random rants of a father of a lovely lady!

there

The answer to the question that if i am going at the speed of light what happens when I look back?

Obviously it wasn't as simplistic as I made it out to be. Which just proves how dangerous is it to have half knowledge. I keep saying this and people don't believe it that all the knowledge that i have is very dangerous. after reading so much over these years, i have amassed a lot of knowledge but nothing super deep in one field. It gives me amazing breadth, the ability to pull off examples that are from seemingly unrelated fields nut what it definitely does is makes me very very vulnerable in a field of experts. Most others wouldn't even venture there, but with my limited knowledge, I would venture into the territory and get caught out.

Its a good thing I am in marketing. I need to get as much exposure as possible. I have over the years been able to play to my strengths, which is take inspiration from various unrelated fields and apply to business issues and try and take a creative leap. This has so far bode well for me. As I get older I use these experiences to make a point or talk deeper through the matter. But then the age old problem catches up. I hate it when it happens - the problem when one articulate meets an inarticulate. or an open articulate meets a closed inarticulate. Basically i will be using all sorts of references and data points to prove my point and then the opposite guy will just stop the conversation. They will refuse to discuss the issue. They say they cant argue with me or they don't want to argue with me or something to that effect. That is a complete piss off as far as i am concerned. Why would you not want to discuss your issues openly, just because you can articulate it well enough? Especially if you are closed to the thought. If you are simply inarticulate but open you will quickly realise that I try my best to articulate your side as well. That unnerves some more of them. Why would I be doing that? Do I really want to help them or am I just taking their case. The smarter ones understand and the secure ones love it, but a large majority - i think i just let go.

The art of keeping quiet and let them rant is something I have developed over a period of time. Just let go when things are not going great - conversation wise. Keep quiet - think deep - relax. your own thoughts are fun things to be.

Speaking of which Jispa has had her share of own thoughts which are running at some obscene rate of acceleration and change. She is a teen and her synapses are getting formed every day. She changing and along with herself - we all are trying to keep pace. She had always hated haircuts. She wants them long but she doesn't know how to handle them. In the past I think she has liked only one haircut. Haircuts is something Jasmine and me have decided is a battle not worth fighting. You decide what you want and when you want - we refuse to get involved or tell her what haircut or tell the hair dresser. Stay away from this ticking tim bomb as much as possible. So suddenly when jasmine told me that she needs to go for a haircut with Jispa i looked at Jasmine with a quizzical look. “dont tell me. i did not do anything. your daughter came to me directly and asked for a hair cut’. Its always ‘your daughter’ when these kind of events happen. The nice things are always done by her daughter. My daughter does all the stuff that leaves us perplexed. So they went for a hair cut. When they came back and i opened the door to see her, I was stunned. This was by far the best hairdo that i have ever seen my daughter with. Her hair were all in shape, they were combed well (obviously blow dried) and looking spectacular.

I suddenly realised that she was now a young lady. She had suddenly gotten much older. I looked at her and told her exactly that. Jasmine looks at me with a bewildered look. It seems from the time that she got her hair cut to the time that she got home, she was messing around with her hair. It wasn't that good, the hair is looking all puffed up, this is not right, that she was going to wash it, or at the very least, she was going to wet some parts of her hair, that she was going to tie it up blah blah. She did mess around a bit. Then Jasmine and i just said - fair - do what you want to, just once before you do anything, lets take a few pics, just so that we know for ourselves what you are capable of looking like and then you can do whatever you want. We took a few pics and one with me and her, i put on FB. This one was the one that garnered the most amount of likes that i have ever seen. in the first couple of hours itself - it crossed a 100 likes. At the tim of writing  - it is stable at around 235 odd. Hah! A simple pic that has no background, no real story, just a  pic of me and my child looking like a lovely lady and there -boom - its breaks the internet as far as I am concerned. As Jasmine was telling me - its not me but Jispa getting all the likes! Yup I agree. 

Facebook is a reflection of the kind of society we live in. young single women putting up pictures of themselves tend to garner a larger share of likes from suitable males than anyone else. Similarly a 40 year old male (me) will garner the most likes when seen in the company of his child or wife - looking all family and all. As that is what is what is expected of me, looking good with family, the archetype of the  loving and caring dad who finds his soul in his family that he cares and provides for … 

What is Jispa?

Yesterday i was having a nice conversation with Jispa and her friend Sheel. Sheel is a smart boy who with Jispa in her nursery. Sheel went to a different school but now he has come to join Jispa’s school in the 8th standard. Jispa had to practically repeat her lower Kg as the cut off for her current school was off by a few months. hence she is the oldest in her class and Sheel is one year ahead of her academically.

