Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Myriad Mumbai


Call it Mumbai, call it Bombay, or Bombaim (for the Portuguese), whatever you call it, the name does not matter.

Mumbai which was basically named after the Hindu goddess ‘Mumba devi’ and ‘Aai’ meaning mother in Marathi was earlier famous as Bombay- meaning ‘good bay’, a name which a lot of people outside India still know it by. A group of seven islands was merged into one to have what today is Mumbai. Appropriated by the Portuguese, ceded to Charles II of England, and in turn leased to the East India Company, Mumbai has imbibed from a lot of influences and as it stands today it’s an amalgamation- a cocktail, a concoction. You can clearly find the mark of the Portuguese and English mainly on some of the monuments and structures still present.
I have been here for 16 months and it has been an enriching experience to say the least. It is the ‘Mumbai’ I had always heard of in television, read in the papers and heard in conversations. Even now, suddenly once in a while I seem to remind myself that I am in THE Mumbai because once you are at any place for a certain amount of time, you do get used to it and start taking it for granted. This is the place where you are very likely to spot a celebrity- an actor or a cricketer; or anybody famous for that matter because they all seem to reside here. This is the place where by the time you realize it’s raining and you take out your brolly (umbrella) or your raincoat, you would have been already drenched by the downpour and by the time you put it on, it would have already stopped raining.

Called as the’ Maximum City’ or ‘The city that never sleeps’, one of the world's top ten centers of commerce, home to important financial institutions as the Reserve Bank of India, the Stock Exchanges and the corporate headquarters of many Indian companies and numerous multinational corporations, the city that houses India's Hindi film and television industry, known as Bollywood, featuring in the Top ten in the world in Financial hubs, expensive streets, office rents, world’s largest billionaire cities and even in filthiest cities. Mumbai is a city of dreams, despair, drama and dazzle; heartbreaking poverty amongst staggering grandness. It is the bubblegum glamour of Bollywood cinema, shopping malls full of designer labels, cricket on the Oval Maidan, promenading families eating bhelpuri on the beach at Chowpatty, red double-decker buses queuing in grinding traffic. This pungent drama is played out against a Victorian townscape more reminiscent of a prosperous 19th-century English industrial city than anything you'd expect to find on the edge of the Arabian Sea. It's a city with vibrant street life, India's best nightlife, and a wealth of bazaars. Millions travel everyday by trains and buses. Nearly eighteen million people live here - wealthy industrialists, flashy film stars, internationally acclaimed artists, workers, teachers and clerks - all existing cheek by jowl in soaring skyscrapers and sprawling slums. They come from diverse ethnic backgrounds and speak over a dozen tongues adding colour, flavour and texture to the Great Mumbai Melting Pot.

This is the place where the buses are called BEST buses. Well it is not a word but an acronym but a good one to go with it. I have lived in another state- Gujarat all the time before this and I did notice some differences. Firstly I found that the bus conductor or the fare collector does not get a seat of his own! This I found to be very strange because in the most crowded city of India, at least he is entitled to a seat. This makes his job so much tougher. Someone needs to give this suggestion to the concerned authorities. This way they might be able to save some money as the job would not be as distressing as it is now, so they might easily find candidates at a lower pay for the post of Bus conductor. It would also help him remain cool in the midst of the sweltering heat and more crucially the humidity. Another thing I noticed in the buses is that there is no facility for the people to keep their luggage unlike what I saw in Gujarat. I don’t know the reason behind this but if it is provided, it would provide a lot of relief and comfort to many. As I have seen people clumsily hanging on the bus bars with their bags taking up too much of the precious space and if someone has to get down, God save everyone! And I often laugh within on reading the sign in the bus- "19 standees only". I swear I have seen double the number at most times.
A strange experience that I had in one of the BEST buses was that I was sitting in the last seat and there was no one around me; either beside me or in the seat in front of me; by chance. A man and a woman presumably husband and wife were sitting in the second seat ahead of me. Now the woman was looking back a few times and I realized that there was a plastic bag hanging in the window above the seat ahead of me. She asked if it belonged to me. I shook my head in negation and said no. And mind you this was just after the days of the blasts in two big cities of India- Bangalore and Ahmedabad. And we decided to bring it to the notice of the conductor. Now suddenly the whole bus realized that something was wrong and all the eyeballs were pointed in this direction. People even asked a woman who was getting down from the bus just in case it belonged to her and she forgot to take it with her. But it wasn’t and I was sitting there wondering what to do. It was also green coloured as those that were used in the blasts. I was sure though it wasn’t a bomb. Twice I thought about moving away from it and my place but eventually I didn’t. The conductor came, took it down and peered down the bag to find a shirt or a piece of cloth. Phew! It was harmless after all and the conductor threw it out of the bus!

