Karaoke Therapy

I had terrible nasal congestion and knew it was going to be a difficult night. But it was also our last night in Singapore, and I had been really looking forward to going out for karaoke. Despite not being in the best of health, I convinced my wife that we should go anyway.

We took a pleasant 20-minute walk from our hotel to the nearest karaoke bar. The next 50 minutes were spent singing and dancing to our favorite songs, after which we walked back to the hotel, nicely rounding off our Singapore trip.

To my surprise, by the time we returned, my nasal congestion was completely gone. No medicine I know of could have worked that fast. Singing and dancing made us happy—and when we are happy, our bodies respond. Hormones are released, biochemical changes occur, and somehow everything starts working better than any pill.

I’m sharing this experience in case anyone suffering from nasal congestion wants to try what I now call karaoke therapy. Of course, pharmaceutical companies would never recommend it—they’d lose business. And no doctor would suggest it either. Imagine going to a clinic with nasal congestion and being told, “Go sing and dance at a karaoke bar.” You’d probably think the doctor was a quack.

When medicine doesn’t work, we go back to the doctor for a new treatment. But imagine karaoke didn’t work for you. Would you go back to the doctor? And would the doctor ask, “Did you sing joyfully? Did you dance? Were you happy?” These, after all, would be the prerequisites for getting better. If you didn’t do them properly, you’d be told to go back and try again. Of course, no doctor would ever say this.

A karaoke bar wouldn’t fund a clinical study either. There’s a classic free-rider problem: why would one bar spend a million dollars on research when every karaoke bar would benefit for free?

So this blog post may be the only way to spread this newly discovered knowledge.

India vs England 2025

Just a few days ago, I was glowing with joy. After five grueling days, eight hours a day of rollercoaster cricket, India had somehow managed to draw the Test match against England. Yes, draw. And I was thrilled. Because on Day 4, it looked like England was going to hand us a good beating. 

This entire month, my morning routine has been to wake up, not before dreaming a few times about checking scores and finding an Indian batting order collapse, and then half awake, telling myself that dreams don't matter, and sleeping some more to wash away that dreadful dream, only to get another one. To break this cycle, and to finally face the realities of the responsibility of earning bread by working on a much less thrilling job than a cricket field, I would wake up, and then actually check the score. Get ready, and in the bathroom, refresh ESPNCricinfo every half a second, and then head to work, and keep thinking about the score while half-listening to a student update me on their week's research progress.  

Today I woke up to find that India had beaten England. By 6 runs! The day before, I was fantasizing about Siraj’s hat-trick. It didn’t happen. But we won, and as every cricket fan says after a near-cardiac experience: “It’s the result that matters, not my blood pressure.”

Now, two days ago. Saturday morning, I was up early again. I just wanted to watch India’s second innings. My family, noticing I was awake wondered if I was worried about something that I am not revealing to them. Nope. No therapy needed. Just cricket. Just Test cricket, the world’s most agonizingly slow, beautifully painful form of emotional self-harm.

I told them later: it’s just the game. And they nodded, clearly not understanding a thing.

Genie in the bottle

 I have a Genie who is everywhere in my room. But when I call upon the Genie, it collapses to a single location, and stays at that location before diffusing back to fill the entire room. Just one call, and it collapses to a point, no matter how large the room is. Is it possible? How can a person educated in science say such non-sensical things? But replace Genie with "electron" and this idea forms the basic tenet of quantum mechanics. This is called collapse of the wavefunction. It has been estabished as the truth through numerous experiments. It defies our common experience of the macroscopic world. 

I have two Genies now - one on Mars and one on Venus. They have equal probability of being red or blue. But, if I look at the Genie on Mars and it turns out as red, the Genie on Venus will also turn out red - without doubt. How is it possible?  Of course, I am talking about entanglement. It's a pretty mind-boggling concept. Now, entanglement has become the basis of quantum computers. The world around us is more strange than our perception of it. What else is out there? I believe a lot - because these ideas have been recently discovered, and these are sprouts of a few genius minds. There may be concepts that our little minds can never fanthom. 

