Invictus *

One of favorite poems goes:-

Out of the night that covers me,
BLack as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul

In the fell clutch of circumstance,
I have not winced or cried aloud;
under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horrors of the shade.
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.

WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY(1849-1903)

* Picked from The Prison Diary (Jeffrey Archer)

Repeat the Q, please

I didn’t know it was such a circulated piece of writing, till my sister enlightened me on its internet offline messages journey. It appeared in the Hindustan Times and though technical errors may be arguable, its good humour nonetheless:
‘The UN conducted a worldwide survey. The only question asked was: “Would you please give your honest opinion about solutions to the food shortage in the rest of the world?” The survey was a huge failure. In Africa, they didn’t know what food meant. In India, they didn’t know what honest meant. In Europe, they didn’t know what shortage meant. In China, they didn’t know what opinion meant. In west Asia, they didn’t know what solution meant. In South America, they didn’t know what please meant. And in the US, they didn’t know what the rest of the world meant.'

udayan's smile says it all :)

stock market quiz:
1) how does a blind stock market speculator know how the market is faring?
Ans. He listens to CNBC
2) How does an illiterate stock market speculator know how the market is faring?
Ans. He listens to CNBC Awaz
3) How does a deaf stock market speculator know how the market is faring?
Ans. He reads the scrolls on CNBC
4) How does a deaf and illiterate stock market speculator know how the market is faring?
Ans. He studies Udayan Mukherjee's smile. (Ref- One doesn't need to be a facereader to interpret the direction and degree of the curve of his mouth.. it moves in direct proportion to the sensex!)
5) How does a deaf and blind stock market speculator know how the market is faring?
Ans. Sorry dude, even CNBC cant help you. tough luck!

how abt a research on the cyclicity of mood swings?

Outlook (reference the Indian political weekly) and its mood swings are getting increasingly violent by the issue. If you were to pick up the latest issue ( dated Jan 28 2008) of the I-forget-how-many-years-old magazine and it happens to be the first issue of the magazine that you read, chances are that you will never pick another issue. Of course, the assumption in this case is that you are the kind of reader who likes reading stuff worth reading. In this issue, however, all the way from the cover, to the cover story and beyond, the magazine has failed to live up to its intellectual potential or seems more likely to be a part of a series intended as an experiment into commercial success ‘ the masala way’.

The cover throws upon you the catch of the experiment ‘he has the look, the attitude, the money. But when it comes to sex and marriage, the small town guy is still a macho man.’ I failed to comprehend to contrast between the two phenomenons. Its only when out of curiosity you pick up the story to make sense of the cover abstract that you realize that ‘the look, the attitude and the money’ has been equated to metrosexuality. And the conclusion of the entire survey is simply that the Indian small town man still wants a virgin wife! I bitched about statistical research in my previous post and this survey by a leading, usually sane and occasionally unusually insane magazine is a classical example of the misuse and futility of statistical research (conducted 999 out of 1000 times inappropriately). Read the survey methodology- 840 odd men sample the entire small town population. You’d be a fool to believe these figures are not inflated atleast by 100 percent. Read the survey and you’ll further find that you can sufficiently conclude that the survey was conducted in just two towns- ludhiana and hoshiarpur (barely 60 kms apart) - one of whom will not even qualify as a small town by many standards. And then the findings of the survey! Insanity, time-pass and printspace-pass do not quite make a very fruitful combination and their synergy can induce temporary mental disorders in many a readers- read frustration and irritation. Coupled with all this mental trauma comes visual torture, the editors having converted the magazine virtually into a porn mag this issue. Outlook’s experiments at masala success which have been developing with increasing frequency over the last 2 years may be affecting readership in more ways than the people running the magazine think.

