Wrapped thoughts...

I still remember the image my eyes captured one day at a bus stand. I badly wanted to capture the image with a camera/my phone but I was a bit afraid. 

A girl of about 25 years - Let's call her X. She was wearing a sleeveless top and a mini skirt. Sunglasses covered her eyes. Behind her were standing two Muslim women. They were clad in the traditional burqa outfit. And one of the women's eyes fell on X. The women did not just glance at X and turn away. Her gaze continued like it did not have an end. 

What was the woman thinking as she saw X?!

I wanted to know desperately. 

When an average man looks at an under-dressed woman, the man's thoughts could be brought down to a very limited set of possibilities. 

But what does an average woman think/feel when she sees an under-dressed woman?!

Does she experience a longing? Does she feel disgust? Does jealousy take birth? Does she feel sad that her body is not built in such a way so as to be exposed? Does she feel happy that her body is built in such a way that she could never ever get an intent of under-dressing? What would be a woman's definition of under-dressing? 

I wanted to know desperately the thought process that was running inside the Muslim woman's head as she looked at X. 

But I was afraid to ask. 

And I let the thoughts of the Muslim woman - whatever they were - to remain safely locked away in her eyes. The way many thoughts of most humans stay.

****

Why have we become a society that treats the clothing of a person as the most important indicator of the person's qualities/principles?

I do not want to comment on if such an approach is right or wrong. 

But think about the following situation.

It is about 11:30 PM. You are walking alone on a deserted road. As you keep walking, you see a man coming from the opposite direction. Now, from the two given options below, when would you feel more relaxed:

• The man is attired in formal wear
• The man is clothed in a very loose, slightly shabby outfit

If you are a person who says that the second option makes you more relaxed, I must admit that I really respect you. But if you feel that you would be comfortable with the man in the formal wear, I want to extend you my hand (sadly) and let you know that you have a friend. 

Now that our friendship has been established, let's think about this. 

We do not know that the man attired in formal wear is a really good human being. Similarly, we are very vague about the intentions of a man in a loose, shabby outfit. But what makes us feel more secure in the company of a properly dressed person? 

Is it the knowledge that a man in a formal wear is well educated and hence, harmless? 

Which brings me to my next question - Is it right to judge the knowledge of a person from his clothing? Is it right to judge the moral and ethical values of a person from his attire?

One of my colleagues told me this story some time back. 

He had been travelling in a crowded train in Tamil Nadu. Next to him had been standing a man, about 40 years old, holding onto a huge carton inside which lay a new desktop monitor for his son. His outfit - a loose and a slightly shabby one. And nearby the man had been standing a guy about 30 years old - Let's call him Y. Y had been in a professional outfit. The 40 year old man, unable to hold onto the heavy carton, had requested Y to move his feet so that he could rest the carton down. He had even explained Y what lay inside the carton and why it was important for him to protect it. But Y had refused (Who knows what problem he faced at his organization that day?). The man had requested Y again. Y had slightly moved his feet. The man had thanked him and placed the carton  down, vertically, near his feet. Owing to the train's motion, the carton had fallen on Y's feet and Y, frustrated, had pushed the carton aside. The 40 year old man, angered by this, had asked Y why he had pushed the carton. Y, angered beyond control, had started shouting at the man and in a couple of minutes, the fight had become so big that all the passengers of their coach had gotten into stopping the fight. And a couple of minutes later, as the train approached a station, the passengers had forced one of the two men to get down. 

Any guesses on who that person was?!

The 40 year old man and his carton containing the desktop monitor had been penalized for a simple mistake of the man. 

He had not been in a professional attire. 

If he had been in one, I doubt that he would have been forced to get down at the next station with his carton. 

We belong to a race that believes that a book must not be judged by its cover. 

Doesn't the same apply to a person's clothing?!

Why have we transformed something that started out as a means of protection from adverse climate into something that has become a basis for judgement of character?!

In the film Batman Begins, there is a line which is one of my favorites.

It is not who you are underneath, it's what you do that defines you.

