Cutting Chai with Arun Krishnan - Opinions

One day before my thirty-fourth birthday, I saw a dead body. I had decided to go for a long run to give my mind an uninterrupted opportunity to contemplate the year gone by and all that there was to do in the year ahead. When I was had progressed into the upper portions of the FDR drive in New York, a good five miles into my run, I saw a man lying lifelessly on a leather seat.

It did not look like a dead body to begin with. It was so unnaturally white that it bore no resemblance to anything that could have been alive at any point in time.

It could have been someone from another world. Or a mannequin. It could have even been one of those opera singers with exaggerated makeup that had somehow materialized in the midst of the Manhattan traffic.

It was only when I saw the car, whose trunk could only be described as decapitated, that I realized that I was looking at a human being who till not very long ago, had family, friends, dreams, hopes, aspirations - and in this city of ceaseless movement, ambitions.

In other words, someone who was not very different from me.

I realized that I could have so easily been that body. If I wasn’t, it was only due to the workings of a mysterious fate, that I had no control over, or couldn’t even begin to understand.

I instantly felt humbled and insignificant, as people do when they begin to understand the vastness of the universe in the course of a visit to the museum, as geologists must feel when they gaze upon rocks in the Mojave desert that more than 1.8 billion years old, or the wonder that visitors to the Grand Canyon experience when they first gaze upon vast expanse that has been somehow carved by the narrow river that flows deep within its gorges.

My mind which had till recently been bubbling over with thoughts on a series of well planned actions which would shape the world in some shape or form, suddenly realized how inconsequential all of it really was. All I was left with was a felling that magnified with every passing second and said to me, “What’s the point?”

Till now, I had thought of death in a largely abstract way.

As a child, I had spent large portions of my hours wondering why policeman Shashi Kapoor didn’t shoot righteous anti-hero Amitabh Bachchan below the knee in the last scene of that classic Deewar and given him the gift of life.

In my college days, I grappled with Nietzsche’s contention that hopes for a higher state of being after death are explained as compensations for failures in this life. As I got older, I began to take solace in the Buddhist teachings that taught me that the drops of life beat eternally on all of our worlds, transient as they might appear.

However, none of these teachings had prepared me for the raw brutality of the moment of a young life being snatched away by what I perceived to be an unconscionable development.

But was the snatching away of such a young life really that unconscionable only because my mind couldn’t rationalize it?

Not really.

As an armchair pretend scientist, I might be completely off in my understanding of the matter, but it was depressing to read of a Leonard Hayflick, who discovered that the cells in our bodies are servants of unfeeling counters that count to as little as fifty. Then, they stop dividing and simply…die. The process happens faster for human beings than it does for supposedly lesser beings than the staid turtle or even the humble lobster (unless they are being cooked in our grills, in which case the final countdown is considerably speeded up).

The never-ending decay takes place ceaselessly even as we actively conjure images of that promotion, that great work of art or even thoughts of how we will defeat the machinations of our dry cleaner, events that at the moment of their conception appear to be basked in the golden glow of immortality.

All of this I knew. Now I remembered. And when I came to realize this great mass of resolutions that I had conjured up a day prior to my birthday seemed pointless, as did my very existence. The image of the lifeless body refused to go away, as I -or more accurately my body - felt utterly and completely nauseated.

Was there any point in willing my mind to live even as my body continued to die?

As I tried to navigate this maze of thoughts, I had continued to run in a blind daze, and had run well over ten miles. I was by the Brooklyn Bridge, which like the image I had of the cells in my body shimmered and disappeared just a little more with every moment. The Hudson River, the expanse of which it spanned, through continued to flow, changing, always changing; real, always real.

And then just like that I felt something. My body felt thirsty and conjured up in my mind the refreshing image of a glass of orange juice.  It was something that the body of Amitabh’s character probably didn’t feel during that last scene in Deewar. But it was something that my body felt now.

And the sensation of a cold stream of orange juice flowing down the insides of my parched throat was more comforting that the most exquisite vision that my mind could ever conjure.

I felt increasingly more alive, as I basked in the complete bliss produced by the vision of an incredibly dry thirst on a hot summer day being quenched by the first touch of a refreshing drink.

