Wednesday, August 05, 2009
The Tale of the Tail
Siddharth Mukund Srivastava: "here I am as i promised to my sis. clean shaven , short hair. bye bye long locks & beard, my look for the last more than 3 years. more to come".
That's a lot, just to begin with. These 3 years your facial hair has a made an epic journey. From the plush office in Gurgaon to the lush grounds of IMT - nobody would agree more on the issue of the merit of your tail. From 5 pointer to a gold medalist your tail and the beard have given you unrelenting support in pressing times.
I am sure Dr. Sahay would have fancied a pony tail and given up the thought; wary of competing with Ms Sahay.
SMS, I would have wanted no lesser than the President himself to decorated your pony tail. It was such an honor and delgiht to see your longing locks sprout into a small semi-formed TIP (tail-in-progress) and see the tail-ling support you through the ordeals of siphoning off GBs of trivia and fascinate the crowds across the quizzerias of the country.
Often people would exclaim "How", some in joy and others in dismay, but their contention being same "What is the inspiration behind this winning bout?"
But off-course how would they understand the ordeal you suffered to nurture the tail of yours. The many absented classes nurturing your tail with the enough sleep. The many apples to strength and lustre. The amount of talking to exercise the locks.
People its time, stop worrying about the CGPA and start worrying about the tail. SMS lead the path, here's the wishing for another epic journey, I would pledge a biography to this cause - "The tale of the tail"
That's a lot, just to begin with. These 3 years your facial hair has a made an epic journey. From the plush office in Gurgaon to the lush grounds of IMT - nobody would agree more on the issue of the merit of your tail. From 5 pointer to a gold medalist your tail and the beard have given you unrelenting support in pressing times.
I am sure Dr. Sahay would have fancied a pony tail and given up the thought; wary of competing with Ms Sahay.
SMS, I would have wanted no lesser than the President himself to decorated your pony tail. It was such an honor and delgiht to see your longing locks sprout into a small semi-formed TIP (tail-in-progress) and see the tail-ling support you through the ordeals of siphoning off GBs of trivia and fascinate the crowds across the quizzerias of the country.
Often people would exclaim "How", some in joy and others in dismay, but their contention being same "What is the inspiration behind this winning bout?"
But off-course how would they understand the ordeal you suffered to nurture the tail of yours. The many absented classes nurturing your tail with the enough sleep. The many apples to strength and lustre. The amount of talking to exercise the locks.
People its time, stop worrying about the CGPA and start worrying about the tail. SMS lead the path, here's the wishing for another epic journey, I would pledge a biography to this cause - "The tale of the tail"
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
The Science that doesn’t make rockets.
The Science that doesn’t make rockets.
“Finance is not rocket science!!” like a great many of his milieu proclaimed our finance professor, wearing a half mocking expression that was fully humbling.
The statement sounded like a reckoning than a requiem to my reverie, having married the greater ideal of making money over making rockets. Rockets just seem to have a way of coming back to me.
On the face of it the statement sounds incredibly innocuous; only that it took me time to figure out why those words haunted me.
For the starters the statement implies that the study of finance is much simpler than the study of rockets. To my belief it is just a way of saying that the more modern subjects are more complicated than those which are relatively, let us say ancient. You might as well be happy with the usage of “Finance is not nuclear science”.
The inferential meaning of the statement made while lecturing to a bunch of graduates undergoing a two year course that has come to be the gold standard of the first decade of the new millennium is that finance is much older and less complicated than rocket science, hence easier to do with.
Before I proceed with the very intentional and flamboyant autopsy, allow me to pull that ancient piece of metal out, it is called Occam’s Razor1, nobody talks of it much these days, like ‘Galileo’s projectiles’, we use it all the time though.
Let me struggle with the ‘older’ of the qualifications first. ‘Older subjects are easier to master and use’. It is not entirely wrong, whether or not you study thermodynamics, you know that exposure to excess heat causes pain and whether or not you know Newton’s laws, you know that excess impulse-like a slap- causes pain too. Mankind has had its way with these long before path breaking treatises of Joule and Newton.
Now lets put the razor to its purpose.
A man exchanges what he has more of to those that he has little of and money makes the exchange simpler for him (if the statement seems awkward you can blame the twenty sessions of power packed enlightenment of the second term: Economics).
