Lessons to remember....

As life meanders along at its own pace, we learn lessons that transform us. They are lessons that need to be remembered so that we dont make the same mistakes again. But often on, as we are left chasing our life and our dreams, we forget these lessons and waste our time making the same mistakes and creating problems along the way. Problems which need to be solved by us and mistakes which need to be rectified by us again. Sometimes, words of wisdom shine through like the first rays of sun penetrating the seemingly impenetrable darkness of the night. And then as the day progresses, we forget the brilliance of those first rays as we agonize about the sweltering heat.

And so I thought of writing down some of these nuggets of wisdom that I have realized over the years. Some are what I do almost always and I am putting them down here so that I never stop doing them. Some others are things that don't come naturally to me and am jotting them here so that they sink in a little deeper and make their presence felt. Some are things I wish I could do ...

1) Life is long but it becomes longer still when you have nothing to look forward to. Always keep dreaming. Never should there be a day when you are not desirous of something. I know this sounds trite, banal, consumerist and selfish but I think that we live well only when we have something to look forward to, something to learn and something to enjoy.

2) Sit down in silence every now and then. Spend some time with yourself everyday. It opens your mind even when your eyes are closed. Don't run from yourself, your fears, your pain, your joys, your ego, your evil... confront them because there is no escaping oneself.

3) Listen to the wind and the waters. Listen to the waves. Go to the ocean every time you can and spend sometime with waves. They somehow remind you of the transience of your stay and then all problems seem small.

4) Exercise as often as you can. Its how you can listen to your body. Its how you can listen to your heart and its how you can feel your blood coursing through your veins. Find your own passion and keep pushing the limits of your mind and body.

5) Stay healthy. The life of a challenged person is painful... and self inflicted harm is the worst you can do for yourself and your loved ones.

6) Appreciate people and compliment them whenever you can... This is not intended to encourage sycophancy but rather to acknowledge the good when it happens. It is almost always easier to find faults, to dislike people and to move away but try and find something to learn or look up to... It makes life easier and better !

7) Live with no regrets. Every time you make a decision, think of only one question. Will I regret it twenty years from now.

8) Never let your love for people be undermined by your need for them.

9) Always remember "This too shall pass !". You will survive everything that life throws at you if you show some courage and resilience.

10) Eat to live but always take a few moments everyday to appreciate the food.

11) Try and enjoy. Find moments to celebrate and revel in them. Try not to post-pone celebrations and feeling happy for the future. Who knows what it holds.

12) Try and live in the present but don't be blind to the past or oblivious of the future. Its difficult but keep trying.

13) Expectation lurks with hope. While hope helps you to survive and go from one difficult day to another, expectations sneaks in with hope and leaves you distraught more often than not.

14) Pamper yourself even if there is no one to do it for you. Indulge in that occasional cheesecake or mousse and let your mind feel happy without any fear or guilt.

15) Never judge a book by its cover and a person by his appearance. Wait for the final verdict till you speak to them.

16) Be a good friend and human being but never let anyone trample you in the name of friendship.

17) Read... because sometimes escapism is the best medicine... !!

18) Learn to say no. Learn that you can die for the people you love but you cannot live for them.

19) Laugh like there is no one around.

20) sleep like a baby and work like a bull.

21) Listen to everyone, think, ponder and then do what seems right.

22) Listen to your instincts. Sometimes it knows more than what you know.

23) Accept people for what they are and not for what they can be or what you think they should be.

24) Its hard to watch loved ones err in front of you but sometimes you have to just watch. Everyone has their lessons to learn and sometimes the best thing you can do is to be there when they fall.

25) Never stop dreaming... !!

26) Find someone to tell you how much they love you and learn to tell people how much you care !

27) Criticism helps you improve but a little praise is what keeps you going ahead.

28) Our lives are governed by randomness. In a perfect world, there is an equal probability of heads or tails. But, sometimes, the results are biased because of an uneven surface or a bend in the coin or an uneven flip or the wind currents.... sometimes, you may keep losing. But given enough chances and coin flips, you will eventually reach where you want to.

29) Find the child in you and keep him close. As the world unleashes its fury, don't let him run away.

