, as if my conversations are really chequebooks. I use present continuous tense where simple present would suffice. I have no notion of punctuality. 

I remember having watched one of Russell Peters’ shows where he said that Indians probably don’t find jokes with the Indian accent offensive because they don’t think they have it. “They think there’s one guy in the country with that accent!” I think that logic can be extended for most Indian stereotypes. We are a part of the crowds we so detest. We’re exasperated that nobody stands in line although we always break it. I think we consider it okay to break the rules. We complain because everyone else breaks them at the same time and that inconveniences us. It’s as if we think we’ve landed up, quite by accident, in a place that’s so full of people who don’t behave as we would like them to. That we’re one of them is immaterial. 

An Illusion of Fitness

I feel rather guilty when I get a seat on the metro. The guilt is partly a celebration of my youth and partly self-deception. I imagine that anybody who can create customised playlists while reading books, rush up staircases to the beat of a song and choose the most aerobic route possible to get to college doesn’t need a seat as much as, well, anybody else does. The metro tells me to offer my seat to someone in need and I wouldn’t dream of disobeying metro rules and requests, such is my tremendous respect for it. So whenever I see someone with a child, someone fighting a losing battle with age using hair colour, someone struggling with their laptop bag or other luggage, someone overweight, someone tired, or someone who has moved towards an empty seat unsuccessfully on more than one occasion, I feel obliged to offer my seat to them. Of course, following the rules so closely means that I rarely sit for over five minutes of the journey. I’ve found that it’s a lot easier to just keep standing. It helps me feel fitter than I really am, counts as a workout in my head and saves me the guilt of sitting when so many more deserving souls wish for a seat. Superfluous courtesies of this sort are all I can afford to be altruistic with and I’m too grown up to play musical chairs every day. 

Maternal Instincts and Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurs are people who want to have children who will do as they tell them to. Of course, this only happens with some probability, but it would be reasonable to assume that the probability is higher than that of your biological children doing what you expect them to.

Usually, less than 5 years after getting a job, the would-be entrepreneur’s biological clock begins ticking and they can’t see the point of meaningless associations with different employers. They crave something more. So they decide to have their own baby company. Often they look for partners, and unlike marriage, they are allowed to have as many partners as they please without society frowning upon their depravity.

And then it happens. Their company is incorporated. It’s a magical moment. Like most people with children they struggle with their finances. Unlike most people with children they can sell a part of their baby company to a venture capitalist who will give them the money to raise it properly. Often, companies that are not properly nourished at this point with all the love and attention they deserve grow up to be damaged sociopaths who go bankrupt and wreck many careers.

Venture capitalists are often people who have raised their own baby companies and understand the effort that goes into it, which is why they are so willing to share their wealth and experience, much like grandmothers teach the parents how to treat a baby with colic.

And finally, when the child comes of age, he is sold off in an IPO, much like an arranged marriage. Let’s call the subscription process the hunt for a suitable match (a company can have as many owners as it likes without getting into any legal or moral predicaments). Let’s call the IPO proceeds dowry. Some IPOs aren’t successful; others, wildly so. It’s all a game of chance. And the game nearly takes a lifetime to play. I see a bright future for entrepreneurship in India. 

Innocence Found

A lot of our childhood games encourage us to develop skills required to be a good criminal. We run away, dodge and escape from the catcher in pakdam pakdai and its regional variations, hide from the catcher in hide and seek, destroy a neatly stacked pile of stones in pitthoo and then set about rebuilding it before we get caught and work as a team to distract those trying to catch us out in gallery. Maaram pitti is probably preparation for prison life where you unnecessarily hit each other to get everyone out of the game. We also acknowledge the fact that being a cop isn’t half as fun as being a robber – the catcher gets to hide again once he finds someone else to blame.

Are we shaping future criminals, acknowledging the fun of doing something unlawful or just maintaining skills that would be required in the wild in case of an evolutionary turnaround? 

Spiritual Progress and Deals with God

I have a friend who has her head firmly planted on her shoulders. It’s what gives her the confidence to shrug so frequently while others have to make do with a twitch of the eyebrows. So when she told me she had made a deal with God, I was sure it was no ordinary deal.