It made for an excellent birthday present.

One wonders how Roger Federer felt walking into Centre Court as an underdog. After all, he was the world’s Number One player. The top seed. Yet to drop a set this year. Attempting an unprecedented sixth straight hoick of the Wimbledon trophy. Undefeated on grass since the Jurassic era.

But for all that, and make no mistake about it, Federer was the underdog against an opponent who had, time and again, exposed his clay feet at Roland Garros. And by claiming the Queen’s silverware this year, he announced in no uncertain terms that he had come to terms with grass, and that last year’s five-setter finale was just a sneak peek at his true arrival. Former greats agreed. Bjorg predicted a Nadal victory and McEnroe couldn’t stop talking about Nadal’s power and the kickass life within his serve.

So there it was. Once the lesser men were sent home to lick their wounds and once the kiddie trophies were handed out, Fedex and Rafa locked horns in what, the whole world hoped, would be an epic battle for supremacy. One sensed that never before, and (God, no!) never again, will these two fine men be as evenly matched. And irrespective of what happened, this would be the most important match of their lives.

Unscriptable. Inexplicable. Once in a lifetime. Deserves another round of tepid verbosity. Let’s try and describe it again.

Roger Federer versus Rafael Nadal. Fedex versus Rafa. The former, the best thing to have happened to men’s tennis since they invented the Open Era. The latter, the best thing to have happened to men’s tennis since Roger Federer. The only certainty was that, at the end of it all, both men would weep. There would be flashbulbs. There would be the less-publicised champagne. But before that, thanks to all that’s beautiful, there would be some tennis. Yessir.

Sports enthusiasts of my generation would have shopped ahead, been as ready as the duelling champions. Microwavable popcorn, beer colder than a cynic’s shrug, wives and children packed off to girlfriends with clueless husbands, home delivery numbers programmed onto speed dial, mobiles (and even Blackberrys) switched off and just about enough oxygen in the room to sustain long breaths. Of course, one cannot discount fickle-minded Indian men who swapped channels once in a while to catch the fiasco in Karachi, and ascertain that the ever-glittering Indian batting line-up had succumbed to the wiles of a young upstart, another sportsman knocking on the doors of genius. Thankfully, the blue-boys boohoo-ed off the stage soon enough and there was no longer any excuse to miss the real action.

The first two sets were a letdown, perhaps even to diehard Rafa-rooters. Did Fedex still have the will to defeat the Spaniard? Did he really? Or was he content to lie down and play dead? Despite having innumerable break points, indeed, one clear and early break in the second set, Federer still limped his way into a 4-6, 4-6 position, the kind of scorecard that prompts one to say, ‘Well played, but…’

Then came proof that the world hadn’t really stopped spinning around its axis. Winds still existed and they brought the first of two rain interruptions to Centre Court. When play resumed, Federer found enough meat in his gall to force and win the tiebreak. He carried the momentum to win the fourth set tiebreak as well and by the middle of the fifth, both players had managed to suspend science. Gravity was put into probation, sent scurrying across the net. Trigonometry was redefined, as-yet-unknown angles found. Power formulae were rewritten, implemented against the will of hapless line officials.

And then, deep into the fifth set, with the scoreboard even as it can get, one man displayed a larger appetite for success. He hit the tennis ball better and found petite chinks in the other’s serve. Not much. Just enough to win. And like all meaningful victories, it was a champion’s victory against his inborn fears and limitations.

In other words, one man – Nadal – overcame the stretch marks of his soul. He won.

Sadly, we will not have a rematch of the 2008 Wimbledon Championship finals. If fate is kind to us, these two men will meet again in the same podium, but they won’t be the same men that played this match. Most certainly not.

Perhaps Nadal wouldn’t be as hungry. Perhaps, dare I say it, he wouldn’t even be the clay-loving parakeet he is today. Or perhaps he’ll not have to masquerade as the second seed anymore.

And what about Federer? Dear old Fedex has two options to choose from. He could slowly fade away into the twilight. Or he could simply decide that immortal immortality is within his reach. Who knows? Perhaps a proper Grand Slam roundup is in the cards. Perhaps he would embrace Sampras’ record as naturally as the rain roof slides over Centre Court next year. He may not know it, but he has a million Indians egging him on.