Jispa has been having evening school thanks to her annual concert. He annual concert has been a really boring affair. I think i only enjoyed it in the first two years after which i think generally the quality degraded and the novelty wore off. I hate those concerts. they are normally ill written with bad acting, bad direction and fundamentally a crap script. Then they have this rule that every kid gets to go on stage with a role no matter how small. So they end up with the lead character role being distributed amongst two tree kids. Even the villain roles are played like thus. So the first time I was wondering what happened to the hero - where did he go? who is this other guy in the same costume… till it dawned on me the great benefits of having an egalitarian and democratic society in a school concert. Total anarchy reigned. so inspite of being  highly involved dad I decided once or twice to just give it a miss. Jispa too doesn't care too much for it. She knows how dumb her concerts are and how amazingly ridiculous her costumes are. The worst is always the final days where she has to dress up and go to the concert with her stupid costume and face with make up. Jasmine has hardly ever used make up. But she has a complete set with all colors just for Jispa’s stupid concerts. I am hoping to miss this time’s one as well.

To manage crowds the concerts are performed over two days and yesterday was the first day when we went to pick her. Sheel was hanging around and we decided to drop him home. Since it was late we went for dinner first. Sheel is the quite intelligent smart guy who likes to read. And he tends to ask nice and intelligent questions and he loves to eat. So when we took him to dinner we started talking about lactose intolerance. It was a nice conversation that went from genetics to darwinism to Einstein. I felt nice.

I was explaining that lactose tolerance is actually a mutation because mostly people should be intolerant after they are around 4. As a human race we started eating so much lactose only in the last few decades. Cheese milk butter was not as plentiful earlier as it is today. Thanks to the modern dairy industry. So Sheel asked me if then over a period of time will people eventually all become tolerant - laws of adaptation since we eat so much lactose in our daily lives. Then was my proud moment i recollected from a book i read eons ago - Survival of the sickest - “Fittest you mean?” he asked me. Nope Sickest. What we consider today to be sick may have been the reason for survival in the years gone by. For example the sickle cell anaemia may be an issue today, but it helped people affected by it survive malaria - hence those sick with it were the most likely to survive. Similarly hemochromatosis being baneful to survive the bubonic plague which ravaged a large part of Europe.

This was a nice conversation after a long time.

I have had this feeling for some time that Jispa doesn't really value my knowledge. For her talking intelligent stuff to her dad is something that she takes for granted. in the middle she refused to have these conversations with me. She would ask irrelevant questions, needlessly dumb down the conversation and sometimes, just stop asking questions. I was quite annoyed with her. Till i realised that this is the way life is. I don't think she will realise the value of all the stuff that I read. When i first go to a place they go crazy and listen to me all day. Then when they hire me - I am on a tap. No body values knowledge given on a tap. i find this extremely irritating but i have learnt to deal with it.

So yesterday when i was talking to Sheel, Jispa also joined in. And this time, i continued my focus on talking and maintaining eye contact with Sheel. The ploy seems to have worked. it was a conversation with Sheel that she could join in - a different kind of conversation. It ended being highly esoteric - that the speed of light is constant and even if you running with a torch and you switch it on - the speed of light will remain the same. The last question before ending dinner was - if you were travelling at the speed of light and you look behind - what will you see? - Jispa said - everything black. At the time i thought thats right - but i guess right now searching further - i realised its much more a difficult question to answer. it ranges to black to frozen to a question of behind not existing at all!

See the problem of too much bull shit info! But sure you get the point and i got a conversation.

Boss!

Now at this age with a 12 year old kid – you are definitely an “uncle’. You may not like it – but you are the uncle. But sometimes you can get elevated. And if the boys in your daughters class elevate you then you have done something that is a huge achievement.

A couple of weeks back Jispa was at a party. When we went to pick her up the kids were playing in the compound after the party. Jispa got into the car and then I decided to play a prank on the other kids. I told Jispa to watch the fun. I quietly moved my car next to the kids. There were a couple of girls from Jispa’s class whose back was to us. I suddenly revved up the engine and let out a sharp horn and braked. The boys simply looked up and the girls let out a scream and were completely scared. They almost dropped everything they had. In a few seconds the boys knew that this was a prank and were laughing their ass out. Then the boys – the naughtiest and the worst of them came up to my car. I rolled down the windows – we hi fived and then the boy screamed out – “ Uncle – BOSS”. That’s it. No body said – great prank, awesome prank, awesome idea, Great, cool or anything like that. For that fleeting moment – I was upgraded from Uncle to BOSS! On the other window another legendary naughty kidd, hifived and proclaimed me BOSS. What more can I wish for? I was no longer a simple Uncle, I was THE BOSS!

