Human supremacy theory - nonsenseablity guaranteed

Sociologists, anthropologists and behavioural scientists(trust me, there exists one such group of people) always debated on whether humans are any different from rest of the animal kingdom, or are we just a bunch of bespectacled baboons. In my view, we are different. Now if you are into too much of biology and stuff and argue “I would have agreed if you and a rat had two different set of holes to eat and expel. We are no different you blockhead!”, its a good start because we now have something to debate on. And let me begin while you sit back, relax and enjoy the futile weekend hours reading this(frankly, if you weren’t my valuable reader, my question would have been, “seriously, don’t you have anything better to do?”) . Ok, back to the topic, I was trying to tell that we are significantly different from any other living being, no matter how you argue that we all share exactly the same basic biological needs of consumption and production of other living things and ultimately act as bacterial breeding grounds. Below are few of my postulates towards this human superiority theory, backed with strong scientific evidences obtained through years of research done by just living in this world.

In my view, the biggest factor that differentiates humans from other species is our ability to behave as utter idiots in spite of having a fairly good adaptation - a decent sized brain - that could be used rationally. For example, I’m sure a troop of chimps will chase away the alpha if he was found not fit for leading and is making a living by stealing others’ food. We on the other hand choose alphas with the said ‘qualities’ to lead us; all the time. Only a human leader can face both bribery, murder charges yet get elected by his fellow beings so that he can “serve” them. The point is, every species is good in using its adaptation for its own benefit, but we often don’t.

Lets look at another example. A rodent will never gnaw away the log on which it is floating while being washed away in a flood, because it knows the log is it’s only hope of survival and one shouldn’t be cutting down the branch he/she is sitting on. Look at us, we invest heavily in doing environmental studies and things like that, live for months together in the most extreme conditions like the outer space, polar regions etc studying how human actions are destroying the climatic conditions of our planet. Yet we cut down trees, build highways, chemical factories, nuclear plants and ultimately lit up our own bottoms in that process.

My third reason is this -  have you noticed people in villages keeping a pair of crow wings on a pole to scare away other crows from eating the grains up ? The psychology is that crows with a brain(however tiny that is) understand what their fate would be if they do the same mistake again. What about us? we hang many gruesome murders, rapists and publicize that news all over. Yet the number of murderers and rapists is increasing, not decreasing.

As I mentioned earlier in this era of TV experts, 3 arguments is a good enough number to conclude that a theory is correct, no matter whether there are 3000 other arguments against it. On a second thought, there are 5 arguments here in fact, 4th that I didn’t have the brain levels to think that somebody will actually read this, and even if they read it, will agree with me. 5th one of course is that inspite of having a hundred other good things to do, you spent time reading such nonsense.  Believe me, none of this will not happen in the animal world.

Reminiscence - man’s best friend on a lazy sunday(after rum I mean)

Here we are, in the month of June that astronomically speaking is the month when planetary orientations and shifts of planet earth brings us monsoon, which is the second most important factor deciding the economic health of our nation. First one of course is black money as you thought rightly . Now that we in this country cannot academically or legally consider astronomy and astrology different, I must also mention a few words astrologically as well. This month Jupiter who is the luck and gift giver is leaving Gemini for the next couple of decades and can have a significant impact on all you Geminians economically and psychically. People born in other zodiacs are not to be worried that much, unless they have school going children. Now those of us with kids or had been kids themselves in the past know how significant a month June is for parents and school going children. Parents because time has come for them to put in practice what they had been mentally and physically preparing for, how to transport to the bus stop a consignment that includes but not limited to kids, bags, lunch boxes, umbrellas and bizarre thermocol constructs that the school authorities for some reason think makes children more creative. Children are thrilled because they now get the weird creatures they had been watching in tv on their school bags, lunch boxes and water bottles as well;for a premium though.

Thoughts on school reopening forces me to take a walk down my memory lane, 3 decades into the past - to my school days. Unlike today’s elite city schools that are mainly owned by well qualified and innovative thinking private managements that include pawnbrokers, paan-wallahs and real-estate barons, our school was run by the state  government; and when I say “run by” , its just a decorative statement, the correct wording will be “slacked by”. School reopening for us was like an astrologically significant date. Meaning, of no particular significance. Except that we now get to play with more friends compared to vacation time. This was mainly because our school never closed to be reopened, thanks to the open door policy or rather the no-door policy that was followed our management(the mighty state in this case), aimed at facilitating the free in and outflow of children during school hours.and cattle during the rest of the year.

