The delicate art of posing

Regret over the past is the largest source of human misery. And there are few things that bring more pangs of regret than revisiting how one looks in old photo albums.

That weird hairdo. That ill-advised colour of footwear. That awful gesture that seemed cool then.

The camera catches just a single instant (unless it is an iPhone 6s). And that's mostly a bad thing because, as Murphy would have it, at least one of your body parts will choose that precise moment to go out of whack. Mastering your limbs not to desert you in these instances is an art. And an intricate one at that.

The nuances of posing for photographs vary as per your stage of life.

Aww, so cute! That's Hitler, btw.

Till about the age of ten or so, you cannot possibly go wrong. Everything you do can be passed off under the garb of cuteness/ innocence/ playfulness. Both 'awful' and 'awesome' are spelt more like 'awwful' and 'awwsome'. Really, even if you are an ugly kid, no one would dare tell you that. This is the phase of photogenic bliss.

This, of course, changes drastically as puberty strikes - a complete anti-thesis of stage one. No matter how hard you try, you end up looking awkward. This can be blamed on the rather sudden sense of self-awareness. The minute you see a camera, you start getting bothered by where your hands are, or if your toes are pointing where they should. You worry and you start getting creative, and there lies the pitfall.

As the awareness of your loosely hanging hands dawn on you, your instincts tell you that 'doing something' might make you look good. And this is what happens.

   

Good luck on how you
feel about this later

V for 'Very awkward'

And don't even talk about the struggle that is having braces on one's teeth. Even if you stand next to Barack Obama, the centre of attention in the picture will always be those shining metal braces. And no, trying not to open one's mouth while smiling only makes it worse. You totter across your teenage years in this quandary but you believe in the Lord and tell yourself that this, too, shall pass.

And then you rush into the twenties. You are the center of your own universe and, needless to say, nothing says "I love myself, b**ches!" like an appropriately hash-tagged selfie.

The rise of the 'Selfie' and other (unrelated) trends 

Web sources say there are a million selfies taken everyday. Logic would say that this number must be understated since a lot of people are closet selfie-tards. Even if we assume each selfie takes 20 secs (which, as I would go on to point in the next paragraph, might be a conservative estimate considering the nuances of it), this amounts to over 230 man days. Basically, between your waking up today and the time you land up in bed again, the world aggregates almost a year of ego-clicking.

I, for one, have never figured my way to a proper selfie. It is just a lot of things to do at once - ensure your whole is visible, that the camera is not excessively close to you, that you are looking straight at the lens and not squinting, and press the 'click' button after that. And somehow, this has to capture the background well enough to shout, "I was here!".

Moving as per life stages, I am now tempted to talk about pre-wedding and wedding photo shoots. However, at this precarious stage of life, broaching that topic might not go down well with a large segment of my friends and acquaintances. All I would say is that, in my opinion, doing pre-wedding photo shoots is like listening to Honey Singh songs. You laugh at everyone who does it and keep claiming you are too cool for it, but, you will eventually do it, and quite willingly.

Needless to say, photographs are memories. Most of us remember ourselves looking super dapper in our memories. And we do not want the printed memories to testify otherwise. So it is understandable that a lot people go out of their way to look good in pictures. Meanwhile, some others go pout of their way to do so.

When Nature came Knocking

Carefully he nudged it along with a little stick,
The tyre wobbled, but kept in its file.
Just then the first drop of rain kissed his cheek,
And quietly flowed into his heartfelt smile.

His pace quickened, his friend he beckoned,
Their run back home was a joyful caper.
The drizzle, however, wasn’t a call for indoors,
But the time to bring out little boats of paper.

The sky, soon enough, shed its azure,
The pitter-patter quickly turned to thunder.
Anything but gentle this shower was,
How much longer, the boy did wonder.

His friend went home, mother dragged him inside,
Their boats now sunk under a bed of water.
Their tin roof looked rather keen to give,
His mother’s forehead betrayed a hint of bother.

That night went by, so did another couple,
The relentless Indra refused to rest.
The crack of dawn was heard in their ceiling,
Time had come to abandon their nest.

Mother, in one hand, clutched a tiny bag,
And held his trembling fingers with the other.
Men, women, were all wading through the streets,
They weren’t alone, was all he could gather.

His aunt’s house was another storey, a refuge,
These desperate times had led them to seek.
Their path was tricky, marred by flood,
The rainwater, soon, of their sweat reek.

Blaring horns few days back, now calls for help,
All means to reach out rocked off the grid.
Shelter, food — all rendered too scarce,
The water failed to ebb, but some lives did.

T’was barely the city he knew, the young boy,
Even the old tea stall had been swept away.
They’d walked, nay swam, for hours on end,
“We’re almost there”, his mother did say.