Another experience that I had was on the railway station. It was really crowded, to state the obvious, especially with the time of festivals being around. I was moving around tugging three big bags and I found a small place where I could park myself. There was this man who just started talking to me. We did not know each other. He started on that he was sick, that he had been travelling a lot recently and he was in a lot of distress. For some time I was just there wondering about the possibility that the man was either mad or drunk or a thief who wanted to draw my attention elsewhere while someone would steal my things. So I wasn’t paying too much attention to what he was saying as I was preoccupied with these thoughts. He looked normal enough. He started telling me the whole story and he had seen and met me just seconds ago! He went on that he had three daughters (which is considered somewhat of a liability and this has led to the want of a male child and which I think is a major factor which has contributed to over population) and that they were good at studies and though they got over 80 percentage, they were still unable to secure a seat in the college. Now I was also tormented by an eyelash that had found its way in my eye so it was watering and I was there with a handkerchief over it, unable to get it out or find water to splash it in and this man then kept apologizing to me for bothering me and ‘making me sad’ as he thought and I was there like –‘It’s ok, no problem.’ Now I am the kind of person who would listen to people and I also somewhere wanted him to share his grievances so he could feel better and lighter so I did not stop him from talking either. He went on about the reservation systems in education and how everything is for the rich and the poor have just no hope or means to do anything. And in the end he departed with the wise words that - always take care of your parents. The position of parents is even above that of God. And he left and I was sitting there a bit sorry for him that such a normal looking from the outside could be under such tremendous stress from within and I also do wonder why he selected me? There were many people around him, in fact too many all over the station and he immediately started talking to me on seeing me. Maybe it is just the way I am that he was able to see it or just my presence there brought it out of him. I don’t know but I was amazed that even such things could happen!
That’s Mumbai for you!!!

* A few of the references have been taken from a few web sites

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Monday, September 15, 2008

Cracking the CAT

Well I don’t really know when can this phrase be applied- Cracking the CAT? When a person gets a call from IIMs or for doing well in general? And if the later, than how well?

Actually I received an email from a relative who congratulated me for “Cracking the CAT”! I did manage to get around 96 percentile in CAT this year, by learning from my previous performance which was quite pathetic.
Actually I feel that it all depends on the kind of paper, its pattern etc. Like for me, English has always been my favourite right from kindergarten I would think! And I always depended on it for that lead ahead of others even in school. Similarly in CAT, all those mock tests that I gave previous year, English would always be my forte. My usual pattern would be that the number of questions I would attempt in Maths and DI combined would be equal to the number I attempted in English and I would be confident of most of my attempts in English. If this happened, I would know I have done quite well. Last year that was the problem, English was tough and so my main run machine was rendered ineffective. And this year it again fell in place. I attempted 45 overall out of 75 (compared to last year’s 23!) with 20 attempts in English itself . And I was confident of most of my answers in English and as expected, I got good marks in it at 99.66 percentile with 45 marks out of the total 90 I got!

I do feel though that a lot of unnecessary hype is created around something that is quite popular or famous. People try and find things when they don’t exist. Like for famous people too, people are always guessing the motive behind their every statement and act which I feel is mostly creating something out of nothing. For CAT too, people are always trying to figure out what would be the surprise this year. With all kinds of analysis of the past papers, trying to find out a pattern of some sort, and even the statement that – “CAT not springing any surprise might be the biggest surprise” has become a cliché too. Now even if there is no surprise in the CAT paper, that too becomes a surprise! What a surprising thing! It means whatever it does, that will be a surprise. I would like to know the thinking of the people who set the CAT paper. All these things must be falling on their ears too. I even think they might be laughing inside seeing and hearing so much being made out of it when all they want is to set a paper and I don’t really think they set the paper always with- ‘giving a surprise’ in mind. Keeping their requirement in mind, they would be proceeding.

