Time

"Time is an illusion" thundered Professor.

It was a special night with Professor Rajkumar on the topic of "Time". Rajkumar was highly skilled not only in his chosen subject (Physics) but also in spiritual topics (particularly those relating to Hinduism), and their parallels. All the attendants of the session were listening with rapt attention. Pin-drop silence.

"Have you not heard the famous Einstein quote that an hour sitting with a pretty girl on a park bench passes like a minute, but a minute sitting on a hot stove seems like an hour? That's relativity. Everything is only relative and there's absolutely nothing absolute." Some of the audience, their mouth agape, wondered at the professor's word play.

Professor went on. "What science and religion are saying is one and the same. That time is just a perspective based on the frame of reference. So never worry about anything in your life. There is nothing urgent. Life is your own. Learn how to enjoy it in your own terms and in your own time."

Crowd was now very quiet as if in trance. Professor continued to milk them. "Now, close your eyes, and take 5 deep breaths."

Everyone instinctively started breathing and closing their eyes. Then, the professor's mobile vibrated.

---

"How did you feel? Let's try one more thing to understand the illusion of time better. Now, close your eyes again, take few deep breaths for few minutes and keep listening to the sound around you till I ask you to open your eyes." With this statement, professor went to the backstage to check his mobile.

It was a reminder. On reading the reminder, the professor's eyes started dilating. He immediately placed a call to his best friend Santhosh.

"Hey Prof, how are you man? Great to hear from such a busy fellow!" said Santhosh with a joyful tone.

"Santhosh, I have an urgent request. Can you ..."

"Hey, just a minute. My grandson is asking for my attention. Achuchu, jijipa, you wet the diapers so frequently uh?" Santhosh started changing the diapers of his grandson.

Now, professor's patience went through the roof. He was praying Santhosh to get back to the call quickly. "Tell me prof" Santhosh said. Professor was relieved. "Great, I ..."

"Oh no, sorry prof. Hey kutti, don't climb that .... Oh God!" Santhosh was gone again. Professor was now feeling helpless. Time was moving ahead.

After another minute, Santhosh came back to the line. "Sorry prof!"

"You idiot! I need Rs.10000 urgently in my HDFC bank account. There's an ECS pending mid-night, and I already missed it twice in the past year. I don't want my name in CIBIL and get into more troubles with loans in future. You got it? Can you transfer now or not? I'm running out of time!" Professor blasted his friend in muted anger.

"Cool down buddy. I'll do it right away. Ok then, how is..."

"Fine, I'm in the mid of a session. Talk to you in a minute. Be on the line."

---

"Please open your eyes. See, how you feel? What happened to you? What happened in this world that you missed? Nothing! So, remember, time is an illusion!"

Santhosh was chuckling on the other side of the phone.

Money, Economy and Maslow's Hierarchy

Image Courtesy: Wikipedia

While I was traveling to work this morning, I thought of Abraham's Maslow's hierarchy of needs for an individual and how the society as a whole could be impacted by that.

Once I reached the office and did my routine of checking mails and looking through new content in Internet, I was slightly surprised to find that someone just wrote about this recently. What does this tell? Perhaps, hundredth monkey effect. I'm digressing.

But though the broad strokes are similar, what I thought specifically is something different and the topic of this post.

Broadly, Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs says that human beings have certain needs at various levels in the order of physiological, safety, love/belonging, esteem, self-actualization. Many of us may not agree with the exact representations (particularly in upper levels of pyramid), but the underpinning of this hierarchy can't be ignored.

I have an observation. With the formation (and the eventual dominance) of money (which is a placeholder for value promised by a party you trust), it became easy for people to satisfy the needs at lower levels. Let me explain.

