My Brilliant Brain

“My Brilliant Brain” is the name of a show on Nat Geo. It talks about the abilities of the human brain taking instances of real people. Susan Polgar a four time world women chess championship winner was once on the show. I watched the show in awe and was all the more inspired by her to pursue the only game I love – Chess. I wanted to be a grand master like her. I wanted to be like the chess god Kasparov. Like him I wanted to defeat computers that could calculate a million moves in a second. I wanted to be the World Chess Champion………

My phone’s stupid and loud ring tone interrupted my thoughts.

Me: Hi Mom, how are you!

Mom: Hi! I am good, how are you?

Me: I am good too.

Mom: So how are you studying these days?

Me: Great, of course!

Mom: Don’t say ‘Of course”. Remember your younger days?

Me: What are you talking about? I have always been very smart.

Mom: Let me remind you something then. When you were 8 and your brother was 11 I asked you what I would do as your brother would be going to college in 6 years. And this is what you said: “Mom, after 6 years brother will go to college because he will be 17. But I will be 8 and nine years after that I’ll be 17 and I’ll have to go to college. So you don’t have to worry for the next 15 years!”

Me: Oh come on Mom, I was only 8.

The rest of the conversation goes on but I have little interest for I am sad that at 4 Susan Polgar started playing chess and at 8 I was a freaking retard! The phone conversation is over and I am planning on how to make up for the years I had lost. I am planning on reading up a couple of books on chess theories and thinking that is going to be enough for a man of my intelligence. The reader should not think I am giving myself undue credit here. Well, I am pursuing a Master’s in engineering and only intelligent people do that, right? Anyway, I am contemplating on what opening theories I have to read about. The Ruy Lopez, Chigorin variation has always been fascinating to me but of late I have found an admiration for the Sicilian Dragon especially after realizing the power of the fianchettoed bishop on g7 and the h7……….

This time my friend from school pings me.

Raj: hi buddy!

Me: hi raj, hw r u!

Raj: nt 2 bad. Neeway, sterday, I was talking to my frnds abt u and we were all laughing like crazy for 5 mins non- stop.

Me: Well, thnku, I always knew I would make a good standup comedian!

Raj: hold it dude. We were not laughing because u were funny but cause u were stupid! :)

Me: what do you mean :x

Raj: remember in our 10th grade we were all solving a problem in the class and when we all got stuck our teacher told us to divide and multiply the term with x? she asked us the answer after that and u were like, “ I have the same term again. x got cancelled!”

Me: Oh! Well, I got to go man. Catch up later. Bye!

Oh dear God! So, this time my age is not going to bail me out. If anything it is only going to make things worse.

But it has been said by famous people that most people don’t know how close they are to success when they quit. So I am going to work hard and dream big things. But before all that I am going to have to do some smart work too. I am going to switch off my mobile and turn off my computer. And now, dream on………….

An Uphill Climb

The words uphill and upstream come into that category of words that I instantly dread upon hearing. As a kid I did not know what they meant and was in constant amusement thinking of what they could possibly mean. This amusement was only short lived as kids grow up fast and I had to learn what these words meant in the worst possible way - Mathematical .

The reader must know that as a kid I was confounded by Math so much that despite my pathetic artistic abilities, there was a time I contemplated a career in impressionistic and modern painting. I thought I could somehow manipulate people into believing weird, creepy shapes to be beautiful works of nature. Looking at modern art today, I think I might have done an exceptional job at it. Anyway, eventually I got around Math.

In case you did not get the cue, I learned what these words meant from the famous upstream and downstream problems in elementary algebra where you have to play around with speed, distance and time and as if it is too easy, also take into account the stupid running water.

7 or so years after my first encounter with the upstream problems……..

It was a very rainy day which was surprising considering that I am talking about Chennai. Sometimes, people get inspired by the rain especially when it is a rare phenomenon. So, I decided to enjoy the rain and my idea of enjoyment was to drive the highways of the city on my bike (motor bike). I did not have a license to drive and was still learning back then but come on, to hell with rules when it rains in a city where you sweat it out all through the year.

