You Know You're Growing Up When^...

·         You have insurance.

·         You use the insurance premium to save taxes.

·         Rebellion means watching television beyond 11 pm on a weeknight. And then feeling guilty about it the morning-after.

·         You exhibit withdrawal symptoms after skipping the morning cuppa.

·         You understand that job satisfaction is not the abstraction that social workers have, and investment bankers don't.

The social workers don't have it either.

·         You are comfortable being called a nerd. Or any other label you may have dreaded during your school-days.

·         You frequently have trouble recalling the names of actors/ Big Boss participants/ regular panellists on We the People/ News-hour/ Big Fight.

“What's the name of the hero in that Parineeti Chopra movie?”

-“Dhruv something, no Varun-something, arrey the tall guy in the Karan Johar movie with overgrown school-kids.”

·         The only bit of gossip you have heard through the week is that of the corruption charges on a business tycoon and a Minister being true.

·         You are alone in the elevator with a CCTV camera and you resist making faces into it.

·         Your mother hints vaguely at "settling down" when you share your rambling, long-winded, career plans with her.

·         You tip the waiter.

^Didn't she say she wasn't doing these bullet-point posts anymore?

*Deafening silence* 

Odds and Ends

Towards Zero (by Agatha Christie) very cleverly uses Poirot, without him being physically present in the story. For that alone (and the dedication), the book is worth it.

I re-read Crooked House (by Christie, who else). I generally never remember plot points, especially of a book that I read only once, way back in school. I remembered this one though-may be because when I read it first, the only kid-detectives I knew were in the Enid Blyton-created world. Would I recommend it?

Ummm... what kind of a stupid question is that?

Speaking of stupid, I chose Calcutta to spend my Christmas-New Year break, over Bombay.

Two weekends back, I went to Jaipur. Sight-saw Amer Fort, where the guide pulled me up for not paying enough attention. Had cups of chai to relieve a head ache (I am getting so old). Re-lived a lot of memories with a childhood friend. She called the Dhoom franchise a five year employment-guarantee scheme for Uday Chopra and Abhishek Bachchan.

I liked Dhoom 3 (to nobody's surprise).

Why is Silver Linings Playbook such a great film? I didn’t root for the protagonists at all, didn’t understand how Tiffany was mentally ill, and found the “twist”, where Pat realises that Tiffany had written the letter extremely…for the lack of a better word…lame.

Why can’t people be old and frail without being worriers/ naggers?

I was getting sick of doing drills in guitar class, so my tutor showed me how to play the Karz tune. Also “Ajeeb dastan hai yeh”. He was going to show “Chura liya hai tumne jo” too but my co-learner put her foot down at that. I can’t actually play any of these since I do not practise.

The other day I roamed around aimlessly in Gurgaon’s cyber-city. Still hate it.

Why can’t I do a PhD in Agatha Christie studies?

You Know You have a Masters Degree in Economics When...

• You haven’t bought a text book in three years-all three of which were spent as a student.
• You look at the contents of a textbook (the ones you bought the first time in three years), and disappointedly conclude, “Meh…undergraduate stuff”.
• You feel dissatisfied with your understanding of a concept (any concept) until you have worked out the math.
• You remember more about Keynes’ love life than his economics.
• You categorise fantasy fiction into two types- One, including the works of Tolkein and Rowling. The other, more whimsical type covering development models.
• You understand that for a lot people (not necessarily economists), “in fact” means roughly the same thing as “in my opinion”.
• You are the only person in social gatherings who does not feel outraged by how low the poverty line is. (It’s a only a measurement benchmark people, relax!)
• People who studied physics are more likely to have solutions to the country’s economic problems than you. 
• Your friend circle can be neatly classified into people who read the Hindu and those who read the Economics Times.
  
  (Secretly, you would rather just read the Times of India.) 
• You think sociologists/ political scientists/schoolteachers have glamourous jobs.

The 25 Step Guide to Getting Your Passport

1)    Register yourself on the website passportindia.gov.in. Download the e-form required to make a fresh application, and skim through it to see the details required. It looks easy enough. So close the form and procrastinate.

2)      Get prodded at work to expedite the process. Rush to complete the form the same day, upload it where it needs to be uploaded.

3)      An appointment with your nearest Passport Seva Kendra (PSK) needs to be scheduled. Make an online payment of the passport fee. Encounter a glitch in the process and panic.

4)      The glitch gets resolved. Relax.

5)      Relax some more as no appointments are available.

6)      Log in the next day, five minutes after the time at which the appointment booking for your PSK starts. All appointments have been taken already.