Usually school reopening is the time when kids get new textbooks and notebooks, but for us, it didn't make any economic sense to ‘invest’ money in buying the new textbooks with our parents’ hard earned money, that too by standing in long queues in front of the school store during monsoon mornings wasting valuable time as well, that could be used for  more constructive activities like catapulting. Hence we diverted funds allocated under textbook schemes  towards buying more fundamentally strong commodities such as candies and ice creams. Not that this was a risk-free investment, many of us underwent severe audits and penal actions for this from our controllers and auditor generals at home, but ultimately we stood by our stands and won many accolades for this strategic fund management, primarily from our friends as the acquired commodities were distributed among them as well and secondarily from the vendors in the schools periphery who gave some of us privileged customer status and issued occasional gift vouchers that could be instantly redeemed unlike those given by super stores these days that can never be redeemed, meeting all the conditions that apply. We then borrowed textbooks of our seniors for day to day use. Those books were like gods for us, as most of them had no beginning and end.

Teaching now has become yet another profession that is purely judged by results, loyalty to management etc. But back in the village we had a very strong guru-shishya bond between us and our teachers. We both worked towards one single goal, that was the transfer of the teachers to their hometowns from our remote Western Ghat village that offered very harsh conditions in winter and monsoon which together formed about 364 days of the year. Teachers attempted through influencing the education department authorities and we by praying to gods in charge of education in our respective religions. Those with single gods submitted the cases via saints and prophets. We weren't rich enough to hire a God man or woman on our side unfortunately. Yet most of the time we succeeded and it took the government mostly months together to replace teachers, which meant more playtime for us.

If I recollect correctly, it was Victor Hugo who said "He who opens a school door, closes a prison". In our case this was somewhat true, with a slight change though - "He who opens the school door, closes in on a prison". As we were a government school, we were also obliged to follow the government’s founding principles, hence had school parliament and politically backed school elections that mostly concluded in having a bunch of high-school boys ending up in hospitals, being stabbed by compasses and dividers. Such incidents were so frequent that the Headmaster was forced to introduce an Instrument Box Control bill which was rejected by mathematics teachers, believed to be backed by instrument box manufacturers and suppliers. Though I was an insider of the “think-tank” of a particular political outfit’s school unit, I preferred to be inside a water-tank in the school premises after such outbreaks happened, this was mainly because our party believed in nonviolence and peace when comes to dealing with physically superior individuals.

I will stop there, as too much reminiscences can expose a lot more of one’s weaknesses and darker past. But one thing I can tell for sure about my school days is this -  No matter whatever made parents of some of us who formed the then educated middle class of the village send us to the government school instead of an English medium school, my school days provided me some of the biggest learning in life. Though lucky enough not to experience myself, I now know what is the meaning of hunger, what is the worth of a slate pencil piece and how does it feel to live with a single pair of clothes an entire year. Today when I drive past my school on my visits to the village and see the concrete buildings that have come up in place of our thatch sheds, a well walled school compound, playgrounds and the “Government Higher Secondary School” board, I wonder what is the one thing that kids today there would be missing that we enjoyed during our days. And I think its nothing but the pleasure that you can bring to a child’s face by letting him use an entire school backyard as lavatory is unmatched. 

public static void culturalHeritage(Foolish args[]){ }

Sometimes I think scholars acquiring too much knowledge is also not good, like too much money in the hands of IPL stakeholders; they get carried away(In IPLs case, the money gets carried away as well). I just concluded reading a book on modern India and how we reached here etc by a very knowledgeable and well respected author. At one place he makes a remark which somewhat meant that Indians are good software developers today because of the “rich cultural heritage” of ours that made us good problem solvers. Now some of you might call it a joke, but I won't because then I will be disrespecting the jokers. To me, if this is true, Sillicon Valley would have been an Indus Valley in the past, and The Greeks would have shredded their R and be The Geeks by now. And as far as I know the ancient dwellers of California(coincidentally called Indians) built no cities, did no agriculture but lived like nomads and I’m yet to come across Greek equivalents of TCS or Infosys. But now that I’m stupid enough to question eminent historians, I’m obliged to give some answer on what I think makes us good software professionals, however absurd that argument may be.

