Hello!

Aug 2022

Easwar and his wife, Padma were always disturbed nowadays. Their younger son, who lives abroad had found a girl of his choice and married her. However, the elder son, Prateek who lives in Singapore was very reluctant to either accept an arranged alliance or find a girl of his choice. Inspite of repeated attempts by Padma to convince Prateek, she had failed. The chap was adamant and did not heed his mother's entreaties, emotional blackmail, or advice on why marrying is beneficial. Easwar was nonchalant, at least outwardly. What went on in his mind, no one would know since he rarely if ever shared his deepest thoughts.

 

Easwar woke up from his sleep with a start. Though his dreams rarely if ever disturbed him or excited him, today he was thinking about that long after he had woken up. In fact while he brushed his teeth and while having his morning dose of coffee, the last part of his dream did come up in his thoughts. Padma enquired about it, but Easwar shrugged it off as nothing of concern. Padma knew Easwar enough not to probe further and that her husband would inform her in his own time.

 

In the dream Easwar was with his friends while someone informed him to contact a certain mobile number. He tried noting down the number on the newspaper lying nearby, but somehow he couldn't write down the numbers. He remembered the number, but mysteriously he didn't realize that he could have as well noted down that number directly onto his mobile! Dreams are distinctly different from reality and many things that we do logically while awake, desert us in our dreams.

 

Anyway, back to reality. Easwar decided that he would try and call the number to see if someone answered the phone. It was a spur of the moment thought and though he didn't believe in doing things at the spur of the moment, today he did call! Not from his mobile number though. Prateek had an India number that he often used when he visited India. Easwar decided to take that phone and dialled the number from memory (hoping that the number wouldn't be answered, or that he wouldn't be dismissed by the recipient of the call as a spammer).

 

"Hello! Is this Prateek?" A lady's voice. 

"Hello". Easwar had to respond. How did the lady know that the number was Prateek's? What was the probability that the phone number that came to him in his dream was actually that of a person and that Easwar, after waking up, would use Prateek's phone to call the number and a lady would recognise the number to be Prateek's? This baffled Easwar. "No, I am Easwar, Prateek's father here."

 

"Hello uncle! How are you doing? I am Anusha, Prateek's classmate from RV College. I remember you from the time you came for our annual day about 10 years ago. Prateek introduced me and a few others to you and aunty. How are you and aunty doing? I hope all is well at your end and Prateek is fine too." The concern in Anusha's voice was genuine and Easwar realized that probably she was also a bit worried about Prateek.

 

"All is well Anusha. Nothing to worry." Now for some face-saving exercise. Needed since he was calling from Prateek's phone and the number that came to him in his dream was an actual number and the girl on the other side happened to be Prateek's classmate also! "I think I have a 'wrong number' here. I wanted to call someone, but not from my phone. I think I have mis-dialled one or more digits here. Coincidentally, the call went to you and you seem to know Prateek also! How are you doing? Are you in touch with Prateek?" It was obvious that Prateek hadn't saved Anusha's number on his phone and Easwar realized that Anusha would have known that immediately.

 

"Coincidence? Yes, uncle it is. I am not in touch with Prateek. We did keep in touch briefly after graduating, but that was very brief. I do not even know where he was till I got this call and checked his profile on LinkedIn. He lives in Singapore, I see."

 

What a quick search by her while she was on a call with Easwar. These young generation people know and do things so fast. Though he had seen Prateek and his younger son do similar things, it never ceased to amaze Easwar that kids nowadays seemed to have ten hands and as many eyes and brains!! What is that called? Time sharing? No, time sharing is something else. Ha yes! Multi-tasking.

 

"Ok Anusha. Sorry if I have disturbed you. I will let Prateek know about you and about this call."

 

"Thanks uncle."

 

Sep 2023

 

Padma was excited. There was a call from Prateek from the airport saying that he was about to board a flight to Chennai and would be home for lunch. Padma got busy preparing dishes that she knew Prateek liked. Further attempts over the last year to convince Prateek to marry were met with cold stares, disconnection of calls, or just plain old fashioned disdain. He always said he would let us know when he was ready. Easwar felt that certain prospective girls would be a suitable match for Prateek, but that chap was elusive. 

 

"Hi pa! How are you?" Brief hug. He went to the kitchen where Padma was busy and hugged her tightly and for about 2 minutes. Easwar realized the bonds between children and their mother was much stronger than the bonds between children and father. Would daughters be different? He couldn't know since he had two sons only!

 

Padma asked the obvious question once lunch was over. "Enna da? When are you going to tell us about your readiness for marriage?"

 

"Wait ma."