7)      Next time you try, log in half an hour before the appointment booking starts. Practice the process twice, so that you can be really quick. Succeed at booking appointment, finally. It’s in two days.

8)      Look at the ‘Document Advisor’ link at the website.

i)        Realise that your parents have no idea as to where your birth certificate is, necessary for everyone born after 1989. Begin frantic search.

ii)       Scour the neighbourhood for notaries who can help prepare an affidavit for you, attesting to your address and identity. 9 times out of ten, they also double up as passport touts.

iii)     Rack your brains about Government servants you know, who can vouch for your good moral character, deemed a necessity for those applying under the Tatkal Scheme. The government servant needs to be at least a rank of Undersecretary to the government. Conclude that the only person you know (of), that high up is Umbridge.

iv)     Get your misconceptions corrected. Undersecretary is not that high up.

v)      Appreciate your tardiness in not consulting the Advisor before taking an appointment.

9)      Organise your documents the morning of your appointment. Notice that your father’s name on the character certificate (issued by the government servant), is written incorrectly. Panic.

10)   Rush to the office of the government servant, in the opposite corner of the city. Reach before the peon has unlocked the cabin and the secretary has arrived at her desk.

11)   Hover over the secretary’s computer getting the changes made. Silently will the government servant to hurry up and sign. Shoot down his offers of tea, and make your way to the PSK, again to the other end of the city.

12)   Mentally abuse the driver for following traffic rules.

13)   Reach the PSK 15 minutes late, then pray while in the queue of people waiting to be told whether they have the required documents. Notice people being sent back. Pray more fervently.

14)   Reach the top of the queue after a 45 minute wait. The guy at the counter will ask for a ton of things, none of which were mentioned on the website. Thank God for giving you the sense to carry all the documents (really, all) you accumulated since you were born.

15)   Get approved. Enter the waiting area to await your turn with the passport officers.

16)   Wait.

17)   Wait some more.

18)   Meet the first guy in the process. He will scan your fingerprints, check your details and snark about you being late, conveniently forgetting the three hours you have waited subsequently for the process to begin.

19)   Wait again. Meet the second guy. He will ask to see some of your originals again. As you dive into your folder to extricate them, he will grow impatient, and tell you to let it be. Move to the final stage.

20)   Notice people being sent back even in the third stage, about six hours into the start of the process. You will be too exhausted to worry, just wait your turn.

21)   The guy at the third stage will notice something amiss in your documents. Examine them minutely to find a way out while he threatens to send you back. Succeed at convincing him.

22)   Leave the PSK with a receipt.

23)   Two days later, get a visit from the post-man. He will have your passport. And will want a ‘dakshina’ from you to hand it over. Be humble, do not remind him that he is just doing his job, not granting you a personal favour. Pay up.

24)   Behold your passport.

Update:
25) A few days later, you will get a visit from the neighbourhood policeman, as part of the verification process. He will be nice enough, filling up a form, stapling photocopies of your documents together (again not bothering with the originals), refusing offers of tea and water. Then before leaving, he will glance sideways, averting eye contact, and ask with a smile "Kuch denge nahi?"
What can I say, when in India, always pay up.

Everything You Really Need to Know about the Delhi School of Economics

There’s a lot to hate about the Delhi School of Economics.

Delhi School of Economics Campus

Its course content in the first year- mostly revolving around mathematics.

Teachers who appear inaccessible.

The huge class size.

The (initial) daily struggle to get good seats.

Some of the teaching assistants.

The weekends. When followed by a mid-term.

The exams themselves, especially when the professors play tricks. (Beware when the teacher announces something as ‘not important from the exam-point-of-view’. That is exactly what will be tested in the form of a question worth 35 marks).

The pressure, the lack of time to really absorb what you’re learning.

But thankfully, there’s also a lot to love.

The Good Professors- God knows that every institution, however great, has its share of mediocre faculty. This is true for D-School as well. However, the brilliance of some of them in the classroom will startle you. There are professors who can explain the most convoluted concepts with the most ridiculous examples (so imperfect capital mobility becomes akin to taking coins out of your torn pocket slowly). There are others who will revel in students questioning assumptions and explanations, will go back and think through those objections, then physically search for students in the corridors, to clarify the concepts again. A few professors will discuss things in class that appear more advanced than the (considerably difficult) texts. And then yet others who understand your life is difficult anyway, without “wasting valuable hard-disk space” memorising things.

The Very Efficient Photocopy Shop (till some kill-joys entered the fray)- Prem Bhaiya knows more than you do. Period.  Your life’s going to be much easier if you curtail the habit of arguing with him about readings. And bear with it when he incredulously asks, “Padoge kab??”, when you want to buy LADW after the math mid-sem is over. He means well.

