Carnatic Music and The Chennai Music Season

I am very pro-music. I have learnt music as a kid, and always continue to hope that some day I will resume my learning. I believe that music a lot more useful than being merely a means for entertainment.

I used to (still am, in a way) a Carnatic music aficionado. When in the hostel, I once had an interesting argument with a friend of mine about comparing Carnatic music with Western Classical music. My argument was that Carnatic music is the most refined and beautiful form of music to which my friend disagreed. His point was that if you would ask a naive African tribesman to listen to Beethoven and Thyagaraja and ask him to rate them, he would surely rate Beethoven higher.

This was a difficult experiment to analyze and react to. I couldn't imagine a tribesman with little connection with mainstream civilization, to like a Thyagaraja krithi over let's say Beethoven's 'Ode to joy' or some such. Does this make Western Classical music more beautiful? Tough to say. One would agree that Western Classical music is simpler to interpret and enjoy (I certainly believe so) and in this simplicity lies beauty and refinement.

Carnatic Music is a very specialized form of music whose interpretation and appreciation has some pre-requisites. Of course, there are a few krithis whose melody might cause instant appeal but the real joy and beauty of Carnatic music doesn't lie in the melody alone. In fact, very little of the beauty lies in the melody. The crux is in the rendering, the variations and the depth to which an artiste can explore.

Given all this, appreciating Carnatic Music is a very intellectual exercise. It is thus hardly surprising that Tamil Brahmin families consider this as a very important and necessary element of development. I am sure I am not the only one who has faced peer pressure at home when there is Carnatic Music on tv or the radio and identifying the raaga is the competition.

The high point of Carnatic Music exposition is the Chennai Music Season. I am in complete awe of how this tradition has continued for so long and even to this day (thanks to economics and media buzz) continues to attract a wide audience. It is an annual woodstock. Carnatic Music's growth in popularity in the near future will depend heavily on how the patronage for the Chennai Music Season changes in the coming years

I personally am out of all this. To put it bluntly, I am a very selfish aficionado of Carnatic Music. I want the art form to strengthen and continue but I am not ready to patronize it through showing up for concerts. I have been in Chennai for three music seasons in the last three years and I have attended only one concert (TM Krishna in Ananthapadmanabhaswami Kovil, Adyar, late 2009) I do not see a point in attending concerts. I do not enjoy them. This is not because I do not like the music but because my enjoyment of Carnatic Music comes from learning and improving my own skills.

Contrary to other people's opinions, I find concerts to be of no value in terms of learning. If I were at a stage where I needed to understand the nuances of concert presentation etc, there might have been some advantage in attending concerts. Currently all that I need to do is to listen to krithis. Listen to them repeatedly; which is something concerts cannot offer.

Unfortunately, I do not derive any ego pleasure from announcing to people that I attended X's concert at Y sabha, there was a superb rendition of Z etc. I am much happier when I realize that I can sing W sangathi in V krithi slightly better today as compared to yesterday.

All of us have different roles to play. I am playing mine. Baleh baleh.

Far from the maddening crowd

I have come to realize that most of my blog posts are turning into self-reflective ones. On thinking deeper, I realize that I do indulge in a lot of introspection. In a way, my aim every day is to be a more perfect me.

Was I different? As time progresses, most of us forget to examine how we've changed over the years. Thanks to some advice I received from friends, I make it a point to regularly reflect on how I have changed. It is a very interesting intellectual exercise. You have get yourself to remember what you thought, felt and liked and what your mental make-up was at times in the past.

This is where blogging is helpful. A glance at your old posts would give you an idea of what and who you were some years ago in the past. Here is my old blog (or one of my old ones). When I go through it now, I feel silly. If I knew the log in and password to access this blog, I would have deleted it. How different was I? I used to feel strongly about issues outside of me: traffic, programming, cricket etc. It is not that I do not think about all this now but I certainly do not have any 'feelings' about these things; at least certainly not have feelings strong enough to warrant a blog post.

Somehow, somewhere life has come to revolve lesser and lesser about these things. So there is a Anna Hazare. It is not important that I do not know what he is fighting for. It is important that I do not care to know what he is fighting for. He is just an example. There are so many things that are happening out there in the world which I do not care to know more of. I am, for bad or for worse, far from the maddening crowd.

Sometime during those years when I was able to churn out blog posts about all those 'world-ish' things, I remember to have read an article in The Hindu titled 'Rebels without a cause'. I do not remember anything about the article but the title of the article had a huge impact on me. Anna Hazare is a rebel if you want to call him that. And he is surely a rebel with a cause. So are the thousands who flock to meet and greet him and attend his speeches etc.

But for every such rebel with a cause, there must be a hundred rebels without a cause. These are the millions who have an opinion on something they do are not directly involved with. It is like me having an opinion on Ganguly's batting on some blog post. Pointless.

To me, not having an opinion about something is a strong statement. And personally, it means that that 'something' is not on my critical path in life. I am a rat, wanting to remain a rat. All these 'somethings' which people make a huge noise about, do not show up in my racetrack. I can at best acknowledge their existence. Ask me for an opinion and you will get nothing.

Annus Mirabillis

Here we go again, another new year. Happy New Year to everyone. On new year's day, I am prone to being nervous. Somewhere inside me, I have been made to believe that how you start on day 1 will determine what lies ahead. But over the years, this belief has waxed and waned. This time around, I really didn't think about it too much. Perhaps it was because I had grown up and believed in a 'who-the-world-works' or maybe it was just a result of a long bout of tension and sleep shortage thanks to work.

But since it is a new year ahead of me, I think it is a good time to reflect back on life over 2011 and how I can be better and more effective in 2012. There are a few things which I surely want to do this year and I see a merit in putting some of those down.

1. Exercise more often

I have had the dream of being presentably slim for a long time now. This has to be the year I do something about it and make it count. There are two broad ways of becoming slim and staying that way - exercise ad diet. The latter, I have found is significantly tougher and hence I shall stick to exercise.

2. Write more often

I think dreams come in cycles. There can be a whole passage of time where I don't dream of a particular thing and then suddenly it shows up on my radar. Writing is one such thing. I hope to write more and write more often this year. Perhaps take the first steps towards writing a book or something.

