Paddy Rangappa's Blog

The cross-baldy effect

 Today’s woke world needs to wake up to a blatant bias

A sinister problem is seeping stealthily throughsociety, spreading its tentacles and hounding good men. I became aware of itwhen a friend told me I was the splitting image of his cousin and showed me thecousin’s photograph on his phone. The man had a lighter complexion, rounderface and broader nose than me. His eyes were wider apart. And while friendshave often remarked on the prominent nature of my chin (“It enters the roombefore you do”), his was almost non-existent.

In fact, we shared only one characteristic: a smooth, well-shavenhead. The gross injustice, always hovering in the depths of my subconscious, surfacedsuddenly. I realized that this was not the first time a bald man was beingdeclared a close resemblance to another bald man and it won’t be the last. Irecalled my bald friends relating instances of their friends, acquaintances andeven strangers declaring them to be identical looking to a cousin, boss,colleague or distant uncle. The prejudice is everywhere: bald men are beingmistaken for each other in WhatsApp forums, dimly lit pubs and crowded footballstadiums in every country, every day.

Today’s woke world comes down hard on peopleexhibiting any form of this insidious bias of likening one human being toanother just because they belong to a common category. For example, if you wereto ask two of your black American colleagues whether they are related would younot get a severe and well-deserved reprimand from human resources? And if youever express wonder at the resemblance between two Koreans because of thesimilarity in their passports, would they not immediately (and justifiably) scoldyou?

IndeedWikipediahas a whole section called cross-raceeffect that covers mankind’s confusion in distinguishing between people ofanother race. It includes complex concepts like ‘emotion recognition’ and‘cognitive disregard’. And for those afflicted, there is increasingly helpavailable to handle the pain of the cross-race effect. For example, in 2016, TheWashington Post wrote about “published guides to help readersdistinguish between” Asians of different origin and went on to explain how“computer scientists at the University of Rochester tried to teach an algorithmto tell the difference between Chinese, Japanese and Korean faces.”

But is the cross-baldy effect raging around us gettingthe same indignant response from the same woke world? Far from it. TakeWikipedia for starters. Apart from a dry section on ‘hair loss’ offering thevapid and completely useless information that hair loss is also known asalopecia, there is nothing. There aren’t any training programmes to teachpeople how to distinguish between bald faces (Lesson 1: “The face starts abovethe eyebrows and proceeds downwards fromthere.”)? And no computer scientist is working on a baldy-recognitionalgorithm.

Perhaps we baldies are to blame. We have not comeforward. We’ve accepted this grievous injustice with stoicism and resignation.That is why conducting research in Google on the topic of bald men beingmistaken for each other throws up not examples of this happening but a varietyof balderdash instead. There is an article in TheGuardian offering tips for dealing with baldness, startingwith asking you to accept it – and making bald men wonder if there were indeeda choice in the matter that not been conveyed to them – and then pontificating aboutthe use of wigs, hair transplants and drugs. Otherlinks lead you to examples of bald men who are famous andsuccessful, hinting that if you’re bald you should simply hang in there, and yourvery hairlessness will one day catapult you to fame. (These articles fail to mentionpeople who are famous and successful, and have a head of hair. I believethere are a few of them.) There is researchto reassure bald men that their affliction is not their mother’s fault. Andfinally, there is some claptrapclaiming that women find bald men attractive. All I can say on that matter isthat the woman who chose to marry me often looks at old photographs featuring myhirsute days and sighs wistfully.

So I urge my bald brothers to take inspiration fromthis ground-breaking article and flood the internet with real stories of real hairlessheroes. Tell the world that you don’t really care that you’re bald, that youlike it, that you actually use a razor twice a week to achieve the effect. Clarifythat you have not spent the better part of your life and a significant part ofyour mother’s blaming her for your baldness. Admit that you would not mindbecoming rich and famous and successful, but you don’t believe baldness alonewill take you there. And above all rave and rant about the injustice being reapedon you when you’re mistaken for another bald person. Tell them it rankles. Exhortthem to stop.

But if they say they cannot help themselves, that, inorder to earn a good night’s rest, they must equate one bald man’s looks withanother, request them to aim higher: instead of mistaking you for an obscuresecond cousin on their father’s side, mistake you for Bruce Willis or JeffBezos and seek your autograph.

This article first appeared in The Strait Times, in Oct 2022

It's urgent to make sense of overwork

 A rose by any other name may smell assweet but ‘overwork’ smells much sweeter when named ‘sense of urgency’

I wasplaying tennis with a friend, an entrepreneur. During every changeover, hewould sit down and get engrossed with his phone. After being made to wait threeor four times, I asked him what was so urgent.

“Onemail with my sales manager in India,” he replied crisply: “I reply to everyemail within 20 minutes of getting it.”

“Butit’s 7:30 am on a Saturday morning! 5 am in India!”

“Doesn’tmatter,” he said. “We attend to everything with a sense of urgency. I’veinstilled a 24/7 work culture.” The pride in his voice, cloying andself-righteous, overflowed into the tennis court.

Bydisplaying a keen sense of urgency, he was not really attending to work inbetween tennis; he was playing tennis in between his work. 

Likehim, many of us take our work with us everywhere – to the tennis court, cinema,food court, even bed. We check our emails just before sleeping and immediatelyon waking up (even if it’s for a midnight toilet visit). Work consumes everyhour of our day, every fibre of our being. 

THEGLAMOUR OF A 24/7 CULTURE

It was notmeant to be like this. In a 1930 essay, the economist John Maynard Keynes predicted a 15-hour week 100 yearslater. But the workweek has only grown since then. Mr Keynes rightlyprophesised the advance in technology and leaps in productivity that couldrender shorter working hours, but grossly underestimated mankind’sresourcefulness in grappling with the problem. “If machines do much of what wedid yesterday – we’ll do other stuff today!” seems to be our defiant responseto Mr Keynes.