The Ratan Tata Library-is certainly well stocked. But as with everything in DSE, it’s the people who make it as good as it is. There are catalogues of course, but don’t bother with those if you want a text-book. The two elderly gentle men at the desk have an encyclopaedic memory of every book that has passed their hands. And they will take it as a personal insult if you can’t locate a book that is less-asked for (as every non-text-book is likely to be). On the flip side, they issue books for a very short time. If you are a regular though, you only get gently chided for being late.

The Infrastructure- the Lecture Theatre is fantastic. The loos have been recently beautified (and get users from as far as Ramjas). The air-conditioning in the CDE will put an end to your constant whining about how hot/ cold it is in Delhi. The speed of the computers could be better. But the staff certainly couldn’t be (especially now that I have realised their shared dislike of a certain faculty member).

The D-school canteen- According to some students the quality of the food is unsatisfactory. Ignore them, they are stupid. The food’s fine (though unholy rumours abound about the source of the meat in the mutton dosas). The ambience is better. The service, if nothing else, is entertaining.

Ask Baba how much you need to pay. He confidently says, “Pachasi (eighty five)”

“Kaise, Baba? (How come)”, you ask.

“Arre, pachas hi (fifty only).”

JP Tea Stall and its Iced Tea- I have already waxed eloquent about it before. And I have nothing new to add. Unless you want to know I choked up just a little, while having my last glass there.

The peer group- there are 180 students in a batch. It’s very unlikely you won’t find friends here.

Though very lucky to find the friends I did-

·         A Bong who shares my enthusiasm for films and music (though her tastes are more evolved than mine will ever be). Also an authority on photography (in our group, anyway).

·         A Bong enthusiast who thinks she speaks better Bangla that I do (she most certainly does not) and whose studious look belies her chatterbox self, as well as her appreciation of Prakash Raj

·         A smartass with an enviable collection of ‘videos’ and a brain that can solve problem sets from courses she did not have

·         A freakishly quick reader, who frequently uses words like ‘syapa’ (though in her defence, D school provides for many occasions for such words to be used). Also thinks that the world is divided into good people and rapists.

·         An introvert who can be incredibly fun to be with when she opens up. Also, what notes‼

·         An eternal optimist, who maintains ‘sab ho jayega’, when I assail her with my whining. Likes JP iced tea, so didn’t take long for me to really like her.

Besides the 180 are going to include people from your college, most of whom share a similar work ethic and a passion for discussing Singham. Their reassurances of also not knowing any linear algebra, helps as well. As do other people you find (even if it’s a little late in the course to know them very well) to talk to due to courses you have in common, during lunch hours or when you are killing time at JP.

Overall, even though it's not something you ever believe yourself to be capable of feeling during the two years at DSE, you are going to miss the place only a few days into your hard-earned holidays.

Travelpost: 10 Things about Kolkata, from an Outsider's Perspective

Wikipedia enumerates the following steps to be followed in the process of doing research

·         Identification of research problem

·         Literature review

·         Specifying the purpose of research

·         Determine specific research questions or hypotheses

·         Data collection

·         Analyzing and interpreting the data

·         Reporting and evaluating research

Since I don't think I have the right orientation for this kind of work anyway (I am after all quoting Wikipedia), I will dispense with any pretence at a scientific enquiry. The following are my (sometimes biased) observations about Kolkata, formed through a lifetime of summer holidays I have spent here.

v  Kolkata is only a different type of hot. While Delhi’s heat will announce itself to you, with its nasty sun and the infamous loo, Kolkata’s will sneak up from behind and take you by surprise. The sweet wind that appears to be blowing outside, when you are at home will conspire to stand still as soon as you step out, and reduce you to a sweaty mess, in the first ten steps you take.

v  Getting work done here, especially in the first attempt, is a near impossibility. This would normally be fine, except when you are working according to Delhi deadlines.

v  One of the reasons for the above is the interminable lunch hour(s) that shops here follow. Long enough, to ensure that the worst administration departments of the best Delhi University colleges are a distant second.

           Last week I needed to use the cyber cafe here for a few printouts. Admittedly, I reached the market at 3:30, and was justly informed that I would have to wait for the shop to open. At 4, I spied the owner entering the market, a man I had known since I was 10 (having overheard him planning a ganja party over the phone, but I digress). When I limped after him to ask when he would open, he waved me away, saying ‘later’.

 I went again to the cafe at 4:25, thinking it was sufficiently ‘later’. He had the shop open and most of the computers on too. I smiled. He grunted and said ‘Come at 4:30’.

I showed him my watch, pleading there were only 5 minutes for that.

