Siddhartha Bhasker's Blog, page 5

Bholenath and Game theory (Prof. SD's diary I)

Note: The piece below is a part of my next novel. It's the first diary entry of an Economics professor who is a pioneer in game theory. Any comments will be surely appreciated.Bholenath is the greatest game theorist. He looks at every interconnection present in this world. We can never fully understand these interconnections. We are endogenous to it. Any idea we throw in will in effect change us. The concept of endogeneity thwarts any human mind to generalize a concept or a theorem without assumptions. That is why I never disbelieved in Bholenath. There has to be an exogenous observer who sees things but does not change. It remains in question how much he can influence what’s going around. It would be great writing a research paper with him.

He not only observes but maintains the equilibrium present on earth. There are innumerable interactions among humans present at any given time. There are so many games at play at once. The boundary for each game may be limited, but their subtle interactions cannot be ignored.Sometimes solutions don’t seem plausible. We can never find an equilibrium to a given set up. But it is important to look at the boundaries and not assume that there is no solution. Maybe we have not taken that crucial element into consideration, maybe we have left it out, even though one must admit that extending the boundaries not only brings in a new perspective but also more questions. That is where the art of a modeller lies. He should know what to bring in and what to leave out of the boundary. He should be ready to question the certain and believe in the improbable. It looks as if I have to do the best modelling of my life to find a solution to this problem I have been facing for so many days now. The boundaries are hazy and nothing is clear. Parameters keep changing regularly. Someone is inside my head and I know for sure it is not me.Solving for equilibrium looks so simple once you get a solution. A reader can read two-three pages and understand it. It is getting to the solution which is painful. At times when nothing makes sense, a trick of the trade move or discovery of the fallacy in the solution can bring in a ray of hope to the problem solver. What it simply means is that every problem is solvable, anybody with enough patience can solve a problem, and that no problem should be left unsolved. We must reach a solution by working to create the little pinhole in the dark room through which the ray of light can enter. In a separate problem sent to me by my good friend from Cornell University who won the Nobel Prize two years back, a small fallacy had created the issue. Once you clarify it, the path to the solution was as smooth as butter. While these kinds of problems can be solved by simplifying the assumptions and then working towards the solution, my real life problem does not seem to simplify at all. It seems I have laughed after so many days today. How do I suddenly end up hearing sounds after reaching the age of 60? Nobody seems to have an answer, not even game theory.

Rendezvous de Bokaro II

A sleepy town, what a metaphor for a town! The literal meaning would be a place which feels sleepy more often than not. What it means is a town where the inhabitants work more or less in a state of sleep that is at a slow and lost pace. Is my town with a wild name of Bokaro steel city sleepy?When we were children, I don’t remember ever pondering over a question like this. Bokaro was my world having never been to a big city; the trip to my village being the idea of travel. My frame of reference being a village, Bokaro was never sleepy, in fact, a modern and active place to be in. Now my frame of reference has changed. Having had an active life in some very big institutions and cities, I don't feel my town to be the same.In the evening one has to think hard of where to go. Earlier it would be at a friend's place or cricket with colony friends.  There is a surprising dearth of young men playing any sport on the fields. The walls of many buildings have decayed giving you the repulsive feeling of a bad marriage. In fact, I noticed the fountain outside the colony we used to live standing dry. Earlier it was perennially oozing out water for the travelers on the road who cleared on to the sides. A similar dryness may have descended over the town. About this on another blog someday. Let me get to the fundamental question.In sleepy towns, time doesn’t run as fast as the metros. They do not have traffic jams. Bokaro never had one as far as I know. The local bus service is unnoticeable. Autowallas can say a no as well. One can stand in the middle of most roads and have a chat with someone who is bringing in milk from the milkman, a daily ritual of many in this town. Some scooters with old uncles riding them run slower than cycles even though the whole road is laid empty before them. The bookshop owner at the center market complains of no readership as if people have to get up from their sleep to visit the collection. The above do point to the town being sleepy.It’s also important to consider the word town. In this respect Bokaro has all the amenities, the most recent one being opening of PVR cinema. What else do you need on an empty weekend! Education facilities are excellent; they are like the flowers which attract honey bees. Schools and coaching institutes are the crown of this place. After steel, they are the ones that give it a name.Steel is what Bokaro is named after, sleep is what it is fighting. An important thing that comes to mind is Bokaro is no more my world. For a school going kid who is engaged in his life, this place would still be hustling and bustling with life even though the observations speak of the opposite.

