'WIT'ness me

'Wit' is now, arguably, the highest form of social currency. One memorable phrase, a sound byte,  is all we need for an impactful conversation. There seems to be a tremendous pressure to come up with 'punches'. Keep missing the opportunity for a 'wiseass' comment and you tether perilously close to being branded 'the Bore'.

Twitter seems to be at the forefront. With its character limit limiting any sort of meaningful discussion, it has become a place for masters to show off their buffoonery and for the apprentices to learn from it.

I remember reading a story back in school. The narrator in the story confesses mugging couplets of famous poets so that he can recite them at the opportune moment and earn himself some appreciation. As desperate as the narrator may sound; how I wish for those deep meaningful couplets, now endangered by puns that play with English sounding Hindi words.

I know. Trends come and go. And it is pointless to ponder. I know too, that my inability to come up with punches of my own is fast resigning this post into the classic sour grapes category. And yet I quixotically plea for everyone to reconsider this madness.

I would have not cared, had this cancer been localized only in group conversations. But this phenomenon has metastasized to every domain of my life. Almost all of my conversations are devoid of things that I treasure so much. Care, affection, sincerity;  all gone. All I see is humor and that forced restriction/alteration of a conversation eventually cheapening it into a 'punch' line.

They have even taken my beloved movies. Long has the time gone where the protagonist delivers a truly moving dialogue. The sort of a passionate dialogue which stirs something within you. A dialogue that makes you ponder.
All I get now is a religious adherence to the below sequence.
1) Hero looks into the camera (I know I am deviating but surely others too would find this blatant breach of the fourth wall a little annoying)
2) The music stops
3) Hero delivers the punch line
4) The background music goes nuts mirroring the orgasmic hysteria of the cinema watching audience.


 A well-meaning open debate is endangered too. No respect for differences in ideologies. No awareness for the everchanging flux of white and black that engulfs the prominent personalities of today.The nuances of figuring whether the person in question is indeed the right shade of gray. What I  get now is a solid unbreakable wall that guards and separates the  'Bhakts' 'AAPtards'and 'Sickulars' (Such pun, much wow).

And then there is burnout. With Twitter users thinking about the new pun, day in day out; with sarcasm being the symbol of anti-establishment in every tv series; there is only so much of new material that people can come up with. To drive an analogy think of the poor scriptwriters that have to write one episode per day nonstop for the Indian family comedy shows. The quality of wit in the posts is now reaching the quality of humor in 'Taarak Mehta ka Ulta Chashma'. ('Chalo Garbha Khele' followed by maniacal laughter.)

On my feed some time back, few people shared '10 reasons why you should not be friend with a northeast/gujju/stereotype person' template with the caption "Loved the sarcasm'. The template, for the lack of a better word, is saying exactly opposite of what is meant to be said. For e.g. 'they are all well mannered '  will be replaced by 'they are not well mannered'. How is this sarcasm? It looks like one of those exercises that we used to do as a kid.
 Q ) "Ramu aalsi hain"
A) "Ramu aalsi nahi hain"
and even there you would get only half a mark. Use antonyms, our teacher would have said
A) "Ramu mehnati hain"


But even if I leave everything aside what really hurts me is the lack of personality. There are snippets of good punches or witty lines that are being copy-pasted into every conversation, like codes. I remember getting a WhatsApp message from my girlfriend and I know she means well. But I can't shake up that feeling that I have seen it as a tweet, meme or something else.

Every new year I send a mail wishing new year greetings to my friends. And almost all of them write back saying how happy they were to receive it. And I know people enough to know that these replies are genuine and not a mere formality.The mails I send, are no literal masterpieces. They are just messages remembering the past and wishing a better future. The fact that they make the receivers so happy give me a bit of hope. The fact that their reply's too are devoid of puns slangs and popular phrases makes me believe that there is a way out too.

But then maybe there is nothing to worry about anyway. Maybe it is all just ramblings of a bored mind. maybe I am just getting a little old. By the way, did you notice the heading of the blog . Playing on the most memorable line of Mad max. Pretty witty , no?

Grand ma

My mom called me on 1st of January. Her usual effervescence conspicuously absent from her voice. 'Dadi is in ICU'.She said. Kidney failure.

Having ruled out Dialysis because of her advanced age, the doctors had given her at best; another month or two. Ma asked me to book a ticket in next 2-3 days.