I feel bad that in today's scenario, the term 'do' can very easily be replaced with the term 'wear'.

Mars, Maths and Matt...

The following is a list of random thoughts that took birth in my head as I watched the recently released 'The Martian'. 

• How does a person feel when he realizes he is the only human being on an entire planet? I imagined how I would feel. The imagination turned scary with the planet being Mars. But I tried to imagine a similar scenario on Earth - in its present civilization filled state - with breathable air and cultivable land available.  The thought was interesting. I could sit down and paint in the middle of a highway. I could cross the borders and walk into any country. I could rest in a palace one night and in a hut the next. I would be the king and I would be the servant. But then a fear started seeping in. How long would I make it without another person? Being alone feels good but what would happen if there was not a human contact for more than a month or two? I like listening to myself but if I was the only speaker and the only listener, then I doubt that my sanity would last beyond a few months. Which actually makes it more interesting - What would an insane man do with the entire world for himself?

• You show a man walking from point A to point B on the screen. Which would be the better technique - using a steadicam or using a handheld camera? When using a steadicam, the viewer gets to watch the person walking from a stationary point and also take in the elements present in the surrounding. But when a handheld camera is employed - when you let the camera move up and down and accompany the person in his walk - the shaky scene that results makes the viewer feel the effort put into the person's walk, especially when the walk is a lonely, exhausted, space walk. The handheld camera is also effective when showing a child walk, or when showing a very old woman walk, or when showing a one-legged person walk. The scene might be a bit more harsher and disturbing than a scene shot on steadicam but then, does life behave in a soft and gentle way to every person?

• Why do these things always happen to Matt Damon? 'Saving Private Ryan' came to my mind. A group of 8 soldiers led by Captain Miller overcome personal/military obstacles in order to save the last surviving son in an American family. The last surviving son - Matt Damon. 'Interstellar' came to my mind. After having realized that there is enough fuel to visit only one planet (out of 2) that shows potential for life, Cooper and his team visit a planet they believe would provide answers to their questions. The lone inhabitant of that planet - Matt Damon. And my mind returned to 'The Martian'. The tale of a man stranded on Mars waiting to be rescued. The stranded man - Matt Damon. Why do these things always happen to Matt Damon? 

• You have very less food left. You have 4 more years to wait till help arrives. How do you keep yourself alive? You start growing food. And that is what the protagonist in 'The Martian' does (the protagonist being a botanist only makes his task easier). He also burns up the hydrazine from his rocket fuel to create water. He then creates a small farm and plants potatoes hoping that his efforts would not go in vain. And they do not. There is a beautiful scene in which the protagonist observes a very tiny shoot and the new plant gives birth to a new hope in him. As I watched the scene, I recalled a few lines from 'Interstellar' - "...Well, right now we don't need more engineers. We didn't run out of television screens and planes. We ran out of food. The world needs farmers." I wished that I could screen portions of 'The Martian' and 'Interstellar' to every single Indian farmer and make him realize that he was going to be the hero of the future.

• 'I need food. What do I do?'. 'I need water to grow food. What do I do?'. 'I need to contact NASA. What do I do?'. 'I need to lift myself off Mars? What do I do?'. - This is how the protagonist in 'The Martian' goes about solving his problems. He takes the problems one by one and follows a simple approach to solve them. He lays down the problem. He does the math. He reaches a solution. And I couldn't help smiling as I thought about this. I was being trained to do the very same thing in my organization. 'When this approach works in Mars, it should only get a lot more easier here' I assured myself. It was time to put on the astronaut suit and march to office.

• Space films seem to fascinate me. The starry, black images seem to give me goosebumps. Why, I wondered? Perhaps I had fallen in love with space. Due to its silence. Due to its unknown and unexplored elements, due to its mystery. Like people generally fall in love with God. 

Huff. Puff. Fat. Fit.

From the day I properly understood all the tasks that my body could perform, I had never paid serious attention to my fitness. 
Except for a brief phase during my 4 year stay at college - the phase was one where my primary ambition in life was to impress a girl. A phase which when thought about now, makes me laugh more than I would for an episode of The Big Bang Theory.

