Our Values

I have been thinking about our values/character. Meaning what we value and what we don't. Let's assume there are two people A and B who both do the same thing. And A takes a lot more effort than B to do it. How do we value A and B? How should we value A and B? We may give a lot of credit to A for taking that much more effort and pain to do the same that B does with relative ease... 

And so I started wondering what causes us to think of person A with more fondness than B...
I guess it's more to do with some things that we have learnt or been taught from childhood:
1. That output ought to be proportional to input (even if it isn’t.. we may tend to value input more than output). Remember, it is the intention (to create more output) that counts..
2. Its no big deal if you spent only a small amount of time for doing something for me. I like the personal touch where a large amount of time is spent (regardless of whether the output was commensurate)
3. We always like the underdogs
and so on..

Then I wondered whether we universally apply this rule (more credit to A than to B) or are we selective...
Where we gotta pay more money for the higher effort we usually prefer the same thing available cheaper... Meaning in effect we prefer B... For example, if Airbus and Boeing assemble the same type with the same "quality" of plane we would prefer the one that is cheaper (obviously the one that uses less time and resources).

Then when and why do we apply the "A better than B" rule...
For things where we dont make any tangible "payment" we seem to value higher inputs for the same output.. Now why is that? That I think is being emotional. Funny..

I Got Cheated

One of my friends played a trick on me for a couple of months. She used a new ID that i was not aware of and chatted with me. This was earlier this year. She found it a lot of fun and she discussed this with some close friends. I am pretty sure they had a whale of a time giggling and smirking.

Some time later I found out who this "new" friend really was but I never told her that until recently. She claims she didn't want to reveal it because:

• She didnt want to let me know that she had been playing this game and since the game was well and truly over why bring it up now...
• And I guess she didn't like the idea that she tricked me and I assume she didnt relish making a fool out of me when she told me (but then she DID relish it when she used the other id!!!).

This friend of mine told me that she went out of her way while using the new ID to behave & speak differently and portray a different kind of person from what I know her to be. And then she said she would ask me something for which she knew the right answer and would wait with bated breath to see whether I would give a different answer to her.

I was deceived initially. I had little idea that it was a case of the old person in a new ID. But then despite that fact that she was cautious (and perhaps because of the fact that she intentionally threw some hints trying to make me catch on) I wore my Sicilian hat (as Tom says in "The Godfather") and figured out the person in the new ID. But then I didnt mention it to her until recently. And she told me y'day that she found the whole thing hilarious then.

I was very amused at hearing this confession ... a kind of prank I might play myself..

Then it started me thinking. Chatting is serious business. Most people start off asking you the age... And I always wondered... Isn't the age something to be figured out based on how a person chats rather than figure out what to chat based on the mentioned age... But I guess we don't want to spent time figuring out who or what a person is. We are so hard pressed for time, we might as well give a questionnaire to the other party (preferably multiple choice questions) and then get the answers, hope they are honestly and correctly answered and if possible outsource the collection and analysis of answers to a company in Bangalore that specializes in this area...

I have seen one person using two different ID's and I have recognized both to be the same person. I have seen two different persons logging in to the same ID and chatting with me and I have recognized the different people behind the same ID. Going back to my friend (with her alter ego ID), its very interesting to see how a person uses the same phrases, the same kind of language without realizing it... There is so much info available to be processed.

And yet we ask people damn fool questions like age and rely on those answers. Whatever happened to the good old way of slowly discovering what the other person is like.

The Last Puppy

A stray dog couple had made my shed their home for the past one year. The two make a nice looking pair, the male is especially handsome. And I had gotten into the habit of feeding the dogs slices of bread every day.

A few months back the female gave birth to 5 puppies. 4 were of them were alike - cute, healthy while the last one, which resembled the father (he was black like his father - other puppies were brown like the mother), was a loner and gaunt, looked sickly. And he behaved weird, he would run the moment he saw anyone. His whole demeanor was awkward, while the other 4 were very friendly and come running to me when I was passing by or bringing bread.

