A rant …

I am writing this post because I am angry. If I am being a little vague at times, I have a good enough excuse.

People are highly judgmental. No matter what they would want you to believe otherwise, they really are judgmental. Also, people do tend to discriminate by nature. This is not something many people are aware of, and again that is the way it is.

This all started when a friend of mine wanted me to go to the movie, The Holiday with him. His plan was for a bunch of 4-5 guys to catch the movie in a hall on a weekend. I replied saying that I found it a little weird to watch what is a romantic comedy, with 3 other guys. He replied, acting all understanding that the point was taken and he thought that it was just a movie and it was not a big deal, but we did not have to go to the movie. I thought things ended there.

All these were through email conversations. So the next day when we ended up having dinner with another friend, the topic was raised again by him. I told him simply that I would feel uncomfortable going to that movie with 3 other guys. He thought otherwise. I never really told him that he should not go to the movie with other guys or anything of that sort. I just said that I was not comfortable doing it. My point was that some people in America would find it a little gayish and I was not comfortable being in that position. Things should have ended there.

Next day we end up going on a trip with a bunch of common friends and a few of his friends. So these are people I am meeting for the first time. Also, I hardly got to talk to them because I ended up with my own friends most of the time. We end up for dinner at a restaurant. There are seven of us at the table. I am assuming my friend told his friend, a girl, about my reasons for not going for that movie with him.

She was at me in a jiffy with all of her swords drawn and some more. And we hardly know each other. All she knows is what my friend told her. I will be paraphrasing mostly here, because I don’t remember the exact conversation. Her very first question was:

“Why wouldn’t you want to watch the movie, the holiday?”

I knew immediately from her tone that this was not going to be a pleasant conversation. And I was really tired after a very long day. So I gave it to her straight: it is a romantic movie and I find it weird to watch it with other guys. Her very next question was:

“So you are not confident about your masculinity? You have to avoid something like that to make yourself feel more like a man.”

For a second, I was completely at a loss of words. There is this girl, who I met a few hours ago, trying to pick a fight with me over a stupid movie for no apparant reason. Though I have this very strong urge to make people like me and see my point of view, I decided to let it pass this time. One, it was a dinner table and a social setting. I did not want to spoil the night for everybody else at the table by having a debate, especially when someone was actually looking to pick a fight. Two, I realized I really didn’t care what this girl thought about me. So I just told her that I was homophobic, which is true, and that I wouldn’t want to put myself in such a situation. She ended the conversation on a triumphant note, patronizing me saying to others that he at least accepts what he is. So there is no point in arguing about it with him. She also gave an example of how a catholic would not like to watch the da vinci code. By then, I was almost laughing, but luckily another friend, thank you AS, asked me how I defined homophobic and I was drawn out of the conversation. All this time this friend of mine was laughing his ass off. I am sure he must have enjoyed putting me on the spot.

But now, I guess I can make my arguments to myself and finally make myself feel better. I always hate it when a good debate does not meet its rightful end (that is until I have the last word).

First, these are some things about me which make me tell everybody that I am straight so that i can feel more like “the man”:

* That girl definitely looked stronger than me. If we had taken it outside, she would have probably kicked my butt.
* SA, a friend of mine once said (what became famous words later): “signedout, you seem to be well in touch with your effiminate side”, after I told her and a few other friends that I had finally over come my fear of the dark (lying through my teeth) when I once sat alone at a camp site for about half an hour watching the fire
* I still can’t watch horror movies. I am scared of them.
* And I am very edgy. I jump every time there is some noise around me. Bring a taboo buzzer next to me and you will find hours of laughter

So does all these make me any less of a man? Come on, grow up. I can’t even bring myself to argue about this. If I have to, all I can say is I am a man because I was born one.
And I see no reason in emphasizing it. Do you seem me going to the chickens and making them understand that I am a human being? They day you see me do that will be the day you see me telling you “how much” of a man I am. That will also be the day I get to wear a straight jacket.