'Meet her once while she is still in senses'

But I knew it won’t be that long. It is impossible to explain, but I knew. So I booked the flight on the same day. I landed in Ahmedabad at 8 PM. It would be another 6 hours of bus journey before I reach home. I called in my mom to let her know that I have got the bus. The sadness in my Mom’s “hello” was enough to convey the message. My grandmother was no more.

I took it way easier than anyone expected me to.Hell, I took it easier than I expected myself to.

No doubt her advanced age (She was 86) made it easier. That she died painlessly (Cardiac arrest); instead of the slow torturing death that kidney failure had in store; was a big consolation too. But that was not all.

I always pitied my grandmom. A product of her time; she married early and studied only till class 6. She came from a rich family and so did my grandfather. Though I always find it hard to believe; but it is hard to argue given the circumstances that she would have lived a luxurious life.

But I never saw that version of my grandmom. A lot changed by the time that young little 'married' kid turned into my 'Dadi'. My grandfather was suspended from his job. And my grandmom and my father have gone through the horrors of watching my granddad squander all his money on his many vices.

“Why did,’t “dadi” stop him.Or at the very least why didn’t she set apart some money for herself.”. I always asked my mother whenever she told the story of the squandered wealth.

And they were intriguing stories. Nothing less than a Shakespearean tragedy. A tragedy brought upon by one man’s vices and one woman’s lack of steel. The fact that people in the story were people I knew made it all the more fascinating.

My grandma was a very social person. She always greeted everyone with a smile and a dollop of blessings.I never saw her angry. Not even once. I guess all she wanted was peace. Never having the will to oppose, she would willingly agree if someone criticizes someone else in front of her. However , If that “someone else” came to know about it and confronted her, she would swear on a billion things and deny it all.  I am sure that if by wretched luck she was ever confronted by both the conflicting parties at the same time,  she would have found a way to deny everything and bless both of them. Lying came easy to her; avoiding confrontation even more so.

She may have been a simple minded person but she was resourceful too. Money being a constraining factor for most of her latter life , she devised ingenious ways of getting some of it on her own. She would sell gas cylinders at higher prices to people who did not have one. She did so by not using her quota of cylinders and by also buying it from other people at the subsidised price. I think everyone was in on the game but no one really minded.They might have been amused by her entrepreneurship skills too.

She also figured out a way to cash in on her blessings. She would bless people who did not have a kid and then would ask them to pay the money to the Ganesha idol sitting at her home, when they get the good news.The blessings were bound to be true in some of the cases, thereby making the “Ganesha” richer. Many do believe that the success rate was way too high for it to be a case of pure chance. Who knows, maybe she did have some magic in her after all.

She committed the most innocent of dishonesty and I believe no grown man in his right mind would have grudged her that. However to a child with an abnormally extreme sense of right and wrong (me) these acts were abhorable.

And this is how I remembered my grandmom .Don't get me wrong.I loved her still. I was not a cold hearted bastard . And even if I were, I think her praises and blessings would still have passed through. I loved my grandma and I can say that without a trace of doubt. But it was a love mixed with pity and a faint whiff of disgust. It was a complicated potion and growing up my grasp of grey was never that strong.

Five days have passed since my grandmom died and all of us in the family have been extremely busy arranging all the rituals. So busy that none of us had the time to contemplate grief. Today a social gathering will take place which is to be followed by a meal. Tents are being set up to accommodate people. To be honest i think an arrangement of this sort is not required . It is after all  a weekday and I do not expect a lot of people to show up.

I am wrong. Lots of people come and then some more. People I have never seen before. And I can see that this is not the“let us go or it will look bad” crowd. They are genuinely sad. And I wonder how can a simple person like her have such an impact.

The time has now come for people to speak up . Everyone is talking about how kind she was. How she always greeted everyone with a smiling face. Some are recalling the days when they were going through a rough times and she consoled them saying it will be over soon . And lo and behold ! it did. My brother in law mentions that no one from my family has invited him to the household like my grandmother.

And it dawns on me . These people are not in awe of her because she had some divine powers which turned her blessing true. They knew her for what she was ; a simple person who had a smile for everyone. And they were in awe of her because that is indeed an extremely rare quality. Life had been hard on her. Some would say, and I will agree ; extremely hard. It would have been so easy to become bitter and blame everyone around. But she chose not to be bitter. She chose to be loving.

I have no doubt that she would have shed many a tears for her slipped away fortunes and there would have been times when she would have felt a strong sense of helplessness. She would have been angry too. She was supposed to be a rich spoiled princess. How did all of this happen.

But she never let it get to her .

