The Arcane Mysteries of Research

There was a newspaper report I saw recently which said using social networking sites like Facebook can decrease workforce productivity by 1.5%

This is a similar article. But hark! I recalled another article (in the newspaper I think) which said social networking is good to an extent! Read this.

Now who are we supposed to believe? Are the benefits (or ills) of using social networking sites different in different countries?!

First of all a disclaimer. I am sure that there are devious minds in my audience who will immediately ascribe the scenes described below to me. They are requested to kindly resist the temptation failing which they might be made aware of an uncomfortable sensation in the nether regions of their physiology.

Our hero, Hamesha Romeo goes to college and promptly falls in love with Pehli Juliet. He blithely proposes to her when she piously informs him that she is committed to someone else and thus Romeo is heartbroken.

A few days pass and he falls in love with Dwitiya Juliet. He confides his love to a friend who assures him that she knows for a fact that Dwitiya is also committed.

Now our hero begins hating the word committed. He is confused as to why the English language uses the same word to describe a person admitted to a psychiatric care institution (aka mental hospital) and also to describe a person in a relationship with another human being (of either the opposite or the same sex).

Along comes Tritiya and our hero once again loses his heart (the mind was missing in the first place). He proposes to her and she tells him with a shocked expression that she felt they were only friends. This incident, my friends gave rise to Romeo's habit of occasionally banging his head against the nearest wall that he is notorious for.

After a few months Hamesha is mad about Chaturthi Juliet but she resists all his advances to the maximum extent possible and refuses to acknowledge the very existence of our hero.

Now Romeo is enraged. He had decided long back that he would marry only out of love and that arranged marriage was below his dignity. So now he decides that he shall no longer pay any attention to any girl from his college.

Now his thought process goes along these lines. Ahha, he is single and free to mingle! The world shall be his hunting ground! Okay, the world is a little beyond his scope. India shall be his hunting ground. But wait, he can't leave this city. This city shall be his area of pursuit. Oh God, he does not have time to go to the nearby market. He shall have to restrict himself to his college.

Ah, finally a target market! Now he shall concentrate on a consumer. After market research, focus group discussions and expert interviews the final target consumer who is single and meets his criteria turns out to be Chaturthi. But wait, why is this name familiar? Scenes of scornful laughter and happy ignoring fill his mind as he is reminded of Chaturthi.

The last we saw of our hero, Hamesha Romeo, he was running for a rope.

Update

I have decided to save myself some effort. I had another blog. I have decided to copy some stuff from it for future entries (if I have not done that already). I am not putting the name up for obvious reasons!

The Half-Century

This is my 50th post on this blog. I first of all thank all the people who have read my posts and also read them now.

I was slightly confused about what to write in the 50th blog. Then I decided to write about human relations in a different sense. Don't ask me why. If everything had a logical reason would there have been emotions in this world?

First of all, you never know how a person will get to know what you did. I am reminded of a tee shirt a friend of mine wore the other day. He had done his summer internship with Mahindra & Mahindra. The tee shirt said "Ask me what I did this summer", in all probability a take on the movie "I Know What You Did This Summer". Well, I do not know about summer but one can get to know about people from weird quarters. This my dear readers, is a small world.

Picture the following situations

1) A guy I know had this huge thing for a girl but things ended pretty badly. One fine day a classmate at his b-school comes up to him and asks him about the girl. He is shocked for a few seconds. Then she tells him that she knows a person who is supposedly going out with this girl as they were interns at the same place!

2) A person who was your senior in engineering college, a person you never spoke to, is your batchmate now, and becomes a great friend of yours. To top that a family friend of the said senior who was your super-senior joins the same b-school in the first year when you have reached the second year.

3) A family friend of an ex-colleague of yours is your batchmate in a PG course.

4) A person you always had certain impressions about turns out to have a different side (may or may not be desirable) that kind of surprises you.

5) You get to know what is happening around you behind the scenes and that KNOCKS the breath out of you.

5) You are sitting on the fifth floor of a building and are just gazing out. You chance upon a guy who just spat on a clean wall soiling it. I do not want to sound paranoid but what is the guarantee that someone tomorrow is not observing you from some corner (even if it is a coincidence) without your knowledge?

Maybe I can go on and on. I cannot reveal the identities of the people I talked about for obvious reasons. The last one is totally hypothetical by the way. I made it up just for the sake of illustration.

A Moving Song

I was translating this song (I did a sad job, I have to confess) from a Telugu movie called Mooga Manasulu which literally means Dumb Hearts. The male protagonist (Akkineni Nageswara Rao) is in love with the female protagonist (Savitri) and vice versa. The supporting actress (Jamuna) is also in love with ANR. There is this song which she addresses to him in the movie. The lyrics (Acharya Atreya) are absolutely beautiful and so is the tune (K V Mahadevan). I felt this was a nice thing to share with everyone, hence this write up.