CAT is surely a really big phenomenon, termed as one of the toughest competitive exams all over the world. Throughout the year all coaching classes, which I don’t think are necessary for everyone, coming up with some innovative idea for an ad, and giving the figures of the number of students of their coaching class that have got IIM calls and not to mention as CAT gets closer, the kind of attention it gets from everywhere. Even in the television, news channels continuously talking about it, bringing in experts and students asking questions (don’t know what they will get out of it asking at the last moments!?) and ironically the experts telling- "Don’t do anything different at this stage now and go with what you have done! "

Seriously I would recommend everyone not to listen to or read to anything related to CAT, much as Cricketers are advised not to read the articles about Cricket during the Match so it goes for all fields as well. It only puts unnecessary pressure, with some articles saying it is a battle or a war and you have to be on the offensive right from the start, others telling you to relax and give it coolly as just a mock-test.
Tell you what; no one knows it better than you yourself as to what is best for you. Just listen to yourself.

Well, going by my way, I don’t know if I can recommend it, after the CAT last year, I did not prepare for CAT again for the whole year, neither read or saw anything in news or news papers related to CAT and looking at me it would be difficult for anyone to say up to the day of CAT whether I am going to give it or not!

I am pleased with my performance but it also made me realize how great is the difference between 96 and 99 or 100 percentile. Maybe it is not so great either but it definitely requires a little extra of everything to get just that much ahead. And this goes on every year, lakhs of aspirants come and many go disappointed, a few get success but this phenomenon is going to continue for a long time for sure.

So I don’t know if I cracked the CAT (Don’t know why they say so!?) or ‘belled the CAT’ but I think having had a crack at it, if not completely then at least I managed a small crack!

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Saturday, August 9, 2008

My Body- Health Enigma!


WANTED- Experts.

Today I am going to write about one topic that almost every human being on this earth has faced at least at some point of time in their life- your body and health.

It is such a complex thing to understand at sometimes and seems relatively simple at others. I guess around 90% of people face the problem of being over- weight or obese! Well, why do you eat so much then? So, as you might have guessed, I am in the other 10 %. The simple indication for this statistics that I have written are simply from the fact that you will always see advertisements for weight loss everywhere. I am yet to come across an advertisement that even shows- “GAIN WEIGHT”- 10 Kgs a month with people testimony etc, leave alone an exclusive ad like this.

Coming on to my situation, let me tell you that I am 24 years old, almost 5’ 10” (178 cms) with a weight of 50 kgs (110 pounds) for the past 10 years I think! Since the past 10 years, I don’t think anything has changed. My height is still the same, my weight is still the same and even I look the same! No matter what I do, not even a kilo changes on either side with the exception that I feel a couple of times it has gone down or come up 2-3 kilos. You just have to visit my Orkut profile and you will find my school friends writing that I still look the same!!! Perhaps I look 18. No harm, but I would prefer to look my age though and it has everything to do with weight. Only if I weighed 70, I would definitely look 24 or even more.

According to the BMI (Body Mass Index), I am very clearly underweight at 16 BMI for which 18.5 is the starting range for normal weight. According to my age and height, my ideal weight needs to be between 65 and 70. That means I need to gain atleast 15 to 20 kgs of weight! Which in itself means 40% of my weight!!! Just see the arduousness of the task in terms of percentage. In terms of numbers it isn’t too difficult, people lose 15- 20 kgs quite regularly, atleast according to the ads but putting on 40 % of your current weight?!! That looks impossible right now.

A little of my back ground as well, I actually have a long, lean frame and I am deceptively strong. At the age of 12 I joined Taek won do and I was surprisingly good at it having won a trophy and standing first in the very first exam for Yellow belt. It is another thing that after that year itself, it closed down. But now if I look back, I surprise myself. How did I manage to do everything so easily? I remember others always complaining when they made us do hundreds of push-ups, running many kilometers, doing the fights, getting punches in the stomach or breaking things and other things and I tell you, I performed every single action sincerely and with dedication. At no point I felt that I wouldn’t be able to do it, my body managed it perfectly.
That did help me with strength and flexibility. I became as flexible as I can be. Splits which many found impossible, I performed with consummate ease and could hold that position for as long as I wanted.