Thirty years ago, the New York Times lamented the increase in working hours andcorresponding reduction in leisure, and every passing year has featured thesame story. In Oct 2019, just months before Covid-19 ravaged the world, The Guardian cited overwork as a major cause of burnout.

Whatdrives people to work so much? It’s “their own ambitions refracted through theexpectations of their employers”, suggests James Suzman in his book exploring the history of work. In a similar vein, a BBC article talks about how “Billionaire techentrepreneurs advocate sacrificing sleep so that people can ‘change theworld’”; and how, having bought the argument, we “devote ourselves to work andglamourise long-hours”.

But inrecent years the glitz of overwork is being dimmed by a counter movement:work-life balance. Op-eds , TED talks, business literature and mainstream news are all exhorting people to live a moreholistic life, with work occupying a part, not dominating its entirety. In thisenvironment, it is unbecoming for chief executives to overtly demand overwork,and embarrassing for employees to wear it as a badge of honour.

AUSEFUL EUPHEMISM

Intypical fashion, business leaders found the answer to retain the allure of longhours – in business jargon. ‘Overwork’ sounds harsh, exhausting and degrading.‘A sense of urgency’ sounds stylish, statesmanlike and purposeful. And when itis emblazoned on corporate walls with the inspirational image of a sprintercutting the tape after a 100-metre dash, featured in CEO townhall addresses, andwritten into performance appraisals, it acquires an ethereal, spiritual,quality.

A

s ayoung executive, I was once told that, by taking twoweeks to start work on an idea that our managing director had thrown our way, I had not exhibited an appropriatesense of urgency.

 

“But that idea is for next year,” I said.

 

“So?” My manager looked puzzled.

 

“So it’s not urgent!” I said.

Shaking his head and adopting a fatherlytone, he explained how a sense of urgency could work for me, career-wise,especially if it were accompanied by fire in the belly.

“People who bring transformative changehave courage, know how to re-frame the problem and have a sense of urgency.” saysMalcolm Gladwell. As a bestselling author – of Outliers, The Tipping Point andBlink ­– Mr Gladwell’s words carry the weight of gospel to many. But hisstatement, while true, is grossly misleading. He has clubbed two irrefutabletraits of change agents – courage and creative thinking – with a dubious third,one that is equally exhibited by successful change agents and resounding flops.I personally know entrepreneurs who pursued ideas without merit, but pursuedthem with a reverberating sense of urgency – and the only transformative changethey effected was a downward one of their bank balances. 

To paraphrase Mr Gladwell with a sportsanalogy, I could say, “Tennis players who rise to the pinnacle have immensetalent, an unwavering will to win and a decent pair of tennis shoes.”

THECORONA-SENSE OF URGENCY

Underthe guise of a senseof urgency theindoctrination of excessive work into our culture was complete well before Covid-19hit us and irrevocably changed the world we knew, taking a tragic toll on livesand livelihoods, shrinking the economy, slowing businesses, and forcing us towork from home. In its midst, one might have expected some respite in workinghours (for those not in healthcare).

But thereverse happened. The corporation’s answer to slowing consumer demand,disrupted supply chains and travel cessation? Work harder! The World EconomicForum reported that Covid-19 caused up to a 40% increase working hours in somecountries. At home, reported in this paper last month, one in two Singaporeans has worked more hours since theonset of Covid-19; and many have added two hours to their workday.

Workingfrom home has actually facilitated this by obliterating the office hourconstraint. Like bananas into smoothies, days blend into nights and weekdaysinto weekends. “When the business slows down, we go faster,” leaders seem tosuggest. “And since you work in your pyjamas anyway, why stop just because it’s8 pm? Or a balmy Sunday morning?”

But the toll of overwork is now provingworse than just stress and burnout. Recent research suggests that around three-quarters of amillion people die every year due to it. So, business leaders, please stopdemanding a sense of urgency from your people; in fact eliminate thephrase from your business lexicon. And do it with a genuine sense ofurgency. Otherwise the next time an employee tells you, “Excessive work iskilling me”, they may not be speaking figuratively.

This article first appeared in TheStrait Times, Singapore, on 1st May 2022

Wanted - vaccine against corporate speak

Business jargon is not new; neither are articleson it. But Covid-19 has augmented every professional’s game. Doctors are treatingmore patients, economists are suggesting larger structural reforms, politiciansare holding more meetings and executives are indulging in greater corporateguff. So the pandemic’s boost to business gobbledygook is worth exploring.

Here’s what BCG, a consultancy, posted onits website two years ago, soon after Covid-19 was upon us: “Immediate actionis critical, but leaders must also embrace a new agenda — one aimed squarely atwhat comes next, for business and all of society”. I was flummoxed when I readit for the first time… and the second. On the third reading the meaning finallyseeped through: BCG was urging us to do stuff we have to do now and then dostuff that we have to do next. Not to be outdone, its rival EY-Parthenon raisedthe level of twaddle, saying, “through the crisis, long-term value is going tobecome a much brighter ‘North Star’ by which to navigate.”

As the pandemic has spread, so has businessparlance to deal with it. Two years into Covid-19, BCG continues to offer such pearls of wisdom (onits landing page, no less): “Always-on business transformation is essential forsurviving disruption.”  

Perhaps the most important lesson emergingfrom this tragic pandemic is the need for transformation, especially digitaltransformation. Google Trendsshows the use of the phrase, already on a steady rise since 2015, has doubledin the last three years. When we hear a CEO say, “We need urgent digitaltransformation to prepare for the post-Covid world”, we are not sure whetherthey want employees to encourage customers to shop online, reply tointer-department emails faster or keep the camera on during Zoom meetings.Perhaps they’re not sure, either.

