Tag Behaviour

Pack of wolves

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Any typical school kid from India must have learnt about Ashoka – The Great. He once ruled the entire Indian subcontinent. What we were thought in school was that he was a great king, he got trees planted along the side of the road to make travel easy. It may not be the most important thing he did in his life but again I did not write my text books. The symbol of a 24 spoke wheel on Indian flag is his legacy being celebrated. But he wasn’t always great, in fact he started out a terrible ruler and only changed after the battle of Kalinga. He self reflected and had a realization after massacring thousands of people. He did not completely cut out violence after that but he became a far better person. If he were living in this day and age, #AskohaTheTerrible would have been trending after his first war. I am actually waiting for some descendant of the people he killed to start an online petition to remove the Chakra from the Indian flag.

In the movie Munnabhai MBBS, there is a scene where a pick pocket tries to pinch the wallet of an elderly person. Get gets caught in the act and immediately the people in the vicinity transform into a lync mob and start trashing the wanna be thief. The elderly man intervenes and asks the thief if he wishes to be left at the mercy of the angry mob. He goes on “These are the citizens of our country. See the anger in their eyes? One just had a fight with his wife, someone’s son isn’t heeding his words, another is jealous of their neighbor and someone got a scolding from their landlord in the morning. They never speak up there, because they lack the courage. They will show all their anger on you.” Even though the move came out in 2003, it was right on point about the general outrage not just in India but around the world. In a way that scene was written well ahead of its time.

“There are no weeds, and no worthless men. There are only bad farmers.”

Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

Victor Hugo, in Les Miserables, says that there are no worthless people, they are like that because of their upbringing. I do not agree completely to the statement. I understand the premise, but I feel that there is a point in every ones life when they are a weed. But most people in normal circumstances, get out of this phase and do make something better of themselves. At least they try. The ones that do not try, even if the conditions are favorable are really worthless. There is a difference between a person who sends you an email that he is a Nigerian Price who can send you his fortune if you pay the customs fee and Lehman brothers. There is a difference between a guy who ogles women in a bus stop and someone like Harvey Weinstein. The former are either victims of circumstance or still in that stupid phase. The latter are the worthless people. If Hugo was alive, he would definitely call them the result of bad farmers.

But, just like the people who tried to trash the pickpocket in the movie, the people now a days are finding it difficult, in fact even more difficult to distinguish between the two. The social media, especially twitter is full of people who, like a pack of wolves waiting to pounce on any and every mistake made. I have been hearing about the numerous lives destroyed for something someone did or said decades ago. Last year, a top executive in Boeing had to leave the company for an article he wrote 29 years earlier that argued women shouldn’t be in the defense forces. There is a separate pack on stand by to attack people on separate issues, ideologies. When the liberals do it, the conservatives call it Cancel culture, but when they do it they refer it to as protecting the moral standard of the society.

Be honest and name an Ideal person. A person who never did any mistake in their life? Aren’t you yourself embarrassed if not ashamed by things you did or said? I am. I have many instances of things that I did that I was not particularly proud of . I am sure many of the poor souls who got kicked out of their jobs because of the cancel culture are too. Most Indians would name Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the nation as an example of an Ideal person. But he too did not stand against racial injustice as soon as he saw it. He did not change until things got personal and he was kicked out of a 1st class carriage on a train in South Africa. Speaking of South Africa, Nelson Mandela’s first wife accused him of beating and being threatened with an axe.

The public shaming has now gone on to such ridiculous lengths that one mistake in judgement can end your life as you know it. It doesn’t matter if its a simple joke between friends, or even if the so called victim the twitterati imagined was not even offended by the action. It doesn’t matter if the matter is stupid and personal or even purely accidental. The world is a complex and messed up place. You cannot apply the same medicine to every disease, each and every one of the have to be looked objectively. If one feels outraged or angry at someone, take a moment pause and think about if what they did was just stupid or unintentional. Check if you are really looking at a weed or if its a plant that needs to be forgiven for one mistake. May be sometimes they were speakeing the truth and you just didn’t like it.

It is necessary to take out the weeds but it is also important not to take an axe to every tree with a crooked branch. If we do that, we may end up in a world with no trees. Our society as a whole is becoming too politically correct for its own well being. There is a saying in India that a person with Jaundice sees the entire world as green, which is equivalent to seeing the world with ‘Tinted’ glasses. They also say a picture is worth a 1000 words, not sure how much a video is worth (24 frames*number of seconds*1000?)

