Experience, Memory, Happiness

Recently stumbled upon TED Talk by Dan Kanheman which in a way provided some answers to my musings about memories and in particular my own memories about certain incidents in life. It provides a layman's view of the psychological self and how human happiness is tied to it. 

Kahneman makes a very interesting distinction, that between the experiencing self and the remembering self. There is a self that experiences things at the moment they happen and there is a self that remembers things as they happened after the instant it happened. Simple enough. But the catch is that the remembering self is a cunning b@*%^ and totally fudges all the data collected by the experiencing self. Now this in itself is not a great revelation as cognitive scientists have almost nailed down the effects of learning, reinforcement and reinvention by the brain. But what it exhilirating is the connection Kahneman draws between these two selves and the theory of happiness.

However, with some general observations, I firmly believe a third self, which for the sake of discussion, lets call 'perceived self' exists and has an overbearing influence on the remembering self. its effect on the experiencing self are debatable. The perceived self has been extensively studied (social comparison theory, modified theory of reflected appraisals). But, I find it rather strange - due to lack of any reasoning given for this exclusion - that Kahneman hasn't included the perceived self along with the other two selves in his pursuit of happiness, pun unintended. In layman terms, its the ubiquitos peer pressure at a micro level or general consensus at the macro level. Kahneman's example of the California resident's notion of satisfaction can be largely attributed to this self. It would be interesting to perform a study that evaluates all the three selves akin to the anecdotal colonoscopy study but preferably with much lesser probing, pun intended. That the remembering self has a distinct advantage over the experiencing self in its ability to improvise on a story provides reason enough to suspect the greater role of the perceived self in this improvisation.

Another profound point Kahneman makes is that 'When we think of the future, we dont think it in terms of experiences, but in terms of anticipated memories'. I for one have experienced it and all my thoughts of the future are just flashes of incidents that I anticipate will happen. I strongly doubt whether the brain even has a mechanism to anticipate experiences. When such large quantities of the self depends upon the remembering self, the perceived self takes every opportunity to reshape the remembering self or at the very least to train it to accept only chunks of the experiencing self it deems appropriate. Expectation Maximization at work! Daniel subtly hints at this when he says that the anticipated memories in a way drag the experiencing self to experience things that it had no interest in to begin with. Whether psychologists acknowledge the role of the perceived self on the remembering self and yet group it together as the remembering self or the effect of the perceived self on the study of happiness is uncorrelated to the other two selves is a tad unclear.

On a lighter note, remember Roy Sutherland's TED talk on intangible value the advertisers tend to create? He proposes to make a train journey better not by reducing the travel time but by hiring supermodels to hand out free Chateau Petrus for the duration of the journey and save a couple of billions off the engineering solution to it. If Kahneman has taught us anything, all it takes is supermodels to hand out free Chateau Petrus for the last thirty minutes and knock off another couple of billions off the operational cost. Colonoscopy could be improved too! 

Obsession

At what point does a mere longing become an obsession? Is it when the ego is hurt? And how deep must it hurt to go beyond the realm where you artificially sour the grapes to the realm where you long for them being sour? Every single morning I see it on my way. The moment I catch a glimpse of it, a saddening feel overcomes breaking through the music blaring in my ears. It lingers on. Memories from the not so distant past fill my head and hold a mirror to how miserable failure is. Never have I waited for the summer so much, never so much for the snow to melt.

My dearest Longs Peak, this summer, I will, I will, I surely will ....

A Tale of Three Individuals ....

The three were burning midnight oil. They were desperately looking for solutions for close to six hours now. None were in sight. Each had a grave problem at hand that the outside world had no inkling of.

Siddu's doctors had advised him to lose weight a couple of years ago. He was so busy in his money making projects and squabbles, he paid no attention to it. But now things were turning sour in his marital life too. His wife refused to go out with him until he shed those extra kilos. His grandsons sometimes teasingly said he closely resembled 'Singh' uncle and 'Mallikh' uncle. Siddu sometimes woke up at night from nightmarish visions of this.

