Thinking about tech

The blogger interface has changed. I wonder if anyone else blogs anymore, but this makes me feel slightly more relevant. 

I'm committed to meeting my full life goals again. In lieu of having an actual full life. 

It's alarming how quickly human beings form emotional attachments, even now when we are all apparently self absorbed droids. I don't mean infatuation, or even love. Just intense co-dependence which makes you want to reach out to your phone, and tell the person you are attached to (the attachee?) about all the random things that happen to you through the day. Is it because most of us are disconnected from the people we physically spend the day with? And it's much easier to open up when the interaction is mediated by technology? 

On one hand it is. We are all funnier on chat when you can edit a message thrice before finally hitting send. When it's easier to hide behind privacy settings and take time to send out a more thoughtful reply. It's easier to hide the momentary irritation, the giveaway facial expressions that could open up a chasm between people. It also probably makes you braver in admitting things than you would otherwise because the fallout (good or bad) is not immediate. 

On the flipside, how do you know if the other person is even interested in you and your life? If you can't see their face, if you can't see how focussed they are on you as you talk, if their interest is taken up by other tabs, other chat windows? 

Notes on reading

Also known as ek teer se do nishaane (re meeting my real life goals) .

I was reading today how Germans, during their period of hyperinflation were afflicted with cipher stroke. Where they would unnecessarily tack on zeros when reporting numbers. So if someone was asked the time, they could respond with 3000. This ex boss of mine was affected similarly with the dollar stroke. If asked to convert 300 million people to lacs, he was wont to multiply the number with 70.

Basu (in Economist in a Real World) spends a lot of time explaining how inflation management policy may not be as straightforward as commonly understood. So while in general, raising policy rates is supposed to be a way for liquidity tightening, it may not necessarily help if distortions lead to the rate settling at a situation of deficit liquidity. Assuming regular downward sloping demand for credit and upward sloping supply of credit curves, a raising of rates may mean that demand falls but supply rises, thus only exacerbating the liquidity and inflation situation.

The Economist recently covered a related policy niggle - the measurement of inflation itself, in a modern economy. For one, goods being consumed change every year, so statisticians may be quite behind in tracking inflation. In fact they never quite catch the first fall in prices of a good or service, that in fact, enables mass consumption. CPI measures not accounting for quality change is again a problem that is more notable for digital access goods than others. Controlling for quality, it's likely that digital access prices are falling, though the index itself will reflect otherwise.

More fundamentally, the CPI measure may mean nothing if critical goods and services have a price of zero, as is true for most digital platforms. This is a non trivial issue if you consider the fact that imputed rent (with no actual transaction backing it) is a part of price indices.

The Indian government is planning to import bull semen from Brazil to impregnate desi cows, in a bid to increase the milk output but some cattle breeders are protesting this love jihad. (No, I'm being flippant.)

To bypass liquidity constraints that farmers face due to delayed cash transfers (for instance in the case of fertiliser subsidies), the Government is mulling e wallets that will be pre loaded with cash, and will only be redeemable at PoS at the input suppliers'. I feel pressured to use PayTM now.

Pixel 4 would have been a hit with all the bengali pipu pishu types. Had they released it in India and had any bengali the capacity to buy it.

Update on nothing

I'm on Day 2 of a productivity kick, where I have resolved to do four things daily - reading the newspaper, physical exercise, reading something policy related and writing. Now that I have written it here, it's possible I will never get anything done.

On the writing bit, I started a short story, for which I wrote one paragraph last night. And tonight I got hit by writer's block. So naturally, I revived the blog - where I let my mediocrity thrive.

Talking of mediocrity, I adapted Macbeth in Hindi. I think I should similarly mangle all of Shakespeare, while ensuring the women get the meaty dialogue, while playing with the men.

Now that I think about it some more, it's definitely an idea.

I want to write about something else here, but I will censor myself for the time being. But this is a placeholder, so that I remember to write about it in a couple of months. I'm sure my wide readership will not mind.

Observations 1

I really have none.  I don't know whether this was caused by some recently acquired self absorption or the fact that I rarely see any other people, like those leading vastly different lives anymore. All I notice is my strong panic every morning,  and especially on Mondays. And it apparently shows on my face because everyone in the world recognises it. My mother comments on it,  my cab mates adjust their seats to ensure I have more space,  and my colleagues do too.  But they are mostly panicked themselves so I think being near each other calms us down.

Also even though I am not doing a great job of observing people,  I do understand that this would be another great way of stress management. In general when something bad happens to me I assume that it will make my memoirs more interesting. Now I have to consciously imagine that life is a movie and everyone is a character whose motivations and behaviour I must observe.  So my boss is not yelling at me,  he is a boss,  yelling at his employee, and I must notice how he is executing the yelling scene.

My instructor/director has also spoken about how stressed out actors are though,  because of their job insecurity. That makes them adopt tricks like yoga to stress manage. And I saw a video of a YouTuber who claimed to be stressed every morning as well. So it's possible that doing anything for a living seems to automatically be a stress creator.

The only working person who I see never being stressed about his work is my brother in law. Maybe I  spend some time observing him.

Theatre classes: the announcement

I joined a theatre workshop and to no one's surprise,  I love it. 

