Spot fixing antics of Sreesanth et al  have quickly escalated into a national media circus (no surprise there). The affair has led to mysterious whispers of “more heads will roll” and “there is much more to come,” and apparently causing widespread panic among the citizens of this great nation. As Mr. Ramakrishna Iyer, avid cricket fan, Hindu newspaper reader and senior citizen from Chennai bemoaned, “It’s hard to fathom how deep this thing goes. It looks like about 30 to 40 percent of the country might be involved. So I voluntarily called Delhi Police to check if they think I might have been involved without my knowing. I am now seriously worried because they have refused to rule out my role in this matter. I am at my wits end. I plan to shoot off a barrage of letters to the editor of the Hindu. What else can I do?”

Responding to this surge of anxiety among cricket lovers around the country, What Ho! has issued a booklet in public interest, which can help an average citizen figure out if she may be involved in spot fixing. While answers to questions such as ‘Are you a bookie?’ or ‘Is your name Sreesanth?’ might easily confirm culpability in spot fixing, the following additional questions might help general members of public ascertain the extent of their involvement.

Hint: The more ‘Y’s you come up, the more likely are your chances of a hot date with the Delhi Police.

1. Have you ever met Dawood Ibrahim and/or have exchanged emails with him on who might win IPL this year?
2. Do you send hundreds of whatsapp messages to bookies?
3. Have you appeared on national TV any time in the past 12 months and made unnecessary and wild statements about being slapped by a disgruntled off spinner who was once called for chucking?
4. Have you ever done anything to upset BCCI or Mr. N. Srinivasan at any point in your petty little life?
5. Are you an unknown fast bowler with an inadequate bank balance, tremendous love for the game and passionate about bowling no balls off the last ball of a match?
6. Do you use the phrase, “I trusted him like a brother. See what he did to me?” often?
7. Do you spend a lot of time watching IPL matches while suspecting that match fixing may be rampant?

In other news

Mr. Sushil Kumar Shinde lauded the efforts of Delhi Police saying, “We believe that nabbing Sreesanth and his sorry cohorts is a critical first step towards the eventual capture and trial of Hafeez Saeed.” In the meanwhile, D-company based out of Dubai issued a warning to investors that they will likely miss earnings estimates this IPL season. A spokesperson commented tersely, “With Sreesanth’s arrest, the cost of buying IPL players has gone through the roof. It’s unlikely we’ll meet street expectations this season.”

On May 22, 2013, the UPA plans to commemorate the ninth anniversary of Mr. Manmohan Singh pretending to be the Prime Minister of the country. To mark the date, Mr. Singh has vowed to launch a full blown inquiry, led by a Special Investigation Team, aimed at finding out who’s running the government that he is supposed to be in charge of.

The What Ho! Report brings you headlines, baseless rumors and no news whatsoever. We read Times of India so you shouldn’t have to.

Life is uncertain. As we grow, we learn that stories don’t always have happy endings. We see that poems don’t always rhyme. We are distressed to see that good does not always win over the bad. We find that truth is not always dressed in black or white. We begin to see shades of grey and so we adjust our sensibilities and beliefs. We sense degrees of uncertainty in events that transpire around us. We become uncomfortable and so we embark on a quest to seize control.

In the quest, we try to force happy endings onto tales that cannot be salvaged. We don’t notice or even deride beauty when it does not conform to our sensibilities. We look for patterns amid the disorder and we interpret them in a manner as to reinforce our biases. We mix effects with causes. We try to re-order chaos to make our lives more predictable. We constantly intervene. Sometimes we succeed. That makes us happy. Sometimes we fail. That makes us miserable. So we go on.

There are two fundamental problems with the way we view uncertainty.

1. Our brains are not wired to comprehend uncertainty.
2. There is nothing you can do about uncertainty.

The wiring of our brains

The first problem has to do with the way our brains have evolved. In biological terms, evolution is a process which promotes certain traits disproportionately to others. Human evolution, it appears, has promoted the ability to leap to conclusions over the ability to make carefully thought out analytical decisions. This explains why a fast thinking college quarterback or dashing batsman is more popular than a slow thinking chess club geek.

