The Elements of Love

One of the never ending debates/discussions/dialogues (and in my case, diatribes) is about the definitions of abstract concepts. These concepts are usually described usually using some ill-conceived metaphors, whose trivialness fails to sufficiently portray the magnanimity of the concept in question. Google “Definition of Life” and you see people comparing life to all sorts of mundane stuff like washing machines to key-chains to tomato ketchup (“Life is like tomato ketchup. Sometimes you squirt it, sometimes you spill it.” Never heard of it? Well, it is because I just created it)

I think defining life is too complex, especially for someone who has seen just 22 years of it. (Ok, 23, I should start getting truthful about my age) So I will try to define something else, something that I have seen an abundance of, especially in my age group. The concept of ‘love’ .Aha! I will try my best not to compare love to blindness or acidity or cheeseburgers. If I indeed trespass my creative authority and embark on such a comparison, then kindly forgive me and banish me to Planet Hippocratica.

One thing that has always befuddled me is that how can ‘love’ be always just a two sided affair. Isn’t there any scope for love to exist in the higher dimensional space? I mean, what is the deal with ‘couple’? What about the triples? Oh yeah, threesome’s are always relegated to one-night wildness that ‘should be forgotten the next day’. My point is, what aspect of the human nervous system conditions us into loving just a single person? Is it entirely possible to distribute all your love exclusively and unconditionally to a single entity? Is that what love is all about? Exclusiveness?

I will come back to my point later.  Before that, I would like to define what love is, and break it down. A lot of people who try to define love treat it like an atomic concept, that which cannot be broken down further. I respectfully disagree. A concept like love is a complex compound of several elements that needs to broken down in order for it to be analysed closely.

Well, here is how it works. Man needs to satisfy some of his needs, his desires, and his urges. To this end, he turns to love. I can identify 3 major needs that a man/woman wants to be fulfilled. He can satisfy each of these needs through a different person (thus bringing the concept of multiple partners) or he can search (sometimes elusively) to find a single person who can satisfy all his needs. Here are the 3 ‘needs’.

1. Friendship: Friendship here doesn’t refer to an ordinary ‘I scratch my back, you scratch mine’ kind of alliance, it is more far reaching than that. Ever had a friend (male/female) with whom you kept absolutely NO secrets? Ever had a friend with whom you can crack jokes that no one else except the two of you could understand? Ever had a friend whom you could understand so well that you can predict his next moves in a situation or even predict his opinions on a previously un-encountered topic? That is the friend I am talking about.

I can say that I have had such a friend (male). We became friends in PUC, 8 long years ago. We have never been in the same city         after that, and we have been out of touch. But whenever we talk (once in a blue moon), conversation is just not difficult. We both can predict each other’s actions very accurately. And we still crack jokes about the world that no other person can laugh at.  By the ‘No Secrets’ part, I mean absolutely none.

There were a couple of friends who came very close, but there was always something lacking. One person who came very extremely close was a friend I made here in the Netherlands (this time, female).  Over the course of time, I came to understand so well that I can now look at links and statuses in Facebook and accurately predict which ones she is going to like when she would log in later. I was so accurate that it was actually scary. However, I screwed it up, majorly because of my own doing.

2. Companionship – Now this is the person that you would like to be with all the time. The person whose presence in the room would mean the same as you sitting alone. I mean, the person to whom none of the privacy laws that you have set for yourself don’t apply. The person whom you would love to go on a trip with, or go to a movie, or a restaurant.  Just the two of you.  For more mature people, it is also the person who you would like to have a family with. Have babies, slap the naughtiest ones among them on the back, go to the graduation ceremonies of your kids together, all that stuff. There is a person that you need here. It is important to note that the person who satisfies condition 1 may not satisfy condition 2. Your best friend need not be necessarily the best companion. That is where the concept of people craving for multiple partners comes from. It is because you are subconsciously trying to satisfy your three needs. and if one person can’t satisfy all three, then you turn to another one to compensate.

3. Sex – This is the person who you are physically attracted to. Some swear this is the most important, while I think it may as well be the least important (at least in a society that is not sex starved). There is that one person whom you can surrender all your body to, and own theirs. It is like home. You may travel to a lot of places, but in the end there is just one place that you call home.

For people who are confused if they are in love or not, I would like to ask this. Does your partner satisfy all three needs of yours? If they satisfy all 3 needs, then cool, you are in love. If not, sooner or later, you will start exploring avenues.

Of course, this has to be two sided, making it all the more complicated. Both sides need to satisfy all their three needs through the other. Only then can a successful relationship take place.

Which comes to the question, am I in love?

Well, the answer is no. I don’t get attracted to females (a self-imposed non-religious non-spiritual exercise that I would be eager to share in another post).  These are the observations I made from looking at other relationships.