Another self gloating thing. Jasmine and Jispa have been at logger heads over studying. Hence over the last couple of weeks I took over. I learnt from last year that teaching her school is different from teaching at the schools I grew up with. we could simply study the notebook and come out of the exams with flying colors. I learnt that the text book is more important than the notebook. In fact they make it a point to ask questions outside of the notebook that tests your fundamental knowledge of the subject. So this time I have started with the text book and then moved onto the notebook. In English I did not even touch the notebook. More energies were focused on talking about the chapters. But the school likes to raise the bar. One chapter they have is on Prometheus and Pandora and her box. The story goes blah blah blah and Gods give Pandora a box to take to earth. She is advised by a well wisher not to open it. Curiosity gets better of her. She opens it to release suffering and other worries from the box and hence earth suffers from it. At the end – she hears a tiny voice from the box she tried to shut. There was hope inside. She then release hope as well as a balm to all suffering. The question she got in the exam was – why would Zeus put hope in the box when we wanted to send the box as a punishment for all mankind. Wow. Now that’s a nice question. Jispa rose to the occasion and answered – that zeus wanted mankind to suffer for eternity. So if there was only suffering and sadness, they would have fought and killed each other to the end, but hope gives them the courage to live on and then to suffer these for life – for always there will be hope. I was stunned. I would expected a humane answer like – finally he is a god and so he left hope so that his children bear the suffering. But Jispa’s take on it was that Zeus was unimaginably cruel or possibly a sadist. Hope kills you more than anything else in suffering. Hah! Amazing. I told her that it’s a great answer and if you have written it well enough – I don’t care if your teacher doesn’t like it. Nice one. She said – ya. I have always found these Greek Gods to be really cruel in all the stories.

I have read this story as a child and never saw this side of the equation. Why would you put hope ina  box meant to suffer. And a possible reason  as Jispa pointed out is not so altruistic. Possibly Jispa sees it because she does try to think differently, or is it possible because at home we are pretty agnostic towards God and religion. We don’t revere God at home. So she is not brainwashed into the undisputed benevolence of God. She questions his motives and sees him as such – She sees large swatches of black in his behavior. Very very Interesting. Very different from what I saw. I am impressed.

Another one on studying. Yesterday Jasmine called me at lunch. She asked me on Jispa’s science preparedness and if she could get by just reading through. I replied in affirmative. Jispa was done. After I put the phone down I was pretty happy. I was the BOSS. Normally it’s the dad asking mom if the kid is prepared for the exam. Not the other way around. That was the ultimate BOSS compliment!

So now I hope Jispa is really prepared for her exams. We have done it the right way. No mugging but understanding. Slowly and surely done the right way. I was then telling Jasmine – now whatever she gets I will be ok with the results because this is the right way to study – marks are of no consequence.

BOSS!

Bonus Really Bakwaas video:-

Eat a lot of chocolates

The Pro kabaddi league is off to a great start. I happen to be in the middle of the entire drama as one of the teams is owned by Uday Kotak in a personal capacity. Like always I love being exposed to a variety of experiences and being involved in a sports team is definitely amongst the most interesting experiences of a lifetime.

The first thing was naming the team, then some designs and some posters… I have blogged about being involved in the making of the song and video… here is the final video

Man it was amazing fun!

The matches have started well in earnest. But I see quite a few issues that need to be ironed out. At the start itself I had told the team to focus on diet and nutrition along with training as a core requirement. Budget constraints pushed it out of the reckoning. I had my chance again when we lost two close opening matches. I saw what the team was having. They were having energy drinks and protein drinks at no predefined intervals. No plan no thinking only drinking. This made no sense to me. Thanks to Jispa and her sport I am aware of a few things. You need carbs before the matches and you need protein after to recover. Simple basics and you have to be hydrated with electrolytes and not with high sugar energy drinks. Sugar is a killer. And where the F are the bananas in the entire picture? The team was without any such food. Hence I got the ear of a senior guy and I directly rammed it in. This team is eating all wrong. They are getting wrong nutrition and wrong training.

I see being a team owner as a kind of responsibility. A responsibility to all the players that you have bought for your team. They need to be taken care of. Especially in kabaddi when the players are from the hinterland and are not really well off or are not really exposed to the scientific training mindset. These guys are players whom we need to groom and prepare for the long run. They will go back to their teams and they have to tell everyone and spread the word what they have learnt. So now thanks to Jispa I could push my point across and thanks to that we have got a budget sanctioned for a trainer and a masseur for the kabaddi team.