Taking a Q

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Our blind-spots and their consequences

When you first start learning how to drive any decent instructor would have explained how to set your rear-view mirrors and explained the concept of the blind spot. The area that is invisible to you if you just look at your mirrors. The instructor I had was a little over the top in his ways, so when ever I changed lanes without checking the blind spots, he used to yell you just killed a kid driving a bicycle or you just killed a person on a bike. In a way, it did help to hammer home the point he was trying to make. Though hypothetical, he was just explaining the consequences of my actions in the real world. Just like in a car, the driving seat of the journey called life also has blind spots. How often do you check for them?

In your opinion, what’s wrong with the world? I’m not concerned about everything that is wrong in this world. What is one thing that in your opinion, the biggest problem in the world? Well! The answers would differ. Based on your nationality, financial status, Age, gender etc, the answers might vary. What if I told you there is a more prominent thing that influenced your answer?

As the old English saying (correctly) goes, Birds of a feather flock together. That’s the way of the nature. But in the era of globalization, different birds are having to flock together. The street you live in, the bus you take, the super market you use, the place your work… all of them have people from various cultures, races and backgrounds. I am not going to be a saint an say everyone is same. We are different… well that sounds a little negative.. let me try it this way. We are all unique in our own ways. Even the twins may only look same. In terms of ideas and ideologies they can be polar opposites.

When it comes to inconsequential things like favorite color/food/actor, there is never any harm. They may argue a little and may have trouble ordering food as a group in a restaurant. But when it comes to matters that are more serious and uncompromising in our petty minds, we tend to seek birds of same feather. This is because these so called uncompromising things are mostly beliefs and its never fun to be challenged to defend something that cannot be logically defended. Things such as political or religious affiliation, where there is no flawless/perfect choice, people get offended easily because they will not be able to make a clear logical argument for their choice.

So, naturally we tend to interact with people with similar political/religious affiliations be it physical or as it is becoming more and more common – virtual. Those Twitter/Facebook/Instagram feeds filled with memes, jokes and news that consciously and sub-consciously create echo chambers where you keep hearing the same thing again and again. You know what… if you hear something long enough, even if it is horrible you will start to find it tolerating. I owned a house near a highway for 4 years. All the long distance buses used to queue there and from 8 pm to 11 pm and the drivers used to honk like hell. First week was horrible, but after a couple of months, they did not bother me. I got used to it. Okay… you may say that I started ignoring those sounds. But another case in point, again me. I spent about an year driving 260 kms for work every day. That meant I spent 4 hours on road. For the fear of dozing off, I used to play music at full volume. Some of that music was horrible, the only criteria for the songs that I used was good bass and a fast beat. After an year of hearing to them, these horrible songs with stupid lyrics became some of my favorites. They still are my guilty pleasures of music.

Social media echo chambers and democracy - Technology vs Humanity: the ...

This is what happens over time, you tend to develop selective blindness and selective deafness to things that normal people would cringe at. This is exactly what has happened since 2017 when an anonymous used started a theory and that ended up in the attack on the US capitol building 3 years layer. The Q Anon movement is a big thing in America. In reality, it might be a playful guy putting a wild theory on a message board and that in-turn being used by some politically motivated groups to further their self interests. Last week I was going through some applications of machine learning in word processing and I came across someone who actually did an analysis of the posts from this so called Q and came to a conclusion that they were 2 different people. A lot of people who had were aligned with the ideas or just wished the things said by Q were true. So they took a cue from what every he said and converted a small dumpster fire into a wild fire that has started to engulf an entire nation.

Two authors are behind QAnon messages, shows machine learning analysis from Swiss company Orphanalytics.
Source: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/qanon-is-two-different-people-shows-machine-learning-analysis-from-orphanalytics-301192981.html

So, it is very important to discover if you are living in an echo chamber. Technology provides some options such as Ground news. But it is ultimately up-to you. How diverse is your network? How many people do you know are different from you? Try to be more open in your choice of people you hang out with, you have a better chance of not being sucked into an echo chamber.

The predators

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Sharks can sense a single drop of blood in an Olympic sized pool. Hyenas by the virtue of the lion king and their unfortunate appearance are one of the most hated animals. Leeches are worms that survive by sucking the blood of animals. They are different species, they live in different habitats. But, Guess what’s common between them? Yes they are all carnivores. What else? Something less obvious. All three of them do not kill their prey. They feed on them when their prey is still alive.

Why God did made the snake before lawyers? To exercise.

A popular but illogical joke. I’ll tell you why.

When it comes to comparing professions with a animals, lawyers are compared to snakes. But snakes bite and kill their prey or at least paralyze them before eating them. But an attorney doesn’t do that. Attorneys are leeches, they have to keep their food alive in order to sustain. What more, just like a leech sucking on a buffalo, they have the ability to numb the prey, so that the client doesn’t realize the blood sucking part. Now a days some other professionals are also taking a cue from leeches. For example, doctors in India have been employing different scare mongering tactics to squeeze as much as possible from every patient. So is education industry.

