Giving Thanks!

It was a sad day and I somehow came to terms that I had to take the merry go around ride once again. More than getting on the ride, the fringe benefits that are offered with it drive me crazy. Staring at each side, waiting for others, moving inch by almost another miraculous inch make me wonder if this is being captured on the Nat Geo for ducks. Finally we ended up going all the way up and then coming down to park the car outside the mall.

After coming to the mall, I never return home empty handed, because I hate to do it all over again. So I pick my stuff and get out of there immediately. Sadly, that was not to happen on that fateful day. They wanted me to try it on and parade. I would have laughed at the idea and had my fun but that day, they were buying.

I went into the trial room and as quickly as one could possibly change, I changed. Actually, I was mid way, meaning I had taken stuff off and was about to put on stuff, when I heard, “not all trial rooms are taken, you know.”

I turned around and saw this woman staring at me dead in the eye. I was surprised that I could see almost half of her and shocked to realize that she was not too tall either. I replied, “so why don’t you use the empty ones?” and mumbled to myself, and why the hell are these rooms so short?!

“Well, my kids like to use the ones meant for kids!” she said and I came out and convinced my friends, that shirt was the best I ever had. Thankfully, or at least I thought so at the time, we got the shirt and moved to the next item – shoes. They found a nice pair and told me to try it on. I saw this trial-room-woman standing right across the room and that drove me all the more to get out of there as soon as I could.

So I put one shoe on and walked around. My friends interrupted my circus feat of walking around with a shoe on foot and a sandal on the other. But I told them with all the smugness I could muster, if one fits, the other ones fits too. Of course, I was right and we came home, sweet home. Thank god, I did not have to deal with vertigo as we parked outside the mall.

After I come back from a mall, I don’t like to think about the nightmare for as long as I can avoid. So I did avoid thinking about it and did not use the stuff I bought until 2 months later. I had to catch a very long flight and with that cramped leg rooms, I realized it was time to take out the new shoes. I got the two shoes out of the box carefully and put them on, they looked good; well my friends had a good taste. Anyway, began making last minute checks like walking inside and outside one room after another to see if I got everything I needed for the trip.

Of all the problems I have, air sickness is not one. So I did not quite get it, when I was feeling extremely uncomfortable. I felt like the room was spinning, that I was losing my balance and that I was breaking down. I did collapse finally, and I looked at my feet and realized that I was wearing two left shoes!

PS: Special thanks to DSGD for the great shoes and sorry about never finding the receipt!

My Experiment With Lies

It was one hell of a field day for the butterflies as they were flying around merrily without any care in the world about the nausea they were causing me. They were bringing me down to my knees, making me hold back tears and making me tighten every muscle in the body for I was trying to put up a poker face. It was finally my turn and the professor was contemplating what experiment she had to give me for the final lab/practical exam of the semester.

She was taking her time as she seemed to be having fun looking at my frozen and yet sweaty face. Those stupid butterflies in my stomach compelled me to talk to myself, have all the fun you want now madam, for I am going to throw up all over, thanks to this nausea! Probably she heard what I was thinking because she immediately gave me my paper with the name of the experiment I was expected to do. I tried hard to read what was on the paper but she perhaps punched me on the face while giving me the paper for all I could see were stars and spots.

I sat down at the assigned spot and realized what experiment I would be doing. Got it! It was my lucky day again. I had no clue as to how to do that experiment, but I had the theory, graphs, equations, and the final result of the experiment memorized like always. I glanced at my friends - Hilarious how you guys suddenly put up the human version of ratatouille by running around, fighting against time, finding this and that to do whatever the hell that is!

I was sitting there looking at the antenna for which I had to find the radiation pattern. I switched the power on and the stupid antenna kept beeping intermittently and I pretended to be taking down the readings in sync. with the beeps. Those beeps marked a subtle change in angle for which you had to record the radiation and that way you could, blah, blah, blah. I had already written the damn result down to the third decimal and plotted the whole radiation graph from memory. Talk about accuracy, huh? Because I got it all figured it was time to relax and I started playing with my pen. For those of you sad people who do not know the bliss of being a James Bond with the pen instead of a gun, it is the art of rotating the pen between your fingers in a mind boggling way that gives you a high, higher than anything in the world with every rotation the pen makes.

The high was suddenly interrupted as I had to stoop low to find the pen. Once in a while it slips through, once in thousand times that is, just to keep the record straight. So I found it after about 2 minutes of navigating in the snake park (those stupid power cords under the table) and when I was up the whole room was along with the professor was looking at me. And I realized I missed the act I was doing for about 10 to 15 of those beeps. But I did not care. Stare at me all you want, but I am not going to start this thing all over because I missed the beeps. I got it anyway. Muhuahahahhaha! Finally it was time to give the paper to the professor.

She: “So how did you get the radiation pattern of a dipole antenna when you were sitting with the yagi-uda antenna?”

Me: “No Ma’am, the name of the experiment I got is dipole.”

She: “I know that. But the name of the apparatus you worked on is Yagi-Uda. So how the hell did you manage to observer the radiation pattern of the dipole or is this the radiation pattern of your rotating pen and not the antenna?”

Me: butterflies, stars, spots and bliss – darkness!

The Logic and Politics of Capital Punishment

The Logic

As we have now come to the final chapter in the execution of a convict, it inexorably follows that at least some of us will engage in heated debates which are more often than not more emotional than logical. This article is therefore a sincere attempt to suggest an objective analysis.

