I started for home from a far off place
I know no route and aint keeping pace
I drove by gut
Following my mental compass
I strayed the path and I did not care
I did not stop to ask for route nor at the signboards did I stare
I drove and drove with a mindset that all roads lead to
And I eventually reached home..
I love the ride and would want to go on without a word
For I was driving Royal Enfield Thunderbird.
What if an alien were to closely observe Indian male and send a report back home?
Identification: These people are a subset of biped human male… usually, these species can be identified by the three convex surfaces they are made up of… namely, a protruding belly, a protruding pair of buttocks and a naked baldhead.
Characteristics: These people are never happy by nature; they always wear a serious look on their face. They never smile at people even if they see them on a daily basis unless (a) they are expecting some favor, or (b) they are so powerful that these hope that they will grant them a favor in future.
Everyone who did a school level course in physics understands what an ‘equilibrium state’ is… essentially it’s a state of rest a certain body goes to and stays there as long it is left undisturbed. Such a state for these people is ‘gloom’ or ‘seriousness’. Unless otherwise posed with situations that make them sufficiently happy, they gravitate back to their equilibrium state of being resentful or serious. No one knows why that is.
They find the word ‘thanks’ as precious as a radiologist would find a chunk of enriched uranium. And the word ‘sorry’… forget it. You’re not going to get it from them unless you have a gun pointing at their head and u go Godfather style, saying either their brains or the word ‘sorry’ will be coming out of them.
They take a special interest in people with ‘fair’ skin. They are attracted to them. They are served with utmost devotion and attention… perhaps; it’s the same attribute that led to British ruling India for a couple of centuries.
They never accept that they do not know something. They know everything. They would interrupt you when you’re saying something… saying that they know it. They don’t even care to verify whether it’s the same thing as they are thinking it is. Besides, its blasphemous to utter the words ‘I don’t know’… they find it as disgusting as the body odor of a coal miner after a day’s shift.
They stay in a state of ‘rush’ all the day. Actually, for these people, ‘rush’ is ‘normal’. They rush to office in the morning, breaking all possible traffic rules and let alone any hint of road sense. Then they rush to pantry to get their coffee, without any heed towards people who were already there. Then they rush to lunch and rush through it, and then they rush back home through the traffic again. They just don’t understand the word ‘waiting’ or ‘queue’. It’s not their style of doing things. More interestingly, they tow their luggage to the compartment door in a train, before the train reaches the station. If the train has a 2 second halt, it might make sense… no, they do this even when that particular station is the terminus for the train.
Some of them are cultured and well-mannered only so long as they are being watched by people whose opinion they think matters to them. The same fella, who carefully folds a food wrapper and drops in the dustbin in presence of his colleagues, throws it away right on the road or pavement when walking alone J
For most men, all kids are not lovely kids. The kids of well-to-do parents are treated differently than those of poor parents. Now its common worldwide that a rich guy is treated better than a poor guy… but the treatment I’m talking about is not at that levels. This is the general ‘sweet talk’ stuff with the kids. Even that, is biased based on the monetary grounds of their parents. A kid of poor parents is frowned upon for the same innocent gestures that the rich kid was praised about. And a little mention about Indian Women as the need arises now… They talk about everything, everywhere. Trains, buses, parks, gyms, any place you name… They meet people on train and irrespective of the intimacy they share, with no guarantees of future relationship… they share stuff about everything, their kids, whereabouts, what do they do.. and if the train journey is more than 5-6hours, they would even learn about the other’s health, diabetes, periods, irregular periods, menopause, family planning operations etc. and all of this in the public place, in a voice of an audible range that pierces the ear drums of people a few meters away, and force them to listen even if they are stone deaf. And especially about the kids, why in the hell, should the co-passenger be interested in the flavor of Cerelac this lady’s baby likes?
*transcript ends here… updates soon… *
PS:- In case if you were to find this offending, please talk to that alien.. oh by the way, this is a transcript to be sent home... you shouldnt be reading it anyway. Also, this is about the 'typical' Indian male... You are not that..you sir, are special and unique. :P
Author's warning.. the following is away from reality.. like star trek or something.. :)
I cannot ever figure out why women just love kids. I mean not just their own kids, they love every human offspring on the face of the earth. They just go crazy at the sight of kids.. they cannot stop till they have their hands on them and talk all sorts of nonsense. And what about the tone? They want to imitate the way kids speak? Why, oh let me speak like a kid, the little angel would flutter his/her wings and make a star for me. C’mon it doesn’t look good. Its like a full grown man going to office by a tricycle. Actually, even worse.