And I didn’t get what she meant by if I would feel less masculine if people thought I was gay. So does she mean that gay people are effeminate and that they are not masculine? If that is the case, she has got it more mixed up than me.

And I hate to justify myself, but I think I have to here. When I say I am homophobic, I mean that I don’t like people thinking that I am gay. This is because I just don’t want to be seen as one. It doesn’t mean that I have something against people with that particular kind of sexual orientation. To me, it’s none of my business. It really doesn’t make a difference to me. To me the same definition of a man applies to my being straight. But why would I try to emphasize one (my being straight) when I claim that I don’t try to emphasize the other (my being “the man”)?

One, this means I would be losing the attention of millions of women (for all thos people say pffaw, cant i get some attention even if it is for arguments sake), which I would hate to lose. Two, I would be getting attention from people, who i will have to turn down in a nice way(if i hear one more pffaw…). And three, I think I can use determinism here: that is the way I am wired.

I am one of those people who likes to make a statement. I like to rub it into other people’s faces that I am vegetarian and why I am one hoping that I will be able to change at least one person and hence would have saved a few animals along the way. Similarly I wear Ganguly on my sleeve and gladly defend him any day. All this to me, projects an image of who I am and am highly protective of it. I don’t care what people think about me, as long as they got the right me.

And I couldn’t understand why she would come for the neck of someone she has just met. It really makes no sense to me. But then, it takes all kinds of people to make this world. Who am I to play judge?

free will

I realized the irony of it all, when I read this interview of Galen Strawson, when Tamler Sommers asks him:

“If it’s a fact that there’s no free will, why do philosophers have such a hard time accepting it?”

when he interviewed Strawson.

The obvious answer from someone who does not belive in free will, like Sommers and Strawson, should have been – it is because that is how they are meant to be.

free will

The theory of causal determinism is very scary, but at the same time very compelling. I am really inclined towards the argument that everything we do is pre-determined and we don’t have a choice in life. I have always believed that there was no free will possible, but did not want to believe it is because everything is predetermined.

These were the assumptions I began with, before I started reading up on this:

We make our decisions based on certain constraints. If the constraints change, how likely are we to change our decision? If my decision remains the same, irrespective of how the constraints change, I would consider myself to have exercised my free will.

For example: I want to buy a car and would love to buy, say a Ferrari. But I don’t have enough resources and I end up buying a Honda Civic. Here I have not exercised my free will. But if I had wanted only a Honda Civic in the first place, and if I don’t change my mind even if I have enough money, then I will have exercised my free will.

The argument against this is that the fact that I only want a Honda Civic, no matter what, is actually pre-determined.

Going back to my assumptions, I thought that since there was no way that I could know about all possible constraints, and how they affect my decision, there is no way I could exercise my free will. I thought there might always be one constraint, which I was not aware of at that time, which means I did not know all my options and hence could not exercise my free will.

For example: There could have been a sale in central south America for a Ferrari that I could have afforded but had no way of knowing it. In other words, I picked my best option, but not what I really wanted.

The reason given by the theory to explain this is that I was aware of only those constraints which I was supposed to (which was again predetermined) and hence I cannot have a choice that I was talking about in the first place.

While initially there was a general belief that this predetermination was done by God or the omnipotent. In his Philosophical Essay on Probabilities (1814), the French astronomer and mathematician, Pierre Simon Laplace wrote:

“An intellect which at any given moment knew all the forces that animate Nature and the mutual positions of the beings that comprise it, if this intellect were vast enough to submit its data to analysis, could condense into a single formula the movement of the greatest bodies of the universe and that of the lightest atom: for such an intellect nothing could be uncertain; and the future just like the past would be present before our eyes.”

It is now believed by most people that this is due to the “laws of nature” and not because of God.

Most of what I have written is from this write up by Norman Swartz. I somehow find his argument in support of free will a little weak.

As I get to read more on this, I hope I will be able to understand this a little more.

free will

Can you ever do anything without a reason?