30) Love yourself for what you are and strive to be better....

31) Learn to enjoy solitude. You are your best companion.

32) Try to understand things around you for what they are. Stay curious.

33) Stay away from lies but try not to hurt people with the brutality of the truth.

Zindagi na milegi dobara !

Zindagi na milegi dobara !

My first Hindi movie outside of India (on the big screen). That itself is probably reason enough to remember it for a long time but somehow that seems like the least important reason right now.

I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. Probably, because it was a surprise for me as I went in for it knowing nothing but the Director's name. And one tends to appreciate the good things that come unannounced more than the good things that come with an appointment....

So it made an impression on me.

I loved the movie for the thought that lies behind it. I love the one thought that runs through the movie.

I wish i could be as carefree as Farhan Akhtar's character was in the movie. But no. I am not. I am more like the character played by Hrithik Roshan. Guarded, determined, hard working, organized (except for the money-loving part). I am all of these and more as I battle against everything that life throws at me, telling myself that i will take a break once I reach a certain point, when i get to that place where i want to be. Seemed like such a wise thing to do till i heard the question - "why do you think you will live to that point ?" Why make an assumption ? And I sure was tongue tied... ! All my life i told myself that i will take a break and have fun and fulfill all my dreams, when i get to---- ! But i have no reason to believe that I will live once i get to ---.

Its difficult to let go and just live in the moment. To forget about tomorrow or yesterday but I am learning my lessons. And someday, i should be able to live totally and completely in the present. Till then I am going to remind myself - "Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara" !

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Pighlay neelam sa behta hua yeh sama,
Neeli neeli si khamoshiyan;
Na kahin hai zameen,
Na kahin aasmaan;
Sarsaraati hui tehniyaan, pattiyaan;
Keh rahi hain ki bas ek tum ho yahaan,
Sirf main hoon, meri saansein hain, aur meri dhadkanein;
Aisi gehraiyaan,
Aisi tanhaiyaan,
Aur main sirf main
Apne honay pe mujhko yaqeen aa gaya…

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Ik baat honton tak hai jo aayi nahi,
Bas ankhon say hai jhaankti,
Tumse kabhi, mujhse kabhi,
Kuch lafz hain woh maangti,
Jinko pehanke honton tak aa jaaye woh,
Aawaaz ki baahon mein baahein daalke ithlaye woh
Lekin jo yeh ik baat hai,
Ehsaas hi ehsaas hai…

Khushboo si hai jaise hawa mein tairti,
Khushboo jo be-aawaaz hai;
Jiska pata tumko bhi hai,
Jiski khabar mujhko bhi hai;
Duniya se bhi chupta nahin,
Yeh jaane kaisa raaz hai.

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Ik baat honton tak hai jo aayi nahi,

Bas ankhon say hai jhaankti,
Tumse kabhi, mujhse kabhi,
Kuch lafz hain woh maangti,
Jinko pehanke honton tak aa jaaye woh,
Aawaaz ki baahon mein baahein daalke ithlaye woh
Lekin jo yeh ik baat hai,
Ehsaas hi ehsaas hai…

Khushboo si hai jaise hawa mein tairti,
Khushboo jo be-aawaaz hai;
Jiska pata tumko bhi hai,
Jiski khabar mujhko bhi hai;
Duniya se bhi chupta nahin,
Yeh jaane kaisa raaz hai.

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Dilon mein tum apni betaabiyan leke chal rahe ho
Toh zinda ho tum;
Nazar mein khwabon ki bijliyan leke chal rahe ho
Toh zinda ho tum;
Hawa ke jhokon ke jaise aazad rehno sikho,
Tum ek dariya ke jaise lehron mein behna sikho,
Har ek lamhe se tum milo khole apni bhaayein,
Har ek pal ek naya samha dekhen yeh nigahaein,
Jo apni aankhon mein hairaniyan leke chal rahe ho
Toh zinda ho tum;
Dilon mein tum apni betaabiyan leke chal rahe ho
Toh zinda ho tum;

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Note to self...