 

Update : In my opinion, these are the only three elements that make  up love. Ever felt possessive about your boyfriend/ girlfriend? Have you ever been jealous of your partner? Have you been secretly competing with your partner(in terms of academics, money-making, baby-making etc)? If the answer is yes to any of these questions, then the answer is no. I will defer my reasoning to the next post.

Jots of a homeland refugee

Some things in life are best left unexplained.

What a clichéd statement!

Let me go at it again.

Actually, some things in life are best left explained. Failure to do so will result in situations, ranging from the sultry to the calamitous, that always make you feel that nothing short of an explanation will satiate your sense of satisfaction.

One such thing is my appearance.

Before you can start getting ideas, and by that, I don’t mean a new mobile connection, I would like to iterate that it is not about the fact that I have failed to enrol and win in any Mr. Handsome pageants, nor is it a racist whim whose solution may or may not be Fair and Lovely depending on how far you are willing to believe advertising claims, but it is just that… I somehow have a Mongoloid look.

Yes. Mongoloid.

Chinese. Japanese. Korean. Naga. Tibetan. Pilipino, Thai… Even Chinki (Racist Mo’fu’ers). I have been asked if I am that and much more.

The unexplained part is that I just don’t know how I got that look. For some background on me, I hail from a purely Konkani family that hasn’t seen many intercaste marriages happen in its fold. Everyone else in the family possesses the Aryan look that is characteristic of Hindu Konkani families. I have confirmed through reliable sources that I was not adopted, there is no one in my family with even remote connections to remote North East Indian places, and to my knowledge,and no one in my family has participated in a wicked genetic experiment conducted by the Chinese with the leakage of classified secrets being the primary goal. Moreover, none in my immediate family feel that I possess the Mongoloid look. This means that I was either born with that look, or I gradually morphed into a mascot for Sino-Indian relations over the course of 22 years.

Let me clarify that I have absolutely no problem when someone mixes up with my nationality. I have been in several hilarious situations that have risen because of the confusion regarding my nationality, many a times to my advantage. I still remember how a watchman at the electricity board thought that I was perhaps some foreign investor and gave me a full-fledged salute much to the amusement of myself and my accompanying friends. I remember how I have fooled various people into believing that I am a Tibetan refugee, a Kung-Fu master, a son of a Sumo-Wrestler, a Thai chef and many more!  I even memorized a few Mandarin syllables so that I can mix them up and create gibberish sentences which I can then pass of as any of Korean/ Japanese/Insert any Oriental language.

Why I am blogging about this now? Just yesterday, a young guy in the bus asked me if I am from Meghalaya. He even cared to tell me that there are no schools in Meghalaya and that is why “you people come here na”. I will leave this story for another blog post and tell you an incident that I remembered when this Meghalaya guy was talking. So lights off, and here it is.

I was travelling in one of the best bus routes in Mangalore (Route No. 19. For those who agree, give me a Hell, Yeah! ) As usual I was preoccupied with some thoughts which usually involve my mind proposing an argument and my mind doubling up as a Devil’s Advocate too. Halfway to my destination, at a place called Bejai, a guy boarded the bus and sat next to me. He was a balding guy and wore a T-shirt that could have said “Be my bitch” but at the moment was only interested in saying “Explore Dubai. Now” , with a picture of a person skiing with swimming goggles. (Really).(Nah, not personally insulting the guy in any way, just making some observations). The guy in question suddenly looks at his side and remarks “So, how do you find Mangalore?”

Me (gives a smile that plainly says ‘A little more context may help, boss ‘) : “Ummm….”

Stranger: “Mangalore is a very pleasant place right? I too love this place.”

Me (still not sure what is it all about, but gives a nodding smile anyway)

Stranger:“Have you visited all the tourist places? “

Me(oh, just harmless friendly chatter): “Yep, all that there has to be seen”.

Stranger: “Oh that is nice. How many days more are you going to stay in Mangalore?”

Me (Oh, so this is what it is all about! Let me play along): “Actually, I am a Tibetan refugee. I came to India a year back. I was staying in the Coorg camp (with the Coorg word spoken in as Tibetan an accent I can manage).I have enrolled in an engineering college so I am going to stay here for a few years.”

Stranger:” Ok. Mangalore people are very hospitable. But I should not see more of your country men settle here and spoil my beautiful city. Did I make myself clear? Keep your hands out of our daughters and get  lost to your ching-chong country as soon as possible”

Me (in a meek voice) : “Yes, sir”

I wanted to teach this racist scumbag a lesson. So I suddenly asked the conductor who was standing nearby “Nale eno bus bandh anta suddi keliddene. Enu vishaya gotta?” No need of translation. It was a statement in pure Kannada.

I loved the look on that man’s face when he heard me utter those words. I loved the way he got out of the bus the next stop even if he had purchased a ticket to a place that had not yet come.