3. Better anger management and channelizing negative energy

This has been among my greatest strengths and in my view the most useful thing I have taught myself. It has been over a decade since I have started experiencing the benefits of this. I wish to continue perfecting this habit and hope to lose my cool fewer times this year.

4. Crunch the time between thought and action

Many times, circumstances get the better of me. In large situations (large being defined by the scale of implications of the decisions that are being complicated) I find that I fret too much about the outcome at the cost of losing my objectivity. This is further affected by self-doubt and your gut's lack of confidence on your brain. It is some sort of 'analysis paralysis'. This year I need to get better at backing my logic and judgement and thinking lesser and acting faster.

5. Do something creative regularly

I have been trying this for some time now and find that it helps immensely in reducing boredom. I just need to be more regular; actually regular creativity is almost an oxymoron. Forget it. I know what to do.

6. Read news more often and have an independent world view

My daily schedule gives me little time to read the newspaper and I am left with relying on the Internet for reading news. Thanks to google news being the way it is, my following the news is at best haphazard. I need to correct this. There needs some method to this.

7. Learn to say No

I think it is the most important skill to have in the world.

Apart from these, there are other minor things -- like cleaning my car more often, ensuring my next shirt is not blue, never wearing mismatched shoes, learning to write fast with a fountain pen, etc.

Getting on with life

In my final semester of engineering, the last exam I wrote was for a course called 'Security Analysis and Portfolio Management'. The last words I wrote in that exam were 'portfolio management'. I remember these words very specifically because at that point, these seemed the last words I would ever write in an exam. Quite a sentimental fool I was. Plan A in life was to end education with that exam and get on with everything else.

The name of the course 'Security Analysis and Portfolio Management' has some funny memories associated with it. Back in semester 5, when I chose Financial Management as my minor I was told that the last course would be 'Security Analysis and Portfolio Management'. I was and still am someone with a average intellect. I wondered what security had to do with finance. I told myself "maybe they will teach us how to guard an office and how to analyze office security". Of course, portfolio management I could never figure out what.

Slowly the realization dawned on me that security is a very different thing in finance and it has nothing to do with uniformed guards roaming around with batons and whistles.

I caught the share market bug briefly at that time. I read the papers, watched a few stocks move. I even had a scrapbook with newspaper clippings and stock graphs. Again, Plan A was to start work, get a demat account, invest and grow rich.

When money came in in the form of salary, the testosterone was in short supply. One needed a certain amount of guts and a feeling of being dispassionate about money to invest. Suddenly the share market seemed like a well organized, legally viable means to bet (I still think it is a legalized form of betting, but as of now I am running along Plan D or Plan E for life) To cut the explanation short, I never invested.

After all these years, I finally got myself a trading account and a reasonable amount of money to 'play with'. There have been a lot of changes since 'Security Analysis and Portfolio Management' in my understanding of Finance and the markets. I traded today and it felt good.

Missing the Web 2.0 bus

Back when I started work, orkut was the rage. I spent a lot of time on orkut. A lot of time. It seemed like the right filler for days full of intermittent work. When you let the machine compile a huge jar file, there really isn't much you can do when the machine is compiling. Orkut filled this gap very well. Given the competitive nature of what I and my close friends were accustomed to, there was competition on orkut too: number of friends, number of scraps, fans etc. I know of people who came very close to screwing up academics (and hence life in a myopic sense) due to orkut. Orkut became a common noun, orkuting became a verb and an acceptable activity.

Orkut slowly gave way to facebook. There were a few other portals (which've been relegated to also rans - Friendster, Hi5, etc.) I was lucky to get early access to facebook thanks to being in a college that was covered by facebook. But I really didn't revel in facebook as much as I did on orkut. I found that it pushed people to be more phony than necessary.

The major difference between your orkut profile and your facebook profile was that the orkut relied on 'pull' in order to get recognition whereas facebook relied more on 'push' for recognition. It was a result of the basic design of the user homepage. Once logged in, Orkut opened to a page with your profile, your friends list and imminent birthdays of your friends. Facebook, on logging on, threw at you updates from what your friends were doing, saying and sharing.

This difference was stark. It meant that one would require different mindsets to navigate the two portals (soon they would become social networking sites) Facebook gave greater returns on pushy-ness, boldness and to an extant blatant self promotion. This came at a time when there was a mindset change in how people perceived the web.

This was around the time when Web 2.0 became a famous concept: when user generated content became the driver of the internet. Facebook fit better than orkut in the web 2.0. Also, let me not take anything away from facebook in terms of user interface, user experience and add-ons.

Close to the heels of facebook was twitter - a brilliant avenue to express, be-heard and self promote in the simplest of fashions. Twitter started a parallel network of connected people in a way nobody could imagine.

I heard of web 2.0 only after it became a huge talking point. Though I was on facebook, I had barely heard of twitter. When you have enough happening in real life, you rarely do look to the internet for excitement. It might have been a paucity of time which resulted in me not spending enough time or putting in enough effort on web 2.0.

I started using twitter regularly a month or so ago. Since then, I have been amazed by it. The design of the entire system is beautiful (I haven't figured it out fully yet) Between facebook and twitter, my vote surely is for twitter. It is smarter, quicker, adds greater value and doesn't damage once's personality as much. There are some simply outstanding people who make twitter what it is. It is almost like a large connected family out there which keeps the place abuzz.

But I have found that getting into the family is impossible (at least I haven't figured it out) And knowing social networks, being a male, out of college, with very few active friends on the network, the odds are stacked against me. Looking back, I feel that I missed the web 2.0 bus. I should have started being active on twitter long ago. But here I am, still searching, still trying to find my feet.

The Wedding Planner

Sorry for the catchy post title. This is not about classic wedding planning as we know it. This is a summary of my guide to attending weddings. Actually, the guide is applicable to family functions other than weddings as well.

Ever since I moved to Chennai almost a year back, I have been hit by a barrage of 'family functions'. I don't know if the last 12 months are representative. If they are, I should expect to attend more family functions in a year that I can count on my fingers.