This certainly is an ancient proposition, and finance per se is about ways and means of making money. ‘Making money’ I say, as I find no other reason a rational one (yes, the rational man of classical economics2) would study it.
So, shouldn’t the ancient and demonstrably simple finance make us, by default, wise enough to make money? Then why does my bank account say that I am indebted to the bank for the loan I raised to pay the fee? For the purpose of knowing that ‘finance is not rocket science’?
I am reminded of Robert Pirsig’s3 mention of the mock horror of the scientists’ when they discovered that Platypus laid eggs when zoology had clearly classified it as a mammal.
“Contradictions do not exist. Check your premises”, says the protagonist of Ayn Rand’s famed work The Atlas Shrugged. I am tempted to.
Premise: The age of an objective belief alone is a sufficient proof of its universality.
The longer a perception is tested, the stronger it becomes. The oftener it occurs it tends to become an objective belief.
It therefore proceeds that the age of an objective belief is a proof of its universality; at that the more aged beliefs are the simplest. Like the fact that regardless of one's knowledge of thermodynamics human beings know that exposure to excess heat causes pain.
A subject is a collective of objective beliefs.
Finance is an aged subject too. People across the ages regardless of qualifications like M.B.A., have made money. Therefore, it should proceed too that finance is universal and every human being, by default, knows how to make money, like the way one knows that excess momentum-like a slap-causes pain. Like how I should not be having a negative balance at the bank.
I have a feeling that I have arrived at the premise that caused me the trouble of having a negative bank balance; the age of an objective belief alone is not the criteria for its universality.
Then what is/are the other criteria?
I could safely bet my two cents on consistency. Then the obvious riposte is that finance is consistent as people have consistently made money. Only, the trouble is that they have lost it consistently too. Why else does Forbes sell, if the list of the fortune companies did not change?
Allow me to offer an equivalent of finance being consistent while people make and lose money consistently, only this time with momentum.
Universally true is the fact that impact of the excess momentum causes pain to a normal human being and as such most of us would choose to avoid it, this is consistent.
If the impact of the excess momentum, for instance getting impaled by a lance in medieval jousting, causes pain and pleasure at different times then any normal human being would wear the armor to avoid the pain from an impact and the same person would not do so at another time, to feel the pleasure. In such case the above mentioned universal truth should be incorrect, which is absurd. (reductio ad absurdum).
The second of the qualifications is that finance is less complicated than rocket science, for this I would borrow some from what academician author Emanuel Derman4, said in Oct 2005 HBR5 issue, with regards to a slightly different yet related field of Economics.
“When people build models to value securities, they make all sorts of imaginative assumptions that are then formulated mathematically. For example, quantitative strategists at investment banks or hedge funds value currently fashionable collateralized default obligations (which provide default insurance on baskets of large number of bonds) by assuming that each bond-issuing company is represented by an imaginary variable. That variable evolves randomly through time-like smoke diffusing across a room- until it crosses an imaginary default boundary in the future, at which point the company will default on all of its debt. It's an elegant mental construct and not an unreasonable way to model the random chance of a company doing badly enough to default. But it's not literally true. It’s still a model, a toy, a limited picture- despite the fancy mathematics. No wonder the picture often breaks down and causes havoc, as happened in credit markets last may.”
One might be tempted to question. Don’t rockets wreck things, then how is havoc in markets more complicated than exploding rockets?
Off course rockets do, like the faulty booster rocket of the tragic Challenger, but even in the case of Challenger there is a pattern that pins the causes of the accident to human negligence which the all venerable senate investigation called “poor quality of decisions”. Engineers do analyze certain scenarios under which a rocket can explode but rarely so ‘imaginary’.
In my limited understanding it’s the nature of the assumptions which makes finance at least equally complicated if not more.
So the next time someone tells you that something like finance is not rocket science, you need not necessarily counter him, nevertheless you could check his premises.
As for me I am waiting to see what pleasure or pain ensues.
Until an enlightened being corrects the fallacy (if any) in my autopsy, the right way to put things would be “Finance doesn’t make rockets” than “Finance is not rocket science”.