Update : The sentence in kannada meant ” I heard there is a bus bandh tomorrow. What is the reason behind it ” . I said that just to show the guy that I knew kannada, that too fluently.

From negativity to positivity

As I type this, I feel something heavy being pushed up my throat. I feel like I am in an unrecoverable hangover induced by drinking too much vinegar. Well, this is the closest I get to explaining my predicament in terms of physical terms. Because it is all in the mind, you see.

My last post ended on a very positive note, with me triumphantly pointing out that passion is the root of all satisfaction. So did I reach that holy grail of happiness? The negativity at the start of the post should more than answer this question.

Another semester is starting tomorrow, and I can’t deny that deep inside, I am still thinking of doing a “Shawshank Job “, or to better describe it, an “English, August” (escape).This time, it gets worse as I don’t even know if I have a Plan B if I indeed escape from my current reality. My friends all over have only one thing to say “If you leave this now, you will be making your biggest and most foolish mistake of my life”. I am not so blinded with distorted perceptions of happiness to disagree them. And in all probability, I am going to stay the course with the deeply calming thought that nothing is permanent.

When my vacations started, I vowed myself to get passionate about things, get immersed into them so much that I will never have an idle mind. This has never been a problem for me right through all my childhood and I love the fact that I have so many hobbies that 24 hours always sounds too less for a day.

But then, I realized that I had lost it. The fire was missing. It has become exceedingly harder for anything to catch my interest. In short, I have become numb.

For perhaps the first time in my life, I seem to have lost interest in quizzing. I fall asleep through movies now. Even music seems to have failed me. I don’t follow the Premier League anymore. It has been months since I made my last Wikipedia edit and I am content these days seeing my edits get vandalized. My tech projects are gasping for life. My writing seems to have deteriorated to the point of no return. I have stopped following education trends and no longer provide counselling to students. The idea of travel no longer gives me an adrenalin rush. My Hacker News addiction seems to have ended. Coding contests are greeted with indifference. My innumerable plans for many initiatives no longer get me excited with anticipation.

The most irritating part of it is that life has never been more normal before. I don’t have to worry about cooking my own food. I get a stipend for just attending classes. I studied only about 10% of what some of my fellow classmates did, but still ended up with good marks. (Friends say “That is because you are Suhas Pai. You don’t need to study!” Some of them are heavily over-rating me. The others are perhaps sarcastic). Contrary to all my complaints, I actually had a very productive semester. I am finally in an engineering college which I feel makes a sincere effort to impart education. I had a lot of “career or resume enhancing” moments. (Do I care about it anymore?)

So what’s wrong? As I end my post, I suddenly find myself coming out of the vinegar hangover. Apparently, writing it down brings some relief. I suddenly feel positive and vow myself to get myself interested in things. How will I do it? Well, not everything in life has answers.

In Pursuit of Passion.

Yesterday, I was a man on a mission.   The unfortunate usage of the past tense in the previous  sentence can mean only one thing.  Either I am no longer a man or I am no longer on a mission. Of course, some of the more intelligent and indulgent readers may point out that I could have lost my manhood as well as my mission and will be looking forward to reading this piece with  juicy fingernails to  extract the gory details of the former. Although I can verify that I have successfully retained my manhood(physically, if not metaphorically), it has to be with shameless apathy that I declare myself to have completed the mission in the time it takes for the  word ‘today’ to indicate a newer time frame.

The mission in question is the act of reading all my blog posts. (What a lame climax! Fire this guy.)  It was a piece of cake since the combined word count of all my posts still cannot match the length of a standard Arundhathi Roy essay, the more alarming part being that the information content in my posts are far less than those in the latter. Apart from noticing that my writing has taken a turn for the worse on every post, it occurred to me that the tone of the blog had changed, from being a blog that touched philosophy (for those readers with a smirk on their faces who have scrolled down to the end of the page and then remarked with a distasteful frown “He is lying”, Friends, the “philosophy” was introduced too subtly, which is the motive of this blog in the first place,  or maybe it is my imagination) to being a blog that has acquired  a more personal nature. A simple explanation to this paradigm shift would be that I would like to solve my own problems before poking fun at the world. Unsolved problems? A booming voice in my head, which is the voice I always imagine that I would possess 30 years from now, told me in its lecturer-like sing-song tone “Instead of writing pointless sentences, whose gist in the end can be summarized in fewer than 140 characters on a popular website, why don’t you solve your problems?”

Fickle-minded that I am, I promptly forgot the topic I was going to spew some sentences on and instead replaced my brain with a Turing machine that can accept only rationality.