Honestly, I don't mind attending family functions. I am reasonably well behaved in public, I like meeting people, I like playing the good boy, I know who I should 'mark attendance' with, I know whom to shake hands with (and whom not to - though this handshake strategy warrants a complete discussion in itself) and I've noticed that people in general are also eager to meet me. Presence in family functions also does a world of good to my positioning in the extended family. Family functions only get irritating if they eat into work or weekend relaxation or if they are the excessively religious type and thereby against my principles.

Broadly, there are 2 main things you need to ensure when attending family functions: indemnify yourself against possible goodwill erosion, and eat a lot of good food. These are the two most important agenda items. I might have used complicated words to describe the first one, but in simple terms it is about ensuring nobody in the future cribs about you not attending. This might seem like a small thing but many people do take it seriously. I have noticed that in Chennai, the invitation to a function comes with an unwritten covenant of compulsory attendance. The second aspect is as simple as I've described it - eating lots of good food.

There might be other things you will end up trying to do - dress well, buy a meaningful gift, show-off the latest Upanishad commentary you've read, etc. But the two I've mentioned are most important from my perspective. I have a logic for it as well. To me, the good food is the only motivation to attend functions. (Its a bit like saying an asset, at the end of the day is about the cash flows it generates) All other reasons pale in comparison. I don't really find joy in networking or showing off my latest shirt or veshti. I do not need to get introduced to either 'girls' or parents of possible 'girls'. I don't read the Upanishads or do network marketing of sarees or beauty products. Good food is good enough. But it is important to keep the good food coming. Attending one off functions is of little use. You need to ensure you are invited again and again. This is where goodwill comes into the picture. Its like having healthy and consistent cash flows year on year.

Any moderately large family function will have a lot of people attending. The superset of attendees is determined the hosts of the function. Its elementary. If A and B are the hosts of the function, A and B will tend to decide the list of invitees with inputs from elders and other significant members of the family.

During most functions, the hosts are the busiest people. Marriage receptions might be an exception in which case the hosts (say A and B) might be the 3rd and 4th busiest. In general, it is OK to assume that the hosts are the busiest. But most hosts do acknowledge your attendance if you make the effort to make your presence felt. Hosts are usually very happy to see invitees attend. From their selfish perspective, that is all they would want - you attending. Like 'saala we took all the effort to invite but he did attend. Good boy'. Most hosts will not have time to look at your new shirt or listen to your latest Upanishad gyaan. As a safety measure, it always helps to also 'mark your attendance' with the host influencers (the ones helping out with invitee lists) Just in case hosts are very busy/unapproachable/dazed to notice you, the influencers are a viable second option. Of course in the event that neither the hosts, nor the influencers notice you during the function, there is a chance that the photographical evidence will act as proof. But nothing is as good as creating an impression in person.

Most family functions are followed by detailed postmortems where a lot of bitching is done about non-attendees. These bitching sessions will many times involve the hosts (A and B) and the influencers. Its these bitching sessions that you should avoid being a topic in. It leads to goodwill erosion. And in the high touch family-society of Chennai, goodwill is very easy to lose and near impossible to gain. Your missing the function might cost you half a dozen meals in the future.

So, to restate my point: it is necessary to attend and more importantly let the hosts and the host-influencers notice during the function that you have attended.

Regarding goodwill, you can play some long term strategies too. This would involve connecting with distant/long-lost relatives. Often these strategies will not have immediate pay-offs. It will take multiple meetings to start standing a chance of figuring in their invitee list. To me, that's too much effort for a possible meal in the distant future. Hence, I do not play this strategy.

Coming to eating the food, the strategy is pretty simple. More the better. Serving food is usually a batch process. There are pandhis one after the other. It is important to be shameless enough to capture your prized seat in the earliest possible pandhi. Earlier, I used to have reservations about eating early - a feeling that observers might find me too opportunistic for the food. But I then realized that people hardly bothered. And more importantly in many cases, eating early would ensure that you get a serving of all the dishes in the menu. As the pandhis go on, a few popular dishes might get finished without everyone getting to sample them.

In terms of your position in the dining hall, a useful idea would be to sit close to the end of the table where the cooks keep the food. This increases the number of cooks/servers standing close to where you are sitting and hence asking for extra helpings are easier.

An ideal plan would be that you enter the function hall, time your entry into the hall such that it is close to mealtime, meet the hosts and significant influencers, head right to the dining hall, finish the most important task and then collect the coconut in the bag and go back home.

An analysis of anger

Like most others, I get angry, furious, vengeful etc. As a kid, I was always known to have been endowed with an excess these the emotions. They blamed it on some kind of inheritance of traits. But post adolescence, I have learned to manage rage very well. Honestly, now I am proud of how well I can control anger. I thought I will put down my basic understanding of anger and tenets of my anger management strategy.

The change started when I first read about anger, the nature and causes of it. It was an article on the internet (I'm unable to find it now though). From what I remember, there were 3 types of anger. I shall call them Internal-A, Internal-B & External.

Internal-A: This is the long lead time type of anger and can sometimes be confused with your personality type or mental outlook. The cause of this anger is internal and the anger takes a long time to build up. The outwards symptoms are tough to identify and this type of anger rarely does produce fits of rage. Very often, this type of anger begins during the developmental phase of one's personality (sometimes even during childhood) when the person starts to harbor ill-feelings towards specific aspects of his circumstances, surroundings or upbringing. The specific cause of the ill-feeling is not external but is the incapability of the person to come to terms with the perceived external stimulus for anger. The usual examples are anger and hatred towards rich people, anger at parents for their behavior type etc. Such feelings once developed, continue to linger with time and are hard to let go off.

Internal-B: This is a more common anger type which is sporadic and short lived. This can be triggered by internal reactions to external stimuli. External stimuli which are not anger causing. Let's say this is very expectation dependent. Anger caused by jealousy, remorse, guilt etc. fall into this category. This type of anger can affect a wide range of personality types. A few might take this anger very seriously (or to put it correctly - a few will be affected very badly by this type of anger) Reversing this anger is usually easy.