There are some professional scammers out there who are always stalking the group of prey to identify the weakest link. From email to sms to phone calls, these people try to bait people and try to make money of them by offering free treasures to millions in inheritance. Hyenas follow the same rule, identify the weakling and gang up on it.

Recently, i have been seeing a lot of sharks around. Both physical and virtual. The physical ones, set shops in our office building as soon as the salary day comes. The virtual ones have discount sales and offers when ever there is some major/minor calendar event or some times just for the sake of it. These sharks are attracted to our office building by the smell of salary being deposited in our bank accounts.

But there is an another class of predator out there, that I am still struggling to correlate with any thing in the animal kingdom. I guess even Darwin would struggle to classify this species. Perhaps they are a mutation of capitalism. They call themselves Marketing executives. They hound, harass and invade the privacy of everyone. What’s more infuriating is that they do it with a smile on their face.

Just like some types of predators, these people set traps and then they stalk and track their prey. In this digital age this has become a very easy thing to do. It’s now even automated. There are plug and solutions available that can do this for anyone. This is not a new idea, its just an exaggerated implementation of an existing idea. In a street market, have you ever faced a situation where a hawker would leave you alone once you have inquired about his product? For him its expression of interest. Digitization of this concept is the reason why we are in a state where majority of the notifications, emails and SMS we get on our phones are advertisements or other promotions. John Oliver explains to the ridiculous lengths these people go in the name of notifications. The tracking is done through hidden scripts of websites. The website that hosts this blog as 2 such trackers. The company I work for, it’s website has 11 trackers. They do analytics, user data collection and prepare stats for businesses on potential customers and their potential preferences. In the earlier example of the street vendors, the digital equivalent would be that you look at something in a store and the sales guys gets behind you for eternity. I say eternity because unlike the street vendor who leaves when you buy the product or strongly refuse, the internet will never leave you. If you don’t like product A, they have gazillion other things to offer. Also, they share their customers generously with others. I can give you an analogy and its not going to be pretty. Imagine writing your phone number on the photo of a beautiful girl and sticking it in the notice board of your apartment. Almost every guy who sees it will call you. The paper boy, the guy who delivers milk, the security guard, the delivery guy, his friends, friends of his friends.

This is how what every telemarketer imagines when he sees your phone number

Now imagine writing your number on a billboard. This is what you did when you gave your phone number to anyone. Weather it be your email provider asking it for extra security, the guy at a billing counter offering redeemable points or the guy who hands you out free lottery draw for exchange of phone numbers or accept to terms and conditions on a app or a website or sign any document when you take a service. In the pretense of selling you something, they want to sell you to the world.

“I laugh at the irony of people screaming out against privacy invasion by governments on twitter and Facebook. The platforms that offered them a chance to look at some memes, videos and probably what their friends had for dinner in exchange for their private information”

– Me

Today I got a call from a person representing my bank. I have a car loan and they were offering me a “top-up” loan on it for the umpteenth time. This was at 12:25 PM. I was so pissed off that I told them that I don’t have a car or an account with them and this was a wrong number. I was just tired of saying no. The most amazing fact about these telemarketers is that the same person never calls you twice, they tell you that they will update their database that you are not interested and then another one will call an hour later. Then exactly at 12:27 PM, I got a phone call from the credit card department offering me an enhanced credit limit. Then I blew my fuse. It then took me 47 minutes to revoke subscriptions from all promotional calls.

Percentage of total calls that were either spam or for marketing in US

Above is an info graphic on the raise in marketing calls in the United States. So, why have we come to a situation where you cannot even live one day of your life without faceless people bothering you?

For example, India has a great many number of prospective customers for all types of businesses. But what they lack is purchasing power. Now, how does one increase the purchasing power? Ideal way is to improve the quality of life, increased wages, better social security, better insurance etc.. there by increasing disposable income and willingness to spend. But, it takes a long time and effort. More importantly willing and efficient governments. Another way is to let people accumulate wealth and then spend it. Lets say you want to buy a car. You can save money for a few years (depending on the car you would like to buy) and then buy it. But some times these few years may become few more years because things like inflation, or unexpected expenses or emergencies. Well, it is good to have some money for the rainy day. Right? But that would mean you buying a car is still an ‘IF’ for the business. So, the bank will give you the loan to buy the car now and then repay it over the same ‘few’ years. That makes you paying them an obligation, not an option. They don’t care for your emergencies, for all they care, if you are already short of money for buying a non-necessary thing, then you will be forced into another loan when you need money. That’s a double win for them.