The purpose of any punishment is to act as a deterrent and it is from this simple logic that the strongest argument in favor of capital punishment that has been put forward stemmed. The logic is that capital punishment serves as a deterrent. Scientific studies were conducted which proved that was indeed the case. These studies, it has to be noted, were not without any criticism and it can arguably be said that these studies were not conclusive enough.

It logically follows that the strongest argument against death penalty would be simply to say that the reason for death penalty is not convincing enough and therefore we must do away with it.

And the glaring problem with the argument in favor of death penalty, assuming the conclusions drawn from the studies are indeed valid, is that capital punishment may act as a deterrent only when it is done more often. Hanging one person every five years or so and amid so much debate, would not really impact a potential murderer as he would know his chances of getting the death penalty are at best, minimal. This means that if we really hope to seek the benefits of death penalty maintaining the status quo will not help and we need to send more and more people to the gallows.

I for one am sure that we will never to see that day as it would be insane to go to that extreme from the commendable 1983 supreme court ruling of imposing death penalty only in the “rarest of rare cases”. So it is logically compelling that we do away with this kind of punishment as has been adopted by the United Nations General Assembly, in 2007 and 2008.

The politics

The issue of death penalty is an extremely sensitive one. Be that as it may, it still cannot escape the tentacles of politics and ulterior motives.

The reason Mr. Karunanidhi gave as to why the death sentence should be commuted (that it would make Tamils all over the world happy) is one that is bound to provoke communal tensions, deeply flawed and connivingly political.

Mr. Karunanidhi may have done the right thing by calling for the reconsideration of the mercy plea but he has done it for the wrong reasons. He has shown all his experience in getting what he wanted with that remark as the current AIADMK had to support and pass a resolution in the state assembly. If the Jayalalitha government would have done anything different, it would have been branded by the DMK as Anti-Tamil.

His remark has now inevitably evoked Mr. Omar Abdullah to tweet, "If J&K assembly had passed a resolution similar to the Tamil Nadu one for Afzal Guru would the reaction have been as muted? I think not”. Although this is being looked at with contempt by the right wing BJP, it is perfectly logical.

Everybody has an identity and belongs to an ethnic group. What if every time a convict is about to be executed the people belonging to his state/religion claim it would make them happy if he/she is let go?

PS: Other arguments:-

1. The costs involved in mercy petitions and successive appeals to appellate courts would offset the cost effectiveness of the execution, if any.

2. Killing a convict, because he has killed others, is the only equal punishment. This is more emotional than logical and there cannot be a counter argument to emotion.

It is Not About Anna

“Corruption is a convenient way to get our things done in a nice manner widout troublin ny1..throw the money/get the work done win the race.” That is how a friend of mine pursuing a doctoral degree in the US defined corruption on Facebook. “Corruption is the backbone of India, nothing can happen in India without corruption and you do it for your own good” said another friend of mine in IT currently working in the US. A person I hold in the highest regard in India said, “Anna has all the time in the world and nothing better to do in life and is wasting everybody’s time.”

The issue at hand is not corruption or those in support or those who are against Anna’s movement. It is not the merit of these notions and arguments. It is something that comes before all this. It is something deeper, more fundamental, more subtle and primeval. It is opinion building.

The three instances above have a few things in common. Firstly a draconian blanket statement is doled out with an arrogance that often renders the person saying it blind to the fact that it is merely their opinion and not a fact. Secondly, their opinions are narrow-minded as they fail to see that corruption is not limited to bribing a cop or bribing a passport officer. They don’t see that corruption is not something “done in a nice manner widout troubling ny1”, especially when people don’t get to eat due to leakage in the Public Distribution System accounting to as high as 85% in some circumstances due to corruption. And finally, these opinions arise out of a nonchalant attitude amounting to apathy, because it takes much more than watching a couple videos shared by friends on Facebook before forming an earnest opinion on something of national significance.

We live in an era of instant gratification, of 140 character tweets and of T20s. We are all busy with the mundane activity of our lives and that and only that is the whole world to us. We do not take time to educate ourselves enough before forming an objective opinion and sadly, it is the other way. We transcend the path of logic and reason and form an opinion instantaneously after looking at something based on our emotions and no matter what we read after that, we read only to bolster our opinion and forever get stuck in this vicious circle.

A case in point here is paranoia driven opinion: - A friend of mine claimed that Anna Hazare should first start at grass root levels and that he should start by improving living conditions before coming up with fancy ideas. We quickly told him to Google Ralegan Siddhi and then he saw a BJP-Anna nexus. Basically, his opinion is unlikely to change.

On the other hand, we have a vast population, some of whom think they will support Anna until the end of the world not because they truly understand the merits of his argument but because they have been swept away by a wave of emotion sweeping across the nation thereby succumbing to mob mentality.

How many of us have truthfully formed an opinion after looking at the merits of different schools of thought? Have we all weighed the pros and cons of legalizing corruption, of Team Anna’s Lokpal, of the government’s Lokpal, of Nandan Nilekani’s idea of an effective UAD in combating corruption among other things and of addressing the underlying socio-economic structural differences as opposed to creating another potential oligarchy as claimed by Arundati Roy?

We all have the right of opinion. However, when we are living in an era of constant social networking where opinions spread like forest fires and build like mammoth avalanches, we owe it to ourselves to be more prudent in exercising this right by being cautious and well-informed by perusing credible and eclectic material.