Millisecond Math

[This was written for flamebird' online magazine, and is reproduced here because priyanka said she needed another post(which makes me feel wanted, a bit), and i already had this written. Exams sneaked up on me again, and I will probably be failing this time, so please, no best of lucks.]

The one subject most people have real trouble with in school is math. Whether it's the way it's taught, with no emphasis on understanding and application, or whether it's the confidence-demolishing teachers and exams, a lot of people I know are afraid of the subject to the extent that they let it affect their choice of later studies. But the fact remains that math is just another language with its own grammar and a surfeit of logic; and as Feynman said, it's the language in which nature speaks.
It's also the one language which the human mind is programmed to understand from birth. Every sense organ of our bodies is a delicately tuned receiver of mathematical data for the brain; which in turn does an unbelievable amount of math to present us with, say, the correct picture of Seurat's Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Le Grande Jatte with its innumerable dots, or to show us this printed page.
And everyone's brain does it, not just Einstein's or that belonging to the smartest kid in the class.
So then. Here’s a wow problem I came across in Halliday Resnick the other day. Very interesting.
What happens when you hear something? The sound goes in your ears; the brain interprets it, blah blah, yes. But how does your brain know which direction it’s coming from?
One clue it uses is the time delay, which we’ll call Δt, between the arrival of the sound at the ear closer to the source, and the arrival at the farther ear.
Here, when the wavefront (the wave) reaches your right ear(very originally named R here) it still has the distance d to travel before it reaches your left ear (yes, that is the one named L).
















Some basic high school trig tells us that this distance is Dsinθ, where D is the separation between your ears (directly proportional to your fatheadedness). Using the basic equation, time=distance/speed, we get:
Δt= d/v = Dsinθ/v (where v is the speed of sound, in air)
And then, the brain does some millisecond algebra and comes out with
θ=sin-1 (vΔt/D). And, based on the measured value of Δt, a lifetime of experience which gives v, and the obvious knowledge of D, the brain computes the angle θ and tells you instantly which corner of the room your friend’s screeching at you from. And all this in a few milliseconds, to enable you to duck the textbook she throws at you.
(There’s some interesting extra info in Halliday about what happens in water, where the brain’s confused about v, but you can look that up yourself.)

The same thing happens when you see something, walk, talk, or do anything at all. The brain’s very good at math. And so are you. After all, it’s your brain. And if you’re having any problems, it’s either the way you were taught, or the fact that unlike the brain, you don’t practice enough. Whichever it is, there is no such thing as a ‘mathematical brain’ unless that refers to every brain in the world. Each of us is good at math, and we can all understand the language in which nature speaks. Marks are only about what formulae you can memorize and remember on exam day. The real test is when you hear a car radio two cars away in the traffic jam and can instantly tell where it’s coming from, and that it’s unmistakably Elvis singing. The rest is just putting down on paper what you can already do in your head.

Indian is as Indian does.

I've always been very much Indian. The indolence, the love of family, the respect for learning, the pointing-people-the-wrong-way-with-assurance, the garrulity, I have it all. And I'm proud of all that, and of my country. I do get that funny constriction in the chest when the national anthem's played, and I do feel compelled to rise to my feet and stand a little straighter. I hate hearing criticism of my country, and I did cry after I saw (and loved) Rang De Basanti. I was a sucker for the India Shining campaign, the Blue Billion ad, the glorified accounts in the History textbooks, and most of the other propagandist feel-good nonsense as well, because I, like most people in the world, am afflicted with patriotism. Shaw had said, with immense courage of conviction, "Patriotism is your conviction that your country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it."
There's a lot of sense in that. What is it that makes thousands of soldiers fight till the end for issues they know precious little about? Even when it's obvious the soldiers on the other side are just as passionately believing in their side of the story? What is it that enables statesmen all over the world to go to war, to buy their little military gadgets and planes to blow other countries to bits? What is it that makes us offer no protest when they waste millions of rupees on fancy planes we don't need, money that would feed some, even if not all, of our starving millions? What is it that lets one man fire unflinchingly into another man's eyes and lets him watch the other man die in agony, only because he's from a different geographical region of this planet?
Yup, patriotism it is.
Shaw, straight thinker and unafraid speaker, had also said, "You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race."

He was right both times.Patriotism is a terrible thing. But it's also a terribly beautiful thing, entrancing fatally those who can bear to wear blinkers, and tearing apart with conflict those who can see both sides of a story. It makes you forget you're an individual with a mind, takes away reason, and thrusts you yelling and screaming into the seething, madly exultant crowd of people who commit atrocities in the name of their country. You become one of them, and in doing so, cease to become you and simply become an 'Indian'. (You can substitute the name of your country in the quotes. It's all the same). And that's all that you become.
You don't stop to think, what if I'd been born in Pakistan?

I don't flatter myself with being a clear thinker and able to resist patriotism. I do think my country is the best. I could write a whole new post about why it is, with bullet-pointed reasons.The national anthem will always make me stand a little straighter, the Republic Day parade of might will always make me proud of our strength, and if I ever go abroad, I'll be severely homesick and scoot back at the earliest opportunity. But I do hope that if ever the time comes for senseless conflict and taking of sides, this post will remind me of a man who did recognise conflict as senseless, and also remind me that it's gross arrogance to be convinced that my country is superior to all others, just because I was born in it.