Then I remember the experience I had with the cricket team and then the interaction I had with Anil Kumble once and how he spoke about enjoying practice and I found that a big thing. Even Tendulkar and Dravid can get bored doing the same net practice every day. That’s right. You may be the best in the world but you can still be bored at doing the same thing every day. The idea is to have fun and do a wide variety of things that can get you to be the best at what you are. Its fun and a challenge.

The point being that life is a collection of experiences. You build on what you experience. On what you learn from anywhere. I never knew that Jispa’s swimming and an event with Anil Kumble along with my cricket playing would help me help a Kabaddi team and then who knows where this experience will take me. I am reminded of the movie Forrest Gump and eth famous dialogue of life being like a box of chocolates. Here look at this scene… its lovely and extremely philosophical.

Life is like a box of chocolates. Only thing is that you have learn from every chocolate you eat!

here.. one more bonus video!

Can you stop it?

One day Jispa old me that she has this great desire to once touch the fan while its moving. Hah! Ya sure. I told her that I wanted to touch the fan as well when I was her age. I wanted to stop the blades from moving. She said – ya she wants to do that as well. We both laughed as we shared our similar childhood fantasies of holding the blades of the fan. She told me ‘when I was small once I put a stick in the fan, thinking that I would go round round round, like in the movies.”. “ya? You serious. I have done that as a kid my self” I told her. “So what happened” I asked her. She said “nothing, the stick banged against the fan”. Yup. That’s the thing that happens. Then I asked him “do you really want to touch the fan while it’s on? There is one trick. You can touch the middle motor and not the blades. You should be fine then. Come let’s do it”. So I first touched the middle round bit and then I held her hand as she touched it. But I warned her to do it only under adult supervision. I told her that I did this as a kid. Then I narrated one incident to her. Once, (I must have been around 17/18) I wanted to check if I could stop the blades of the mixer with my fingers. So I tried experimenting with the mini boss. The hand held blender. I held the blades with my fingers and then started it. I got a deep cut in my finger and of course – the blade did not stop :) . that was my stupidity. I then tried showing her the scar on my finger. We could see a faint line. It was fun sharing these stories with Jispa. We really share the same weird ideas. How would it be to stop a fan?

A few stories that I did not tell her was that one of the things I experimented with was that I would do two more experiments with the fan. One was after I switched it off, at what point before it stopped moving altogether – would I be able to stop it. Putting my hand on the motor and increasing the friction was one. Putting a stick and even my hands on the blades when they are slower was another. The other experiment which was very successful and led to the finger in blender experiment was I would switch on the fan and then immediately try and stop it from moving by holding on to the blades. Now in a large ceiling fan that takes a lot to shrug off the initial inertia – it worked. You can stop a ceiling fan from starting by holding on to it. WARNING – any kids reading this – DO NOT TRY this at home. The fans can be of varying speed and this stuff was tried in the 90’s or 80’s. Motors and speeds have surely moved on from then on. SO since I could do that to the fan I wanted to do that to the blender. That successful experiment is not something I am going to tell Jispa about. Prudence prevailed.

But it was still fun to share a lot of these fun things with Jispa. Most of these experiments are garbed under scientific research in our brain. Once Jispa got a scolding for using nail paint in her fingers without asking. Later on I found out that it was a part of a scientific experiment on the effects of chlorine on nail paint. How long will it last while she swims.

But let me leave you with a video of a blender and stuff I would love to do at home. I think they got the amazing insight of every childhood fantasy… will the blender blend it? see all the related videos.

Daddy knows

We are dam irritated with Jispa’s school class teacher. We have had a series of issues. It started by her wrongly correcting Jispa on the light year concept, then came a few more incidents and these days Jasmine and me are completely pissed off as she doesn’t even bother to explain the concepts properly. On the weekend I was given the task of explaining different plants to Jispa. Especially the carnivorous plants. These were the Pitcher Plant and the Venus Fly trap. Normally Jispa always came in understanding the concepts very well but this time I realized she knew very little. And she was just given worksheets to memorize or learn from.  So I decided to teach her properly.

Now I also don’t know exactly how the mechanisms work. From the explanations it seemed obvious that the Venus fly trap simply smashed shut it leaves, but the pitcher plant seemed more complex. Here is the picture of the Pitcher plat. Looking at it, it seems obvious that the top part closes in after the insect is within grasp.

 

But that is not the truth. Thanks to power of youtube, you realize that the top leaf is practically immobile. The Ants slip in thanks to the fine waxy layer at the edges. They first get drawn by the nectar at the sides and then they simply slip into the pouch which is a deadly concoction that helps digest the insect. Lovely isn’t it. See this video for the whole truth.