With the preliminaries taken care of(drumming on the mouse pad of my laptop in anticipation, throwing threatening glances at my dog, making a common gesture with the middle finger held upright and then smiling  at how funny human fingers look, and tossing a coin to see if it eventually falls  flat because I had watched Inception just a day ago, and ensure that the coin falls right inside   my pocket because I have been practicing Rajni’s tricks from Shivaji) , I finally settle down to exercising my right and the art of solving problems. The fact that there were preliminaries meant I was hesitant. I usually don’t ROFL looking at my fingers and my dog doesn’t entertain eye-to-eye conversations, although it is true that I sometimes prefer hand gestures over face gestures.

Problem Definition: My previous posts indicate that I have a problem finding happiness. I could work that one out, thanks to the suggestive title of one of my posts “In pursuit of happi(y)ness”.

OK. Going down towards finer layers of granularity. Define “Happiness”. At this point I have to remember that because of the rationality- only condition, I can’t use abstract dictionary meanings nor quote conveniently from Wordsworth (or keeping with the present times, Chetan Bhagat). I need an explicitly quantifiable expression representing happiness which can be manipulated mathematically in several contexts.

Impossible?

Then let’s take a different path. Why do I feel that I am missing happiness now when I haven’t felt that before? Can this revelation imply that I was happier before?

The previous question gave me a glint in the eye. Yes, I had been happier before. My childhood was like an ultra-long honeymoon with no sex and full frolic. I had gone through some tough times since then, only to be back to my previous self in the last two years of my engineering days. Was I happy during my engineering days? For those who know me well, I hated my college (not the management but the environment) with a passion. I lived in an ocean of regret on my choice of college and was always ready with my grumblings to anyone with so much as half an ear to listen to them.

But let’s get back rationality into the picture. Hatred and regret doesn’t necessarily translate into unhappiness. Contentment and happiness have two very distinct meanings. The last sentence rang a bell.  Are contentment and happiness inversely proportional? If you aren’t content with how things are panning out, then you lose happiness. When you get things going your way, you get happiness. But then in this characterization, happiness becomes a mirage. It is an endless loop, which by the way, is exactly what life is all about. What if you are the embodiment of contentment? This leads to a static characterization. You are either happy all the time or you are not. Which possibility is true?

Statistics point to the latter. Opinion Polls, the Human Happiness Index, the Happiness Quotient etc all point out that the Scandinavian countries are the least happy of all. Yes, the Scandinavian countries that have the lowest poverty rate, the lowest crime rates, the lowest corruption rates in the world. While I don’t believe in opinion polls for many reasons like the sample space being too small, the questions being not representative of the general trend, and the human inability to know what they know, so many polls bringing out the same results bring some credibility to the results.

One can infer from the above that it is the lack of contentment that leads to happiness indirectly.But…I am not convinced. Let me explore another angle.

Why did I have a happy childhood? Was it because of a lack of contentment? Bringing back rational reasoning, innocence of childhood doesn’t translate to a happy childhood. We all had innocent childhoods with our parents shielding us from all our problems, but a happy childhood is a totally different matter.  I know quite a few people whose childhood sucked and they readily agree to that. So what was so special in my life back then?

Before I could get caught into a nostalgia spree, I already got the connect (Quizzer style). There was one common thread that ran through all the earlier days of my life.

Passion.

This brings me to a time when a few of my friends had “fallen in love” .Some of them requited, others unrequited. While the “love failures” were planning of leading a life in the Himalayas for mourning(ROFL), I told them it is not love as they thought, but it was a psychological condition called “Limerence”(Check Wikipedia for an awesome article on it.  P.S : Jimmy Wales ads rock) The main cause of this condition is an idle mind, which is not only a devil’s workshop, but also an abattoir of happiness.(Ever heard of the phrase “Too busy to fall in love”?)

I succumbed to my fickle-mindedness and digressed from the plot. Getting back, passion was what made me busy. Passion was what made me have so many hobbies. Passion was why I wished a day had more than twenty four hours. Passion was why I fell asleep as soon as I went to bed because I had so many exciting things to do the next day.

But now all that has changed. Why? I don’t have an answer. I work much lesser than all of my classmates. (for a different reason). In fact, I am almost as free as I was during my B.E days, except that I spend an unnatural amount of time grumbling that I don’t have time for anything else. I have just lost interest in a lot of my hobbies.

No. I need to erase my last sentence. I have not lost interest in any of my hobbies. I have lost the passion in them. My mind is idle, like that of an animal. Suboptimal use of optimal organs. I haven’t fallen prey to limerance or other psychological conditions (I am stronger than that), but then an idle mind has made me lose my piece of mind.

Therefore, this vacations. I make a resolution. To end all sorts of procrastination, and to regain my passion. And to retain my passion for the rest of my life.

This is my new mission. As all “cool” mission names go, I have a Greek name in handy : Mission Pi.

Anyone wants to join me?

Update: Philosophy apart, I finished my first semester to a much anticipated break. From sleeping in corridors to getting featured on the front page of Hacker News for totally unexpected reasons, it has been a wild journey. A journey, which has been a learning curve in the bigger scheme of things.