This article has been written by Bangalore based writer Eshwar Sundaresan. He can be reached at eshwars@vsnl.net.

Have the journalists of today become lazier than sloths hanging off particularly comfortable tree branches? It certainly does appear to be that way. How else would you explain the fact that our media has lost the ability to celebrate the uniqueness that is inherent in every scandal?

In a world full of conformity, scandals are the lone bastions for strong-willed people rebelling against rigid and antiquated societal systems. It is therefore important that the efforts of each and every our fellow citizens that have stepped off the path of righteousness be recognized and celebrated separately.

Why then is the media doing our scandalmongers and indeed society at large a disservice by lazily naming every scandal using the word “gate” as a suffix?

When U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton lied about being caught in sniper fire in Bosnia, the media called it Snipergate. When Indian cricketer Harbhajan Singh slapped Indian cricketer Sreesanth in public, the media labeled it as Slapgate.

This gate-naming phenomenon is a dangerous trend that must be nipped in the bud. Else, each time we read about criminals, we will be reminded about Richard Nixon - which is really unfair to the criminals.

Luckily for us, our peers and ancestors have indulged in a wide-ranging variety of activities that allow us to think more colorfully (if not better) of them. Here are a few scandals that will help the modern journalist to think beyond Watergate while framing references for future scandals.

The Whiskey Ring: In the years following the American Civil War, federal liquor taxes were raised to extremely high rates to help pay off the cost of the fighting. However, there were a few enterprising souls who bribed government officials for tax stamps, thus avoiding the cumbersome task of having to pay the extra tax.

Use the word “Whiskey” as a prefix or suffix while naming scandals (both are equally tasty) involving the exploitation of public situations for private gain. These situations can also be referred to as being Haliburtoned, though in this case usage of the phrase “being a Dick” is more appropriate.

Hillary Clinton in Bosnia: The former first lady’s yarn spinning abilities need not draw on the scandals of the past for a name. Instead they can function as a source to inspire and name generations of future scandals, particularly those involving the use of hyperactive imaginations.

Imagine you hear of a scandal involving a person has embezzled money from their bank. This person then tells the police that the culprit was Harry Potter. When the unbelieving upholders of the law show up with the handcuffs, you can say that the guilty man has been Serbed.

Mobutu Sese Seko, Life of: It would be foolish to view scandals solely from an American perspective. There are some truly great visionaries in the art of scandal making that have forged innovations across the world.

In his 32year reign as President of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mobutu Sese Seko stole everything he could get his hands on. And judging by his extremely large stash, he had more hands than an overachieving Hindu God. Mobutu had a love for most things Swiss - while the cheese was too full of holes for his wholesome taste, he particularly liked their banks.

Seko - use as a verb that indicates desire or want. To seek happiness, but to seko a Mercedes.

Imelda Marco: This powerful lady that ruled over the Philippines was found to own 15 mink coats, 508 gowns, 888 handbags and 1,060 pairs of shoes. While she was renowned for many other grander acts of corruption including sending a plane to pick up Australian white sand for a new beach resort, she failed to live up to her usual high standards in terms of her shoe collection, which impressive at the time, is considered necessary by most women in New York today.

Marco - use as a prefix or suffix, for an act of corruption that is not timeless, such as being involved in the piracy of a huge consignment of Celine Dion albums during the release of the Titanic.

Zinedine Zidane: A famous French footballer who headbutted Italian rival player Marco Materazzi during the 2006 World Cup final. Marco (not a shoe stealer like his Phillipino namesake) provoked Zidane by saying some not very nice things about his mother, and by accusing him of not paying his dry cleaner.

Zidane - use a prefix, suffix or verb. However fast going out of style due to overuse on Fox News - they Zidane to resolve arguments.

And what of the incident involving an Indian cricketer slapping his brother man? To draw an analogy, one need look no further than the Fodder scam, where Bihar Chief Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav siphoned huge amounts of money under the pretext of buying fodder for large amounts of cattle. The problem, of course, was that the cows were imaginary.