The uglier and more sinister looking one is the Venus Fly trap. This video on youtube is very good and makes you feel bad for the fly. But one thing you are sure of – Jispa won’t forget this in a hurry. See it. Highly recommended. http://youtu.be/O7eQKSf0LmY

Then yesterday jasmine was also pissed that the teacher doesn’t even explain words and other stuff. She just reads out and expects kids to understand. This was corroborated with Jispa. According to her , the teacher just reads and then if you ask for a certain meaning, her standard response is that in fourth grade you guys should know. Jasmine was  super-duper pissed when Jispa was given worksheets for horizontal division without the teacher explaining how its done. For example solving 330/11. Which you have to do without using the standard horizontal method. Jasmine had to explain this to Jispa.

So in the evening Jasmine and me discussing this and we both were cribbing when I just turned around and said, “great. We always wanted to be involved parents, right? This is the perfect opportunity. I am ok teaching whatever is required to Jispa. In any case I do a better job of it. I love teaching and I think this is my life’s calling. What better than to teach my own daughter”. I guess this is the best thing that happened.

I told Jispa the next day – don’t bother about school stuff. What we will do is that you tell me what all you are studying over the weekend or over dinner and I will teach you how it works. We will use Videos and internet and learn the real stuff. Her teacher also taught her that the pitcher plant closes the top leaf as a trap. Let’s learn the real thing. Exactly how it happens and what all else we can learn from it.

This also helps me and my general knowledge. The other day I learnt that Delhi while having a chief minister and a high court is not exactly a state. It is still a Union territory and has some special privileges that help it get managed as a state. So that’s your favorite quiz question, Is Delhi a State? One idiot in office challenged me. He even put 1000 bucks on the table in a brazen act befitting a brash North Indian (sorry for racial prejudices). I told him don’t do it, I just taught my daughter that and I looked up Wikipedia and the internet and it’s a UT with special privileges. Don’t bet. He still bet. He lost. I gave him back his thousand. He was serious on his bet so I took a hundred and that should have taught him a good lesson. Don’t bet with a man who kid goes to the fourth grade. Just don’t.

From wiki entry on Delhi -

“The name Delhi is often also used to include urban areas near the NCT, as well as to refer to New Delhi, the capital of India, which lies within the metropolis. Although technically a federally administered union territory, the political administration of the NCT of Delhi today more closely resembles that of a state of India with its own legislature, high court and an executive council of ministers headed by a Chief Minister. New Delhi, jointly administered by both the federal Government of India and the local Government of Delhi, is also the capital of the NCT of Delhi.”