I get excited when I see cars, good cars such as a Gallardo or a F430 or a Shelby or a Golf GT. I don’t get excited or would want to touch an alto or a hyundai. But women are not like that, they find every kid attractive, every kid wonderful. I don’t know why people are never willing to accept that not all kids are good looking. I mean, if every kid is good looking I bet every woman and man on the face of earth should be. Oh that guy… he has a bent nose, a stoopy eye.. he is umm..whatever.. women come up with all kinds of names for grown humans.. but not for kids. All kids are good looking J.
Don’t take me for being as wicked as that Texan chainsaw guy. I like kids.. but I like them to be around for a while and then go away. Like a good game on pc, come whenever I want it. And I can handle kids of more than 5yrs of age, when they behave as individuals.
And women, I wish to share this event that I witnessed. Probably this would let you think twice the next time you try to hold a kid stranger. I was traveling by train to home from Bangalore. This lady sitting in front of me has 3 little angels (pun intended). They were probably born at 1yr intervals. Another middle-aged lady sitting a little further away was so impressed by these kids (it’s a reflex). She started talking all sorts of nonsense like ‘sweetie you gotto say good morning to your brother when you get up’ .. ‘ try it out now.. say good morning to sonny’ so on. This went on for more than half an hour. The kids were playing among themselves without any response to this lady. The lady should have taken this as a cue and stopped. But you know the ladies… kids are the eye candy. So she went on saying such stuff. Finally, the youngest of the three, probably still in pre-nursery turned around to the lady and said “ Oye inkosaari mataadaavante ninnu champesi bayata padesta” (that’s in verbatim, meaning.. lady if you blabber any more, I’ll kill you and throw you away).
That came as a shock to her and she slept taking coke. Although coke contains caffeine, it could do nothing to the anesthesia the angel blessed her with J
So all you ladies and (a few nancy men) beware!! Kids nowadays are not like you and I were. They are smart, they watch hell lot of movies and they even follow every conversation that happens at home. They are more grown up than we estimate they are. Don’t you mess with them, they would say like Dirty Harry.. do you feel lucky? What do you think???? Punk!!
Proofreading
Compatibility vs Incompatibility is a long standing case in human history, at least so long as civilized humans learnt of relationships. And perhaps no one is experienced enough to postulate rules or hypothesize on what works and what not. This is therefore just an account of experience; the essence of hardships, mostly misunderstood as ideal with any relationship and lessons hence learnt. Due to my limited view of the world and biased judgment owing to self-love, I disclaim that I may not always be right. And to quote the great philosopher Bertrand Russell here, I shall not die for my beliefs; for I might be wrong.
By relationship, I do not restrict myself to the one between one and his spouse, or between lovers or friends. All kinds of long standing interpersonal interactions are included in 'relationship' except those with family. Family is circumstantial for good or bad that is. Where as any other relation is a choice we make and needs extra work and attention to keep it running.
To start with, the most crucial mistake and a harbinger to many 'break ups' is lenience. In the bloom of a relationship, love is all around. Many times in this bloom, differences are overlooked. Some of them, in reality are of considerable gravity. Such overlooking puts the grease in the wheels and relationship running. But sooner or later, the bloom withers and these qualities of a person seem not so easy to forgive. So, instead of going through this viscous circle, it’s better to be non-lenient, if not strict in the incipient stages.
Secondly, accepting compromise as a part of life. Though easy to say, its quite difficult to really accept that compromise is a part of life. And then again, the degree to which compromise can be acceptable varies from person to person. Every relationship is based on selfish motives. Although selfishness might seem an unwanted quality, it is so ingrained in human nature that it is omnipresent and omnipotent in every action and relation. To accept that selfishness is inevitable is to stop expecting people to react the way we expect them to, paradoxically, accepting selfishness means accepting that we shall expect others to react in a way that is favorable to us. So perhaps one should categorize expectations into ‘necessities’, ‘comforts’ and ‘luxuries’.
To expect your spouse to understand your every mood and emotion is perhaps a ‘luxury’. To expect a soothing reaction in adverse situations, a ‘necessity’. To expect that he/she receives you the same way as you do may be a ‘comfort’. And so on..
Perhaps categorization of expectations would allow a person to compromise logically. And terms of compromise foreseen are generally easy to accept compared to unforeseen ones. It also allows you to draw the line and say, well such a thing is unacceptable so you have to change or go fishing.
Thirdly, to overcome inertia is a major challenge in any relationship. Inertia to start up and inertia to end a relation are both worse in their own ways. After all, any relationship is to keep you happy. Once you are clear that there is no happiness with a relation, it is useless to expend energy and time on it. Remember, every relation is out of selfish motives; to keep you happy. Of course, in a constructive fashion. To quote Bertrand Russell again, to lead a happy life is to be happy every day.