I have never been a huge fan of any sport. I have had favorite sports personalities but I have liked them for reasons beyond their playing abilities. 
I have always liked watching a game being played rather than being a participant in it. 
Seeing a bowler deliver a short-pitched ball to a batsman coming forward has given me joy. Seeing a football midfielder fake a sprint in one direction before passing the ball in the opposite direction to the forward and assisting in a goal has given me joy. Getting involved in the processes hasn't. 
The sweat and the loss of breath and the bruises are as unwelcome to my body as the distant relatives who visit my home on the very day I and my mom plan to visit a place we had been wanting to go for a long time.

My head is my body. To put it down in simple words. 

And I have always been happy with this approach of mine. 
Or at least I was till last week when a kindergarten kid and a rubber ball shook the very foundations of this approach.

I prefer walking to my office in the morning. 
A bus ride from my flat would cost me only 5 minutes as opposed to the 30 minutes my walk takes up. But I prefer walking. 
Walking lets me think. Walking lets me notice. Walking takes me past a residential area where I get to enjoy the sight of kindergarten kids start to their schools.
A girl with a small fountain of hair bursting from an elastic band in the middle of her head, a boy seated on top of the petrol tank of his father's two-wheeler wearing his father's helmet, a girl whom I have always noticed to be asleep on her mother's shoulder - All these visuals help me through the rest of the day at office as I sit analyzing data and exceptions. 
Or at least they did till last week when a kindergarten kid and a rubber ball shook me apart.

It was like any other normal morning in Bangalore. The sun was out and bright but not hurting. A continuous cool breeze kept moving ahead on the roads irrespective of the stationary vehicles lined up for miles. 
I accompanied the breeze as I walked, thinking about a photo series that I had come across on Parisian floor designs. The thought process made me want to look down at the road I walked up on. With every step of mine, a new portion of the gravel road came under observation. After stretch after stretch of gray rocks, suddenly came rolling a tiny red colored rubber ball in my frame of sight. 
I stopped the ball with my right leg and picked it up. 
Looking ahead, I saw its owner - a small kindergarten kid struggling to escape from his mother's grasp in order to run towards me and fetch his ball. I quickened my steps to reach him and hand over his ball. As he took the ball from my hand, the kid smiled and then a moment later, added, "Thanks uncle!".

My world stopped.
Parisian floors and gravel roads vanished in a moment.
UNCLE???!
In the 21 years I have walked this planet, I have been called a lot of names by my family members and my close friends (many of which have been curse words!).
But never once have I been addressed by that term.
UNCLE!!!
It felt like I was being told on my college graduation day that the entire 4 years I had spent learning engineering had all been a dream and I had another 4 years of engineering ahead of me.
UNCLE!!

It took me an extra 20 minutes to reach my office that day. After I reached my bay at office, I placed my bag at a corner and rushed to the restroom. I positioned myself in front of the huge mirror that had witnessed the sleepless faces of many of my colleagues. 
The coffee-brown colored wall of our restroom with me at the center - This was what the mirror showed. 
I moved closer to the mirror. I scanned my reflection from head to toe. It would have probably been because of the tummy. I then turned sideways to observe how bad the protrusion of my tummy was. It's actually not that bad! It's nearly flat. What then could have been the reason? Still standing sideways, I moved few steps further to the mirror. A significant portion of the hair on the right side of my head had turned gray. So it should have been the gray hair! Yes! It definitely should have been the hair! I turned again to see the reflection of my entire body. I scanned again from head to toe. I concentrated on my face. I slowly removed my spectacles. A slightly blurred reflection of myself became visible. Do I look younger without the specs? I waited for a few seconds before putting back the spectacles on my face. And I suddenly noticed the beard. Oh! It should have been the beard! Definitely the beard! I slowly massaged the one-week-old beard. And then slowly I turned sideways. It would have probably been because of the tummy.