This is why people in India get so many calls like personal loan inquiries, real estate offers. Types of sales, where you can be put on a leash for a long long time. A common man would be scared of defaulting any loans. Most defaulters are actually people who are inherently wealthy, for them cost of a law suit is much less than the cost of repaying the loan. It is vice-versa for a middle class person. These ‘marketing folk’ are like a mutation in the natural food chain, they create their own prey rather than hunting them. Also, the hunter you see is not he actual predator, like in the case of Ants where the entire colony works for a queen and even hunts and gathers food for the queen. The people who call you or email you get only a miserly bit of the flesh.

May be Jerry Sienfeld foresaw this in 1992. That is why he made the below joke in his show. With all the greedy people out there, the situation will only become worse. We are not in the age of personalized marketing as shown in the minority report. But we are getting there fast.

The Judge, the jury and the executioner

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It is a fact that no two people are alike. I am not talking about appearances, DNA. finger prints, iris scans or all the other bullshit that the governments are using to tag us like some endangered species. I am talking about the nature, qualities, behavior and other things that are almost impossible to quantify or classify. There are words in every language to describe these things but the combinations and scale of intensity of these things is so unique to everyone that we would have to invent a new word for each one of us.

My brain is some of these at times, many of these at other times but never all of these.

As a person who seldom makes a good first impression, I want to ask you this. How long does it take for you to judge a person? But, more importantly, I would like to ask you. Why do you need to judge another person? What purpose does it serve? The only people in the world who should be concerned about what a person is is a psychiatrist. What is the urge to classify and categorize every person in your life?

We do that right from the moment a person in born into this world. We put them into one of the 12 buckets available based on the day they were born. They are called sun signs or moon signs, depending on the place you are born. I don’t believe in astrology. I am so self-centered that I assume that no-one knows more than me, so I start with a presumption that every one is wrong and accept anything only after fact checking. I am like Sheldon cooper with out a PhD. But I do have a confession to make. In my first week of my first job, I was bored and someone send me a link to a website that has all the content from Linda Goodman’s book – Sun signs. As any one would do I clicked on my sun sign and started reading.

No, I still remember the website and the content so well because I was very surprised it to be so accurate. Its been over 11 and a half years since I read it for the first time. But over the last decade I have been revisiting the site. As they say, age generally brings maturity. What I took in from this website changes over this period. The 21 year old was blown away by the content. The 25 year old started looking into the content for other sun signs. Finally the 30 year old understood why the 21 year old was blown away. The content for all the sun signs is highly positive. Even some of the negative traits shown in a positive way. This makes every one like their own stuff. Though I am still a little spooked about the accuracy content, I have also realized that I am not just what was in that web page. There is much more to me. May be it represents 10-15% of me.

If I were on a mission to make every one like me. I would have to print out those pages and distribute them like visiting cards. Underlining the less desirable traits in me and asking people to bear with me because they were manufacturing defects. On the other side, every one around me will have to make an algorithm out of the content to figure out the probable reaction I give to different situations. Its highly impractical and also illogical. Because I change every day, the content of the page has remained same since 1st December 1984. When I say I change every day, I don’t mean like a chameleon. I mean that I evolve everyday. Based on different circumstances, I keep changing my opinions and thus my responses to same events keep changing.

But we keep trying to stereo type people based on gender, region, religion, blah blah blah. Thereby we miss the point. Its none of your business. Deal with people in a case to case basis. In each case, start with a clean slate. It takes a lot of self control to do this. I do digress sometimes. But eventually try to go back to do the correct thing. React to situation based on the facts and only facts of the case.

Don’t try to be the Judge, Jury and Executioner for everyone around you. Judges are corrupt, Jury are gullible and Executioner don’t get to use their brains. In the current society, if a person with a criminal record is found at the scene of another crime, they assume he did it.

Next time you see a news article with something bad written about somebody, try reading it as – a person did a bad thing rather than a bad person did a thing.Don’t generalize. If you do, you will be a person doing the same bad thing again and again.

The underdog detective

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Over analyzed movie review – Episode 1

I like movies a lot. That is why I don’t watch many. 


Spoiler Alert: The following blog contains spoilers. Please stay away if you haven’t watched the movie.

Well to start with a gist, better get it from IMDB, “Agent Sai Srinivasa Athreya is an authentic humorous investigative thriller revolving around the adventures of a detective based out of Nellore.“

Now let me try it in my own words. It is a low budget comedy thriller that has a very good script and screenplay. An ambitious detective who watches loads of English detective films to learn his trade and operates from a shack in the middle of a vegetable market. He gets dragged into a very sophisticated criminal operation. He thinks that he is on the right path, so do we. He ends up being framed for a couple of murders and now has to clear his name while also find the real culprits.