Classic Case of Overexposure

The first book i remember reading was not, interestingly, an Enid Blyton or a E Nesbit or even a Boxcar children book. ( Though I love reading them now. I must be in regression). It was this book called the Black Arrow. It was abridged, and by RLStevenson, and I loved it, still do. After that, I read every classic I could get my hands on to. I loved Jane Austen, and Dickens(i loved Dickens), Verne, Alcott, Fenimore cooper. And so I was into classics from the very beginning. Some of them abridged, most not. I realise now I was too young for many of them, and had to go back to them later, but they were these books with character, not mass produced children's literature, and I fed on them ravenously.

Of course, this had many repercussions.
One, I had these huge glasses when I was six, and already had a small face, so from a distance it looked like two walking parabolic reflectors.
Two, I developed this weird habit of talking like I was this ancient Victorian. Hearing a little girl saying things like "why, pray?" and "That's pre-pre-preposterous!" must have been disconcerting, and it's no wonder people stayed away.
Three, I nearly bankrupted my family. At one point of time, I was getting twelve books a week, and they had to rent most of them, and even buy some, so I think they even tried to get me addicted to TV instead; but it was too modern and newfangled for me.
Four, I became this trying-to-be-dramatic, romantically-inclined creature, not unlike Anne but without her charm, which ensured and ensures that I remain single forever. Also, there wasn't and won't ever be, anyone like Darcy, or Bluntschli, or The Scarlet Pimpernel, or Dick Shelton.
Five, I ignored guests of all kinds, didn't eat unless they let me read while doing it or better still, spooned the stuff into me, stayed up till I'd finished a book or barricaded myself into the bathroom with it, and snapped at anyone, however well-meaning, who tried to talk to me in the middle of a book. To their credit, they soon learned, and let me alone after a while.


But then, I gained hours and hours of the most amazingly pure, uninterrupted(not that they didn't try), unforced pleasure that I never get from anything other than books. In all, I was a totally happy child, safe in the world I'd created for myself, letting no one in.(Come to think of it, I wouldn't marry me if I were a guy.What a bore.)

Now, to business. This post was prompted by the fact that sangy( can i call you that?) aka Roberta Flak, of icecream-is-cold.blogspot.com (wow blog), tagged me. Which means I have to post the 5th para( or last if there's no fifth) of page 123, of the book I'm currently reading, and I have to tag five people more. And that's why I wrote this post, because the current book happens to be Rob Roy by Scott (sucks to all of you who expected Penthouse) and I find I haven't got over my fascination with the musty old things. They do smell so good...

*shakes head to clear it*.anyway, here's my bit.

"Besides the progress which Miss Vernon had, whose powerful mind readily adopted every means of information imparted to it, had made in more abstract science, I found her no contemptible linguist, and well acquainted with ancient and modern literature. Were it not that strong talents will often go furthest when they seem to have least assistance, it would be almost incredible to tall the rapidity of Miss Vernon's progress in knowledge; and it was still more extraordinary, when her stock of mental acquisitions from books was compared with her total ignorance of actual life. It seemed as if she saw and knew everything except what passed in the world around her; and I believe it was this very ignorance and simplicity of thinking upon ordinary subject, which rendered her conversation so irresistibly fascinating, and riveted the attention to whatever she said or did; since it was absolutely impossib;e to anticipate whther her next wprd or action was to display the most acute perception or the most profound simplicity. The degree of danger which necessarily attended a youth of my age and keen feelings from remaining in close and constant intimacy with an object so amiable and so peculiarly interesting, all who remember their own sentiments at my age may easily estimate."

I love this book ever since '98 when i got it. The heroine's so different from the usual simpering kind. Oh, and I tag Priyanka at butterfly assassin which does not mean that she slaughters innocent butterflies, and revolver at shootingfrom. I also tag raghu and another brick in the wall, seeing as they haven't done their part and I don't know anyone else to tag. And if you noticed that leaves another person to be tagged, you can jolly well be that person yourself, because I CANNOT think of anyone else. so there.

I'm disgusted.

Don't read this if you expect a nice post, I'm sick.(Literally, I mean.)
I was a very healthy baby. I almost never cried, saving up all the whining for this blog; I never had croup, or measles, or chicken pox, or wooping cough, or mumps, or even the common cold or a stomach upset. And if I threw up on someone, it was only my way of protesting about the person, while sacrificing my dignity as befits a martyr. And while other people had fevers and things and didn't come to school, i didn't come as well, but instead of lying on a bed, had fun at home. I was tiny and scrawny, but I had and have this wowie of an immune system. And did I mention the invulnerable stomach of steel?

So when I had this accelerated heartbeat in 5th grade, I naturally thought it was some cute boy next door and this must be my first crush, and that's why they call it a crush. So when the doctor met us gravely I didn't think much of it (they always look grave or weirdly, falsely cheerful); that is, until he said I had SupraventricularTachychardia.(Yup, I couldn't pronounce it either.) It was an extra impulse or something in the heart, not very painful, just a sort of dhak-dhak like the heroines' dils, and then they got it zapped in Delhi so it was all right and my people were pretty relieved.It was over, they thought.

You guessed it. Not by far, it wasn't. I went on being healthy as hell and eating anything I could get my hands on and not looking noticeably the worse for it. And then in class 7 or so, at a time when I'd had nothing but home cooked food (cooked by shubu mashi who was new then and I hadn't got used to her grotesquesness-look at the earlier post for details) for a long time, down I come with ParaTyphoid, and just when they think it's licked, i get it AGAIN. And they can't even blame it on phuchkas.

Yeah, there's more. In 9th grade, the night before the Maths exam, I wake up with this raging fever. So I don't give the exams, and the doctor can't figure out what's wrong, so he decides it's dengue( which was conveniently doing the rounds just then) and i have this nice long holiday for about a month, and no exam to boot.Parents did get a scare, though.

