The Impotent Indian

Today, I saw something that set my blood on fire – and my complete inability to do anything about it makes things even worse.

I live in DLF, which is basically a suburb of New Delhi, the capital of India. My office, though, is in Connaught Place, the centre of Delhi, a good hour and a half away from home. Now, I usually get to work by taking a bus into Delhi, and then another bus to CP.

At 8:45 in the morning, I had just gotten off the first bus, outside AIIMS, the All India Institute for Medical Sciences – affectionately termed ‘Medical’ by bus conductors and rickshaw drivers throughout Delhi. So, I had gotten off the first bus, and was waiting at the bus stop outside AIIMS for the second bus, just watching the traffic flow by. The first thing I noticed was a white ambassador (a model of a car, not a person) weaving through traffic, at something over 60kmph. Now, around 9 in the morning, traffic outside AIIMS is probably the densest in the city, so what this chap was doing was undoubtedly dangerous, and utterly stupid. The inevitable happened – one of his wilder gyrations plowed him straight into the back of a tempo that was stuck in traffic.

Ordinarily, one would expect the driver of the ambassador to acknowledge his mistake, get out, get into a shouting match with the tempo driver, and then make his escape before the cops arrived to make life difficult for anyone in the area. Not this time, though. Four large, bearded chaps got out of the ambassador, marched up to the driver of the tempo, and started beating him to a pulp.

I was about to start forward, with the idea that I could help the driver in some way, before I noticed two things. Firstly, nobody on the street had moved. This is a rare thing to happen in India, where the slightest sign of a fight will have every loafer in the area congregating into a small, tight, smelly circle before the first punch has time to land. Secondly, the ambassador had a small, discreet pennant on its bonnet, and a license plate saying “Government of India”.

Since nobody looked like they were going to back me up, and I’m 5’6”, and weigh about 60 kilos, I decided not to get my face beaten in for interfering.

I am a coward.

The driver, quite obviously, didn’t stand a chance. He looked like the kind of chap who’s been on a starvation diet for the past few months, ribs there to count, sunken face and all. How could he resist four thugs intent on their job? No matter how he protested, or begged for help, or begged them to stop “mujhe mat maaro, maine kuch nahi kiya, mai gareeb aadmi hoon, please, bhaisaheb, mat maaro”, the pulping continued. And I watched, helpless.

I feel sick. This is the first time I’ve ever been ashamed to say that I am an Indian.

What sort of government allows its employees to break its own laws, assault its own citizens when they haven’t even done anything to warrant it, and walk free at the end of it?

The fat babu sitting in the car was probably some middle level government flunky, nothing more than a paper pusher, who probably got his job through some shady connection, in return for a favour. Not to say that the tempo driver was some sort of saint, but what the fuck IS this? Is it right when some bastard abuses his privileges in such an arrogant manner? When the fault is his own, he nonetheless has his bullyboys beat up an innocent man? And there’s NOBODY to stop him?

This incident is already over, for all practical purposes. Even I, feeling so righteously angry at the world and my own impotence in this matter, will probably not do anything about it. It’s just another incident in the big city.

Except, of course, for that tempo driver, who’s lying on the side of the road, broken and bleeding.

To you, the tempo driver, I make one promise. I am neither well connected, nor do I have the kind of time or resources to make sure you get the justice you deserve. What I can do, however, is write. I will write one article a day, in your name, about something that happened in the city. You will be my conscience, and the conscience of whoever takes your story to heart.

This, I promise you.

The equal ape

This particular piece has come out of a particularly controversial thought I had some time ago – are people equal?

People would like to be treated with as much respect as the next guy, usually without doing quite as much as him – whoever the next guy may be. I mean, take me as an example. It’s 12:40 in the afternoon, and I’m supposed to be working – that would be the responsible, correct thing to do. Nonetheless, I’m sitting at my desk, pretending to work, all the time publicizing my opinion on other people, and expecting it to be read and appreciated. Nonetheless, I will still continue with this farce, as emotionally, it satisfies me – hold on to that thought, I’ll come back to it later.

People are infinitely different in their characteristics, and in the combination of those characteristics. And that’s just where it begins – then comes the nurturing effect, which adds another modifier to what is already an incredibly complex piece of bio-machinery. The effect of nurture could turn one of a pair of identical twins into a cultured, thoughtful, respectful, contemplative mass murderer, while leaving the other a boorish, gullible, thoughtless, insensitive, average family guy. Which would you rather be?

We all start off in life at a similar stage – although the innate characteristics you possess are probably unique. I say probably for the simple reason that at present, there are about 4 billion people alive, and have been many billions before us – even with the kind of number of possible characteristic combinations there are, chances are that there will be some repeats.

