Head spinning, Stomach churning headlines!

Waking up to the headlines in newspapers these days is a rather challenging experience. Apart from the unpleasant news from around the world we are confronted with futuristic stories that sounds more like the science fiction novels we read growing up.

This week’s reading has been all about Brain Hacking, Reverse Thinking, A car orbiting the outer space, a social media message asking me to walk bare foot and a BOT checking on my emotional well-being at frequent intervals.

Brain hacking is one that got me befuddled, never knew such possibilities existed when I was young. Securing an education was the foremost thing on my mind, unlike the possibilities today where one can augment / facilitate / stimulate or even simply dope ones way to a higher intellectual plane…no…’ high’ sounds better.

The Kotas of India would soon be equipped with hyperbaric oxygen chambers where your kids could stay for 30 Minutes and end up solving calculus better. The now redundant ISD / STD booths could be re-utilized for this.  You can administer your kids with smart drugs and indulge in brain doping for them to succeed or even have a 2mA current pass through their grey matter to stimulate it to the MENSA cracking levels.  Soon you will hear of an organization called WIERDO (World Intellect Enhancing & Restoring Doping Organization) like the WADA that checks on doping in sports.

Armed with a higher intellect after all the efforts (including some described above) you enter the corporate world and you are advised by Ivy League management gurus to do reverse thinking and ask you to think of the worst possible solutions. They claim that we need to look the wrong way for the right solution or analyze the worst case scenario first.  During a late night banter with like-minded friends, one explained it by drawing an analogy of a simple swelling of the leg and the worst expectations / assumptions that go through an Asian / Indian way of thinking. We would first start with a malignant tumor, a failing kidney or even an advanced stage of diabetes only to realize it was a result of muscle spasm. Did you sit in a hyperbaric chamber for 30 Minutes to come up with this?

Then comes along a story of someone sending his Roadster to outer space with the Starman at the wheels.  The Martians would soon spot an alien in a non-polluting car and still cry foul over it. While the earthlings would celebrate the David Bowie song dedicated to the star man.

As I continue to read, I learn that walking barefoot will keep me away from a possible Electron Deficiency syndrome. From driving a car in space to grounding ones feet for a healthy life. Those are the life lessons I had this week from my newspaper and social media messages that greeted me.

After all this, If we are still depressed and we need an Artificial Intelligence aided app to enquire on our well-being. It pops up on your smart phones and asks how your day was and even advises you to breathe slowly and deep. How can I?  I am what I am because I have spent more time in a hyperbaric chamber than with my parents to reach where I am.

I brain doped my way to reach a high and then indulged in some reverse thinking that I could send a car to MARS and be told that I need to be grounded to stay healthy. If I am unhappy with all this I have an assistant endowed with artificial intelligence to console me and get me out of my depression which my natural intelligence naturally couldn’t.

Guess I should stop reading these kinds of stomach churning articles in the morning newspaper. But on the flip side I carry my newspaper to the chamber every morning and a little bit of stomach churning only facilitates a peaceful day ahead!!!

A requiem to a Hermit!

Back after a period of writer’s block to write a tribute to someone who has been instrumental in introducing something way back in 1954 that has been my trusted companion during most of my youthful years and blogging sessions.

Little did Edward Abraham Dyer know in 1855 that he would leave a more positive legacy in India 162 years down the line than his notorious offspring Col Reginald Edward Harry Dyer who would go on to feature in history books across India as a person who was more cursed than forgiven for his acts every time one read his role in history.

Ghaziabad shot to the limelight or rather (Orange light) in the recent past for all the wrong reasons. But Ghaziabad has a history of spiritual association with the youth of the country since 1960.

When Jamaica took the lead, we in India created a cult.

The above clues were not from a connect-them-all trivia quiz round but facts about something that would go on to calm the nerves of the first youth of an independent India, something that the senior Dyer in a distant way helped us forget his descendant’s wrong doings and also helped us to curse the English better in better English!

The hermit in each one of us was kindled by this concoction. Some would introspect, some would turn a socialist and some would simply laugh out loud much before the expensive laughing club memberships came into being.  Easy on the pocket, light on the mind might sound oxymoronical to a few.  

Solitude was the virtue of a hermit. But the product that was named after the hermit always brought people together…

Happy that a monk is now the guardian of the region that THE MONK that united people irrespective of caste, creed, or religion was born!

The Monk never dies!!! However Old he is!

RIP Brig Kapil Mohan!

A Dodransbicentennial Tribute

Do…Dodran…bi…Yeah that’s exactly what we are celebrating.  It doesn’t matter if you couldn’t a) pronounce it b) didn’t know the meaning. This is addressed to the erstwhile alumni of Christ Church Anglo Indian School who were taught to pronounce it and spell it, right after they had learnt the meaning of a word by distinguished teachers who continue to, not only live in our hearts but also in our acts.

Some good souls got together and decided that it would be a good idea to celebrate the milestone and the process of informing the diaspora spread far and wide began, thanks to the people connecting tools these days like WhatsApp & Telegram, they came in droves.  60 year olds were sharing anecdotes on managing the Traffic as teenagers on the erstwhile Mount Road, when it was still in a manageable state, with childlike exuberance, the 50 year olds wanted to play a game of Bank, River, Ocean, Sea & Land (More about this game later) overrating the strength of their aging knee caps, the 40 year olds were lamenting that the women folk were not well represented, well what else can they think of in their 40’s!

