Here's to you Santa!

Dear Santa,


While I fully understand your predicament at this commercially attractive time of the year, I was sincerely hoping that you would take some time out from your sledge surfing (I still believe a leopard would be a far better option that those poor reindeers- just imagine the sheer awesomeness of you perched on a leopard in a Mattel store!) and have a look at my wish list for this Christmas. While I agree to adhere to the North Pole's law book, that this wish list cannot be back-ordered like the one on Amazon, nor can it be sweetened with some last minute tomfoolery by a frustrated customer service agent for Verizon, I pray that you give some consideration to my pleas for the betterment of me and me only. I am not a selfish person, but the principle of rational distribution in a linear set of wishes demands that I focus on my odds of receiving something in lieu of demanding a 100 different things. Who knows, with 4 billion people demanding everything from the iPad to a reunion of Pink Floyd, you could probably spread the love out with my fellow bargainers. See, I am being altruistic here. Okay, back to the list:


1. Get rid of all the parks


Honestly Santa, as much I love the rays of fading sunlight fall on the leaves and turn it into a hue of poise, I feel bad for the poor gardener and his extended clan who have to redo the lawn after every outburst of public sentiment, more so these days with the Lokpal campaign and Occupy Wall street protests. Before I get lambasted by anybody for trying to question our unquestionable right to freedom of expression, I propose that we turn all parks into community centers with clean and hygienic sanitary facilities. We can always alter the landscape so as to maximize the space available for convening a meeting, while having a high-rise in the rear to provide comfortable lodging options for the night. It's a win-win proposition Santa- the government doesn't have to worry about the inconvenience caused to those who wish to take a leisurely stroll in the park, and the protesters can keep shuffling their band of slogan-raising humans so that nobody feels homesick. You can also figure in the advertising revenue to offset the costs of construction, and the cost benefits of letting the private sector sharing a piece of the pie!


2. Create a smarter Facebook


Santa, while you would agree that a lot of people really speak their mind on their walls, how about something which really taps into the mind of an individual? So that facebook would no longer have to politely inquire-"What's on your mind?", rather just publish and say-"Oh, so you didn't like the latest Mood Indigo Livewire night but are just praising it to appear cool to  other metal heads!" 


3. Get rid of money, and replace it with points


Santa, money is the root cause of all problems. Not when you have a lot of it, but then there is no limit to how much is enough. Everyone has a different take on it, from the Tea Party to Mukesh Ambani to Kapil Sibal to daily wage laborer working on the next high-rise in Shanghai. I would certainly not mind making more during grad school. How about we get rid of money all together, so that people have one less thing to complain about on their agenda. We can instead have skill-based remuneration system, something that awards points or something. For example, somebody who can jump 4 hoops at a time gets more points than somebody who can only do 1, or pipetting 1ul accurately should have more value than 1.1ul. Wait, that's how the currency system was born. Oh well, you get the gist of it Santa. Just figure it out using all that wisdom you have accrued while dying your beard starch white.


4. Find another Earth for me


Seriously Santa, these space scientists are driving me nuts with all their talk of Goldilocks zones and Earth-like planets. Every time they come up with an interesting revelation, I get my hopes high of space travel and meeting an alien who will confer superpowers on me a-la Jadoo or E.T., and then it fizzles out. Okay, we have water on Moon, and Mars might have once been home to microbial life, but where is the fabled planet where Spock resides? 


Till next year!


PS: It's the season of holidays, and what better way to celebrate than through the words of John Lennon.

Freeze and thaw

Winter is a funny time of the year. There is a deluge of family-centered holidays, and shoppers flock to get the 'best deals' that only open up at this time of the year. In India, nobody remains slim anymore, as toddlers are covered in their layers of sweaters and the women bring out the expensive cardigans and shawls to the envy of the neighbors. As for the weather, depending on your geographical location, winters can either be the best time of the year or an absolute nightmare.

For me, 5 years in Mumbai destroyed whatever winter tolerance I had built up in 17 years living in Jhansi. Winters in Mumbai were the best time of the year- no fear of dehydration and humidity at its absolute low. Having swung between these two extremes, I was under-prepared when I landed in the desert. Having been here twice in the hot and dry summer, and knowing that Tucson was not very far from the west coast, there was nothing abetting my desire to pack enough warm clothes. Turns out, Tucson is more like Jaisalmer than Pune, and the cold wave outside makes me wonder about other assumptions that go wrong all the time.

For example, we assume that politicians are committed people who will put aside differences in the end and work out a mutual agreement in the greater benefit of the nation. Ironically, the educated US senators perform no better than the semi-literate, identity-bred politicians back home at this benchmark. You can gloss over other nations as well, and it becomes clear that politics is a dirty business to the core. Another assumption that often goes wrong is that the economy is going downhill because of less global spending. Never was there more investment activity going on across the globe. You simply need to look into the right sector. Be it clean energy, or the more conventional oil exploration, investors are flocking to the few seemingly reliable areas in both sectors. If anything, the reason might be the lop-sided nature of investments, where few monies are spent on human development, and more on increasing the already inflated MPLAD funds. We spend when we feel good about ourselves, or even when we want to feel good about ourselves. Having recently witnessed the Black friday euphoria in the states, the latter certainly seemed to be the case.

The third assumption, and this one is quite close to my heart, is that Science holds all the answers to every conceivable question, and if Science cannot explain it, it is not possible. The other day, I was having this conversation with a friend about religion and faith (you know where this is going), and I put forward my best argument that some of the practices seem to be lacking any logic whatsoever. Then comes the news that OPERA project was able to reproduce their results of neutrinos breaking the Einsteinian barrier of light travel. We might very well be re-writing all those Physics textbooks 10 years down the line. Who knows what else might become explainable with better and more sophisticated instruments!

The lesson I take from the above is that while it is good to assume certain stuff, it is imprudent to blank out an alternative. With that, I wish my assumption of a warm day on December 11 turns out to be correct!

PS: Nobody remained young at heart longer than Dev Anand did. He was the foremost style icon the industry ever had, and a wonderful observer of new talent where others would have seen none. RIP!