Go ahead.. EXPLODE

Going with Jispa to the bus stop every day is just enough bonding time. Anymore and Jasmine will probably throw me out of the house. What problem does she have with my bonding? Well nothing really, it’s the problem she envisages Jispa having with my bonding. I get extra pleasure out of talking with Jispa and pushing her imagination. And Jispa likes to use and apply these concepts.
Like this time around we are high on Einstein. I was explaining to her how time moves slower in a moving vehicle. Well kind of explaining to her. To the best that I understand. She was getting all wired and confused but getting the point as well. Its fun teaching concepts that challenge her brain. The other recent favorite is that it is possible to see the past. All you have to do is move faster than light. But you can’t theoretically move faster than light but if you could, then you would be able to see the past. I explained this to her and she was quite awestruck by the fact. We even discussed this a few days later. That is the ultimate test. If she remembers it and she talks about it then I know the penny has dropped. Full on time pass. She has to take some facts to school on a periodic basis. What’s the point in taking lame facts? All kids read encyclopedias and watch the geographic channels so facts that astound them have to be smart and different. This time Jispa was asking me about taking a fact to school. I was fresh from a book about flight and I explained to her that the aero planes could only be invented after the invention of the petrol powered engines. Otherwise the other engines were too heavy to put on planes. Now that’s a fact that even her teacher wouldn’t have known. That’s a fact that does come as a factoid in a channel or a children’s magazine. It’s an unknown kind of factoid. I keep trying to dazzle her. It’s fun when you teach that run of the mill stuff is just that – run of the mill stuff. It’s not something she took and read from a cut out or something. She spoke it from her mind because she understood the concept. I am dying for her to take the see the past concept to school. This is what I call teaching a kid. Putting advanced concepts in a simple to understand way.
Throw open your mind. Absorb stuff from all around. Keep thinking, keep tinkering. Jispa and I have the ultimate fun when one question leads to another and another and then we wonder how we got where we got. Whoops. I love it when it really challenges me to explain what I know in a manner that an eight year old can understand. That is the true test of knowing. Like my professor used to say – what is marketing? How do you know you know marketing? Can you explain what it is to your mother? Can explain the marketing of the oil she is buying to your mother. Then it is marketing. Yes Professor Navalkar. I remember his golden words. What is the point of all the reading I might have done? I must be able to explain it to the kids in a language that they understand and in a language that they appreciate, learn and remember. The penny must drop and remain there.
The best compliment I thought I ever received when Jasmine today told me that Jispa was telling her “mom, how I remember stuff from long time ago. I remember when I was two or three years old and daddy was teaching me about day and night. He took me to the bathroom with a globe and a torch and in the darkness showed me night and day. I still remember it”. Wow that is cool. I barely remember it. It was around 5 to 6 years ago. Like all proud papas; I took that as a compliment to my teaching skills rather than her memory skills. Haha. In parenting you get a lot of brickbats, you have to learn to take a few positives and gloat on them when they come. I tell, that is a sure way of staying sane.
(the reason
Kids are the most fun. You have to explain to them, use similies, metaphors and really challenge yourself. And you know what, explaining this to others helps you learn it better. You understand it in a way that even you retain it. The surest way to learn something is to teach it to others. They challenge you, ask you and expect you to know it all. So you keep thinking, take some time out, think through, sometimes together and figure it out. That is the best way to learn. You keep drilling concepts into your mind as you drill them into other minds. In office too as I teach / talk about the various concepts, I get to learn them as well. I love it when my team challenges me on the concepts, pushes me, asks ridiculous, innocuous looking but highly dangerous questions that challenge my understanding of them. That pushes me to think much more. Yes teaching is a great thing.
Like one office kid asked me what I think is the thing that I want to do the most. Years of corporate disillusionment has taught me only to remove all notion of ambition. I have no great desire to be the CEO or something. Screw you establishment. But I think of something that I hold dear to my heart. Something that has possibly defined me and helped mould me. Teaching. I want to constantly teach. I want to be in a position where I can learn constantly, where I have to push myself to understand better and then teach people to understand better. I want to see minds open. I want to constantly open mine. The greatest gift of teaching to me is the simple act of a student opening his mind. My greatest pleasure does not come from the guys who come in first in class. It comes from the guy who come into class with a closed mind, least interested in studying and generally believing that this is all shit. When I see him contribute, when I she her raising her hand, challenging me and then when I say, right, good thought, great observation, and then them believing in what is being taught. That is the greatest gift that I can get. An opening of a window in their mind.
After knowing a bit I know only one thing, that I know too little. The joy in knowing more is unimaginable. The joy in teaching that there is a vast unexplored world out there is crazy. One of the reasons why we named Jispa after a slightly inaccessible mountain village is just that. Her name must conjure in her head a sense of exploration. Something that she must seek out. Something that she could aspire to conquer, reach and feel. Something that is high, away and pure. Go on Jispa. Go on… explore. EXPOLDE.




PS: the reason Jasmine worries about all this is because Jispa likes showing her mind off and she worrys that she will show off to her teacher in school and we don’t know how they all react to oversmart students. Yup. We are scarred by our own experiences. But I purposely push her and want to show her that a teacher, any teacher, never knows all. She is only explaining what she knows and that does not make me/her/ she/ him the ultimate know all. Go ahead.. . burst a few myths along the way. Go ahead. EXPLODE