The torrent raged on, only growing in fury,
The deluge threatening to engulf them two.
Some kind hearts with brave hands came forth,
Of their tired feet, now, they had a boat in lieu.

They made it to their aunt’s place, at last,
It’d taken a beating but, yet, in place.
The boy and his mother huddled with the others,
And prayed for the ever-so-elusive sun’s rays.

The storm did abate, but not before it had,
Brought down the city down on its knees.
Walls had come down, but the hearts were stronger,
A lot of good, and some bad, all come to cease.

Days later, the boy, the mother, started anew,
His evenings, he began to playfully spend.
The tyre kept company, so did the stick,
But silently, he missed his good old friend.

The perfect playlist

My mornings bring with them a thirty minute drive to office. Thirty minutes fly by in a breeze if filled with music I like. To ensure that, all I need to do is cull out my favourite songs and create a playlist. Simple.

I thought of doing this over six months ago but still haven't. This unreasonable delay annoyed me no end and I thought of writing about this playlist creator's block two months ago. And it is today that I got to finish the less demanding of these tasks.

Believe me, creating this playlist is important for me. The airplay on radio channels is disappointing at best, and soul-crushingly repetitive at worst. There are four to five songs that have constituted 75% of the music I have heard on these channels in the past two months. However, music is only a very small part of what plays on the radio. Mostly, there is a bevy of builders who want me to buy a house in their complex, and a bee-line of online grocery providers who want to ensure I never need to step out of it. RJs spend most of their time cracking bad jokes, doing impressions or pranking people. Basically, RJ wale babu does everything but play mera gaana.

And it's not like I require a million songs. I drive for roughly an hour a day. Accounting for the fact that I would mostly not listen to the entire song, average song length is ~3 mins. It would suffice to have, say, 3 days' inventory of non-repeating stuff which makes 20 songs/ day X 3 = 60. I'll be extremely indulgent and tailor full size lists for sombre, calm, upbeat, party moods - totalling to 240 (60 X 4) - and replicate these for both English and Hindi racking up 480 songs.

Well, damn, that's quite a bit. But manageable.

The problem, however, put succinctly, is that I want this to be the 'Perfect Playlist'. And a perfect playlist eludes perfectly.

I am the kind of person who will laud the great BB King one minute, and let Britney be my sweet little angel the next. Hold it against me, if you will. November rain reminds me that blue hai paani paani. And my usual retort to 'Don't turn off the lights' is battiyaan bujha do ke neend nahi aati hai. I am usually at a loss when someone asks me what "genre/ kind" of music do I like. I like some songs for their music, some for their poignant lyrics, some for the sheer energy they bring, and a number of them because they remind me of a phase of life gone by.

Add to this the factor of my 'current mood' and making sure the song I would want to listen to at any particular instant is in the playlist becomes nigh impossible. For one, if I were to keep a buffer for those one-off song cravings, I would be exposing myself to the judgement of any co-passenger on the kind of trash that I listen to. Secondly, the existence of a lot of music urges is unknown to you till they actually surface. One would never recall Suchitra Krishnamurthy crooning 'Dole Dole' till one fine day you actually feel like drowning yourself in a bucket full of the 90s. And you have to have the feels to remember why Lobo singing 'I'd love you to want me' appealed so much to you.

Pondering over this makes me realize why gifting someone a mix-tape was such a thing especially in the Hollywood movies from a decade or two back (handing someone a flash drive just doesn't carry that kind of romance, perhaps). Considering how difficult it is to put a finger on one's own choices, it is truly remarkable to have figured out someone else's with even a fair bit of accuracy.

Anyone reading about this quandary might think that the plenty of music apps out there are a fix to this problem. Indeed, to a certain extent. However, the delight of the music player surprising you by playing the song you wanted, almost before you even knew you wanted to listen to it, is unmatched. Technology is magnificently close to bringing out systems like these.

I'll probably be asking for the RJ-like randomness and the human-touch that day. Human nature, innit?

Solving the Khan-undrum

The three Khans of Bollywood - each a superstar in his own right. Each having dominated the industry for so long that despite the rise of, arguably, better acting Khans like Irrfan and the long standing Saifs of the world, the trio doesn't need their first names for identification.

Battle lines have been drawn among the three on numerous occasions with a each of the Khans drawing a rather equal share of accolades and his own fair quota of brickbats. Yet, the question of who's the best of the three Khans has always got both Bollywood pundits and the audiences scratching their heads or each other's faces.

In such cases, I believe that the word of ten people holds more weight than that of one, and that of a hundred even more. So, indeed the opinion of thousands should hold enough weight to lead to some conclusion. Where will I find this, I thought. IMDB. The folks at IMDB have been kind enough to put up an updated copy of their database here - which in its excel form is extremely tough, yet not impossible, to sift through.