I for one, however, would still tolerate its mood swings. Though it comes out with the worst in popular English Indian print media once in a while, the best in this space has also been outlook’s domain. Two issues back it ran a full fledged story on the bibi assassination and the future of Pakistan as it can be hypothesized thence. It is by far the most authoritative and cohesive document on this issue in Indian print media space that I have come across. In this issue too, inspite of all its prostitution, it contains a few delights. Sample the quote of the season- “I welcome the merchant of death… to corruption, official apathy, terrorism, darkness and despair” – Thuglak editor Cho Ramaswamy welcoming Gujarat CM Narendra Modi to Tamil Nadu. It’s a pity Mr. Modi cannot approach the election commission for this!

merlin didnt like statistics!

Academic research is just not my cup of tea! I have a strong dislike for statistics and any results they predict. So, having to do a heavy weight (6 credits paper compared with 3 credits for the other 5) compulsory research project in the final semester of your undergraduate studies doesn’t make life seem any easy. This comes with the additional realization of the fact of ours (St. Francis batch of 2005-08) being the first ever batch subjected to the semester system (would that qualify us as pioneers or guinea pigs?) and its resultant consequent of we (B com professionals) having been given only one semester (90 working days or 4 months of college including abundant holidays) to complete the project as compared to our seniors who had more than twice that time (annual examination system). Thank them now, be elated, be proud or blame them for setting such standards in this research exercise over the last years that the evaluators now expect nothing short of a PhD paper from undergraduate students who now have less than half the time with more than twice the pressure (academic and life- read admission into an MBA oops diploma awarding B-school, or fulltime CA articleship or CS inter or final examinations). Add to that fools like me who don’t believe in the credibility of statistical analysis of most kinds… at least the ones that I can undertake at this stage of my education in finance and statistics and thus plan to do a research project over a period of 10 days by simply anthologizing various papers done earlier and pick up a super-sophisticated topic like ‘diversification of banks into non traditional banking sectors’ worded simply to people-with-dislike-for-long-titles as ‘universal banking’. You have 40 days to do your project and it takes you 30 days to realize that things are worse than it seems, in other words, that you have created just the right environment for the world to eat you up alive.

You break your I-stayed-awake-till-dash-hours-after-midnight records every night, live with the constant fear of developing spondalysis with the ever increasing growth rate in the number of hours you spend in front of the comp each day and each night, you google, you altavista (I don’t know if the verbs have yet found their place in the dictionary) almost like never before, read up every article and paper there exists on the topic, curse JSTOR for commercializing academic information on the internet (read charging users for access to academic papers after providing an abstract which enables the reader to frame a far-from-vague-idea), write close to 40 pages of notes (yes handwritten!), compose the introduction and review of literature (9 pages- keyboard typed- without copy and paste) and then one day the bomb drops on you! You learn that the osmania university evaluators who had far too much confidence in the ability of undergraduates with one semester of statistics as a paper, now have the backing of the management of the college who insist and send a guideline requisition to the evaluators asking them to make the project methodology and analysis a prime criterion in the evaluation.!

The 40 pages of written material now find their place in the bin, ditto with the 9 pages of the word document now occupying unnecessary place on my hard disk (even in the recycle bin) and the topic is finally discarded for I did not plan to do any significant analysis on the project and was hoping only to create a well structured and cohesive theory base for the work that has already been done. An analysis, which I had not thought of, and which was now required, of any nature in this topic would have to be based primarily on secondary data, the only accessible documents being the annual reports of banks, which most claim suffer from non-reliability and inadequacy, thus nullifying the entire project. Added to this is the incapacity of the researcher (read me) with regards to the awareness and competency in use of analytical tools and techniques that a research of this nature and complexity requires. A difficult task now seems super-difficult, almost to the point of being impossible and it seems only wise to discard the foolishness and move on… to a new topic.

That’s 10 days now to come up with a new topic, do the research and drop the bomb of having changed the topic at this sensitive time on my research guide. This doesn’t make me fancy academic research any more than I did earlier. Only maybe less.

Find me the man who invented birth anniversaries!