(The problem with a piece like this is that there’s so many directions you cold possibly take – and only a very few of them will actually reach somewhere in an interesting manner.)

So, where have we reached so far?

There are billions and billions of combinations possible in your genetic makeup – so the chances of finding someone with your exact combination of characteristics are very, very low. Add to that the fact that nurture also has a hand in your final (I mean, at the point that you start to think about them – there is no end in the classical sense) makeup, and you see what I mean.

So why persist in the belief that people are equal?

Perhaps we mean that people should be treated equally – that’s possible, after all. Again, though, should we?

Society tapers as it approaches its peak. There are much fewer openings at the top than there are at the bottom – pretty much because the bottom is where we all start, and the top – say financially, socially, emotionally, spiritually, or any other alley that you choose, is where we’d like to end up. Of course, this is where a philosopher would interject and say that there are no alleys, only the Road, but that’s why they’re usually not invited to debates. Such finality takes all the fun out of a meandering thought process.

People would like to get to the top – in other words, there is competition for the few positions available. This is when the assumption of equality – even the assumption that we should be treated equally – goes out the window. If there is ‘top’, as it were, then how can we treat people equally? There must be some compensation at the top; so obviously, he’s already being treated better than everyone else below him. Secondly, if all people are equal, then where does the element of competition come in? Everybody wins, the ultimate goal of an egalitarian society.

So, obviously, there is a problem. Egalitarianism cannot exist while we are not equal, or rather, when there are fewer rewards than competitors – or when the rewards differ from each other. What to do?

One solution is to first accept that people have different characteristics, and therefore, desires. Not everyone wants money, or power, or a really expensive vacation, or something like that. Me, I’d settle for some peace of mind, and a lifetime career of writing. Once we’ve managed to get people to accept this, then we can proceed with locating the next step.

Perhaps if we structure society in a way that every industry rests on every other industry – mutual dependence to the hilt, as it were. No one at any point can then claim to be the most important – since any one industry collapsing would cause every other one to collapse as well.

Another solution is one I’ve picked out of Childhood’s End, by Arthur C. Clarke. Provide everyone with all the basic necessities of life – increase manufacturing of base goods to the extent that their prices plummet – free electricity, water, food, clothing, housing. Luxury goods then become the only marketable products – okay, I haven’t thought this through, and probably wont, since it’s starting to sound an awful lot like Microeconomics – but you see my point, I hope.

I don’t know any solution to this – and maybe a lot of people don’t even see it as a problem. If you do, however, and you have a couple of minutes to spare – any ideas?

Bally Krishnan

10:30 in the morning, and I’ve already been awake for three hours, and working for an hour and a half. I think I’m getting the hang of this working thing. Pretty impressive, considering that on average I used to sleep about ten hours a day, and sunrise was that mystical part of the day either seen as the end to a long night of partying, or not at all.

Umm…yes. I’m sorry; there is no point to this post. Earlier, I used only to post if I actually had something to say, but of late, I seem to be using this as an excuse to goof off at the office. Not that there is much work, anyway, but at least this way if someone surprises me, I’ll actually look like I’m working (large swathes of text occupying your screen always look impressive, it seems. No matter what it’s actually on; there’s this chap sitting a few tables away who religiously spends a couple of hours a day reading up on alligators, and no one seems to have noticed).

Oh yes, funny story.

The bank at which I work (I’m avoiding naming it to minimize the grievous shame they must already be experiencing for having hired me) has this interesting policy. There are no spare computers in the office – there is one terminal per hired worker, and that’s all. No spares, no extras, exactly how many they need. Admirably efficient, but there’s a crack through which I seem to have fallen – since I’m an intern, I technically don’t come under the heading of hired worker, and therefore, don’t qualify for my own terminal. Therefore, each day at the office begins with me lurking around unoccupied chairs, hoping someone calls in sick (otherwise, they make me write everything out. Bastards).

Anyway, a couple of days ago, the VP of the company went on a week long leave. Much to my excitement, they decided to let me use his office – that is to say, I went and badgered my boss until he came to the conclusion that the shame of him having to sit outside my office was nothing compared to the irritation of having me mooching around his desk asking him what I should do.

So, twenty minutes later, comfortably ensconced in my new office, I’m trawling through the BSE website, looking for annual company reports, when this middle aged man knocks on my door and walks in. I promptly got to my feet, since I’d never met this chap before, and a little bit of caution when dealing with strangers in a bank is preferable to having your brain chewed by an irritable VP whose office you’ve just laid claim to. As I say, he walks in - and promptly starts groveling.