I decided that I had to change my lifestyle. 
Only green vegetables and fruits - nothing else. 50 sit-ups and 50 push-ups every day. 
I left the restroom a determined man.
"Let me begin today", I thought and locked myself in one of the empty discussion rooms in my office.   
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Huff. 6. Puff. 7. 8. Huff. 9. 10. Puff. 11. 12... 
And by 10 minutes, I had completed 50 sit-ups. I was already feeling younger. I then proceeded to my office cafeteria to buy a bowl of sprouts. 
The change had begun.

And I experienced the complete impact of the change the very next morning.
With every step I kept forward from my bedroom to my restroom, I felt the pierce of a knife through my thigh.
It took me 5 minutes to climb down the stairs from my flat on the first floor. 
It took me an extra 20 minutes to reach my office than it had taken the earlier day. And with the piercing pain I proceeded to my office cafeteria. 
I avoided the shop selling fruits and vegetables and proceeded to a North-Indian eatery and ordered a plate of poori. 

No more sprouts. No more sit-ups.
No more change.
I was fine with 'uncle'.  

Organized chaos

I have been thinking about death for the past 10 days.
No. Not my death. But death as a concept.

In my earlier post, I had explained about a thought process on death that had taken birth when thinking on the importance of bus drivers. 
Strangely, I happened to come across an accident few days after the post.
The collision of a car against a lorry. 
Having no other alternate route available, I had to walk past the accident scene. Two dead victims had been laid down on the ground, covered entirely with a white cloth.  
I should have crossed the spot as quickly as possible but for some reason, I stopped and looked at the crushed car and the dead victims for a few seconds. I couldn't take my eyes off the victims. 
Something made me want to look at the victims. Something made me want to look at death.

The accident spot and the dead victims occupied my mind for the next few days. And it made me think repeatedly about death. 
The day of the accident would have started like any other normal day for the victims. They would have cracked a joke or two with their family or friends in the morning. They would have had a hearty breakfast. They would have shared an intimate moment with a loved one. Would anyone have expected that the day would be the last day for those victims? 
How great a pain would the parents and friends of the victims have suffered on being made to face the sudden loss?
Why is death of such a random nature?!

The last question troubled me the most.
Death and its random nature.

I let my thoughts flow and they chose to show me the deaths of two close relatives I had been made to come to terms with in my childhood.
It pained me a lot. 
It also reminded me the voids the deaths had caused. In my life as well in the lives of my family members.  
And I halted the thought process there. 
A new related thought had suddenly taken birth. 

****

"When I give you a problem, why do you always rush to the solution?" - This is a question my team leader used to ask me frequently in the initial 2 weeks, after I had been assigned to an account/project in my office.
"A problem needs to be understood first. Only then can you think over it and reach a solution. And when do you understand a problem clearly? Only when you have a proper visualization of it. Try to put it down on a paper. Get it out of your head. Then, you would be able to think with clarity. And the solution would present itself easily."  
I never imagined that a piece of advice I had received regarding data analytics would help me look at death from a new perspective.

****

Let us consider that a person X has died.
X's death is sure to affect the lives of his close ones. The death is sure to create an irreplaceable loss.

The picture below shows a small circular network. 

The dot in the middle represents the death of X and the arrows surrounding it represent the lives of X's family members and friends. The dots in each of the arrows represent the loss created by X's death.

This is how we have been perceiving death for a very long time. 
A death occurs and it causes a loss in the lives attached with it. 
And the overall picture - Death is of a random nature.

Now, consider the next picture. 

Here, we take into account only the lives of X's family members and friends and the loss caused due to X's death in their lives. 
Representing each of their lives one below the other shows us how each of their lives had been affected by X's death at different stages. 
But we know that X's death did not occur at different stages.
X's death occurred only once. 
Which brings us to the next picture.

This image shows a representation of the lives of X's family members and friends in such a way that the losses are aligned. 
And what insight does it offer?
The lives of 8 different people need to come together in such a way so as to suffer a loss at the exact same point.

So, is death of a random nature?! Or not?!