Deshu wanted to impress someone. He jogged every morning, tried coloring his hair, having that retro 70s look and a bunch of other antics. However his heavy panting and collapsing due to cramps had not strengthened his case. He always thought of undertaking an adventure and making a solid impression. Alas, his boss was always in Delhi and the burden of managing the zonal office rested with him. If only he could mix work and his personal agenda ...

Shivu had no particular problem of his own. He was a happy man who often tinkered around with the law just for the kicks. He loved hanging out with Siddu and Deshu. Or at least he liked the free beer and late night movies at Siddu's. Rumor was it that he would do anything for a couple of beers and a briefcase that was not necessarily empty.

As he gulped down his fifth beer, Shivu had a brainwave!! The other two unanimously agreed that it was the panacea to all their problems. Shivu too agreed to join them in exchange for a couple of non empty briefcases or empty cheques.

One week later, all three set out on a padayatra from Bangalore to Bellary. A thousand sheep sheepishly followed!

A Case For And Against Evolution.

Twenty years, 365 days a piece, twenty four hours, every second of it. Information, more information, flying across, back and forth, to every terminal, from every terminal. Digits clicking away left, right and centre, eyes scanning across, hands dancing around, a billion lives, hooked on. Searching, like never before, twittering, louder than the loudest twitters. One last chat before crashing, one last ping before sleep. And you wake up and all that remains is this memory.

Vast deserts of naked warriors, savages killing each other, deranged men and women behaving wildly. Dark walls, zombies all around, searching for that special something, your toenails ripped apart. A catastrophe?? No wait, this is a dream. Confirmed, get back to sleep and wake up. You are in the same lounge you last slept, the computer meekly staring at you. Was there a smirk?? Did you miss it? Was your dream better? Yes, in a probabilistic sense.

Evolution, they say takes its toll on many things. What goes unnoticed is the havoc of evolution on a smaller scale, in a smaller time scale. Making egoists out of intellects, drawing out the beasts out of morons. Evolution towards what? Evolution towards self centerism? No, they say its evolution towards better internet usage, or so we are made to believe. But unbeknownst to us, deep down brews a hint of egoistic tendencies. Scares you when you are pulled in the vortex. Scares you when there isn't an escape pre planned. Scares you when it is all not a dream. Yes, you definitely want to get out it. Or do you?

Evolution teaches you to block people on gtalk. Feign not receiving messages and attribute it to connection problems. Evolution coaxes you to hide people on facebook. It often makes you a hero, That DC motor you connected to that old battery, those repeated trips to the electronic hardware store (just because you didnt know what to get the first time), those animated discussions all made you a 'geek' already. Now live up to it, show a moving toy to your friends in the basic sciences, post pictures of it on facebook,  makes you a certified lifetime geek. 

Deny evolution? Wonderful. No way it can explain the moronic youtube comments, comments that are totally unwarranted and uncorrelated to the video at hand. Comments on the anatomy of the scientist's daughter in an otherwise perfectly historical and scientific documentary of a great legend. Trivialities eulogized, mediocrity worshiped. Old hackneyed jokes, the same that appeared in your email for the 23rd time in the last 6 years, the same crushed hand of the baby girl that you will help get operated, the same kid of the parents victim to international terrorism, the same awesome unbelievable photos, the same clandestine 'private' messages that 'you have not answered to' in the past, the same millionaires of the world who went on to Forbes list by forwarding emails from AOL and Microsoft, bothered enough? Only if there was a internet suicide pill, pop one in, and you can never use the net again. They dont make it, do they? Homicide charges are pretty strict they say. No one escapes the law. But the rule doesn't apply to fishes, farms, friends of the day and of course Mystic Meg is definitely above the law! State vs Mystic Meg? Naah, who made these laws anyway?