In my experience, managers use complexjargon for three reasons: to sound grand, obfuscate ignorance, and follow theherd. Perhaps a crisis like Covid-19 accentuates each motive.

Take sounding grand to start with.Consultants want to show that they know what they’re saying when advisingcompanies to deal with a once-in-a-century pandemic that no living person hasexperienced. They could play it safe and advise clients to “do a few things ata time” but the CEO, who gets such advice from their grandmother, will baulk atpaying big bucks to hear the same words from their consultant. So this is howone consultancy words the same advice:“Choose the journey carefully to start. It is too easy to try to boil theocean.”  Similarly, get your ducks in a row sounds grander than prepareproperly and think outside the box than think creatively.

Covid-19 also forces managers into hidingignorance. When the pandemic hit us none of us knew what was happening –and we remain befuddled today. So there’s plenty of ignorance to camouflage.And Donald Rumsfeldhas taught us that the best way to say “We have no clue” is by employing thephrase “unknown unknowns”. AForbes article starts with this balderdash in its headline itself:“Leadership after Covid-19: learning to navigate the unknown unknowns”. Andcontinues in the same vein in the article, offering incoherent advice like,“Post-crisis leadership requires tuning in to other frequencies and applyingbehaviours that are not as narrowly focused and have less immediate goals.”

We know that people follow the herd. Andmanagers, who strive to do everything better, follow the herd with moregusto. During Covid-19 no managerial jargon has become trendier than ‘newnormal’. In 2020, the World Health Organisation titled a webpage as ‘Thenew normal’. And just a few days ago, on 10th February 2022, Forbes publishedan article on ‘Building effective remote teams in the new normal’. Meanwhilethe Pew Research Centreissued a grim warning that “Experts say the ‘new normal’ in 2025 will be farmore tech-driven,”. In our fast paced, fickle world, surely the new normal in2021 would be an upgrade over the new normal in 2020 and the one in 2025 evenmore advanced? Maybe we should clear the confusion by using terms such as‘newer normal’, ‘newest normal’ and ‘new normal 2.1’.

But managers don’t appear confused. Leadersin every industry – from agriculture to aeronautics, banking to buildingmaterials, and postal services to pharmaceuticals – are saying ‘new normal’these days. Some of them are saying it several times a day.

The extend of corporate guff has beenridiculed often (like hereand here).Despite this, managerial mumbo-jumbo has spread through organizations like analarming virus. For example, in conference calls during Covid-19, hearing theirCEO instructing them to take a discussion offline, employees start usingthe word at every opportunity, whether it’s warranted or not. For example, “Toprepare for ACE (After-Covid Existence), I need to discuss key milestones withyou offline. Or if you have time, we can discuss them offline now.”

New employees, listening to ear loads ofsuch corporate blather from their managers – in the conference room, on thetelephone, via email, and over drinks to celebrate the latest merger – beginspeaking like that too.

As business leaders, we need to stop this nonsense.Let’s pivot from the jargon status quo and leverage normal language as a corecompetency. Whoops, sorry! I mean let’s stop using jargon and start speakingEnglish.

If we don’t, jargon will become everydayparlance and employees will cease to understand us when we speak like ordinaryhumans. Soon you may face a situation like this.

You tell your manager to focus on only twothings during the pandemic– e-commerce and delivery – because they are the“easiest to do and will produce quick results.”

They stare at you, puzzled. “But why?” theyask. “I don’t see the logic.”

Now you are puzzled. “I just told you why,”you reply. “Because they’re the easiest and will yield results soon.”

The manager’s face clears. “Oh, you mean Ishould go after the low-hanging fruit? Why didn’t you speak plainly inthe first instance? 

This article first appeared in The Strait Times, Singapore, on 27 Feb 2022

Programming the driverless car for India

In Google’s California campus, the spooky spectacle of
driverless cars moving quietly on the road is apparently common. Now Google is
letting these cars roam the city streets, and, according to a recent article in
the New York Times by Matt Richtel and Conor Dougherty, the cars are not
enjoying sharing the road with human drivers.




The article describes how, seeing a pedestrian at a zebra
crossing, a self-driving car slowed down, but the car behind it didn’t. The
result? The pedestrian was unharmed, but the Google car ‘was hit from behind by
a human-driven sedan’.




I smiled. Then, as I read what Donald Norman, an expert on
autonomous vehicles, had to say, I chortled aloud: “They (driverless cars) have
to learn to be aggressive in the right amount, and the right amount depends on
the culture.”




How appropriate it would be for the car to be trained in
India, I thought, affectionately reflecting upon our famous driving culture. I
imagine being tasked to travel in the driverless car in Chennai (with the
ability to take over control at my whim) to figure out what changes are needed
in the car’s programming to inculcate an appropriate sense of aggressiveness in
it.




I get into the car and input my destination into the map.
The car reverses silently into my colony road. When we reach the main road,
instead of turning right, the car switches on its indicator and waits. Immediately
the driver behind us blares his car’s horn and gesticulates ‘Move, idiot!’ with
his arm.
I realize the car is programmed not to move until it can
sense enough empty space, probably ‘two car-lengths’, in front of it. But
Annanagar’s 4th Main Road has not seen two car-lengths of empty
space since 1984! So I take over the controls and move forward slowly. Vehicles
on the main road quickly accelerate to block me but I continue to move, inch my
inch. Soon I’m blocking one lane (but some two-wheelers simply manoeuvre around
my car and continue on their way behind me).
I wait until I spot a car with three feet of empty space in front of it. I
quickly move into this (forcing the car to stop), wait for a similar gap on the
opposite side and make a quick right turn.