1 Occam’s razor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam
2 Rational Man: A man who attempts to maximize his satisfaction in all given situations with a minimal effort expended. (For more elaborate treatment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_economicus)
3 Robert M. Pirsig’s work “Lila: An enquiry into morals”, pg no. 116.
4 Emanuel Derman: director of financial engineering program at Columbia University.
5 Beware of Economists with Greek symbols, HRB October 2005.
“Finance is not rocket science!!” like a great many of his milieu proclaimed our finance professor, wearing a half mocking expression that was fully humbling.
The statement sounded like a reckoning than a requiem to my reverie, having married the greater ideal of making money over making rockets. Rockets just seem to have a way of coming back to me.
On the face of it the statement sounds incredibly innocuous; only that it took me time to figure out why those words haunted me.
For the starters the statement implies that the study of finance is much simpler than the study of rockets. To my belief it is just a way of saying that the more modern subjects are more complicated than those which are relatively, let us say ancient. You might as well be happy with the usage of “Finance is not nuclear science”.
The inferential meaning of the statement made while lecturing to a bunch of graduates undergoing a two year course that has come to be the gold standard of the first decade of the new millennium is that finance is much older and less complicated than rocket science, hence easier to do with.
Before I proceed with the very intentional and flamboyant autopsy, allow me to pull that ancient piece of metal out, it is called Occam’s Razor1, nobody talks of it much these days, like ‘Galileo’s projectiles’, we use it all the time though.
Let me struggle with the ‘older’ of the qualifications first. ‘Older subjects are easier to master and use’. It is not entirely wrong, whether or not you study thermodynamics, you know that exposure to excess heat causes pain and whether or not you know Newton’s laws, you know that excess impulse-like a slap- causes pain too. Mankind has had its way with these long before path breaking treatises of Joule and Newton.
Now lets put the razor to its purpose.
A man exchanges what he has more of to those that he has little of and money makes the exchange simpler for him (if the statement seems awkward you can blame the twenty sessions of power packed enlightenment of the second term: Economics).
This certainly is an ancient proposition, and finance per se is about ways and means of making money. ‘Making money’ I say, as I find no other reason a rational one (yes, the rational man of classical economics2) would study it.
So, shouldn’t the ancient and demonstrably simple finance make us, by default, wise enough to make money? Then why does my bank account say that I am indebted to the bank for the loan I raised to pay the fee? For the purpose of knowing that ‘finance is not rocket science’?
I am reminded of Robert Pirsig’s3 mention of the mock horror of the scientists’ when they discovered that Platypus laid eggs when zoology had clearly classified it as a mammal.
“Contradictions do not exist. Check your premises”, says the protagonist of Ayn Rand’s famed work The Atlas Shrugged. I am tempted to.
Premise: The age of an objective belief alone is a sufficient proof of its universality.
The longer a perception is tested, the stronger it becomes. The oftener it occurs it tends to become an objective belief.
It therefore proceeds that the age of an objective belief is a proof of its universality; at that the more aged beliefs are the simplest. Like the fact that regardless of one's knowledge of thermodynamics human beings know that exposure to excess heat causes pain.
A subject is a collective of objective beliefs.
Finance is an aged subject too. People across the ages regardless of qualifications like M.B.A., have made money. Therefore, it should proceed too that finance is universal and every human being, by default, knows how to make money, like the way one knows that excess momentum-like a slap-causes pain. Like how I should not be having a negative balance at the bank.
I have a feeling that I have arrived at the premise that caused me the trouble of having a negative bank balance; the age of an objective belief alone is not the criteria for its universality.
Then what is/are the other criteria?
I could safely bet my two cents on consistency. Then the obvious riposte is that finance is consistent as people have consistently made money. Only, the trouble is that they have lost it consistently too. Why else does Forbes sell, if the list of the fortune companies did not change?
Allow me to offer an equivalent of finance being consistent while people make and lose money consistently, only this time with momentum.
Universally true is the fact that impact of the excess momentum causes pain to a normal human being and as such most of us would choose to avoid it, this is consistent.
If the impact of the excess momentum, for instance getting impaled by a lance in medieval jousting, causes pain and pleasure at different times then any normal human being would wear the armor to avoid the pain from an impact and the same person would not do so at another time, to feel the pleasure. In such case the above mentioned universal truth should be incorrect, which is absurd. (reductio ad absurdum).