There is a Nigerian out there waiting to scam you every ten seconds. The eleven digit figure you won in a draw, the dead rich businessman's naive daughter, that little pill that just has you jumping like a horse, all too well documented by Socrates. Plato even had a revised edition. But no, we are not interested, who listens to the Greeks anyway? They speak Greek. The donation of email passwords to those websites never ceases, just when you thought you blocked the last of those sites, comes another one. Javascripts don't have any mercy either. They do awesome stuff alright, make tomatoes fly, wiggle up your screen as if you had weed, gives you cool themes and can even get you to remember that lady you met last night. But didn't anyone tell you it can also take over your profile? Advertise a one night rendezvous with your sibling? If the English were to go on their conquest again, all they'd have to do is ask us to try out a new Javascript, and we'd be all too happy to do that, wont we? Damn you. No, damn you. Yeah! D-A-M-N you. 

[ Author's note: On a completely unrelated note, voice overs are great!. Totally in awe of this aspect of film making. Have your character talk out, talk to you, subjectively, related or random talk. Then you watch the movie from a first person's point of view, blurring the lines between diegesis and non diegesis. You, are the character, makes you think like one. Scorsese, Coens, Soderbergs and to some extent Wes Anderson and Fincher, experts at it. The art of film making is getting more enticing by the day.]

To SIR, with love ...

[Disclaimer: No SIRs were harmed during the making of this blog]

Definition: South Indian Relative (SIR) is a species native to the southern parts of India. Some westward migratory tendencies have been observed but are mostly confined to the young ones. The usual age of a SIR is in the range of 40 years to 60 years with a high variability. The male of the species are characterized by receding hairlines while the females are characterized by extraneous noble metals on their self. Relatively large swarms of SIRs can often be found in group activities common among the species namely weddings, house warming ceremonies and naming ceremonies providing SIR researchers a wonderful opportunity for their study.

SIRs as usual can either be good or bad - The Noble SIR (N-SIR) and the Pesky SIR (P-SIR). The noble variety usually approach your parents with a broad grin on their faces. Quite predictably, they are the rarer species and so has little or no contact with your parents since when you were 60 cm tall. The opening phrase would be 'Elli, Magu barlilwa?' After scratching their generously grey heads, and racking their brains for an excuse (other than 'He hates people, he wont come'), the poor parents would be at loss of words to explain how the magu has grown up and no longer looks forward to buying balloons off the street vendor.

Another equally awkward situation would be when a group of elderly ladies approach you and ask "Neenu 'ivara' maga alwa?" In such situations, the clever victim usually says 'No' and scoots. However in my case, it has never been so. I unwittingly say yes and then wonder with a strange expression on my face as to who was that 'ivaru' she was referring to. Quite obviously I dont want to be someone else's son and so, I ask her upfront. At this point, there are umpteen possibilities -

• She really doesn't know you. Makes some apologies and grants you freedom.
• She really doesn't know you. But in defense of her, you look exactly like this guy and so she thought you were his son.
• She really doesn't know you, but said so just so that you could be asked to get a glass of water or even better, some kaapi from the kitchen two floors down. (Happens a lot in Hassan and surrounding areas, to the best of my experiences)
• She knows you! She tells a lot about how she met your parents in the morning and how good they are. ('Thumba oLLeyavaru') - Thanks for the affirmation!! 
• She knows you! She knows your father! She knows your father's chaddi friends too! You are treated to a long narrative of your father's childhood with the pride glistening in her eyes that she knows your father since the time he was 'shorter' than you.
• She knows you! You don't know who she is! The long process of making her familiar to you with a dozen other names (which obviously you dont know) thrown in and family tree pulled up - the most torturous of them all!

Let's move on. Then there is this 'uncle' who is not so closely related to be called a family member nor is so remotely connected to be a 'far relative'. He smiles, you smile. You notice his kid who's literally pulling his pants down for he wants that third bar of choclate or some fancy toy. The uncle is trying to divert his mind and lo and behold, you walk past! 'Ivanu yaaru gotteno? You know who this is? Ivanu Karthik Anna' You thank heavens that you aren't an uncle yourself yet and smile sheepishly. Thats when you catch the clearly annoyed kid sticking out his tongue at you.