After a painstaking few days poring over excel sheets, I found what follows in this post. A lot of it is hardly surprising and merely proves what most of us have already believed. But quoting our flamboyant turbanator Mr. Sidhu (who was probably quoting someone else), "I use statistics like a drunk man uses a lamp-post; for support, not for illumination".

Here's a quick glance of the line-up:

It is tough to find a set at such similar stages of life and career. Let's dive deeper with some very basic metrics.

The ratings table (cleaned up voice-overs & appearances as child-actor)

Salman & SRK have about double the number of movie as compared to Aamir. No surprises there - Mr. Perfectionist has always been more frugal with his role selection. In terms of the number of votes cast, Salman comes as a bit of a surprise (Note: That says quite a bit about the Salman fan base; it is not composed of a largely IMDB visiting populace). On this count, Aamir pulls away with some dazzling numbers: Just the votes on 3 Idiots, Taare Zameen Par, PK and Lagaan are equal to the total votes cast for Salman's 96 movies.

Sometimes less is, indeed, more

Aamir wins hands down on quality of votes as well with the average rating on his movies almost an entire point above that of SRK. The chart on the left should help by drilling down further into their montage of films.

Check out how SRK has done an equal or, perhaps, higher number of well-rated (7 & above) movies than Aamir, However, doing a lot of sub-par (< 5.0) movies hurt him. Salman, of course, went full throttle in that bracket and undid any good work he had managed to dole out. Interestingly, Aamir & Salman's highest rated movie is the same: Andaz Apna Apna (1994) with a rating of 8.8. Salman had to wait over 20 years to deliver another 8-above with Bajrangi Bhaijaan (2015) while Aamir dished out 7 others in the same period to take his total of 8-above's to 9 (Jo Jeeta Wahi Sikander in 1992 was another one)

SRK also has attained the 8-above marker an impressive 8 times. However, our analysis has yet not laid stress on recency: an important factor in an actor's current value. All 8 of SRK's 8-above's came prior to the current decade with 4 of them in the last millenium. Aamir, keeping in mind the niggardly fashion in which he went about his movies, has done better to have all of these but 3 in the 2000s. This cumulative rating average over the years chart should help you picture this fact better.

Cumulative rating over the years shows Aamir's steady rise

But it might be too soon to discount the Bhai fanaticism...
One glance at the ratings table in the beginning of the post tells you Salman garnered the lowest average rating. Yet, the moment you start weighing the average by votes everyone jumps up a rating point. The percentage jump, however, is the highest for Sallu bhai - an indicator that his fans are far more likely to vote when they like a movie than otherwise. This could be called higher fan intensity.

Who is the most versatile (or experimental) of them?

Who would've thought Salman would be the most diverse?

Apart from just the objective rating scores, I felt it was important to see the diversity of movie genres each of the Khans has featured in. Each movie on IMDB is likely to have more than one genre mapped to it. Since, it was nearly impossible to assign priority weights to each genre based on prominence in the movie, I have split weights equally (e.g. if a movie is listed as Comedy, Romance & Drama, that gets counted as 1/3rd of each genre).

Comedy and Romance find a larger place in Salman's portfolio of films than any of the other Khans. Remarkably, the King of romance SRK is lagging both the Khans in % of movies under the 'Romantic' genre. He, however, as expected, takes the cake as far as 'Drama' goes.

Lastly, to get who was the most diverse, I relied on my favourite statistical measure - the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index - taking the percentages in each genre for each individual only to find that Sallu bhai emerges as a winner in this round.

I also chanced upon some exciting tid-bits, a few of which are listed on the left. For the record, Salman has played 'Prem' 12 times so 'Prem - naam to suna hoga' would have been more apt. Also, the only tele-drama all three Khans have made guest appearances in is.. wait for it... Diya aur Baati hum.

I would, of course, not venture a claim to the 'Best' Khan for two reasons: 1) 'Best' is highly subjective and, 2) I have no intent of being lynched by the mob whose favourite I do not consider or get run over by a car.

Nevertheless, this analysis did prove quite a few things:
1) the money a movie/ star makes has absolutely no correlation to its rating,
2) being picky helps in improving quality of work, and
3) you can get data to talk in any way you please!

Such concrete. Much jungle. Wow.

Engaging in conversations with kids, especially the ones in the post Power Rangers and pre- Asimov age range, has never been my forte. Just the other day, placed in a similar situation with my 12 year old nephew, I resorted to the non-polemical "What's happening at school?" question. With a face that, unsurprisingly, did not betray a sense of enthusiasm, he recounted the rather long list of 'home activities' assigned to him - one of which was to write a 500 word description of the 'Road to my house'.

Though our conversation soon drifted to sports and movies, this seemingly unexciting task of describing the road one takes everyday transported me to the sights and sounds that greet me during my half hour drive to office, meandering through the dusty lanes of Gurgaon. No two days are the same - something that prevents any account of the experiences from being exhaustive. Yet, there is one peculiar element that makes its presence felt every single day, with unequivocal non-chalance.