Around that time, I came across Arnold Schwarzenegger of course through movies etc, and I was fascinated and wanted to have a muscular body like that. And I used to do all kinds of things- push ups, pull ups, weight lifting- of course never by joining a gym but doing it at home with whatever I could find.
And I did get good muscles for the people of my age group but still I was lean.

Nothing’s changed and I still have good strong muscles but not big or bulky at all. At rest, my arm may look absolutely thin with no strength but when I flex my muscles, it might seem like a very strong, muscular person. Just see my pictures to understand.

As a child I wanted to be like a body builder- Arnold Schwarzenegger type and used to exercise, lift weights. But obviously I never became big and bulky and not even in the normal weight range and am still an underweight by some margin. Now I don’t want short- term or unhealthy measures to gain weight etc. Right now I am facing the problem of deciding what really do I want. Do I just want to put on weight? But I have a love for exercise and having muscles and there can be 2 things. Either you can have big bulky muscles or long lean muscles. Both are for different purposes. After thinking and analysis, I have come to the conclusion that obviously I can almost never belong to the first category and it’s no use either being big and bulky. It’s basically unhealthy. Nothing should be done in extremes. It is very easy to go from one extreme to the other. The most difficult thing is to stay in the middle. The “middle path” of Buddha and walking on the razor’s edge.

I had figured it out a long time ago that Flexibility = strength. The more flexible you are, the more strength you actually have. From being extremely flexible, I have come down a lot and flexibility only decreases with age. I have tried many times unsuccessfully to get back to the shape I was in by all terms during my Taek Won Do time.

And one thing that has had me thinking and is responsible for me writing this blog post is that recently I came to know of a website called hundredpushups.com. It is a 6 week program at the end of which you will be able to do hundred push-ups consecutively. I loved the idea and am going to do it, in fact have already started but it also made me wonder, what would be its result. It should definitely make me stronger but would I put on weight or lose it? Would I put on muscle mass or have leaner muscle which, with the same weight would make me look thinner? It is a complex thing with many myths attached to fat and muscle and various theories.

So in the end I am quite confused. I only know that in the end what I really want is to be in a normal weight range- around 65 to 70, with good strength and flexibility and a nice muscular look. Now what diet should I have, the percentage of protein, carbohydrates etc, the kind of exercises I need to do- has to be ascertained. I do have some idea about a variety of topics of health that to put on weight or bulky muscles mass, heavy weight lifting with a high protein diet is the way to go. But what I have to decide that what I really want in the end as mentioned above, is it possible to have it all at the same time? Or would I first only need to put on weight first, then take on strength and flexibility training!

Some other information is that my diet might be less with people always saying that I eat too less, but I eat all kinds of foods that is vegetarian, occasionally eat eggs too for the proteins, but will definitely not have meat, fish etc for personal reasons and is almost out of question. I eat all kinds of vegetables and have a balanced diet. I have reduced milk consumption and only have it with tea. And currently I also walk a lot but otherwise have pretty much sedentary lifestyle, not like most people have but still not a very active lifestyle either. If I play a sport etc someday, some muscles ache that day or the day after.
But I also have an excellent heart rate or pulse I guess at 60/min which I know that only meditators or athletes have less than it.
So this is my situation .
ANY HEALTH EXPERTS OUT THERE?!! HELP ME!

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Friday, August 8, 2008

Gambling- a game of chance?

Around a month back, I and a few of my friends had gone to Mahabaleshwar. And most of my friends know that I blog, and a few of them have started too. So there were talks about what I would write in my blog about our trip, with my friends saying that do write about this thing or that thing or don’t forget to mention our names etc. I knew that I wouldn’t write about our trip per se but there was one thing that stuck with me and thus in this way at least there would be some mention of the trip.

There is one thing we did in that trip that I was quite fascinated by later on. And as you can guess from the name of this post, it was a game. I don’t really know if it falls exclusively under the ‘gambling’ category but here is what it was all about.