Example: Imagine (a 100,000 years ago) a cave man running into a saber toothed tiger on one of his daily hunts. As you’d imagine, his choices were to either fight or flee. If you think about it, he also had the option of whipping out his NCERT designed maths text book and calculating the odds of an average 20 year old Homo Sapiens male becoming fodder for a wild canine. It turns out that (not surprisingly) that evolution rewarded those who leaped to the swift and plausible conclusion that flight was the prudent course of action. Those paused to analyze and failed to take quick action were weeded out. Thanks to the momentum of evolution, this tendency to leap to quick conclusions persists to this day even in the absence of the threat of encountering sharp toothed felines on daily morning walks.

This is how our brains came to be wired. We are not good at understanding the concepts of chance and probability. Our brains don’t naturally construct normal distributions and assign confidence levels for events. At least, not in normal course of action. If you think back about the struggles with probability and statistics courses in school and college, I’m sure you’d agree.

What can we do about uncertainty?

The first coping mechanism was a belief in an entity called God, who is all-knowing and orchestrates the events of our lives. Pretty soon, salesmen claimed privileged access to God and added extraordinary tales of His powers and especially about His ruthlessness when it came to dealing with disbelievers. These middlemen are possibly ones who understood the nature of uncertainty (that you could do nothing about it) better than most, and exploited this arbitrage to their benefit.

And then came scientific determinism in Europe more than a thousand years after Aristotle spoke of it. Science began explaining events which would normally be interpreted as acts of God. Science began explaining nature in ways that undermined religious middlemen. Scientists began curing people. They made people fly in the skies. They explained why the planets moved the way they did and why stars twinkled. The moon was not made of cheese, they said. Scientists began displaying powers normally attributable to Gods. And it is possible that scientists began believing that they were Gods themselves.

Something happened in 1927 which rocked the world of science. The scientific community which comprised confident men and women who believed that someday they would explain (and thus control) EVERYTHING were told that the creation was not as explainable and controllable as they believed it to be. They were told that, at the subterranean depths of nature where particles smaller than atoms exist, there was great uncertainty. Quantum mechanics described the fundamental aspect of nature as probabilistic (one of many possible outcomes) and not deterministic (a cause leads to a predictable effect) as Newton and Einstein had led them to believe. Wisp like particles with no mass interact in unpredictable ways to produce blocks called atoms and molecules which in turn combine to produce concrete things with mass (like babies, stars, flowers, bees, chairs, etc) which then interact with each other according to deterministic laws, thus creating an illusion of an orderly creation. Some like Einstein never came to terms with this notion of uncertainty. “God,” he complained, “does not play dice with the universe.”

In other words, if you were given a 300 qubit quantum computer capable of processing every single microscopic piece of data from the beginning of time and then were somehow able to construct a model that explained EVERYTHING till date, you would still not be able to predict what would happen the very next nanosecond because even nature does not know what she is going to do next.

To say that the only thing certain about uncertainty is that you can do nothing about it is a conundrum unto itself.

The beauty in uncertainty

Whether you choose to confide in God about your deepest hopes and fears, or to place your faith in text books and armies of scientists who toil unsung in far away laboratories, or to unconditionally embrace the uncertainty in this creation is your decision. However, there is something to be said about the beauty inherent in uncertainty. This beauty becomes pronounced and magical when we view it from a position that is separated from the self.

Happiness comes from simply listening to the music and swaying with your eyes closed without having to torment yourself about why and how the notes came to be composed. The greatest of joys sometimes does not always come from knowledge or discovery. It comes from the simple act of surrendering to the experience.

I’d like to share something that I’d written a while back as my little ‘ommage to the master of humor, PG Wodehouse himself.

This is a re-telling of a story from Mahabharat, about Pitamaha Bhishma and my conjecture of how he came to take a terrible oath of celibacy. The tale is written in an irreverent Wodehousian style and might seem a tad too irreverent to some. My apologies if this offends you, though I do sincerely believe that it will not offend. I count myself among the many admirers of Devavrata who was renowned for his sagacity and resolve.

Two days back, I had posted Part 1 of the tale with the intent to post the remaining 4 parts over the next few days. Clearly, I hadn’t thought this through. A few wrote to me saying that a week was too long to wait for the rest of the story to unfold, and breaking it up into pieces was disruptive to the reading experience. So, I have published the entire version here on What Ho! in one place, so you can do what you deem fit – either read it all in one go or bookmark and read it when time permits.

