How opinions are formed

There are people with opinions and some without.  Among the ones with opinions, some have their own and some borrowed. People with their own opinions are great as long as they can justify their side of the argument and also stick by it. The problem really lies with these pseud people with borrowed opinions. These people go by the mob mentality. Their opinions are a twisted compilation of the majority junta.

Even worse, some of them think that by just putting down a new idea or going against the mob makes for a great opinion.

Gandhigiri – To be the change you want to see

I believe Citizens are mostly of 5 kinds :

(I am going to take a very Astoma Satgamaya (bad to good) kind of approach)

1. Those that are not in the system. People who are indifferent to governance.

2. Those that are in the system and realize there are problems.

3. Those that see these problems and complain about them. Just complain since they seem to have all the time in the world to complain but not to do anything to rectify them.

4. Those that see complain and wish to do something about these problems, but unfortunately either don’t know how to counter these issues or just do a bad job of it. But, potential are there.

5. Those that are the change they want to see.

I want to share one of my experiences with mentoring children for a civic project 2 winters ago. We were getting 7th standard kids to understand the concept of our neighborhood while most of us grown ups can’t even spell the word right!!

 For one, I liked the topic better than the previous years’. It was very diverse & vague which meant a lot of freedom to experiment with ideas, etc. The project guidelines in reality could set fewer boundaries. 

These children were given 3 months to work on their project. Each team consisted of 7 kids and there were 15 teams or so from 3 different sections of the Grade 7/8 from one school. Then the best team from each of the 8-10 different schools (different income level schools, aided & private) was made to present its project at the grand finale.

All these schools belonged to different wards of the same zone, mostly from North Bangalore.

You could see each of the above 5 kinds clearly among these groups.

There were ‘had no clue what the topic is’ group (but great presentation skills), cut copy paste group, ‘for the heck of it’ group, great research work group & ‘action with impact’ group.

 It wasn’t surprising to see that schools from Malleswaram were the ones that stood out since there is a strong resident welfare association that has done considerable work in keeping the citizens well informed and driven by community work. Rajajinagar schools also did well since my team had worked with them very closely and we knew exactly how to get the expected results. The children didn’t let us down either. I guess I would classify them as type 4.

Anyway, there was this one group that particularly impressed me. Being a high income group school was an added advantage which meant that the worldly exposure & quality of education they receive is superior compared to the govt schools.

What impressed me about them : This group had walked the entire stretch from Navrang circle to Malleswaram circle surveying the impact of Metro & Underpass on every house/ shop on that road. Since most people felt that dust and traffic congestion took a toll on them, these kids did a cycle rally on that road and distributed hand made paper bags to every shop on that road to encourage pollution reduction. It was probably a one day effort and might not have contributed in such a big way to reduction of pollution in Malleswaram but I see it as a strong belief that they can make a difference and just a desire in every kid’s heart on that team to be the change they want to see!

Denial – The price you needn’t pay for.

As strange as it may seem, this is very true. Be it physical intimacy or work!

“What makes him come and bug us so much for the data?” That’s because we don’t give him the data. That excites him. That challenges him.

All of us love challenges.

If you were to make a pass at someone and they were to give in immediately, your first thought would be on the lines of either the woman being a nottie or you making a bad move.
And, if she didn’t give in immediately, then the woman’s a hottie and you wouldn’t stop trying till either she gave in and you gave up!
Here again, the enjoyment level is directly proportional to the amount of denial. Denial builds a false price around everything.

Now, if a kid was to ask for a lollypop and he/she was given one immediately, it’s no fun! If the kid were denied the lollypop and then after he/she pushed its luck far enough after crying and rolling all over the floor, then its seems like a major high for the kid.
The child feels like he/she has achieved something. Then there is more incentive to enjoy the lollypop.

How about a more adult situation like bargaining on the streets?
You want a lemon. It costs 3 bucks. You earn a million. Yet, you are not satisfied till you make him sell it to you for 2 bucks. The sense of achievement one might get for saving that a buck is higher than earning a million!!

And guess what, you would absolutely hate it if he agreed to sell it for a buck lesser quite easily. What we really enjoy is being denied, and not saving that 1 buck!!

This is also the underlying principle behind sexual harassment.