By the way this movie was remade into Hindi starring Sunil Dutt and Nutan as Milan.

First the Telugu lyrics.

maanu maakunu kaanu
raayi rappanu kaane kaanu
maamoolu manisini nenu
nee manisini nenu

naaku oka manasunnaadi
nalgurila aasunnadi
kalalu kane kallunnayi
avi kalata padite neellunnaayi

pramidanu techchi vattini yesi
chamurunu posi bema choopeva
inta chesi, yeliginchenduku
yenaka mumdulaadeva

manisi toti yelakolam
aadukunte baaguntaadi
manasu toti aadaku mama
virigipote atakadu malla

Now the translation (forgive and forget the errors).

paed paudha nahi hoon
patthar to hoon hi nahi
main seedha saadha insaan hoon
tumhara insaan hoon

mera bhi ek dil hain
sab ke jaise aasha hain
sapne dekhne waale naina hain
wo vichalit hote hain to aansoon hain

diya laa ke, baati rakh ke
ghee daal ke, bhram dikhaya kya tumne
ye sab kar ke, jalaane ke liye
aage peeche kar rahe ho (hichkicha rahe ho)

insaan ke saath mazaak karna achcha lagta hain
dil ke saath mat khelna
toot jaaye to judega nahi

Gullibility on the Internet

Many must hav heard of phishing and also the Nigerian Fraud. For the uninitiated the latter is a kind of email fraud where someone contacts you to transfer a large amount out of a certain country (not only Nigeria). Scott Adams says in a Dilbert book that people are stupid. Occasionally it does seem so. If spam and the likes still survive it means that there are people who read these mails and act upon them.

Recently I received two mails on my college email ID. One was from ynotmarry.com, which I think is a marriage agency. The sender's name was Shalini and I actually have a batchmate at IIFT by that name. I was non-plussed for a few seconds as to why she sent me the mail. Also I first thought that the website points out why we should not marry! The other was something on the lines of the Nigerian fraud. But this time it was from a person claiming to be one of a pair of orphans. They wanted my help. Since when have people started believing in orphans personally going online and asking for help!

I have attached screenshots of the two mails.

Saare Jahaan se Achcha

There will probably be very few Indians (at least from the northern part of the country) who will not have heard of the song, Saare Jahaan se Achcha by the poet Mohammed Iqbal. It is widely considered to be a patriotic song in praise of India. But how many people know that the poet proposed a separate nation for Muslims which became the Pakistan concept and that he later disavowed the song? Also Iqbal is the national poet of Pakistan. Maybe understandably, the song is little known in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Read this article.

This country is weird in its inclusivity. Accusations have also been made against our current national anthem that it is in fact a song of praise addressed to the British Monarch. Tagore himself acknowledged that he was asked to pen something in praise of the emperor, but he ended up addressing it to God and not to the British monarch as this was something that he could not do.

Remember the controversy some time back to change the lyrics of the national anthem as Sindh is no longer a part of India? The final verdict was that Sindh refers to the people and hence the word need not be removed. Thus India has consistently been a mixture of people - tolerant and zealous/bigoted. When will all Indians finally understand this and live amicably with one another?

Worrying about other people's opinions

This is an email forward that I got from an ex-BITian - Nirbhai Chadha. I found it to be awesome, and it also reflects my attitude in general, especially when I ask questions. No offence meant to anybody. Read on.

A pastor entered his donkey in a race and it won. The pastor was so pleased with the donkey that he entered it in the race again, and it won again.

The local paper read

PASTOR'S ASS OUT FRONT

The Bishop was so upset with this kind of publicity that he ordered the pastor not to enter the donkey in another race. The next day, the local paper headline read

BISHOP SCRATCHES PASTOR'S ASS

This was too much for the bishop, so he ordered the pastor to get rid of the donkey. The pastor decided to give it to a nun in a nearby convent. The local paper, hearing of the news, posted the following headline the next day.

NUN HAS BEST ASS IN TOWN

The bishop fainted. He informed the nun that she would have to get rid of the donkey, so she sold it to a farmer for $10. The next day the paper read

NUN SELLS ASS FOR $10

This was too much for the bishop, so he ordered the nun to buy back the donkey and lead it to the plains where it could run wild. The next day the headlines read

NUN ANNOUNCES HER ASS IS WILD AND FREE

The bishop was buried the next day.

The moral of the story - being concerned about public opinion can bring you much grief and misery, and can even shorten your life.

So be yourself and enjoy life. Stop worrying about everyone else's ass and you'll be a lot happier and live longer!