And that brings me to a few days ago, just before Milaap the SPICMACAY fest, when, after a long time of no diseases or discomforts whatsoever (I should have known a malevolent providence was saving it up for a big one, I didn't even get a cold or an upset), I get a sore throat and the CMRI doctor takes one look at it and says:"You, my Young Lady, have got Acute Pharyngo-Tonsillitis." Which basically means Pharyngitis and tonsillitis together. Ow.

Yes, I'm okay now. And no, it doesn't hurt that much. And thank you for asking.But I think I'd take a cold once in a month instead of these nasty surprises they keep choosing ME to play on.

Wish I was alive.

Just as we reached school today, they gave us another week off for the PMT exams to be held. So school reopens on the 10th. And I'm amazingly happy about it. Relieved, even. Which as everyone probably agrees, is so boringly obvious and normal it's redundant to talk about, even on a blog.

I was just thinking, in one of the most powerful scenes in the Fountainhead, of Roark the architect looking at the Heller House being constructed; he's indecently, gloriously happy, revelling in the fulfillment of what he does, his 'job'.
He sees a party of people, out to enjoy one day out of many days of their existence, one girl savagely strumming an ukulele and yelling; "shrieking to the sky their release from the work and the burdens of the days behind them; they had worked and carried the burdens in order to reach a goal-and this was the goal." Roark forgets them in a moment, because he's distracted, transfixed, by a cartload of gleaming cut granite passing, intended for his building.

But I can't forget them, because they're me. They're us. Gleaning a day or two out of our existences to have 'fun', earning a respite from everyday lives, our lives for heaven's sake, to enjoy ourselves. Why is it that we have to be released from our lives to be ourselves, to be 'indecently, gloriously happy'? Why is it that the rest of the time, we're stuck in a closed room writing, like automatons, waiting desperately for the bell to ring and liberate us from what we do each day, that is our life?
I wonder if this void is what death might be like. Familiar, then.
I don't know. All I know is that I was glad today to escape my life for one week more.

The Passions of a Sea Anemone

There’s this section in orkut that always has me stymied when, having absolutely nothing better to do, I fill out my profile for the umpteenth time. It’s the ‘my passions’ field. And frankly, I do not like it one bit. I mean, I know I’m pretty much a vegetable when school’s out, and that the gang would probably rate me 8 on a boring scale of 10(none of them read this blog a lot, so I can safely say 8 and not 10), and if I were an animagus I’d probably be a sea-anemone; but sitting there for five whole minutes thinking of my passions(‘ thinking of my passions’- what an oxymoron) is simply not acceptable.

So, I’m going to do something about it and list them out here. And I will NOT tell you how long it takes me to write this.

First of all-and this comes easy-reading. But would you say breathing, or drinking water, (or sitting with the gang on the grounds on lazy afternoons, all of us bunking classes) is a passion? Reading’s like that....I have to do it, or wither away. Or whatever it is sea anemones do when they decide they’ve had enough of life. I’ve always been like that. Can’t sleep without finishing a book, and when someone snatches it out of my hands at 2:30 in the night, I lie awake wondering about the next page. So no, it isn’t a passion. More like a necessity, like going to the toilet. (Yeah, ugh and all that.) So that’s out.

Next up, I could say music, because when I was young I’d wake up and go to sleep with the old maestros creating magic with ancient ragas. I had a musical home (no, not those things that tinkle when you turn a key). But well… those days are gone. Nothing’s forever, and somewhere down the line my tastes changed or rather my habits changed, and I moved on to a little western classical and then on to old bands and new bands and rock and music that means so many things it doesn’t mean anything at all. I still listen to old stuff, but mostly on the radio, and a few cds I have, but I fidget nowadays and I never used to fidget before. Maybe it’s because I’m trying to bring back something that just isn’t there anymore, and if I’ve learnt one thing, it is that that cannot be done.

It might be Science which sometimes fascinates me with the sheer wonder of the universe and people like Feynman have had a lot to do with that. But then, the everyday mind-numbing ordeal of copying notes like some macabre superfast typewriter and then mugging them up the night before the exams does a good job of putting my ‘scientific temper’ to sleep. So I’m back to the square marked one, which is the square I was born in, and will die in.Sad.

So is it Superman? That’s what I write sometimes when I’m trying to be smart-ass funny. But he’s really only the guy I admire, actually the guy everyone admires and wants. I mean, he’s Superman. I love graphic novels (comic books for the uninitiated) because of the amazing nuances and the cool people on and behind the pages, but I’m not so passionate about them that I’d go to a comic book convention in the neighbouring state like Seth. I’d like a guy like Clark someday,(umm, not exactly like him; I mean I could do without the vulnerability to Kryptonite), that’s why he sometimes makes it to the passions list, but since none of the guys I know remotely fit the bill, I’m as far away from a likely passion as I was before. So that’s out too.

Wail....so what am I passionate about?? I don’t like to admit it, but nothing much, really.
Oh well, man probably evolved from something like sea anemones anyway, so maybe there’s hope for me yet. So pray for me while I hibernate. (Yeah, I know they don’t hibernate, but I couldn’t find anything else. So sue me.)

An Old Story.

Here's something I wrote for Elective English Homework at the beginning of last year...and i did the assignment at one in the night; so judge not, lest ye be judged.
(This is I think the first time I'm posting any work on the net...that's why I chose this story..it's not particularly good.)