About a month back, I returned home one day to find that the 4 puppies (that were similar) were no longer there. Apparently someone had called the dog catchers and they had come and taken them away. Only the father, the mother and the sickly puppy were left. I wondered how it was that these three got away from the dog catchers. I used to look at the father and mother to see how they reacted to losing 4 of their best. They didn't seem to behave in a human way throwing tantrums. Life for them went on as usual.

Earlier a friend of mine had commented that the loner would not survive. And she and I were both surprised that it was the sickly loner that survived and not any of the other four. And we concluded that's how life is.. so unpredictable.

Today as I was going out my mother asked me whether the loner was alive. Apparently my sister-in-law who saw the puppy y'day had commented that it was not going to survive much longer. So I went to look at the puppy, I found him lying with his jaws open and teeth showing, very much dead. I was stunned. And there the puppy's mother was lying wagging her tail and the father circling me as usual, handsome as ever.

The loner didnt make any noise. He just died quietly during the day.. Ugly while alive, he had a young and a graceful death.

I almost had tears in my eyes. How does it feel to lose your children.. Does one feel sorry for the dogs that they don't seem to realize what has happened? Or is one better off being like the dogs?

The illustrations were done by Tukun.

Additional reading:
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/to-be-one-with-a-canine-buddy/article9018371.ece

How Does a Toddler Recognize His Mom

Recently I happened to come across a young Muslim couple in Kashmir, with a 7-8 month old baby. The woman, wearing an abaya, was holding her child and the child was doing all the things that children of that age do. Jumping over to his father's lap for a minute then (when the father with rough long beard kissed him) jumped right back to his mom's lap. Then he was held by his mom and was peering at me, his pupils seemed larger than his eyes. He was cute. I couldn't resist myself, I started making faces at him. He started giggling. This went on until the mother turned back and stared at me through her veil. It's unnerving to be stared at by a woman when others don't realize she is staring (because she is behind the veil).

A thought struck me then. How does a child recognize that the woman holding him was his mother. He couldn't see her, she was wearing that veil. I asked a couple of my friends about it. And they told me (in that knowing tone which women employ when the topic is kinda feminine) "Oh he can sense that it's his mother. He can smell her". Now that made me wonder.. Can children smell and recognize their mother? I was not sure I could digest this. That couldn't be possible. (Update on 2015 July 7th: Apparently it is true as per this article.)

Then I thought something must make the child comfortable with the woman whose face was not visible. What was that?

Perhaps such (Muslim) children think of their mothers as having two avatars. 1. The "normal" mother when she is home and her face is visible and 2. The mother when she is outside and her face is covered by a veil and not visible. Perhaps such children think they have two mothers.

Meaning if I wore an abaya and held the child softly, the child couldn't make out that I was not his mom and he would be comfortable with me. I am not comfortable with the smell theory. Anyone has better ideas? Recently my guruji came up with what seems to be the right answer; The child recognizes the voice of the mother. I think that could be it.

My thoughts then wandered on..
What if you were walking along in a crowded place and suddenly you lost your wife (who was wearing an abaya)? Imagine all women in that area were wearing the same thing. You couldn't accost each woman and ask if she wasn't your wife. It would be a nightmare. (In the movie,  Bhajrangi Bhaijaan,  they copied this idea while searching for Salman and Nawazuddin, with Salman in an abaya) You might lodge a missing person complaint in a police station. But then the police would ask for a description of your wife. What would you tell them? "Well, uhm, hmm, aah, she was dressed in a black abaya". This is not a description that will help the police much.

Then I thought what would happen next. You would wait in your house for the missing wife to be returned by the police. Sooner or later the police would return with a woman in abaya and tell you sternly to be more careful in future. As you heave a sigh of relief and take the woman in your arms, I was trying to picturize the face of the husband at that moment..