 

The door bell rang. "Who could be at the door", thought Easwar. He went and opened the door. There was a well dressed lady there.

 

"Hello uncle! I am Anusha."

 

 

Aliens? Or time travellers

The recent spate of news items appearing in newspapers and visual media regarding sightings of drones, fast moving objects, UFOs over the skies of New Jersey, New York and other cities in the USA have rekindled the debate about alien visitations. This 'conspiracy' has been raging for many decades since the early sightings of UFOs over our world. Many believe that these are living beings from some far off galaxy who periodically visit our Earth to watch over us (since there has been no information of any confrontation with any such UFO so far). 

In popular culture many movie makers have made interesting movies on this subject with their own stories - most basing their story on major confrontation with the human race, strangely in the English language movies almost always in the USA! Others have made the aliens benign and friendly with their approach more to study our civilisation rather than thinking of subjugating us or conquering us.

Today while sitting to pray, I suddenly had an epiphany. I thought what if these sightings of UFOs actually are nothing but our own human beings from a distant future with advanced technology of time travel. That thought actually is nothing new, I realize through a simple google search. In fact quite a few scientists share this thought too and hypothesize it. Many are skeptical though and contend that time travel is 'physically impossible'!

Pentagon logs 757 cases

Wikipedia too contains a detailed page on time traveler-UFO hypothesis and the following page contains some discussion on the same. Wikipedia page on UFO-Time Traveller

Conspiracy theory or plain hypothesizing a possibility....I believe many scientific advancements have happened due to such hypothesizing and substituting the question "how" with "why not"! Being a bit more practical in these matters, I think we are at the moment only at the 'loud thinking' stage without any means to scientifically prove that time travel is possible.

However, by suspending belief and thinking further, how about the following:

• Ramanujan actually was a being from the future who knew so much about the number theory that he wrote them down for us to investigate further!
• Aryabhatta and Brahmagupta were visitors from the future who wrote down their scientific theories to educate us humans of the early millenium.

One could hypothesize further in similar manner to marvel at the geniuses that we had!

What do you think?

 

Disclaimer:  I am neither an alien, nor a time-traveller, but how much fun would it be to be one!

 

TIME

 

Time is an illusion. The distinction between the past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.  (Albert Einstein). That's a philosophical way to look at time from the relativistic perspective. For us humans who interact with other species on this Earth, that statement may not find much value. At least not on a day to day basis, especially when you are a student and expected to come to class on time; attend your work at the workplace by punching your card; or take a flight or train. Then the concept of time is the same across all the people who matter. We would look foolish if we were to quote Einstein to the person at the check in counter. She is likely to just point us towards the window to show our aircraft pulling out of the gate and say, "Well, that is the illusion of time for you".

Long ago, probably about 42 years ago, when I was in National Productivity Council posted to Hyderabad (this office was opened only about 1 or 2 years ago), our Director had come from Chennai to meet some industry heads looking for some assignments - consultancy or training. I was a junior and was with a senior consultant from Hyderabad office. We were waiting in the reception area since the Factory Manager was on his 'rounds'. We had already fixed up an appointment with his secretary. We waited for about an hour, but the Factory Manager was still on his rounds. We enquired if he would meet us. I was getting impatient and so was my colleague. However, the Director from Chennai was quite unmoved. He said we had gone there for seeking some work and the Factory Manager was not obliged to meet us as much as we were in need of meeting him and convincing him to give us some work! Patience.

Japanese are sticklers for punctuality and it is not a tall tale that the Japanese trains are known to be so punctual that you can set your watch by the train pulling into the station or pulling out of it. It takes a lot of effort for all concerned to be able to ensure these levels of punctuality and precision. We Indians are known to stick to IST (some derisively say that it stands for Indian Stretchable Time) and our clocks are not aligned with one another. Take the case of the three clocks in our home. At the moment each clock is showing the following time:

The bedroom clock : 1:40 pm

The hall clock: 1:46 pm

The clock in this room: 1:45 pm

How can I expect to stick to time with these clocks in our house. I do try and set them all to show one time, and I do this once in a while, but I think my clocks are inspired by some as yet unknown phenomena. The clock in this room sits on top of my professional book shelf that contains books on Quality and Six Sigma in addition to a few on management. The one in the hall is probably showing the correct time for the guests to know when they should depart for their home, especially since they shouldn't be blaming me for some problem that they may face if they went late or early from my home! The clock in my bedroom sits on the bookshelf containing fiction, some science fiction, and some history books too thrown in. I am sure that clock is influenced by Einstein and that is why it is running slow. The matter of when I bought that clock, and whether it is digital or analog; whether it is a reputed brand or a local clock is just nitpicking. I am convinced that Einstein has played a part in clocks in different rooms showing different time.