****

I came across a beautiful article that explained how the colors present in a butterfly were a result of the pigmentation of each individual cell. 
Let us consider the example of a butterfly with orange-colored wings containing three black dots on each of them. 
Of these three dots, to possess even a single black dot on its wing, the butterfly would be required to contain a circular group of cells - all the cells exhibiting the same color - which becomes more interesting considering the fact that the pigmentation is not predetermined. 
So, a circular group of cells would have to exhibit the same color - out of pure chance - to combine and produce a beautiful black dot / a beautiful pattern. 

Now, isn't this similar to the way death works?!
Umpteen number of lives align themselves in such a way as to suffer a loss at the exact same point.

And this similarity makes me want to label death with two words borrowed from the butterfly-article's title.

Organized chaos.

The label fits perfectly for death.
But on second thought, the label also seems perfect for life.

Leading an invisible life...

Imagine.
There are no vegetables left at your home for preparing a meal. You are required to go to the market to purchase the vegetables. But if you step into the market, there is a very high possibility of the Border Security Force arresting you citing the reason that you are not a citizen of the country. And there is no real way for you to protest. 
For, you really are not a citizen of the country, or for that matter, any country. And it has been so for the past 68 years. 
If going to the market presents such a threat, I need not elaborate further on the near impossibility of having an education or holding a job.
What would you do under such circumstances?
What would any person do?

When I read an article last week about the 14,000 odd residents of 51 Bangladeshi enclaves who had officially become Indian citizens after 68 hopeless years, I was affected greatly.
I couldn't even imagine the amount of desperation accumulated by those people leading a life filled with fear day after day after day.

How would you feel when you realized you were country-less?!
How would you feel when you realized you were identity-less?!
How would you feel when you realized you had been leading an invisible life?!

****

The KSRTC (Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation) bus I had boarded at the Shanti Nagar bus stand in Bangalore had reached CMBT (Chennai Mofussil Bus Terminus) after about 7 and half hours. The bus had stopped for the passengers to get down and I slowly walked ahead in the aisle of the bus to reach its footsteps. An old lady who was climbing down the steps was finding it really difficult even with the help of two other women. Knowing that I couldn't help her in any way and having been made to wait for a minute, my attention turned towards the bus driver. 
He was a young man, sporting a french beard, dressed neatly in an all-white uniform. And I couldn't help smiling looking at him. 
After all, I had been subjected to top-3-buttons-unbuttoned-in-the-khaki-shirt-and-collar-a-few-meters-behind-the-neck bus drivers all through out my life at Tamil Nadu.

A minute later, my feet touched Chennai ground and I turned to look at the bus driver. He was looking at me. I don't know what prompted me to do it but I quickly raised my right hand to my forehead and did a short salute. The bus driver reciprocated.
I then joined my friend who had gotten down from the bus earlier and inquired if he had noticed the bus driver, especially the french beard. My friend gave me a puzzled look. I repeated the question again. 
"Who pays attention to bus drivers?!", he asked me.
I did not have an answer and remained silent.

My friend and I then parted ways, boarding different MTC (Metropolitan Transport Corporation) buses to our homes from CMBT. Having seated myself near the window in an almost empty bus, I started pondering over the question my friend had asked.

There had been about 70 passengers in the KSRTC bus I and my friend had traveled in. The age-wise split-up of the 70 odd passengers went like this - 1 new born, 3 kids of 7-10 years, 2 people above 60 years and a majority of the rest falling within the 20-30 age bracket.
I then started imagining something which shook me apart.
The first thing I imagined was the death of the 2 elderly people - the loss of moral support and much more for 2 different families.
The next part of my imagination revolved around the death of the 3 kids - the loss of innumerable dreams and much more for 3 different families.
The imagination then shifted to the death of the new born - the loss of a new hope and much more to an entire family.
And I decided to stop my imagination.There was not a need to imagine further. 
The responsibility that our KSRTC bus driver had shouldered became crystal clear.
70 passengers. 
Hopes and dreams and moral support of those many families.

Having realized this, I closed my eyes, leaned against the window of the MTC bus and let my friend's question bellow in my head repeatedly.