When it rains out of the blue

When it rains out of the blue, the place does not look the same. Rains can transport you to those times before when you would have had some interesting experience trying to escape downpour, with friends or alone looking for a large tree or a tea shop somewhere in the vicinity. Of course, here I am talking about the downpour which is more drizzle than heavy. Like the one happening just outside my balcony.The sound of rain, like the sound of a flowing river, never gets boring. It’s not like the sound of a car honk or a dog barking which can get on to you. One can stay with its soothing tone for as long as it goes on. Then there is the subtle sound of raindrops falling from the roof if you are in a close enough vicinity to hear the ‘tap tap tap’. Might remind some of a famous song of the 90’s, just a digression.
One can have interesting times with an umbrella during rainy days. As useful as they are when they are outside, above your head, unfurled and all protective; it is an equal trouble once inside. Whether it’s a class or house what the hell to do with a wet wrapped umbrella can sometimes be difficult. You could open it up and let it dry, but that takes a good amount of space and is especially difficult when there are a number of them. A wet closed umbrella, if it's black in colour is like a crying baby, can’t keep close, do not want to keep too far away especially if you in a habit of forgetting. I lost three umbrellas once in a span of a week and since then I have lost two more. An ingenious invention is a thin polythene bag wrapped around your head. Its keeps the water out of the hairs which I hear is the reason for getting sick in rains. Rest of the body can cope up with the wetness with whatever they can manage.
If it has rained after a long time, the smell of mud wafts through the air. It’s difficult to feel it now but I remember I used to in early days. Rains also keep the dogs away for a while on the roads, which is comforting. It’s resting time for them. It is fearful to think of a situation when one is chased by a dog in rains especially with an umbrella in hand.
Rains can turn into a nuisance just like too much of anything else. The air in the house gets thick and the environment can get gloomy. One stops enjoying the tea anymore, wants to go out. Slippery floors, wet clothes, and unwanted guests.

But the best thing in the rains is to get wet at one's own will. 

Five things not to do, to stop yourself from turning weird

People said that my friend X has turned weird. As far as I knew, he had been weird since I knew him. Only now has he stopped making an explicit effort to hide it. X suggested me five things not to do if I was not to turn weird. These are the five things I am sharing. These are purely the views of my friend, and because his context may be weird these may sound weird as well.

Don’t be honest: As far a possible stop being honest, X says. The best thing is to go the tangent way which means not being dishonest as well but discussing things which only touch the subject line and can give some messages. Another way he told me was to be formal, very formal so that the other person does not have any option to go tangent. The reason being if you become honest outright, the other person may take advantage of it.
Don’t be independent: Very dangerous. You may lose your job, your girlfriends and will piss off many people in your way if you like to think independently. And the most important thing is that if you are honestly independent then you can lose a number of good opportunities of ‘growing’ in life. Both good and bad things bind you, says X. So never be Ray Charles Robinson when his mother says to him in the movie Ray “You ain’t no cripple.” Be a cripple, be dependent.
Never show that you are peaceful: this is for sure going to be the envy of many people around you. As they have landed themselves up in a mess, and their soul is drowned in chaos you would be the sugary syrup for them. They are for sure going to take a dip and try and get themselves all sweet and peaceful. So if somebody tells you that his life is a mess and blah blah, the first thing either avoid that person or as a defence mechanism, invent things in your life that are chaotic as well.
Don’t fall in love: Until you are sure that the subject of your love is also in love with you which, of course, is a very difficult task. On prodded further X was reluctant to divulge any more details but he did say that falling in one-sided love can turn you so weird that it will alienate even your close ones. In a very soft voice, he warned me that if you fall in love with more than the person at the same time then that’s suicide.
Always keep your room clean: A clean room belongs to a weird person; he told me. He was still thinking about the explanation before I ran away from his room. I was full till then.
X for sure is weird.