So what about the pesky SIRs? Well, they are pesky. They take an active interest in all that others do, more than those involved themselves. They are probably more interested in your CET rank than you. (the year of CET = Annus horribilis). They actually count the number of Mysore Paks you had at the lunch. They keep a tab of your life more than your mom probably ever did! They dont believe you, why should they? And so they ask you the same question a dozen times, hoping that one of those times, you will give a different answer. Better still, they'll ask the same question to all people connected to you and try to dig out the 'secrets' ala Mr. Holmes.

God forbid, if a SIR's own progeny is within an acceptable age range as yours, you are doomed D-O-O-M-E-D! Now, my friend, your academic competitors are not the nerds in your class, its a subset of all those who attended the wedding reception last Monday night! And so, every prize from a lemon and spoon competition to a frog race and every achievement from being the class 'leeeeeeeader' to ranking first in the entire 3rd standard A section is celebrated upon. It is these kind of people who literally change the world! University of Timbucktoo becomes better than MIT, coding becomes high precision engineering; every frog race is a rat race, Phew!. One special penchant the pesky SIRs of Bangalore have (which I cant come to terms with for another century) is for a certain college in Bangalore run by Di.Ke.Shi. Anyway, Di.Ke.Shi and that special engineering college discussion for another rainy day.

In between the two extremes are the bunch of other SIRs. SIRs who take credit for anything from the greenness of the plantain leaf to the sweets of the coconuts used. SIRs who knew when you were born, that you are gonna be an 'excellent' engineer! SIRs who lecture you on why Digital Signal Processing is bad and why you must study Mechatronics instead (His wife's brother's father-in-law's sister's grandson is studying that - so it must be good) among a host of uncategorizables. Despite all this, time and again all the SIRs congregate, carry through their personal agendas, and yet mingle around and make the event a success. After all, that's life, full of diversities, full of masala. Cheers to the South Indian Relative!

Banashankari, onduvare ticket!

[My first blog post in ages, its an attempt to try my hand at nostalgic writing. This post is a tribute to all those blogs and stories of nostalgia, which when read truly transports you back in time, most notable among them Bengalooru Banter. Heres another comical take on it.]

For the uninitiated, Route No 14 is one of the very few links between the North and South of our famed Bengalooru. I wont go into all the explanation about how people in the North think South is a residential paradise or how the South thinks North is uncultured among other things. Usually operating between Malleswaram in the North to some random location in the South (which the author doesn't know since he never sat through till the end or had no enthu to google too), it made an extended trip from ITI Layout in the North to again the same random location in the south twice in the morning and once in the evening everyday. This they say was to facilitate the employees of AG's office long ago. Its another matter, that no one knows what exactly is AG's office now or what actually happens within the confines of the office [For general information, it is Accountant General's office situated somewhere on Kasturba Road, the same place where the Museum is situated (and no, its not the museum road)], and as with all great things, conspiracy theories abound like the local milkman bribed the BMTC officials to run this service so his kids could attend some random school in Basavangudi, or the area MLA used this to return from Vidhana Soudha when the MLAAD scheme was under scrutiny - although all charges have been unconditionally refuted and no chargesheet filed.

14 is one of the few buses (let me be frank, the only bus) I know in Bangalore that follows a queue system, yes a QUEUE. The bus leaves at 0840 hrs in the morning and one can see a long serpentine queue beginning to form at 0810 itself. As with most other things, I dont see the logic behind standing in a queue for a good 30 mins so that you dont have to stand in the bus for an equal or lesser time. But nonetheless, I have more often than not, stood in the line. And no, this bus is a true showman. He doesn't believe in exposing his body to all the smoke and paan standing there like a fool and expecting people to arrive. He arrives royally at 0830 or 0835, the conductor still cleaning his mouth of the morning breakfast and sipping water. The conductor for many years was a medium built man with a striking resemblance to Kannada actor Ambarish, was replaced for a few years and then he was back all over again.

