In the movie Fight Club, Brad Pitt and Edward Norton play alter egos -- opposite ends of the psychological spectrum -- two guys trying to communicate with one another and having a tough time making it work. Interestingly enough -- and without giving away the punch line -- much of the action in the film revolves around the production of soap, an activity that seems to bind the characters in unique and unexpected ways.
My Plate – Your Plate: I noticed this before reading Tipping Point. There is this hotel next to our office where tables are full with working people during lunch hours and a common food ordered by everyone – Mini Meals. I am not the biggest fan of monotony. The tipping takes place like this.
All the tables are cramped with hungry, sweat drenched, Axe-laden males and rare females. They are really not in love with the sultry weather – neither the super-tired fan (ceiling fans!). They want to fill their bellies and run back to their air conditioned offices, they do not have time to be creative but a quick suggestion will do. When waiter comes, you need to shout at the top of your voice to get his attention. Everyone shouts – what else – “Mini Meals”. I try twice but the waiter does not find me a subject for mercy and moves away. He is now far away (still in the hotel) from me… I feel embarrassed, and I shout like a guy who is embarrassed, “Hey waiter! One Masala Dosa (another type of food), please” and it tips.
I feel happy to find early adopters by the time my order comes and by the time I leave, I can see a mature market for Masala Dosa.
I am cold. Me too! This phenomenon is same as the lunch tipping, the difference here is, that the people are constrained by the thinking that they might be contradicting other people’s wish. I am talking about night train journeys in sleeper class at in mild cold season when most of the people feel cold while fan is running but they do not take any step to switch the fan off thinking that they are the only who is inconvenienced by the fan.
I noticed this many times. What happens is as soon as I start feeling cold, I ask the person closest to switch to fan-switch to turn it off… It involves shouting and repeating the intention. In following minutes I hear people asking the same in neighboring compartments… and it is successive enough to feel like triggering chain reaction.
Fire Walk: Recently, I went to a seminar where organizers claimed that they will make people (ordinarily available bipedal human being) walk on broken glass and flaming fire. I thought it is doable, but did think that they will pump a lot of funda, boosting talk and some technique. But they did not. I went there thinking a long session of platonic talk to divert our brain from concentrating on the real danger of burning and cutting, but all they did is, they placed a seven feet bed of coal, poured gasoline heavily, flamed it and said casually, “walk!”
I got crazy. 30 seconds of burning fire, no one walked, and all were cold feet [he he … this phrase does not suit here]. Now, the coals has become real red rubies and I, for a split second, though to just run through and finish this drama but consciousness was on denial. And, I guess everyone had this surge of thought to go through in a quick movement and end it (and be the burnt feet hero).
45 seconds. And one of them got surge and could not hold… ran through. There was no need of organizer to encourage, it had already been tipped. People went through in succession. They added more and more gasoline (when I walked the first time, flames were coming up to my lap) but once tipped the suppressant like this did not work. The same thing happened with ‘walk on broken glass’ and ‘stand on nail bed’ events.
This story runs into two parts. Here is part 1 >>
Tipping Point Part 1: Usual Tipping
This story runs into two parts. Click Here for part 2.
Marla Singer. I, once again, got reminded of Marla Singer. But I resisted playing Marla this time. I was standing opposite to Bangalore City railway station and I needed to cross the road to make it to the station. In less than two minutes, more than twenty people gathered at either sides of the road and they were in the same mindset – “jump cross the road as soon as rush of speedy vehicles gets a break.” And it never happened.
Few more moments of wait and someone decided to commit suicide and started walking casually – well, the suggestion worked, everyone joined him and it tipped –a momentary halt in racing vehicle as if there was a red signal.
Power of Suggestion makes it possible to tip an event – Tipping Point says so. I have some non-utterly-boring incidences where I think I can relate what I read in the book, Tipping point. They all point to power of suggestion part of the book.
Uncontrolled Traffic: There are quite a few very deadly crossroads on Poonamallee High Road, Chennai with overloaded traffic, self-assumed-smart vehicle drivers and thinking-over-smart pedestrians and this phenomena tip almost in every 4 of 10 red signals.