Baby blues

“You think your baby is cute? Was she done by the masters?
If not, you’ve been tricked.
To stay clear of underachievers, delinquents and colicky youngsters, come to BundleOfJoy today! Anything else is a compromise…don’t compromise on your baby!”

What a horrible, weak advert, I think, sprawling on my overstuffed office chair. Some dimwitted decorator’s tweaked the Atmosystem to emanate heat from the walls-to stimulate brain activity- one of the daft ideas Personnel churns out with monotonic regularity to ‘motivate’ employees.

I toss the proofs aside, thinking, the best Child Effectiveness company can do much better than this. I mean, if you haven’t heard of BOJ, you must live on Mars-everyone knows we’re the best, if only by virtue of being the earliest. And people trust their precious ‘bundles of joy’ only to the best. We’re the oldest in this new business, the most prestigious. We started shop just after the GEC (Genetic Engineering Controversy) cleared up, and from that day 30 years ago, we’ve been ‘Raising the Bar for Young Achievers’. (That’s our company motto, by the way. You know, the heavily underlined attention-grabbing line beneath the giant logo.) So these dumb morons down in advert should find it easy as pie to write a proper ad. But instead, they send up such boring drivel…I put a huge cross on the page, which makes me feel pretty good, and send it down to advert after wrestling a bit with the Transferrer.

The swoosh of the sender having confirmed the transfer, I shift my attention to a more pressing task-the memo concerning the new incubator’s design problems.

To: Ms. A. Leeman, CEO 08.11.2067
BOJ Design Labs
Sub: Incubatron-004

Fault 302 noted in 33 cases out of 100.


Seemingly innocuous, this makes me sit up in consternation and almost slip off the glossy chair. Fault 302 is one of the more serious defects-and this particular message means that 33 out of 100 embryos tested negative on the Leeman-Harper Test for Exceptional Intelligence. As the test was designed by me, and so was the new incubator, this gives me an instant ulcer. Higher Management could have my head on a charger for this. The LHET test’s based on ‘average child mental ability’; and as more and more kids are designed to be cleverer, the standard keeps on increasing. That’s why we have to keep on building these new incubators each time. The normal IQ nowadays is around 212 (actually 212.0788 this instant), so it’s getting really difficult.

And now this. I suddenly feel so deflated I could cry. First the ad, now this Incubatron fault. Why can’t I just have a respite from the endless rush to keep up, why can’t the dratted parents be content for a day? All the time, they want more brains, more beauty, more grace, more everything; all the seven virtues in our catalogue, all at once! I make a note on my electronic Post It machine, which malfunctions as usual (why did they do away with office stationery?), and move to the next matter, a simple business of an E&E (egg and embryo) import bill from Africa, when the intercom rings. It’s Assia, my method analyst (secretary actually, but unions these days...) who tells me sympathetically, in hushed tones, “It’s a Blessed couple to see you, Ms.Leeman-Harper”.

This is bad. As per our code, Assia calls me ‘Ms. Leeman-Harper’ only when it’s a bad case, and before I can say I’m busy, the door’s jerked open and the Blessed couple comes in. The ‘Blessed couple’ is what we call devout parents who own one of our kids. Higher Management realized we had to woo the god-fearing parents somehow, so after the Pope endorsed our company, they came up with ‘Blessed’ to reassure the mothers and fathers. (As if they needed to-we’d have them beating a path to our door anyway). And the non-believers we call ‘NeoPragmatic’. Which means-nothing. But that’s management for you. (I have no idea why they’re so lame-I mean, Mr.Stark up in Higher Management was a BOJ baby himself….)

My musing are interrupted by the father, potbellied and balding, pulling out a chair with a jarring squeak. The exquisitely beautiful mother sits down softly and starts crying. The exaggerated cupid’s bow of her lips reminds me of something…she has the exact minor problem we had with the earliest models. The contrast between the two becomes even more striking as I realize that she must be a BOJ baby too. Encouraged, I ask the father, “What’s wrong, Sir? Is your child…?”

The man splutters,”The boy had a cricket match today, and let me tell you, if the press were to know of the poor showing he made, I’m sure it wouldn’t go down too well with your superiors! We didn’t get him done here to be humiliated in front of all my friends and neighbours, when it really counted!”
The mother burst into tears with renewed vigour and I handed her a self drying tissue. ”Won’t he be normal? Won’t he be a Superkid Grade Two like you promised?”

Wordlessly I take the boy’s birthsheet from the father and scan it. They had only 3 of the seven virtues- Beauty030, Brains034 and Health, the compulsory one. Definitely not a Grade Two. Not even a Superkid. We’re always getting these problems-parents who don’t read their birthsheets carefully and expect more than the kids are equipped for. I knew something like this was in the air when I saw the mom was one of the early models-we hadn’t introduced PhotoMemory then and anyway she was probably only a Beauty candidate.

I break the news as gently as possible and sweep the uncontrollably sobbing mother and the raging father out the door, muttering about suing us. He can’t, as he’s signed a No-Responsibility Certificate, but as I’ve said before, they aren’t very strong on memory. But for some reason, I feel pretty bad myself.

I step onto the Autoconveyor and it carries me to the design wing- I need to look into the problems with the new incubator. It’s revolutionary really-we’ve introduced emotional manipulating as well, so we’ll have Superattitude, Taste, Assertiveness, etc. etc. to put in the brochure as well……..but I suddenly feel so miserable and disheartened that instead of going on to the main unit, I step off near the ‘Higher Management Only’ sign and get in the electronically locked door. There’s a coffee machine in an alcove and I desperately need coffee. With a steaming cup in my hand I step to the switchboard containing the controls of the new incubator, installed for Management. Screwing off the top, I can see the bare innards of the machine, gleaming like the shark’s teeth in that vintage film ‘Jaws’ I watched a few days ago.