I recently ended up reading Maya Angelou's "Letter to my daughter". Yes, I am late in reading Maya Angelou but better late than never. The book is interesting in many ways as it gives you glimpses of the writer's life and also the lessons learnt from them in these tiny nuggets. In some ways, it is the distillate her life, her trials and tribulations seen with the benefit of hindsight.

There were a few things that lingered on with me after reading the book, but this particular chapter somehow struck a chord when i first read it during my bus ride in the morning. The reason It struck a chord is probably because this is one issue that keeps cropping up every now and then - the matter of social propriety vs honesty.

In my early days on coming to the US, one of the first things I noticed was the exchange of greetings among strangers. Everyone would begin with "Hi ! How are you ? How has your day been going ?". It certainly was a pleasant novelty to start with, since in India, talking to strangers was something you were taught against even before you learnt how to talk. But then with time, I noticed that even though the question was asked, no one really waited for the answer or even heard it. It was just another meaningless social custom followed by habit and with no greater interest whatsoever. Once that realization hit me, this seemingly pleasant ritual became a sham that I no longer wanted to be a part of. So I no longer voluntarily participate in these conversations and when I do, I wait for the answer and listen to the words, than just the sounds. This note starts with this custom and then touches on the question of honesty and diplomacy that have been the fulcrum of many of my disagreements with people over time. And as i read her words, I realized that they echoed my sentiments to good measure. Of course, I do not care to tell off people for their dress sense and style unless specifically asked but whenever i do state my views, I try to be as close to the truth as I see it. Of course, I have also learnt that while truth is essential, tact is necessary too. After all, I state the truth not to intentionally hurt someone but simply because i care enough to not lie. And so in someways, this note dealt with some of the questions I have often dealt with in my personal struggles with social norms, etiquette and propriety.

"My mother, Vivian Baxter, warned me often not to believe that people really want the truth when they ask, "How are you?". She said that the question was asked around the world in thousands of languages and most people knew that it is simply a conversation starter. No one really expects to be answered, or even wants to know "Well, my knees feel like they are broken. And my back hurts so bad I could fall down and cry." A response like that would be a conversation stopper. It would end before it could begin. So we all say, "fine, thank you and you ?"

I believe in that way we learn to give and receive social lies. We look at friends how have lost dangerous amounts of weight or who have added ungainly pounds and we say, "You are looking good." Everybody knows the statement is a blatant lie but, we all swallow the untruth in part to keep the peace and in part because we do not wish to deal with the truth. I wish we could stop that little lies. I don't mean that one has to be brutally frank. I don't believe that we should be brutal about anything, however it is wonderfully liberating to be honest. One does not have to tell all that one knows, but we should be careful what we do is the truth.

Let us bravely say to our young women, "That raggedy hairstyle may be trendy, but it is also unattractive. It is not doing anything for you." And let us say to our young men "Your shirt tail hanging out from under your jacket does not make you look cool, it just makes you look unkempt and uncared for." Some Hollywood fashion police decided recently that appearing in wrinkled clothes with half shaven faces was sexy because it made men look like they had just arisen. The fashionistas were both right and wrong. The disheveled look does make the person appear to have just gotten out of bed, but they are also wrong because that look is not sexy, it is just tacky.

The nose, nipple and tongue rings are the possession of the very young who are experimenting. While I dont like them, they don't bother me much because I know that most of the youth will grown older and join the social sets in which they work and live. The rings will be discarded and the young people will pray that the holes heal over so that they will not have to explain to their own teenagers why the holes were put their in the first place.

Let's tell the truth to the people. When people ask, "How are you," have the nerve sometimes to answer truthfully. You must know however, that people will start avoiding you because they too have knees that pain them and heads which hurt and they don't want to know about yours. But think of it this way, if people avoid you, you will have more time to meditate and do fine research on a cure for whatever truly afflicts you."

From the Quirky thumb to the QWERTY keyboard...

Biology, Technology and Culture - the three things that in more ways than one define our existence today.