At the outset, allow me to clarify that I’m all for deals with God. He’s the ideal party to draw a contract with because you can always be reasonably sure that He’ll hold up His end of the bargain. It used to bother me at first that such deals are similar to bribery. But when you think about it, it’s just payment in kind for exercising specialised skills. God is so efficient that once you’ve agreed on the contract, you can relax and be sure that it will be taken care of. You can propose a deal costlessly. You can choose your own terms, although you don’t really receive a rejection letter if He finds your terms unacceptable. But most people seem to know what would seem fair to Him. He doesn’t object to sudden modification of terms. If you don’t fulfil your obligations under the contract, you will be penalised in ways you could never imagine, the uncertainty over the form the penalty will take being a potent motivating factor to make you honour the agreement. He’s all right with performing His end of the deal first, without any guarantee or advance payment from you because of His immense power to enforce contracts. For instance if you promise not to eat chocolates for a month and you violate the terms, He can give you diabetes.

My friend, as I mentioned before, is rather smart. She formalised this whole system so beautifully for herself that I had to marvel at the religious progress the current generation is making. She decided that God’s jurisdiction should be clearly defined. For His convenience and her own, she decided that her promises are enforceable in a geographic area specified in the agreement, which conforms to existing political boundaries so that any doubts she has can be resolved by worldly authorities.

She’s also very exacting in her requirements and reduces the reward when God doesn’t show the panache she has come to expect of Him. For example if it turns out that she had merely misplaced something and she remembers where she had kept it later, then it doesn’t qualify as a miracle, so she allots credit to God on a pro-rata basis and modifies the contract accordingly.

I’ve also noticed that nearly everyone who makes deals with God appears to believe that He will reward those who deny themselves something they like. I’m not sure how this works. It’s not tenable for everyone to believe that He is a sadist. Does He consume what the devotees forgo? If so, is it correct to assume that His preferences are aligned with our own? Or perhaps He just wants everyone to have a sense of balance in life: you can only have one or the other. It helps one practice constrained optimisation on a regular basis and prevents devotees from becoming hedonistic parasites to society.

I was marvelling her ingenuity but she seemed to mistake it for sarcasm. “What do you do when you want something?” she asked, eager to know more about my spiritual inclinations. I usually convince myself that I don’t want the thing in the first place so that I’m not disappointed if I don’t get it and if I end up getting it, I do my best imitation of an Oscar acceptance speech: “This is such a surprise!” Then it takes me a few minutes to reverse all the brainwashing I’ve done to myself.

But then I wondered what I’d do if I lose something where there’s no question of wanting it. Say, I lose my passport. I suppose I’d worry, whimper and lose sleep for a couple of days and then pass the buck to my parents since I’ve done all I could in the matter. That’s probably why my parents never tell me where my passport is.  

Oh Shopping, why must you be a Nightmare?

I recently went to Great India Place (GIP) mall. Let’s just say my sisterly concern caused me to be roaming around a part of what isn’t Delhi. I felt more claustrophobic than one would on Blueline buses that ply on what is Delhi.

The said sister was slightly upset with me. I had misled her into believing that I would arrive an hour earlier than I did and I was also dreadfully tardy in responding to her queries about my location because I wasn’t in the mood to put my book down. I wondered why she messaged me with such regularity from a mall. Sure, it’s boring to shop alone but not so much as to have to send messages every 8 minutes? Turned out she was waiting for me at the metro station, hoping against hope that I would indeed arrive at the agreed time.

It wasn’t entirely my fault. All right, it was mostly my fault. I tried to explain to her that I had done everything I could to be on time – skipped the lens routine, reached the metro by car, ran up the stairs and took the train to Vaishali even though I needed to go to Noida because I couldn’t stand to be doing nothing while she waited for me. She pointed out that I should’ve left early, writing all in caps to indicate her displeasure. Unfortunately that idea hadn’t occurred to me. I had already decided to have a lazy morning so it was a bit difficult to change the course of things. She didn’t know it at the time, but I saved her life by making her wait.