External: As the name suggests, this type of anger is caused entirely by external factors. These are external factors that specifically stoke anger in the psyche. This type of anger is most common and something which all animal species exhibit. External anger is driven by the mind's survival instinct. When someone hits you, you get angry and hit back. This anger is healthy and I would say 'right'. This anger is difficult to control, and in my opinion is wrong to try and control. It is supposed to be a natural reaction to external stimuli.

What I have found is that anger is very often a mixture of the three types. The pre-existence of one type of anger enhances the effect of the other. e.g. I've been feeling very angry at myself for driving carelessly thereby resulting in a scratch on my new car (can be classified Internal-B) Then this guy at the traffic signal bumps his car into the back of my car. I lose it completely (External anger enhanced by Internal-B).

Anger type Internal-A is very a existential angst type of thing. At a basic level, it can be overcome by logic and acceptance of life as it was and it is. If you've always been obese and hence hate slime people, relax. Give your genes their due. Being obese might be the right thing for you. At a more complicated level, Internal-A anger might need medical attention. Chronic cases of hatred, ill-feeling might lead to pathological depression warranting psychiatric care. But extreme cases aside, Internal-A can be overcome by right thinking.

Anger type Internal-B is the most unwanted type of anger. I personally find it the silliest and most useless type of anger. It is this type of anger that I have almost completely quashed from my mind. I often tell myself that it is I who lose when I'm angry for there is nothing to gain from this anger type. You never scare anyone, never make a point, never get someone to do things for you. I try and ensure that I never develop Internal-B anger. And believe me, it is easy once you realize that it serves no useful purpose.

External anger is good and necessary anger. The only challenge is to use it in a controlled and careful manner. External anger follows the pattern of diminishing marginal returns. Hence it is important to understand where you are on the curve and what the slope is. I rarely try and control external anger. The most I do is to examine where there's marginal benefit in continuing or increasing my anger levels.

All said and done, the most important step towards anger management is to understand which anger type one is experiencing and delve into the actual cause of the anger. Once there, one can use the skill of logic and cost-benefit analysis.

Accrual accounting

I do not know how the accounting system we currently follow came into being. At some level, the accounting system is an elaborate exercise in trying to prove a tautological premise. Let's say you have two dogs: Debit and Credit. You give each dog a set of bags. The number of bags given to either dog need not be the same. You then take an even number of beads and start distributing one bead each to either dog asking the dog to put the beads into one of the bags based on some complicated rule.

You keep doing this: pick up two beads, give one to Debit and the other to Credit. Do this for a year. And at the end of the year ask either dog to list the total number of beads against each of its bags. After a lot of fretting, the totals match. You are happy and someone responsible signs off the paper certifying that the totals match. Everyone is happy, Debit and Credit wag their tails, the beads for the new year start coming in.

I could never understand double entry book-keeping in B school. There was just too much pressure which prevented me from making a fundamental assessment of what was going on. It was only recently did I really understand the gist of it all. The difficulty lie in the rules that apply to determine which bead should go into which bag and the exacting exercise of choosing a few bags from either dogs and putting down the bead-count details of those.

Now that I understand accounting in the simple bead, dog, bag model, it is important to understand what constitutes the beads and the bags.

Statutory accounting is done on an accrual basis as against a cash basis. This I'm assuming was a decision taken after a lot of deliberation. Accounting on an accrual basis is more elegant, better for analysis and structurally easier to monitor/maintain. But at the end of the day cash is king, queen and most wanted. Cash accounting is reality. Cash accounting helps you sleep in peace.

Interpreting cash movement from accrual accounting detail can be a harrowing exercise. The problem is that accrual accountants (ergo all certified professional accountants) overdo the elegance bit, mostly at the cost of obfuscating reality.

Lets take a simple example: you own a company that sells soda ash. Your chief executive tells you that he's manufactured and sold 100,000 tonnes of soda ash to Charles Taylor in Sub Saharan Africa. You congratulate him on the sale and tell yourself that you're company is doing well. You order a glass of wine, eat an expensive dinner and go to bed imagining yourself in the new Armani.

A couple of months later your bank calls you and tells you that a 1,000 Rupee check drawn on the bank by the soda ash company is about to bounce. You flip. You ask your accountant to check on what's amiss. He tells you "Sir, yes we're overdrawn".

You look at the company profit & loss statement. It has been a great year; the super-large order from Africa had been the buzz. Your company had made windfall profits thanks to Charles Taylor. What could have gone wrong?

Cash. And the bloody lack of it. The problem is sales, margin, EBITDA, profit are all accrual measures. What really matters is cash. Your profit tells you nothing about whether Charles Taylor paid you for the soda ash. It is designed not to tell you. Charles Taylor's payment or non-payment is hidden in the receivables. The beauty is that you could have gone around town claiming that your company made large profits and yet end up getting caught in a 138 offence on a piddly little check.

This illustration might be simplistic and anyone even remotely familiar with business will be able to spot the miss. But the point I emphasize is that financial reality is often hidden in the accounting statements and takes some finding out.

Accountants are strange people who seem to belong to some secret brotherhood. They seem to have designed things in a way to ensure their necessity is always felt.

His Highness Abdulla

As I grew up, there were a wide set of influences I was exposed to. Malayalam and Kerala culture (not necessarily Malayalee culture) was certainly one of them. There was a school of thought among people at home that Malayalam movies were the best kinds. I did not subscribe to this view: my inability to understand the language and the need to avoid images of dingy, rainy, overly green places were the major reasons.

Recently, I re-started watching Malayalam movies and the first movie I saw was 'His Highness Abdulla' starring Mohanlal, Gautami, Nedumudi Venu among others. As a kid, His Highness Abdulla and Kutti Chatthan were the only 2 Malayalam movies I had ever heard (and Abhayam came sometime later). People at home, especially my aunt's family used to rave about Mohanlal's role, the music and the movie in itself.

Before I put down my review of the movie, I must confess that I watch portions of the movie every single day. I have my favorite dialogues, expressions and sequences to watch out for. I must have watched the entire movie 5 - 6 times in the last year and some portions of it 30 - 40 times. This is seriously a great movie.

Warning: I do not know how to review a movie without detailing the plot. I am spoilt.