Hogwarts in India

 The Hogwarts Express comes to a halt and wizard students get off to start their new school year. They enter the Grand Hall and the dining room, and large quantities of delicious food of different varieties appear on the table magically. In the later years, the students learn that it is the house elves who are toiling hard to prepare the food in an underground, hidden kitchen. Magic! Something that we will never witness in real life. Wrong! It is part of our daily lives in India. Whenever I am visiting New Delhi, I find that things and services are magically made available by just a tap on an app or a phone call - whether you want to have a Bangalore biryani, a Lucknow kachori, a pan as soon as you have finished your meal, or would like someone to pick up a package and deliver it in a day to another city. India is a world of wizards and house elves. The house elves run door-to-door delivering services at breakneck speeds. The wizards are tapping the right apps like charms from their wand.  

Childhood memories wrapped in a research paper

 Last week, my student emailed me a research paper that was relevant to her work. Upon opening the paper, I found that it was written by two professors of IIT Bombay in the late 1980s. It is an elegant paper, so much so that we are finding it useful for the research being done in 2023, and I wondered about the amazing work that these professors did with little resources. But, the research paper also brought back the happy childhood memories - I sitting on the floor of my home in Delhi on a summer day, and wind blowing through the open gallery doors into our drawing room. Some dust on the floor. The coolness of the floor making it a comfortable place to sit. I wondered how important it is for a childhood to be happy. When you encounter something that takes you back to your old memories, and you feel happy, content, and then remember a funny event that happened during those days and you start laughing. 

Kunal Kamra and the Chocolate Factory

On the onset, I would first acknowledge that Kunal Kamra is a winner. No doubt about it. Otherwise, why would I be writing a blog on him. He calls himself a comedian. But he lacks the quintessential quality of being a comedian - humor. How do I know? I recently watched his invective-laden attempt at a stand-up comedy. Did not find him funny at all. Of course, I watched him because of the stunt he pulled off so successfully a few months back. Few months back, nobody knew KK. One day, KK was supposed to be flying to Lucknow. It was just like any other normal day. Little did he know that his flight ticket was bigger than what Charlie had won for the chocolate factory. It was bigger to him than the Peter-Parker-bit-by-spider-turned-into-spiderman event. Edit: "few months" is now a few years. This blog was originally written some years back. 

Writing

 I am planning to write something everyday. That's a difficult job when there is so much stuff to take care of. But, writing is important. It is difficult to write something that is catches a reader's attention. My first year in the US, we had some friends over at our house and one of them forgot their first three books of Harry Potter at my home. The next day me and my roommate were going to the library to study.  I was waiting near the door for my friend when he was collecting his stuff. As I had nothing better to do (there were no smartphones at that time), I picked up the 1st Harry Potter book. I had barely read a paragraph and I was hooked. There was no stopping then. I ended up reading the first six books and eagerly waited for the last one to be released. That's the power of writing. I have always felt that one important thing that kids should learn early is how to read. If one has the ability to read and comprehend, then they have to power to get back in their studies if they are behind. But, I now feel that along with a good ability to read, one should develop the ability to write coherent essays early in their childhood and should continue to write. That's a great skill. A typical research proposal is 15 pages long, but it is so difficult to write. A reason is that to write the research ideas that you are still cultivating, you need to understand what has already been done. That requires a whole lot of reading before you start writing. Once you have the ideas in mind, you put them on paper - something interesting happens then. The mere act of writing the research approach that you have in mind allows you to scrutinize the idea. Something that appears clear in mind often comes out muddy when written. It is something like introspection. We do not introspect for most hours of the day, but we almost always have some thoughts in our mind. So, most of our thoughts are never scrutinized. And so one never evaluates the subconscious emotions behind those thoughts. Nor one evaluates the biases hidden in these thoughts. If we write all our thoughts, we are making them more concrete, and revisiting them slowly. That's when the thoughts get evaluated. A friend of mine is a painter. He asked me, "do you know how many paintings did Picasso paint?". "No idea". He gave me some numbers to work on - suppose one paints X paintings per week, then how many paintings will the person paint? What he was telling me was that Picasso was Picasso because he had painted some insane number of paintings in his life. Some became masterpieces. But, you do not start by painting masterpieces. You paint and paint, like a running train. You get better and better at it. Your paintings become deeper and more elaborate. There is no act of humans that does not require persistent work.