She often said ; in a tone that was a mix of sadness , hope and serenity “sukh dukh kya hota hain . agar maano to sukh hain na maano to dukh hain”

She chose to be happy . And therein lies the greatness of my very simple grandma.

Why "Secret Santa book gift" is a bad idea

A lot of my friends have joined in the "Secret Santa book gift activity" on Facebook. Being a book lover myself  I thought I should write about the reasons why I think it is not such a good idea and propose an alternate way.

For those unaware, this is how "Secret Santa" works.

1. Person C joins in the event by commenting on Person B’s “book gift activity” message.
2. Person C is then asked to gift a book to another person (A) mentioned by person B. Think of it as a participation fee.
3. Person C then posts the “book gift activity” message and the trend continues.

OK now that the rules are clear let us look at with the help of the diagram.

L1----------------------------------A--------------------------------

L2-----A1----A2-----A3-----------------A4-----A5-----A6----------

L3---A11-A16---A21-A26-----A31-A36------A41-A46------A51-A56----A61-A66.

Based on the above info we know that the Level 3 will be giving the gifts to Level 1.Which really makes it exciting. Because the Level 1 guy is getting all of 36 books, while gifting just 1 book. (His participation fee). Since this is a chain everyone gets 36 books by gifting just one book. Amazing right?

Not quite so. Although it must be obvious but let me do the explaining nevertheless.

Assuming that books are not being created out of thin air, the number of books bought will be the same as the number of books gifted. So when you get 36 books it essentially means that 35 people taking part in it will not be getting a single book. Sound more like a lottery than a secret santa, right?

Only thing is; it is worse. While in a lottery the chances of winning the jackpot will be equal for everyone, here the chances are biased to your social popularity. The way to ensure that you get 36 books is by ensuring that there are atleast two levels below you. (And don’t kid yourself in thinking that everyone will be able to do it. As I have explained earlier for every one person getting the complete two levels, there will be 35 failing to do so.)

So the secret of getting more books to read is to be more socially active. A little ironic isn’t it? Also dare I say; a little “Amway” ish. The only difference (that too for worse)  is you are selling the scheme to your friends instead of acquaintance.

Now that I have explained the absurdity of it let me also dig into the language of the post.

“Want some books for Christmas? Join this lovely Secret Santa thread doing the rounds on Facebook. All you have to do is buy one book and send it to one person. In exchange, you'll receive lots more in return!

I just need six people of any age/location (within India) to participate in this book exchange. Comment below if interested, and I will privately message you how to go about it.

Let the fun begin!”

Notice the part that talks about buying a new book. Gifting a book would have been enough right?. And any true book lover will value a well-kept used book more than a new one. I do not want to turn this into a conspiracy theory blog but you must be getting the hint by now.

Another interesting point (proof?) is that books are not getting exchanged. Funny!

Let me break this down for you if you did not get the joke. You have, through a social network, created a group of 36 people who all love books. What would you want to do?

(a)   Exchange books among themselves

(b)  Create a contest where the most popular person gets to keep all the books.

Based on the trend clearly (b) is the answer. 

So here is what I propose. Instead of creating levels; Create a circle. Pass on the books to next guy/girl every month.  So by end of jan, a1 gives a book to a2, a2 gives a book to a3 and so on.Only rule; put forward the name of your nominated book initially and that book must not have been read by at least 50% of the remaining people in the circle.

                                                       

Abnormal man

Is it because he is unique; Gifted , special. Or is it simply his disgrace; his absolute failure at being normal. Everything hinges on this one question. Who then will provide the answer and more importantly when. And then comes an even more alarming concern; will he provide the answer.

Will he fumble presenting his answers to God; or will his God be answerable to whatever heavens that lie above Him.

(Sample paper: Questions may vary during the final examination)

Answer the following questions (objective types): Max time 5 minutes. No cutting allowed. Answers to be filled with permanent ink.

    

1.   Is Mr __ good or bad?
   
2.        Is Mr __ brave to follow a new path or a coward who ran away from minor challenges that the entire world faces so solemnly?
   
   
3. Is Mr__ strong-willed or a stubborn idiot?
   
   
4. Which emotion do you feel for Mr__? (you can pick more than one)

a)      pity

b)      proud

c)      disgust

d)      anger

e)      irrelevance

And the wait. Oh! The agony of an uncertain wait. And what use is any of this if the results are not in favor. Is the life worth living at all then? What if he keeps on trying only to be told at the fag end that he failed? What then? Hell, there cannot be a retest either. Can’t anyone even drop a bloody hint? The maddening excruciating numbing wait.

