Well...

So much for my conspiracy theory...foot firmly in my mouth...now time for national mourning.

Conspiracy theory – India vs Bangladesh

Right after we lost to the young Bangladeshi side in the Group B match of the world cup, I saw this post on DP linking to various people ranting and raving about the dismal performance of Team India. I watched this match and was as upset as the other ranters. But I had a theory. I did not want to voice my theory ahead of the other league matches so as not to jinx them, in a manner of speaking. But I cannot hold my tongue (or my fingers on my keyboard) any longer.

I have come to think of the World Cup as a commercial carnival. Let me give you a for-instance from a different world to tell you how I came to this point of view. Why do you think Sushmitha Sen and Aishwarya Rai and Lara Dutta and what-is-her-name Chopra get crowned in the beauty contests in consecutive years? Because the cosmetic industry realized that Indian women now had the buying power for their products and hence the time was ripe to tap this virgin market. And why did n’t the assorted ladies in subsequent years win the same beauty contests? Because the market was established by then and the industry turned its attention to other sectors. Do you think the above argument is reasonable (from a cynic's point of view that is)?

Now, in the same spirit, the main source of income to the cricket carnival that is the world cup are the billion avid cricket fans in India. So I cannot believe that they can afford to have India leave the tournament before the Super eights. Now, what is my conspiracy theory then? I want to claim that the match against Bangladesh we lost so that there is guaranteed viewer ship for the subsequent league matches featuring India. We would all have watched the opener anyway just because of the fact that it was the opener, but how many of us would have watched the Bermuda match on a week night/day, depending on the time zone you are in? And how many people ended up watching it, me (at the office, while pretending to work) and my dad (at night at home at the cost of being late to work the next day) included?

Well? Do you buy it?

Back Home

I am back home after a week long trip to the west. The official purpose was to attend the big meeting of the American Physical Society and present my current research in the form of three talks. The unofficial purpose was to network with the prominent people of the community and catch up with old friends. All of this happened with gusto. The high point was seeing all my grad school colleagues that are post-doc-ing all over the country (and finding out that they are in comparable amounts of misery as me :)). I also got to meet college friends from India that I have not seen for ever. That was good too.

Usually, when you see somebody you have not seen in a while, you use them as a reference to see how you have changed since the last time you have been with them. That is one of the primary purposes that catching up with old friends serves. But somehow I did not do that this time. It could mean several things. The simplest thing could be that I was so distracted by all the physics that filled this week that in the brief time that I was actually in a social mode, I did not tune out of it enough to think of the “gauging the change in me” thing. Another rather Freudian thing could be that I am either really secure (unlikely) or extremely insecure (possible) with where I am now that I was subconsciously avoiding any comparison. I am not sure which of the above scenarios is the truth. In any case, all of this sounds like over-analyzing some rather simple thing and I have to get back to work.

Also, I have been out of the Blogsphere for a week now. Wonder what I missed here?

Rubbing me the wrong way

Blogged as part of the BLANK NOISE PROJECT BLOGATHON-2007.

I grew up in the big and crowded city of Madras. But, relatively speaking, I led a sheltered life with respect to this whole phenomenon of eve teasing due to the following reasons. I went to school by the school bus and stayed on campus in the hostel when I was in college. My home in Madras is near a train station and trains in Madras have a ladies compartment where the worst thing that can happen to you is that you might be yelled at by some lady with a heavy basket for moving too slowly! In spite of these facts, I have had five or six experiences involving “groping” of some form that happened when I rode the city buses in Madras. That should give you a feeling for how frequent an occurrence this must be! I am usually non confrontational (“Dhushtanai kandaal doora vilagu” philosophy) and even perhaps forgiving. I am narrating below the only one of these times when I lost my temper and actually hit back at the guy in question, literally.