While bartering was the main source of fulfilling needs, people might not have known the value of product (whether products or services) that they needed. Hence, in all probability, they would have given more value than they got. (I agree this is subjective, since value in those days depended more on the utility than an artificial assignment as it is today. Still, it's possible that the buyer might have been exploited by the seller, if the seller was able to extract better value for himself by his smartness.) It is relatively tougher (though not impossible) for farmer who barters rice for a dhoti to figure out what quantity of rice could be bartered for a given number of dhotis. (Let's even leave out the quality issue here.) Unless there was a system of values maintained and controlled by government, bartering was based strictly on utility.

With the advent of money, the exchange of value mainly based on utility diminished. But a fixed rate (i.e. fixed by market) became the norm and it was easy for people to exchange information on values far more easily. This now makes it clear to people how much money (i.e. value) they need to satisfy their basic needs and hence strive to earn that much through producing/creating something or selling labour for money (also called "employment"! :)). 

But by the same measure, it has now become difficult for people to satisfy the needs at higher levels. Why? For the simple reason that needs at lower level are more concrete and as we go higher, they become more abstract. Obviously, it's difficult to put a value on an abstract thing.

During bartering days, every one had to be a seller. And most of the people would have naturally tended to sell lower level things (as they are concrete, hence easy to understand, produce and sell compared to the higher ones). Nevertheless, due to lack of information on exchange value, such lower level things should have remained "expensive" compared to higher level things. Simply put, it was simply hard to find something that fulfills higher level needs. So, people naturally tended to find ways (by cooperating with others, organizing competetions that were not for prize-value but for pride-value) in order to satisfy those needs. And hence arts would have flourished.

Now, with money being a clear placeholder of value, but higher level stuff remaining as abstract as they were earlier, people only tend to become more confused. Now that buyers have a clear place holder of value, they naturally think there should be a clear value for higher level stuff also. Because, money (information) not only enabled the buyer to easily spot value of lower things and keeps them confused on the higher things, the sellers of higher level stuff take advantage of this and sell their stuff for a high-fixed value money (i.e. not based on utility).

I arrive at a conclusion that as much as we try to "buy" stuff that's high in Maslow's hierarchy, it will remain elusive. So, "buying" that is not best way, but "finding" it is better!

If you're still here, kudos to you! :)

She's Now Mine!

I saw her first when I was in Singapore few years back. The moment I saw her, I was awed by her beauty. For the next few days, I couldn't help that she occupied much of my thoughts. Why not? A girl from a family where the father worships beauty in everything he does. Probably, that man took some special care on this kid of his.

Without any shame, I'll now explain her beauty. She had beautiful curves at the right places. None of the other girls matched her. And her skin was white. I even saw a photograph of her where she posed naked!

I decided that I should make her part of my life. I waited for the right time.

In between, I came back to India and continued my life here. After few years, I got married to another girl (who didn't know at that time about my secret love for this girl). I was blessed with a son who made my life more joyful.

But still, my love for that girl didn't cease. It only grew more!

One fine day during last week, I summed up the courage to talk about my problem with my family. To my surprise, my Mom, Dad and Wife agreed to bring this girl home. After some inquiries, I learnt that she was in Chennai in Mylapore.

I went to her home with my wife, brother and my kid! On the way, I prayed God that nothing should go wrong in this endeavor. We entered her home, and I saw her sitting at a corner smiling at me. I was lost for words. As I went near her, I could feel my pulse racing and my heart beating so fast. When my wife, kid and brother were away for a bit, I touched her for the first time. She responded with a bright smile, and didn't even move a bit. Her curves were very inviting, but I suddenly took my hands away the moment I saw my family members coming towards me.

My wife too was admiring her beauty. And my brother ... his eyes were on her most of the times, but luckily my kid distracted him for the most part keeping him busy.

Atlast, I took her in my hands and lead her into the car. My wife seated this beautiful girl beside her. Wow, what a surprise!

That night that I spent with this beauty was unforgettable.

I'm proud. I am proud to own her!

I'm proud to own ............. a MacBook!

Return to the roots?

Kunal had a question on which I commented earlier. Now, I am finding myself in a similar (but not exactly the same) predicament.