I hand back control to the car. A car on the left moves in
front of us. Instead of sounding its horn and accelerating, my car slows down…
silently. In disgust I press the horn but it’s too late. Later when my car
slows down within our lane instead of moving into the empty lane on the left, I
turn the wheel myself. And when it tries to stop at a zebra crossing, I pre-emptively
press the accelerator.




Within 30 minutes I know what re-programming Google needs to
do in the car.




1.     
The car should not reverse silently. Reversing must be accompanied by loud music
that repeats in five-second loops.




2.     
For the Google car to move on Indian roads, the
setting for safe-gap to move into needs
to be changed from two car-lengths to
two feet.




3.     
The instruction to stick-to-your-lane has to be removed. The car needs to understand that
lane markings, if present, are only for fun. In fact, the luxury version of the
car (targeting Bollywood stars for example) can even be programmed to use the sidewalk as an additional lane when
needed.




4.     
Similarly the instruction to stop at a zebra crossing for pedestrians needs
to go. Such crossings are opportunities for a friendly game between pedestrian
and vehicle. When the walker shows courage and resolve (demonstrated by walking
firmly forwards, ignoring the traffic), the car should respectfully slow down.
But should the walker hesitate, the car should accelerate.




5.     
In fact, in such situations – approaching a
zebra crossing, another car trying to squeeze in front, signal ahead turning
red and policeman signally ‘stop’ – the instruction slow down can be replaced with accelerate.




6.     
The current horn instruction, sound the horn in an emergency, is
stupid. The car should be programmed
to sound the horn generously, for five seconds each time: (a) when a motorist on the right (or left) tries to
get in front; (b) before, during and after moving into the lane of
the motorist on the right (or left); (c) when a pedestrian tries to cross the road; (d) when a pedestrian walks quietly on the sidewalk; (e) ten seconds before the light turns green while
waiting at a signal; and (f) every hundred metres, if none of (a) to (e) has
happened, to stay in practice.






7.     
To make everyone feel at home, the car should bring down the window and eject a spurt of
red liquid once every kilometre.






I could share other, finer pearls of advice – like how to read
the competiveness of another driver in their eyes, what to say when your
side-view mirror is ripped off and how to adjust your driving when competing
with a taxi driver – but there is no point. A computer will never understand
such nuances.

The phone may be smart, but...

Do you remember the traditional camera, a box-like thing
with a lens in front and something black and plastic-like called the film
inside? The film served the useful purpose of limiting the number of
photographs that could be taken and therefore ensuring that people were judicious
in using the camera, taking pictures only of stuff they needed.




Then along came the digital camera. Immediately the need for
thrift and common sense vanished. Instead of limiting themselves to perhaps 20
pictures of their child’s birthday party, people took 200. Where earlier an
animal lover might have exhausted a full reel on a visit to the zoo, returning
home with 36 photographs, they started taking 36 of each animal! I once took a
visiting friend, his family and their newly-purchased digital camera to the
zoo. The 17-year old daughter, assigned as official photographer, was
enthusiastic and unrelenting in her duties. I felt sorry for her, clicking so furiously
that she did not have the time to view a single animal through her naked eye.




“Why don’t you look at the animals, Ritu?” I asked and reached
for her camera. “Let me hold that for a while.”




She pulled the camera close to her chest and looked at me as
if a trunk had replaced my nose. “Why?! I’ve captured all the animals here and
I can see them later at leisure, on the computer.”




However, even the most prolific digital photographer didn’t
carry the camera everywhere: so they only photographed worthy occasions like
birthdays, weddings and zoo visits. And they could share these only after removing
the card from their camera and loading it into their computer.




But now, with the smart phone and its built-in camera, things
have got out of hand.
People carry the phone everywhere and therefore take photographs,
or make video recordings, of everything…
and then share these instantly. At the receiving end of this habit, I’ve had to
view, in still and moving format, trivial things in people’s lives like the
view from their front door, back door and bathroom window; the dresses they
fancy on mannequins in shopfronts they pass; their dogs in different poses;
their neighbour’s lawn; and, for variety, their dogs sitting on their
neighbour’s lawn in different poses.





Among the worst offenders are couples with a new baby. In
the old days one could avoid visiting them and therefore avoid painfully going
through albums of photographs (all of the same baby). But that strategy no
longer works because they carry the albums with them! With a flick of an eager
forefinger, they scroll through photographs of their baby in every conceivable
moment of its tiny life, with an average of six examples of each moment. These
photographs might perhaps be captivating to the infant’s grandparents but not
to anyone else. Talking of grandparents, earlier they could only talk about the exploits of their
“miraculous grandkid”; now they are also armed and dangerous, carrying a full
set of the same photographs on their phone.




People recommend restaurants they’ve visited by showing
pictures of the entrance, the manager, the waiter, the other guests, the menu
card, their food before it was served, the food being eaten and the empty plate
depicting how much they had enjoyed it. And as proof that they really visited the
restaurant (and didn’t merely copy the pictures from some else’s phone), they
show you selfies, with themselves prominent and upfront in each picture and the
restaurant entrance, for example, a blur in the background.




It appears to me that people are walking backwards through
life, taking selfies. Today my friend’s daughter’s zoo pictures would show the
animals behind her, props to her selfie.




These days, big sporting events are covered beautifully by a
professional television and press crew using hi-tech equipment. Thanks to
Google and YouTube these photographs and videos are available the next day. Yet
many spectators also capture the match on their smart phones! At a football
match we went to watch together, my friend recorded most of the proceedings on
his phone. When I glanced at his screen, everything was blurred and jerky. I
had difficulty spotting the ball and whether anyone had possession of it (and
if so, which team he belonged to). But since he was recording the match so
assiduously, he watched most of it on his screen.