Since most women would be wearing an abaya, the possibility of the woman returned by the police being your wife would be pretty low. And we all know that Muslim women are cute.

So the husband would
1. Be having a woman in his arms
2. Who is very likely cute
3. Who is very likely not his wife
4. And having a perfectly legitimate reason for being in that position

Oh wowowowow...


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burkini

Common Mistakes in Perceptions

I have spoken with many women on the subject of extramarital affairs (EMA for short) and whether it's the men or the women who have more affairs. Most women responded to me saying that men have more affairs than women. And that men are much more likely to cheat than women. "Men are just built that way, those #$%$$#@%" would be the typical response.

In another article I read today (written I think by a man), an explanation was given that EMA usually start at the workplace. And that in the olden days few women were found at the workplace and hence men had more opportunity to have affairs than women. The author continued that these days with women joining the workplace, their (women's) indulgence in EMA is also higher. If few women went to work earlier and hence (as per the author) few women had EMA, I wonder who the men (who were largely the ones who went to work) had affairs with...Maybe those few women who were having EMA's in those days were multitasking and having a rather busy social schedule. Seems possible?

I used to think that it's not possible that men can have more affairs than women. I defined an affair as a relationship between a man and a woman who are not married to each other. If a man has an affair with a woman, ipso facto, that woman also has an affair with the man. Hence the affair statistics has to be equal for both men and women (unless of course men had affairs with entities other than women).

I came across these nice articles:

• http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/12/weekinreview/12kolata.html?_r=3&oref=slogin
• http://antimisandry.com/chit-chat-main/all-women-pigs-15124.html
• http://www.sensualism.com/sex/

where I find that other people have been thinking along the same lines as me!! While providing links, I am aware that the links provided in this post may not be available at a future date and you may be hit with a 404. These links were working at the time of writing this post.

The article below is based on a survey in India.
http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?239547
An interesting thing is the statistics published by the survey (as per the article, equal number of men and women were surveyed in each of eight cities across India). Some responses are categorized by gender. I am quoting a sample data from the article.

"How frequently do you have sex with your spouse?

Of those who said "once a week", males were 8% (of all males) and females were 21% (of all females)."

I wonder if it's possible to have data like the one above. I thought accurate data would show percentages for males and females to be close to each other. Did the respondents to the study provide accurate data? The total number of sexual sessions for men must be equal to that for women. And if the number of male and female respondents were same or almost same then... (This is what happens when you have emotional people do data analysis. Vaat laga di analysis pe. Read also http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2017/07/tu-mere-saamne.html). 

I happened to look at the outlookindia link today (March 2018). The data has changed from what it was 9 years earlier. Now the sum total of percentages across all frequencies (sex once a day, once a week etc) for men is 100, as it should be. While for women the sum is in single digits. Don't believe? Click the outlookindia link above. I wouldn't be surprised if the same set of people, who collected and analyzed the data, came up with a report on male and female fertility rates suggesting that males have on an average 3.1 kids and females have 2.3 kids.

Digressing slightly, recently I came across an interesting type of marriage in Saudi Arabia very similar to the one that Anil Kapoor proposes to Kajol in a Hindi movie (and Vijay to Simran in the original Tamil version). This is one of the best things I have heard about Saudi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misyar_marriage  This is a cross between a marriage and an EMA.

While I was trying to look up paternity suits where the father learned that the children he was supporting was not his, I came across this interesting case http://www.canadiancrc.com/Magill/Magill_v_Magill_Judgment_09NOV06.aspx  where the husband and wife had three children during the course of the marriage. Later, the couple got divorced and the husband started paying maintenance for the children. Subsequently, the husband found out through DNA tests that he was not the father of the 2nd and 3rd children and that his wife had had an extramarital relationship with another man who was the father of child 2 and 3. (The husband was the biological father of child 1). The trial court held that the man should be paid Aus $70,000. The highest court in Australia turned this down, as I understand. 