Sreesanth – the new Ganguly?

Mind your Language

I was first introduced to “bad words” when I was in my 5th standard. It started off, like many others, on what can be called the lower end of the spectrum of choice words. The KP’s, KK’s and KP’s became a part of my vocabulary. Using these inanities was considered cool. You would be called a prude if you did not or in a few cases, will not (ab)use them. The more words you can use in a sentence the cooler you were.

“Antha KK oru KP da.”

Antha KP Sla rod ethanam da.”

Our vocabulary was limited to just a bunch of words. Two K’s, a couple of P’s, a pair of S’s, a M and the more creative you got with their combinations, the cooler you were. We used to come up with really random combinations, which make no sense at all today. Of course, I had no idea what they meant then. I just used them because it was cool. I was not yet introduced to any of the O’s yet (the tamil equivalent of the four letter word). That came in later.

It was a full year of these and by the year end I was considered an expert. I had come up with a bunch of combinations the most famous of which was the SK. The year got over and it was summer vacations. I ended up at my native place like every year and all my cousins made it there as well. I am one of those people who were right in the median range when it came to age groups. I was never old enough to be with the older guys, but they had to put up with me because no way was I going to be with younger ones. So I was the demarcation line when it came to the older kids. Everybody younger than me was left out in all the fun stuff we did.

So, I had always looked up to the older guys. They were the cool ones and I had always tried to emulate them. I came in this time with an air of some one who has grown up. I considered myself an equal now, because I thought I knew all these cool “bad words”. The first few days were frustrating, because I realized none of them used any of these words. This led to a belief that this was because they were all prudes. I thought it was a good chance for me to upstage them and show them how cool I was. I decided to slip it in during a normal conversation.

We were playing cards. There were around a dozen or so of us, an equal mix of guys and girls. Since there were too many of us I was playing with another cousin. This guy was closest in age to me and we were pretty close. He played a really stupid hand and I ended up saying:

“KP mathiri velayadra.”

What followed was a deathly silence. The entire room had come to a stand still.

“Enna sonna?”

I realized everybody was looking, no make that staring, at me, with their jaws hanging a little lower than their hips. I was supposed to be this really geeky, really boring, really soft-spoken kid. I gave them a condescending look (like the one thalaivar would give before uttering his punch dialogues) and said:

“KP mathiri velayadra.”

The second I said that he punched me. I was dumb-founded. It was not because he had punched me, but it was because I did not expect him to do that. I expected awe; I expected them to bow down to me. But instead I got a punch, in my stomach. I got up a little unsteadily. People around me moved away. Things around me was happening in slow-mo. I turned to him and mouthed another set of expletives. He hit me again and we got into a fight. And it was a fight right out of the movies. He would throw me something like a karate chop and I would stop it with my hand. He would then try to kick me and I would block it with my hands again. (If you have seen any of the thalaivar movies, you know what I am talking about.) We moved from the living room through the portico to the gate. I remember every punch, every hit precisely the way it happened. I remember two of my cousin sister’s talking:

1: “Some one stop H(the cousin who was beating me up)! Pavam signedout.
2: “Leave them alone. He deserves it. you hear what all he was saying before?”

If I gave you the impression earlier that it was an equal fight, it was just to make it more filmi. I was and still am a weakling. I got beaten up pretty bad that day. I only fought back with my repertoire of “bad words”. Every hit I took, I replied with one or two of my choicest. At the end of it I was ostracized. Nobody would talk to me. Nobody would play with me. I had the younger cousins, but word had spread to them as well. They looked at me with fear and ran away from me. A few days’ later things simmered down and I was slowly inducted back into the group.

The day school reopened, I was introduced to the O word. One of my best friends came up to me and asked if I wanted to hear a joke. I said of course. It went something like this …

A: knock! knock!
Me: yaar adhu?
A: yaaru mukiyam illa, en vandhuruken than mukiyam.
Me: en vandhirukae?
A: Unna O!