Afterwards he sighed and said, “Fantastic match! I’m so glad
I came. I’ve got most of it here.” He tapped his phone proudly.




“And when will you watch it?” I asked.




“Oh, any time,” he said vaguely. “What’s important is that I
have it.”




He then told me about a tennis match that he had attended
live.




“It was a night match,” he said. “And the players kept complaining
that the flashes from cameras all over the stands were disturbing them.”






Before I could sympathise with the players, he continued.
“Isn’t it ridiculous, in today’s day and age? If someone cannot handle the
innocent flashes from a mobile phone camera, they have no business to be
playing professional tennis.”

Telling a good story

I’m tired of people in every
sphere of life telling me, in voices gushing with excitement, how wonderful the
internet is and how it has made life easier in every way. But it has not. Take the subject of party conversations
for example. In the halcyon pre-internet era I found it very easy to hold
audiences spellbound on topics that I had only a vague knowledge about and
others on which I knew nothing.




For example, I clearly remember
one dinner I attended in that splendid period before www.something invaded our
lives. A few days before the dinner, I had watched a television programme about
the meat-eating customs in different countries and was keen to share some
insights with my friends.




“In China,” I declared, “they
eat frog legs.”




“Wow!” said someone. Others
gathered around me to listen, the topic having piqued their interest.




“Yes, they do,” said Ganesh
Subramanian with an air of authority. “In Thailand too…”




“They also eat snakes in
China.” I said sharply. Having introduced the topic and secured attention, I
was not going to let it be hijacked. “In fact, they not only eat snakes, they
drink their blood.”




I smiled to myself as Ganesh
closed his mouth and others opened theirs. This was obviously something new to
all of them.




“They believe the blood is a
potent aphrodisiac,” I continued. People drew closer, mouths opened wider and
words like ‘Wow!’, ‘Fascinating’ and ‘Disgusting’ were muttered.


Now, having watched the television
programme a few days ago and that too without full concentration, I was a
little vague about the topic beyond what I had just said but I was not going to
let that stop me from continuing, not when everyone was hanging on to my words.




“There are snake-speciality
restaurants in China,” I said confidently. “All sorts of snakes are displayed
in somnolent state in glass bottles, one snake per bottle. A caption in front
describes each snake’s vintage: its age; which region it inhabits; the quantity
and quality of its blood; the names of ancient Chinese kings who, according to
legend, have been especially fond of this particular species’ blood; and its
price. Once you choose a snake – obviously picking a size based on the number
of people in your group – a waiter brings it in a large bowl to your table,
gives each of you a straw one-centimetre in diameter and then makes a deep cut
in the snake. Everyone dips their straw inside and sucks. When you’ve finished
drinking, the waiter takes away the snake and brings it back in 30 minutes, cut
and sautéed, for your dinner.”




The audience was captivated. As
a buzz went around the room, I smiled modestly.




“They eat dogs in Korea,”
declared Ganesh Subramanian. People turned to him, their curiosity aroused. I
joined them, acknowledging it was legitimately his turn now.




The Koreans-eat-dogs story was
riveting and Ganesh told it well. In fact it had such potential that I was
compelled to add a finishing touch when he was done.




“In fact,” I said, “The phrase
BYB (bring your booze) we use for parties actually originated in Korea with
BYD: bring your dog.” Was this true? I had no idea, but it sounded logical. And
it certainly got everyone’s attention.




I did not limit my repertoire
to non-vegetarianism in those days. I would pontificate on a variety of topics,
like the dire consequences of waking up a sleepwalker (unless done with the
slow beat of a Congo drum), the right way to walk on the moon and the real
story behind the rivalry between Shah Rukh Khan and Aamir Khan. And I was not
the only one doing this. All around me there were “experts” sharing knowledge
confidently on subjects like science, sociology, cricket and the anatomy of the
human body.




Yes, those were the wonderful
days before the internet. Fast forward to today. Just a few days ago I was at a
party and the topic of strange eating habits of different people came up. Aha!
I thought, I can offer some scintillating titbits here.




“They eat snakes in China,” I
said. People gathered around me. Experiencing a warm glow of déjà vu I
continued, “Yes, and they drink its blood too.” Hearing murmurs of approval, I
gathered steam. “Snake-speciality restaurants in China display snakes in glass
bottles, with a caption in front…”




“That’s not true!” In shock I
turned to Vijay Shenoy, the man who had so rudely interrupted me. He was
looking down at his mobile phone and appeared to be reading from it.




“I Googled ‘snake-eating in
China’ while you were speaking,” he said. “It says here that in actual fact…”






It appeared that
snake-consumption in China was not quite like I was describing. I could have
switched topics and told them what happens when you wake up a sleepwalker but
there was no way that story would get past Vigilant Vijay. So I cursed him and
sat quietly, reflecting about how the wretched internet has robbed us of the
simple pleasure of telling a good story.

Crazy pricing is the right pricing

My accountant friend KS
Srinivasan invited me for a quiet dinner at a restaurant to seek my advice. He
described his large ancestral property in Kodaikanal and told me he was
converting it into a resort. Now that his children had left home, he and his
wife wanted to move there permanently from Chennai and run the resort.




“But I have no qualification to
be an hotelier,” he said.




“Nonsense, Srini!” I said. “You
own the property – that’s the most important qualification. And you’re an
accountant, able to count the money as it comes pouring in. That’s all you
need. Hire people for the rest. How many rooms in the resort?”




“30, with half of them air-conditioned.”




“How will you charge for the
rooms?”




“`5,000 per night for AC and `3,000 for non-AC rooms.”




I shook my head gravely. “You
should charge `7,000 for
rooms without air-conditioning.”




“That’s crazy!”




