Local Train Adventure

I found the train parked at the platform when I reached there. I had barely boarded the train when it began to roll out. I was the only passenger in the bogey. It was a bit surprising but I thought to my self that the train is usually empty at this particular station. So I took a seat. Having moved about 400 metres the train came to halt. To which I thought that some trains wait at the outer signal for the signal to turn green.

Just then a few crows came flying in to the compartment. This was the weirdest thing I has seen all day. I had never ever seen crows inside a train. Then a few more crows made an entrance. It looked like a scene from Harry Potter where crows usually play the role of being the harbingers of sinister. It felt a bit spooky. An empty train compartment in a stationary train in the middle of a train yard with a few hundred crows flying in and out of a compartment. I leaned outside the door to see if there were any other passengers on the train.Not a soul moved. Suddenly the fans are switched off. The silence was now accentuated so much so that I could even hear the flapping of the crows' wings. At the far end of the train I saw the drive deboarding. It is then I realize that the train was being parked in the yard. This was confirmed by a voice yelling at me from the other side of the train.  I deboarded the train as well and then tailed the driver all the way back to the platform. This was my little adventure on a rather unassuming day.

On a totally disconnected note, walking on railway tracks with formal shoes on is really tough.

Star Plus and Cooldom

In my experience of the world, people usually graduate from watching Star Plus to MTV to Channel V to VH1 to Star World. 

However, Sve- the very busy human being, takes time out of her busy schedule to watch Star Plus. She has graduated from watching Channel V and MTV to Star Plus so much so that the she even googles the plots of the soaps that she has missed or the soaps she intends to watch but can not watch becasue of the ever so busy schedule. Besides, she has got her sister and her entire family hooked to Star Plus giving us yet another example of how influential she is.

Now, all the advertising people here is a lesson for you- The new cool is what Sve says is cool !!!

Death Walked Down this Corridor

The winding corridor looks darker than before. The solitary bulb glows trying to dispel the darkenss. A solitary moth engages it. The shadows seem darker and a deathly stillness prevails. Some figures walk around the shadowy corners, stubbled and untidy.

A faint light peaks from under the closed door. The fan hangs still. There is a strong odour that I can not tell. A bunch of incense sticks burn in the far corner. There are too many of them. All placed in that one room as if they were intended to supress something. A door flings open, I can not tell why. There is no gale, not even a breeze. A boy in shorts and a crumpled t-shirt walks out in a hurry. He covers his nose with a dirty looking piece of cloth. He looks unsettled, his eyes red, his hair unkept and his slippers ragged. He walks past taking no notice of me. It hits me then, I am begining to tell the odour.

There are hurried footsteps beyond the dark corner behind me. I turn around. The solitary bulb shines on, the moth's still fluttering around it. I hear some distant incoherent voices. Three, may be four, voices, I figure. Four days...Suicide...Groundfloor...!!! is all I catch. The voices grow fainter with each passing moment. I can not hear them any more. The smell catches my attention again. Four days, suicide, ground floor come to mind. I put them together and realize that someone had committed suicide four days ago in one of the rooms on the ground floor.

The body lay decomposing, in the room with the many bundles of incense sticks, until they discovered it this morning. The incense sticks are doing a resonable job of supressing the rancour odour. Morbid pictures flash before my eyes. The room in which the suicide was committed is in front of me gaping wide like a death hole. I step back and then forward again. I stare at the room, then the fan and then the room again with a thousand thoughts grazing my turbulent mind. The whys, when and hows will remain unanswered. My phone rings, I answer it and head for the fifth floor. No amount of incense will be able to hide the fact and I shall always know that once death had walked down this very corridor.

In Defence of Economists

Economists have come under severe criticism for being unable to foresee crises, so much so that the efficacy of economics as a discipline is being questioned. Besides, people often point out that economists have been guilty of using models that are not applicable in the real world. Some of the criticisms are fair. However, to question the very efficacy of economists on the ground that economists have not be able to predict crises in misguided.