Alert : Sensationalist News Ahead

“Which is the biggest problem that India is facing these days”? Asked my friend to me one day. Before I could open my mouth to reply, he had already delivered the reply. “One Word. The Media”. Basic arithmetic skills apart, there was so much wrong with that sentence or rather the way it was delivered that I put on my menacing gesture which signalled that I was all ready for a debate, except that it didn’t look threatening at all.

“So what about the media? What did they do?” I wanted a stupid answer so that I could attack it. He delivered it in style.

“The Media? What did they NOT do? And what are they NOT doing right this moment? I don’t blame you for your ignorance. Six years without a T.V is a good enough excuse for you. In fact, it is a blessing. You know, the media is making our life hell these days. So much sensationalization, so much undue hype, so much concentration on trivial matters. Did you see their breaking news? Today it was about Amitabh tweeting to his son about coming home early to lunch! The media have been discussing whether Amitabh has declared war on cellular operators and decided to use Twitter as his main communication medium! What use is this news to us? Bland, dirty celebrity gossip! No wonder the whole world calls us as voyeurs! Now you know who the culprit is.

Did you see the systematic way with which the media destroyed the Commonwealth Games? With all that hype over a few unclean toilets, they have successfully and irreparably damaged the reputation of India. Welcome back, snake charmer days! Why couldn’t they be responsible and shown the good things about the CommonWealth Games too? Why not show the world class stadiums? Ok. Leave it at that. How about the Ayodhya mess? Do you think anyone is still bothered over that? It is their hype that made it a serious issue in the first place.

And what is that all about “How do you feel “type of questions? It seems to be on every journalist’s default questions list. They ask that question everywhere, when a woman is raped, when a man loses his child in a terrorist attack, when a player wins a cricket match, even when a bookie is caught. Are we so stupid? Don’t we know what they must be feeling? Why hear it from the horse’s mouth every time? Whenever I switch on the T.V these days, I feel like puking. Just check my Twitter account; it is full of angry tweets that come from my bruised mind fresh from the media assault. I AM SICK AND TIRED OF IT!”

He was gasping for breath at the end of his rant. I was almost alarmed but then I remembered that I had to give him a fitting response. There were so many things that were fundamentally wrong with that outburst. As a nihilist, I don’t think anything is “wrong”, so I need to change that word to “logically void”. So, giving him my nasty “I am going to win anyway” look, I began my offense.

“Ok. So the media has made your life hell. You just can’t stand those “sensationalist” T. V channels right? I have a solution for you, a simple one at that. Ever heard of a remote control? Man’s greatest invention after democracy, this device provides you with a great thing. Choice. If you don’t like it, you are free to change the channel! No one is forcing you to watch things that make your life hell.

And celebrity gossip as headlines? No one finds it important? Well, let me tell you. The Media is run by shrewd businessmen, with one word in mind” T.R.P”. And before you talk about my arithmetic skills, let me tell you it is three words because it is an acronym. They run celebrity gossip news because there is a market for it. Why on earth would they publish news that no one would not watch? And I bet you, regardless of what you think, a bigger part of India is more concerned about Salman Khan’s receding hairline than the effects of sand mining on the Coramandel coast. This is not a bad thing, because you know what, it is their choice! If all that people want is celebrity gossip, then let them watch it and let the media feed them with it!

If you are concerned with the “How do you feel” questions, which I agree is a pretty redundant thing to ask, again the solution is the same. Switch to another channel! Maybe News Channel A is just not your cup of tea!. I hear some news channels are brainwashing innocent people by feeding propaganda. Well, this is certainly not a threat to the country unless it is government controlled. If you feel disgruntled, worry not, for the opposite party has equal rights to start a new news channel which serves as their propaganda machine! That is the great thing about a democracy and rather than complaining, you should feel proud of this system.

If you feel these news channels are depriving you of savouring “real” news by providing only sensationalist Breaking News, I have a choice for you. DD News. They are as “news-like” as a channel can get. They are not sensationalist, they are not filled with reporters with high decibel levels, they even cover the weather and the most important, they are not a government mouth piece. Did you realize the importance of that? There are so many countries in the world where the government owned/controlled news channels are just propaganda engines; in fact private news channels are not even allowed to operate in many countries. Did you realize the privileges we have been enjoying?

Now, back to DD News. Why is it not so popular? After all, it is the only channel which is a “true news channel” by your standards. I have seen the news readers there and some of them could fancy their chances in a beauty contest with the more popular females from the private channels. Yet, nobody cares. Why?

Because there is no rock music playing in the background when the breaking news are announced. Because there is no yelling, screaming and chest thumping. Because no one syas repeatedly “This is a DD News Exclusive”. Because some of the women wear saris your grandmothers used to wear.(Nothing wrong with that).

And more importantly, because they deliver only plain boring news.