The Good, the devil and the Asshole

Assholes are the only thing devil would be afraid of. I am sure he/she has the ammunitions to deal with the good and virtuous with the war going on for ages. But assholes, they come in their own variety and forms, very difficult to deal with.
The problem with assholes is that they are not sure of what they want to do. And so they tend to get attracted to the confident ones who have some idea of their lives. If this is a supplementary attraction like the one we read in our school textbooks between the buffalo and the crow, then one can tolerate the shit. But this is more parasitic, more assholic.
Why would the devil be afraid of assholes! Because he/she fears that they would do it to him what he/she wants to do to the others. And that too in some mysterious form which would only be evident later. Assholes make visible the cautious and insidious mechanisms of the devil. They make it weak, make a joke of it. They are a traitor to its workable ways.
A friend of mine X once met an asshole or to be more precise a bunch of them, all together basking in their new found glory living in the cognitive illusion of grandeur that a mediocre society had bestowed upon them.  X fell into this illusion in part. Maybe he is an asshole himself.  He got acquainted with the group learning their ways and in some ways imparting his own to them. It was all hunky dory. That is how an illusion works. All iz Well. The devil though must have gotten pissed off at such a display of laxity while he/she was working day and night to screw people. Or maybe he/she was unable to be a part of such an illusion. How could assholes neglect him in such a way? How could they screw it by not being good but still being peaceful! It had to do something. The devil could not tolerate such a situation.
But what happens when the devil meets the asshole. Fireworks? No. it's actually pretty boring. The devil is reluctant to display its methods to the assholes. And the assholes do not give a fuck about the devil. But they have to get things going, and both have the same enemy, so they need somebody good as bait. That is where many people have fallen prey to in this world. When you hear that somebody good could not achieve what he/she was meant to, please keep in mind that he/she could have had invited the devil on account of being with assholes. So when the good, devil and assholes come together, the assholes cannot do much. The devil ultimately may get the good, but his/her punishment is that his/her methods are exposed by the assholes, and he/she has to reinvent his/her strategies. Assholes meanwhile once they are done with the process change places like gypsies. Or more often than not they split making excuses and inventing unreasonable arguments.

Venice, the good Saharsa

Every year the Northern plains of Bihar are flooded by the river kosi, which, if one had memorized school geography correctly, is called the Sorrow of Bihar. There was a big flood in the year 2008 when the embankments which have been built to prevent the local population from getting affected by the rising water levels and stop the change of course of the river collapsed. The raging river took the mud of the embankments and like a humiliated prisoner who has just been given his freedom and is ready for revenge deposited it on the nearby agricultural lands. This destroyed the land fertility. 


Why is this blog titled this way, you might ask? Some of you may have an inkling of an idea, a vague guess. Recently I came across a report by PARI network about the booming business of boat making in a place in Northern Bihar called Saharsa.Venice is beautiful from pictures, Saharsa is not. It is dirty and poor, Venice is not. Hence Venice is good Saharsa or Saharsa is bad Venice whichever way you would like to put it. In Venice, I am sure the food habits of people are refined unlike Saharsa, where they have to fight for rats.When movies are shot in Venice, they are like ‘The Italian Job’. The opening scene, a heist and a chase shot on the waterways of Venice can take your breath awayAnd then there are the residents. My guess is residents of Venice would never want to leave their home city. I read there is a lively culture around the city. The opposite is true for the residents of Saharsa. They want to move out. Being from close by, I can assure that the place is as cultured as can be possible. But culture serves it in the way inner beauty serve humans in the modern world. A compromise on culture to attain more comfortable ways of living just like a compromise on inner beauty to attain more comfortable ways of looking is the rule.
Finally, for any doubts make out the difference in the color of the water in Venice and Saharsa.

tweete-a-tweete: A way to use twitter

‘140 characters should be fine. The mind functions randomly, it hardly stays for more than 140 characters on one topic anyways. Just put the immediate thoughts down on your profile and let people retweet and like it,’ this is what I said to myself while opening my twitter account @BGroundwest. Facebook had already become a best friend, given the amount of time one spent on it. And now the social friend group was supposed to have a new member.