Phew! Those were some long sentences. But to the topic of my interest. Why did it work?
Traditional movie goers in India prefer movies with big name stars to ones with a good script. So, how did this movie do as well as it did? Well a movie, irrespective of language will always do well if it manages to play with the emotions and instincts of the audience. 

In this movie, some of our basic instincts (not Michael Douglas’s) are played with. In any detective movie you expect the lead to solve the mystery. But casting a rookie as the film’s lead trigger’s the underdog effect. Let’s say you are watching a James Bond/Sherlock Holmes/Mission impossible, if the lead were to fall into any peril, you wouldn’t be concerned. How can any harm come to such a powerful character? (Same logic used in reverse to blow your minds again and again in Game of thrones) If you are not concerned or connected with the character, you wouldn’t be blissful when he wins. In this movie, the lead is not very powerful or well built. You wouldn’t expect him to win any fights. So, it makes him the underdog. In a neutral situation, one always roots for the underdog. So there is a connection established with the audience. Its always satisfying to see a deer escaping a tiger than a tiger devouring a deer or a tiger fighting another tiger.

Next, Us being Judgmental. Movies have always generalized bad people. Their appearance,body language, the facial expressions have always been stereotyped. But, How does a bad person look?  Here is a test for you. If you haven’t watched ‘The Usual Suspected’, play along. Look at the image below and find the culprit.


Before you answer, think again, this may or may not be a trick question. Watch the movie to know the answer. I will not reveal it. 
Another test if you are interested. Below is a poster of “Murder on Orient express”.The poster of the better version of 1974 was not very convenient for the task, so I am using the 2017 version. Who among the below is a cold blooded murderer?




Now coming back the topic of discussion. At no juncture in the movie, the audience get any information on who the bad guy(s) is/are. There is no attempt to mislead you either. They genuinely show characters in different situations. Besides appearances, People mistake attitude for character. So, for major part of the movie, our brains keep passing judgments on everyone we see on the screen.

Side note: This topic alone deserves a separate post. On how we assume ourselves to be the judge, jury and executioner for everyone.

Coming back to the movie. A detective movie is only good if the audience cannot figure out the mystery themselves. There are different ways the narrators achieve this. Some make the plot so complicated/illogical that its impossible to find the culprit. Others mislead you on purpose. But only a few master the screenplay of audience coming to their own conclusions and making sure they are wrong conclusions. 

So, this movie plays at 2 habits of ours. One always supporting the underdog and the other, us being judgmental about everything. This is why it hit the right cords.

Collective compass

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Ants

 
Ants are curious organisms. They are always busy. I mean always. Have you ever seen an ant that is not in hurry? Its unfair that bees get the idiom ‘Busy as a bee’ just because they start with same alphabet. I have see plenty of bees that are just sitting idle of a wall or a leaf. Though, I cannot change the existing language, I can add another idiom. ‘As industrious as an Ant’.

Ants have a social hierarchy. The queen is the founder and responsible for laying eggs. Drones are the males responsible for mating with the queen while worker ants are responsible for building and maintaining the nest, protecting the colony from other ants and, most importantly, feeding the colony. The most fascinating aspect of worker ants is the way they carry food. If you observe the below animation closely, you will notice that Ants keep changing places. Its not like they are taking turns at the job or taking frequent breaks from their task. You will also notice that each time a new ant joins the effort, there is a slight alteration in the direction.

Worker ants have a collective goal. They trust each and every one of the ants to work towards the same goal. When ant leaves its position and wanders around, it is actually scouting for the direction they need to travel in and when it comes back and tugs in a different direction, the rest of the group just follow the new direction, without even a slight hesitation.


A compass is a tool that tells you direction. But it does its job only if its working properly. A broken compass will show a wrong direction. Lets look at it as each ant has its own compass, each member of the group, takes turns to check their compass and tell the rest of the group to follow their compass. The rest of the pack ignore the readings in their compasses and just follow the latest information. Also there is no single ant forcing others to follow only its directions. It sounds like a very inefficient plan. But it ants always make their way back to their nest.
 
Now, if we give a group of human beings a compass each. Some working and some broken without telling them who has the proper ones and repeat this experiment of asking them to go from Point A to Point B with no single one having any idea where their destination is, I would bet one of the two things with happen. They will either remain at the same location arguing or end up being influenced by the most dominant member and leave the result to the change of the dominant member’s compass being correct.

All this might seem like a stupid Idea. When would anyone be in this kind of situation. Well, this happens often in life and more often at work. Whenever we embark of a journey to uncharted territories with a group/team of people, almost everyone in the group has an opinion on how to go about it. But they seldom trust each other. They fail to consider that they might have a broken compass.