The Pursuit of Happ(y)iness

I just felt the urge to open my word processor and revitalize my fading typing expertise. So, here I am. I feel like typing non stop without hesitating. So pardon me if some sentences have gone astray.

A few months ago, I was at the crossroads of life, with my engineering degree acting like a chequered flag telling me “Your time at the tracks is over. Move over to the podium and then get lost”. And on June 14^th, with my final year project evaluation out of the way, I had reached the podium, and it was time to come to a decision.

Should I race on? Should I change my tyres before proceeding? Or is it time to leave racing altogether? Umpteen questions which everyone faces when they move out of their comfort zone(undergraduate studies) and are on the threshold of  entering the big, bad world. So why should I fret over it? After all, every one is in the same situation, so it is not that big a deal to cook an omlette on your head over it.

But well, I needed to fret over it. As Slumdog Millionaire says in no uncertain terms , “It is written”. So, there started a series of brainstorming sessions with only one agenda on the horizon “Where do I want to see myself in the future?”

As a computer science engineer, I would say that there is ample ambiguity in the above question with the word ‘future’ loosely defined, but assuming that I can skip the requirements analysis phase claiming that it already exists within me, I jumped to the next stage : Evaluation of alternatives

1. Be a normal person and go get a job.

This sounded quite appealing. Time to be in a ‘professional’ environment. Meet new people. Work in a team (isn’t that awesome!, I only see team work happening in reality shows on TV). Work on new challenges. And most importantly, get a significant bulge in your shirt pocket (Of course, I am not talking about breast/chest enlargement and I don’t wear shirts with pockets at the abdomen. It is just that I find it illogical to have a wallet and thus keep my money in the shirt pocket). Yes, I am weird. Continue reading.

A job would enable me to indulge myself in all the things out of my reach. But then came the question, what would I spend on? I am a very frugal person even by Indian standards. I don’t think I will ever learn driving/riding in my life, so a vehicle is out of the question. I am not a very big fan of clothes and have a lot of food related problems.

Finally, I came to the conclusion that I will find new ways to spend money once I start earning it.

The next question then was

1.1    What sort of job should I take?

Now, beggars aren’t exactly choosers, so the above question stands null and void. But I disagree with this notion. My resume doesn’t look too bad and I am trying to be humble when I say that I have landed a job in no less than 4 companies, with only Infosys showing me the boot. The main question was whether I wanted a industy/non-industry job.

What non-industry jobs did I have in mind?

1. Join Nirmala Travels/ Vikram Travels as a travel guide
2. Become a lecturer and try to bring a change in the education system from within(haha. Dry laugh.)
3. Become a banker, like everyone in the 80’s did. I have a fascination for everything 80’s.

Option i. looked fascinating, as travel is my foremost passion, but the prospect of going around different places and falling sick owing to my fragile digestive system didn’t look too enticing. In the general public interest in mind, I ticked off this option. And heck, it was too unrealistic. I like to call myself unconventional, but I have to admit I fear the crowd.

Option ii. was more realistic, as during my engineering days, I discovered that I had a flair for lecturing people(on philosophical matters). On a serious note, I knew I would do well in this field, but then I realized I was not qualified enough to become a lecturer. Any Obama-like talk about change in the education system can be achieved only if the initiators practice what they preach, and for that I needed to be properly qualified with atleast an M.Tech. So again, Option ii, atleast for the immediate future is out.

Option iii.  was a joke. I just hated to admit I had only 2 options on board.

2. I am still far from ‘complete’. So lets do higher studies.

2.1    Which field do you want to persue?

1. M.Tech – Like every normal VTU student, I wasn’t very confident about my technical skills, with all the last minute studying(not learning) and little or no exposure to ‘practical’ stuff. But the online coding fests, the GATE exam and the final year project changed all that. I got to know that I wasn’t that bad as I had made out to be. But I was still a raw product straight from the VTU factory, I needed to polish myself to upgrade my status from ‘uncut’ to ‘in the process of being cut” .

So where should I persue M.Tech? IIT’s? Stop joking. At this moment , a voice in my brain makes me hesitate at the keyboard as I type in the following : Perhaps I can make it to IIT as well, but then I would have to waste a year waiting for the next GATE. Dreams apart, how about more realistic targets? NITK? MIT, Manipal? Wait a minute, how about foreign universities? Many of my friends had told me that life isn’t complete without a proper university experience. From a long time, I had been fascinated by Western universities and had dreamt of studying in them. But then, I always knew it was a pipe dream. I could barely afford the university application forms, leave alone the living costs and the tuition fees.

