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!