He said that and burst out laughing. I had no idea what he was talking about, but I laughed as well. It took me another couple of years to figure out what all these words meant and I evolved into a master swearer. Then came the english words and the coolness quotient shifted to them. And then when we started learning French, like every good student of any language we learnt the words that mattered the most first.

And once I entered college my tamil “bad words” usage trickled down to almost non-existent.

But even now, those words carry some kind of an exotic charm for me. When I hear some of my friends casually throw in a couple of juicy tam words, it still sounds very very cool.

Me

Notes before you read any further…..

This is a very long, very introspective and a very boring rant. It’s mostly meant for me.
This is as negative (positive) as it gets for me.
My honesty some times astonishes me.

Interviewer: How do you define success?
Me: (After giving it a thought) I would define success as setting myself some goals and attaining them. I will not measure myself with someone else to see how successful I am.

I swear I came up with that answer on the spot. It was not a rehearsed answer for a job interview. At then end of it, I was pretty happy with that answer of mine. I thought it was a really cool philosophy. And yes, I did get that job. This was about three years ago.

* * * *

R: I think I am the second most successful person from my class.

Me: How do you say that?

R: There is one guy from my class who is studying law in the UK and I am sure he will end up making a lot more money than me.

Me: So you are defining success on how much money one makes?

R: How would you define success then?

I went to give some gyaan about how I would define success as something that makes me happy and as long as I was happy I would consider myself successful. Then I gave him a condescending look as if I was philosophical and he was materialistic and I was in a higher plane than him. This was about a year ago.

I am paraphrasing here.

* * * *

I am very retrospective. I over analyze things I do and things I have done in the past. I cannot say or do something which would sound uncool. Everything has to have the right amount of coolness. And this retrospective nature of mine or as many other would call, a middle class conscience points out every mistake I make. It would point out every statement I make and many times tell me that I really did not believe in what I just said.

This is where my first quote on success comes in. I kinda knew what he was expecting from me. I gave him what can be termed a very general answer, but showed me as someone who was a bigger person. I really am not. I do not care whether my friends from school are earning more than me, but I definitely care about some one in my team getting applauded for better work. Though I don’t worry about what the other person’s appraisal is going to be about, I do worry whether I am doing better than the people working around me. I can be a hypocrite at times and I have learnt to live with it. But what I have come to realize about myself is that I am good at feeding people crap.

I almost always know what the right thing to say is. And more often than not, I say it. It does not matter if I really mean it or not. It doesn’t make a difference if I believe in it or not. In all trivial cases I don’t even bother to check if I mean it. This has ended up in projecting me as someone I really am not. The funny thing is I know it. And I don’t think I am ever going to stop doing it. Though the little guy keeps complaining, I just am too weak.

This I have realized is because I have this urge to please everybody. I can so recognize a Raymond or a Monica. I just wish I was half as funny! I need to be loved. By everyone. Even by people I hate. Well, that is not true. Some times my ego comes in the way and bursts my nice guy bubble. But the bottom line is that I create an image which is not really me. And people fall for it. Its all cool with people you hardly know or interact with. They think you are a cool guy and everything is good. But cracks develop with people you end up spending more time with. In my case the result has always been one of two extremes. The good one or rather the better one, where I end up changing into the person I was projecting. The hard one is where things just don’t go to well.

There are two constants here. One, my never ending urge to please others and the other, my nagging conscience.

Which brings in my second conversation. Add to this my judgmental attitude and that completes the picture.

Time, experience, grey hair, wisdom … whatever you call it dawns on you once in a while. I have always considered myself a liberal and am being pushed further to the right here. I am beginning to get the bigger picture and the smallness of the self, but its assumption of bigger things. My conversation also relates to the fact that I want to pip my friend and I wanted to do it in my books and not in his. I was just happy with the fact that I considered myself greater than him because I believed I was not as materialistic as him. But then the little guy, who I am coming to realize is just plain logic based on my own parameters, tells me I was just being a sanctimonious bastard.