Look at the traffic scene in some major metros in India. There have been newspaper articles and messages on X mentioning in particular about Bengaluru that it has taken some people about 2 hours to travel a distance that should only take 15 minutes. Let us put ourselves in the shoes of one of the drivers in a car in that traffic in Bangalore. S/he has been at the same place on the road for a good 15 minutes. That is 15 minutes for me sitting in Chennai at home; but for them in the car in Bengaluru time and space have stood still. No wonder Bengaluru is the 'science capital of India'. 

Preserving documents

How do we know about the various dynasties that ruled over India many centuries ago? How do we know of our ancient history? Archaeological finds are a great clue; so are the structures built by the kings and queens during their reign. But if their names and their regnal periods weren't documented in some form, we wouldn't know about them. Some or many accounts of our glorious history have been 'documented' through oral traditions that have been preserved through the 'guru-shishya' parampara that was the norm. Many kings, especially Emperor Ashoka ensured that his commands were cut into rocks at various places across his kingdom. God knows how many rocks were destroyed over the years, but what remains is still enough to ensure that we know a lot about the Emperor. Probably he was among the early rulers to have multiple copies of his edicts across his empire, so that even if some 'copies' got destroyed or damaged, whatever remained would still give a glimpse into his rule. Emperor Ashoka, the first 'rock-copier'?

Paper came later and then the printing press. That revolutionized the writing and making multiple copies of events for posterity. The documents that we know as medieval history. However, the inherent nature of paper is that it is difficult to preserve it for long and it deteriorates. Compare that to the rock cut edicts to see which is more permanent!

Modern days have electronic means of documentation. This brings a new challenge. Can you access any old document or report that you may have written in electronic format on your old computer (PC XT or PC AT) using a 'primitive' Word software on your Apple Mac or Windows Word 2021? Proprietary software has its benefits, but also challenges in ensuring that important documents can be archived for posterity and accessed successfully decades later.

An article that caught my eye earlier today reminded me of this conundrum. You can read the article How to properly archive your digital files. We cannot be like Emperor Ashoka and chisel our documents on rocks, nor can we ensure longevity of our documents if we retain them in paper format. So what then should we do? Just read the article and follow the advise of the expert here.

During the pandemic year (2020), when I had nowhere to go and nothing worthwhile to do, I looked at all the old photo albums that I had collected over the years. The albums that 'documented' in pictorial form the 'history' of my family. I thought that I could use the time productively by scanning all the photos - some from the early days of my father, and a few of his wedding (that was in 1946, by the way). So I scanned about 1000 photos, categorized them into digital albums, and saved them in Google Photos which hopefully is open source and won't be impossible to open a few decades from now by my grandchildren and great grandchildren (my sons, Anirudh, Arvindh, and Sairam may please note!). If they are interested, that is!

 

Four Years on....

 

I came to Chennai in March, 2020. It is now 4 years since I settled in the city that was my home at various periods of time in my life. Initially from 1974 to 1977, while I studied for my under-graduation in Science from D. G. Vaishnav College, Arumbakkam. Then from 1981-82, while I did my post-graduation in Industrial Engineering from National Productivity Council's training institute in Kilpauk, Chennai. Though to be fair, I was in Chennai only for 15 months of those two years; the balance 9 months I spent in Bhopal where I was posted at the Regional Directorate there as a trainee. After joining NPC, I was posted to Hyderabad and I requested for a transfer to Chennai in 1986. So from 1986 to 1995, my base was in Chennai, but since the job required long absences due to consultancy assignments I used to be away from Chennai for months or weeks at a time. Anyway, home was Chennai. In 1996 I shifted my family to Bangalore and my home was there; though again my work would take me to different locations around India. Be that as it may, in 2019, my wife and I decided that we need to now come to our own flat in Chennai, where we hadn't lived at all since we bought it back in 1993. That's how after nearly 26 years, we moved to Chennai and now it is 4 years since we shifted home. Hopefully this would be my last 'shift'.

Even during the periods when I was away from Chennai, my parents, my sisters and other relatives continued to be in Chennai and that brought our family to this city quite regularly. I have seen the city grow (whether this is appropriate or not, it has definitely grown in population and area) over the last nearly 50 years since I came to Chennai as a young adult.

There are many things to like about this city; and many areas where the local government could do more to make our lives livable. This is also true of all cities in India, definitely; but could also be true of all cities around the world. One of the most important aspects that the local governments could do for major cities in India is lay decent pavements/sidewalks for people to walk. Most roads in Indian cities are poorly designed for pedestrians. It is as if the city is built, expanded, developed, and grown only for vehicles. If in any locality any road has to be widened, it is the pavement/sidewalk that is 'encroached' by the local government.