History of Science

 March 2007. I looked out of the window of the airplane to see the snow-covered fields of Denver, Colorado where I was flying in to attend my first American Physical Society (APS) annual conference. I was quite determined to make good of this opportunity. I had the plan to attend all talks related to "behavior of water in confinement", which was my research project at that time. Next on the priority list was all talks related to protein adsorption and protein folding, followed by talks on new simulation methods. If I would not find talks on any of these topics during a time-slot then I had decided to attend any session that captures my curiosity. That was the plan and I followed it quite religiously for the first three days. On the afternoon of the fourth day, I did come across a time-slot wherein I could not find any talks related to the topics of my interest. So, I selected a session which sounded interesting, while totally not related to my field of research. I do not recall the name of the session, but this session has remained vividly in my memory for the last 14 years. The researchers were performing experiments in which they were dropping strips of paper from a height and were using slow-motion camera to capture the motion of the strips. They were developing numerical solutions to describe the motion of strips of paper falling down in air. Interestingly, this work was sponsored by DARPA - the research division of the army of the United States. NASA has been sending missions to moon and far-away planets, F-16 and 18s are soaring the skies and we do not understand how a strip of paper falls under the action of gravity in air. Interesting. The session led an indelible impression on me. It is important to understand what we know and what we do not. The scientists know that there are simple-looking phenomena that we do not understand. Interestingly, it is the non-scientists who think that we know a lot more than we actually do. When I started my graduate studies, I got to know that Prof. X works on studying the properties of water. Water! Don't we know everything about water already? I asked myself. Fast forward five years and I attended a conference on water where the leading scientists of the world were arguing about the structure of water and the debate got hot a few times. 

Our theories, our knowledge of science is constantly being updated and what we think of something as true today may turn out to be quite wrong in the future. It may be useful to learn about how scientific ideas evolved over time. Most of us know about the story of ether that was thought to be permeating the empty space, or the story of black-body radiation that led to quantum mechanics. Around a century back, scientists believed that chemical reactions occur because different molecules have different shapes - hydrogen is a ball, oxygen is donut shaped and so two hydrogen balls fit well on both sides of the donut to form water. We now know that this picture is incorrect but I would be careful to say whether our current picture is completely correct. I think I have painted a gloomy picture. Should we throw away our science books? No! Our precision and accuracy of experimentally probing physical systems have been steadily improving. Computational research has grown quite rapidly and is aiding our understanding. We may not completely understand quantum mechanics, but we do have a mathematical structure for it that describes quantum phenomena quite accurately. The number of people pursuing research has been growing. The amount of research money being invested has also been overall rising at the global level. Research is shared digitally and is not obscurely available only in few libraries of the world. At Intel, we used to say that "not all zeros are the same", implying that at the start of a new technology, even though our yield for working microprocessors remains zero for long periods, but we keep making improvements in removing defects. Similarly, all "lack of understanding" is not the same.

Ramanujan and Shakuntala Devi

Ramanujan had a phenomenal ability in mathematical logic. Shakuntala Devi had the ability to perform mind-boggling calculations at a breath-taking pace.We can learn many things from knowing that humans like Ramanujan and Shakuntala existed. One is that there is a configuration of our brain that can result in such super-human abilities. Both Ramanujan and Shakuntala lived pretty normal life otherwise. This tells us is that a normal brain is not at a Pareto optimal level. Which is good news because it means that one does not have to sacrifice any mental functionality to achieve the abilities of Ramanujan or Shakuntala Devi. Another observation - they were both born in pre-independent India in poor families. Ramanujan received his education nothing out of the ordinary. Shakuntala Devi was not formally educated in school. This implies that starting your kids early in the tried-and-tested mechanisms of teaching so that they are successful in school early in their lives may not be optimal. It is low-risk strategy which will dumb down kids.