The movie is set in the home of Udaya Varma (Nedumudi Venu) who is a king (the Varma type) with lots of property and no heir. His son Unni had vanished as a child. Udaya Varma's poor health stokes the interest of his near family who want to usurp portions of his wealth. The family (mostly of his nephews and neices) shows undue interest in his health and well-being hoping to garner a greater share in the wealth.

Gautami is an orphan - someone born out of wedlock to a servant in the palace. She is the well behaved, obedient servant who Udaya Varma considers as his daughter. She is well versed in music and dance; almost an intellectual heir of Udaya Varma who calls her his Maanasa Putri.

Udaya Varma's set of relatives plot on murdering him so as to hasten the property transfer. It is for this reason that they bring Abdulla (Mohanlal) from Mumbai. Abdulla is a singer in the red light area of Mumbai with no particular experience in being a hitman. But the money offered to him entices him to take the assignment.

Abdulla comes to the tharavad in the guise of Plakkurusi Ananthan Namboodiri - a friend of Ravi Varma: one of Udaya Varma's nephews (played by Sreenivasan). Ananthan invokes suspicion but is allowed by Udaya Varma to stay in the royal house for 2 days.

Udaya Varma's wife (who has become mentally unstable because of her missing son Unni) mistakes Ananthan for Unni and calls out to him. Ananthan is touched my the lady's predicament. She continues to believe that Ananthan is Unni.

Ananthan is told by the set of plotters that he should finish the job in the two days assigned to him. At the end of the two days, Sreenivasan protests at his inaction. It is then that Ananthan plays a trick (a number as he puts it). As if practicing, he sings a beautiful song 'Pramadavanam vendum' (rendered impeccably by Jesudas) which catches the attention of Udaya Varma.

Udaya Varma then takes a liking to Ananthan. Udaya Varma mentions that Ananthan's style of singing sounds familiar to him (evadayo ketta oru aalapanashaili). Ananthan also impresses Gautami with his cheerful nature and knowledge of music and dance. Ananthan helps Udaya Varma's ailing wife walk and laugh by being the Unni she imagines himself to be.

In an episode, Ramanathukkara Ananthan Namboodiri gets into a musical contest with Ananthan and Ananthan (Mohanlal) comes out with flying colours. This song which is part of the contest is the high point of the movie. An absolutely brilliant composition 'Devasabaathalam'. Ananthan's proximity to Udaya Varma grows with time. Udaya Varma confides in him that he feels threatened by his kin. Gautami starts falling in love with Ananthan.

Udaya Varma talks about his friend Ameer Khan, a musician from Malabar. He tells Ananthan how close he was with Ameer Khan and how great a musician he was. That night Ananthan takes Udaya Varma out in the night for a walk. Udaya Varma is drunk in a bid to forget his sorrows. This presents Ananthan a brilliant chance to hurl Udaya Varma down from a cliff in the area. But he doesn't do it.

In the midst of all this, Ananthan's sidekick Jamaal comes to the royal house from Mumbai. The next day Udaya Varma while walking around the house sees Ananthan and Jamaal (who is in the guise of Sankunni Nair) reading the Namaaz. It is then that Udaya Varma realizes that he has been cheated.

Ananthan readily accepts that he is Abdulla and that he had come on a mission to kill him. He says that he has changed his mind and now wants to protect Udaya Varma from danger. Abdulla also meets the conspirators and tells them that he is not ready to kill Udaya Varma.

The conspirators bring in another hitman from Mumbai to do the job. Then there is a fight in which Abdulla prevails. He keems Udaya Varma hidden in the cellar which prevents the conspirators to hurt him.

In the end Abdulla confesses to Udaya Varma that Ameer Khan was his father and that he would never kill Udaya Varma once he came to know this fact. And finally all ends well when Udaya Varma asks Abdulla to stay back in the royal house.

The plot is very beautiful and meaningful. It is unlike the usual movies with heroes endowed with larger than life abilities and powers. But what makes the movie stand out is the characterization and acting.

Nedumudi Venu's role suited him to perfection. He plays the old pessimistic king with a love for the arts brilliantly. Mohanlal never overacts. Each of the characters of the set of conspirators is conceived brilliantly. The old blind man was the stand out character among them.

The movie is in as chaste a Malayalam as you can get. Every dialogue is studded with class befitting a royal setting. The expressions, pauses and modulation are a perfect representation of how Malayalam is spoken. 'Aau Malayala basha raksha pattu' seems a very apt thing to say. The delivery of Hindi could have been better.

Music is top notch. Two of the songs went on to become blockbuster hits. While Pramadavanm might rank as one of Jesudas' all time bests, Devasabaathalam with its lyrical brilliance poignant with meaning and classy screenplay ranks as my favorite.

In summary, a classy, brilliant Malayalam movie. Something that only Malayalam cinema can give you. A movie where everything comes together in perfection.

The Cut and Run business?

My current job offers me multiple opportunities to meet investment bankers - the IBD type. Through two years of B-school, I harbored stereotypes of work in investment banks. As I understood it, there were broadly 2 categories: sales/trading and IBD. Sales/trading concerned with transactions in the the capital markets (debt and equity) and IBD involved transactions outside the capital markets and transactions that resulted in an entity gaining exposure to capital markets (IPOs, debentures, etc.) Of course I understand things better now.

The IBD side of the business intrigues me. These are people who do 'transactions'. Transactions are basically barters of economic interest of different kind; most often cash for ownership or cash for claim on future cash/assets.

Each side of the transaction hires a banker to help find the other side. It is in the banker's interest to see the transaction through. Most often banks are paid a success fee for culmination of the transaction. More money for the bank will mean more money for the people working for the bank and specifically more money for the people directly involved in the transaction. Given this, a banker would be happier if there were more transactions done by him.

Now a transaction by definition is a transaction - a point in time agreement between two or more parties for which the banker is witness or chief cause. The banker's fortunes is not linked to the future of either party post the transaction. This might be different in the case of the non-IBD banking system where the bank might have exposure to the underlying party.

So a transaction banker would do deal 1, make a cut from it, move to another situation with different parties, do transaction 2, make a cut from etc. Does this mean that the nature of business is cut and run?