The earliest ones are AG's office employees who are near their retirement or for that matter anybody whose retirement life is beckoning but they still got to finish up a few years before collecting their pension. They wake up early, eat early and are at the line early, with a newspaper, which is most cases is the orangish brown Economic times or the Hindu, TOI is blasphemous. Passing by the queue, mostly you would see shining bald heads with a briefcase or a bag in one hand, except if you were a regular, in which case, the shining heads would tilt back and grace you by a elegant curve on the lips. The general rule is no one breaks the line, and if you did, thou shalt be charred to death by the disgusted and angry look on their faces (even if looks could not kill). Then, there would be the old ladies who made a dignified walk to the end of the line occasionally stopping to chat with other ladies in the queue (as expected!!) Amidst all this, there would be a drooping Anglo Indian who seemed to be in a world of his own complete with an old European style cap, flannel clothing and total silence.

Amidst all this sepia tone drama, there would be an occasional 'young blood' in the queue. A young girl in her mid twenties who for some 'strange' reason always sat with another young guy of comparable age, an occasional engineer who lost his way, or some PU student from Shady's who had bunked the morning session and wanted to experience some college torture after the breakfast break (which incidentally is where yours truly fits in - and our college started at 7:30 in the morning and we had a breakfast break at 9 - good old days)

Back to sepia, bus is in place, conductor having finished cleaning his mouth, would start his ritual, and that being his first 'trippu' in the morning, the oft heard growl was 'Change illa kanri, change tharakke agalwa?' This was mostly with the people at the end of the line, the early birds were of course regulars and mostly had the exact change down to the last paisa or had passes! Occasionally, someone in the crowd waiting for other buses about 100 ft away would notice a totally empty bus as against the usual filled to triple capacity buses at that hour and would leap into the bus totally ignoring all protocols only to be abused and sent to the end of the line.

All the groundwork done and the last of the passengers boarded, the bus would leave at 0840 hours or at most 0843 hours - amazing time keeping by any Indian standards - initially slow and then picking up pace - as if it was some princely locomotive. The sepia tone generation would still be in their 'economic' times with an occasional political commentary, the color generation trying to strike up conversations and failing most of the time, a few others looking at their watches and repeatedly cursing the organised boarding for their delay, people alighting, new people boarding, and halfway through the trip, the original passengers would've all alighted to make way for a new set of them, a new crowd behavior, a new set of discussions, a new set of purposes. Of course, Route No 14 didn't mind any of these, it was more than happy looking at the stone buildings of IISc, the hustle bustle of Malleswaram, the stagnant traffic of link road, the terrible stink on link road, the distinctive smell at Shivananda, the powerful Vidhana Soudha, the bustling RC College, the overcrowded City Market, Chamrajpet, Ramakrishna Mission, Shanthi Talkies and disappear into the folds of the South.  It was afterall a daily routine, sometimes in sepia, sometimes in color.

Namma Kaayva Kurubarooo , KURUBARU!!! KURUBARU!!! .....

ThaLavoorida kuruba katukanaadare, avana machchigava enu hoLapu, enu jaadoo, enu moha, kaNNu kukki sokkiruva, katthanadake thikkiruva, hogi hogi nekkiruva, naavu neevu avaru ivaru ......... KurigaLu saar .... KurigaLu

[For the non kannada readers - its futile to translate it]

Kuruba - Shepherd

KurigaLu - Sheep

Father Gowda, one day after his son infamously tried sneaking into 10, Janpath in his Merc (of course with a chauffeur) reiterates that the third front is intact. In what has become a repeated political drama in the family, son goes to another outfit, father disowns him, lots of high voltage action, a heart attack, dizziness thrown in, a trip to the hospital Jayadeva (Jayadeva, not Sagar Appollo mind it), mangalya bala of female members of the family invoked, photo op hugs, a few dives to the feet of the patriach and all is well all over again. Whom are they trying to fool? We, the citizens? No we are never fooled, we are educated, we never vote at all you see. 

Somehow the first thought that came to mind seeing this is the wonderful poem KurigaLu saar naavu KurigaLu by Prof. Nissar Ahmed. Written years ago, the song is true to its word, everywhere, everytime, more so in this age of alliances where every Kuruba is invaluable to the Head Kuruba.

Listen to the song (Requires Real Player): KurigaLu (Nisar Ahmed - Mysore Anantswamy)

Credits: www.churumuri.wordpress.com