Here it is – the full version of “A Man of His Word” Hope you enjoy this! cheers.

I’d like to share something that I’d written a while back as my little ‘ommage to the master of humor, PG Wodehouse himself.

This is a re-telling of a story from Mahabharat, about Pitamaha Bhishma and my conjecture of how he came to take a terrible oath of celibacy. The tale is written in an irreverent Wodehousian style and might seem a tad too irreverent to some. My apologies if this offends you, though I do sincerely believe that it will not offend. I count myself among the many admirers of Devavrata who was renowned for his sagacity and resolve.

If you haven’t read Wodehouse, you must go out and get a copy of anything by him immediately. If you have read the master, I’m sure that you just raised your eyebrows on hearing the ‘Wodehousian writing style’ claim. I hope this brings a few smiles and maybe even a couple of laugh out loud moments. As for whether it matches up to its billing, I’ll leave it you to judge. There’s a comments section and I’m sure you’ll let me know.

The entire story is about 8,000 words or so long. To make this readable, I’ve split the story into five parts and will publish them on alternate days on What Ho! starting May 1. Here goes!

Devavrata: A Man of His Word

As the sun set over Hastinapura on another Friday, it observed the denizens of the proud city quietly winding down, satisfied with their week’s exertions. A cool breeze wandered curiously about the city, discovering its spacious streets and the nooks in its sturdy walls.

As the shadows grew longer, traffic at the Cosmic Eye, the local watering hole, began building. Regulars that evening would not have been surprised to sight the Venerable Vyasa at the bar, engaged as usual in discourse with cohorts. The Uninformed Reader might react with justifiable astonishment and raised brows upon hearing about the sighting of saints in hooch serving establishments.

“Venerable Vyasa, sipping margheritas in a tavern? Saints, with souls filled to their gills with bliss, seeking intoxication from the worldly Tabula Rasa? Rubbish, I won’t have it!” she may exclaim.

It is entirely possible that mention of venerable sages raises visions of extraordinary men with souls forged in the white-hot fire of experience and quenched in the ice cold clarity of wisdom. One rather imagines their lives to be filled with unperturbed calm, spent in hushed contemplation of the Great Illusion of Life, unyielding to the temptations that hold allure for ordinary mortals. But, the Uninformed Reader must note that even the souls of great men require the kind of solace that comes only from a jaunt to the nearest public house and indulging in a robust tipple every now and then.

That evening, the discourse among the venerable gentlemen had started predictably with a debate on the relative merits of Shruti and Smriti. By the third round of drinks, they had found their groove and settled into an intense discussion of the Brahma Sutras. As the evening threatened to age into middle aged maturity, the conversation unexpectedly veered towards the discomforting subject of the Modern Young Man.

“The days of gentlemen are past. Decency lies moribund and morals are deceased. There is no regard left for courtesy and honor. The Modern Young Man has even less regard for his word,” the Irascible Muni glared down at his Soma-on-the-Rocks.

“One must agree with this assessment. Morals have retreated into the shadows of obscurity. In these dark days of Dwapara, Dharma stands but on two legs”, sighed the Morose Maharishi as he beckoned a refill of his stiff Amrit-and-Tonic as though to pre-empt an approaching doomsday.

“While evidence suggests that the Modern Young Man is not on the straight and narrow, our pessimism might still be overdone. There is much good that is remnant. Why, my once removed step-cousin, Devavrata, comes to mind as a fine example of a upstanding Modern Young Man with impeccable morals and unimpeachable integrity. While Dharma stands on two legs, but two sturdier lower limbs we may not see for ages to come.” The quiet voice of Venerable Vyasa lent steadiness to the proceedings as he downed his third Tabula Rasa calmly.

Although temporarily intrigued, his audience listened with practiced disinterest and lack of conspicuous gusto. To men who look at proof and pudding as mere duality of the cosmic coin, enthusiasm does not arise easily. And, so Venerable Vyasa rolled on relentlessly, much like the chakra of time.