For those people who know about me, I am a programmer. Even though I try to learn other aspects of software development (like project management, process etc.), what I identify myself with is programming.

Some time back in the year 2007, I got into project management by choice, and my company gave me the opportunity to get involved in project management. Of late, I've come to realize that I may not be a good project manager for the following reasons:

1. Not creating enough

As a project manager in my current setup, I hardly create anything. Basically, I love to create. (Music is my other passion; I used to compose many songs for a children & youth group, but not much happening now-a-days in that front too.) And, when I come to a stage in my life when I don't create something useful, I become rather sad!

2. Managerial skills?

I believe it's totally my fault in not having a clear expectation of what project management means (or to be more precise, what project management means in a particular setup). For example, with a team that has a high technical & domain skills, superb intra-team & client communication, the project manager doesn't have much of work REALLY. In that case, it makes sense for such a PM to take up the responsibilities of his superior (could be revenue management, business development, new process initiatives.) But with a team that's not that technical and / or not with enough bandwidth in terms of client communication, the PM's role becomes more deeper. i.e. the PM ideally does some heavy lifting by taking part in the requirements AND design, apart from the usual status reports, tasks allocation, adhoc client calls etc.

This is where my problem was. I belonged to a team of the first type, but still I was not willing to accept the fact that I should be sharing the responsibilities of my superior. (I'm still not willing to do so, since there's not much scope to be really productive.) So, I give an impression that I'm not good at project management.

3. Ethical reasons!

I think this heading is self-explanatory, so I don't want to dig deeper.

Ultimately, when we keep doing something we don't love, we end up hurting ourselves real bad in long term. Maybe, I should return to my roots!

Earning Money - Made Easy

Well, I agree that it's an "attention grabber", but I've come to believe that making money is not THAT difficult, if you put your mind to it and have SOME creativity.

I read the book "Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid" by C.K.Prahlad some time back. In that, he discusses how real money can be made by selling to people who are really way down in the pyramid of "money" - people who can't really afford much. Ideas like selling 1 rupee icecreams to a huge population and still making profits have been floating around. (Not as simple as it sounds since there are LOTS of factors involved in such ice-cream making and selling, but still it's not impossible either.)

This morning, I was watching the following video by David Heinemeier Hansson:



Wow, is this not fortune at the bottom of the "web" pyramid?

Enjoy!

Seeking truth relentlessly

Some of my friends asked me why the title "Seeking truth relentlessly" for my blog. That one symbolises a person in history of India (some prefer to call it "mythology") who was seeking truth relentlessly.

For those uninitiated, there was this small boy whose father was performing a yaga (a fire ritual). It was a practice in India to gift something to poor people during the yaga - and whatever is given should be of good quality and should be one that's close to the heart of the giver. This father was giving away old cows that couldn't give milk. The young boy saw this act of his father. Being the one who was close to father's heart, the boy asked his father "whom you're going to gift me to?" When asked repetitively, the father got irritated and said "I give thee to Yama deva (the lord of death.)". The boy went to Yama loga (the place where Yama resides). He waited there for 3 days at the doorsteps without any food. It's considered a sin to have a guest wait. So, Yama begged his pardon and told him that he'd be granted 3 boons.

The boy asked his three wishes: first, that his father should be ridden of anger and recognize and accept him when he goes back to his home. Yama granted the wish.

Second, the boy asked to learn Agni vidya (the knowledge of fire) from Yama. Yama granted this wish too.

Third, the boy asked to learn Atma vidya - the knowlege of soul - what happens to the soul after death. Yama was stunned. Yama said "Dear boy, please don't ask this alone. This is one thing even great sages are trying to figure out and it's tougher for even them. So, drop this and ask for anything - wealth, emperorship or whatever you like." But the boy didn't waver; he persisted and requested Yama deva to grant that wish. Yama accepted his request and taught him Atma vidya.

This young boy is still remembered for his persistence to seek truth relentlessly.

And his name is Nachiketa.