At first sight, this seemed true. I was sitting at the airport trying to reason this out to someone when I realized the flaw. Banking is about relationships, about reputation. There might be cases where a banker cuts and runs, moves from one bank to another and hence able to continue his cut and run. But in the big picture, these transients will be few. A bank will develop a reputation based on the future performance of the party post the transaction it oversaw. Good banks and hence good deal makers will get a reputation of making the right deal and not merely cut and run.

Nari and the weight loss tamasha

The title of this post is borrowed from a recent book I saw at the store. It was titled 'Women and the weight loss tamasha' and I thought a minor adaptation of the title will put things right in context.

By the BMI method of classification, I am obese. I have been obese for more than a year now. 8 kg is what separates me from normalcy and these 8 kg seem like a huge ask. Weight gain and weight loss depend on multiple factors. My own personal experience tells me that the factors that help me lose weight are: exercise, anxiety and diet control.

My battle with weight is something that was least expected. As a kid I was mildly chubby and I grew to be tall and slim. Before the onset of adolescence few would have expected that I would grow in weight this rapidly. Come adolescence, things changed. It was during a time when I really didn't spend too much time playing outside home. Academics was the main focus. I slept, ate, studied and slept again. My photographs taken in this phase of life tell me that I was very ugly looking.

Things changed when I started off in IIT, I lost 12 kg in the first semester. That is 12 kg in 4 months, 12 kg in 120 days meaning an average loss of 100 grams a day. Imagine hacking off a small 100 gram piece of flesh from your body every day! The factors that contributed to such a drastic fall were anxiety (driven largely by homesickness), exercise (cycling around in crazily humid Chennai after living in the cool, dry climate of Bangalore for most of my life) and diet control (lets just say the mess food wasn't all that great).

I have never been able to replicate such a feat again. There was a brief while in 2008 when I had a bout of typhoid because of which I lost a few kilos in 3 weeks. But the 12 kg loss in 2000 still stands as my personal best.

Subsequent to the first semester, my weight started showing a familiar pattern - gradual decline in the months I was in college followed by sharp spikes during the vacation months when I was home. I realized that I had become one of the types whose weight is never constant or within a small window.

When I started work in 2004, conditions were perfect for steady weight gain - home food, zero anxiety at work, coffee vending machine, McDonald's in the Forum mall etc. I think I did start a morning jogging routine but that was scrapped shortly after I started mugging for CAT.

It was only in a short window - between the CAT written test and the day the interview calls were announced that I religiously went to the gym and brought by weight back from a hair's breadth close to 100 kg. Soon after that, preparation for interviews and the subsequent spartan routine at IIMA took precedence over plans of weight loss.

When I resumed work (now in Bombay) in 2008, I wasn't exactly overweight. Lots of eating out was balanced by work related pressure and the tough life in Bombay. I perhaps had mild ups and downs but on an average hovered around the slightly overweight category.

Since then I have never really considered exercise or a fitness regimen. On marriage day, I apparently didn't seem overweight. Phew!

Moving to Chennai I thought would help me start reducing weight but this time, there was no anxiety and certainly no diet control. Jogging and gym never really took off (my excuse being that I'm growing old and hence will power is in short supply)

One of my relatives lost 15 kg in 3 months thanks to advice from a dietitian. I know this is true. But I also know the amount of hard work that has gone into keeping up with the diet prescribed by the dietitian. Imagine drinking tomato juice for lunch and avoiding pappadam etc.

Today I was told that another relative of mine has started off on a diet prescribed by this dietitian. I also got details about how the dietitian charges her clients. It is Rs 300 per kg, payable in advance. So if you want a diet package for lets say 10 kg, you need to cough up Rs 3,000 for her to give you a neat diet with exact instructions. She also changes the diet plan every week and emphases that the plan is sculpted according the need of the particular person. This reduces the chance of someone borrowing the diet plan from an earlier client.

I might not take the drastic step of seeking a dietitian's advice. I know I do not have the discipline to follow a diet or the ability to suspend my tongue's voice. But yes, given that I will be 30 in a year and a few months more, I really need to put an end to this tamasha.

A lean day at work

Today has been a lean day in the office. It is one of those days when I walk in not knowing what I need to get done through the day. There were of course a couple of small things which needed completion, but nothing big enough to keep me busy through the day.

As a result I began freaking out. This happens to me when I do not know how to spend time. Games on facebook, spider solitaire, countless refreshes at google news: all these to tend to get to you.

There is a looming question: how easy is it to live life without a goal? I have found that having a goal, an objective albeit a short term one is very necessary to keep things going. My mind needs something to feed on and most often the something has to come from the external world. During the day, I usually expect it to be in the form of tasks at work. Outside office, my mind expects responsibility, duty and leisure activities.

Where are things today?

It has been quite some time since I wrote last. Not many things have happened but I seem to have changed quite a bit. The biggest change in me is perhaps my poor health and deteriorating fitness.

It seems to be a symptom of a larger issue in the way I live life nowadays: the lack of a sense of stability. There is just a lot of things I am trying to do and ending up being inefficient.

This is not new, but I need to change and change fast. The most important thing lacking in my life currently is discipline: discipline in multiple things in life.

I went to Pazhani Temple this morning. Pazhani is simply a magical place and it has never failed to inspire me to be better in life. I am sure this time it will be no different.

The anatomy of failure

I have been wanting to write about this for a long time. This one is in the series of posts of self-reflection. By putting down whatever I do here, I hope to change and improve.

What is failure? What constitutes it? Failure is a condition of under-achievement: a feeling of not having done what you intended to or wanted to. I think wanting to do something and not being able to do is a better definition rather than intending to do something and not being able to do so.

There can be many reasons why people fail. The obvious one is that the goal they set for themselves is far beyond what they are capable of. This is failure by design. The system is structured for failure. You cannot be born in India and hope to be the President of the United States.

Failure by design is caused by bad judgements of goals and expectations. Such types of failures can be corrected by realigning goals and wants - the familiar expectation setting. Some people might be of the type who purposely set stretched, unattainable goals for themselves. This is a good strategy for people who know how to deal with it.