Ten reasons why I place birthdays on the top of my list of ‘the most disconcerting days of the year’.
1. You realize you are one year older than what you were same day last year.
2. And 4 kgs heavier!
3. You pick the morning’s paper and a cruel reality confronts you in the face- that you share your birthday with a certain president of the country about whom you had bitched generously in a post not too long ago ( destiny can be extraordinarily peevish sometimes).
4. The rule of the day is to be happy. You cannot cry or sulk or whimper. Mood swings are a strict NO-NO this day.
5. You get tired of eating cakes and getting them smeared on your face. Yet the routine seeks a repeat telecast every 4 hours.
6. You are aware of people around you conspiring for the last one week planning surprises of various kinds and you study every action of every person with suspecting eyes wanting to beat them at their game but fail in spite of all your efforts.
7. It’s a pain in the **** unwrapping presents specially when your friend insists that the wrapping paper be intact and that you show some ‘respect’ to her efforts and sentiments by unwrapping it meticulously! Chick, who gets the respect here? You or the wrapping paper? - think about it!
8. You place all the phones in the house by your side at 11: 50 with anxious anticipation wondering who will wish you first on your birthday this time and suddenly it begins to ring. Congratulations! You just had your first greeting. Unfortunately it happened to come on the wrong day. If only her watch was not ten minutes fast!
9. Distant relatives call you on your birthday and wish your sister!
10. With every passing year the teaser, ‘chhori bees/ikkis/baees (whatever) saal ki ho gayi bhai! Ladka-vadka dekhna shuru karo!’ gets louder and more resonant. Your confusion whether you should blush or laugh increases in proportion to the frequency of the teaser.

I’m not complaining really, everyone likes attention... it’s just difficult to reign for a day when you are not used to being the queen!

The Bigger B

It was long due. I doubt how many people were actually sent into a state of shock at the assassination of the president of the PPP ( pakistan’s people’s party) Benazir Bhutto. Most would have seen it coming… The state of turmoil in Pakistan has just worsened after yesterday and a tragedy it is for Pakistan for Musharraf is emerging as the scapegoat in the entire drama.

Without intending any insult to the memory of the lady who lies buried at Larkhana sahib from today, my conviction stands stronger today than yesterday that Musharraf is the best thing that ever happened to Pakistan and democracy will be the worst thing that can happen thereto, very contrary to the lady’s beliefs. Musharraf is as die hard a nationalist as they come and the only non corrupt leader to have lead the country since its notorious inception in 1947. The only blemish on that man’s record from a pakistani’s point of view is the manner in which he usurped power. Ignoring that one fact, he has been as able an administrator as that country can afford and has protected it like a father. He might not have been best friends with his counterparts in India and probably even extended gestures thereto only in perfunctory terms, but his very presence at the head office of our most precariously poised neighbour was a boon in disguise for India, came though it did with its price.

And all the propaganda lately surrounding the prospective elections, whenever they may now take place, is leading to an ill advised advocacy of the failed western ideals of democracy in a place where they are extraordinarily misfit.

Pakistan shares its borders with Afghanistan and the scale at which arms are treated in that goner of a country coupled with ‘people’s rule’ in the former would mean a terrorist attack every second day in Pakistan and every 3rd day in India. And things are not going to stabilize for a long time now. Meanwhile Pakistan will remain caught in the quagmire and the question resonating since yesterday “ what's next for pakistan?” is something neither a nobody nor a somebody can predict with any certainty.
In the not too far future, however, this is what I predict:
1) Musharraf will be assassinated in the next 2 years for he has become too much of a liability on America and on his own people.
2) Imran khan will emerge as the new leader of the country probably heading the country 5-6 years down the line.
3) India will, albeit too late, realise its responsibility towards its neighbour and extend its support as Big Bro and a mitigation of the tensions between the siblings will ensue.
4) The real rationale behind Al Qaeda’s claim of bibi’s assassination will emerge to replace the ‘only a fool would believe it’ reason given by the organization-‘because she was a very close friend of America’!.
5) The people of Pakistan will get some sense into their heads and then maybe they could deserve a democractic government.

Yesterday, really, was just a humbling start to a long struggle. May Allah give them the strength. Amen.