the selfish giant

This post was written on Saturday but posted later. Why is this important? Because this blog has a time value attached to it. Time is the fourth dimension, but is relative. What is all this shit? Well, I have been reading some stuff on quantum physics and I find it completely disconcerting. The journey as it seeks to find the theory of everything. This stuff does not make any sense. But it makes so much when you read it. It is so fascinating but at the same time so bloody mind boggling. Sometimes I wish I had taken physics major. That the stuff I was always good at and I naturally loved. Nowadays it makes for great fun to read this complex stuff and be entertained. It is only possible if you don’t want to remember it all and give an exam. Because otherwise it would be so insurmountable. I even read stuff about us living in mutliverse as opposed to a universe. Whoa!
But the point of the time value of this blog is important as I sit down today and reminiscence on the feeling that got built up over the last year as we hurtled towards yesterday. In the good old days I felt excited and I wanted yesterday to come everyday. I even counted the days to yesterday. Till I was in third standard yesterday was always in my school vacations. We used to live the gulf, where the school shut for the oppressive summers and I could not have my day in the sun in front of peers. Yesterday was an important point in my every day year. So when we first came to Mumbai I was so excited that I would get to celebrate yesterday with peers. I started counting the days I would take to get yesterday. Waiting and counting. If I am not mistaken I even counted up to 45 days. Oh that day. I wore a safari suit in the fourth standard. What was it blue or was it grey. But I was so proud. I must have never been so proud to distribute orange hard boiled confectionary. It used to cost 10 paise for one at retail price at around 6 paise per sweet at wholesale rate. Man I was so thrilled. The first time I had a chance to celebrate my birthday in school and having 60, not just 30 as per gulf school norms. Yeah yeah. It was day in the sun. No wonder I was so excited.
All these years I continued to be excited till something struck last year. It was my own version of the mid life crisis. I started hating birthdays. Not that the thought of growing older hurt. But au contraire I loved getting old. But I started hating getting birthday greetings from people. Why? I don’t know if people really care when they wish and I stopped liking any wishes and I started suspecting them of being mere formality. I also stopped wishing too many people on their birthdays as well in the hope that they would in turn stop greeting me as well. I even got rid of my birthday notification from the social networking sites.
Day before yesterday I sent a mail to HR. they have this practice of sending emails announcing everyone’s birthday. What a complete waste and pain. So I wrote them a mail asking them to please desist on my day. Just. Just spare me. As I get older I have gotten more anti social. In fact I merely got grumpier. Just like the old troll in fairytales. On Thursday being my grumpy old troll mood, I refused to listen to my team request for a luncheon on Friday. In fact once my meeting got cancelled for the morning I put in a request for the day off. I am not even coming to office. The second half we planned to run off to Igatpuri at my sisters bunglow with her family and my brother’s as well.
I make an effort not to remember my birthday. My dream one day is to forget it completely. That will be the day according to me. so I woke up in the morning not remembering its my birthday till I received an sms wishing me. as I came out of the shower my wife and kid sang the birthday song. I like that. I know people who really care, when they wish, it doe fell kind of good. My things with birthdays is the rest of the world not those who care.
I spent the rest of the morning helping my wife clean the house as we were to leave for three days. Roaming around in a pair of jeans, I was trying to get my pedagogy right for the lecture I was scheduled for next Sunday.
Suddenly the bell rang. As jasmine opened the door, I saw my good peon form office – Vinod with a cake in a bag. Oh god. They sent me cake from office. I looked at Vinod. Since I was topless I looked at him and aksed, ‘ are there others around? are they hiding?” he nodded and pointed in the direction. I ran in to wear a t shirt and then came out to discover them hiding near the stair case. SURPRISE!!! My team along with two others who are no longer a part of my team was present. Ok. I really love them. They all came in from office to catch me on my birthday. They had got a chocolate mousse cake which I proceeded to cut and then they took turns splashing it on my face.. Soon enough one spark resulted in a cake fight. All of us including my wife had cake n our face. All with brown melting mousse dripping down on the face.
It was pretty good fun.
Moral of the story – I was a grumpy old troll with a bad attitude problem. Sure enough you get shitty people and people who don’t care but at the same time you get good guys with a lot of love to share. In my effort to alienate those I do not care about or thopse who do not care for me I end up alienating those who do and those that matter. I almost threw the baby out with the bath water. I am reminded of the story of the selfish giant who did not let any one in his garden and winter permanently set in. It only got a bit of spring when one small kid who refused to get intimated by the giant and came and sat on one of the trees. The giant then saw light.
My team refused to get intimated by my ‘trollness’. They said screw you. And they came home and showed me what I might have missed.
Dates are irrelevant to the rational mind. They have no significance. What is the point of celebrating Independence Day. Work hard and be honest if you really care. Don’t sit and celebrate the day by watching old emotional movies on the telly. What is the point of it? Pure symbolism. What shit?
But at he same time, isn’t it a day to somehow remember that we struggled. So many fought so that they and more importantly those to come would be free.
My birthday has no real significance to me and to the rational mind it means naught. But we are all a bunch of people guided by irrationality. I liked it that the team came. I liked celebrating with them. It mattered to me that they felt welcome to come home and the fact that they bothered. It said something to me. it also proved my belief that I might be a troll at times but I am a likeable troll or at the least approachable. Having cake on my face was the ultimate gesture of acceptability.
In the physics book that I was reading I read about the Solvay conference held in Brussels devoted to Quantum Physics. 17 of the 23 delegates were or would become Nobel laureates. Marie Curie was even a double laureate. Einstein was one delegate. It was here Einstein declared in reference to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle that “God does not play dice”, and to which Niels Bohr replied “Albert, stop telling God what to do”
Wow. Imagine the group where one like Einstein can be told something like that in no uncertain terms. There is respect for the brain but there is also a healthy irreverence. Groups where people aren’t afraid to speak their mind are the groups that I would love to belong to. That is the group that I prefer. A respect but a certain irreverence. A case of opposites reconciling. And to think of it – I almost missed it thanks to my … my…. I don’t know what. Shit. I was lucky. I hope I don’t forget this lesson. In all likelyhood I am going to make this mistake again. It’s going to be difficult. The silver lining for me is that here I made the mistake but my team refused to let me suffer for it. At least I was considered open enough, whose plea for solitude was ignored.
As I grow older I will have many more of these pangs in opposite directions. The greatest fun will always be if in some magical way opposites reconcile.