Firstly, many of the crises that people often quote can be attributed to asymmetry of information more so the recent Global Financial Crisis. Financial firms sell exotic financial products. The only information you have about these products is that they represent some underlying asset which will yield returns in the future. These products often come with an ostensible ‘Investment Grade’ rating from the rating agency and hence do not explicitly state the exact nature of the underlying asset. In such a scenario it is safe to assume that the investment products are a relatively safe investment. However, the problem arises i.e. a crisis takes place, when the financial firms or the rating agencies pass off toxic investments as good investments. The information that the economist has is that the investments are indeed good. All calculations are based on this information. This being the case there is no reason for the economist to believe that a crisis can occur. Then in the event of a crisis occurring people jump to conclusions that the economists have failed to predict the crisis. The real cause of the crisis is often not understood, in this case; being the lack of proper information about the financial products. Why should the economist be blamed if financial firms commit outright fraud?

Secondly, on using models that are far away from the real world; the very definition of a model is that it is a hypothetical description of a complex event or thing. The main purpose of any model is to simply whatever it is intending to explain. Thus, when an economist uses a model he/she endeavours to break down real life phenomena to a level where a study can be done with relative ease. The model is just a depiction of a complex happening in a way that is easy to understand or deconstruct. With the models many underlying assumptions are stated explicitly. These assumptions point out that the model is indeed a deviation from the real world scenarios. The economist, to his credit, makes it ostensible that the model is based on assumptions. In such a case is it fair to hold the economist responsible if someone else uses the model without fully understanding the implications of the assumptions being violated. Clearly, it is not.

Thirdly, “...the evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones…” goes the famous Mark Anthony speech. Economists are treated in this way. The work done by economists is often forgotten. The recovery after the crisis has been steady. Timely interventions have saved the day and prevented another Great Depression from occurring. Economists have pointed out that government’s role in the economy is imperative and therefore the G-20 nations have accordingly undertaken coordinated fiscal stimuli of their economies. This action has stalled the free fall that the world economy saw during the financial crisis.

The cogency of the economist’s trade rests heavily on correct information being available. All deductions are based on information that is available. There is no reason for things to go wrong if the information available is correct. Thus, holding the economist responsible for dupery committed by others is not right.

My Experiments with Swimming

You may think that it is impossible for a boy of a six feet two inch frame to drown in five feet of water. Let me tell you, at the outset, that it is possible.

Having drowned, well amost, in a five feet swimming pool, I decided to learn to swim. I enrolled at the swimming pool at Anna University. The coach tried to teach me leg movements of the breast stroke. I kicked and I kicked hard for twelve days and could not even float. On the thirteenth day the coach thought that only fate could get me to swim. Thus, he made me dive in the the deepest part of the pool which was well over ten feet deep. I protested, he did not relent and got me to jump in to the pool. I jumped praying all the while to make God take me through this episode alive and in one piece. I jumped in and wallowed in the pool drinking large quanitites of chlorine water. I thought I would not be thirty for a week. I puked, well almost and felt sick. That was the last day I saw of the coach and the swimming pool at Anna Univeristy. I could not tell which was worse-drowning in five feet of water or trying to learn how to swim and the coach almost drowning you. The moral of the story was that I survived but did not learn to swim.

About two weeks ago I enrolled, again, in a course called "Learn to Swim" at the Tamil Nadu Sports Development Authority Complex. Twelve days later I could swim with much confidence and to top it all I have picked up three of the four genres of swimming. I managed to learn the freestyle stoke, the breast stoke and the back stroke. The coach, Mr Verra, at TN SDAT was brilliant. He got everybody in my batch to swim. I think I should take up the membership of the the TN SDAT to hone my swimming skills. Mr Phelps now is the time when you should start getting worried.

The Blue Mug - A Reflection

What would you associate with Rajat Kapoor, Vinay Pathak, Konkana Sensharma, Munish Bharadwaj, Sheeba Chadha and Ranvir Shorey when they come together for a performance? My expectation swung between the extremes of an outright comedy and the acute seriousness of contemporary threatre. What spanned out in those seventy five minutes caught me by surprise and brought tears to my eyes. Tears of sorrow and some of joy.

The Blue Mug was personal theatre at its very best. It was a play based on memories in which the protagoist was the memory of the thespian on stage at each point in time. This seemingly abstract play was not that abstract after all. It did serve a purpose, it did make a point and it did make a memory. In fact many memories, some bitter some sweet. The play tickled and tantalized with characterised ease. It made you feel different emotions at the same time.