Lethargy lurks in. What’s the point? Just lie down. There is no goal. There is no meaning. There is no hurry. Be still, relax. Yet relaxed, he does not feel. He feels sad. Unexplained melancholy swirls around, devouring him slowly.

It would have been another story if he would have chosen a pious path. That would have been a normal abnormality. His pains would have then become sacrifices. There is a well-defined path laid out for this abnormality. A positive results is almost a certainty no matter how screwed up his life would have been.But that he is not. He is as selfish as any normal person.

His abnormality rises from the fact that he keeps on questioning and cannot take “everyone does that” as an answer. Oh, there is a type there too. The Einstein type. Questioning everything, destined for greatness. Great, he is not and greatness is not his aspiration either.

Save for this abnormality he is perfectly normal. It’s an extremely tricky grey zone. There are no established case studies here. There is no way of knowing the result. What choice does he have then but to lose his grip on fear as he gets numbed by this uncertain wait?

He slips in the nadirs with darkness swallowing him quickly. And then comes this thought. This small thought that lights up everything. What if he questions the importance of result itself and refuse to take “everyone does that” for an answer. Can he really do that? Is he even allowed?

He does not know. But he follows it anyway. Maybe the thought will lift him up to new heights or maybe it will burst soon throwing him into even deeper darkness. But he is not waiting for that result anymore. For now, the abnormal man smiles.

Smile

Her smile albeit faint exposes

her disconnect from reality.

And yet she is no dreamer.
that distant faraway look clearly missing

Then who is she.

We share the same “now”

but her reality so different than mine.

Her faint smile proves that.

It annoys me a little at first

and then a lot more.

For a part of me knows why,

And the rest fights to unlearn

How I wished for her smile to be a brave front.

Oh! What poetry would it be?

The redness of her lips matching her bruises

A sunset; don’t we all love a sad smile.

Acceptable still, if she would be pretty

An unpolished gem among the coal mines

Her smile a celebration of her uniqueness,

But how ordinary her features are

How dare she be beautiful then, ju her smile.

Heat so strong that everything withers

Dry wind blows furiously, scorching all joy

Not a tree, let alone a roof

Her utensils shine like a sword, murderous.

Calm. How can it be?

I think of asking her but do not

She probably would not know 

Or maybe I fear her answer

I pass her by silently

Her smile etched in my memory

slowly contorting my face into a smile

1 thing you should start doing (Sorry I don't have a "gif")

There is a lot that is wrong with the articles currently circulated on social websites. Judging by the "likes" and "shares" they are pretty popular too. I will be honest. I don’t like them one bit. I think they are doing what Chetan Bhagat did to literature. They inspire new readers (the good part) and then they restrict them to that for their whole life (the horror part). And I failed to fathom why this happens. I understand no one starts with big profound literary works. I started with champak, balhans, Nancy Drew, Sydney Sheldon,  and then build my way gradually up.

And it's not just that way for people who start early. I have introduced novels to a lot of my friend (And I say it with a lot of pride) and I see them reading such big range of work now. Its generally small books initially; Animal Farm , To Kill a Mockingbird, O Henry's short stories, Premchandra 's short stories. But the guys who start with Chetan Bhagat, I don’t know what happens to them. All they could reach is "Anything for you Mam."

And I think I see the same pattern with Scoopwhoop or Storypick or other sites of the same sort. No one now seems to have the time to enjoy a good long article. No New Yorker, Der Spiegel or any random blog for that matter. And this really saddens me. But the article is not about that.

There are other things here that annoy me. The bulletisation for one." 10 things you should do (7th is awesome)". Does no one have the patience to read a paragraph anymore? And I think gifs are cool but that's what 9gag is for. I would like to keep them separate. It was probably funny the first two-three times but to make a template out of it just irritates me. The quality of language seems to be a clear outcome of the recklessness that comes with deadlines.

It is about something more important. Something that we as a society seem to be losing. If you have a bit of time at your hand just quickly go through the above paragraphs. Notice the number of times that I have used "I". I think it is irritating. I think the quality is not good...and so on .". Now go to any of these websites. Notice the number of "you" there. "10 things you should do", "10 things you should avoid", "Why you should marry a girl who travels". 

Welcome my friend to the world of diminished individuality. A world, where people don’t share experiences as "food for thought". They shovel advice down your throat. When an anchor says the "nation wants to know" he assumes that his question is the all important all knowing one. I don't like Chetan Bhagat novels and I like people who travel and I may even use that as some basis for selecting my friends. But that would be because I would opt for compatibility. But no fucking way in hell, have I the right to say that I am better than them. They could have other things. They may not like to travel much but just want to listen to music on weekends. Who am I to compare a sight of the flowing river with the melody of Beatles.