The one fact (and am really happy about) that is becoming more and more clear is that I can trust that little bastard in me. He has evolved into some one who is fairly confident about his beliefs. It is only I who has to learn to trust him more often.

I know life can be a lot simpler than it is.

Blood

It was the third week of December. He would walk by this street everyday. He had made friends with some of the kids there. All of them were African-American. Most of them did not have a family. They did not go to school. In a few years they would be running drugs or mugging people. But they were good kids. He had wanted to surprise them. He carried a huge bag on his shoulders today. The kids saw him and waved. He beckoned them towards him. After the customary hi-five’s, he settled down on the basket ball court with them. The looked at the bag curiously. When he picked the first of the brightly packed boxes out, their eyes lit up. He passed it to one of them.

When he turned to pick the next one, he felt a boot come crushing down on his face. As he reeled to the ground, he saw a couple of older kids grab the bag and run. He got up and wiped the blood running down his face with his shirt sleeves and ran behind them. As he turned around the corner he heard a loud pop. Before he knew he was on the streets running next to a bus, only to hear a pop again and something whiz past his ears. He heard the bus screeching to a halt beside him. It was then that he realized that some one was shooting at him. He immediately dropped to the ground and rolled under the bus. He had very little idea of what was going on around him. All he had wanted to do was bring a little holiday cheer around him.

****

When they saw this little brown guy with a bag on his shoulder, they had trailed him. When they had seen him open it, they just decided to grab the bag and run. What they did not expect to find was two cop cars parked right at the street corner they turned into. They just froze. The only thing they could hope for was that nobody had noticed them running down from the alley. When they saw a cop get out of the car with his hands on his waist and turn towards them, they just panicked. They went for the pieces that they had gotten a couple of days back. As their eyes met with that of the cop, they already had their guns in their hands and they had no choice. So they did what they thought was the most sensible thing at that time. They shot at the cop.

****

The first bullet hit his partner on his arm and the second went through his waist. He radioed for back up immediately and asked for paramedics. He could not risk checking on his partner just yet. He pulled his gun out and threw the door open on his side open. The bullets had come from behind them. He realized there were two of them, at least. As he lent out to fire, he noticed that they were just kids. The delay gave them enough time to run across the street. As he crept out of the car, he noticed a small brown man run out of the alley. As he just went past his car, he heard shots again. It had gotten too far out of hand. His friends, who were inside the restaurant, came out with their guns drawn. He had lost sight of the assailants.

****

The bus above him started to move, pulling away from those kids. He would be exposed in a minute. The reality was sinking in slowly. Why did he have to run after them? What was he thinking? He was no hero, never had been. But he did not want to die. The bus stopped again. He looked up to see that he was right at the start of the bus, but still well hidden. The kids had disappeared behind another alley. He slowly crawled from under the bus. The bus had started to move again, forward this time and he found himself right in its path. As he shielded himself with his hand, he heard the bus come to a screeching halt. He decided to take the bus and get the hell out of there. He ran around and banged on the door. The driver let him in. As he got inside, he realized people were staring at him. Who wouldn’t stare at a guy who just got himself almost run over by a bus? As he found an empty seat, he noticed a woman cover her kid’s eyes in a protective gesture. He found it strange. As he swatted the dust off his shirt, he noticed a red stain both on his palm and his shirt. He had no idea where the blood had come from. He stared blankly ahead, trying to think. It was then that he caught his reflection on the pane. His forehead had opened up and his entire face was covered in blood. He felt the pain slowly seeping through his head.

Cricinfo or How I learned to start praising and hate Sourav Ganguly

One of the most biased write ups I have seen in a while. It is common knowledge that cricinfo doesn’t like Ganguly, so it was not a huge surprise. But I must admit that they have very good writers. Every word slides in a little pin into Ganguly’s career and lets the blood trickle slowly. It’s not a sword nor is it a pen, but then just a million pin pricks. Here is cricinfo’s version of Ganguly’s reign.