Anyway, my blog is about what my experiences have been over the last 4 years since I shifted to Chennai. I landed here with my belongings in the first week of March 2020. Within about 3 weeks Covid 19 struck the world and our PM announced lockdown across the country. We had about 3 days 'notice' since there was one day of a mock lockdown to test how the citizens would respond. The initial days were tough since we didn't know anything about this virus and its transmissibility. There were many TV 'experts' and YouTube 'advisors' videos about this; many honest attempts to educate the people, but quite a few were by half-baked idiots showing off their knowledge (later we realized that this was fear mongering). My wife and I remained confined indoors till August 2020 - a five month period when we both hardly ever stepped out of our doors. 

Covid 19 brought 'work from home' for many people who were employed and my children would often communicate with us about how they were coping up abroad. My elder son in Bangalore too followed our advise and remained confined at home.

Luckily processes were immediately put in place to minimise inconveniences regarding groceries and essentials and we were hardly ever put to any difficulty. I cannot vouch for other people around the country and images and visuals of migrants' return to their homeland on foot were heart-rending. But this blog post is not about others; it is personal. My wife and I escaped Covid 19 for two years. However, in early June 2022 we attended an event and I contracted Covid. That wasn't severe since I had already been vaccinated in 2021. The illness was mild and within a short while I recovered.

What changed within me due to Covid 19? That is the question that I have often thought about. So what changed? I think we saw what a pandemic can do to the common man and what the challenges were posed to the administrators around the country. Importantly, I stopped believing the 'experts' and 'advisors' on YouTube and WhatsApp forwards. On medical and science matters, I refer to my friends who have been studying and practicing their expertise. I have started being careful about cleanliness - more than what I used to practice earlier. I buy hand sanitizer and carry that during my journeys and travels and sanitize my hands. I also became regular in writing my blogs (thankfully! 😊). I have started listening to political speeches, press meets, and interviews on YouTube (experts, not pseudo experts) during my morning walks. Hopefully in our lifetime this will be the last pandemic that we will face! 🤞

 

Black Swan

 

We know of swans as white. In Hinduism, it is accorded a special place as a "vaahan" (vehicle) for Goddess Saraswathi (goddess of learning and music). Most depictions of swans are as a white bird. It also symbolises purity of thought and action. Purity of the soul. Probably, 3000 years ago, white was the colour of purity and black the colour of "rakshas"... (Picture of white swan from here)


Europeans, too, thought there were only white swans in the world.  If someone wanted to signify an event which would have a very, very low probability of occurrence, he would say, "it will happen when I see a black swan". Things went swimmingly, until someone found black swans to be native of Australia and New Zealand sometime in the early 18th century, perhaps. The shock and surprise was complete. Black swans did not come with an adjective of high improbability. They were just not native to Europe, but not rare at all.

The consequences of such realizations have been the subject of a book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (more details here) and the title of his book is appropriately "The Black Swan, The Impact of the Highly Improbable". It has attracted the attention of people in Wall Street and academia who have come to recognize in this book the near impracticality of predicting "black swan events" - events that are extremely rare, but whose impact is far-reaching and probably global. (Image of black swan from here).

Extreme examples are 9/11 and the aftermath in terms of war, increased security, man-hunt and the changes that we see to this day - 11 years on. More recently, we had the Covid 19 pandemic that ravaged the world and killed millions within a very short time - probably of the scale of a world war. On the positive side, we have Internet, Google, mobile telecommunication (especially in India), and the rapid technological changes it has wrought in society and business as a result.

Could anyone have predicted these? There is someone who has, strangely. A futurologist called Ray Kurzweil (more here) who has been able to predict many "black swan" events with timelines. Among his predictions was the power of internet, wireless communication and internet access, nano-technology, and power of chess programs to routinely win against the best humans. His predictions are here.

Of interest to me is not these phenomena which are global. If there are black swan events on a global scale, can we not have black swan events at a country, province, district, village, or family level too? Events which are not foreseen, but which can have intense impact when it does happen. I can think of the 2004 tsunami which devastated many coastal towns and villages in Tamil Nadu, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Indonesia. For those villages and towns the event was a black swan event. Highly improbable, but with devastating consequences for life and savings. Tsunamis in the Pacific were the reasons for the advance warning systems that were established along the Pacific - from US through Hawaii upto Japan. But no one predicted that an Indian ocean tsunami could be so enormous - at least till Dec 26, 2004.