The simile arrests my mind. I look through the viewing module at the rows and rows of identical baby housing cells, hooked up to the huge gleaming machine in one corner, that’s filled with superior genes ready to be injected into the embryos-to-be. The cells are empty now, production paused, but soon they’ll be filled with our future ‘achievers’. Parents will be standing outside, wondering anxiously whether the new baby they ordered will be ‘better’ than the new baby the Joneses ordered. Smarter, cleverer, prettier, sportier, better adjusted…and they’ll be disappointed. Oh, won’t they! Not once, but throughout the little kid’s life at what he can’t do, not grateful for what he can. That’s the way parents are, at least the ones who come to us.

And that’s how we-and I-thrive. Feeding on their too-high aspirations, their grasping dreams. I have a great job, definitely not a noble one as they tell the bright-eyed graduates in our orientation meetings, but a good one. I’m never sick, if you discount the periodical ulcers everyone has.
I don’t have kids, of course…

In one fluid motion I hurl the steaming coffee onto the gleaming console of the Incubatron and watch the delicate circuitry vaporize in seconds. Then I walk out the ‘Higher Management Only’ door, out the design wing’s businesslike arch, out the lobby doors, grinning like a fool, into the street outside, teeming with imperfect people, real people. I jump onto the nearest UniTaxi and program it to the Bahamas.

Maybe they won’t find me. After all, I’m not a BOJ baby, with a built in tracking chip…….

The Seth Cohen Phenomenon.

(For those of you who're reading this from those regions of outer space without television, Seth Cohen is the lanky nerd from the OC, the guilty-pleasure teen drama that's actually funny for a change.)

The guy's tall and thin and wears baggy jeans ; is pretty intelligent and gets good grades, talkes fast and drawls, is amazingly funny in a chandler-type way, likes indie rock, obscure books and comic books-from Jack Kirby to Alan moore he likes them all-and he's filthy rich with a pool house and he can skateboard, he lives in sunny California, he has a sailboat which he sails alone, and he has these wonderfully un-screwed up parents.
The stuff of dreams, wouldn't you say?a king among kings. drool drool.

well, on the OC, he's this total loser, in every sense of the word.He's beaten up by the water polo jocks, the girl he likes never looks at him (i'm talking about before ryan, the beginning of the show), he's this unpopular nerd whom everybody makes fun of, the guy who hates Newport so much that he sails away to Portland to avoid another year like before.
my reason for stating all this? I just wanted to show how far apart we are. Over here, Seth would be the most popular guy in school-he'd go to fests and win and be cheered, be Head boy probably, at least a prefect, he'd have a gang of cool intellectuals and he's sit around discoursing on comic books and dostoevsky while the jocks wore duncecaps and did lines. he would mumble and drawl his way to the ladies' hearts(i know i'd love this guy), and he'd be the talk of the 'fest circuit', where he'd perform death cab for cutie and rooney and get everyone saying how unusual he was.
so why are we so different? is it because we prize intelligence and funny-ness and intellectual-giri and such-like more than sports and stuff? India (and i think Bengal specially) has this adda culture where the more obscure and unusual and incomprehendable you are, the more weird books you've read, the more eclectic your tastes, actually the more 'different' you are, the more you're prized.
i think i can guess why. maybe it's because we're so many, such a huge mass of sameness, that any individuality, any spark of originality is precious. in order to prove you're somebody, you have to be different, you have to be 'weird', in order to prevent blending in with the masses.

orkut gives me fodder for these weird opinions..look in any reasonably 'cool' person's profile and you'll see he or she has filled it up with obscure references, unknown names, music not many people like, films no one watches, pseudo-intellectual stuff that immediately makes people go..hmm, unusual guy(or gal). the person will invariably,at some point in the profile, state that his friends call him weird, or mad, or strange, etc etc.
to paraphrase one misogynist whose name I've forgotten, the one thing that's the same about everyone is that they all try to different.

Our Cook Who Can't Cook

I've always been a real foodie.I can recognise spices in food.Food gets me worked up.The best way to keep me happy is to feed me. My nickname at home is 'andha kua' which, as you may have guessed, underlines my capability of stashing away the good stuff in enormous amounts.So when people ask you what irony is, you can tell them about this post.

Our cook is this nice woman from some picturesque village who should have learnt cooking,at leat how to boil an egg, while being dandled in her mother's lap. But, somehow, she missed out that vital part of a cook's education and is now, unfortunately for us, a cook who can't cook.

Take a simple example of something like toast. What she does is, burn one side and rub the butter on it so that the butter gets black flecks and the toast gets, well, no butter. Then again, her favourite spice happens to be turmeric. so the predominant colour on the table is..yes, it's yellow. yellow dal, yellow chicken, yellow vegetables, yellow everything. And then there was the deadly lunch box. Before I wised up and stopped taking food to school, my lunch box was a time bomb. The friends would watch with panic stricken eyes when the clock struck 12:00 and it was time to get the box out. Of course, no one could eat a bite, least of all me and so I invariably brought it back untouched.

So, painstakingly and with much trial and error, mostly error, I learnt to cook. And surprise...I could cook, and well. I learnt how to make the heavenly chingri macher malai curry and chicken in white sauce and fragrant pulao and even maggi(which is really hard to make well). ....God I'm hungry already.And all thanks to our cook who can't cook.
So really, when my people say it I get all cynical, but they're right-all's well that ends well.Sorry-I meant everything happens for the best. and so on and so forth.