Brain is a physical object after-all. And, it operates by sending signals between its millions of neurons. This implies that there is a certain connectivity and configuration of neutrons that can allow one to think like Ramanujan or do calculations like Shakuntala. Can we design such a brain? Not at present, but maybe in the future. What do we need? We need to first figure out what is the critical size of the configuration of neurons that needs to be trained. Ideally, one would like to tailor the entire brain, but that may not be practically feasible. Once we know the critical size of connections that we need to optimize, then we need to figure out what to optimize. Which configuration results in a Ramanujan brain? Is that configuration unique? It is most likely not unique, because, first, in that case the probability of existence of Ramanujan becomes diminishingly small. Secondly, that would mean that any new experience or learning would change this configuration and the brain will become sub-optimal again. So, an ensemble of configurations should work. Great! But, what is the objective function that should be optimized? I do not think we know the answer of this one as well. Once we have figured out these questions, then it comes to the logistic part of physically designing such a configuration. How do we assemble neurons in a configuration? We will probably not start attaching single neuron to others from scratch. That's not possible. We will probably need to scan thousands of brains for their connectivity and select candidates that have closely related networks. This exercise will also tell us if the brain's ability correlates positively as we move towards the optimal configuration in a continuous manner, or will we see a step-change in the intelligence. If the process of optimization of networks is invasive, one needs to somehow grow that brain in-vitro. Then, we start optimizing the connections.

Rubik's cube: Marshmellow test for adults

I could never solve the Rubik's cube. What is it about this cube? The objective is to have all same-colored squares aligned in rows. So, one starts by aligning some of the same-colored squares. But then there is a catch: you need to destroy partially formed order/structure so as to further increase ordering in the cube. That is, in the intermediate steps, you need to undo what work you have done previously for reaching the globally optimum configuration. I think solving a Rubik's cube is a good measure of risk-taking mentality of people. Those who are scared to loose what they have for a better reward in distant future are unable to make such moves, and thus never solve the cube completely.

Politicians

Many years back when I was in India, I was watching an interview of Mr. Narayana Murthy, the chairman of Infosys. He was narrating a story about a meeting he had with the politicians of his state Karnataka. Apparently, the politicians were planning to promote their regional language, Kannada, while dissuading English education in state-funded schools. Murthy went around the table to ask each politician where do their kids go to school – all the kids either went to the best schools in India or abroad, and of course, they were all learning English. Amused, I told the maid in our house how the politicians in Karnataka are trying to promote their regional language in school over English. She replied that we should ask where do these politicians send their kids to school. So, one does not need to be chairman of a software company to figure out what the politicians are up to. It is in their favor to keep the population less educated, less equipped, economically weak and subordinate to them, as this will allow them to keep their powers unchecked and unquestioned. I had told the maid of this incident because I knew that she had made extra efforts to ensure that her kids learn English. Less education does not mean that a person is a fool to fall into the tricks of the politicians. Fools are fools. The people who look up to politicians as their leader for guidance in each step of their lives are the ones who are easily duped and manipulated. 

Fast forward to 2016. The prime minister of India announced one fine day that within a few hours, the currently circulating currency notes will no longer be valid. Everyone needs to get the notes exchanged with the new ones being issued by the RBI. This created a huge turmoil for many months with long queues in the bank, people losing their daily wages, small businesses suffering a loss in revenue, etc. The leaders claimed that this will clean the economy of black money. I was watching a popular news debate “The Big Fight” on NDTV – the topic was demonetization. A young girl from the audience said that “she is willing to stand in the line to get the notes exchanged. Our nation is being built and we should all look forward to that”. That comment sparked an emotion of hope and patriotism. Everyone clapped. I also felt a tinge of emotion. An year later, the Government admitted that they could not recover any black money. People had found ways to get their black money converted to white via many new avenues that had sprung up overnight. The entire experiment was simply like an ant colony optimization scheme – the conditions changed, a large number of people started figuring out the best possible way out, many loopholes and methods were identified and voila – we are rich as we were before. The young girl on The Big Fight was not from a poor family (people from marginal backgrounds hardly ever make up the audience of TV shows). She must have not suffered much. Who suffered were the poorest of the poor. They don’t have any say in the news channels as yet. In December 2016, just a month after the demonetization announcement, I was visiting some remote areas of Malwa region of India. The artisans over there gladly took a bank cheque as a payment for our shopping, but they told us that the nearest banks are many miles away. The workers they hire for block printing do not have access to banking – they get their wages in cash, they use boxes to store their money or sometimes dig pits in the ground to hide their savings. Most of them are not educated and are quite unaware of what is happening in the country. At the time of demonetization, they lost all their savings. To get their notes converted they had to walk many miles to queue up outside the bank. Those days banks were running out of newly issued notes. So, even if they spend their day not working but going to the bank, there was no certainty that their money will be exchanged. Great job Modi. 