All for a cracked CD

Oh god. I had no clue this was so complicated.
Jispa found a CD floating around the house. She came to us and asked if this was an important CD. Oh no, that was just around, waiting to be junked. She then asked “Can I put it in the microwave please?” WHAT? Why would you want to do that? “I read somewhere that if you keep the CD in the microwave then it will crack.” Uh ok. I looked at Jasmine and I figured that WTF. Let give it a go. We took a Corel plate and kept the CD on it and put it inside the microwave. In exactly two seconds the CD began to crackle with electricity. It looked so cool. The sparks on the CD looked like how a city looks at night from an airplane. It was pretty cool. We stopped it immediately. Then we started it again for three seconds. Wow. Cool nah? We did it again a couple of times.
Then we removed the CD to see it. The plastic was untouched. It was the mirroring on the CD that was affected. Then I tried to explain that to Jispa. I explained that the CD was actually a transparent plastic disk with troughs on it. so while it looking smooth to you, it actually has many small dimples of sort. Then I had to explain this via a cross section drawing. At first it was difficult to think of the drawing as cross section but eventually she got it.
Then I had to explain how the laser in the CD player throws a laser which bounces back. She then asked me if laser is like electricity. On which I then had to explain how laser is essentially a light beam, narrowly focussed. Like those red lasers which you get. Then I had to explain how light essentially has to bounce for us to see stuff. then I took her to the bathroom with a torch and explained how by merely shining a beam on the mirror you cant see yourself. But if you throw that beam of light on yourself, you can see yourself in the mirror. It merely bounces off the light it gets and hits the eye and hence you see what you see in the mirror. That was one major oh ho moment for her. She thought the mirror works in some other rocket science way. Now that I write about it, I am making a mental note to ask her what did she actually think, on how a mirror works. Then I got the beam on the top of her head and she figured that the light moves in a straight line as her head was illuminated and not her chin.
Now establishing light, we continued to understand the CD and explained to her that the CD language is in dips and troughs or something like that and that the laser (which I showed her on the comp) throws this beam and catches the bounce and understands the language and translates it into the screen image and music. “so, who wrote that language”. Er I don’t know but some body did I guess. “so if you don’t know the language?” “ya you need to know the language. The computer knows the language and then translates it for us”.
Then I had to explain that how the CD goes round and round in a computer and the read goes up and down to read it and that’s how you get to see a movie etc.
Then we went back to the concept of the microwave that sends out an electric signal of sorts that pass through the metal portion and what you see are essential electric sparks on the CD.
Wow this took up at least half an hour, but it was well worth it. Then she decided to take the CD to school as a part of show and tell. I had also explained that the CD would then melt if it would have been heated too much. Today morning as she was putting the CD in her bag, she also wanted to take the small plastic cream bottle that we had kept in the car. That bottle, thanks to it being in the car had twisted out of shape in the car. She wanted to show what happens to plastic if it gets heated too much.
Whew. What a large explanation all because she wanted to see the CD crack in the microwave. Cool nah.
My inspiration for this was Richard Feynman. In the book, 'Surely you are joking Mr. Feynman', he explained that how his dad explained Triboluminescence. It is the light emitted when crystals are crushed. His dad explained that as the blue light you see when you crush sugar. Google search throws this line - “'When you take a lump of sugar and crush it with a pair of pliers in the dark, you can see a bluish flash. Some other crystals do that too. Nobody knows why. The phenomenon is called "triboluminescence."
I even found an online version of this lovely book. You can get it here

excuses excuses

This is easily the funniest thing I have read this month. The world’s most powerful particle accelerator was shot due to some bread (baguette) being dropped by a bird. Read here and here
This is same LHC that critics said was extremely powerful and could produce anti matter that could end the world. Something like matter meeting anti matter and BOOM – end of the world.
After the hilarity of the dropping, one another thing struck me. They actually seemed to have told the truth no matter how embarrassing it would be. Or it is the most implausible of excuses. I am sure a lot of the scientists working at the LHC would be teaching somewhere and what would their reaction be if a student gave a similar excuse for not having the assignment on time. “I finished it but a stork flying overhead shat (diarrhoea perhaps) on my laptop, short-circuiting it”.

jispa - when you do get older, remember the excuse - if a bird can shut down a LHC with a bread piece, imagine what they can dow ith your assignment. Especially if you are studying physics.