Red signal is yet at 35 second in down timer, at this moment there was a momentary slack in orthogonal traffic and a daring self-assumed-smart bike rider zips through it – A suggestion. Now tipping point, every one joins the bike rider and crisscross, honk-honk, shout-shout…
The same thing happens at 09:50 onward at night but with one difference, the suggestion is a commonly known fact that traffic lights will be in yellow-mode (that means see-and-cross, decision is yours) at 10 o’clock. And 09:50 PM is the tipping time for all non-major traffic signals.
Real Boring Habit can Tip: I lived 10 months dwindling in different private hostels in Chennai. The arrangement is like this, the hostel is nothing but a 2 bedroom, one hall, one kitchen (basically all except restrooms are converted to bedroom) apartment which is so strategically situated that no one wants to buy this or accept as rent. People who stay have one of the two main reasons to accept this. One, they do not have money and two, they have one or more attributes like they are ultimate lazy, totally unplanned, short stay or have no friends in Chennai.
No matter what the reason is, once in hostel they realize that they have been paying more for less, feel cheated. So, how to recover? Simple, utilize resources to the maximum – watch TV 24 hours, take bath two times (well, that’s a requirement sometimes), over eat et-cetera.
I read book occasionally. Reading anything was assumed to be most miserable thing to do in hostels – people become sympathetic to you. The other activity that we used to do, when not wasting resources, was, to talk – and we talk a lot. During one of the discussions, I kept on quoting different books wherever required. For some unknown reasons, people really liked it. And within a week, TV hours reduced, people started going to Landmark (bookshop) with me, borrowing books and most of them started a book. Phenomena tipped. The readers in the hostel had shot from one occasional reader to one occasional reader plus five enthusiasts, from 12.5% market share to 75% market share.
The reverse happened as well. Enthusiast dropped as quickly as they adopted. It happened something like this. I paused reading for one very busy month. I could see no one’s bookmark had shifted a page. I, finally, shifted to a new place and whenever I go back to the hostel – the bookmark still stays where it was, when I left the place.
This story runs into two parts. Part 2 >>
Rover, Wanderer, Nomad, Vagabond Part 3: Roaming Rameshwaram
(This article runs into 3 parts. Links to PART 1, PART 2)
Rameshwaram: Ramarnatham is a holy place for Hindus. It is one of the four tirth, mythology says visiting all the four reserves a seat in Hindu heaven. (I have already visited two, yay!)
Rameshwaram is a lovely coastal place. It is a normal tier III Indian city, with people having only two sources of income fish and tourism – and this fact was repeatedly injected in my mind by our driver. When we were there, there was no rush we got nice economic hotel room, reserved a car for city site seeing at reasonable rate, toured around half of the day and came back to hotel.
The Ramarnatham temple is big and spacious. Being off season and weekday, there was no people overload – in fact, it was mostly empty. You need to take bath 27 times (I am not sure whether it is 27, but it is close) at 27 different wells which are assigned names of holy rivers or Gods. The idea is to be super clean by taking bath from all the holy waters in India before doing the holy work.
Then there was small queue to see god. See God, pray for your earthly needs, and walk in famous 3rd corridor. Take pictures.
I liked this. I liked this thousand times more than Balaji. It was open and accepting, unlike Balaji which is closed for normal people, wrapped in illusion of security and ego and denial as the first response. Or perhaps, I was fortunate in Rameshwaram.
Rover, Wanderer, Nomad, Vagabond Part 2: Thirupathi Thrills
(This article runs into 3 parts. Links to PART 1, PART 3)
Thirupathi Balaji: A god for fat rich people. Don’t get me wrong, it is one of the wealthiest (yeah, in terms of revenue) temple loaded with behemoth overhead of security and people management (damagement, I would say). The process to get a look of the god is so inefficient that you may not get a chance to see god, even if you have 8 hour time window.
Last time, me and my cousin, S , reached there at morning 10. And – no surprise, there was no information center (or our heuristic search didn’t get one) and officials and dudes do not believe in possibility of a non-Telugu language. We assumed our methodology was wrong and we should have learnt Telugu.
This time, with non-coherent knowledge from different sources that includes experienced guys, internet searched and travel agencies, I was clear about one thing that I was not going Balaji the next time (even before journey starts). No, yeah, I agree they have tried to facilitate people but it fails miserably. So, there are number of tickets issued by the temple authorities that are mysteriously available in some unknown temple in T. Nagar, Chennai. All the persons, who are going to Balaji, have to be there at ticket booking center to get a bar-coded tag with visitor’s finger print stamp [1]. I never get one, they are volatile, supposedly.