The other and more important type of failure is failure by choice. Some people just choose to fail. It is not because of the goals being stretched or their skills being inadequate. It is this nature of failure I personally want to avoid. Currently, there is an overwhelming feeling inside me that I will end up failing because I choose to fail. And the choice is not something I make consciously.

Why does this happen? I think the primary reason is a lack of confidence. It is a feeling inside which says 'success is not for me... I am meant to fail.' It is hard not to succumb to such a feeling when it is strong and sub-conscious. I am not saying that I have succumbed completely; but every now and then, I do believe (and believe very strongly) that success is not for me.

The whole proposition is very silly given that there is no basis for such a feeling. This is the exact logical way I am taking to fight my way out. If there are tendencies which my mind can take for an uncertain event, I might as well tend towards believing in success rather than in failure.

But believing in failure is the very essence of pessimism. It is something that (unfortunately) is a part of me.

Leo Tolstoy

Last weekend, I read by first Tolstoy novel. It wasn't his most famous work; for I have reserved War and Peace and Anna Karenina for a later stage in life. I happened to read 'The Cossacks' - an early Tolstoy novel.

To say the least, it was a wonderful book. There was the right mix of story and philosophy. I could relate to how and why Mahatma Gandhi would've been influenced by this Russian giant.

Line of credit and the milkman

I got back to Mumbai after weeks outside. Thankfully the house was in order except for a bit of dust around. There wasn't much to eat apart from almonds, walnuts and some old boxes of sweets. It is a bit of a struggle without having food handily available. I am now completely dependent on my social network; someone has to suggest meeting up, someone has to suggest that the meeting up happen over food etc.

When I started writing on this blog, I had two main objectives: a) getting used to writing and writing well so that I may someday use these skills to write a book or something worthwhile, b) to 'educate' the world through my ideas and observations. The second one was a bit of a stretch. But at times I do certainly feel that people out there really aren't very keen observers. There are some patterns of thought and reason which everyone resorts to.

A system of thought can be legacy; something that is passed down through generations and is a part of one's culture. But logic? Logic cannot be something that is passed down. Logic has absolute existence. The existence of logic is almost tautological. It simply cannot not-exist.

People have very skewed notions of what is logical. The human mind is to blame for this. For all the talk about human beings being intelligent, there is still a long way to go. We are no where close to being objective in our thoughts and analysis.

Being non-objective is necessary and important. If as a race, we weren't non-objective, we wouldn't have poetry, differing opinions, ideologies, etc. But it is important for people to be objective where necessary. I would say necessary is not the right word. Humans can survive without being objective at all; but being so makes life a touch easier. What do I mean by being objective?

Before delving into that, I want to get one thing out of the way. I hadn't paid the milkman for milk I bought in the month of January. The outstanding amount was some 520 Rupees. So last night I heard the bell ring at an unearthly hour: some 10:30 odd. It was him demanding his money. How did he know that I get scared in the night, easily, alone? The matter is now sorted; I paid him the money this morning.

When you are objective, your thoughts are uncoloured by feelings. You examine evidence for what it is and your logic is absolute, singular and not coloured by what your culture or upbringing has taught you. You maintain hypotheses to be hypotheses till the point there is credible and objective evidence.

There are so many instances in life where I see people rationalizing non-objectively. These people also claim that their rationalization is logical and objective. This is because their system of logic and reason in non-objective. Or rather the hypotheses on which their system of logic rests haven't been tested enough.

Another pet peeve of mine is what I want to term 'perceptual knowledge'. Simply put this is like saying "I know something; I cannot share it with you. You will have to realize it for yourself" (sounds familiar, doesn't it?) I think perceptual knowledge has some basic flaws. Knowledge by definition (my definition at least) cannot be perception based. Knowledge has to exist outside the mind for it to be knowledge. Perceptions are mere perceptions and there is no credible way to ascertain their truth. Or even better, the truth value of a perception is something that doesn't make sense.

The other major flaw is that perceptions by nature are products of the human mind. And the human mind is not objective. Putting it in another way, perceptions are mere chemical balances in the human nervous systems. This chemical balance needn't be driven by knowledge.

A Renaissance?

I am perhaps in the laziest phase of my life. I sleep for about 9 hours a day (while holding on to a job which pays me quite a lot). I wake up just in time for work. I do not exercise and have no controls on what/how much I eat.

All this makes me feel a bit unsettled. I haven't been like this in life too many times before. There might have been the odd week or two where I've gladly chosen to be a potato. But this time, its been more than a couple of months since I was active.

A few things have changed for the better though. I get lots of sleep; deep sleep. I no longer suffer from the bouts of being half-asleep and things like that. My anxiety levels have reduced, I am not as jittery or fretful as I most times am.

But I need to change. The remorse about 'wasting' my time is hitting me hard these days. I really can do so much with the amount of leisure I get. Technically speaking, there is nothing that stops me from making better use of my time. It is just an efficiency problem.

A possible cause for this condition is that I am goal less now. I really am just going with the flow of life and so far, I have been contented with where it has taken me. To change this approach towards life, I need to think hard on multiple things.

Today, I had a project performance review meeting with my boss. And I was surprised with the ratings I got. I thought I had done poorly but in the end, the feedback wasn't that bad after all. This gave me a good feeling and a stronger sense of belief in my abilities.

During that discussion, I also realized how I have stopped being diligent. As I previously mentioned, I have started taking things lightly.

I need to think myself out of this and develop a strong work ethic. This 'Renaissance' might be a bit of going back to the drawing board and start planning things.

As a start, I am determined to make good use of this three day weekend. I have promised to read a book cover to cover - Orhan Pamuk's 'Istanbul' which I purchased today. Outside that, I also want to develop an plan, a set of specific things I will start doing in order to change my ways.

My investigation into the nature of true statements

Off late, I have been trying hard to understand the nature of knowledge and belief. Knowledge to me is a higher idea than belief. Knowledge is something that is true whereas beliefs needn't be. But this differentiation isn't as simple as one would expect; because claiming that something is 'true' is not an elementary task.

Perhaps understanding the nature of 'truth' is a good starting point. Once we know what 'truth' is, then we will have a clear way to differentiate between 'beliefs' that are 'knowledge' and 'beliefs' that are merely beliefs.