The second of the qualifications is that finance is less complicated than rocket science, for this I would borrow some from what academician author Emanuel Derman4, said in Oct 2005 HBR5 issue, with regards to a slightly different yet related field of Economics.
“When people build models to value securities, they make all sorts of imaginative assumptions that are then formulated mathematically. For example, quantitative strategists at investment banks or hedge funds value currently fashionable collateralized default obligations (which provide default insurance on baskets of large number of bonds) by assuming that each bond-issuing company is represented by an imaginary variable. That variable evolves randomly through time-like smoke diffusing across a room- until it crosses an imaginary default boundary in the future, at which point the company will default on all of its debt. It's an elegant mental construct and not an unreasonable way to model the random chance of a company doing badly enough to default. But it's not literally true. It’s still a model, a toy, a limited picture- despite the fancy mathematics. No wonder the picture often breaks down and causes havoc, as happened in credit markets last may.”
One might be tempted to question. Don’t rockets wreck things, then how is havoc in markets more complicated than exploding rockets?
Off course rockets do, like the faulty booster rocket of the tragic Challenger, but even in the case of Challenger there is a pattern that pins the causes of the accident to human negligence which the all venerable senate investigation called “poor quality of decisions”. Engineers do analyze certain scenarios under which a rocket can explode but rarely so ‘imaginary’.
In my limited understanding it’s the nature of the assumptions which makes finance at least equally complicated if not more.
So the next time someone tells you that something like finance is not rocket science, you need not necessarily counter him, nevertheless you could check his premises.
As for me I am waiting to see what pleasure or pain ensues.
Until an enlightened being corrects the fallacy (if any) in my autopsy, the right way to put things would be “Finance doesn’t make rockets” than “Finance is not rocket science”.
1 Occam’s razor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam
2 Rational Man: A man who attempts to maximize his satisfaction in all given situations with a minimal effort expended. (For more elaborate treatment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_economicus)
3 Robert M. Pirsig’s work “Lila: An enquiry into morals”, pg no. 116.
4 Emanuel Derman: director of financial engineering program at Columbia University.
5 Beware of Economists with Greek symbols, HRB October 2005.
Saturday, December 23, 2006
An ode to Bagaria
What is due on my part is more than a volume of anecdotes, descriptions of personalities whom I have ran into or come across (since my last post), the endless travails of the rushing days, the listless moments of sleepless nights, scattered gems of ecstasy in the slimy earth of toil, and I hope I can do justice in parts without running the risk of a caveat.
Bagaria, one of the few endearing souls on the campus, 'wits, guts and musings', thats how I would fix him in a phrase. My tryst in life with him is to fight the poet in him, but one can’t fight a poet with logical swords and if one does, the person would be running the risk of being accused as a victim of historical fault lines of rationality and duality.
Having a guess of the nature of the risks I run in facing the poetic devil in Bagaria, I chose to fight the apparition in its own medium of rhymes and lo !!, poetry became the victim of my menial manifestations.
Like the serpent defiant
curls the winter truant
with the misty trails rises its hood
plunging folks into glaucous brood
And swallowing days with fewer yards
in the hours of twilight settle the bards
with the hour rises the phoenix bright
the citadel ancient's darling delight
Echoing in the now empty hall
of the times past in the order tall
drift a few notes hither of the melody
as testimonials of the ruins and rhapsody
An orphan, by it pass many a glance
like an orphan warmth comes only by chance
phoenix though it is, nurse the melody
lest, it be claimed by divine comedy
Wake up thy bard
dreamt you have of prosody hard
curled by serpent, the phoenix is mime
its time for the poet to rhyme
Ahem, now don’t you go mistaking me for an enemy of his, I am merely the magnetic south of his poetic north. Some of the most wonderful moments in the last six months have come about in the company of ‘Bagz’ (that’s how he is infamous), Mathew, Deepak, Rohit Gupta, Sagarneel and Lokesh (more testimonials to follow in time).
A testimonial is only like a snapshot, it captures a person in a frame of reference, and with enough time all frames pass out of reference and no testimonial can stand that test, what remains however is the essence a testimonial tries to capture, the spirit of being and the fear or the lack for the nothingness, as for Dada (and I am the ‘juggy’) I see the spirit shadowing the fear, and may that be so.