But before I begin my alternative theory, I must ask one question, (primarily to myself) that “Since when are Indians GOOD software engineers, btw?”. We weren't’ at least till I left office last night. I mean we haven't conceived anything that is capable of replacing Unix, MS Windows, SAP,  Google or FaceBook as of last evening. Now your question to me would be "Moron, who do you think wrote all those code behind the said software products?", to which my answer would be that we generally don't give the credit of creating Taj Mahal to the masons who put the stones together but to Ahmad Lahauri(or whoever the chief architect was) and Shah Jahan. Ok, back to the topic - yet its a reality that there are more Indian software professionals than anybody else in the world, hence it still needs some explanation, unless you start an argument that “There are more Indian laborers in the Middle-East than anybody else, is that also due to the said rich heritage?”, in which case I will be forced to remind you not to bring in the poor when we are talking big time on rich cultural heritage and stuff. 

My reason number one for more Indians in the software world than anybody else - There are more Indians than anybody else; at least in the English speaking world. Now I don’t know the cultural heritage played a role in producing us in large numbers, but common sense tells me that it shouldn’t have. Those who know basic economics will know that supply and demand are two sides of the same double edged sword. Next, reason number two - I would give the credit not to the ancient scholars and gurus but your parents and my parents; the yesterday’s middle-class that included teachers, bank employees, small town merchants, government officials etc who insisted their children go to school, get English educated(and not Sanskrit and astrology as ancient scholars and their modern day scholarly avatars would recommend) , become engineers and ultimately get out of their head and stand on our own shoes(preferably a Nike or Adidas one). 

Now to my third reason - those knowing basic human behaviour will know the meaning of “bandwagon effect”. If somebody take a survey among software developers from India on how many of them turned to software development because their college senior / neighbour / friend / cousin who is now a ‘green card holder’ influenced them, I’m sure they will find that its a much bigger number than those who pursued it because they come from a rich cultural background. Now if this is not a good enough reason and if we still stick to the rich heritage reasoning, I would say then the rich heritage is also the reason why there are a large number of Marwari tradesmen from Rajastan in south India, and also why there is a large number of nursing professionals from central Travencore Christian community.

Now that three arguments is a good enough number to start a debate on a topic, I’ll stop there and let you make your conclusions on whether it was worth reading some random aahoo bitching against eminent historians with pathetic anecdotal evidences or continue to agree with the scholars that there is something called rich cultural heritage that makes us the best human beings that ever walked on this planet - mostly barefoot, as the rich cultural heritage hasn't been very successful in making footwear affordable to most of us; yet.

Living the middle-class dream(unisexually)

If there is one thing that economists in this country - irrespective of their Punjabi or Bengali origin - agree is that the biggest beneficiaries of economic liberalization in India is what they call it’s neo-middle class(most of them will be labelled Richie Richardsons instead if the economists know what poverty in this country means), primarily because there is a considerable improvement in their vocabulary of luxury doodads. They now know what Fajitas, Shiraz and Tommy Hilfiger are. This post is on my first-in-life exposure to one such luxury term in the neo-middle class dictionary, caused purely by necessity, the mother of all vices.

Though I economically belong to the weaker sections of the society towards month ends, rest of the year I usually am part of the growing, all powerful Indian middle-class capable of consuming anything modish that comes their way. This brings me the obligation to pay occasional visits to such places as theme restaurants, ‘sports bars’(what an oxymoron) and 'malls'. However, one middle-class necessity that I never longed to enjoy was whatever are the services provided by a 'Unisex Salon and Spa'. From the time I came across this term, I developed some sort of prejudice towards them, mainly attributed to the last three letters of the first word being too suggestive, and also the chances that a woman might be at my service. I'm very uncomfortable when subjecting my body/parts of it for examination/treatment by a woman, be it a physician, dentist or hairdresser. Primarily because of a very masculine trait in me - fear. I'm afraid of the attempted molestation charges I could face if a hand/leg/look of me accidentally come in contact with the lady, even if its due to a reflex action towards a falling syringe or scissors. Reflex actions are not constitutionally legal yet I presume(so be it, desperadoes will otherwise reflect many more women and children to death). Moreover, I was very happy with my barbers so far.