He turned around now facing me properly for the first time. He seemed to hesitate first, then something in my eager, pleading face helped him make up his mind. Taking a deep breath, he leaned forward and said, “4:30 means 5.”

An important life lesson learnt.

v  People are unnaturally chatty here. Especially in comparison to Delhi, where even the Metro keeps reminding you to not befriend any strangers (lest you get drugged and raped/ drugged and looted/ not drugged but still sweet-talked into parting with all your money etc.).

The chattiness can sometimes be nice, when you receive a nugget of absolutely irrelevant information. When it takes the form of unsolicited advice, then it can be a little infuriating.

v  Kolkata is second to known, when it comes to political awareness among its citizens. Domestic help/ guardsmen/ vendors etc. take en-masse leave during election season to go back to their native villages to cast their vote. A few years back, my three year old cousin examined my fingernails and disappointedly surmised that I hadn’t voted.

v  Children are very precocious here. Okay no, children are precocious everywhere.

v  Kolkata kids (students) are very hard working. At the tender age of nine when their Delhi counterparts don’t know what an essay is, these kids are mugging up dozens of them every week. When a Delhi kid has difficulty pronouncing participle , the Kolkata kid is far past the stage where he/she wrote the participles of 10 verbs every day. The Kolkata kid, as soon as he/ she enters class eight, is reminded of the impending Board examinations. Life outside school ceases in class 9. That’s when they start going for two tuitions for every subject. And if you have a cousin in Kolkata who is in tenth standard, the same year as you, then besides all the studying/mugging/ tuition-taking, he/she will also make life very miserable for you.

v  People (adults) have a lot of time on their hands. Markets, have dedicated spaces here, where people congregate to chat, have tea, while away their afternoons/ evenings. In fact no time is sacrosanct.

Today, at 12:15 pm, I saw two youngish-men, dressed in formals, at the neighbourhood park, SWINGING. Yes, on those contraptions designed for kids-which they no longer need, given how busy they are, studying or just being precocious.

Mind you, these were bhodrolok, not the unemployed youth who loll about in Delhi’s Central Park.

v  Scatological humour is big here. This is tied in to the general pre-occupation about one’s digestive systems and food.

v  Food’s everywhere here. And relatively cheap.

My Taxonomy of Academic Writing (in Economics)

I am currently reading a paper, firmly ensconced in the intersection of B, D and E (see below). Which motivated this.

A.      Vishal Bharadwaj cinema^*- Our microeconomics professor encourages students to write short answers in exams. He cites the example of Kenneth Arrow, who was notorious for his short papers (most of which, went on to span complete branches of economics). I haven’t read much of Arrow, but I have certainly read other economists who decide to infuse meaning into every word they construct. You blink. And you miss the most important plot point. These economists enjoy sneaking in a harmless looking line in the introduction, or worse, a footnote- the one line that holds the key to all the mind numbing (unsolved) differential equations that you are so impatient to get to, in later sections.

B.      Ekta Kapoor Soaps- These authors lie on the other extreme end of the continuum. They absolutely must give us a recap of every section of the paper at the end of the section, as well as at the beginning of the subsequent section. And in the introduction. And in the recommendations. And in the concluding remarks. You get the idea. (And then almost start missing the algebra).

C.      Farhan Akhtar/ Abbas-Mustan projects- While the Vishal Bharadwajs are theoretical economists (in the vanguard of academia), empirical economists (especially if you skip the methodology bits to power on to the results and discussion) are more accessible. That’s not to deny their capability of employing stunning gadgetry on the way to the climax. When done well, the results are sublime. When not…umm I trust you have seen Race.

D.      Rohit Shetty filums- unambitious and unpretentious. But (happily) not very taxing on the brain. These benign authors decide that they must make life easy for students, and spend most of their paper presenting a simplified version of the papers written by Exhibit A and C. Just as fancy cars hurtling in the air are a regular fixture in Shetty’s films, the penultimate section of these papers too must invariably involve critiquing the papers they discuss, and sometimes an extension.

E.       The ensemble film (in the tradition of Aaja Nachle, Chak de India)- Chak de India straddled regional chauvinism, national unity, religious persecution, sexism, the pathologies of Indian sport, all in a three hour narrative. The academic equivalents may not give such gripping results, but they do manage to flog a single mathematical model into providing amenable results on a variety of points the author wishes to prove. Sometimes this is not limited to a lone paper. Several careers have often hinged upon one model, one idea. Sometimes so much so that all the loving self referencing pushes it into Yashraj Films territory (who remind us at every chance they get, that Aditya Chopra made DDLJ).

^* Yes I compare academic papers to Bollywood films and Hindi television. Sue me.