The instructor has told us to write  daily log of stuff that happens to us,  and how we responded in the moment. So that basically means that this space is going to become active again!

I don't know when I stopped liking my grandfather. It was also the same moment that I stopped loving him, I think.

Or maybe I never loved him.

Growing up, my mother used to tell us stories about he had been a strict disciplinarian. Though I think I always thought that was code for distant. She told us a story about how a colleague of his asked him what class his daughter was in, and he had no idea. That was the first and only time, he came back from office early, and went through my mother's books. I thought this was unthinkable, given how over-involved my own father was.

He wasn't necessarily the greatest father, especially if you ask my sister. But he was my favourite person for a very long time in life - the only person besides my grandmother who would tell us stories (even though they were largely from his head, and not from the large stack of literature that was Dida's source material), the only person I would trust to teach me math, the person who would run after me on Sunday afternoons to get me back home to have a bathe and eat after a day in the sun, goofing about with other children in the colony. I used to be terrified of my dad turning up for PTMs in schools. Other parents would scold their children if they got bad marks, my father would scold the teachers. He told my third standard class teacher that she made us carry too many books to school, never once entertaining the thought that I was the irresponsible child,  merrily carrying everything every day, instead of sticking to the time-table. In seventh standard, he genuinely wondered how I could have gotten a C in Physical Education. Though he and I don't get along as well now as we did when I was a child (mainly because he is losing every filter of his with age, and has a tendency to say the most hurtful things, extremely nonchalantly), I never think of him as a person I would be scared of. And no matter how many arguments I have with him, or how far I want to be from him, to escape his over-attentive fussiness, he is someone I will always count as being on my side.

My grandfather was definitely not that type of father. He was a fun grandfather though. During our Calcutta summer breaks, there were some days that were reserved for him. He would take my sister and I out - mostly to Nicco Park, or Bonobitan, or Nandan, buy us knick-knacks and then bring us back home in time for lunch. We knew that he was terrified of feeding us junk. So if he took us out to eat, it had to be a suitably darkened restaurant with sombre waiters and dignified menus. My sister and he also had a friendly camaraderie, which I was not party to. Everyone loved, indulged (and pinned all their dreams and hopes and ambitions on) the first-born. She used to compare Dada to Amitabh Bachchan, and I secretly agreed, too shy to say it out aloud, too introverted to even have an independent relationship with him. He was after all someone who seemed to terrify both my parents. (It was different with Dida, who was my other favourite person for all of my childhood. She was the type of grandparent who found a way to brag about her grand daughter to sundry relatives, old neighbours, random cell-phone salesmen, once a ticket-seller at a movie theatre).

And then Dida fell ill.

Seeing my grandfather respond to it, through the years, killed any secret childhood admiration, or love, if there was ever any, bit by bit. I always found him resentful. She was everyone's favourite, even his siblings loved her more. She had lost a younger sibling, and then with it, her will to be healthy or even live. And she was a hindrance. The help who had to be around to care for her, annoyed him. Her health impinging on his social calendar irritated him (I think I have inherited this selfishness from him, another reason I think I will be terrible at marriage.). He couldn't understand why she was weak, why she couldn't summon the will to be better. And he seemed to be waiting for her to die. Because then he would finally be free.

It's not even been a year since her passing. He is now unwell - a mild jaundice compared to her Parkinsons'. But he is still selfish as ever, refusing to eat. My mother is still scared of him, so can't stomach the idea of forcing him to do anything. And I feel very little sympathy for him now, only anger. Anger for making my mother see her own father willfully kill himself, in spite of her best efforts. Vindication - hoping he finally understands what he did to Dida. And hopeless - hopeless that age will rampage even on limited (and terribly selfish) dreams of happiness.

Work notes 2

In the morning a few days back,  the fire alarm went off in office. A few seconds later an announcement clarified that it was a false alarm and asked people not to panic.

No one even looked up from their work.

Who are these people migrating from Nepal to Eritrea or Burkina Faso?  Really,  I want to know.

I just internally sniggered after reading 'Netherlands'.

I think the first sign of truly settling into a job is when you start dreading Monday mornings again.

Are almost 30 year olds allowed to cry out of jealousy?  Like literal shedding of tears.

Work notes I

The NSSO Consumption Expenditure Survey asks households about the grams of ganja they consumed in the last 30 days.

It's probably not much, given that India ranks 140 among 156 countries on the World Happiness Index. Before you start accusing the publishers of bias ('Happiness means different things to people in India' etc.), know that the index is based on a survey of citizens where they were asked to evaluate their lives and place themselves on a ten-step ladder based on the evaluation.

What could possibly be making Indians so miserable? Lack of work-life balance, the upcoming elections, the dementor-like electronic media, agrarian distress, unemployment, fears of war would be my guesses. Apart from the daily drudgery of human existence of course.

By the way, for those keeping score, Pakistan is at the 67th rank on the Index.

I'm currently obsessing over a colleague who bad mouthed me to the boss.  Well,  obsessing less than I did on Friday when I first learnt about it. But I think there are two learnings from this: 

- I'm much less cooler than I thought. 

- people can dislike you for the most random reasons. Reasons beyond your control.  So as long as your own conscience is clear,  it's best not to give a fuck about what others think.