But couple of months back things changed. My regular barber moved out of my locality. Though I'm not a hypochondriac by any standards, the alternate barber shops I explored made me uncomfortable, especially with the wrapping clothes they (re)used and their eyes constantly glued to the third grade flesh-throwing movie songs  running on a TV on the exactly opposite wall. I was worried whether I'll come out with some infectious disease or an ear lesser. After consulting many of my relatively well-heeled, high-heeled acquaintance who assured me of the "an-eye-for-an-eye, a man-for-a-man" policy followed at a nearby ‘unisex salon’, I decided to get a haircut there last weekend. Though set out confidently like a victorious Viking, as I approached the salon I was developing some sort of fear that was roughly comparable to a victorious Viking returning home forgetting the tea bags he was asked to bring his way back. But I managed to muster enough courage, briskly opened the salon door and peeked my head in.

The first sight that caught my attention was two relatively stylish women seated on a large black sofa, one reading an older edition of Vogue(I’m nearly confident it was an younger looking Gwyneth Paltrow on the cover). Their upmarket, minimalistic attire kind of made my fears worse. Now I was in a condition similar to that of the prevailing socio-economic situation in our country, with my all powerful head controlling me already in the cool, plush interiors of the salon like the rich and ruling class of our country, while the legs and the rest of the body that should accelerate my movement/progress still out in the scorching May sun like the rest of our poor and needy population. Then suddenly from nowhere a corporate looking lady appeared and posted that all inviting question to me, “How may I assist you sir?”. Now that put me into more familiar and relaxing grounds. As a customer of new generation banks, her attire and question put me feel very much in familiar territory. Yet I asked such an idiotic question that even the lady who was trained to face all sorts of blockheads as a beauty salon staffer had serious difficulty in controlling from bursting out. My question was “Do you do haircut here?”. Still without a trace of sarcasm, she smiled and replied “Yes sir, we do”, and by then I had abandoned my nationalistic posture and was fully inside the salon, but careful not to look left or right so as not to come across scenes that might force me to retract. Then from behind a curtain emerged a man in some sort of a barber’s uniform, with, again an all inviting smile on his face. Now seeing another fellow man in a wilderness of any kind is the most consolatory thing, yet this guy made my anguish worse. His gestures and speech resembled some kind of a gender-neutralized(or is this the 'Unisex' they meant?) person than a man or woman. Now that I was inside and expressed my wish, there was no looking back.  I got escorted by the man-in-charge-of-me to a high chair, to my dismay, right against the sofa-settled, Vogue reading ladies. Somehow I got settled on the char careful not to look too much into the mirror, when something unthinkable happened.

Suddenly out of nowhere a blond supermodel came out and embraced me, or so I thought for a while. It took me some time to realize that it was a wrapping cloth with a full-size photo of a Western model that the man-in-charge  put around me. Now I’m in a  singularly embarrassing situation, sitting opposite a mirror, ‘wearing’ a super model in bare minimum clothing, with two women right behind; I nearly have nowhere to look at now. By then the man-in-charge started his work, with a statement of “Sir, you should dye your hair, its too gray for your age”(He already has my birth certificate!). By now my ego came alive and told me not to let him dominate whatever be the circumstances are, so I  shot a question back “What about Richard Gere, George Clooney and..” to which the Vogue woman (pretending to be still reading) replied through telepathy “..and you Mr.Clowny?”. The man smiled, and started doing his job. I must admit he did a far better job than my usual barber(middle-class means class I now realize).

Nearing completion of the haircut, he posted another abstruse enquiry “What else can I do for you, Sir?” which contextually (I assume) means more cosmetologically middle-class things such as plucking, pricking etc than a (cheap) haircut. I politely replied “Nothing more, thanks”. For a moment an expression flashed on his otherwise smiling face, which I felt was more barbarian than barberish. By then the supermodel and the Vogue women had already disappeared from the scene, and only now that I got some courage to look around, and saw for the first time in my life what goes on inside a unisex saloon. I never realized it will be this gruesome a seen. There were bodies of men and women thrown all around, with their faces, hair deformed with people in long black-clothes ‘working’ on them with lethal weapons such as scissors, knives and blades in relatively dim light with some weird sound all around which I guess is from a newly released Bollywood striptease album. The whole ambiance reminded me of a scene from Macbeth, where the three witches rounding about cauldrons singing “..by the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes. Open, locks, Whoever knocks!”, to which I had actually entered like an agitated Macbeth about half hour ago!. Now all I wanted was to get out, so I walked to the cash counter, paid for the service and came out, into the hot sun, to live my rest of the weekend’s middle-class dreams..

Its time to return..