I don’t mean to say the one must follow everyone’s advice. It would be ridiculous. But one should at least give a benefit of doubt to other ideas. There is a very good quote in the movie “Ratatouille”. It says “Everybody can cook”. It doesn’t mean that each and everyone of us would make an excellent cook. It means that a great cook can come from anywhere.

 

 

 

Well wishers

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Foxes in sheep’s clothing

The Wolf has been one of the most maligned animal in an idiomatic sense. Some one who is cunning and deceives is commonly referred to as a Wolf in sheep’s clothing. But, in reality wolf is a very ethical animal. It never hides its intent. From an evolutionary perspective-it doesn’t need to. It has the physical strength to survive, it always lives in a pack. So, anything that it does to undermine the integrity of the pack will not be tolerated and this fact is genetically embedded. 

On a side note, this idiom has biblical origins. According to new testament this was quoted by none other than Jesus. No, I don’t attend mass. I just googled the idiom and Wikipedia told me this fact. Which means., 1) Wikipedia is wrong or  2) The guys who wrote new testament lied or 3) Jesus didn’t know the nature of wolves (which is highly unlikely coz his dad created everything. Right?)

Coming back to the poor misunderstood wolves, The actual culprit here is another canine. Foxes – They are always deceitful. Their slender size demands that they be cunning. Else, they wouldn’t survive. This is evolution, the survival of the fittest. The word fit here is misleading, it doesn’t just mean physical fitness. It is the fitness demanded by the surroundings and environment. Now that my mini-crusade for Wolves has concluded. I would like to get into the actual context. 

The image and the title might not make a good correlation on first glance. Now read well wishers as the people who wish that they can at least push you into a well or in a best case scenario wish they could push you off the cliff. Now, can you make the connection between the foxes, the well wishers and the stick version of “This is Sparta“?

Since, the gentlemen in the figure are wearing ties,Can I also assume that you made the correlation to an office environment? Okay, you might have missed that. But no worries. 

Lets look at the employees in an office in conjunction with the Darwin’s theory of natural selection and evolution. 

In nature, all species have developed different tactics to attract mates. 
In offices, the managers become these mates. But eventually most mates ehm…. managers turn into praying mantis (they f*ck their mate and they eat them – wow this my first ever expletive ridden post). In nature the female always prefers a partner which would pass on the best genetic code to its offspring. The particular quality that is preferred depends on the type of species. But in offices, different mates look at different qualities. Some good for the offspring (organization) some just good for them. This is where offices deviate from Darwin. 



Now that we have discussed the metaphorical mating rituals, lets look at the competition. In animal kingdom there are different types of competition among peers (Other than competing for a mate). Social animals fight for control or power over the group. But this mostly results in finding the right leader. But in most organisations the oldest animal becomes the King. These Kings in the organisation do not opt for a long term partners. So, they don’t choose a queen. They instead pick a bitch* from time to time. This would be their most loyal employees. Then there is another position up for grabs. The one of a minister to seek advice. This is where again the there is a deviation from evolution. Here its not the survival of the fittest. The person most capable of doing his job well would be the fittest guy, some Kings do choose their counsel wisely. There by becoming successful even if they are incompetent. But some others choose poorly and ultimately perish.

The poor choice of counsel happens because of not having visibility. This generally happens in large organisations. But in smaller/medium organisations, the foxes come-to-the-fore. Since, they don’t cut the bill, they resort to all sort of tactics to get the competition out of the way. Gossiping, bullying, back stabbing, undermining others, taking credit for others work. They use all the code in their cheat book. Their skill here is to do it subtly. They make every effort not to get exposed. 

So, long story short. The foxes in offices have defied the laws of evolution. If you want to be successful, please be on a look out for foxes. They can be lurking next to you, masquerading as a Sheep, waiting for the right opportunity.

* not trying to insult any dogs here

Being Humane

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Englishman in Newyork




I originally wanted to call this piece ‘Being human’. But I was afraid of a copyright infringement suite by the Bhai’s lawyers. Not the Mafia kind, the Bollywood kind. You don’t mess with a legal team that can manage to keep a person out of jail after he was found guilty for culpable homicide.

Now coming back to the matter of being humane. What is a human and what makes us humane? Humane means being benevolent or in “Non-Sasi Tharoor” language, it means being kindhearted. Are Humans so kindhearted that we can bestow the the word humane with a  meaning of benevolence? 

United Nations maintains a list of global issues. Each and every issue in the list is a result of human action. Let me be clear here. Not inaction, but human action. I’m not going to justify this statement by linking each problem on the list to present or past human actions. Anyone with common sense should be able to make the correlation. Also, I’m not writing this because my heart suddenly started to bleed for all those suffering in the world. The trigger to this post is very personal.