So the Harbhajan -Sreesanth incident should be referred to as Fodderslap. This is because Harbhajan took away Sreesanth’s dignity by slapping him. Only Sreesanth didn’t have any dignity to begin with. Like an imaginary cow, his dignity went from nothingness to nothingness, and managed to moo and bawl very loudly while doing so.

Many a wise person has said that having different seasons keeps a person more intellectually engaged with the outside world. This theory explains why I prefer the different seasons of Bombay: humid, more humid, and really very humid.

On the other hand, the changes in the New York climate are a bit too dramatic for my liking, and I prefer to give them a miss.

New York’s wide range of temperatures might at first glance seem appetizing to a democratic mindset, but in reality, it is winter that like a cruel dictator rules the populace - and the remaining seasons-with a cold heart.

This is a good thing, the wise people say. After all, it is the cold winter that makes the New Yorker brooding and real, and keeps him or her from devolving into a flighty Angelino.

However, truth be told, winter does not make the New Yorker gritty. All it really does is put people in a bad mood when they are waiting for a table at a restaurant, a sour expression that they carry around for the remainder of the year. It also causes people to have overtly exuberant reactions to the hot summer months - why else would they drive to beaches in sweaty, huddled and sticky masses, and plead with one another to kick sand upon their sun-burnt faces?

The normally reliable Merriam and her worthy sidekick Webster define a season as “a period of the year characterized by or associated with a particular activity or phenomenon”. Winter, then is not a season. It is a cheap glass of wine, the effects of which are felt not only during the process of actual imbibing, but also during the endless and cruel hours that must inevitably follow.

But for the human race to survive, there must be moments when we can temporarily look through our hangovers to the future with a semblance of hope. And this is why, following winter, we have spring.

In New York, spring does not come punctually with the beginning of the equinox. It takes spring the better part of two weeks to open its eyes, have a glass of tea, and do those stretching exercises so highly recommended by doctors to transition into a state of wakefulness. Once awake, spring dresses itself up, and decides to show itself off to the rest of the world.

And resisting the urge to slip into hyperbole, all one can say is that it is wonderful.

The best way to view the new found joy of spring in New York is to go for a run along the FDR or the West Side highway and run a few circles around J.D. Salinger’s fabled ducks at Central Park. You can see many an incredible spectacle, spectacles that would offer the Taj Mahal stiff competition and make you say, Marble is nice, but it goes only so far…

The first yellow flower stands out proudly from barren patches of gray, and makes you realize that clichés can really be very, very comforting. These gray patches also pale next to the white waves of foam that lap the shores of the rivers with warm breezes, rivers whose very existence you had forgotten. Along the river banks, the trees sprout new flowers and leaves, and pretend to be cherry blossoms, if only for a while.

With nature, its inhabitants come to life. Skirts cast serpentine shadows on cobblestoned streets, and make you want to be alive. It’s still too early for Shakespeare in the Park, but you can still see Homer accuse Caesar of some unmentionable crimes, only to be rebuked with a gentle pull of the leash.

And the world is green. It is a green that stands out sharply against the yellow jerseys of the baseball players and the white of the vanilla ice cream cones. It is a green that makes you want to compose a song about going to a store to buy cereal in flip flops, but when you get home you realize that you don’t have milk, but don’t mind going out again, because you can wear flip flops.

These are the flip flops that you remove at the end of the day before going to sleep with a heart that is calm and happy, one that would make a cardiologist give you a pat on the back.

But you wake up, not to the rays of sunshine and the warm breezes that have played starring roles in your dreams, but to gray skies and cold drops of rain. This is impossible, you think. You get into a staring match with the temperature widget on your computer screen and lose.

As you reach for your winter coat from the recesses of your closet, you feel crushed and helpless like a person at the receiving end of a violent street crime. Only this time around, you have been mugged by a season. And here’s another song - Nothing breaks more achingly than a resurgent hope under the callous soles of a powerful boot, one whose workings are too mysterious to fathom. Try getting that to fit into a tune.