Since, this is a high-tech (?!) temple they have on-line ticket that ranges next 90 days for booking. I had enough time to plan (around 40 days). It was weird to find out that ticket has been already booked for all the future 90 days. Out of curiosity, the next day morning (9 o’clock) I checked availability of ticket on 91st day, no surprise, no room. I started checking this site frequently; it was always full – less mysterious, more doubtful.
Finalized, I booked a bus ticket from a travel agent that ensured a Darshanam (glimpse) of the God. We started six in morning from Chennai and were there in an infinitely long queue for Daarshanam. We were happy that even if the queue was actually 4 KM long, if we kept moving and 5 hrs (at the worst) in the queue and we would get a glimpse of the God.
Running over and below people’s feet, we reached to a monkey cage. Where they made us (500 people) stay and get bored for six long hours, the only thought I had was to escape from there even if it means no Darshanam (I wasn’t eager from start, either) [2]. And the truth was – no matter what God feared people say – everyone was getting more and more frustrated, restless and anxious. The effect of this pressure building resulted in a stampede as soon as the cage opened. People hit iron bars, got squeezed, rubbed and gone under other physically painful sufferings. People started shouting, cursing, pushing, slanging and doing all kind of panic activities.
The result of this rat race was a coupon for sweet that you are ‘eligible’ ONLY IF you have done Darshanam and you are back in another cage. Now, in this cage, people had become verbal. They started calling (requesting) officials to open the door or asking when the cage is scheduled to open etc. – all unanswered. Rumor starters had fun there, if there was a rumor that gate 3would open, people run from gate 1 to gate 3 (earlier rumor was for gate 1); four more hours for monkey descendents in the cage, and then opening of the gate at 10 o’clock at night.
It was very long, empty and silent corridor. And suddenly, there was an eruption. Everyone was happy; I am more than sure it was happiness of freedom. It was less a willingness to get Darshanam and more an urge to return home which was driving people to run and run-over.
The main temple had a tiny entrance, one person at a time. When the entrance pushed by the mad mob, I felt my ribs were going to collapse. People were shouting, using all the dirty slangs on fellow visitors and pushing each other, while entering. The passage way was narrow, many people with accessories like earrings, handkerchief in their hand and similar, had lost them because the pressure was peeling skin off. A lot of people got hurt. I have got a powerful push which made my heel bone to hit a corner stone leading a deep cut that bared the bone. I was already less faithful, I became even lesser.
It was quarter a second glance before security person pulls people by their arm and throws out of the area where the God is visible from. I couldn’t see anything; neither did I have any wish. I completed my Darshanam even before a quarter of a second, in fact, I ran the zone of the queue where people wait and see for 250 milliseconds before getting forcefully thrown.
We came out bought some stuffs for memories, I already had got something permanent on my body for memory – a solid wound which would leave a mark forever.
We ran back to bus, reached home at 4 AM.
[1] There is a hack for this system if the persons visiting Balaji are not around. The trick here is your security/non-transferable band has gender and fingerprint only, the barcode is just a cross-check to validate that it was issued from appropriate authority.
Now, if there are x men and y women are planning to visit Balaji and for some reason (small time window of visit, busy schedule etc.) they cannot go to ticket counter in Chennai. So, to hack this system, you just collect x men and y women of any age, get tickets issued. It is less likely that fingerprint is ever going to be verified at the temple.
There is no or very superficial checking on Balaji – unless you are damn unlucky you will not be caught.
[2] Yeah, they provide some free food, free water and toilet facility; which is a good idea. The problem is every time they bring food people rush to choke the food center and since they take more than what they can consume, there was big wastage of food and a lot of people never get food. The other good thing is cleanliness; hourly cleaning people come and clean the place.
Rover, Wanderer, Nomad, Vagabond Part 1: Kabala of Kabini
(This article runs into 3 parts. Links to PART 2, PART 3)Travelling is not my hobby. I have high inertia – even the thought of travel makes me feel bad in my stomach. But to maintain sane image, I rarely deny a proposal of an adventurous trip offered – no matter how bitterly I loathe the idea of carrying my dead body up to the hill. So last six weeks I was either busy in planning and organizing tour or touring.