This is a little less than a decade ago. But, it disgusted me enough that I still remember. It was summer, the month of May. I was waiting in the fifth main road bus stand in Nanganallur for the bus numbered 18C to go to Thousand Lights on Mount Road in order to go to the British Consulate library. Those who know Madras will realize that this is a 45 minute stint on the bus, made worse at the time as they were constructing the Pazhavanthangal subway and the buses were taking a round about route into the city, enough time for the drama narrated here to unfold. It is 8:45 in the morning on a week day. I am dressed in what I have come to think of as my Madras street clothes as I now wear them only when I am on the streets of Madras, which these days is very rare. Modest cotton Salwar Kameez that covers everything and a big cotton Dupatta on top for extra measure. 18C comes. It is already pretty crowded. I get in. We are on our way. Now, for those who don’t know, nobody gets off the bus on this route until Guindy about 40 minutes away from now. But people keep getting in.

Fifteen uneventful minutes pass by and the bus gets progressively packed. There is hardly enough room to breath, let alone move. The drama starts. I feel something on my butt. I move what little I can to avoid what I think of as accidental contact. Then I feel it again. This time, I recognize definite and deliberate rubbing. I try to turn around to see who it is. I am only able to turn my head and shoulders. Contact withdraws. I only find innocent looking commuters. Five minutes pass. Contact again, definite deliberate rubbing of what I have by now recognized as somebody’s boner. Eee…w! I try to squirm away. No room. I try to turn around and contact withdraws and I can’t recognize the culprit. This goes on for another ten minutes and I am getting madder and more disgusted with every passing second. The bus comes to a halt at the race course bus stop. Some commotion ensues with the conductor yelling at some guy for not getting off fast enough or something. In this distraction, I lean into a girl standing next to me and tell her to watch my back and tell me which guy leans into me when the bus gets going. We wait for the commotion to subside and be on our way again. I am half hoping that this whole thing is finished with and I can ride the rest of the way in peace, but at the same time hoping he does try it again so I can confront him.

We are on our way. Five minutes pass, and nothing. So I am beginning to think it is over when…again, rubbing, slow, deliberate. I stay still for a minute then turn towards the girl, my ally. She nods, yes I saw that. I lean into her. Checked shirt, dhothi, puny guy with a mustache is the description I get. We are at the Chinna Malai bus stop. People begin to get off. I turn around and there he was. Looking innocent and apparently minding his own business. Bus gets on its way. Five minutes. Then it turns into the Saidapet bus stop. I know a lady behind me wants to get off here. Under normal circumstances, I would have leaned into the seat near me and would have let her pass between me and the guy. These being extraordinary circumstances, I do the opposite. I move towards the guy to allow the lady to pass between me and the seat. Just as she gets behind me I pretend to loose balance, lurch towards the guy, use his shoulders for leverage and knee him in his groin precisely the way my Karate master taught me. My master would have been proud of me had he seen the guy go down. I hastily but vaguely apologize to the people around, not meeting anybody’s eyes and hurry behind the lady and get off the bus. Only then do I look in and see two people staring at me. The girl who was my accomplice and another guy who must have seen what actually happened. The girl’s eyes convey approval. I feel vindicated and rush off into the crowd to wait for another bus to complete the rest of my journey.

Walking in winter

As the title suggests, this post is about my experiences with walking in winter in upstate New York. But first let me start with a preamble. I love to walk. And I hate waiting for buses. If it is only 2 or 3 miles and my options were take the bus, take your car but fight for a parking spot or walk, I would any day choose walking. This is perhaps one of the reasons I liked living in Europe because there I could walk anywhere any time of the day. In suburban United States which is where I have lived, nobody walks anywhere. There are only cars on the road. In spite of this I walked a lot when I was in Florida, especially in the months of October through March, when Florida has the most perfect walking weather. Temperature in the 60’s most of the time and clear blue skies with a bright sun, heaven! And then I moved to the godforsaken hinterland of upstate New York, inside the Snow Belt. But, I stubbornly refused to change my predilection of walking everywhere and the following is an account of the experience.