Biology of course arose as a result of the well known and well understood Darwinian Selection where the struggle for the "Survival of the Fittest" leads to the evolution of forms with greater and greater adaptation to the changing world systems. Now this is a subject where one can write volumes of books with numerous examples, exceptions, theories, principles etc. But lack of time, energy, effort and more importantly knowledge force me to limit my ramblings on this subject to the barest minimum. The point of relevance of course is that the forces of natural selection which drive evolution are limited by the availability of raw material. This means that selection pressure can only act on already existing variations, and not "design" something altogether new. These tiny variations in existing form arise due to mutagenic events which confer a phenotypic change. And then this pre-existing pool of variation gets subject to the forces of natural selection to generate diverse forms. In fact, as SJ Gould says, "the complex and curious pathways of history guarantee that most organisms cannot be designed optimally. Indeed, to make an even stronger statement, imperfections are the primary proofs that evolution has occurred...". This principle of imperfection in biology has been interestingly named by Gould as the Panda principle to honor the example of design imperfection as seen in a Panda's unique thumb. I would have probably been more anthropocentric and would have probably chosen "the appendix principle" or "the pain in the back" principle but then Gould was ahead of me in time and thought and I will stick with his terminology.... ;)

To summarise the Panda's thumb, Pandas are herbivorous descendants of carnivorous bears whose anatomical thumbs were committed to limited motion suited to their carnivorous lifestyle. However, a Panda's adaptive diet of bamboos requires greater manipulation with the appendages and this required some redesigning. Since the Panda's anatomical thumb was irrevocably committed to a different morphology, they developed an enlarged radial sesamoid bone of their wrist as a false thumb, serving a similar function but having a very different origin. So while the enlarged sesamoid is a sub-optimal structure, it functions and serves the pandas fairly well. And thus change in the panda's biology was in someways limited by their history.

Culture. Now culture is yet another constantly changing aspect of human existence. In fact, it is a well accepted notion that while biology changes in a Darwinian manner, human culture evolves based on Lamarckian principles which entail the inheritance of acquired characters. What it simply means is that the changes/advancements in human culture are transmitted from one generation to another through education, publication, word of mouth etc. Consequently, cultural evolution is faster by orders of magnitude than biological change. Also the basic topologies of cultural evolution is very different from that of biological evolution. While biological evolution constantly diverges without a subsequent rejoining of branches, human culture grows with transmission across lineages - spatially and temporally. We learn from people who are spatially and culturally far away from us and from our past.

So two of fundamental aspects of human existence - biology and culture are both subject to different kinds of "evolution".

Technology however is an odd one here, at least that's how it seemed to me till I read Gould's essay called "The Panda's Thumb". Now this is an essay which I had read a few months back and I thoroughly enjoyed the read. It was thought provoking in many ways.

In this essay Gould builds a case for the existence of the "Principle of Panda's thumb" in the arena of technological development. This is in some ways counter intuitive because technology is aimed at simplification and efficiency and one would think that technology should be able to easily rid anything unsuitable and inefficient in light of newer advancements. After all constraints of genealogy and inheritance do not apply to steel, glass, plastic and therefore to change in technology. Theoretically we should all be able to make a switch to a more efficient technology in a span of a few years. In fact this is one thing that keeps us all updating to newer and newer gadgets - smart phones, laptops, e-readers, operating systems etc etc. So, who would think that some of our technology is also limited and shaped by History... ? Atleast i didn't till I read Gould's essay.

Think about it ! Which parts of the technology that we currently use is actually inefficient and suboptimal but is still used by virtue of history.

Gould does justify his argument in the essay and his argument is based upon something ubiquitous in our lives these days - the keyboard which starts with QWERTY. Now, anyone who works with a keyboard would wonder the weird and counter-intuitive organization of the keyboard. Instead of being alphabetical or based on the usage the current keyboard is efficient in that the frequently used alphabets are least accessible. Consider this - More than 70% of english words can be typed with the letters - DHIATENSOR, and one would imagine that logically they should be the most accessible. But, one look at the keyboard will tell you that they are actually scattered all over the keyboard. For those who type with the eight finger touch typing method, these keys and the vowels are either placed away from the home row or are placed in such a way that they are used by the weaker fingers - like the little pinky finger.