I was driving pretty well until my childhood memories came sprinting to me bettering Bolt’s records. I had to drive over a flyover that had an ugly uphill slope. I tried to keep my cool and drive normally imagining it to be a flat road. Well I did manage to imagine but my stupid piece-of-metal-bike lacked the imagination. And of course, the ever flowing traffic made it more difficult. The problems with my driving were more psychological than technical. On my way up, I managed to go down! For some reason after every two inches that the traffic moved up, I moved an inch backward first and two forward next managing a net gain of 1 inch.

I have heard of people speak about their tiers losing traction on slippery slopes. But I was better. My bike was fine, it was my legs that did not find the traction. The end result was that I was colliding with the vehicle behind me and the vehicle ahead of me every time the traffic moved. So my movement was essentially the result of spatial confinement rather my control over the bike. The other motorists looked at me in disbelief.

One college kid was so kind in suggesting me to try a career in gymnastics. One guy told me his 5 year old daughter could control her rocking horse better than I controlled my bike. Another middle-aged man reminded me that the city had public transport system designed especially for people like me. Two college girls were laughing their heads off and to top it all a baby found it so amusing that she was clapping as if it were a circus.

They were all maneuvering their way as far away from me as possible. Inch after painful, colliding, abuse-taking, inch I found my way to the flat road and my uphill climb was over.

I felt like Tim Robbins in “The Shaw shank Redemption” after getting to the top and feeling the rain against my face. I felt like Mel Gibson in “Brave heart” and had to try hard not to scream “FREEDOM!!” I felt like……

”Take out your license Mr. I have been watching the way you are driving and I am assuming you don’t have one.”

That is all it took for me come swooping back to the ground.

I paid whatever he asked for and drove back home giving a serious thought to a career in gymnastics.

How smart am I?

I have talked enough about being dumb and you need to realize that we all have our share of moments. You can be smart for an instant and be a fool the very next! Let us take a leaf out of cricket here. “Form is temporary, class is permanent” is a famous adage in the cricket world. In general, I believe smartness is temporary, intelligence is permanent. I am telling you all this to make a point that dumbness is not my predominant personality trait. Not convinced? I am not surprised because that is what I have been talking about for quite some time on this space. But read on….

Buses in Chennai, represent a very sad state of affairs. At Kennedy Space Center, I went inside a rocket that was about to be launched. Although I would love to leave that sentence there without any further explanation, I have to admit that it was only a prototype for simulation purposes and not a real one. The simulation began and got over with no effect on me whatsoever, unlike the thrilled and grinning faces around me thanks to my experience with buses in Chennai. The rocket just rocked, twirled, groaned and vibrated. Not what I had in mind for I had seen all that and even more back in Chennai.

Whenever, the driver shifted gears in the bus I almost threw up, not what I ate but my heart itself. He would try to change the gear but the damn rod would not budge. He would use his fist, forearm and even his elbow to move it and all this while racing the green light along with people driving as if they were all escaped convicts with cops right behind them. That is not even the worst part. That credit goes to the lovely passengers I travelled with. It was always so crowded that at any point you either had at least four people sharing all the parts of your body or air gushing against your face while your feet were suspended and your entire body supported by your hands which clung on to a flimsy bar of rusted iron in one of the windows. Since I had no interest in finding out the tensile strength of the rusted iron rod at the cost of my life I always chose the former.

Anyway, I was travelling with my friends to a book store to return some books in one of these buses. We had had a rough day at college and were on our way to a very far off book store. All the seats were taken as usual and the fact that we were carrying books made us even more vulnerable. We desperately wanted to sit and take the burden off our shoulders. So we just went ahead asked the ladies in the last row to get up and make way for us as we were carrying a lot of books. We damn well knew it was reserved for ladies but hey, try following rules when you cannot feel your shoulders anymore. Of course, the ladies said no and that it was reserved and blah, blah, blah… I told them to have some moral values and follow the rules in spirit and not in letter.

Enter Conductor: “Stop bothering the ladies you rowdies”

Me: What is it with you moron. It is not as if you are a director and this is a casting couch reserved for beautiful girls, is it? Wake up! You are just a conductor. Of course, this went on in my mind.

My Friend: Get Lost!!