Dev, (did I mention that we are cousins) was the son of King Shantanu, and grew up a handsome, strapping young man. By the ripe age of sixteen, he wielded the bow with uncommon skill, and mastered the art of shooting through series of metallic rings into eyes of various aquatic and aviary species, blindfolded and with very little advance notice. He swung the mace with such natural grace that even poetry in motion might have a hard time matching his elegance. Nimble feet, brawny arms and a steely grip ensured that he was not to be trifled with in the wrestling pit. Ruthless gladiatorial skills with the sword belied his gentle nature and impeccable manners.

It is not uncommon for Mother Nature to withhold some favors to compensate for others that she bestows. The astute reader may have noticed that imposing height and muscles of steel are gifted to men resembling gorillas. Extraordinary beauty is cursed with inexplicable and tragic lack of sagacity. In the rarest of cases, nature breaks her own rules to demonstrate the containment of perfection in a single specimen. Tall, handsome and wise, Dev embodied singular perfection, and was the pride of Hastinapura and the envy of the Gods.

Even the godliest of lives are not immune to the surreptitious influence of Fate, who chose a breezy spring morning to make her presence felt in our young prince’s life.

It was customary for King Shantanu, once he had completed a light round of morning calisthenics and had followed it up with a heavy dose of carbohydrates, to develop an inexplicable craving to seize the bow and quiver, leap into the nearest chariot and dash off to the nearest jungle to fire a few rounds of arrows at the local wildlife.

Of life’s little pleasures, there are few that compare favorably with the thrill of the chase as crisp air fills the lungs. That morning, as the chariot crossed the jungle and approached the mighty Ganges, a strange noise filled their ears.

“Do you hear that?” the king enquired. “Does that not strike you as remarkably similar to the sound of an elephant gurgling by the river banks?”

“Yes, Sire, the resemblance is indeed striking. It is distinct gurgling that I hear,” replied the royal charioteer.

The king trembled in anticipation, as he drew an arrow in the direction of the unsuspecting mammal. A momentary doubt prevailed, and he paused to wonder.

“Or, then again, could it be an old man filling his pot with water?”

The charioteer paused and listened.

“Sire, now that you paint this different picture, it does appear entirely plausible that the sound emanating could be that of an elderly male engaged in the domestic chore of gathering water in an earthen vessel.”

“And if that were to be the case, it would be imprudent to fire off a few arrows in that direction, I’d imagine. I’m willing to wager that fossils are unlikely to react favorably to unannounced deposit of sharp metallic objects into their posteriors.”

“Sire, it will undoubtedly cause unpleasantness unwise if your arrows were to inflict damage on unsuspecting elders. Perhaps, you will be advised to remember old King Dasharatha, who found himself in an unfortunate predicament after having rashly discharged a full quiver without investigation.”

“Yes, I recall hearing that tale when I was a stripling lad. Wasn’t the old king cursed with lifelong rashes all over his behind or something equally foul?”

“Sire, the circumstances while similar in some regards to your recollection, differed in that King Dasharatha’s arrows struck an old gentleman’s son and caused his unfortunate demise. Upon which…”

“There it is again”, the king interrupted hastily. His interest in hearing the remainder of the sordid tale evaporated upon repetition of the gurgling audio.

“Sire, if I may suggest, you may consider proceeding on foot to gain full possession of the facts at hand. That may prove useful in choosing a course of action”

“Good thinking, my man. Take good care to protect that noggin of yours. It is indeed an object to be treasured. A fact finding mission is what this calls for. I will proceed on this stealth mission immediately.”

The king alighted and treaded cautiously towards the river, taking care to avoid rash collisions with lumbering pachyderms. As he peered out from the bushes, the landscape was distinctly devoid of wildlife. But it was not entirely devoid. His keen eyes caught glimpse of a female kneeling by the banks, engaged in filling her pitcher.

King Shantanu thoughtfully scrutinized the scenario, trying to note similarities between the kneeling woman and elephants to rule out any possibility of misjudgment. Although there was no prima facie evidence to support resemblance to elephants, the woman was undoubtedly robustly possessed of broad shoulders and ample girth. If a wandering poet had described her as a cross between an Amazon queen and a sumo wrestler, the king would have readily concurred, along with gifts of pearls and lapis lazuli.