“Crazy pricing is the right
pricing today,” I said. “Say Person A flies from Mumbai to Hong Kong, via Singapore.
Person B takes the same flight, but gets off at Singapore. Who pays more, A or
B?”





“A!” he said immediately. “He’s
flying a much longer distance.”




“Wrong! B pays more because his
flight from Mumbai to Singapore is non-stop, whereas A’s is not! Pricing based
on the logical cost of providing the service is so old hat it smells of mould. Pricing
today is based on perceived value only. The trick is to name your rooms
appropriately. Call the cheaper room ‘normal air-conditioned room’; call the
other ‘premium natural weather room’ and describe it as: ‘Kodaikanal’s natural
beauty and fragrances brought inside your room’.”


Srinivas nodded and started
writing notes in his pad.




“What are your room views
like?” I asked.




“The rooms on the inside
overlook the hotel courtyard, which is pretty but not as picturesque as the
mountains facing the rooms on the outside. I’ll charge 20% less for the
courtyard-facing rooms.”




“No! Charge 20% more.
Call them ‘serenity rooms’, ideal for ‘taking a calming break, away from all
distractions, including beautiful mountains’. I hope you will provide wireless
– people need connectivity to browse just as they need air to breathe?”




“Yes,” he said. “And I’ll charge
a daily rate for it.”




“Don’t! When something becomes
as necessary – and ubiquitous – as air, people expect it to be free. But some people
pay to climb Mount Everest where there is no air to breathe. Using that
principle design a few rooms with no wireless. I’d suggest you pick a few of
the ‘serenity rooms’ with a poor view – perhaps the ones with the worst view – remove
wireless connectivity and call them ‘super serenity rooms’. Promote them ‘for
people who dare to go where few have ventured – away from everything, including
the internet!’ Charge 40% more than normal for these rooms.”




“Wow!” said Srinivas.




“Always adjust prices upwards
when demand increases. When occupancy crosses 80%, charge double the normal
rate for every type of room and, at 95% occupancy, double the rate again. People
who decide late to go on a holiday expect to pay atrocious prices.”




“Thanks,” said Srinivas, writing
in his book.




“Let’s talk about the
restaurant now,” I said. “There you should promote healthy living. Eating healthy
is a fad that you might as well capitalize on. Also, calling your food healthy
allows you to charge more for putting less in it. But ensure you also serve the
normal version because there are still some people who eat food for its taste. Offer
healthy options at a premium price. For example, you could charge `150 for ‘normal cheese dosa’ and for ‘cheese dosa
with low fat cheese’…”




“Charge `200!” cried Srinivas.




“Yes!” I beamed at him. “And charge
`250 for the super-healthy version – ‘cheese dosa
with no cheese’. Similarly, offer normal coffee and, at 50% surcharge,
‘organic coffee’.”




“What is organic coffee?” Srinivas
asked.




“No one really knows,” I said.
“But when people know they’re drinking organic coffee, they automatically feel
healthy. Similarly provide all types of tea – like green, Darjeeling, oolong,
jasmine, peppermint, apple and ginger fusion, camomile flowers – many of which don’t
even have tea leaves.”




He was writing furiously.




“Discourage people from eating
outside your hotel. Offer packages that include breakfast, lunch and dinner. And
offer packages that include a free pick-up from Coimbatore and Madurai
airports.”




“Why?” asked Srinivas, puzzled.




“People in their own cars tend
to drive out looking for places to eat; if compelled to hire a taxi for every
meal, they hesitate. And maintain a small shop selling typical holiday
necessities – like toothpaste, banana chips and playing cards – at three times
the normal price. People will happily pay up, especially if you simultaneously stock
their room minibars with the same items at five times the normal price.”






With four pages of his book
filled with scribbles, Srinivas happily paid for the meal and left, shaking his
head in wonder at my grasp of the hotel business. I could have enlightened him
that my deep insights were due, not to genius, but to mere observation while
traveling, but I didn’t.

Watching the watch

A month after I had met my
friend Balwant Sinha and gained a useless understanding of measuring sleep, I
ran into him at the mall.




“Got to show you this!” he said
briskly, holding up a shopping bag. “Come, let’s have coffee.”




“Is it another device to
measure sleep?” I asked with some foreboding when we had sat down.




“No! But it measures stuff that
will help me sleep better. Since Monday I’ve slept only an average of 5 hours
23 minutes each night – that’s 5.3833 hours, if you prefer irrational numbers –
against my target of 6 hours. And you recall my ZQ target, right?”




“No. In fact I don’t recall
what ZQ is.”




“I told you last time,” said
Sinha, sounding annoyed. “It’s a single sleep measure capturing the positives
(REM and deep sleep) and the negatives (sleep disruptions). I’m scoring 36%
against my target of 65%. And I’m not able to lift my game.”




“Talking about lifting the
game,” I said, trying to change the topic, “did you see how Chennai Super Kings
played against Knight Riders?”




“Exercising helps in sleeping,”
he said, ignoring my intervention. “So I started running after dinner. But it worsened
things: my average ZQ dropped 7%! Then further research revealed that one
should exercise at least six hours before bedtime. In the immediate period
after exercise your metabolism is quicker and you’re more alert, energetic and
not sleepy.”




“Dhoni, they say, does his
workout in the early afternoon.” I tried a diversion again. “In last night’s…”




“I too have started exercising
in the afternoon,” said Sinha. “But I also learnt that overdoing exercise can worsen
the quality of your sleep.”





“Cut down your exercise regimen!”
I said. “On Sundays, Dhoni…”




“But what to cut?” asked Sinha.




“I don’t know. Run one
kilometre less,” I suggested.




“Nonsense! That’s arbitrary and
unscientific. I need an exercise target, measure where I am against it and then
adjust performance.”