Then, I came to know about this wonderful dual degree program that was offered free of cost with all living expenses. One year in India and one year in Europe. Since, it was completely free, I expected it to be extremely competitive and very limited. I knew I had to get into the top ten ranks nationwide , if I could start dreaming about research in a university setting. Here comes my real test, I thought. I spent exponentially more time wondering how I will fare in my exam than studying for it. I dropped the plan of studying for the exam altogether with the following logic : If I couldn’t understand a concept in 4 years of engineering, I cant get it by studying a few days before the exam. And if I knew a concept well, I wouldn’t have to study it.

imagine my surprise when I discovered I had scored 8 marks higher than the next highest scorer in the entrance exam!(to be very honest, I wan’t that surprised).  So, I wasn’t that bad after all!. Maybe I underestimated myself! And the subsequent interview process was more of a ‘Learning about Myself’ course , which demands a blog post for itself.

ii . MBA

I don’t have the requisite communication skills, nor the presentation flair and definitely no the motivation to be an MBA. However, the sole reason why I wanted to do an MBA was because I felt the entrance tests were my cup of tea. All the sections, especially the ones in CAT were the ones I considered as my strong points. Hence I had a feeling that I could possibly be playing jingle bells over the summer.

My reasoning went like this : I will clear CAT and get into a good college now. Who knows, maybe I will develop a real motivation for it later. And communication skills can always be improved. Can’t they?(NO)

So looking after all these options, plus some more, which included sitting at home(some would say that is gross), joining my friend on a startup, making a movie(Yes, I can dream), becoming a pygmy agent(awesome, aint it?), the omlette on my head started literally burning.

Time to make the design decision before moving on to the implementation.

Software engineering principles state that there should be a sound rationale behind any design decision.

My rationale goes like this in the form of a formal proof

p: Aim of life is to be happy

q. I will be happy if I learn more

r. I will be happy if I make myself less ‘incomplete’ by getting the complete picture  in my field of interest

s. I will be happy doing research in a Western university environment

p is true. q,r,s are true. I have succeeded the “Aim of Life” stuff.

I joined M.Tech/M.S because I wanted CS concepts to be crystal clear at my mind. I want to talk hours about the subject without doubting what I am talking about. Right now my knowledge is splintered with a lot of disconnected joints, I need to fix them and  M.Tech is the platform for it.

Hence , the decision was made and I was so happy that I finally know what I wanted!!

It is 3 weeks since my classes have started. You must be imagining that I am on cloud nine. But the reality is that I am on ground zero. This has not panned out to be what I thought it would be. In short, I am not happy.

Proposition p,q,r,s still holds true. But I doubt any of that happening with the GPA craze. The pressure to score. The pressure to attend classes daily and maintain minimum attendance. This is not what I signed up for.

I am not happy again.

Dilemmas of a Nihilist – part 2

Because of the naturally long gap (owing to the fact that I am blogophobic), I have to remind you readers(if, any) that there is a Dilemma’s of a Nihilist Post 1 here, which you have to read if you plan to make sense of stuff that makes up this post.. In case you have read Part 1 and are straining your nerves trying to remember the gist, let me help you.

1. Locate your mouse. Most probably, the cursor is right on top of a red button marked X, which is where mouse pointers usually lurk when the user unsuspectingly lands on boring blogs that claim to be written by a nihilist.
2. Perform the scroll operation. Scroll down until you reach Dilemma’s of a Nihilist Part-1.
3. Check out the date it was published and exclaim “Even the Transformers sequel came much earlier!”
4. Take back those words that you just blurted out, yes, the factually incorrect one where you try to lead people to believe that a sequel of a high-on-graphics movie was released just two months after the original.
5. Admit that it was a lame analogy.
6. Skim through the post now, and raise your eyebrows and point your eyeballs in the general direction of nowhere and say “Oh, this post.”

Yeah, this post. The one where I spew out random words and my subsequently unconcealed surprise when I discover these words actually make coherent sentences, which is reflected in my posts by the excessive usage of the superlative.
Note that the previous sentence is a blatant lie, but you know what, I had bathed everyday the last week. Yeah, I am a random sentence generator.

Now, that I am done with all the smart-assness which in the end can be summed up by the oft misused phrase ‘beating around the bush’ , it is time to come to the explanation(not justification).

This may come as the greatest swathe of irony you have come across, but the reason why instead of helping out women from ditches or tunnels I am writing pages and pages of ‘envy inducing posts’ (according to a comment on the Part 1 post. Really?, is the inability to help the fallen be a cause for envy?) and in turn make you read thus wasting your valuable time in which you could perhaps have saved a million ladies from getting buried in pits/tunnels/ditches/manholes is that I am a simple man.

(Yes. I know that I have set the bar of helpfulness to a whole new level by including the word ‘manhole’.)

I am a simple man. And simple men solve the problems of their life using simple equations. We are that breed of people who are the sole cause for the optimism of scientists who claim that they can build computers that are as powerful as a human’s brain.