Who can forget the pug that diligently followed his boy-master in those old Hutch ads? And who can forget Babe - the non-conformist, adorable pig? Or pictures of neat, well-fed cows grazing green pastures and lovingly staring out of Social Studies textbooks?

The dogs, the pigs and the cows on the streets of Gurgaon look nothing like them. 

The canine members go about looking ill and lounge about like algae. So much so that, at times, their inactivity in the face of my approaching wheels makes me believe they have a latent suicidal urge. The pigs are quite the boar (homophone joke cue), playfully flaunting their tar-dipped coats. And the cows' stare at you as if you just told them that Chetan Bhagat is your favourite author. To top it all, the number of these creatures on the streets is such that if I had a penny for each of them, I would replace every single one of the characters on Big Bang Theory. They, of course, make up the cream of the 'Gurgaon is safe for..." pack.

The real cattle class has it way easier than Tharoor's

There was a time I wouldn't have had this kind of vitriol, especially not so for pigs. That, however, changed on a fateful Wednesday morning about four months ago. As I was happily driving to work, overdosing on the radio airplay of Arijit Singh songs, and hurling abuses at mindless drivers and pedestrians with my windows conveniently rolled up, I saw a black dot dash across the other end of the road and fling itself into the air. I heard a thud on my front bumper and barely regained my wits to look into the rear view mirror to see a hideous pig shake off the impact and walk off the road. My car's bumper wasn't as fortunate. When I recounted this incident to friends and colleagues later, it amused me that nine on ten responses included the words "Did it die?" and "pork", mostly in the same sentence.

That day, I went back home and played Angry Birds for two straight hours. It was satisfying.

As someone has rightly said, "To driv-err is human, to misgive is swine".

Up the social ladder

Nervous parents queuing outside - some chanting prayers, others biting their fingernails, waiting as their children exit the room in a steady stream. There is a mix of emotions, ranging from the morose to the ecstatic, the deluge of tears to the jubilant dance. Joy. Sorrow. Anger. But most importantly, hope.

Though a sight eerily similar to the one outside any competitive exam in India, this isn't essentially one of those. This time the whole nation is watching. And these kids are competing to become the next big singer/ dancer/ movie star.

Now, I am an unabashed fan of talent shows as simply viewing people pushing themselves, and pushing the limits of human excellence, excites me like nothing else. It is, of course, infinitely mind boggling with kids - confidently facing the heat from the likes of Simon Cowell or bravely facing the train wreck that is whatever Anu Malik says.

Though, it is fascinating to see the passion some of these kids have towards the art they are pursuing, at times, one is led to believe that a large number of them are living the unfulfilled dreams of their parents. It is not uncommon to see kids and parents break down, either on failure or describing how they went through hardships. It is remarkable how the stories of hardships get maximum footage while the display of skill flashes in small spurts. Misery sells. And how.

With their proliferation across the smorgasbord of channels, talent (and game) shows have become the new means for upward social mobility. Academic distinction in certain exams has, since long, been the way to uplift one's social status. This is especially true of developing economies which have tasted the fruits of advancement but suffer from huge disparity within sections of society, separated by intangible yet very rigid boundaries of caste and ancestral wealth. The JEE for admission to the Indian Institutes of Technology was (and to a lesser extent is) one such exam. While the aristocrats in the newly formed India could afford to send their children overseas for higher education, for the teeming middle class, the institutes provided a passport for the new dawn Panditji had promised at the fateful stroke of the midnight hour.

Our not-so-friendly neighbour China has a (surprisingly) far more draconian form called the gaokao. Ghastly images of sleepless, ill-fed aspirants, rummaging through huge tomes, residing in decrepit  buildings have, from time to time, surfaced on the internet. This is after some of the parents have spent their life earnings in getting them the necessary training - offering us a preview of how critical that one selection could be for them and, possible, their generations to come.

These tests are purported to be the greatest leveller. Because, merit is the sole criterion.

Higher education tests in the US, present a significant contrast. While the state has been successful with secondary education, the university system is still dominated by private schools. These private schools increasingly favour candidates who can pay the entire fee for the course. Even the 'well-rounded' standardised tests with their emphasis on vocabulary and writing inherently carry a bias for a upper class upbringing. Standardization of tests, as is largely seen in systems like that of the US, promotes an inherent bias in testing.

It is fascinating to see how societies evolve. How the privileged become the privileged, then erect barriers for outsiders, and how the oppressed find newer means of breaking through the glass ceiling and challenge the status quo again. 

Education and talent will always remain powerful tools for the ones left behind to break from the accepted social order. The interplay of classes and the struggle to rise up the echelons will continue to occur till human stupidity ensures the annihilation of the entire race.