The EmScale [1...10]

Emotions are essentially the colours of human life. Colours have different shades, these shades may differ ever so slightly but each is a different colour (you may as well check the hex representation!) in its own right! Greater is the number of shades in a painting, the more colourful is its appearance. But for a colourful painting to translate into a mesmerising piece of art, all the colours need to be in the right place! But is the same true with a person brimming up with different emotions? Is there a prescribed definition for “right emotion at the right place” ? Don’t think so and that’s what makes a living personality dynamic and different from a static painting. (I know the above text has something in it that makes it sound like a mathematical proof, I am an engineer after all, and more mathematical interpretation is unfortunately going to follow).

The expression of an emotion, should it always be spontaneous and unplugged? Or should an emotion come out after actualizing the logistics of the situation at hand? (That sounds so supply-chain-ish). You may agree neither is the best way to go about! (This is going to be the style for this blog, ask something and then deny it!) Expressing every emotion just like that, takes the fun out of it, and has a dull notion of predictability associated with it. At the same time, the conscious suppression of an emotion is a deep and intense realization which makes this feeling itself a heavy-weight when ranked amongst its peers. The people we describe as normal are generally emoting on the line in between these two extremes. And yes these “normal” people are more inclined towards one or the other side of the “emotional divide” (This phrase is a nice candidate to be the title of this one...let’s see)

Let’s analyse if we have an “Emotional Scale” (let’s call it something fancy...say The EmScale™ :P ... you must be able to think of something better...) from 1 to 10 in order of increasing emotional expression, what should be the ideal world mean be? Five may pop up as an answer, which implies there are equal number of people on both sides of the emotional divide. But is it so simple? Can a person have a fixed rating on this scale for his entire life in every situation? May be in an ideal world yes, but the “normal” being is dynamic enough to have a fluctuating reading. He could be “1” at a given point and change to “10” is the spur of moment. For instance in an argument he could range from “1” to “10” with the simple tool of voice modulation! The equilibrium of an argument can essentially be defined as closeness of the mean value of persons involved being close to “5” (Wow, see now I am defining terms based on what I just defined!). So it is actually the instantaneous mean value of “5” which we are looking for in the larger sense, for a given situation, for a given group of people and for the world as a whole! (I know it is so stupidly mathematical, but it is my blog, and I felt like writing that sentence!)

So what is your value on this scale? Or let me correct myself and say what is your current or instantaneous value? (Which may prompt you to say that the correct parameter to define a person on the basis of this scale is “Standard Deviation”... but let’s leave it for higher mathematicians!)

The train-people! (Part-I)

“Kathgodam se (pause) aane vaali (pause) Delhi ko (pause) jaane vaali. Sampark Kranti Express...” and this much of the announcement was enough to get the people moving . The people rushing and brushing past you here, there and everywhere, very much like the little kids pushing around to be the first one in the queue (...atleast they care to form the queue...) for getting into the school bus. It is hard to imagine an Indian Railway platform not buzzing with this kind of (hyper-)activity and I guess, I don’t want to imagine a super-orderly crowd of silent people acting as if others are aliens to them. They tried to implement the latter pattern at Delhi Metro, but off late the metro-junta has come to its own, where you just need to be near the door and you will be automatically steered in or out of the metro depending on which side of the door you are. Coming back to the good-ol’ railways, this rush of people, full of excitement of going to wherever they are going, scampering to get into the train even when they have reserved seats, carrying tonnes of luggage as if carrying the whole household and last but not the least, full of best wishes & suggestions for someone they are seeing off , makes the experience truly and positively Indian!

The platform is only a part of the experience; the train is the real deal. And what makes the train travel an interesting experience is the train-people! Yes “train-people” are a special type of people who come to their own when travelling in a train. I came across quite a few varieties during my 4 train journeys (to-and-from Delhi) in the last one month. The rest of this blog is dedicated to types of train-people one usually finds in our trains. Have you ever acted like one of them, I surely have, read and find out.

1. The Newly-Weds

This is one of my favourite types. The first thing is recognizing such a couple. The common characteristics are – a very college-going look with lots of big red bangles on the girl’s hands, a couple too happy with one another, often found leaning and falling asleep on each other, other characteristics can only be visually observed :). The fun part comes when the husband is sitting in the window seat, the wife in the middle and suddenly an Uncleji comes and occupies the aisle seat (...and you are seated in the parallel seat in the position of a keen observer ;)). The Uncleji (...likely with a thick moustache and teeth red with Pan Masala...) sits and spreads out in the most relaxed position he can, capitalizing every penny of the ticket he has paid for and takes out his...newspaper. The girl visibly irritated, shifts slightly away from the uncle towards the husband. 1minute...2minutes...3minutes...the Uncle and the paper spread a little more, the girl shifts a bit more. [Re-read the previous sentence, till there is no more space to shift and the husband is literally squeezed into the window]. The husband with an evident frown says “you come in the window seat and let me come here”, the tone is potent enough to cause an immediate sideways glance by the Uncle and he pulls the paper and himself a little a away. But the damage has been done, the shifting takes place and all is well again :). The girl in the window seat, boy besides her and Uncleji has to now actually read the paper.