Now that’s shocking enough, when you’re an intern, but after he’d finished ritualistically banging his head on the floor, and calling down God’s blessings on me, he gets up, shakes my hand, and stuns me even further.

“Sir,” he says, “It is really kind of you to stand and greet myself – shaming it is that not so many of today’s young executives are as modest as yourself. Please sir, I have been joined the bank today, and I am *blorbleblurbeglup* Balakrishnan. Pleased to be meeting you sir!”

Okay, his English wasn’t quite that bad. And I’m still not sure what exactly his name is, I don’t think I’d survive asking him for it again. At that point, though, it was all I could do to burst out laughing, and keep a straight face. More importantly, I was having a particularly worrying thought at the time -

“What the fuck is he going to do to me when he finds out I’m an intern?”

Anyway, I bit the bullet, steeled myself for a punch in the eye, and informed him about his mistake. I wish I hadn’t told him there was no need to bow, though, that seemed to really get him cheesed.

“Sir, I’m afraid you’ve made a mistake. There’s no need to bow, I’m just an intern – I’m just using this office until another terminal becomes free.”

The honeymoon ended quite abruptly after that.

“WHAT HARE HYOU DOING IN THIS HOFFICE? WHO TOLD HYOU HYOU COULD SEET HERE?”

At that point, Mrora (my boss, that’s how he introduced himself to me on my first day here) hurried over and sorted things out; bless the three hairs remaining on his head. May his loins always contain fruit.

Must stop now, Balakrishnan is making dirty faces at me through the glass walls of my private, Vice Presidential Office.

London bridge is burning down

It ridiculous, when you come to think of it – I am, at present, working at a bank, with the stated purpose of learning something about the corporate sector of finances, so that when I graduate with a BSc. Economics, I’ll actually have some practical experience to go with it. I’ve been working here just about a week now; what have I learned?

Well, for one, I now know how to trawl through the BSE and NSE websites looking for information on companies that my bank might want to target as future customers. It’s awe inspiring, the sheer volume of data available to the average bunty. Being an average bunty myself, it’s strange that I’ve never thought to use it for my own benefit until now. Of course, one of the things preventing the average bunty from going ahead and making a killing on the stock market from all this seasonal data available on the animals that romp through this particular forest is that all the information is presented in a manner most conducive to causing a mind numbing headache. Then comes the technical jargon – take this line, for example:

“Operating margins increased to 17.20% during the quarter, a rise of 1318.92 basis points compared with the corresponding quarter”

Yes, fine, absolutely beautiful. Now, what the hell is an operating margin? What is a basis point? What is the corresponding quarter that this quarter is being compared to? For that matter, what in the name of all that’s small and twinkly is a trailing twelve month basis?

It’s the mystique of the craftsman, is what it is.

In the early 1900’s, America was going through a massive reconstruction of its industrial sector. Mass production, in the vein of Henry Ford, Taylor, and all the rest was yet to come – unfortunately, there were significant bottlenecks in the way of this progress. One of these particular bottlenecks (for that is how they saw it), was the control that the experienced worker, the craftsman, had over the production process. After all, there is a significant difference in experience between one who has completed a decade long apprenticeship in order to learn his craft, and some twerp hired off the street who has trouble differentiating his arse from his elbows. If the task is complex enough, the craftsman has almost unlimited control – after all, it’s his experience going into creating the product itself. Therefore, the final authority rests with him, rather than the man with the money.

Skill valued over money. A master carpenter is worthy of more respect than an inexperienced millionaire. What a fascinatingly beautiful concept.

Anyhow. No sense crying over marginalised carpenters, I suppose. To get back to the point, though – since these workers had so much control over the production process, and therefore could stonewall their employers whenever they wanted to, a problem began to emerge. Since the industrialists who set up these manufactories wanted the highest possible returns on their investment - for that is how they saw the situation, in the black and red of a balance sheet – they chose to do so by reducing their costs as much as possible – including worker costs. Fair enough, I suppose. I’d probably not do much different.

Taylor, though, was the nut who set the wheels spinning, in his analysis of the production process. In his view (that of an engineer and a financier), he saw the problem as a battle for power between the workers and the management. Since the power was pretty much balanced (the money on one side against the skill on the other), the situation was deadlocked. Solution? Simplify the production process until any jackass off the street could do it. Result? Mass production, mass consumption, retailing, credit facilities, consumer banks, Wall-mart, K-mart, personal vehicles – the whole fabric of the economy.