For the last few years, I haven’t been very happy. Well! Happy is not the correct word. I haven’t been content with my life. I couldn’t put a finger on it. My wife was having the same feeling(not similar, exactly the same). We felt like aliens in the our own country or in other words, felt like we were living among another species. So what is my definition of being a human being? or being humane? It is a very big and abstract word. 

What makes Homo sapiens unique among all the other species to have ever walked the earth? We have brains with higher cognitive capabilities or to put it simply, we have more grey cells in our head than what is required to just “Survive and Reproduce”. So what are we using this additional processing capacity for? 
I strongly believe, most of us have focused all the left over processing capacity to do only destructive things. Greed is a primary reason for this but so is selfishness. I used to think that I was a very selfish person, still think I am. But talking in relative terms, I am the David for the Golaith’s out there in comparison and unlike the biblical hero, I am not going to win.  

In fact, the way most of my fellow humans are acting embarrasses me to accept that I belong to the same race as theirs. In a way being different is not a quality appreciated by the society in general. They treat you like an alien. Perhaps this is exactly what we were feeling. But I find solace in the words (rather lyrics) of Sting.

If “Manners maketh man” as someone said
Then he’s the hero of the day
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say

I’m an alien, I’m a legal alien
I’m an Englishman in New York
I’m an alien, I’m a legal alien
I’m an Englishman in New York



Many-faced god

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Everyday is Halloween


“Sometimes we don’t do things we want to do 
so that others won’t know we want to do them.”

Today evening I was watching “The Village” by M Night Shyamalan for the second time in my life. I watched it once long long ago and I hated its ending. I wanted to know if my wife would agree with my opinion, so we watched it together. The female protagonist spoke these words, the words I missed when I watched it the first time and it triggered an avalanche of thoughts in my head. After a few minutes, I remembered a quote by Tim Burton.
Both the dialogue and the quote mean the exact same thing, it is just not very apparent. 

The first title I thought of this blog was ‘The masks we wear’ but it would be too obvious and kind of redundant Halloween theme. Many-Face god is someone who is worshiped by a cult of assasins in the HBO series Game of thrones. To celebrate its last season that was recently aired, I chose this title. These assassins don faces they collected from dead people as masks to hide their true appearances. In a way this is a more apt title for this blog. You’ll understand the correlation by the time you finish reading this.

Are you truly the person that others perceive you to be? I would confidently wager that you are not. If you honestly say yes to my previous question, I don’t have any words for you. You are truly a rare breed. 

If you answer the question as No, then think of how many people truly know you?
There is no shame in accepting this. Majority of us behave or try to behave in such a way that is expected of us. School, college, Work, Friends and Family. Each of these situations expect you to behave in a certain way and portray certain set of values and attitude. it is a combination of Peer pressure and Social obligations. 

If one removes all these obligations would you still make the same decisions? I know I wouldn’t. Most of our actions are a result of a thought process “What will people think of me if I don’t/do this?”. This is very good in a way. This may be the main difference between a human and an animal. Animals always do things based on their primal instincts. Humans have mastered the art of suppressing the natural instincts. I say suppress for a reason. These urges are still very much a part and parcel of everyone’s genes. The funniest thing is that humans are also self centered and give a name called ‘Conscience’ to this act.

Even for the sake of argument, I cannot ask you to tell me how you would react when there are no social obligations. Because they are ever present from birth to death. But there are 2 situations in life where one cannot and will not suppress their true nature. One is when they are alone and the other is when they are under tremendous amount of pressure.

Lets look at each of these situations. When you are truly alone and have nothing to do, what runs through your mind? What do you want to do? Is it different than what you would do if your partner/friends/family/co-workers are with you? If you answered yes to my first question and yes to this question, then you are lying to your self. Welcome to the club of ‘Many-faced Gods’. 


Now the other situation, when you are under severe pressure. Here the true self comes out without any effort. Its not in your control. the survival instincts of your brain kick in and all other cognitive functions shut down. In such a situation you do what comes to you naturally, your brain forgets all the training you have given it over all the years distinguishing each and everything as good and bad.

I’m no Saint here.  I’m also a Many-faced god(human). I’m a selfish person. It comes from being the only child or may be there is some of it in my DNA too. I never had to share as a kid so it was difficult to train myself to do that. Not just ‘stuff’, I also never had to share attention so my natural instinct is to crave for it. I’m condescending, which is a derivative tendency of anyone who has had lots of attention as  kid. Like wise I’m egocentric, narcissistic, insensitive. A lot of people who know me (or think that they know me) wouldn’t associate these qualities with me. But honestly I’m all of these. I’m many more but I don’t want to reveal them and upgrade my designation from Sociopath to Psychopath.