But twitter turned out to be a rebel with an independent mind of its own. Not the kind which would join a group and acclimatise fast with the group members. Working with it raised questions. Why doesn’t anybody like my tweets or retweet me? Before the dawn of twitter, there was the dusk of one’s own company where thoughts would pass through your mind like updates on the twitter wall. I was almost alone on twitter, like I was before it, and hence no value addition seemed to have taken place.
Another goal of joining twitter, almost as a secret wish, was the promotion of my first novel B Ground West. I did try advertising and few cheesy tweets (including tweeting Orhan Pamuk whose novel Snow is mentioned in BGW) but they did not work to bring the bees to honey. Now I realize that there are many writers on twitter who promote their books and it takes time to get your profile recognised. This meant huge competition and nowadays one has learnt how to deal with situations like these.
My twitter enthusiasm crashed in a few days.
Later one day I had an epiphany. Just like our ancestors who had not taken troubles to document the Indian society, I had not taken troubles to document what I read. Which means if you read 5-6 articles a day and there is no documentation, it would just take 2-3 days for one to forget most of what has been read. This is bad, especially if you are a writer and may need to go back to one of them. When there are moments that something read earlier hits your memory and you want to go back to it, an archive of sorts would help.  A place where all of these articles can be shared is your twitter account. Hence for me, I had found a value of twitter to keep me going. One can argue that bookmarking the articles will serve the purpose but then synergies of sharing on twitter and reading related articles is not possible through bookmarks. Plus there is a faint chance (and a wish) that years down the line, a group of people may be interested in what you are reading.
This is something I started 2 weeks back. And it does work fine. With the hashtag, you can keep tab on the subject matter you are most interested in. For me, climate change, auctions and writing are the prominent hashtags. You get few followers of similar interests whose tweets can enhance your knowledge on these subjects. A special help has come in the area of writing. As it is a lonely profession and one can easily get stuck for long periods of drought, connecting with fellow writers does help. Some of them are really active with their work and are busy tweeting quotes and tips from every nook and corner of the world. Apart from that, there are also recent trends on climate change and auctions that come to your twitter wall like fresh fruits plucked in the morning from a nearby orchard.

Of course it would be better if there is greater number of followers, who would at least get a glimpse of what is happening in the mind of a PhD student who writes occasionally. By the way, I have decided that I will keep my follower count higher than following. There is no particular reason for it, just a nail of irrationality stuck on the walls of my mind, refusing to get out.  Hence this has restricted my activities a bit. But one is hopeful that in the course of time, the numbers will grow. Till then I am happy with the one important function my twitter account @BGroundwest is performing that is acting as my archive. 

Raag Darbari

Raag Darbari is one of the finest satires written, this is what you get to hear as you grow up. I am reading it and no doubt the book will make you laugh at regular intervals. Here are a few sentences and paragraphs from the book translated by me for this blog. I am yet to complete the book but it is clearly evident how satire is a powerful tool to show the ills of society, entertaining the reader simultaneously. *Today the railways cheated him. He had left home with an understanding that the local train would be 2 hours late. But it left the station after being just 1.5 hours late! [introduction of the main character Ranganath]*On entering the (police) station, a man felt that somebody has picked him up and thrown him away 100 years back into time. If he was a reader of English detective novels, he wants to look at (inside the station) fingerprinting lens, cameras, wireless fit cars, but where are these (he thinks)? In response, he would get something which has been described above. Alongside, a naked Lotaband

Facebook is your emotional bank.

Facebook is like a bank. We have accounts in banks where we keep our most precious belonging. A bank holds our money and hence is a measure of who we are. If your bank balance is like the number of hits Tushar Kapoor has given, your face and personality might resemble him. On the other hand, if it’s like an Aamir khan, you are never complaining.
Facebook, I feel has become a bank of our emotions, our good times. You wake up in the morning and open your facebook account to witness all good things happening o your friends. Somebody is into a relationship; somebody is globetrotting and putting happy pictures, parents putting up their kids in funny poses and equally funny taglines, pictures and status messages signifying achievements. It’s as you do something good and put it in the bank of facebook for preservation and an interest.