This post was really an attempt to make me feel better. Maths exam was dismal(i thought it'd go great) but physics was great(I thought i'd flunk; such is the contrariness of life), so I thought a bit of philosophy mixed with some own-trumpet blowing (at least I blow it in tune) would do me good. And it did.
Think I'll go and get some french fries.shubu mashi's (the c. who can't c.) gone home for a holiday. Time to hide the turmeric.

Oh to be young again...

Some more memories...
Looking back from the ripe old age of 17, I guess some of the most fun times have been when we at school (the Exciting Eleven, we were young and fond of Enid Blyton so excuse the name) were inventing up some of our weird scrapes to fall into, because the actual carrying out of them always made us so damn nervous that we always came within a hair's edge of being caught.Once we did get caught and were almost suspended, but I'm not gonna mention that here!

So-some-only some- of the great times:

All the times we bunked classes and hid backstairs and 'practiced' for our band(doomed from the start, as I've said) and forced our classmates to perjure their souls. One time, we nearly broke the lock of the school terrace and went up, but good sense and a darwanji's yells prevailed and we made good our escape.

Then there was the secret passage(there were many we'd found, but this was forbidden fruit so irresistible) with the 'shaft of light'(!), a perfectly innocent gully between the sports complex and the boundary wall which we were morbidly curious about and HAD to get into. But then, you can't blame little curious girls for being curious when there were always two or three darwanjis hanging around the gully with shifty eyes like they were guarding something-which made it even more suspicious in our young eyes. Of course, me and sreerupa (I think) did take a chance with our lives and sneaked in once (what did you expect) and saw a small door-ish type of thing, but then were ignominiously dragged out ...so that's one unsolved mystery.

Speaking of mysteries reminds me of our 'Detective club' back in 4rth grade-which involved being suspicious of everybody in school, trying to prove the school had been a graveyard ages ago, believing that heinous crimes were going on in school under our very noses, and gathering up kites that fell into the school courtyard and feverishy analysing them for secret messages. One time we foung a plastic bag full of some white powder in the school workroom.we retrieved it, risking our necks in the process, and I took it home, bubbling with enthusiasm, to have it 'analysed' by an uncle who was a forensic scientist. He wisely took it without comment, and we forgot all about it in the excitement of discovering a bone(chicken, sadly) in the school grounds, (that proved it to have been a graveyard).
In 5th grade, I got to know-life, thy name is disappointment- it had been chalk powder.

more later.

Nothing Doing

We, being the absent minded giggling girls we sadly are, lost the card.
Talk about anticlimax.

(Oh and to the anonymous guy who resented our guywatching in his comment, I thumb my nose.Like he wouldn't like two pretty young things looking at him.yeah, rrright.)

It Could Happen To You....

A few days ago i met up with my friend sreerupa in Fame Hiland Park, near her house(our moms are friends and they tagged along too, like moms will). So we have fun, then head off to a eating plaza nearby and ditch the moms in a dhosa place (they're nice moms, very nice indeed, but well..you can't go guy watching with your mom along) and sit down near a busy throughfare outside a shop(they had seats) with some nice crispy chicken.
So we're watching guys and eating,and watching, and making silly jokes and hilarious ones too as only the two of us can..we might fight a bit but there's a sort of mental wiring(don't get all inflated by the honour, sreeru) , watching and eating-me getting about 80% of the food-and rating the guys.well there's this guy there, and he's checking us out, but we rate him and move on coz we're like, only seventeen and he seems a bit old, like 25 or so.
so we keep being all funny(inspired to new heights by this guy with an intellectual french cut laughing at our wit) and he's laughing away and sitting there, and then we have to go, so we head off to the right to find the moms..and midway sreeru discovers she's left her bag behind(that's how we are.. once she left her maggi filled tiffin box in school for a week and what it turned into I will NOT describe here...i will when i feel like grossing people out though.)
so we rush back huffing and puffing and what do we see? no bag (duh), no man, and two tiny girls on our seats. so we scare them out of their wits and ask them about the bag, and they manage to say that the man picked it up, said something and rushed off, to the left. so we run hither and tither(no one says that anymore, i know) and finally come back exhausted.

the girls have scrammed, so we go into the shop and ask the manager about this man, saying he's a thief, we're gesticulating fiercely at this point. and guess what he does? he freezes us with a glare, takes out the bag-it looks like the holy grail to us by now-and says"the man left this for you".
with identical stunned and abashed expressions we rush out with our prize followed by the man's lecture on how people have no trust in others anymore ringing in our ears.
i go-"i told you cute guys aren't thieves"and sreeru says"okay,okay" and then she, ever suspicious, hunts in her bag to see if her money's there!
it is.
and along with it,there's something else.
her hand comes out with a torn-out half of a visiting card.
The man left us his phone number.


(that's why he'd walked off to the left earlier).we haven't called him yet. does anyone think we ought to? to thank him? and isn't the story out of a book? life is fun sometimes...

I repeat, change is NOT good !

[ Okay, I feel not-good, so this is going to be a sad, whiny post.
Still reading? Don’t say I didn’t warn you.]

On days when I don’t have school and I’m just sitting at home doing nothing, I get the feeling that time’s passing me by… I’m watching my life go by…it’s natural to feel a bit in limbo, I suppose because everything’s rushing by so fast, just a few days ago was the first day of 11th grade and now the finals are looming close…but then there were so many things I’d thought to get done, so many experiences I’d vowed to have, that I can’t realize somehow that I’m seventeen now. Almost grown up. I’ll be casting my vote next year…..but I don’t feel any different, any older.