If all this seems too diabolical and if you are spiritually inclined read this: http://vbala99.blogspot.com/2018/03/shiv-mandirs.html.


Additional reading:

1. http://canadiancrc.com/newspaper_articles/Globe_and_Mail_Moms_Little_secret_14DEC02.aspx (Very nice)
2. Blood group mapping between parents and offspring: https://canadiancrc.com/Paternity_determination_blood_type.aspx 
3. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/homo-consumericus/200911/who-s-your-daddy-global-nonpaternity-rates
4. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/lifestyle/she-thought-she-was-irish-until-a-dna-test-opened-a-100-year-old-mystery/?utm_term=.d155546acb88
5. In India: The Indian Express: Oops! Girl found out her father isn’t her REAL dad during a BIOLOGY lesson.

What Prevents Success

Often we wonder why some people seem to have a constant paucity of time struggling to finish what they set out to do while others consistently seem to be able to do what they set out to do. While the former belabor the difficulties in their lives, the latter largely are on top of things. This difference is stark.

Would we all not want to be part of the second group? How do the two groups of people differ from each other?

Most of us have more demands on our time than we want to afford. We necessarily have to distribute our time, which is a scarce resource, towards all the activities that need our time.

People handle the above situation in two ways.

• Spend our scarce resources towards each of the activities (Note that I am using our time and scarce resources as synonyms) Or,
• Eliminate activities from our scope (by not doing it, by delegating to someone else / outsourcing it, by doing a shoddy job of it) after prioritizing our activities

People who choose the first option believe that (a) every activity should be done well and (b) every activity should be given equal priority. Note that (a) and (b) are conflicting. A high focus on (b) above usually leads to a low quality of (a). Now let's see why this should be so.

Let me explain this through an example. Let's assume we have limited money and that we have two options. Option A gives 10% return and Option B gives 20% return. What would our investment strategy be? Invest equally in A & B or invest only in option B? Would we not invest only in option B? We will eliminate option A from our investment strategy, right?

Investing our time (which is another scarce resource) among various activities is no different. We have to identify all those activities which demand our time that are similar to option A above (those that give lower return on investment) and eliminate them from our (time) investment strategy.

Insofar as money is concerned we know what we expect from investing money. We look for monetary return on investment which is tangible.

When it comes to time, what is the return we expect and how do we measure it? If we didn't know the answer to this question how could we identify those activities not to do?

This is an important point. The return that we expect from our time depends on HOW we want to spend our time as well as WHAT we want to achieve. May be we want to make money and / or may be we want to devote our time towards social causes. Note that we may have a HOW as an objective as well.

Once we have identified our personal objective we will use that to decide how we spend our time. At the very least, the awareness of personal objective will help us to decide which activities we need not do. Adherence to this point helps us to maximize the return on investment of our time. And this is what separates the two groups of people which I mentioned in the beginning - those that are constantly short of time and those that constantly seem to be on top of things.

The takeaway from this is: Identify what you need NOT do. And scrupulously dont do it. It is perfectly fine, optimal for us to not do some or many things in our lives. A silly fellow is he who puts his money in every scheme that he comes across.

If you still feel that money and time are entirely different and that the same yardstick should not be applied to the two, look around and see for yourself whether the people around you who are usually on top of things do all the activities that confront them with equal vigor...

Man's Behavior

What kind of person achieves what he wants? What kind of person becomes a tyrant? Who becomes a thief? Why do we become god fearing?

I used to think about these questions quite frequently. I come from a fairly orthodox family where everyone prays before important events such as exams or while taking up a new job etc. And I was, from my early teens, not into it. People around me were different and I was different in this respect.

Much later I got around to thinking what caused us to become this way. A friend of mine once sent me a ppt (embedded in one of those chain mails) in which it was claimed that what we need most in life was faith. And this faith is usually held to be an exalted virtue in people.

I think there are 4 different aspects in a man's character.

1. A desire: Most people have various kinds of desires be it money, objects, status, achievement. There are some people who dont have much of an ambition or desire - a "sanyasi" of these days.