There are many tests for truth; or the criteria of truth. The primary and most relevant criteria are objectivity, and consistency. I wish to discuss consistency first; objectivity deserves a longer, more detailed discussion.

By consistency, I mean that a true statement should be be consistent with everything else that is accepted as true. This is a very basic condition; if a statement is true but it contradicts another truth then one of two things: the statement is not true or the earlier statement which was accepted as being true is not entirely so.

This is perhaps how science and human knowledge grows: by testing the consistency of propositions with the accepted truth. A classic example is the idea that the world is flat. This was considered a true statement until somebody's claim which was inconsistent with this, started getting attention.

The second and tougher criterion is that of objectivity. The criterion of objectivity requires that a true statement stands alone without dependence of opinions and feelings. An objective truth should be external to the mind; for the mind's lens is a subjective apparatus.

Once we bring in objectivity into the picture, our sample of possible true statements shrinks alarmingly. For example, Adam tells Eve. "Shem tells me that it is a very hot day today in Canaan. Is it true?" If objectivity is a criterion for truth and the word 'hot' is as understood as it currently is, Eve can only reply "The temperature today in Canaan was 40 degree Celsius".

Shem's opinion about the weather would have been true if our system of communication had defined 'hot' has 'a condition where the temperature is greater than 39 degree Celsius' or something like that. But as we use it, the word hot is an opinion, a judgement of a condition.

This brings me to the next step: the difference between factual statements and judgements. A fact is an objective statement (hence external to the mind) that need not necessarily be true when stated or proposed. In a way, a fact is a true statement whose consistency hasn't been tested yet. And by definition, a judgement can never be a true statement.

The statement 'this colour is blue' can be true under the assumption that that blue is understood to be a colour that corresponds to a certain wavelength of light. What if Adam tells Eve. "the water is blue in colour"? Is this a factual statement?

This statement might have been termed factual. But one fine day someone identified colour blindness as a possible human condition. Given this possibility, Adam's statement cannot be factual in the strict sense. Adam's perception of colour is something that is still subjective. If Adam said "the wavelength of light reflected by the water is xx Angstrom", this can be called a factual statement (assuming that Adam has the standard equipment to measure such details accurately and he makes this statement after the measurement).

Is the act of measurement objective? It certainly can be. Assume a machine which just correctly reads the light and displays the wavelength on a screen. Adam can just read off this screen and make a statement on the wavelength of the light. This statement by Adam is no doubt factual; but its truth will depend on Adam's ability to read correctly.

There are a lot of things I want to discuss regarding the consistency of true statements. I shall get to that some other time.

On the nature of happiness

If I were to name three books that have had the greatest influence in the way I think and lead life, one of them would surely be Fooled by randomness by Nassim Taleb. I have read the book one and a half times and have been fascinated by some of the stuff in the book. In some places, the book is extremely immodest but that is the author's style. Amidst all the positioning and holier-than-thou, there is a lot of sense in what he says.

I would like to bring to your attention a quote from the book: Solon's warning - 'The uncertain future has yet to come, with all variety of future; and him only to whom the divinity has guaranteed continued happiness until the end we may call happy'. Taleb builds on this in a way and combines the good and bad effects of randomness to bring about his views of success, luck, etc.

I do not agree to Solon's statement completely. Happiness to me is more a stock variable: at any given point of time, you can either be happy or you are not; and the argument ends there. The state of being happy can change quickly thanks to uncertainity of the future. But calling only those who enjoy perpetual happiness as being 'happy' isn't something I wouldn't agree with.

Here I am tempted to think along the lines of what constitutes happiness and whether it is an abosolute term at all. Does happiness derive from the change in one state to another (whereby happiness is a relative perception of the mind) or is happiness absolute and stand alone? My answer tends more towards the former than the latter.

My best effort would be to define happiness as a state of mind. A state of mind which can further be broken down into a specific mental chemical balance (do I love this line of reasoning or what!) To that extant, happiness is an absolute state. We can, in some form describe happiness as - 'a mind state where the subject has an endorphin concentration of xx gm/Litre'. Depending on how you are as a person, the value of xx will differ. But this is not the 'non-absoluteness' I want to talk about.

Happiness is derived from relative improvements in situations. Abolsute situations do not guarantee happiness. E. g. If you beat Usain Bolt in a 100m race, the first time you are happy. Your endorphine level shoots up to 10xx or something. The 100th time you beat him in a 100m race, the end state is still the same in an absolute sense but you don't feel half as happy.

Humans are greedy by nature. Our happiness circuits follow the law of diminishing returns. It's as if the gland releasing the happiness hormones says "I've seenenough of this. Show me something better!".

New beginnings

It is past eleven on a Sunday night and I am still up working on something. This time, my week begins early. I think working Sunday night is a good way to beat Monday blues.

As I was reading slide after slide, the idea suddenly came upon me that I should re-start blogging. Mind you, I have done this a half a dozen times. But for once, I got the blog address I was looking for in the first attempt. I do not like to claim myself to be a believer in superstition (I'm supposed to be a member of the Brights Society) But this time, maybe it just felt good to get the blog address of your choice.

I do not have a direction for this blog as of now. And I would be uncomfortable if I did have one in mind. I think direction stifles creativity. It is also that this early into this blog, I wouldn't want to take call on what I should write about. Something might come up as I progress.

Today, the world celebrates Valentine's day. I did too but that's besides the point. Celebrating Valentine's day is by no means universal. There are a few pre-requisites for it - love (obviously), people, freedom, smart marketers (yes, that is increasingly becoming true).

Among the things I listed, let me pick on freedom. You need a certain degree of freedom to celebrate it. The lack of freedom doesn't preclude Valentine's day but it certainly jeopardizes attempts to celebrate it.

There is an interesting episode of how a certain person chose this day to show hatred against someone, something on this day. For this certain person, someone and something, this day would denote a day of hatred. The day when the hatred began - to be precise. Hatred is as strong as love, and even in this case it outlived one of the people involved.

In many places in the world, there are some things which neither money nor MasterCard can buy.