Sunday, May 07, 2006
Ramblings of a 24 year old on the eve of a friends wedding.
It was not very hot for a mid-summer day in hyderabad but the dining hall was located in the cellar of the building and the pantry was in the adjoining rooms, the banquet was sumptuous but my appetite was jaded for reasons I could not fully appreciate, perhaps seeing Sudheer in formals could be one of it, 'SUDHEER IN FORMALS'? how did it come about to be?
It is not always the easiest of the things to speak about friendships, even when spoken about, one can never so fully convey what it is to be 'comrades in arms' not that we were particularly socialistic but then it was a brotherhood of sorts, urban nomads who despised urbanity; things ought be coarse, 'OUGHT TO BE', like the bluntness of logic, like the jaggedness of truth.
Through thick and thin,
through rum and gin,
through the misty clouds of filtered tips,
through the twisted roads of 'ifs' and 'buts' ,
the motley band lived as any brothers did,
the brotherhood survived as any covenant did,
and now the road that has brought us thus far is showing signs of change ,
and now the paths that ran the length of a decade no longer engage.
Let me walk myself out of the mist and clouds, its time to face the path of deeds ahead, my best friend Sudheer got married, I was attending the reception and the motley old group was assembled too, the file has thinned though, to paraphrase Theoden king "days in the 'East' have gone down".
How did it come to this?
Some were lost to the lust of oppurtunity,
some were lost to vanity of a higher study (yes I too fell for it).
A decade is often a bit too long especially if you had had lived fewer years before facing it, thats how old the brotherhood is or perhaps a little older, by the time I was sworn in the band was mere three, Ravi, Sudheer and offcourse who else? and settings of our meeting was special coaching center for IIT-jee aspirants , soon sagely Ajay was sworn in too , Ajay had seen a bit too much of life at too small an age, he was in navodaya(rajahmundry) and 'emmigrated' to 'bihar' under the 'national integration' program and true to its nature 'the jungle' had rewarded his penance with the temperment of a stoic and the guise of a sage. Ajay and Ravi went to IIT bombay in 98, why bombay? no one knew, perhaps because the life at bombay is socially and economically more evolved from that of hyderabad, the city of the proletariat and the citadel of the oligarchs; oppurtunities unbound. Sudheer joined IIT-B the next year , before that the brotherhood had swelled, sandeep , rakesh , raghavendra, mahesh, srinath and others had doffed their hats and drunk to everyone's health.
Vinay and Pavan joined Sudheer in IIT-B, a few more doffs and cheers, the technology that he was supposed to learn which was Aerospace did not enchant him so much to rocket him off to US, and no sooner than he came back from Powai, the brotherhood was re-convened and new technologies were brought to light, there was thrust (read kick) and then there was fog too, I became his first and the most diligent apprentice just short of being knighted as 'Sir Jaggers', for the sharpness, with which I mastered the new 'kick and fog' technology that was brought to 'light'.
Now sitting under the glare of decoration lamps its hard to comprehend that life claimed Sudheer so soon, good for him and good for sirisha , I wish the newly weds a happy and wonderful married life.
However, I am still a bit unsettled, a decade is too long to wear off from one's nerves so soon, for has it not been that we travelled those twisted paths too
often and too long and have come out much the same , Sudheer a bit richer though, I agree, but then the contours had unmistakable signs of similarity.
Could it be ? Has it come to claim me too, have my good days been numbered too? For a while now I could notice it in the corner of my eye but it would not fall into my gaze, now while I sit under the wedding lamps longing for the company of the lost comrades and brothers in arms, it reveals itselft to me, the djinn is no different than I am just that it is a more aged version of me but is filled with a fear of loss. The writing on the wall is clear, to paraphrase Theoden King again "the days have gone down in the 'east' and the days of the brotherhood are numbered.
It was the time to bid the couple a farewell and go back to a life without the prospect of a brotherhood and I was getting ready to it, but at that moment
something happened the bridegroom stood and took of his coat looked around for a breif moment and ran towards us, this was a piece of devilry I had not imagined of, was I not lamenting about the 'demise of the brotherhood of kick and fog' ? We were in a fit of laughter when he yanked us out of the chairs and we walked out into the open , amid the roar of laughter up went the holy smoke (pheeeeeeeeewwww) and he told to us "Its been 12 hours can you beleive it?" , I could beleive anything at that moment , it is never hopeless, there will always be hope, 'the brotherhood of kick and fog' lives.