I didn’t have the heart to tell
him that he was complicating something simple like running and, simultaneously,
talking drivel.




He continued: “My objectives
for running are to (1) improve ZQ performance to 65% and (2) lose 3.6 kilograms
over the next 6 weeks.”




“Lose weight?! You?!” Sinha was
a fit athlete with flat stomach, bulging biceps and panther-like court
coverage, the envy of our tennis circle of middle-aged men, carrying podgy
paunches and breathing laboriously.




“Yes!” he said. “My BMI (body mass
index) is the problem. I need to bring it down from 22.8 to 21.7, so that it’s
exactly in the middle of the recommended range (18.5 to 24.9). To do that, I
need to lose 3.6 kilograms at the rate of 600 grams per week.”




“Or 86 grams a day.” I said
sarcastically.




“Exactly!” Sinha said with
delight. “But the variation in the body’s water retention everyday causes the
daily statistic to fluctuate. So I measure my weight every Friday, taking the
average of three measurements at 9 am, 3 pm and 9 pm. What say?”




I didn’t know what to say; so I
didn’t say it. But I didn’t need to: he was happy to continue.




“Taking into account my age,
height and weight, and the prevailing temperature and humidity, my goal is to consume
2,500 calories of food (obviously I measure everything I eat for
calorie-content) and burn 625 calories through exercise. Then my net calorie
intake of 1,875 calories will help me shed 600 grams a week. Following me so
far?”




I nodded dully.




“Here’s the exciting part,” he
said (but my pulse did not race). “To achieve 65% ZQ sleep, I need to burn
those 625 calories without my heart rate going above 80% of its maximum capacity.
Today, I’m guessing that I’m going above this, but from tomorrow I stop
guessing.”




He took out a sleek-looking
black watch from his shopping bag.




“Meet the Polar M400 watch,” he
said, caressing the device lovingly. “It measures time and distance using GPS
and, through sophisticated algorithms, tells me how many calories I’m burning. It
also measures my heart rate using this special sensor attached to my chest.” He
showed me a black thingummy with a strap. “There are five heart rate zones: very
light, where the heart beats at about half its maximum rate; light; moderate;
high; and finally very high, where the heart beats at almost its maximum rate.
Tomorrow, I’ll set my target in the middle zone, ensuring my heart rate doesn’t
go beyond 80% of its maximum rate; then I’ll run, watching my watch, and stop
when I’ve burnt exactly 675 calories. This way I’ll achieve both my goals –
weight loss and getting good sleep. Brilliant, right?”




I had not been battered with so
much information in one lecture, nor experienced this dull lassitude, since my
engineering college days several years ago.






“I have another idea,” I said,
stifling a yawn. “Simply record what you’ve been saying to me for the last half
an hour. Every night in bed, play the recording to yourself. You’ll go to sleep
very soon and your ZQ will hit new heights.”

The science of sleep

“Hi Paddy:
over here!” my friend Balwant Sinha cried from across the room. “I’ve been
dying to talk to you.”




I was
touched by his greeting. I didn’t realize how much my company meant to him.
There was obviously something heavy on his mind that the poor fellow needed my
opinion on, some weighty problem that only I could solve.




“Really
sorry,” I said, sitting down next to him. I looked deep into his eyes with
empathy. “What’s troubling you?”




“How well
did you sleep last night?” he asked.




I shook my
head. “Forget that. What are you dying to talk to me about?”




“That’s
it: your sleep, man! How well did you sleep last night?”




“Ok, I
guess,” I said, “but…”




“Don’t guess!”
Sinha sounded cross. “Do you know that extensive studies
have highlighted that not getting proper sleep is a key issue today?”




“Yes, I’ve read something like that.
But getting to something more
important, why…”




“Nothing is more important,” said Sinha.
“So think: did you sleep well last night?”




I threw my
mind back (not literally, of course) and said, “Yes, I slept well.”


“Are you sure?”




“Yes, yes,”
I said impatiently. If he had nothing better to talk about, I did, like for
example, India’s meteoric rise and sudden fall in the World Cup. “I know I
slept well.”




“How do
you know?”




I was
puzzled. “I don’t know,” I said.




“But you
said you know!”




“I know,”
I said. Then, realizing he may think I was changing my answer again, I
clarified: “I mean, I know I said I know but I don’t know why I know, if you
know what I mean. And the fact that I don’t know why is the reason I know I
slept well. Because when you sleep well you don’t know anything.”




“Nonsense!”
said Sinha. “It looks like you don’t know anything even when you are awake. For
example, you don’t know the latest science of sleep. You don’t know that we
undergo different cycles of sleep: REM (rapid eye-movement) sleep, which
restores and refreshes our brains; deep sleep, which restores our muscles; and light
sleep.”




“Does that
restore our souls?” I asked coldly, stung by his remark about my ignorance.




“No,” he said,
impervious to the sarcasm. “Light sleep is actually not beneficial. Finally
there are the periods we wake up but don’t remember it.”




“What
about the periods we wake up and do remember it, like when our teenage son
comes back from a party at 2 am and rings the bell, having forgotten – once
again – to carry the house key with him?”




“Ah, Children’s
Role in Sleep Disruption! That’s a fantastic side topic on sleep that I’ll come
back to. But first, did you know that we can now measure the three cycles of
sleep?!” He showed me his smart phone screen. “What do you see?”




“I see
you, sleeping,” I said, “with a massive alarm clock next to you. For some
strange reason, you’re pushed your eye mask so that it covers your forehead
instead of your eyes.”




“That’s
not an eye mask,” he said. “It’s an elastic headband that carries a transmitter
pod to measure my brainwaves continuously and send them to that special Zeo
alarm clock!” Without waiting to see if I was excited (I wasn’t), he ran his
fingers over his phone. It now showed a chart with three bars on it, the third
being the tallest.