Srinath and Mithun

As soon as Abhimanyu Mithun took a hat-trick on his Ranji debut, comparisons started with that other Karnataka fast bowler who did the same – Javagal Srinath. However, given the way things are with his career now – dropped after a not-so-bad debut series in Sri Lanka, and following that up with an unspectacular Ranji season – it’s unlikely he will have the same kind of impact.

Ability apart (Mithun so far hasn’t shown signs of bowling anywhere as fast as Srinath did), what might make a major difference in their respective careers is in terms of handling by the selectors and the team management.

One has to really give it to Azhar, Abbas Ali Baig (then the team manager) and whoever was in the selection committee back then for the way they managed Srinath’s early career.

Just take a look at his profile on statsguru: he didn’t take a 4-for until his ninth Test match. In his preceding eight Test matches, he had a bowling average of 46 (and he was dropped once – because the pitch at St George’s Park in Port Elizabeth was supposed to take spin).  And in the meantime, he had played a World Cup – having taken part in all matches that India played.

Of course he was dropped immediately after his 4-for to make way for a 3-man spin attack. But he was always kept in the squad, and Azhar made it clear to him that he would always play whenever India wanted to play 3 quick men (the first time ever that he was dropped for another fast bowler was perhaps in the finals of Singer Cup in Sri Lanka in 1994 when he made way for Venky Prasad).

Considering how much India chopped and changed with the support attack to Kapil and Prabhakar in the late 80’s it is indeed surprising the way they gave Srinath a long rope. And it paid off magnificently well, in the way he carried India’s bowling attack in the mid to late 90s.

Maybe it was because of his pace, and no one else was close to being as quick.

Compare that to the handling of Mithun. After playing a full series in Sri Lanka, on flat pitches and not bowling too badly, Mithun finds himself completely out of the picture. Not even the fifth best bowler, it seems. Given the way he has been handled, I won’t be surprised if he fades away.

Again, he is nowhere as quick as Srinath though he is reputed to have once been. My cousin Sandeep who knows the insides of Karnataka cricket tells me that Mithun had a back injury even before he made his first class debut, which perhaps explains the drop in place.

But it is perhaps the way he has been handled by the national selectors that would be responsible if his career were to fizzle (the same applies to other “bad drops”, also, though I must say that Murali Kartik has done quite well despite having been handled so shabbily).

PS: I expect a number of you to comment that he’s not that great a bowler. Simple reasons why I’ve used his case rather than anyone else is because he plays for the Ranji team I support, and he is fresh in my mind considering I’ve been watching him in the Ranji QF against MP today)

Geeks

There are two kinds of geeks – unidimensional geeks and multidimensional geeks.

Unidimensional geeks thing multidimensional geeks aren’t geeky enough because they’re not as geeky as the unidimensional geeks in the dimension of the unidimensional  geeks.

Multidimensional geeks have the ability to wear many hats, and being geeky in whatever they do. And given that they can be geeky in just about anything, they are likely to get along with a larger number of people than unidimensional geeks.

Just saying.

Quiet Dissent

Sometimes when someone asks you to do something that you don’t want to do, your instinct would be to not do it. However, in certain situations it might unnecessarily offend the person who asked you to do it, and you may not really enjoy fighting with him/her. On the other hand, doing it would be like simply listening to what that person said, and effectively inviting him/her to run you over (figuratively) at the next opportunity, so you would want to avoid that.

In such situations, I follow this policy of quiet dissent. I do whatever has been asked of me, but make it a point to register my dissent. I ensure that the person who has asked me to do the job knows that I didn’t like doing it; and by doing the job, I also try to communicate that I don’t mean any disrespect to the person who asked me to do the job, but that I’m opposed to that particular idea (me doing that job) of his/hers.

You might find it strange that the usually firebrand me is espousing moderate ideas such as this one, but I think I’m just being pragmatic, and I’ve found this technique to be quite useful in dealing with people you don’t want to piss off – because it’s not profitable for you to piss them off. Of course there is the chance that that person may not understand the subtlety of the action, and might interpret your voice of dissent as disrespect to them. I think if anyone thinks like that, they deserve the disrespect.

o!!!

o!!! (super) is indeed a super movie. It is so awesome in so many different dimensions, that it’s hard to capture it all in one post. I guess in this post I’ll simply stick to the economic aspect of the movie.

