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. 

A Social Evil called Super-Specialisation

I’ve never been a big fan of specialisation. I’m far too indecisive to choose what I want to wear. Choosing a field to specialise in for all my life could give me a panic attack; which is why I do something that almost amounts to reversing my choice every time I’m forced to make one. As a student of economics, admitting my inability to choose is going to leave some eyebrows permanently raised. It’s really a question of convenience. Once I’m sure of my choice, I’m stubborn enough to get on my own nerves.

But I ramble. To return to my original point, super-specialisation causes you to see your own field as the only one that matters. At least to you, in any case. That’s why we need managers. Management theories created a bunch of people too focused to care about why they’re doing whatever it is that they do, so that they would need managers who make them take an interest in other smaller joys of life.

I refuse to specialise because I don’t believe in being excessively focused. I also refuse to take an interest in anything else because I don’t believe in management. I will specialise in doing nothing. It makes a strong statement. 

Girl Power

You can’t be sexist when you are a girl, right? Wrong. I’ve been sexist for most of my life – whined about how there are no (or not enough) female icons, how girls are given stupid dolls to play with while boys get cars, and so on. As a kid, I hated having to play with other girls because the games would almost never be any test of athletic ability, involve very little, if any, competition and never get around to being half as fun as football. Being a tomboy was a convenient social construct that allowed me to straddle the gender divide in the playground.

It wasn’t until I grew older and wiser (I like to believe) that I understood that the reason women seemed a lot less cooler was because they hadn’t had a chance to do much for a very long time. A lot of behavioural patterns that bothered me were the result of social conditioning. I also came across some truly impressive women in fields that are traditionally male-dominated, and that ended my whining for good.

When I was a kid, I wasn't particularly girly. But I do think it’s a lot better to be a woman than a man. I’m really happy that I can never think with any part of my anatomy other than my brain. 

Stage Fright

I’ve always been pretty good at taking notes. If there was an award for the most photocopied notebooks in school, I would most certainly get it. This was partly due to my obsessive need for record keeping and partly because my school was the sort where I was unlikely to find anybody else who bothered to bring a notebook at all.

As a Master’s student with no background in economics, I make notes that are too detailed even by my standards. I rationalise this to myself by arguing that what is obvious to people who have already studied economics for three years is not obvious at all to me. But lately I’ve been suffering from stage fright because of all the photocopying my registers undergo. I’m very acutely aware of the fact that everything I write will be read by people other than me so I try to sound more authoritative, I double-check my grammar, I avoid scribbling in the margins like I would otherwise. Self-censorship. It makes me quite uncomfortable and I only find solace in the fact that I’m not writing anything even mildly interesting anyway.

Any prospective employers finding my blog would be bad news for me. My posts put together suggest that I’m awful at making decisions and interpret theories as I please but I have a pretty handwriting and I’m good at taking notes. I would almost certainly wind up as a secretary. 

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. 

A Matter of Class

I’m quite a fan of an online cartoonist who has devoted much of his time to researching minor behaviour and speech modifications that can make you appear “100% classy.”While he usually deals with more serious issues like the possibility of adding, “You may quote me,” at the end of each sentence or naming your dog ‘Sir’, I decided to turn my attention towards the more mundane matter of appearing classy on paper so that I could help people ooze class on their webpage or blog. I have the first step all figured out. It’s quite elementary, really. In order to appear classy, I must do exactly what Wikipedia does to be mistaken for a real source of information: obsessively reference everything I write and add footnotes wherever possible.[1]

The second step, obviously, is to use hyperlinks. Now this step calls for some prudence. If you hyperlink everything, your page ends up looking rather shady. Hyperlinks must be evenly distributed, thoughtful and used judiciously. One hyperlink for every 150-200 words is ideal.

The third step is to replace a few words with more complex synonyms. This will require a little bit of effort to ensure the context is correct. Another excellent idea is the use of third person. “One” is just so much classier than you or I.

The last step of course is style. If one doesn’t have that, there’s not much one can do.

---

[1] Support for this school for thought can be found here.