My brain is organized like a database. I have grouped the data in tables, and have taken pains to ignore slight differences between similar types of data, using a process called homogenization. I have a set of templates stored within myself and everything in this world, except for Rajanikanth and Chuck Norris of course, falls in one of these templates.
I harbor a lot of pre-conceived notions which helps me out a great deal because I can take non critical decisions like selecting which stranger to sit next to in the bus.

My template matching system says that I have to assume every foreigner walking on the streets of Udupi to have a stash of marijuana waiting to be ‘smoked up’. It also says that if I am in a closed room with a bunch of people and my wallet gets stolen, I should start suspecting the most poorly clad person as the culprit.

Of course, the number of tables in the database varies from person to person. The lesser the number of tables, the more “narrow minded” he becomes. For example, a person with very less number of tables would instantly brand anyone with a turban and a beard as a terrorist, while a ‘complex’ person, who would have an almost infinitely large number of tables, would still maintain that the rest of the world is targeting an innocent person, even if the man possesses a turban, beard and in addition to that a bomb and some scary looking chemicals and raccoons.

Wait a minute. I was of course being sarcastic. I don’t really look at every foreigner here as a hippie. I don’t think much about selecting the stranger to sit next to in the bus. (I prefer positional convenience over social proprietary). I pride myself as a rationalist.(Do I?). However, I am still a simple man. Like we all are. All of us are. We use a lot of generalization techniques to simplify out day to day decision making tasks. Let me explain one that I experienced.

It was the time after Second P.U. that everyone says is the most crucial days of your life. While some students pack off to coaching centers so that they can ‘get a hang’ of the first semester syllabus, others decide to spend their last days with their P.U friends before they get separated for four years, after which everyone ends up working in Infosys.

I, in the meanwhile had made a lot of friends at the CET counseling centre (Yes!). We had really hit it off, partly due to the fact that we were going to end up in the same college (No, Not P.A). We used to meet up more regularly than parliament, and mind you, the parliament session was going on back then.

One particular day, some of them had come to Mangalore and we were loafing around near the Empire Mall bus stop, when a girl who was a close friend of theirs passed by and stopped to talk to us. The mandatory introductions then occurred, as one of my friends introduced me to her. I removed my hand from my pocket and offered it to her.
She. Wait. Let me take it to the next paragraph for more dramatic effect.

She extended both of her hands. Raised them. Folded them. The Big Indian Namaste. A huge roar of laughter engulfed my ears. There were 8 pairs of eyes watching keenly to see what my next move was. A handshake snubbed me was visibly hurt/upset/embarrassed/shocked/humiliated/gutted/heart-wrenched/suicidal (Ok,not the last one). Of course, I was a big loser back then, still basking in my adolescence. However, now I am currently a proud owner of the Null emotion, which means that no hand-shakes = Null emotion. Total indifference.

But 4 years ago, that was a major thing in my insignificant life. I was standing there with one of my hands outstretched, like they do in those P.T drill or whatever term you choose to call that futile exercise practiced by millions of children at the school assembly every day. I made a decision then. No more handshakes with females. Of course I would be deprived of some social customs and vice versa, but then I wouldn’t like to get slapped on the face just the day before I have a Software Engineering Exam. (Surprised? That is called getting to the point. Actually, I just got tired of writing).

Just on the past evidence of 2 factors made me take the drastic decision of denying the opportunity of shaking my hands with any female.

1. That most of the people who denied and showed Bharatiya Sanskar were females
2. That most of the people who accepted handshakes were men.

Now, based on these two simple facts, I came to the conclusion that it is safer for me to offer handshakes to men without facing the risk of being snubbed.
I also came to the conclusion that there is a higher probability of a handshake offer being rejected in case of women.

So, was my action justified? For those who disagree, please go a few paras above and look at the variety of emotions running around in my head.
Now, was my action justified?

Let’s go right to the point. The point I wanted to make for which I divulged quite a few incidents of mine and my friend’s past.

Airport Security. Anyone who is not ‘White’ is usually stopped as part of a “random check”. The “randomly checked” people complaining of racism. Prime ministers and Presidents holding talks about this issue. Politically correct statements released.

Two Factors.

1. Most of the people involved in Terrorism in the United States are not Caucasians
2. Very less number of Caucasians have been involved in terrorist activities.

Isn’t the random checking of Indians/Pakistanis justified?

The only problem I got with the system is that it shouldn’t be called ‘random’. Please don’t change the meaning of the word and cause reprints of the dictionary.
Come up front and tell that you would like to conduct additional checking for every non-White.

And to the Indian who got a problem with this. If you have a problem, feel free to stay in your ‘home country’. Yeah, that’s about it. A simple solution.

P.S: Of course, I offer handshakes to everyone now, regardless of what sex they belong to.
I don’t mind if anyone doesn’t return it, except that I find it amusing now.
I was too immature back then, but that is what adolescence is all about :-}