Life was calm and crappy as usual in 7 bar 1* – the only round the clock shit-smelling paying guest house of ours, until I had got an enthusiastic call on June 17, 2008 from home that they were planning to visit me in Chennai. I was missing my mom too, but the amount of work involved in making their comfortable stay in Chennai was daunting, especially when you are a bachelor and your options are constraint by limitation on expense. I made few shameful excuses, few facts about availability of a proper staying place – It came out that they were ready to manage by their own. I realized that I shouldn’t let them down. And I started searching a rental place to accommodate my family. It turned out a costly deal to me, but I was happy that, at least, pre-requisites were done.
(* ‘7 bar 1’ was the place where I used to live earlier to July 1, 2008. ‘7 bar 1’ is nothing but the address of the place which is 7/1 Annanagar)
On July 1st, I with Syed and Kannan had shifted to the new place, this shifting period of next 10 days were hectic. And, in the mean time, family visit plan kept on canceling and rebuilding. And finally, when they made a concrete plan to visit on 16th July, 2008 – I realized that we have an official tour plan from 17 – 25th of July. Family visit had been shifted to start from 27th of July.
I am going to comment on places that I have visited. You should just ignore the stuffs that you do not like about the place because I don’t like travelling, anyway.
Kabini (Mysore): Kabini is a place close to Mysore - rich with natural diversities.
We stayed in Kabini River Lodge – a government owned 24 hour stay picnic-cum-safari arrangement - quite good for people with fat wallet. It is like any other green jungle nearby a water pocket modified to get post-civilization humans a feel of jungle without losing civil-values (like, they exist!).
“… They called their marriage ceremony off and returned groom back home without marriage because they were asking more dowry than they initially asked for. …”
Refer Indian Express 18th May special edition news about 3 girls who returned grooms back home.
(Author’s Note: I always think what happened to them. This story reminded me three other stories that I have came across. In this post, I raise a question, not putting my point of view)
I had been wondering all through my education why there were always a section called
“woman’s condition” whenever they describe a society in any age or under any ruling? Perhaps the reason is that if woman, the weaker sex, had better condition, then the people at the bottom of the pyramid are treated humanely. When history would read early 21st century, it would say women were treated equally to men. The sad thing about history is it doesn’t reads below the layer and perhaps for good. See no evil, do no evil.
I find it very visible that female is still suppressed half of society specially after seeing these three real stories.
Story 1 [Bangalore]: An educated, born in respected family, software engineer who lives in a posh area of Bangalore and is a – so called – typical of gentlemen. A guru, supposed to have practical solutions to all real life problems from ‘how to clean carburetor’ to ‘how to find your real love.’ Let us call him Mr. Guru. This story, I found three months before leaving Chennai for Varanasi.
Mr. Guru cites this example of having happiest family life that “he” built. The example has big part as his initial marriage life which is full of frequent beating of his wife to straighten her out to make her follow his way. And when father-in-law interfered, he said that she was either a daughter or a wife, if father thought that she was his daughter take her to her paternal home, else – let him to handle her. One time in the story, Guru makes a comment that is rather explicit to mention here, where he says she liked beatings at some other times. And asks the audience why the father shied away when he mentioned this fact (Likely, this might be a fake to spice the story up)? At this moment, pupils (listener) make a laugh and agree. Supposedly, few months of beating made his wife a good woman. And they lived happily ever after.
Story 2 [Chhattisgarh]: This guy is a heavy drinker, almost lost his job due to alcoholism, once, but being in a government office no one expelled him. He was married eight years ago when he was presented as a responsible, educated and real shy guy from a very reputed family background. We will call this guy, the Drunkard.
The next month after wedding the wife of Drunkard reported his habit of drinking and occasional slapping and beating which were ignored by wife’s family as initial unsettlement. Then later Drunkard got notice of being expelled from office because of absenteeism (as the wife reported, it was due to husband’s alcohol love). Although that didn’t take his job away and he had started drinking heavily. The wife found out he had been a big drunkard and lazy even before the marriage. Beating was a daily routine now and more brutal.
Wife’s family, afraid of her life, took her back home; kept her happily for seven years. Now, she had become a social shame and financial burden to her parent. Moreover, second marriages are more a loose character issue than a symbol of ability to take strong steps in India. So no one would marry her. She went back to Mr. Drunkard.
I met her on the way to Varanasi. On asking how Mr. Drunkard behaves now, she replied this is a part of life all she hoped that he would stop daily beating, someday and she didn’t care whether he kept on drinking.