(ON A DETOUR:
Things I’d thought I’d do:
Get a casual job after 10 boards
Write my Thamma’s memoirs (don’t grin, they’re hilarious)
Redecorate my room and learn to cook, learn spanish, learn the guitar, learn shorthand, something…
Write stuff and send it places
Really study for once…
After watching Rang de Basanti : Change the world (ok, tall order, but a little change, maybe?)

But all I do is:
Read. (the same books over and over again now that my British Council membership’s expired)
Go to school and come back, all in a sleepy trance.
Watch Friends
Watch the OC
Watch Seinfeld
Watch cartoons (in hindi for god’s sake)
Watch …you get the idea.

And I somehow don’t feel that’s going to change anytime soon, just because I’m gonna be 18 or 19.)

And in the meantime, everything is changing around me, leaving me behind…my cousin twin’s family might be getting transferred which would be horrible, other cousins are gonna go off to study and I love the bunch too much, Mitra’s gone to Ashok Hall leaving a huge gap in the fraying sisterhood,... they don’t show Lois and Clark anymore on Pogo…so basically the (more or less) picture perfect idyll I’d been living in the last few years is breaking down, piece by piece, like I always knew it would.

I just didn’t realize it would hurt this much…

All the world's a stage...

Writing about the Ozone street play got me thinking of the other plays I’ve been in, and huge attacks of stage fright notwithstanding, the stage is actually a really fun place to be. A place where you can shed your inhibitions and bask in the limelight. A place where you will get cheered (as your school will cheer you on!! Of course you’ll be jeered at too) and where you will forget your lines at times (but make them up seamlessly if you value your skin) and where you will have a hammering heart and cold hands.

So here are a few roles I could think of which I played:

The first one:

The dadu in a Rabindra Jayanti play involving a cat everyone’s mesmerized by…there was a whole pack of powder on my clothes, and very little on my hair, but at least I got the stoop and the quaver in the voice right-gimme a break, it was class 7!!


Not long after:

The bangal chakor in bharate chaai -a weird role involving an exaggerated bangal accent and a lot of gesticulation, for Teachers’ Day. Teachers loved the play-Inam looked amazing as a bangali bou and said “ki amar sokhar math gorer pran!!”(a teacher put her right), while hitting Mitra with a broom. That was the first big success--and that’s why we’ve been recycling Bharate chaai at regular intervals ever since, whenever we need a script fast.

Then there was Abak Jalpan which I don’t remember properly, and another one which our Bengali teacher made up..... and a few more I guess…none inter-school though.

There was a brief hiatus in our acting careers after that while we focused on our doomed-from-the-beginning band but Teachers Day and Rabindra Jayanti etc always saw us doing something, anything. We loved the stage and would do anything to get on it--all 11 of us!! 7th and 8th grade were packed with fun and we spent more time in our backstairs ‘practice’ spot than in our classes….I don’t believe how many classes we bunked back in 7…tar opor chilo music, debates, extempore, quizzes,-- everything we got our hands on, we participated in.
Maybe that’s why we got so jaded later on….

I got kinda sidetracked, but this will be added to and continued later on (hopefully)…..

Ozone's over, school sucks as usual...a grouchy post

So Ozone 2006 is over and it's back to school and handwriting practice( 'coz take notes is all we do) and i feel so empty. Abar back to drill in the hot sun for an hour and a half each day, Bengali class with the mad scramble for seats at the back, the lower-back-pain-inducing-chairs, the AC that doesn't work but is put there by the management on purpose to make us feel hotter....(fascinated? Don't worry, a post titled 'Why I Hate School's' in the works...)

Ozone was great while it lasted, though...jotoi onno onno feste giye participate koro, nothing quite beats the feel of the school crowd cheering you on....and beating certain schools (which shall be nameless)on your own turf.

This time I don'tknow why, I got into the mood late and as a consequence ended up participating only in the street play(we came 3rd by the way-bosco 2nd, sphs 1st. Bosco spoke the language of the people and won with audacity and skill firmly in place ; and sphs did 'Iqbal' which has a made to win script....we were good too, though).
Impact was fun, mbg had great costumes and was 2nd, bosco was disappointing and bvb was first; indipop, mock the band, were all the same as in every fest, fluffy and fun, while Jal was simply mind-blowing...I think I'm in love with Gohar Mumtaz.(by the way, all guys should have hair falling over their foreheads-try it guys, it does wonders for a sagging attitude and sagging lovelife. I woudn't advise one lock of hair though, only Superman can carry that off, but hair you and your girl can run your hands through-great.)

So it's almost 12, and I'm not supposed to be up blogging but here I am, and I'm sure to wake up late tomorrow and have to sneak in the back gate of the building; but then, gyan buddhi thakle I would not have lost my CBSE 10 mark sheet a month after I got it.( don't gasp, I found it again, although only after making thr trip to Allahabad for a new one...how my family puts up with me I can't imagine..)

Bye and goodnight and don't let the pyantakhancha below your bed get you.Use ginger-they hate it.

Richard P. Feynman

I've always loved learning how stuff works, how things happen, and the why of everything, so when my father handed me Richard Feynman's Lectures on Physics a year or two ago, I immediately fell in love with the books and, of course, the guy.