2. A fire in the belly: This makes a man strive to achieve his desire. And makes him desperate to get it. Without this fire in the belly, the desire only remain a dream.

3. An ability to achieve what he desires: This happens through appropriate planning and adequate effort. People having this would know when to cut the losses, how to circumvent seemingly unsurmountable obstacles and temper their desires.

When this ability to plan, execute with relentless motivation is absent what is left in a person is only a burning desire but no conspicuous ability to achieve. Such people invariably turn into thieves or turn to religion. They believe that a faith in god (and a trip to Tirupati or Mecca or Jerusalem) will get them what they want (a good education for the son or a good groom for the daughter or a good job for self etc). Its so easy and comforting to believe that breaking 108 coconuts or wearing a new gem stone will get them what they badly desire but which they have hitherto not been fortunate to get.

4. Wisdom and strength of character: This is needed to know what boundaries not to cross which moral / ethical rules not to violate. A person without this wisdom / strength of character would turn out to be a person who achieves what he wants without regard to ethics and morals, such as a Hitler.

I believe, people having all these attributes will achieve their desires and be happier. An algebraically positive difference between a man's desire and his ability to achieve makes him unhappy, evil and turns him towards god. Have we wondered why a man goes to a temple? Is it for world peace? Most of us go to a temple because we have not got what we wanted through our own abilities. Are we born to be strong, to believe in ourselves and put in the effort and achieve it or are we born to lead an impotent life, depending on the grace of god?

If we look at the people around us, we can categorize them as having only the 1st attribute or only the 1st two or the 1st three or as having attributes. Reflect for a second and see whether we can categorize people whom we know. And see whether you admire the people who have a positive difference in desire and ability or those with a negative or zero difference... Does that tell us something?

To come back to the ppt which claimed that faith is the most important aspect in a man, how would we classify such a man? A level 1 person? Or a level 2/3/4? What is faith without ability? Yuck...

Vedic Astrology

If you are an Indian, one of the things that you would notice is the number of times people talk about astrology (science of casting/analyzing horoscopes). We indians call upon the services of astrologers frequently to help us make our decisions, whether it is about taking up a job or a buying a house or getting married.

Now the interesting tenet about astrology is that a person's life can be foretold accurately if we could cast the person's horoscope accurately. Now if you have the date, time and place of birth are known, the horoscope can be cast immediately with any number of freely available software programs.

Having said that, we have an interesting situation. The basic astrological principle says that a person's fate is pre-determined the moment he is born - meaning whether he will become rich, whether he will have children, whether he will have a good education/professions are all pre-determined. Subsequently we also try to use the same principles to help determine our course of action (whether to quit/continue studying, whether to get married to this girl or not). Which, if you think a little deeply, is funny.

Imagine you had an exam next week. And the lecturer tells you that the results of the exam are pre-dertermined and won't change regardless of how you perform in the exam. Now what you and I do? Would we study more if the lecturer told us you & I would pass no matter what? Would we study more if the lecturer told us you & I would fail no matter what? I think I would quit preparing and do something else if I was sure that the exam results had already been prepared.

With unfailing regularity, most of us Indians, consult with astrologers fairly regularly. An example is the event in the movie "Lage Raho Munna Bhai" where the matching of horoscope was seen as a pre-requisite before deciding on the spouse for a girl. A friend of mine was told by astrologers, whom she consulted, that her married life would not be happy. Much to my consternation she took this news badly and went on a fast (eating spree).

When we do strongly believe in astrology and hence in fate, why do we use it as a mechanism to help us with our decisions (We make decisions in our lives because we believe that we can influence our destiny.)? The belief in astrology and a belief that our destiny is in our hands are mutually exclusive.

Now this is a conundrum which has kept me thinking for quite a while. More on my take on this subject later...

Additional reading: http://Calmisc.blogspot.in/2012/05/astrological-indications.html