“These bars
depict my nightly sleep scores in one convenient number ZQ, based on the
positives (REM and deep sleep) and the negatives (sleep disruptions). I scored a
whopping 75 last night, versus 42 and 46 the previous two nights, which is why
I know definitively that I slept very well last night.”




Before I
could react to this drivel, he continued. “I also know the exact breakdown of
my sleeping performance. Last night, for example, REM contributed 23%, deep
sleep a solid 38% and light sleep 25%. The rest – 14% – was disruptions. Not
good but an improvement over the previous day, when it was a horrendous 26%.”




“How does all
this help you, apart from making scintillating bar conversation?”




The man
was sarcasm proof. “Thanks!” he said. “Very kind of you. But how does it help
me? It has transformed me! I now have a clear action plan for sleep in my life.
I’ve set tough but achievable goals for myself: 65% ZQ on weekdays and 85% on
weekends, with at least 50% of that coming from REM and deep sleep. ”




“And what will
you do with all this?”




“Isn’t it
obvious? I’ll track myself daily and adjust performance. For example, during
the week, if I slip on Monday and Tuesday, I’ll lift my game on Wednesday and by
Friday, hit my weekday goal. Likewise if I do badly on, say, the Diwali weekend
due to playing cards for too long, I simply up the ante in the subsequent
weekends to hit my monthly goal.”




I shook my
head, wishing his headband could also measure his overall level of lunacy even
as he slept.

Our bureaucracy is alive and well: part 3

A week after being
thwarted at the passport office my friend re-submitted his application with a
fresh schedule F stating unequivocally that he had been staying at his present address, as opposed to his permanent address or his previous address, for the past six
months. Three days later he received his new passport. But he also received a
text message requesting his presence at the neighbourhood police station for
post-passport-issue verification; so he went there and handed his passport to the
sub-inspector.




“Show me proof of
citizenship,” the police officer said.




“It’s in your
hand,” my friend replied.




“No, I need your
birth certificate or school leaving certificate, preferably CBSE.”




My friend was
surprised that the police thought so poorly about the passport’s ability to
prove one’s citizenship but since he had carried his thick ‘passport-preparation
file’, he did not press the point.




“Take both,” he
said.




Instead of
showering him with kudos for providing two documents where only one was
required, the policeman said, “Also need proof of residence.”




“Again?!” My
friend was shocked but also well prepared, ‘proof of residence’ being the
biggest obstacle he had had to overcome on the path to passport. “Here’s my
employer’s letter showing my address. Using it I transferred my private sector
bank account to Mumbai: here’s that passbook stating my address. With this I
acquired a public sector bank account: here’s that passbook. Submitting this I got
the passport, already with you. That’s four proofs of residence and please note
– all carry the same address,
exactly.”


The man was not
impressed. “Where are you staying?” he asked.




“You can read the
address in any of the four documents,” my friend said coldly.




“I need a letter
from the housing society stating that you’re staying there.”




My friend walked
out of the police station in a dismal mood. He knew that the secretary of his
housing society, a resident herself, was a formidable, thickset woman in her
fifties whose life’s mission was to enforce every bylaw in the society
handbook, while proposing new ones worthy of being added.




The next day my
friend visited her with a packet of sweets.




“For the
children,” he said, smiling obsequiously. The secretary nodded curtly. My
friend bumbled on. “Indian sweets are much better than Chinese ones.” The
secretary remained unmoved by this revelation. “Talking of China,” he
continued, “my company is sending me there next month. So I got my passport
renewed urgently. But for the police verification, I need a small favour from
you: a letter stating that I live here.”




“Sorry, cannot
give you that without official documentation,” the woman said immediately. “Bylaw
17 subsection 2A says…”




My friend
interrupted her. “Here’s a letter from my company and the rental agreement.”




“No. I need your
police verification.”




“But the police
needs your letter to provide verification!”




The woman would
not budge: subsection 2A was very clear on this point.




“Will you come
with me to the police station so both letters can be exchanged simultaneously?
I’ll take you by taxi.” The woman refused, quoting a bylaw that forbade the
secretary from leaving the premises for frivolous activity.




My friend
staggered out of the office and called his helpful government friend (provider
of schedule F) and poured out his heart.




“In summary I’m
flummoxed, flabbergasted and frustrated” said my friend. Extreme emotion often rendered
him poetic.




“There’s something
called a tenant police verification,”
the government official said. “A broker can help you get it.”




So my friend approached
a broker and handed over his passport to him. Two days later he received a
tenant police verification. When he showed this to the housing society
secretary she was “pleased to” issue him an official letter verifying his
residency “because this is how it is specified in the by-laws”. He handed this
letter to the police station, where the inspector assured him he would “do the
needful”.




Three days later
my friend received a phone call.




“This is the
police, verifying your address, but you are not at home.”




“I am!” said my
friend. “I can see myself in the bedroom mirror.”




Apparently the
inspector was calling from Delhi, where my friend had stayed before coming to
Mumbai.




“I climbed up
three floors to verify your previous address and you’re not here,” said the
policeman, his tone reproachful.




My friend
explained it was impossible for him to be at his previous address at the present
time without resorting to time travel, which he had not yet mastered. After
some discussion, the policeman agreed on a compromise: if my friend would send
him a photocopy of address proof in Delhi, he would ask neighbours to confirm
that my friend had indeed stayed there.




Two weeks later, my friend got text messages
saying that police verification had been completed both in Mumbai and Delhi.




“Whew! I’m finally the legitimate owner of
an Indian passport,” he told me on the phone. “Man, it was tough but it was
worth it.”






“Yes it was!” I said. “You have a passport and your story has appeared over three
columns in The Hindu!”