It was a potpourri of emotional outpouring. Indeed a pleasant sight to see the virtual banters between very eminent groups of alumni. How each went on to be distinguished in their chosen paths is always surprising, when looking back we were indulging in our scholastic exploits in a school sandwiched amongst five movie halls. The Eastman colored hoardings around us outnumbered the black boards in the school and it took some really eminent set of teachers to make the black boards more attractive...  In contemporary terms it’s like asking a kid to study in a room with multiple play stations switched on. That’s exactly where we had our first lessons in developing a monk like concentration on the job on hand.

All of us would have passed through many other Institutions during our academic pursuits after we stepped out as naïve 15 years olds from its portals. However the strength of the bond to this particular alma mater comes a close second to the umbilical one.

Many eminent historians have chronicled the history of the school and I would not even attempt it.  I would confine myself to a couple of trivial experiences on the campus which I’m sure many would identify themselves with…Here we go.

As soon as the Investiture Ceremony for a particular academic year was over the eagerly awaited part was the duty rooster that was published. The most sought after duty was the one guarding the narrow strip that connected the Boys side and the Girls side part of the campus. I would like to call it The Wagah of Christ Church sans the hostilities. It was a border that was always manned and ‘womaned’ during the breaks.  Many a crushes & many a friendships have blossomed at that border.

Corporal punishment was so common on the campus. Never have I seen an incident when a parent walked up and defended their wards action.  Try it today and the kids and the parents slip into depression. The only depression we knew in those days was the one that passed over the Bay of Bengal that later manifested itself into a cyclone. Each of our teachers had what I call a patented approach to corporal punishment. One still stands out vividly in my memory and yes… ouch…my ear lobes are hurting when I think of this. The ritual starts with both your earlobes being gently primed / massaged and was later used as a lever to pull you back and forth, increasing the intensity on the earlobe with each to and fro movement all along narrating the gory details of your misdemeanor. This ended with a simultaneous release and slap on both cheeks. The timing and the synchronization of this mode of punishment was executed with clock like precision and with the elegance of a ballet artist. The even more painful part was that this act was performed in the august presence of your class mates some of whom were your partners in crime.

The games we played on the campus were also quiet unique and very indigenous. One of them was a game Bank, River, Ocean, Sea, Land that was played on the church steps. I have been trying to dig up the origins of this game for many years but in vain. There surely should be an inventor and anyone who can throw some clues on this would be suitably rewarded on the day of the event. 

While we exhibited the stiff upper lip behavior most of the times the Madras in us came up once in a while. That’s how a game called Kallangole was born. The game was played at the end of the Kite season. The campus used to reverberate with the chants of ‘Any Maanja!!! Any Saada!!! Any Twine!!! It was said with the same poise with which one would narrate an Alfred Lord Tennyson or a Wordsworth in the class rooms.

Come 26^th November we gather as a family to not only celebrate a milestone but to share reminiscences of the days spent, honor people who facilitated it and above all a day to give back to the institution that has played a key part in shaping you.

Son of a BOT!!!

My apologies on the blog title sounding a little offensive. The way things are shaping up in the world around us, the days are not far when the title might actually represent an evolutionary fact.

The last weeks I have been running into articles on BOTS and how they are here to stay. The clincher that made me write this one was the ugly virtual world spat between Mark & Musk (No, that’s not a name of deodorant) on the public domain. They were actually fighting over whose intelligence fared better on artificial intelligence.

In the 80’s the standard high school essay/ debate topic was Computers – A Boon or Bane.  Today it could well be BOTS- A boon or bane.  Me being an illiterate in the virtual world, the first time I encountered the word BOT, I asked someone and they told me that it was a virtual Robot. My first memories of a Robot are watching a serial as a kid called Giant Robot (Robot to be read as Row Boat) and ended with Rajni’s Endhiran.

At the turn of the millennium I also had to decipher funny skewed alpha numeric images before I could log onto my bank account and they looked as scary as the balance in my account. They were called CAPTCHA’s. I was again told by learned virtual world gurus that they were there to prevent BOTs and not to test my eyesight or my IQ.

Now I read, a BOT can bring happiness into my life an application I’m sceptical about, simply because a BOT cannot measure the number of tear drops that roll down a cheek (at least until now).  Emotions cannot be outsourced to an algorithm however brilliant it might be, is my opinion. There is another BOT that can actually tell me the recipe of a Pani Poori by its image, but in my opinion cracking the source of the paani in the poori at the road side Yadav Food Stall would still be a far cry for these advanced BOTS.

I was told BOTS and Artificial Intelligence was here to stay which means I need to do away with my natural intelligence.  I intend approaching Baba Ramdev who is fighting a lone battle for natural products; I wouldn’t be surprised to find a PATABOT spring out of the Patanjali stables as the first BOT that depends fully on natural intelligence.

The capitalist in me wants to have a butler like Jarvis as Mark has, but my socialist side tells me humans should not be made redundant by some machine that was created by man.

‘’If we create some digital super-intelligence that exceeds us in every way by a lot, it is very important it be benign’’ - Elon Musk