One may leave a high paying job and I would love to hear his/her experience but it would be absolutely foolish of him/her to say that nobody should pursue high paying jobs. This act of making us follow one path and one path only horrifies me. The news channels are the same. Gone are the days of debate. I remember my teachers telling me in school that a chance of debate reaching a conclusion is nigh impossible. The idea is to listen to both sides and take out the insights. Try telling that to the newsroom debates of today where the conclusion is fixed even before the debate begins.

This has now crept up in our day to day life as well. Very often I would take what I do as a standard template and try to force fit the life of people around me into it. There is a sense of security in it. There is ease in it too. Don't we all love if everybody will speak the same language as we do? But this needs to be checked against.

So ironically I will end it with a "Thou shall not " statement. Don't force your views on others. Present them as an option but leave the choice to others. That's all I ask.

Password Story

Password Story

After the 9/11 crisis, Microsoft faced an issue. To retrieve the passwords of people who died. It looks trivial and yes, inhumane too in front of the tragedy that had just occurred. Regardless, it was a serious problem. A lot of people were privy to information only known to them and their computer/mailbox. In the absence of the password it would all have been lost.

The brute force technique would have solved it eventually but would have taken a lot of time. To give an example let's assume that password is to be of 5 characters and all of them letters. The machine will start with applying aaaaa as a password and will try all combinations till zzzzz until the password is retrieved. That's 26^5 combinations. And in the real word the passwords are more than 5 letters , the length is also not fixed and special characters and uppercase letters are also involved. It is clearly a tough, very tough task.

So they have to look at the person's life for inputs. For e.g. , was he married? If yes, than could his marriage anniversary be a password. How did they combine this information with brute force exactly, I can only imagine. And this blog is definitely not going to cover that.

What I was interested in is how that little password; that is there only for security reasons; that has no impact or belonging to our life; could carry so much of "us" in it. Based on our need to remember it we award to it a print of our personality.

Of course it's not the same for everyone. The" security-ease of remembering" trade off creates a fascinating scene. The absolute pro-security ones will make up an absolute random password like 12sfgdv$%k and commit it to memory. The one that favours ease of remembrance will opt for birthday dates, wedding dates etc. It's the one in middle that fascinates me. Those who would like their password to be secure enough to be random to others but personal enough for them to remember. In the process of doing so they provide to it an imprint of their personality. The imprint could be well thought off or could be more subconscious.

There is this absolutely moving story of how a mother found out about his son's homosexuality only after his death. His password was" lambda1969". Lambda is the Greek word "I" sometimes referring to the gay liberation. The year 1969 referring to the year of stonewall riots.

My passwords were never this profound but now that I look at them closely they do reveal some things about me. Initially my passwords were names of famous English movies like "matrix" , "killbill" etc. I grew up in a small town where English was, and I dare say;  is, something that commands respect. The fact that I can understand English movies gave me something of a status. Also that they were much better than hindi movies, is a statement not many would argue on. So basically it was something that I liked and gave me a bit of status. No wonder they became my initial passwords.

My password up next, "confuse" or some variation of it pretty much defines my after school years. I had one focus in the later part of my school life; To get into an IIT. Once I was there I was not really sure if that was what I wanted to do . I felt like coming back but then I was not sure if I wanted to come back either. It is the confusion of choosing what to do that just stayed with me and crept its way to my password. In between there was time of homesickness where my password became my hometown itself. "Banswara". There was also a time; that I remember now with a fair amount of cringe, when a conversation with my Ex tested my patience to a hilt resulting in the password "fuckyouall". The fact that my password today is a far more positive word tells me that I probably came out of it all Okay (Fingers crossed)

So here is what I would want you guys to do. Think of your old or new passwords and think of the way it captures you and I would love to hear your story. I think it's a fascinating read into somebody (and I do know this is borderline voyeurism but I am what I am) and also I think it would be nice to create a story about it.

I really don’t know what I am looking for and probably it's too much to ask for anyway.

But I do believe there is a compelling urge in everyone to make their stories heard just like there is a compelling urge in me to hear those stories. Here is the link for you to send me the stories anonymously. There is an option of sharing your details too but needless to say they would be purely confidential.

Your password story . I must admit my reach to social media is fairly limited so do help me spread it around. If you know of someone who would be interested in sharing his password story , feel free to forward the link around.