I walk to work everyday. I walk through small roads and not-quite-roads that are not cleared regularly and almost never salted by the looks of them. I walk this way because it is the straight line from home to work. In any case everything was fine and dandy in the fall. And then, first came November. My sneakers started getting wet by the time I reached my office every morning and I had to take them off and let them dry. Then later in the month it got so cold that walking with wet sneakers made my feet so numb they hurt. So I went out and bought myself a pair of Faux leather shoes that did not get wet and were thick soled. And then the walking continued. Then came January and with it a whole lot of snow. First, there was may be 10 inches or so of snow on the ground. So I went out and bought myself a pair of boots that allowed me to walk through it with no damage done. And so the month progressed and the walking continued.

Then came the winter storm a few weeks back. We got 30 inches of snow in a span of 2 days. When I walked into work through this, I realized through first hand experience the hazards of walking through waist deep snow. If you lose your balance and fall (as you are bound to do) you actually go under the snow and getting back up is not easy at all as you have no surface that can lend any support! By this time I thought I had seen it all with respect to “winter walking hazards”. But then, this morning I walked in “freezing rain”, a meteorological phenomena that I don’t quite understand (something about not enough time between nucleation and precipitation for snow flakes to form). And do you know what freezing rain does to snow on the ground? It forms a layer of ice on top of it. So with every step one of two things will happen, either the ice will make you skid or the ice will give under your weight and you will find your leg disappearing into the snow and you have to use your other leg (which is hopefully free and clear) to extricate yourself from this hole! Is there more in store for me? I hope not! Oh Spring! When are you getting here?

Blogathon against Eve teasing

The people over at Blank Noise Project have announced this year's Blogathon about fighting back against eve teasing. I have had several nasty experiences myself. So I will share one, so I can be part of this online campaign against this disgusting reality in the urban streets of India. More on March 7th.

Science and Honesty

Recently, Sunil over at Balancing life had this nice post where he was listing the qualities that distinguished a mediocre scientist from a truly good one. And to that post I added the following comment.
“I would like to add one more to your excellent list. Honesty. What I mean by that is to be able to see things as they are, not as we want them to be. Some of the really great ideas have come out because the scientist in question was really looking and was not trying to fit what he/she saw to the existing world view, but rather was willing to see that it was the world view that needed to be modified. It takes exceptional intellectual honesty to do this, especially in physics.”
But I don’t think I made myself very clear on what I actually meant. So, I thought I will take a moment to clarify in the unlikely event that a random reader of that post stumbled over here.

Let me start with normal communication among people first to lead up to what I actually want to say. Suppose you tell me something. I don’t actually hear what you are telling me. I hear the projection of what you are telling me on the space of my own life’s experience. Do you see what I mean? Suppose you were telling me something simple, for example about some object, a pencil or whatever. Then, I will understand what you are saying completely. But if you were telling me about something complicated, something associated with the sixth sense, like an emotion you felt, then how much of what you say I understand will be determined by how similar my life’s experiences are to yours. Pause for a moment and think about it. You will see that this is true.

Now, what has all this go to do with science? A reductionist definition of fundamental science would be expressing observed phenomena in the language of mathematics. In this sense, nature is talking to the scientist and the scientist tries to understand what nature is telling him/her. And the scientist truly hears only when he/she eliminates the process of projection as described earlier in the context of normal language as applicable here to the language of mathematics. This is the quality I call intellectual honesty. It is the ability to see the box in the clichéd phrase of “thinking outside the box”. The example that comes to mind for me is the Maxwell Equations for the theory of electricity and magnetism. Once the wave equation was written down and found not to obey Galilean Invariance, the box forced people to come up with the Ether idea and spend time and energy looking for it. It was the people who saw the box that recognized that nature was telling us that she did not have Galilean Invariance, she had Lorentz Invariance. Sorry for the esoteric example to the non-physics folks and ask me to clarify if what I am saying rings a bell but does not quite hang together.