2. The Manorma/Sarita/Grihshobha Uncle

These as you may have realized are names of popular women's magazines. And yes, these are found mostly with Uncles in trains at least. Afterall when that hawker comes with a tempting offer with all three costing just Rs.10 very few can dare refuse the package. The primary features of this type are- they appear as if they are reading the most important thing in the world, they hate when the little chintoos (...they are another important species of train-people...) make annoying noises or when the mischievous houseflies bother them and sometimes they behave like the Unclejis mentioned in the previous description. I wonder what they are reading in these womens'’magazines, I bet it is not the recipies. It can be quite a task sitting alongside them, when they are smelling of the cigarette they just smoked off at the compartment door. Mostly silent their only expectation is silence to read what they are reading.

This one seems like it’s going to be a long blog as I have a long list of train-people to describe. Some of them being:

....

The "Bhaiyya-adjust-to-karna-padta-hai" aunty/uncle

The "Ever-so-irritating" Chintoos

....

I’ll talk about them in the next one. For now let’s see if Kings XI Punjab manages to pull this one off against RCB!

@shashiTharoor ... #cattleClass is cool!

This title may seem like a tweet at the wrong place, as it is intended to be so. This title in twitter lingo is dedicated to the recent remark of Shashi Tharoor posted on twitter. Shashi Tharoor is India's MoS for External Affairs (…who has been caught in an internal affair...). To bring everyone on the same page (…ya I hear a lot of this in office...it has to come out somewhere!…), let’s do a bit of background…Recently the Indian Govt. has laid down a directive that the central govt. ministers will have to do all their air travel in the economy class. This is only applicable while traveling within the country (…may be coz they believe in the great Indian saying - ghar ki baat ghar mein rahe…) . A bit of googling will land you up on a search results page listing snippets having the phrase “Indian Govt.’s austerity drive” (…don’t google now that’s why I have put it all here ;)…).

So when Mr. Tharoor, who is a regular on twitter was asked by an innocent someone (…this guy will surely be having a certain feeling of accomplishment at this moment…) that if he would stick to this directive, and travel in cattle class (...and so he used the term first) ? Mr. Tharoor had something interesting to tweet about it. This is what he posted as a reply-'Absolutely, in cattle class out of solidarity with all our holy cows!'. Note that this was not a comment made in any interview/to media, it was a simple little tweet. But the twist in the tweet came when the holy cows within his party described the remark as insensitive and uncalled for, painting a not so good image of Mr. Tharoor. And that’s when this became news and since then people have been searching for it.

This austerity drive launched by the govt. is an attempt by the govt. to express its solidarity with the mango-man (source:Love Aajkal) in a drought struck nation owing to an indifferent monsoon (…hope some of it has been compensated by the recent spells of heavy rainfall…even causing river Yamuna to kiss the danger mark). Guessing from the way the Indian mango-man’s sentimental flow usually is, the first thing one would expect is sharp criticism for Mr. Tharoor, but on searching on twitter for responses to this remark, a lot of results pop up which receive the remark with a bit of humor occasionally sprinkled with sarcasm (…as probably it was intended to be). Another reason for this observation can be that there aren’t enough specimens of the great Indian mango man on twitter! But let’s consider the former…just for the sake of it (FSI…if you have read it).

Mr. Tharoor has had a stain free reputation of an intellectual and was even billed as India’s candidate for the UN Secretary-General in 2006. His frank tone didn’t exactly make the right noise in his party’s ears but he has often utilized his right of free speech & expression (…which twitter has come to unofficially represent…). As was in another episode when he along with another minister was asked to vacate his room (serving as a temporary residence) in a five star hotel. He retorted back saying that he was paying the bills himself and not billing the govt. Although he had to vacate it like here also he has agreed that he will travel in the cattle class.

One thing all this has done is make twitter famous. Surely a lot more people have come to know about twitter following this incident. Already twitter is becoming more popular in India, although not at the speed at which Orkut accounts were initially created, but still I can say as the number of followers of mine (…this “followers” is totally a twitter term here :)…) have been constantly increasing. Coming to Tharoor, may be he will have to follow the rule “think before you tweet” because as of now there is no real block feature (which may prevent selected people to view your tweets) in twitter. This is another debate, which we’ll discuss another time!