What becomes really interesting is to see the differences in the weave of the fabric in different countries.

Germany, for example, considers the skilled worker essential to the production process – they don’t see it as a one sided battle for power. Management is as responsible for worker satisfaction as the workers are for production levels. An equitable balance of responsibility and power.

Japan takes it one step further – the company is your family. Literally. The turnover for workers in Japanese companies is almost nil – before a worker is asked to leave – not fired, asked to leave – every effort is made to find a department/position where the worker can fit comfortably and contribute to the process. Kind of like a beehive, without the wax combs and dripping blobs of honey.

However, to get back to the main point. The stock market, the average bunty, and the internet. There are many reasons why the average bunty would not make money, besides the fact that he might not understand just what the website is telling him. He might not have a large enough bankroll to support himself. One mistake might cost him all his money, and therefore make this option undesirable. The effort of tracking stocks day in and day out might not be something he’s willing to contemplate.

It all comes down to the apprenticeship in the end. While serving as an apprentice, there is a lot more being taught besides the theory and bald practical application of these concepts. There are tacit skills, subtle shortcuts, different styles of working things out…all things that one gains over years and years of watching a master at his craft – which in the end, is more valuable than money itself.

Like they say – light a fire for a man, and he’s warm for a night. Teach a man how to light a fire, and you burn London down.

"Oh no, not again..."

It’s strange, how life always has just one more googly to lob at you. On Sunday, I met this fantastically beautiful woman (‘May all the beautiful women grow a pimple’), and on Monday, I was abruptly brought crashing down to earth when I found out that she had a boyfriend. Life’s like that, I suppose. As I said though – life found a way to do it again. Yesterday was the Germany – Italy match. Ordinarily, not something to get unduly excited about, even if it WAS a semifinal match up in this year’s World Cup. As you may have guessed, though, that wasn’t the important bit of the evening.

Shut up, Moose. No need to get condescending, even if you know me well enough to have figured it out. Yes, it was another woman.

This one was eye catching right from the beginning. Remarkably pretty, interestingly interesting perspective on life, and beautiful eyes. No, I really mean it. Her best feature by a long shot, and that’s saying something. Anyway, so I spent a bit of time getting to know her, was hauled away by another friend of mine, who claimed that I was making it too obvious, and that I was a terrible flirt (sadly, she’s right. When it comes to flirting, I’ve got all the skills of a one eyed, three fingered man trying to juggle hot coals while walking across a suspension bridge in a moderate crosswind). That, as you might imagine, put a bit of a crimp in my plans, but worry not, I was back at it before the match started – well, sort of, anyway, what with one thing and another, didn’t really get to spend much time. Then, though, came the kicker. She’d been fiddling with her phone for some time, getting irritated with it, cursing at it, generally getting fed up with the whole deal. Ladies and Gentlemen, take a shot at it. Who do you think she was trying to call? Her boyfriend, in Nairobi, whose birthday it was.

Now two weeks ago, something like this happening twice in a row would have gotten me solidly moody, and would’ve had me mooching about the place grumbling darkly about the world trying to get me. Now, for some reason, I find it intensely funny (not the fact that I didn’t get the girl, which sucks. She’s quite something), but the fact that I could’ve met two really, really pretty women, who, more importantly, are as interesting as fuck, within two days of each other – cause whichever way you slice it, I now have two intensely hot female friends. Who, with any luck, will introduce me to their intensely hot female friends? Or maybe one of them will become single soon. Something, at any rate.

I guess the difference is that now I have hope.

Look into the abyss, and sometimes, just sometimes – the abyss looks back.

The Infinity of Apples

I’m feeling particularly restricted today. Perhaps it’s because I’m wearing a tie. I don’t like ties, so any situation in which I have no choice but to wear one automatically grates on my nerves. Don’t ask me why. Perhaps I was an irate Chihuahua in my last life that had been tied up too long. I really don’t care right now, either. Its 2:45 in the afternoon, I’m at work, I’m dead tired, and there’s no chance that I’ll get to leave for a couple of hours yet. You can see how this frame of mind would develop, yes?

Imagine life without restrictions – as in, all restrictions, of every possibly type. Like there was no gravity. No limit to what you could think of and create. Or perhaps just the thought of something would cause it to be created. I want a chocolate ice cream. Damn. Not working yet. Hmm, perhaps this idea needs a little bit of refining (I want an oil refinery. Hmm, no, that didn’t work either).