It was not very hot for a mid-summer day in hyderabad but the dining hall was located in the cellar of the building and the pantry was in the adjoining rooms, the banquet was sumptuous but my appetite was jaded for reasons I could not fully appreciate, perhaps seeing Sudheer in formals could be one of it, 'SUDHEER IN FORMALS'? how did it come about to be?
It is not always the easiest of the things to speak about friendships, even when spoken about, one can never so fully convey what it is to be 'comrades in arms' not that we were particularly socialistic but then it was a brotherhood of sorts, urban nomads who despised urbanity; things ought be coarse, 'OUGHT TO BE', like the bluntness of logic, like the jaggedness of truth.
Through thick and thin,
through rum and gin,
through the misty clouds of filtered tips,
through the twisted roads of 'ifs' and 'buts' ,
the motley band lived as any brothers did,
the brotherhood survived as any covenant did,
and now the road that has brought us thus far is showing signs of change ,
and now the paths that ran the length of a decade no longer engage.
Let me walk myself out of the mist and clouds, its time to face the path of deeds ahead, my best friend Sudheer got married, I was attending the reception and the motley old group was assembled too, the file has thinned though, to paraphrase Theoden king "days in the 'East' have gone down".
How did it come to this?
Some were lost to the lust of oppurtunity,
some were lost to vanity of a higher study (yes I too fell for it).
A decade is often a bit too long especially if you had had lived fewer years before facing it, thats how old the brotherhood is or perhaps a little older, by the time I was sworn in the band was mere three, Ravi, Sudheer and offcourse who else? and settings of our meeting was special coaching center for IIT-jee aspirants , soon sagely Ajay was sworn in too , Ajay had seen a bit too much of life at too small an age, he was in navodaya(rajahmundry) and 'emmigrated' to 'bihar' under the 'national integration' program and true to its nature 'the jungle' had rewarded his penance with the temperment of a stoic and the guise of a sage. Ajay and Ravi went to IIT bombay in 98, why bombay? no one knew, perhaps because the life at bombay is socially and economically more evolved from that of hyderabad, the city of the proletariat and the citadel of the oligarchs; oppurtunities unbound. Sudheer joined IIT-B the next year , before that the brotherhood had swelled, sandeep , rakesh , raghavendra, mahesh, srinath and others had doffed their hats and drunk to everyone's health.
Vinay and Pavan joined Sudheer in IIT-B, a few more doffs and cheers, the technology that he was supposed to learn which was Aerospace did not enchant him so much to rocket him off to US, and no sooner than he came back from Powai, the brotherhood was re-convened and new technologies were brought to light, there was thrust (read kick) and then there was fog too, I became his first and the most diligent apprentice just short of being knighted as 'Sir Jaggers', for the sharpness, with which I mastered the new 'kick and fog' technology that was brought to 'light'.
Now sitting under the glare of decoration lamps its hard to comprehend that life claimed Sudheer so soon, good for him and good for sirisha , I wish the newly weds a happy and wonderful married life.
However, I am still a bit unsettled, a decade is too long to wear off from one's nerves so soon, for has it not been that we travelled those twisted paths too
often and too long and have come out much the same , Sudheer a bit richer though, I agree, but then the contours had unmistakable signs of similarity.
Could it be ? Has it come to claim me too, have my good days been numbered too? For a while now I could notice it in the corner of my eye but it would not fall into my gaze, now while I sit under the wedding lamps longing for the company of the lost comrades and brothers in arms, it reveals itselft to me, the djinn is no different than I am just that it is a more aged version of me but is filled with a fear of loss. The writing on the wall is clear, to paraphrase Theoden King again "the days have gone down in the 'east' and the days of the brotherhood are numbered.