Feynman simply has to be the most original thinker, the most versatile, the most human scientist ever- a bongo player, an acclaimed artist, an amateur safe cracker, a practical joker par excellance, a favourite with the ladies, and a man of conscience-not to mention the little matter of the Nobel prize- he'd started to supplant Supes in my affections. The wow thing about the man is how he says all the time how little we really know, how little he really knows.....humble yet arrogant, the guy takes my breath away. And if you want to get hooked to Physics, really get the beauty of it, live on his books.
Oh, and trust me, his remembrances-Surely you're joking,Mr Feynman?-make for really engrossing reading.

But then, Miss cornelia bryant was right in Anne's house of dreams-

"aren't there any good men then, mrs. cornelia?"
"yes of course
dear, in the graveyard yonder..."

(or words to that effect)

Don't mind the cynicism, i'm just having a Jonah day.

Reason? It's the day after the Jal live in concert in our school fest-MBG Ozone06- and as a result i have a sore throat and blisters from shrieking and dancing, and i've pulled a muscle in my arm from waving them in the air-we were in the very front row by the way(there are some advantages to being tiny)-and now it's back to the old take notes-have lunch-take notes existence in school which drives me crazy and makes me long for a feynman of my own who lives life on his own terms....and figures out electron spin from throwing a frisbee in frustration.

God i love the guy......

Change is NOT good.Pity you only realise that afterwards...

I've proved my last post right by writing this after two months-I am the laziest creature on Earth.
But then, it's my blog, so I rule.
The other day i was looking at an old picture of myself at age 10 or so, and man, was I weird! Not ugly exactly, but well, disturbing.

See what I mean?Glasses all over the place, the half-dead expression, the oversized sweater, all the signs of nerd-ness.....so anyway what i was thinking was, you hear all these horror stories of the nerds (me for instance, back in 4rth grade) getting teased,fetching and carrying and so on, but I was surprisingly spared all that. i mean I had it all- the air of helplessness, the tiny size, and, man, the glasses. prime teasing target, wouldn't you say? but all i got was good natured ribbing about being stuart little,and stuff like that...

i wonder why-maybe i was so immersed in the giant tomes that i never noticed, or maybe kids aren't as cruel as they say, or whatever the reason, but i was actually happy back then. Not giving a damn what I looked like, hanging out in the library and the grounds alike, playing 'sister-sister' and 'chain-chain' and being doodh-bhaath all the time, reading meaning into kites that fell into our school compound as part of our "detective club" ( involving many spine chilling episodes about secret passages out of school and a drug smuggling ring that actually smuggled chalk, but that's for another post)....anyway, i had a helluva lot of real fun back then.
None of the bitching, the make-believe popularity, the who-has-more-friends-and-a-better-boyfriend(s) stuff that's so weirdly important for everyone(not excluding me) nowadays.


I don't look like that picture now, what with contacts and a posh haircut and the typical clothes and outer trappings, and neither do i look like a lost kitten but act as maddeningly brash as the brashest of the gals; (and I still have the same great friends who have changed,sure,but so have I.....) but sometimes i feel that i'm still really the little girl I was, with the sad look and the tentative smile......

nothing really changes, does it?

I'm not Peter Pan after all....

because my birthday's coming up again, on the 11th of August,(i won't be "a sixteen year old girl from Kolkata,India " any more) and I suddenly realised that my blog's turned a year old a month ago. And i've made, like, four posts.
So am i incredibly lazy? do I not have enough time? Is there nothing left to write about? I think I'll go with the laziness theory and make a birthday resolution to post more often.

that's all for today, but you'll soon see more of the new, improved, seventeen year old anasua.and yes, that means i'm not posting till Friday-hey i did say getting over laziness was my birthday resolution!

Superman or Batman?

Recently i read The Tower Of Babel, JLA 02, (after buying it for the immensely low price of rs 35 at a second hand stall,yay) and was confronted with my age old conflict over who's the 'better', superman or batman.and it also made me feel quite uneasy, coz i absolutely sympathised with batman and his machiavellian manipulation (just love alliteration) and i couldn't for the life of me see why the other jla members were making such a fuss about it. In DC's words,:Quis custodiet ipsos custodes (Who watches the watchmen?). And maybe, just maybe, batman guessed wrong when he guessed how superman would vote.the man is an expert at ruining his own life! if youre wondering what i'm talking about and wish i'd shut up about men in tights, then look at the blog title. it's dedicated to humour, and superman.

well, to get back to my conflict, don't get me wrong, superman is and always will be my special favorite, not totally because he was the one who got me into comics and graphic novels, but because he's so completely the quintessental 'hero'.he's just so GOOD. and i don't care if you're thinking, bo-o-o-oring, coz however boring goodness is alleged to be , you can't have enough of it nowadays. in school , i'm known as superman-obsessed-he was the subject of my all india presentation!-but batman messes me up. i love clark- but bruce i can't figure,-or forget.tell me, anyone, what you think. and signing off, here is the one thing i love about each superhero.

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SUPERMAN: EVERYTHING.but specially,the fact that he's the most powerful man on earth, and could do what the supervillains all want to do. take over the world. in a day. but he doesn't. which is why people think he's soft.which is why i think he's worthy of worship.can you even imagine what it takes to resist temptation like that? his whole life is about resisting temptation, even the small ones(eg.not looking at women-actually lois, coz he's faithful- with his xray vision!), just coz he's so good!!

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BATMAN: his mix of strength and vulnerability. his reaction to his tragedy and his intensity.his magnetism. his scars. all women like a fighter who doesn't let his wounds stop him. but i like best that he's a vigilante, not a superhero. you see the difference?....and in his own way, he's just as noble as superman.

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see my dilemma?...