Without going through the country, state, province, district, and village levels for other examples, let me go to the black swan events that can rock a family. What do we say happens to Mr. Sushil Kumar who was the winner of the Rs. 5 crore jackpot prize during season 5 of the popular quiz show, Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC) (inspired by the British show, Who wants to be a Millionaire)? A computer operator, whose monthly salary was 6,000 rupees. His life would have taken a totally different turn since winning the top prize in KBC 5. A black swan event in his family. On the positive side, no doubt. Coming to think of it, wasn't KBC itself a black swan event for Star Plus (now on Sony Entertainment Television) and for the career of Amitabh Bachchan, its host? 

At a personal level, illnesses and its consequent effect on the person can be a black swan event. I have had three of them in my life - each made an enormous impact in my life.

No, marriages are NOT black swan events in one's life - even though it changes one completely. You see, it is inevitable and you know you are going to "fall" into it. It is not in the category of "highly improbable".

 

IF.....

Reposted from another blog of mine that I do not access....at all. Just happened to visit that today and saw that the last blog of mine there was this one. Just copy-pasting that here without any edits.

This was published on October 2012. My family and I were living in Bangalore then.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

My wife and I need to meet our cousin who lives about 25 kms away. There are multiple routes to reach her place, and before we leave, we discuss the options. I feel going through the "ring road" is quicker since the roads are wider, and there are less signals to pass through. However, the route is longer by about 6 kms. The route via the city centre, though shorter, has more signals. Anyway, the options are only regarding which route takes longer. We don't want to be stuck on the road for a long time. No fun in that and with petrol prices at stratospheric levels, we cannot afford that too!

We choose the ring road, the over-riding reason being that I am driving the car. But we didn't contend with the traffic jam today. There are at least three places where the traffic is insane and at each place we spend almost 10 minutes navigating through 6 lanes of vehicles of all description crammed into three lanes of traffic, with motorbikes occupying all intervening spaces. With the stop-start-stop being the norm, my wife also starts the same "start commenting, stop commenting, start commenting". If you had listened to me, if you had driven through the city, if I had not finished dinner before leaving as you wanted me to, if...if...

How can wives know where the traffic will be lighter? Beats me. But during occasions such as these, they pretend they have a seventh sense (the sense to detect traffic jams).

We do tend to look back at various points in our lives to pause and reflect. If only I had prepared for my CAT more thoroughly, if I had applied for a US university, if I had not taken up my job at XYZ, if I had done this, if I had not done that...

In fights with my wife, we have said many things to each other including if we had not married each other. I have often thought of this, honestly..

Life is full of choices. We are confronted with this right from our school days, where our parents make the choices on behalf of us. They choose our schools and from there we form friendships and alliances and networks. These are some of the strongest influences in our lives. We remember many of our school friends even later on in life. Thanks to the internet and social networking sites, we can remain connected even when we are into our fifties. Later on when we move to higher classes, we need to make our own choices. The most important "fork in our life" comes when we move from X std. to junior college or Plus 1 or XI (depending on the board of education). Science, Arts, or commerce? PCMB or PCMC? Commerce with Economics and Statistics or Business studies? The decisions we take here determine the path along which we will travel for the rest of our lives. Oftentimes we consider ourselves too immature to take these decisions and leave them to our parents to decide. The more "mature" ones have even "maturer parents" who want their kids to take a particular course. Entrance exams, colleges, courses, jobs... and the list goes on probably culminating in "choosing" the life partner.

"I think Arup (name changed) should have taken metallurgy in NIT Jaipur instead of studying electrical engineering in a Bangalore college. You (this to her husband) told us then when we went for counselling that Arup need not go to Jaipur. The college is not so good. But now Lalitha's son, Prashanth, has completed B.E. Computer science from NIT Jaipur and has got admission in a US University. If only Arup had joined NIT Jaipur...."

It is comforting to live in the past and examine each decision and choice with the benefit of hindsight (which has 20/20 vision) and then find fault with one's own choice or with the choice of the partners. In my opinion, this is wishful thinking and doesn't take us anywhere. You cannot drive a car constantly looking at your rear view mirror. You only look at it occasionally to see what is behind you. Drive looking ahead.

Leave the "ifs" in the realm of flowcharting where it truly belongs. You need to ask yourself many questions starting with "if" while flowcharting, to understand the various choices people in the process make. What do you do if the invoice doesn't have the PAN number of the supplier? What will you do if there is no budget this year for the item indented, but it is a critical item needed now? Ask innumerable questions with IF at each stage of your process while creating your flowchart for the process that you are studying to determine what actions people take under various situations. 

However, do not live your life with an IF.