I left penning my thoughts on social injustice prevailing in the post-liberalization India through this blog a couple of years ago under unavoidable circumstances such as subscription to I.P TV and lack of readership. And I never felt the urge to come back here and write my strong reactions on the abominable treatment of the poor and needy of the country, primarily because by then we had strong AAAs or Aam-Aadmi-Aurat coalitions formed throughout the country to fight against everything evil, be it kleptocracy, Masculinism or electricity generation. I thought its a well deserved break for concerned social-networkists like me, now that social responsibility is in the safe hands of AAA groups. But now, things are starting to look murkier as AAAs are getting split left-right and center, with Aams being injected with carbides and sold in super markets, Aadmi busy raping his children and sisters and Aurat going on summer vacation to stand in water tanker queues, its time we social-networkers rearm ourselves with the cyberweapons we surrendered long back and come forward to express our solidarity to the weaker sections of our society like IPL players and  gun-toting Bollywood stars.

As an ardent cricket lover, this post-AAA post is in the name of all those Cricket fans like me out there who just cannot see our favourite game being subjected to television debates to this extend. 16th May 2013 is a day that we Indian Cricket fans will never forget as one of the blackest days of the year(apart from the other 364 power-cut days), because that's the day we woke up(by afternoon that is) to the shocking news of IPL spot fixing scandal and arrests of few of our favourite players. We are shocked primarily because we came to know that in our otherwise free country there exists such a vigilant and efficient police force like the Delhi police whose hawk-eyes and dolphin-ears could reach anywhere, and can take our freedom (that we primarily enjoyed hitherto for raping, mugging or even relieving ourselves in public places) away any moment. We also shockingly realized that how much more entertaining and satisfactory it would have been, had we been spot-fixing on the Cricket matches and not idiotically watching it for more than a quarter of a century. By now we could have made enough money to become IPL chairmans, hired cheer leaders and sought asylum in richer countries.

Now to all those Cricket hating, supercilious, unpatriotic men and women out there who are giving us that pity yet seemingly pompous look, we have only one thing to say, this is just a temporary descent for Cricket, the greatest games ever invented by humankind(and if its football to you, we say the same to you; in plural),will come back to its glorious days soon. We fans consider these incidents like a deciduous plant going through  shedding of dying leaves, only to be clothed with better ones come spring (or the next IPL season whichever is the latest) . Let me assure you fellow Cricket fans, dont be disappointed, if Cricket is our religion and D-Co is our angels, it will come out of all these, in a much better form than any of our current players, in a much better shape than any of our sponsors-cum-cheerleaders and with much better signaling techniques than mucus capped kerchiefs. Keep watching!

Business ideas

Businesses establishments that I've recently observed have come up in my neighbourhood

* A 'unisex spa and salon' - A kinky enough name to make any homo sapiens take an evolutionary downgrading and become homo erectus.

* A 'dental spa' - Makes me think what exactly is a Spa anyway?

* A restaurant named 'Yoras'!, just kidding, it was 'Mayas' in fact.

Land of opportunities

When experts say India has become a land of opportunities, I totally agree with them. You have plenty of opportunities here now - to get beaten up by some or other regio-religio-linguistic-chauvinists.

Points to ponder

* Today's breaking news - No flights delayed due to fog at Delhi airport

* New movie - 'Karthik Calling Karthik' - I'm confused. Shouldnt it be Kalling?

Global warming - hoax/nohoax

Like any other human earth-dweller with below average level of knowledge on the subject, I always wondered what if the whole climate change thing is a hoax.

In This Thomas Friedman column I found the answer, quoting the most important paragraph from the article here,

"If we prepare for climate change by building a clean-power economy, but climate change turns out to be a hoax, what would be the result? Well, during a transition period, we would have higher energy prices. But gradually we would be driving battery-powered electric cars and powering more and more of our homes and factories with wind, solar, nuclear and second-generation biofuels. We would be much less dependent on oil dictators who have drawn a bull’s-eye on our backs; our trade deficit would improve; the dollar would strengthen; and the air we breathe would be cleaner. In short, as a country, we would be stronger, more innovative and more energy independent"

Food for thought

Thought of the day - Whoever framed the proverb ‘an idle mind is devils workshop’ is a corporate guy, who else can know both about idle minds as well as what goes on in workshops for devils.

Business idea of the day – If you know how to make noise by pulling a steel string – Start guitar classes for corporate guys.

Travel tip of the day – Kingfisher airlines, also you will know whether you are suffering from Stockholm syndrome