Story 3[Varanasi]: The guy is a philanderer, married at 32, a typical of UP guy, full of ego on nothing – a government employee. The relationship went smoothly with wife for almost six months until the girl wasn’t pregnant. Afterwards, the guy’s skirt chasing became visible to blind eyes. Call this guy, Womanizer.
Womanizer used to squander all of his money on women, took debts from friends and finally wife paid. This cycle went on until a big fight between the couple, the guy left home leaving his wife alone in last months of pregnancy. The girl didn’t call anyone until the condition became critical on the day of baby’s birth.
Girl brought back to paternal home for couple of months, the guy never showed up for next few months. After few months, the initial decision to leave the guy and live independently seemed to be against social security as well as social reputation. Remarriage was impossibility in UP and remarriage with a girl carrying a baby is next to impossible.
Now (when I was in Varanasi), my friend was describing that the girl’s parent and the girl were agree to send the girl back to Mr. Womanizer on his terms. The guy was tightening all the bolts to make sure that his side of business kept running.
The question is whether the glass is half filled or half empty? Are we correct when we say marriage is an institution - A custom that for a long time has been an important feature of some group or society? Aren’t we forcing to see half full glass? Is it possible that glass is actually half empty? Is it true, by our animal behavior, that female is, in fact, the weaker sex?
of some 10 minute frustration and I shed it down on blog. Yes, I was frustrated at the very moment when Mr. S described, but afterthought made me realize that the dream he was running behind could have been achieved some three years back, plus he would have been a specialized in the work he was planning to do.Mr. S is my roommate, a nice guy, about to complete his bachelor degree in Electrical Engineering in next one month. One day during talk I asked how his project work was going. He replied that he, like other guys, had paid INR
18,000 to some company which would create a project for him, work on it and before the presentation; they would finish the project and give the software with document and presentation to him. All he would need to do is read through the presentation during the seminar.
On asking the knowledge of this fact to the professors he replied that everyone knows and all the students do this.
I had got burned from my top to bottom listening this, but after giving a thought I found out that this phenomenon is almost omnipresent in India. The education is just a tag; it is not a meter of knowledge. And for the developing country like India, it is job what matters at the end of the day. And for a job you do not need to perspire on a useless project that is, anyways, going to be assumed to be a fake owing to the massive fake CV culture.
We don’t have massive demand of technical guys at R and D level for the reason that we are not at technological forefront as a country, so we don’t have companies doing research. All we have is companies that buy the technology and they need technical guys who can just take care of the process as an inspector. For doing so, you don’t need a project to be done. In fact, you don’t even need a technical degree; a diploma would be just as fine. So what is the purpose of going through night outs for a lousy worthless project?
I do not understand why we have so many degree colleges, especially in technical fields when all we need is diplomas. We need persons who can understand technology and work on them effectively. This requirement is completely fulfilled by a diploma holder. And a diploma gives you early job opportunity. After your high school (std 10), go for a three year diploma course. Done, you are a jobseeker at the age at the age as low as 17 years.
I do not understand why even after knowing the reality we don’t change, why education is more like a blind man showing path to another blind man or rather it behaves like a herd of sheep or perhaps, thousands of penguins at the edge of iceberg.
March 30th, 2008, in Sunday Times in his column, Mr. Shashi Throor writes a fiction, “An IIT graduate walks near a pond, gets a speaking frog that requests and then begs to kiss it so that it can turn into a real beautiful loving princes. The IITian
guy replies that he has got no time for girls but a talking frog is cool.” [Rephrased from: Why some engineers become terrorist]
For your kind information, Mr. Tharoor, engineers are frustrated variety of human being. A kind of people, who get frustrated when everything is the way as they wanted, for the reasons why everything have to be in their way; and the other way, they have got reasonable reason.
They are frustrated. If there is no work, they feel wasting life, if too much work then a slave. And in case there is good work-life balance, then they feel making no positive impact on the world by living like any other Tom, Dick or Harry.
Mr. Tharoor, frustration is the 47th chromosome that an engineer adds up in its DNA during education. This chromosome pairs up with 48th chromosome as terrorism in later phase of its life. Now, depending on dominating circumstances, either the engineer turns into more common spouse torturer or less common terrorist.
I am pretty much sure that you must have never been to pond for a walk. If you go, you may find some engineer catching every second frog and kissing to get a possible princess convertible frog.
-Nishant