It was the time to bid the couple a farewell and go back to a life without the prospect of a brotherhood and I was getting ready to it, but at that moment
something happened the bridegroom stood and took of his coat looked around for a breif moment and ran towards us, this was a piece of devilry I had not imagined of, was I not lamenting about the 'demise of the brotherhood of kick and fog' ? We were in a fit of laughter when he yanked us out of the chairs and we walked out into the open , amid the roar of laughter up went the holy smoke (pheeeeeeeeewwww) and he told to us "Its been 12 hours can you beleive it?" , I could beleive anything at that moment , it is never hopeless, there will always be hope, 'the brotherhood of kick and fog' lives.
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
How bad is the ad?
"I am on no one's side because no one is on my side" - Treebeard , LOTR
Of the million things that zoom past us in the day to day life, the ones that matter most to us are those which have a bearing upon us, once in a while a few things interest us which are removed from our immediate considerations, they entertain us with latent humor or hurt us, perhaps un-intentionally.
The case in point is the "Hari-Sadu" ad. To an extent I appreciate the ad, like everyone I value good humor too, however we live in a "media proliferated" world, wherein a media event takes a lot lesser amount of time to get circulated than what the society takes to, assimilate the resulting hyperbolic implications.
For instance the ad by naukri.com and the boy whose name was 'hari' , the boy would have watched it like everyone, may have even had a hearty laugh but when goes back to the school the next day something odd hits him; he is being slotted into the vile character "Hari-Sadu" because he shares a part of that name, soon this becomes a means to take a dig at the boy on and off and he is an instant hit as sitting duck in the school and amongst his classmates.
While all of this is not a matter national security it still needs to be handled with care for there is no reason why a school going student should bear the brunt of a creative stunt pulled out by an ad-maker to cash in a few extra dollars. Here is situation where someone is profiting by a process while some other person is suffering as consequences of the same process, will that not be immoral?
This ad is like one of those stones flung into the sky to prove one's skill and creative abilities but every stone that goes up does come down, and the stone could hit anyone, perhaps a dear one or a family member, should we ignore the pain the stone would cause when it hits because the stone was well crafted and glossy or the throw was skilled and professional?
I am not of the view that such ads be stopped but I am certainly of the view that the ad-makers should be more sensitive with regards to social implications their creative works pose.
Having said that I have only come half way through, the other half lies in members of the society appreciating the media in a less sensational way and as a matter of fact. We take the media a lot more keenly and sometimes get carried away in the orb of sensationalism, the lesson is to observe restraint and not to be effected at a personal level. The boy who filed the notice should have gotten more support from the family members in taking a more mature stance.
"I am on no one's side because no one is on my side" - Treebeard , LOTR
Of the million things that zoom past us in the day to day life, the ones that matter most to us are those which have a bearing upon us, once in a while a few things interest us which are removed from our immediate considerations, they entertain us with latent humor or hurt us, perhaps un-intentionally.
The case in point is the "Hari-Sadu" ad. To an extent I appreciate the ad, like everyone I value good humor too, however we live in a "media proliferated" world, wherein a media event takes a lot lesser amount of time to get circulated than what the society takes to, assimilate the resulting hyperbolic implications.
For instance the ad by naukri.com and the boy whose name was 'hari' , the boy would have watched it like everyone, may have even had a hearty laugh but when goes back to the school the next day something odd hits him; he is being slotted into the vile character "Hari-Sadu" because he shares a part of that name, soon this becomes a means to take a dig at the boy on and off and he is an instant hit as sitting duck in the school and amongst his classmates.
While all of this is not a matter national security it still needs to be handled with care for there is no reason why a school going student should bear the brunt of a creative stunt pulled out by an ad-maker to cash in a few extra dollars. Here is situation where someone is profiting by a process while some other person is suffering as consequences of the same process, will that not be immoral?
This ad is like one of those stones flung into the sky to prove one's skill and creative abilities but every stone that goes up does come down, and the stone could hit anyone, perhaps a dear one or a family member, should we ignore the pain the stone would cause when it hits because the stone was well crafted and glossy or the throw was skilled and professional?
I am not of the view that such ads be stopped but I am certainly of the view that the ad-makers should be more sensitive with regards to social implications their creative works pose.
Having said that I have only come half way through, the other half lies in members of the society appreciating the media in a less sensational way and as a matter of fact. We take the media a lot more keenly and sometimes get carried away in the orb of sensationalism, the lesson is to observe restraint and not to be effected at a personal level. The boy who filed the notice should have gotten more support from the family members in taking a more mature stance.