So clearly, by your observation and by that of many others, our present keyboard is inefficient and suboptimal. It is a relic of history that has gotten embedded in our fabric of life in such a way that a change to a more efficient system would cause more disturbance and upheaval than continuing with the same inefficient approach. QWERTY however began as a sensible adaptation with a sound rationale in the early technology of typewriting but soon became a constraint on faster typing as the advances in the technology erased the initial problems which mandated a QWERTY system. A little history at this juncture should clarify the whole point. Typewriters when they evolved suffered with one basic drawback which was that excessive speed or unevenness of stroke would lead to jam two or more keys near the striking point. And if this entanglement is not resolved the subsequent uses of these keys would type a repetition of the key leading to the jam. These problems were magnified in early machines which were constructed so that the keys approached the paper from the underside, invisible to the typist and thus the typist would not know till the end if there was a Jam at some point. As a result a page full of prose could be garbled into a repetition of A's or D's when the keys were jammed. This necessitated that the frequency of the jam be minimized or that the speed of the typing be reduced and this is how the frequently used characters ended up being scattered all over the keyboard. One would imagine however that as technology evolved to make the paper visible to the typist at all times, the keyboard and its organization would have changed to permit greater efficiency. But then through coincidences of history which Gould has elaborately described in his essay, it so happened that the 8 finger touch typing on the QWERTY keyboard became established as the most efficient mode of typing. And thus this feat of anti-engineering in the form of a QWERTY keyboard got successfully carried through history and into our lives as an evolutionary relic of no present day relevance.

This was certainly a great example which nailed Gould's point for me but then despite a lot of thinking, I could not come up with any other examples which substantiated his point of technological advancement being a prisoner of history.

I have contemplated on this for a few months and I have seen that we have adapted to change in many avenues and things have moved forward. The older desktops have now been replaced by the laptops. Windows is being challenged by Mac. Paper cash is being fast replaced by plastic money. Operating systems are being driven out faster than they are being developed. Automobiles are being engineered and re-engineered for fuel economy and emissions. In fact, to my understanding, technology was constantly changing in ways faster than we could comfortably learn them. And so, to my mind, this solo example of a relic in the form of a keyboard (even this was changing as most cellular phones did have an alphabetical keyboard and still do) was not sufficient to justify a whole principle that held technology hostage to history.

But then a couple of weeks back I came across this example of the width of a rail road gauge that perfectly illustrates the same point yet again. I do not have all the evidence to substantiate this example but I do see some truth in this whole chain of thought and that prompted me to finally keep a more open mind to Gould's statement of having more common underlying principles between biological evolution and technological advancement than what is superficially apparent.

So here is the example as I found for your judgement -

"The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number.

Why was that gauge used?

Because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built the US railroads.

Why did the English build them like that?

Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.

Why did 'they' use that gauge then?

Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing?

Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads?

Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England ) for their legions. The roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts in the roads?

Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Therefore the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot.
Bureaucracies live forever.

So the next time you are handed a specification/procedure/process and wonder 'What horse's ass came up with it?', you may be exactly right.

Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses. (Two horse's asses.) Now, the twist to the story:

When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRB's. The SRB's are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRB's would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRB's had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRB's had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel

is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced

transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass.

And you thought being a horse's ass wasn't important?

Ancient horse's asses control almost everything ...

and CURRENT Horses Asses are controlling everything else."

Now, while this is a humorous post and is probably an overtly simplifying description of the complex history of the origins of standard railway gauges, it is easy to see that a lot of our present day technology is also in someways trapped by the past. I mean, even if, we have had the standard broad gauge railroad tracks for the past few centuries, we should be able to switch out of them as and when there is a better system but the vast prevalence of the older system and the cost-benefit ratios tilt the scale against such massive change and we end up sticking to the old and the familiar.

I am still not completely convinced in applying Gould "Panda's thumb" principle more generally to technology, but with these two examples, I believe that history, like in all other fields, does mould the future of technological advances too. Sometimes, by acting at the level of economy, sometimes acting at the level of convenience and at other times by acting as blinders which tint our view of the world and limit our perspectives.

In case you are able to think of other such examples and/or opinions on the same, do write in.