You see, GIP isn’t a mall so much as it is a poorly stocked labyrinth of colourful signs with girls who are no longer teenagers humming the tunes of 90s boy bands and short boy-men who wear too much cologne cheap deodorant. It also has more children on a weekend than the average pre-school on weekdays. Most of these children have a delightful way of slamming themselves into passers-by, doing their child-launched-from-a-cannon-at-a-moving-target imitation.

When I did enter the mall, it had so many people that I thought there must be something really wonderful to buy there. Every shop was overflowing with people but nowhere did I find anything that I would be caught dead wearing. They couldn’t possibly all be keen social scientists observing behavioural patterns like me.

Thankfully, I wasn’t shopping for myself. My sister asked me if it isn’t the most wonderful thing to be shopping for someone else, even more so than shopping for oneself. I thought for a minute. She must be making some less obvious point because she most certainly isn’t an altruist. I nodded. “Yes it is,” I said. “When you shop for someone else you get the satisfaction of buying something that you consider worth buying without the guilt of having spent your money.” “Exactly!” she smiled happily.

At one of the shops we wandered into she found a sweater that she considered pretty. I noticed that you could see through it and observed that it probably wasn’t very warm. “Who cares about warmth?” “Well, it’s a sweater, isn’t that what it’s supposed to do?” I asked, somewhat naively. “No! It’s supposed to look good!”I put my finger on my chin thoughtfully and asked her why she didn’t just buy a t-shirt in that case – it would certainly not be bulky, it would be cheaper and probably more stylish. “But then I wouldn’t be dressed for the weather,” she shrewdly pointed out. “Ah! I see it now!” I said. “You want to look like you chose comfort over style but you’re really choosing style over comfort.” “Exactly!” And I always thought it was the reverse.

The best thing about the day, other than all this worldly wisdom, was the plate of golgappas I ate outside the mall. Not just because they were quite good, but because it was a refreshing change to be surrounded by cars instead of people. 

How Not to Make Decisions

Students of economics are armed with a formidable array of tools to “make decisions”. Being the keen scholar that I am, I wanted to see how they apply these to a “real-world setting”. I decided to look at the choice of optional courses in the final semester. The goals vary from “taking it easy” and “doing something different” to “preparing for a PhD”. So at the outset, I should say that there is no “correct” choice of bundles, and the choice depends entirely on the constraints (in terms of choices available and ability) and preferences (or goals).

I found that we aren’t spiritual enough to be able to optimise. There isn’t enough knowledge of the self, of self’s abilities, self’s preferences and whatnot. There also appears to be much social pressure that operates indirectly through social conditioning (even now!) – smart people take difficult papers, wise guys take “scoring papers” (I’ve never come across these in all my life, I used to think it’s an oxymoron. I know now that it’s just moronic), geeks take “theory papers” and the “take it easy” guys take the most mind-numbing courses available. Most of them don’t attend classes.

This is not optimisation! Dear old Slutsky and Hicks must be turning in their graves. We study all of consumer theory in the first semester, are introduced to choice under uncertainty soon after, ace exams in permutations and combinations in the second semester and then choose courses based on, well, none of the above. I agree that we were spoilt for choice in the previous semester and are generally spoiled in the last semester, but isn’t constrained optimisation the cornerstone of microeconomics? 

Kiran Bedi to be flogged

Gandhian Anna Hazare, whose claim to fame was flogging a dead horse, has declared that Team Anna member Kiran Bedi will be tied to a tree and flogged publicly next week for inflating travel bills. Preparations for the event are underway.

Feminists are have protested the move, arguing that Bedi is being targeted because she is a woman, and more deserving candidates like Kejriwal and Bhushan have been overlooked simply because “Mr. Hazare is awfully sexist.”

Despite the media attention, however, Team Anna members spoke of the event quite casually. “It’s really not that big a deal. They used to burn witches at the stake in Europe. We’re just flogging her,” said a spokesperson.

Meanwhile, drunks in Ralegan Siddhi where Annaji first instituted the holy practice of flogging drunkards in temples have suffered emotional breakdowns following the news. “I really thought I was special, that it meant something to him. And now he’s flogging pretty much everyone. In front of TV cameras. It’s shameful, shameful!” a former floggee cried.