Human beings love restrictions. It’s only after you’ve suffered through eight hours of work on three hours of sleep that you truly realize the value of leisure. In the same way, you have to deny yourself something to give meaning to something else. In fact, this idea is so pervasive, it’s even influenced science. Consider, for a bit. Most scientific theories you would have read (unless there are some theoretical physicists reading this, in which case...bugger off, you lot!) come prepackaged with a number of assumptions. Even the basic equations we’re taught in school only work when every other possible variable is being held constant. So it’s true, all right, but only for a given value of true.

It’s weird, that such a thing could develop. You can imagine early man shambling out of his cave one morning, and going “Hmm. If I imagine that teeth and claws and horns don’t exist, o boy, it’s meat tonight!” And then he tries this out on the next wild animal he sees, and has to spend the rest of the day and the night on top of a tree cursing the hell out of all random assumptions.

Assumption, besides being the mother of all fuck ups, is also the prerogative of those who can afford to have them. For example, in the practical sense, there’s no way to assume no gravity. You could tell yourself there’s no such thing, and perhaps even convince yourself and a few others, but unless you’re tripping on some psychotropic, hallucinogenic nonsense, you can’t get away from it.

So, why assume stuff? For the simple reason that we can’t encompass everything going on at once, and still retain sanity. Oh, sure, you can babble on about the fundamental interconnectedness of all things, but unless you’re a Douglas Adams type genius (in which case, I have a few questions for you about Desmond, the ten ton rhino), there’s no way you’ll get about to explaining it coherently. No, doing some particularly foul drug and then going “Yeah, man, but I SAW it, you know what I’m saying?” and then nodding encouragingly doesn’t count.

Interestingly, the fractured, boxed in world of Physics seems to be coming to this very conclusion – albeit, with a very, very strange addendum. Take Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, for example. It states that if you’re looking at an electron, or any other such subatomic particle, then you can either know its position, or its velocity, but not both. In other words, the act of determining one thing about something will change everything else about it. Kind of like a previous post, The Web of Life, but in this case, it’s actually valid. Well, valid for the kind of technology we have right now – an electron microscope is, for all it does, a particularly bizarre piece of equipment. Using it to study electrons is like studying trucks by smashing other trucks into them, and then following the pieces. Sure, it’s logically consistent, but…well, come on!

But suppose, for a moment, we decide to...well, bend these restrictions a little. You’ve already done it in school, if you’ve given your tenth boards with math. I’m talking about imaginary numbers. For those of you who want to know more, call up Madhav and ask him, but here’s a (probably mostly incorrect) summary of it.

Imaginary numbers first come knocking on your door when you deal with square roots of negative numbers. A square root of a number (X) is some number that when multiplied by itself gives you X. So, the square root of 64 is 8. Simple enough, yes? Now lets complicate matters a bit. What’s the square root of 100? Yes, well done, 10. -100? Ah. Here’s the tricky bit.

We can simplify this by taking -100 as 100 * -1. So, the square root becomes 10 * (square root of -1). Now, anyone who remembers the basics of multiplication will know that there’s no way you can multiply two numbers of the same sign (positive or negative), and arrive at a negative number. Chaitawyag, I’m not talking about you. You, my man, are gifted. But to get back to the point. Two positives make a positive when multiplied. Two negatives also make a positive when multiplied. So how to solve this? Enter the i.

(i), by itself, has no meaning. It is basically he square root of -1 ( we use the same cheap trick I used to solve -100 for every negative square root). Therefore, the square root, for example, of -64, is 8i. Cheap no? Nonetheless, effective. The problem comes in again, when you try to visualize the problem. I have 35i apples. Great, can I eat them? No, cause they’re imaginary apples. And only exist in potential, as it were. Great, can I eat them now? No, go away, you aggravating kid! WAAAAH! MUMMY! And so on.

Restrictions exist for the simple reason that without them, the infinity of the cosmos is unbearably lonely. And terrifying.

Although, if you manage to get past this sort of third rate soliloquizing, infinity can be rather fun.

May all the beautiful women grow a Pimple

Women have an unfair amount of power.

Two days ago, I met a woman that completely rocked my world. Absolute stunner of a woman, too - sultry smile, eyes that you could happily drown in, hourglass figure - the whole nine yards. Hell, the whole hundred metre dash, for that matter. Anyway. So, yes, I met this woman, and spent the next to days having all sort of ideas about her - the kinds that I cant put down here for decency's sake, and the ones I can't put down here for fear of looking like a lovesick six year old. For some reason, though, the obvious idea didn't cross my mind - that she might already be taken.

Ten minutes ago, I had a conversation with a friend who's a friend of...well, with someone who knows more about her than I did.

Man, she's taken. I'm all depressed. Go away.