As the king watched in idle curiosity, his heart thumped with an oddly increasing rhythm and his nostrils twitched in accompaniment as blinding insight dawned. His court poets often babbled about how the light spring breeze carried Cupid on its wings. As he gazed upon the serendipitous Amazon, the king knew that was no idle babble. The woman was a certified goddess in human form. Lesser men would have dawdled. But, Shantanu was not a dawdler, especially when confronted with goddesses in human form. He sprang lightly from the bushes and sauntered confidently towards the object that had possessed his senses.

Meanwhile, the Amazon had taken notice. She suspended her immediate activities and looked up in alarm at what appeared to be a rhino rapidly charging in her direction. As the unidentified charging object came within sight, she was relieved to note that she was soon to be in the neighborhood of a middle aged male, who appeared to bear the ravages of inordinate luxury and unrationed nutrition. Soon, a breathless king and the Amazon were within a range of proximity that allows conversation.

“I am Shantanu. Err, the king Shantanu”

The king broke the uneasy silence. The Amazon remained silent and unsure. It was jarring to be filling one’s pot one moment, and then look up to find the place swarming with kings.

[ To be continued. ]

I know I haven’t written on here in a few weeks. I haven’t been on Twitter either. There are a couple of reasons for this. One is that I’ve teamed up with some really cool folks to start a company called Positive Integers (www.positiveintegers.com). We’re in the data analytics space, and already have the fortune of being able to work with a few big customers. Wish us luck. We’re working hard on the projects we have, setting up our office, getting ourselves organized, hiring great people, etc. In the last few weeks, I’ve been focusing a lot on that.

The other reason is that I’ve been spending time on weekends with my older daughter, who just went through her final exams and is now entering the tenth grade. We’ve been working together on preparing for Maths and Physics finals, and then having all kinds of chats about what she could be doing in college. It might seem a tad early to start this conversation. On the other hand, it’s not a bad idea to start mulling things over.

These two forces combined to consume pretty much all my time. But, it’s been great fun. The downside is that it came at the expense of blogging. I guess that’s the way things happen, at times. Having said that, I plan to set aside a couple of hours a week for at least one blog post, and another couple of hours  for Twitter ( it’s actually fun to engage with folks on there) going forward. I also plan to blog regularly on our company blog. Let’s see how things play out.

Going through the final exams grind with my daughter reminded me of a fascinating aspect of mathematics education in middle school, which relates to the Pythagoras theorem. Pythagoras was an interesting chap. I’ll save that for another day. But, you probably remember his 2,500 year old theorem which states that the sum of the squares of the sides of a right triangle equals the square of its hypotenuse. This pretty much forms the foundation for areas like trigonometry. The fascinating aspect of Pythagoras theorem is that while it is introduced in middle school (either 8^th or 9^th grade), the students are not taught the proof of the theorem itself at that time. Rather, the books and teachers tell the students to take the theorem as ‘given’ and motor on. As a matter of fact, the proof for Pythagoras theorem, which is such a fundamental theorem in mathematics, is never taught in school. I’m told that only Maths majors learn to prove the theorem in college, and that too only in some countries.

Do you recall learning the proof? I don’t believe we were ever taught this. Try asking a friend or a colleague. The answer is likely the same. The chances are that very few of us can actually prove the Pythagoras theorem if asked to do so. This is because we never learnt about it. Obviously, it raises the question of why is it that we were not taught this in school? Why are school kids still not being taught the proof for one of the most famous mathematical theorems?

The answer is that the proof for the theorem is apparently considered too complicated to be taught to eighth grade students. So, students are taught to understand this empirically. They’re asked to construct right triangles and physically verify the truth in the theorem by measuring the sides and then by applying the theorem. There’s no “proof” given to them. They’re asked to go along with it. The reason they are asked to ‘blindly’ accept it is because there is a great benefit to knowing and applying the Pythagoras theorem from the eighth grade onward, and because without it, further learning and advancement is not possible in some areas. This is interesting.

It struck me that much of religious and spiritual belief works the same way. We are asked to place faith in a notion (say, the existence of God), the proof for which is complicated and hence unavailable at that time. But trust and belief in the notion is fundamental and critical to moving oneself forward to a state where the proof for the notion may become self evident. Fascinating.

ps: if you’re curious, here’s a simple way to prove the Pythagoras theorem below. cheers.