So basically the premise is that in 2030 India is the most powerful country in the world. Bangalore is clean and green, with whites working as chauffeurs and sweepers, with 70 pounds to the rupee, and so forth. The movie is a fairly elaborate nested story about how this transformation is brought about.  (rest of post under the fold. spoilers are there)

Continue reading “o!!!”

Introducing Pinky

So given that the new missus has moved into my life, and my home (and to add some cheese “and my hort”), I think it is quite appropriate that she moves into this blog also. You might have already seen her first post, which she wrote this afternoon. You can expect her to be more prolific in the days going forward. Till then, you can read her old writings here.

This might be a good opportunity to tell the world about how we met. It all started out with this post on my blog (I seriously miss those good old pre-twitter days, when I could peacefully write blog posts that were one line long; keeping with the tradition, the missus refuses to get onto twitter). And then she happened to like this one. Orkut.. GTalk.. Tharkari.. Gandhi Bazaar.. … ………………… Marriage.

Coming back, both of us will be writing here, on the same page. The same feed that you are currently subscribing to will enable you to subscribe to both our writings. The first line of the feed has the name of the author, and in any case I think our writing styles are so different that you should be able to figure out who has written what.

Why most married men make boring bloggers

Sri. (Something I write on top on the first page everytime I start writing in a new book. Its probably because of how the letter curves in Kannada)

I’ve heard enough complaints about the deteriorating quality of this blog over the last one year and I simply couldn’t help not thinking about it.

First of all, what made this blog so interesting was the occasional sprinkling of posts on women, relationship & love amidst the interesting fundaes on eco, politics, finance, etc which is not the case anymore.

The way a guy writes about a girl when he is single is so different from when he is married to her.  The style of writing changes from starry eyed, inquisitive to mundane & cynical. The girl seems like a closed box of treasure to an open one now. Nobody cares about the box once you’ve seen what’s in it no matter how interesting it is. You get the hang of it, right?

When a guy says very sweet things about his wife, male readers know the truth in it and the female readers like to simply believe it and see how differently it works in their lives and don’t want to read anymore of it. Hence, you lose most of your readers.

P.S – The title is taking generalization a bit too far.

Ganeshana Madhuve and Challenge Gopalakrishna

Scenes from these two movies were enacted out at our wedding.

So in certain cultures (such as my wife’s; this isn’t practiced in my mother’s house at least) there is a uniform that brides need to wear – a white or off-white sari with a red border. I think this uniform is there in my father’s family also, but I’m not sure. I’m sure this is not there on my mother’s side.

Anyway, Priyanka was in her uniform, in the “bride’s room” doing “gowri pooje” that is supposed to be done before a girl gets married. There were several other women around, and for the wedding, they had all chosen to wear their own wedding saris – white or off-white with a red border. This included mostly Priyanka’s aunts and cousins and one of my aunts.

So there is this scene in Ganeshana maduve where Ganesha (YG Rao) is told that the girl in red sari is Shruti (his “pen lover”). And he goes into the bride’s room to find that everyone there was in a red sari, so he has no clue in figuring out who Shruti is. Similarly, if someone had come to the bride’s room searching for one particular woman who was in the white-red uniform, they would’ve been thoroughly confused indeed.

Then there is this scene that is oft-repeated in the other classic Anantnag starrer Challenge Gopalakrishna (I’m not able to find the link on youtube). Whenever Gopalakrishna’s dad abuses him, he reminds him of his lineage. (translating) “Being the great-grandson of Justice Gopalakrishna (loud temple gong), being the grandson of Major Radhakrishna (another loud temple gong), being the son of Rotarian Muralikrishna (yet another gong) you dare to behave like this… “. This scene is played out several times in the movie, and towards the latter half, as soon as Mukhyamantri Chandru utters “Justice Gopalakrishna”, Anantnag runs.

So as part of the wedding rituals, the bride and groom are anointed as Lakshmi and Narayana (the gods). So while I was being anointed such, the priest chanted “Venkataramanasharma nautram, Suryanarayanasharma poutram, Shashidharasharma putram Shri Karthika Sharma … ” and similarly for Priyanka (that way I got to know her great-grandfather’s name). The first couple of times it was ok. But when this bit came up later on in the rituals, we couldn’t help but burst out laughing. Thankfully there were no temple gongs to punctuate the recital.

I’m not sure if Lakshmi and Narayana are supposed to laugh.