The use of ‘I am’ instead of ‘I was’ is intentional. This is because I know what I am and I also know that I will always be that. I use these so called negative personalities in a positive way to deal with the social obligations that these behavioral traits are always in conflict with. But I have found out a way to use the conflict to my advantage. For example if I see someone not following traffic rules and they cause inconvenience to me. It hurts my ego. Instead of reacting to it I call my inner narcissist who appreciates my taking the higher road. That makes me happy and avoids a confrontation. I’m not saying everyone should  follow me and try to turn their negatives to positives.I’m also not saying that I’m the master of my senses. I’m just saying that this is what I do or at least try to as much as possible. 

In Batman begins there is a line that says 

On the contrary, what ever we do we will always be what we are underneath. It is equally important to embrace what we are. You might argue that it is wise to be a Roman when in Rome. I’d say… sure be a roman but just remember but your actually aren’t.

No Brainer

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Stop and Think!

Jellyfish. Its a fish that looks, feels like a moving jelly. So naming it a jelly fish is a No Brainer. No, I dont mean that you don’t have to use any grey matter to arrive at this name. I mean it literally. A jelly fish has no Brain. So do a lot of other organisms. But it is a well known and recognised creature, so I’ll stick with it to make my point.

Now Jelly fish has no brain but it survives. It just survives it doesn’t bother about the rest of the world. But we humans do. None of the other 8.7 million species on earth do it. Just us. So, we think that we are superior to them. We think our brains are more advanced than all the other species. This hasn’t yet been scientifically proven but just for the sake of this argument, let’s assume they are. Now are we using this brain? Or May be let me rephrase the question. Are we using our brains correctly?

There are 2 types of humans that I see. Ones who just accept what ever they are told. Ones who don’t. Now, if you just accept what ever is told to you without reasoning, technically you might as well be born as a jelly fish. In other words, you might as well not have a brain. Why carry the weight of 3 pounds that is not needed. Well may be not all of it, just the Grey part. You will still need the white part to remember what is told to you. You just don’t need the part that gives cognitive abilities.

I would like to venture a guess that while reading this blog, especially the previous paragraph, you have categorised yourself as the second kind. The Reasoning Kind. But I’d like to disagree. It might sound a arrogant statement. But I honestly believe that most people do not put their brains to good use and I wholeheartedly wish they did. May be they don’t realise the need to question the status quo. 

Now, I’ll go through a list of few things that I bet you never bothered to think twice about. You learnt them in school, stuffed them in our memory bank and left them there. For Instance, why does one stop at a red light and drive when it is green? Who decided it? Why did they choose those colours? 

But one question always drives me in circles. Well, spheres and ellipses to be honest.
Earth is a sphere and it revolves around the Sun in an elliptical orbit. So, how do we determine the starting point of a sphere or a ellipse?
Well they did do that. In 1850, people from some so called western came together and said, we need to create time zones. This started when railroad connectivity established between Canada and the US. Business men had a tough time with ‘time’. Obviously they did not invite all the countries with people who have melanin in their skin. Then everyone that were invited wanted their country to be taken as a reference point. Now who do you think won in this situation. Take a guess. It was the English. They made England the centre of Earth.
One can argue that there was a very good necessity to draw longitudes. But then they have established the so called East and West. 

Directions are pretty straight forward. The direction that sun rises from is the east. eg: For India Singapore is East. For England, France is East. But its funny that their definition was not relative. Japan is far east, even for Hawaii. And For Korea, US is West. That doesn’t make any sense.

Now lets get back to the concept of time for a moment. A calendar is also a way to keep time. Time will exist even of no one will keep track of it. Now, the best way to make a formula for anything is to find as few exceptions as possible and a unit of time has to fall under same criteria. But they did all kinds of reverse engineering and forward engineering. Its just like the non-metric system in US and UK. Its stupid. An year is defined as time it takes for earth to complete one rotation around the sun. So, where does an orbit start? Why start counting on January 1st. Again you might argue that its a problem with no solution. Some one had to start counting at some point in the orbit. Why not January? Agree.

I’ll use a final example that in completely and utterly illogical. Now. A week has 7 days. There are 5/6 work/week days and 2/1 weekend days respectively (depending on which part of the world you are in). Now why is Sunday a holiday? Why not any other 6 days of the week? This is a stupid thing that was written in bible that no one is supposed to work of Sabbath as its the day of the lord. Now that is fine, but what about the rest of the world. Its not the day of ‘their’ lord. Well except Saudi Arabia, they saw the right through this logic and declared that their holiday would be on Friday. 

You may think that I’m crazy to say that such kind of things are worth thinking about. But I’d argue that these are the exact kind of things that one should ponder about. If we silently follow what we are told, what’s the difference between a sheep(or Jellyfish) and us.