It is said that Modi is a PM who connects with the people. I heard a part of the speech he delivered at the Madison Square Garden. He made two jokes, one that man is now a slave to the mouse (referring to a computer mouse), and the second that it costs more money per mile to take an autorickshaw in Ahmedabad than the per mile cost of ISRO’s Mars mission. I did not laugh. Thanks to Whatsapp, I had heard these jokes before. So, we have a PM who goes center-stage and cracks whatsapp jokes. Not surprisingly, he connects to the people, as that’s how we do small talk in our drawing rooms. All fluff and no substance. As an example, when Raghuram Rajan talked about buying and selling of dosas to explain an economic concept, it became famous as Dosanomics. The leaders of yesteryears apparently made the mistake of presenting political, social and economic issues as serious matters. 

EDX

It is 9.30 AM and I know that there are a hundred things I should be working on right now. But sometimes you feel inspired, and then those hundred things wait and you write a blog. EDX is the newest online teaching website.  A couple of months back, I registered for a course in Physics taught by a professor at MIT. It was a 5 week course, with new course material released every week and a problem set to be submitted weekly. I struggled to keep up the pace. Missed a few deadlines. Managed a few. Then we had the final exam. I got 80% and that took my aggregate grade to 63%. Just above 60% and I passed! That's not the point. The point is the elegant manner in which the professor taught the course. The beauty of how he developed a complicated theory for the students bit by bit. And, it is all available for free. The best thing about EDX is the software which allows you to submit answers even when they are as long equations. Online learning has come a long way. EDX has emerged as the leader. It's the future.

Orange

Everytime I eat an orange, I get fascinated by its amazing design. To start with, there is the skin. It is porous, hydrophobic, squishy, and sticks to the fruit with a mesh of fibers. The inside has spherically arranged packets holding liquid and covered with a thin fibrous layer. If we open a packet, we find small spheroid bulbs filled with beautifully colored liquid and covered with a delicate layer. Orange grows symmetrically out from a small bud, becoming enlarged as it adds cells in a defined structure, it is not assembled piece by piece like the way we manufacture items. And, if left alone, it seamlessly mixes into the ground. An amazing beauty, an intricate balance, a piece of art, and zero pollution. It is produced by a small plant not more than 6-7 feet in height, 3 feet in diameter. No raw materials to be shipped in, no workers doing 3 shifts - just an un-disturbing existence. Humans are in the stone-age of manufacturing. We lack the intellect to design. We are struggling.

"Parallel lines meet at infinity"

"Parallel lines meet at infinity", my cousin in class 10 told me, and also that his teacher had mentioned that if one cannot understand this apparently simple concept then one can never hope to understand mathematics. I was in class 8 at that time. I wonder why did the  teacher say so. The concept is still not obvious to me. By linking an obscure statement to the ability to understand mathematics, the teacher very effectively killed any uncomfortable questions about it from the students.

Suppose I am standing near a  set of parallel lines, say a railroad. I look towards positive infinity - the lines meet at some point. We will never reach that point and the point is not a well-defined point, but the lines do meet as per the statement. Now, let me gaze towards minus infinity. Again, the parallel lines meet at minus infinity. Now if two lines meet at two distinct points, then they are nothing but the same line. So, we arrive at a contradiction, and parallel lines do not meet at infinity.

My mathematician friends tell me that this line of reasoning is not quite correct, as one cannot have a well defined point at infinity and that the statement that "parallel lines meet at infinity" is only valid in projective geometry. 