Munish Bharadwaj was jesting that he had to visit the crematorium very often as people in his family kept dying often. His brother and he were the most sought after people during the days when someone had died because they had unprecedented knowlwdge on the rituals. " My brother had gone to buy wood for the pyre and gave Rs 800 for wood costing Rs 740. The wood wala said Sir change nahi hai to which my brother said koi nahi bhai sahab agli baar adjust kurlengay. Humara yaha aana jana luga rehta hai. My brother died five years ago". The lights began to dim thereafter and melancholic music played in the background. I could not help but feel the chill when at one moment I was delirious with laughter and at the next I was pained at the loss of life.

The riots of 1984 played before my eyes when Sheeba Chadha paced the stage with anxious steps and shuddery narration. "My father walked up and down the room and bricks kept piling on the roof. My father was not wearing his turban that day and that annoyed me. He looked like a distraught mad man and bricks kept piling on the roof. If someone had to come let them come now." There is a scream and the lights dim.

Ranvir Shorey plays a middle aged man whose world seems to have been stuck in 1983. His accent is pulsated with an overt Punjabi twang. Recent memories evade him. He recalls his childhood with ease but has difficulty remembering events that have transpired a quarter of an hour ago. His melancholic melodrama is imbued with the colour of raw humour. He inspires a feeling of overwhemling compassion. Konkana Sensharma plays his doctor. She graples with is condition and is unable to come up with a cure or remedy for his situation.

Rajat Kapoor guides the audience in to past and brings out pieces of our childhoods. The joint family festivities and the slumber on the terrace sprinkled with water on a hot summer night evoke a sense of nostalgia. His monologue is dotted with subtle humour and has gory mix of tragedy. "My brother called me at 10 in the morning. I knew something was wrong becasue my brother never called me during the day. He said that our father was sick. But my father had been sick for the last eight years. My dad woke up in the middle of the night and said that there was a man on the ceiling.  The next day he could not recognize anyone. I went to see my father and he did not recognize me. We got used to living with him in that state. I came back. One day the phone rang, agian, at 5:30 in the morning.

The exuberance of Vinay Pathak was very well captured in his performance. He loved going to the circus and enjoyed the whole atmosphere until one day a clown spat on him through his eyes. "I loved going to the circus. I loved the smell of circus, basically animal crap. I enjoyed everybit of it. Then one day a clown pointed his finger at me and came close, very close and spat on me through his eyes. I was very scacred. Everyone was laughing at me, I had no place to hide and no place to run. That bloddy clown ruined it for me. I had nightmares of the incident. I would wake up in the middle of the night in a sweat and my mother would ask me kya hua beta. What could I tell her. Kya bolta- Ma mujhe joker k sapne aate hai"? The light dims and music plays in the background.

Memories flowed by like the sands of time, changing by the ticking hands of a clock ever so fresh and then decaying in a split second making space for another. The play made me laugh and it made me weep running by me the countless memories of my life. I was left craving for an encore. In a span of those seventy five minutes I had relived my life. How I wish I can relive it some other day too.

*The quotes may not be exact but they capture the spirit of what was being protrayed by the thespian on stage.

The Reptilian Coach

The year was 1995, I think. It was the time when I was being introduced to basketball in my boarding school. Like most others of my age I was quite excited about the whole business of basketball. The game fascinated me beyond measure. At the same time it perplexed me as well. I could not figure out how could anyone basket the ball with such precision. This troubled my young unadulterated mind.

This seemingly imposible situation was solved by the basketball coach Mr Majumdar. Mr Majumdar (I think he was called Mr Majumdar) was our computer teacher and was filling in one day for our real basketball coach. Mr Majumdar's solution to the problem was very "reptilian". He said "Keep one eye on the ball; keep the other eye on the basket and shoot." We tried, and we tried again and again and again never actually managing to keep one eye on the ball and the other eye on the basket and shoot. We did shoot but never managed the former part of the advice i.e. to keep one eye on the ball and keep the other on the ring. We just couldn't. It was only in one biology class some years later that we got to know that it is physically impossible for humans/mammals to keep one eye on the ball and simultaneously one eye on the basket. Till then we had thought that Mr Majumdar has special basketball powers that allowed him to do what reptiles do with ease - look in different directions with different eyes. Mr Majumdar you had us for many years but now we have you for the rest of your life. Howwwzzzaaattt!!!