Starting with the trip, it was quite a good experience overall and the places Mahabaleshwar and Panchgani – in Maharashtra, India are worth seeing. We did face some problems in the initial part of the journey itself but such things are almost a given. No trip is an absolutely smooth trip. The mountains and the valleys etc were the most wonderful part of there for me. See the picture below:

There is a special feeling being in the mountains- the peace and solitude that you can feel there is unmatched. It is a spiritual experience. It makes you aware that you are just a tiny speck in front of the mountains and thus in the entire universe, almost nonexistent. The amount of importance we attach to ourselves, our thoughts and beliefs seem exaggerated then. The boating, echo point, Pandava’s foot prints and locations where many movies have been shot etc were some notable features of our trip. Also there were a few foreigners paragliding and I had even taken a video which you can see on You Tube at- PARAGLIDING VIDEO

Alright then, about the game. Firstly I wasn’t too interested in the game because it was around midnight after a long day’s journey and I was more interested in catching some sleep and getting a much needed rest especially in the warm blanket in a cold place. But my friends were really keen. The game consists of a board large enough, consisting of many slots that are numbered. See the picture below:

Now the rules of the game are simple. You have to throw 2 white colored balls and they will fall in any of the numbered slots. But before that you have to mention what you are betting on. For example, firstly you have three options-

1) 6 and below
2) 7
3) 8 and above

Since the slots are numbered from 1 to 6 and you will be throwing the 2 balls, whatever slot they end up in, that will be counted. So firstly you put your money in any amount, like my friend first put in 10 Rs to bet on 8 and above. He threw the first ball and it landed on the slot numbered 3. Now he needed at least a 5 or a 6 with the other one to reach 8 or above to double his money. But he got only a 4 and thus lost his money.

My close friend and roommate Rajesh Sethi who has an unmatched enthusiasm was very keen and always targeted 8 and above option. But we all being new to this, did not know the exact rules or procedures of this game. Actually when you initially give the money, he gives a kind of a token representative of the amount and you have to keep it on the option you are betting for i.e. 6 & below, or 7 or 8 & above. He did get it right but didn’t put the token so didn’t get the money. He tried again and this time did the right procedure and got 20 Rs for the 10 he put in and then backed out. He even insisted that I too try my hand at it. I initially refused but since he said that he will sponsor the 10 Rs for me, I agreed. I put the 10 Rs on the option 6 and below meaning the 2 balls that I throw need to land in slots that add up to 6 or less. He seemed dissatisfied with this decision and tried to dissuade me from it and coerce me to bet on 8 & above. However I persisted and it proved to be a lucky decision. I got a 1 with the first ball and 3 with the other. I got 20, returned his 10 and thus got 10 for free. I withdrew from the game and didn’t play after that.

I found this such an interesting game. I had never done anything like this before. This was not just about luck, this was about probability as well; a very interesting concept. How do you decide what are you going to bet on and how much? And why would the owner of the game have such games in his place if he doesn’t earn profit. One thing is sure that in the end after all play the game, overall more people lose than earn and for the owner, he earns more than he loses that is why he is doing this business in the first place. The thing is that it is not divided into 2 equal parts so that the probability will be 50 :50 but it is in 3 parts.

- 6 & below,
- 7,
- 8 & above.
Thus the probability is distributed.
Now some connotations:

1) The minimum you can get is 1 + 1 = 2
2) The maximum you can get is 6 + 6 = 12
3) That means total 2 to 12 = 11 possibilities.
4) Thus the 3 options are 2 to 6, 7 , 8 to 12
5) So the possibility of any of the 3 options is less than 50 and thus in the long run you lose more than you earn.
6) If you put on 7 and get 7, you earn triple and if you don’t, you lose it.
7) For 6 & below, you need both balls to fall preferably in the slots 1, 2 and 3 to be safe. Get a 6 in any ball and it’s game over. Similarly bet on 8 & above and if you get 1 number in any ball, it’s again game over.

I would say that Probability is based on a long term and thus you might lose if you are playing just on that basis. I would advise you to play up to that point where you win. If you are getting more than what you have put in, it is best to exit. Though it happened with me in the first try itself, I still left the game there.

At least this experience gave me an idea why such gaming parlors, casinos around the world are so popular and what a potentially dangerous thing this is. You literally get sucked into it. The temptation of playing on and the hope of winning and the greed to earn even more than what you have got spell disaster to me. The wise thing to do is just take this as fun and enjoy it as a game and not get too worked up over it or be too greedy. Just play, enjoy, if you win a little, take it and leave or bet just little so that even if you lose, it wouldn’t bother you much.
What would be your strategy? Which slot would you bet on and why? How long will you play? What would you do?
Do drop in with your comments, opinions and strategy that you would follow and what you think of this concept.

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