A monkey and a surahi

This is a story I read when I was a small kid. It goes like this: A man wants to catch a monkey. He places some chickpeas (chana) in a surahi (surahi is a Hindi word for a thin, necked flask, usually to store drinking water), leaves it in a park where monkeys frequently visit and hides behind a nearby tree. In some time, a curious monkey approaches the surahi and inserts his hand inside the neck of the surahi to grab as many chickpeas as his fist can hold. But the monkey's fist is too big to slide out of the neck of the surahi. The man starts running towards the monkey. The monkey sees the man but out of greed does not open his fist to remove his hand and is caught. Interesting story - monkeys are fools, and humans are clever. Clap. Clap. Just that, the story is only a figment of one's imagination and, in reality, monkeys are smarter than this. One would notice that a monkey, while attempting to scavenge food from a waste-bin or while attempting to open a container, would run away at the slightest hint of someone approaching him. In fact, I have seen clever monkeys who manage to steal bread-pakoras from kids but do not approach a heap of bread-pakoras in the nearby shop because they know that the shopkeeper will not let them steal.

Humans are different though. They are the greedy lot. And, they are so greedy that if monkeys could understand their behavior, they would be the ones writing stories about them. If one replaces chickpeas with something that humans care more about, say, a legacy like a house which can be sold to make some money. Humans will put on a nasty show and will fight tooth and nail to get a hold of it or a piece of it. One cannot reason with them, and to even attempt such a thing is naivete. Quite an entertainment for monkeys, I must say.

Arjun

Arjun had a problem. His teacher had declared that he will be the greatest archer in the World. He was just a 6 years old kid, who enjoyed playing with his brothers, lazying around and listening to stories from his mom. How will he bear the burden of becoming the greatest archer in the World? The problem with the word 'greatest' is that it implies becoming better than everyone else. The scale is not absolute but relative. So if a catastrophe strikes and only Arjun survives, he becomes greatest by default. Becoming 'great', on the other hand, does not imply comparison. As long as one works to improve their skill, one can become great. The declaration by Arjun's teacher, Dhronacharya, therefore, not only affected Arjun but every aspiring archer in the World. And we see later its consequences - Eklavya lost his thumb, and Karna was discriminated against - only so that Arjun can be the greatest.

Dhronacharya was a bad teacher. He should have taught his students how to improve their skills, not how to eliminate competition. 

Supernova material

Look at yourself. What are you made of? Carbon, nitrogen. oxygen. How hot is the Sun? Around 6000 deg C at the core. Pretty hot, huh? It is only hot enough to fuse hydrogen into helium. For making heavier elements, one needs much higher temperatures, of the order of millions of degree C. Such temperatures only exist in a supernova. So, prior to the Sun, there was our grandfather star, a star which exploded as a supernova, which cooked all material needed for life. So, life on Earth has its roots, not to the first cells of life, not to the first amino acids, or to formation of the solar system, but to formation and destruction of a much older star system - a supernova, which spewed the elements needed to create life. Some billion years back probably. Look at yourself again. Each atom in your body was cooked up some millions of degrees in a supernova some billions of years back. If only our atoms could tell their story.

A story

Gopal finished his breakfast of two rotis and daal, picked up his files and called his wife, "do you have the sweet box ready?". "Just two minutes more, the barfis are still hot". "OK, I will wait". He started reading his files while waiting for his wife to bring the box of barfis. "Here you go", said his wife, handing him over a box of barfis. "Great, I hope sarpanchji would like them. I will leave now." Gopal left his house and started walking towards sarpanch's house, which was near the village center, not very far from his office. Gopal was the only lawyer in the village of Karmpura. He had a small office near the village center, where he did legal paperwork for villagers, which, most of the times, was related to buying or selling of farmland, a house, some well, or cattle. Sometimes he would interpret notices issued by the district government for the Panchayat. Today, like every year, with the advent of the winter season, he was taking the first batch of sweets to the house of the sarpanch, Kishanlal. Kishanlal had been the village sarpanch for 20 years now. When Kishanlal was first elected the sarpanch 20 years back, he had decided to start an education fund to promote bright kids of the village to go to the city for higher studies. Gopal was one of the first beneficiaries of this scheme. He was identified by his teachers as a bright and enthusiastic student. Unfortunately, the village school had classes only upto class 5. So, Kishanlal arranged funds for Gopal to go to the city. After finishing school in the city, Gopal enrolled for a law degree in a college. There were no courts in the village of Karmpura. But, after finishing his studies, Gopal decided to return back to his village and serve his fellow villagers.