The interest is the likes and comments one gets. In psychology, I had once read of something called the positive stroke. It’s like a unit of ‘good feeling’ that one gets on recognition or appreciation. More recognition means more positive stroke. Likes and comments are like a positive stroke. Hence Facebook makes it possible to get an interest out of a capital you have with you.
Just like a bank can be looted, your account can be hacked. Losing money from your bank account and getting your account hacked along with the hacker posting something on your wall will give you similar feelings of disgust. We sometimes see strange status messages from well to do people like my good friend proclaiming that he is gay! Or a beautiful woman writing that she is single and available! Both of these sound strange and scary.
A good bank balance is proof of your financial soundness. Regular credit into the account keeps it healthy. Similarly, a good facebook balance is good for your emotional soundness. Regular updates about good things which have happened to you will keep you emotionally healthy.  Or you may remember the tinge you feel after hearing about the savings in your friend's account when your account is like a desert, thirsty for a flow. You will keep getting the same tinge when your facebook is full of happy things that are happening to others while your wall is empty and crying for good news.
Finally having a good bank balance is no proof of your having a healthy lifestyle. You may be the richest man in the world but equally sad and lonely at heart. Money can’t buy you everything, as a common saying goes. So beware of the walls of some facebook friends. A good wall does not guarantee a happy life. The person could have the most happening facebook wall but could be the biggest ch***** and p**** of them all, gate-crashing to places he/she ought not to be. As they say, sometimes it is the one who makes you laugh the most is the saddest of them all. 

Goodbye dear friend

Goodbyes are not easy. Try saying it to cigarette smoking especially after you have been doing it for the last 14 years. A famous saying goes ‘Quitting cigarettes is easy. I have done it many times.’ But then there are times you just know that the relationship is not working anymore, a permanent strain has developed. Not just you but even the cigarette realises it and both parties amicably call off their relationship.


My friendship with cigarettes started on a rough note. While in undergraduate college, there was considerable moral friction before I got into habit of smoking. Cajoling from friends and inspiration from movies played their own part. The internal struggle with cigarettes started as soon as I started smoking. It was as if they could never take the place of a loyal wife, they always stayed a mistress and hence were prone to moral scrutiny. Slowly, like a skilled mistress, they made a regular place in my life. And I became, among many students, a trip-taker to the closest cigarette shops on the campus.
There are two aspects to smoking. One is of course what it does to the health. Other is the positives it brings. ‘The Economist’ recently called it the ‘biggest cause of preventable disease in the world’. Hazards of smoking are well known, major among them being cancer. Even the smoke packets make it very clear with the dirty pictures of afflicted lungs and throat. Still why do so many people smoke? There must be strong reasons that cigarette smoking has been increasing in many parts of the world. I am not advocating in favour of cigarettes, just saying a nice goodbye to a long-time friend here!
One thing for sure is that smoking makes you many good friends. If you can share a cigarette, you share a soul, however dirty the cigarette might be making it. Sometimes one cigarette would pass through five chattering mouths. Community smoking not only brings those smoking closer but in my opinion heats up the conversation. A smoker is in a way a romantic, smoking, knowing very well the consequences of it. The shared knowledge of such chivalry breaks certain barrier in a conversation and lets it to be more open. It is like one meets people at adventure trips and the conversation one could fall into with strangers just because all of you are doing this adventurous thing.
Cigarettes give you regular company. Imagine you have just finished watching a movie like ‘Godfather’ and wish to go out and talk to somebody about it. The movie has stimulated a part of your nerve which hardly gets stimulated while reading for competitive exams or talking to friends. But it is 2 a.m. and others are busy. Who would come to your rescue! It’s that thin cylindrical piece of nature which you can light and sit like Michael Corleone, maybe mouth few dialogues to yourself and then think of how beautifully the movie was made. Try this without the cigarette and see for yourself how everything falls off in a matter of seconds. This is a small example. The company of a cigarette can extend to your work, when you need a break from writing. There is something fulfilling about smoking one and getting back to what you were doing. It could just be the adrenaline rush!
I have innumerable stories with cigarettes, just like any other smoker. Unless you get your lungs checked, they all seem interesting. Recently, though the goodwill had stopped. It’s no more interesting to smoke. The mistress had been laying a stake at becoming a wife, asking for more time and you know, lungs. I did try to increase but after a certain extent, you can’t, hence this amicable divorce. Interestingly yesterday I visited the Nescafe stall at the campus. It was a habit sometime back where you would get a cigarette to smoke along with the coffee. When I sat down with the coffee, the stall owner called me and asked me if I was alright? I replied I had stopped. He seemed to be the happiest man in the world. Who knows what history he may have had with this dangerous mistress.