"Who pays attention to bus drivers?!"

Beauty!

If only beauty could be sucked..
The beauty of the moss covered walls of an ancient building
The beauty of the cement-filled smile of a construction worker's child
The beauty of the hungry crow scanning through one eye
The beauty of the rain drop wriggling down a rested umbrella
The beauty of the worn out end of the security guard's wooden stick
The beauty of the elastic hair band and the entwined few hair strands
The beauty of the blurred bathroom mirror after a steam bath
The beauty of the circular wood shavings from a flower designed pencil
The beauty of the pot-hole pimples in an empty road
The beauty of the sentences uttered in a crowded elevator
If only beauty could be sucked..

Tamil cinema and its Data Scientists

The film Baahubali was nearing its climax and the magnificent battle was halfway when it struck me.
About five minutes earlier, having been deprived of the most powerful ranged-artillery plants by his cunning uncle, Baahubali had come up with the solution of using a giant canvas of cloth, cannonballs tied to its ends, that would cover the enemy soldiers when thrown over them which could then be set aflame (the cloth being coated with inflammable liquids) using fire-arrows.
Very soon, as Baahubali approached the enemy-warlord with a group of soldiers under his command, he was presented with another problem. The enemy soldiers had lined their fronts with bound and tied commoners belonging to Baahubali's province. Baahubali now had to attack the enemy camp without harming his people. I kept imagining that he would probably take a huge leap on his horse and land directly into the enemy camp, killing the enemy soldiers and thereby releasing the tied commoners. 
But Baahubali did something different. He commanded his soldiers to direct their sling-shots at the commoners so that they would fall to the ground after which emerged a flurry of arrows from Baahubali's soldiers destroying the enemy camp.
I was awe-struck. 
Totally awe-struck by Baahubali's problem-solving skills that it took me some time to process the other parallel thought-flow that was taking birth.

Why don't we start employing Tamil cinema heroes (or any other regional cinema heroes, for that matter) as data scientists?!

The term 'Data Science' when looked up on the internet, throws out this description from the Wikipedia page - "Data Science is the extraction of knowledge from large volumes of data that are structured and unstructured...(and blah blah blah)". 
A Data Scientist would hence be expected to be an expert in the aforementioned field (which in itself requires expertise of statistics, data mining, computer programming and strategical thinking). And most Data Scientists tend to be just that. 
But then, would an accumulation of knowledge in a range of assorted fields suffice to tackle complex business problems of top organizations?

Definitely not. 

There exists the need for looking at a problem in a novel way.
There exists the need for limitless imagination and innovation.
There exists the need for forward-thinking.

There exists the need for someone like Suyambu Lingam from Papanasam who could come up with the thought of burying a dead body beneath the flooring of a police station.
There exists the need for someone like Deva from Ayan who could hide a diamond-set under his hair.
There exists the need for someone like Assault Sethu from Jigarthanda who could identify the mole in his gang using a simple fake plan.
There exists the need for someone like Vinayak Mahadev from Mankatha who could set up an entire robbery, an ensuing cat-and-mouse game and his own death.

And my thoughts kept flowing in the same path.
I continued imagining a discussion room with Suyambu Lingam, Deva, Assault Sethu and Vinayak talking over a business problem. But then my thoughts paused.

Why employ the creations when you can employ the creators?!

The discussion room underwent an instantaneous makeover with Jeethu Joseph, KV Anand, Karthik Subbaraj and Venkat Prabhu occupying the seats instead of their creations. And slowly the room started filling up with more such creators, their ideas and solutions bouncing around like the game-screen of 'Fruit Ninja'.
Vetrimaaran and Sasikumar started analyzing the available data. Ram and Mysskin started defining the possible parameters needed for addressing the problem. 
And I would go on with the happenings of the discussion room.
But why burden the reader with the specifics?!

The thought process took a while to settle down. But by its end, it had given me something to rejoice.

Filmmakers, if none of their films worked out, have a very good prospect as a Data Scientist. 

Now all I need to find out is if the reverse could work out.