People usually don’t talk to conductors like that. And he immediately stopped the bus and got some cops who usually come in so late in the movies and so promptly when you don’t need them in real life. The cops looked at us seriously, and this is where I played smart! They were asking us where we came from and things like that. I tried answering them but I kept my voice so feeble that they did not think for one second that I might do some eve teasing of which we were all being so unjustly accused by our conductor. I was on song and played a little trick and opened my bag and told them with all the innocence in the whole world that I was on my way to the book store.

The cops refused to believe what the conductor was saying looking at our innocent faces and the books and just left. The conductor did not speak any more and nobody in the bus made eye contact with us anymore. Of course we did not get space to sit but we had plenty to stand because nobody dared to come near us. With so many people in the bus they did not hear our conversation with the ladies, or the conductor or even the cops. So they just knew that cops had come and interrogated us and left. Most of them probably assumed we got away with some eve teasing because one of us was a gangster.

Whatever, I did not care anymore for we had plenty of not just space in the crowded bus but respect out of fear too!

Now, wasn’t that extremely smart?

Right Place, Wrong Time

Nicholas Cage’s interview appeared in the Reader’s Digest when I was a kid and that was when I first came across the expression “It is all about being in the right place at the right time”. That was his answer to the question what his secret to success was. I instantly fell in love with the expressions as it made sense. Ever since I read that interview I have had dreams about people asking me what my secret to success was and me using that expression with all my charm. (Don’t start laughing your head off about the non- existent charm. It was a dream, okay?)

Four years later…….

It was that time when the vacation was coming to an end. I was a 16 year old kid and hated every second of the day as I had to leave my aunt’s place to go back home for school. I was looking at the train ticket that my Dad sent me through mail with an empty look in the eye. I started packing and knowing that in just a day’s time I will be going back to reality. It was time for me to start yet another year of unfathomable course work, astronomical home works, painfully slow commutes to the school and text books making you want to hunt down the author and kill.

I carefully placed my luggage under my seat and sat with all the sadness upon my face. An old man interrupted my gloomy thoughts and told me to get off the seat rudely. He claimed it was his seat and that he had it reserved. I was already extremely irritated and this old man was talking to me as if I had stolen his house. He was so loud that the little girl sitting next to me and enjoying her samosas almost fell off her seat. Well, if you could shout using all your intestines at 60, then I’ll show you what decibel levels younger material can generate.

“I respect people based on merit and not age. So don’t expect me to let go off the seat just because you are older. I reserved this seat two months in advance, just leave me alone!”

The little girl probably did not see this coming from the petite 16 year old kid that I was, because she started choking on one of her somosas. I had beat the old man at his own game, 1-0.

The old man took out his ticket and showed me the seat number. It was 15A, the seat on which I was sitting. I was utterly shocked. He was waiting for me to show him mine. I was terrified and started having all the doubts just like I do when it is time for some class test results. I slowly took out the ticket and even before I could look at it the old man grabbed it out of my hand victoriously. His face turned pale and I thought he was having a stroke. I looked at the seat number and it said 15A. The scores were even this time, but overall I ruled 1.5- 0.5.

Enter ticket collector, “What is going on here. Let me look at your tickets. The train will leave in about 5 minutes and you guys are still fighting about the seats?”

Old man: “The whole system is corrupt. How could you give away two tickets for one seat? I’ll take this to the press.”

I was sitting there calmly because I knew that if you pissed the ticket collector off you hit a dead end. It was very simple; there had been a miscalculation about the seats. So they gave off two. But only one had to get the seat. This means that the ticket collector will chose one of the two to stay. Since I was calm and not pissing him off I would stay. Game over: 2.5 – 0.5

Ticket collector: “Look here boy. Today is 11th and your ticket is for the 12th.”

I don’t know if it has ever happened to you but sometimes your brain just shuts off and you start doing things without thinking. It happened to me at that instant. I just took out my luggage and got off the train without thinking anything except this: Old man: ticket on the train, me: getting off the train. So the game is indeed over!

My Aunt started scolding me for being so dumb and she asked me how I managed to be so dumb. It was my moment. Considering my dumbness, I can never live my dream and use that expression, so I might as well try to improvise the expression and use it in this nightmare.

“Well, it is all about being in the right place at the wrong time.”