Gopal also owned three buffaloes and a small farm. His wife would milk the buffaloes everyday and sell milk. Before the start of the winter season, she would make barfis to sell. As a mark of respect and for seeking new year's blessings, Gopal used to take the first batch of barfis every year to sarpanch's house. Gopal had lot of love and respect for the sarpanch, for if it was not for him, he would not have got the opportunity to go to the city to study. He would have remained an illiterate farmer like his childhood friends had become. Gopal can never pay back what the sarpanch had done for him, he thought. "Namaskar sarpanchji, how are you?" "arre, Gopal, come. Good to see you. Have a cup of tea". "Sarpanchji, I have brought some sweets for you from our first batch this season.". "Oh Gopal, you and your wife take so much trouble for an old man like me. I am quite content with the little I have and my happiness is my children around me. The entire village is like my children. If they are are happy, so I am." "Sarpanchji, this is your love for us which we all feel so strongly, which has bound us all together in this village. This is just a small token of our gratitude". "What gratitude Gopal? I am like your father. I am actually elder to your father. I do not desire gifts from you. But, to be honest, your wife's barfis are always very tasty and I can never say no to them", he chuckled and Gopal smiled with gratitude. "Gopal, now that you are here. I have a small work for you. I am planning to buy some farmland on the south side of the village. Can you please complete the paperwork for me?". "I would be grateful sir", replied Gopal. The sarpanch asked his servant to bring a file from the other room and handed it over to Gopal. "Here you are". "Sarpanchji, I will finish this today only, and drop it back to your house while returning home in the evening". "Dhanyawad Gopal, I am glad we have an able lawyer like you in our village. I hope more children of the village go to the city to get educated to become teachers, doctors and engineers. They can come back and improve the condition of our village. We need a school to teach kids up to class 12 or even a college. We need a doctor with knowledge of modern medicine. Our vaid is good, but modern medicine has progressed a lot". "Sarpanchji, you are a visionary. Your ideas and policies will transform our village into a modern town". "Gopal, there is a lot I would like to do for my children of the village. Anyway, you must be getting late for your office. I will see you in the evening then". Gopal left sarpanch's house for his office. The road went along a small canal. This canal was linked to the Gudgu river, which is 65 kms from the village. The canal was dug up as part of the Indira Gandhi irrigation scheme to bring large farm areas under irrigation. As per the first draft of scheme, the village of Karmpura was not included, as it was small village and the available funds were not enough. But Kishanlal had put-in lot of efforts by meeting and petitioning to many high-level officials in the capital and district offices to get Karmpura included in the scheme. It had taken two years of pursuance to get the canal approved. If it was not for the sarpanch, the entire village would have had a hard time farming their fields, especially during the periodic droughts their village faced. The villagers owed their prosperity to the sarpanch for his valiant efforts to get the canal to the village.