So, timely decisions are necessary in order to avoid unnecessary pain and discomfort. And the famous ‘better late than never’ works here too! One should also understand that relations are not always time and distance problems. Rarely does the intimacy intensify with time if the people are incompatible in the first place. I agree time will accumulate memories, times spent together but on a careful observation, many of them would be disappointing and things that were wished to never happen. Also, to carry a relationship for the sake of society is a sin. Unfortunately, fear of society is culture. Let us not let this fear consume happiness.
An ideal relationship should be one in which the two involved should have equal say. Freedom is a property they should share equally. On a difference of opinion, they should have a healthy conversation or if necessary, tuition to let the other understand one’s viewpoint. There should be no reservations on the content of sharing. A relationship is really fruitful if you can be just yourself before the other, but sanely so! And when there is true love, this would be a very easy task. In such case, there wouldn’t be dishonesty, lies or things to hide. This is the fourth, but a high priority ingredient of a successful relationship; honesty. Although old, the saying still holds good, honesty is the best policy.
The following ‘muses’ are my view point based on my limited experience with research through a little more than a yearin a corporate research center and about a couple of years of research that resulted in my graduation. This is a personal opinion and therefore is ill-formed, biased and limited in its perspective. And I’m sharing it purely out of interest in sharing, with no ideas or thoughts on improving or judging current day research.
I do not know if Newton was known as researcher by the time he was working out calculus or if Galileo or Kepler was known as one. But to my opinion, what they did was research. They investigated physical phenomena or explored space and invented necessary language to express it. In case of Newton it was gravity, calculus and in case of Keppler, the laws of motion. And many more like that. As I said before, I’m stunted by my knowledge in finding better examples.
Research changed its form, capabilities and scope over time. In those days, research was out of curiosity and it resulted in pleasure. As Feynman puts it, it was the pleasure of finding things out. The intentions, aspirations and foresight were limited to the point of finding it out and hence the focus. The results were marvellous and carried a kind of beauty and generality and were open to change if attacked by counter arguments of sufficient potential.
The founders of science had a pleasure trip. They did not care about the monetary and societal implications of their work. One might argue that it was easy in those days to make a breakthrough discovery in science because many of the fundamentals were not yet formed. But even so, it required clear and original thinking to come up with rules based on observations all by themselves. So did Mechanics, Electricity, Magnetism, Thermodynamics happened.
The science was entirely mathematical; and mathematics, simple. For that matter, a majority of fundamental properties are but constants defined to satisfy equations. Otherwise, how can one define mass? Mass is but a constant that satisfies the equation ‘F=ma’ as defined by Newton. Its just a constant, a notion, as ‘m’ is in ‘y=mx’. Or so was entropy in Thermodynamics. As Stephen Hawking puts it, entropy is just a matter of notion. Reasonably consequently, the notion of unidirectional arrow of time is also a justification to support the asymmetry in human perception of past and future.
Perhaps in the 18th Century, the notion of engineering has swept in. To my understanding, engineering is application of physics or rather physical laws to make life better. Engineering in many ways set or limited the scope of growth of research. Research was all focused towards making better automobiles, electricity and so on.
The liberty in thinking and exploring new avenues or ideas turned even limited with the advent of corporate research. Here, the researchers are but a part of a manufacturing chain where all they concentrate is on minute incremental work to the existing product or technology. I agree that one need not undermine the effects of these minor increments. What is really bothersome in this chain is that the researcher has no liberty to focus his effort or drive with passion an idea to reality. Because he is just one in the chain, his ideas need not necessarily fructify even though they might be good. A good example would be the invention of GUI by a researcher in Xerox, which would have never turned out to be an ingredient of a product if Steve Jobs were not to pick it up.
The point I’m trying to make here is, as soon as engineering swept in, research was forced to justify itself on the grounds of whether or not it is useful to the society; and in case of corporate research, the justification is in terms of the business impact and profit for the company. The capacity and capability of scientific experiments was more or less aligned towards delivering an important and relevant goal and hence stunted growth in all of its possibilities.
Now, an immediate question can be as to what are those fields where science is terribly restricted. And I will be just as stumped as a theistic, when asked to show God. Being a part of the system, the current day, I cannot make out what would be outside. What I cannot understand, I obviously cannot explain. But still, the argument is simple and logical; as long as you are focusing on one thing, perhaps very justly so, you are missing on the liberty to explore the rest.
I’m not saying that the liberty depleted in entirety or that free explorers of science or nature do not exist anymore. Those who do so, unfortunately form a minority despite the humungous increase the percentage of population that are acquainted to science in the modern day.
So in this present scenario, on what basis should a ‘researcher’ derive satisfaction from his work? Because it is all hazy as to what ‘end goal’ is he working towards? Should he come up with evasive counter –logical statements like those that support existence of God as made by intelligent God-men or should he accept his limitations and be termed as a ‘resentful employee’, thoroughly disappointed with his current status and work scope?
.. to be continued