Gopal reached his office, dusted his desk, lighted an agarbatti to the photo of the deity on the wall and settled down to work. By noon, he had finished the documents for the sarpanch. He ate his lunch in the office and then went out for a walk and a cup of tea. When Gopal returned back to the office, he saw someone sitting inside. "Who is it?", asked Gopal. The lady turned around. She was Geeta, daughter of Maniram and care-taker of grandsons of the sarpanch. "Arre Geeta, what brought you here? Want my advice on something?", asked Gopal. "Yes", she replied, looking down. "What is it Geeta? Is something wrong?" "Gopal, I need to tell you something. You are the most educated man in our village, You understand law and the system. You have always been fair in your views". "Yes, Geeta, of course, I will do whatever is needed, what is it?". "Gopal, the sarpanch molested me yesterday night". "What? What are you saying? How can this be?". "Yesterday night, after making bed of the grand kids, I was about to head out for home, when sarpanchji held my hand and tried to grope me". "Oh Geeta, our sarpanch is an honorable man. He treats the entire village as his children. He can never do such a thing". "Gopal, why would you think that I will lie? I have no one else to ask for help other than you. Look at these wounds on my wrist, waist, neck and shoulders. Don't you think the wounds tell my story?". Gopal looked at the wounds. It did appear that someone had physically misbehaved with Geeta. "But Geeta, this is hard to believe. Sarpanchji would never do such a thing. I am shocked. Can you further elaborate on what happened yesterday night?". "When I was trying to free myself, Chandi came to the room, saw me and gasped. Seeing Chandi sarpanchji were a bit startled and I was able to run away. Chandi met me later in the night near my house and told me that I should stay away from sarpanch's house for some days and try to forget what has happened". "Geeta, will she be able to corroborate your story?". "I don't know Gopal. Her livelihood solely depends on the work she does in sarpanch's house. She may like to stay away from this issue". "Did anyone else saw this?". "Sarpanch's servant Ramu saw this too, but he went about doing his business as if nothing was happening". "I don't know what to tell you Geeta. My mind is becoming numb. While your wounds and your teary eyes corroborate your story, but this is almost unbelievable. A man of such honor and integrity to whom the whole village looks up as a Godfather could not have done such a thing. I don't know what to tell you". "Gopal, help me please. Who else can I go to in this village? No one would even tolerate listening anything against the sarpanch". "Geeta, if it was not for the sarpanch, we would all have struggled to even grow crops for subsistence. If it was not for him, I would not have got the opportunity to go to the city and study law. I owe everything good in my life to him. How can I ever stand against him? We all have grown up looking at him as more than our father. What you are asking me to do is to implicate my own father. Geeta, we have grown up together and you are like my little sister. I understand your feelings, but my hands are tied". "Gopal, imagine my situation, imagine what mental agony I am going through. How can I live without any hope of justice? I know if I stand against the sarpanch, I will be alienated by the entire village. Nobody will dare to marry me. It is more difficult for me than you can imagine. But, I cannot reconcile with the incident". "Geeta, everything that you say is true, but my mind is numb now. I never imagined to be in a situation where I will be asked to take a stand against the sarpanch. I am just incapable of such an act. Geeta, I am sorry. Please go home and try to forget this as a bad episode. For the greater good of the entire village, we need visionaries like our sarpanch, or else, we will remain poor and medieval in our mindset. As a responsible villager, I would prefer a greater good of many over justice to an individual. Your demand for justice for yourself appears selfish to me as it will damage the future of our entire village. Don't get me wrong sister, swallow your indignation and forget this episode. You need not return to sarpanch's house. I, myself, will find you a new job in the village, but please do not ask me to take a stand against the sarpanch". "Gopal, I had come to you with hope, but all you tell me are reasons for your inaction. I do not harbor any hard feelings against you. I will probably go in a recluse and help myself when no one else is willing to help me", and Geeta left Gopal's office. Gopal sat on his chair stunned. How can all this be true? How can the sarpanch do this? He was unable to do any work for the rest of the day. At five o' clock, Gopal picked up sarpanch's file and left his office for sarpanch's house. The sarpanch was sitting in his living room. "Namaste sarpanchji", "Arre Gopal, come, have a seat". "Here are the papers for the property you intend to buy". "Dhanyawad Gopal, what would this village do without you". Gopal could not look into sarpanch's eyes. After the casual conversation with the sarpanch, the entire discussion with Geeta appeared surreal.

It took a few sleepless nights for Gopal to come at ease with himself again. He had forgotten Geeta's episode as if a bad dream. He continued to serve the village and the sarpanch like before. What he had done was for the greater good of the village. How many people in the village like Geeta would have starved if sarpanchji were not there to protect them How can he drag him down to the courts and the police for providing justice to one individual. If he did, he would not be a responsible citizen of his village as this will do more damage than good. Didn't kings have many wives? Wasn't Draupadi guilty of so many deaths in Mahabharata? 

Gulam

In the movie Gulam, there is a small town gunda. Nobody has guts to challenge him and people meekly submit to him, till one guy decides to stop his gunda-gardi. We enjoy watching movies in which truth, freedom and honesty prevail in the end. Our hearts sympathize with the heroes of such movies. But, in real life, we prefer to live meekly. Intellectuals of today have all the right ideas of democracy, freedom of speech, honesty and integrity on all the matters that do not directly involve them. But, when they are needed to speak up, stand up to small town gundas they prefer to look the other way. 

ISRO reaches Mars

It is almost certain that ISRO's first Mars mission would be successful now. ISRO's website has a paragraph about it. I personify ISRO as a postman in khakis riding a black bicycle in sultry heat of Indian summer. I wish I could be like that.