As my soul still tries to come to terms with the grand deception of temporary change, here’s my one request to spring. Don’t be classy. Don’t be like one of those ancient dancers in those old kingly courts that revealed themselves, one veil at a time. Instead, be like a stripper at one of those modern day establishments, and make us aware of your beauty in one grand revealing moment. Don’t be like a clever argument in a scholarly work that discretely wags a finger towards a societal failing. Instead, bludgeon us over the head repeatedly like a loud news anchor on a cable channel, if only with rays of sunshine.

Spring, I beg, you. Please. Please make it all worthwhile.

Recently, I read a New York Times opinion piece that said of the economic stimulus package: “Eighty percent of the benefits from the capital gains tax cuts would go to the top 2 percent of households.”

The taps in my bathroom are malfunctioning, and my dog has a cold. I can tell that I am not in the top two percent of the population. I get concerned and immediately want to speak to the President about my economic situation.

Through the ads on TV, I know the President is more accessible than an escort at a 1.900 number. So I call.

“Hello,” I say politely.

“Is it 3:00 a.m.?” a groggy voice answers.

“No,” I reply puzzled. “Why would it be?”

“Then, why are you calling me?”

I am a man who believes in cutting to the chase.

“I want to talk about my economic situation.”

“Please call me at 3:00 a.m.”

I keenly discern that the voice on the other end keeps repeating the same thing. But judging by its highly irritable tone, I can tell that it is not a recording. Only people that are real can cough and spit between words with such vehemence.

“I can’t call you at 3:00 a.m.” I protest.

“Why not?”

It is a reasonable question, to which I want to provide an answer.

“I am normally asleep at this time,” I answer honestly.

There is a hushed silence on the other end. I fear I must explain my erratic sleeping habits more clearly to the President.

“You see, I work at an office between 9 a.m to 5. p.m., ” I say. “But on most days, my boss makes me work longer than that.”

My mood darkens, but I continue gamely, “So by the time I get home, it is already 7:30 p.m. Then I have to cook dinner. This normally takes till 8:15 p.m.”

I want to explain that mincing garlic is getting more difficult as I get older, but I decide to stick to the subject at hand.

“I don’t have a family, but I watch other families on TV. This normally takes till 11:30p.m. or so. Then, come the infomercials, flossing and light reading. So, as you can see, it is already 12:00a.m. before I get to sleep. That is why I am normally asleep at 3:00. a.m.”

“Are you done?” the President asks irritably.

“Yes…,”I begin to say.

“Why can’t you be like other people,” the President asks. “Like the folks who are awake at 3:00 a.m. and want to speak of the situation in Iran or the housing foreclosures in their city ?”

“I am like other people,” I say.

“So most Americans are asleep at 3:00?” the President asks incredulously.

“Yes,” I say. “Except for my soft-spoken neighbor who sells parsley in small plastic bags throughout the night, most people I know are asleep at 3:00 a.m.”

“This is a problem…”the President says.

I wait for the President to continue.

“I promised voters to be awake at 3:00 a.m. to talk about…you know…stuff. And if I am awake all night…”

“You need to sleep during the day,” I chip in.

I know how it goes. Like most weak-willed men, I have sat through all-night Beavis & Butthead reruns.

“Yes…” the President says ruefully.

I am a magnanimous man. Even though I am the one who called with a problem, I am ready to offer a solution.

“You should speak to my cousin J…in India,” I say. “When it is daytime in the US, it is night in India. That is when J…starts the working day. When people call you in the day, they can get transferred to J.., who will handle all your calls.”

“But is J…any good?” asks the President.

“Sure,” I say, “J… can do Australian, American, French and English accents. Sometimes all in the same sentence. Imagine how close the other world leaders will feel to you. Birds of a feather and all that.”

“Sounds good…” the President says, trailing off with a yawn.

“You get right back to sleep,” I say concerned. “I will set my alarm and call you at 3:00 a.m. If I can’t wake up at 3:00, I will call J…tomorrow to discuss my economic situation. I really need to talk about it.”

It is true. I really do.

Last Friday, I went to see Ishmael Beah speak at an event organized by the student body Project Africa at the New School in downtown Manhattan.

For those of you who haven’t been to a Starbucks or a Barnes & Noble bookstore over the last six months, Mr. Beah is the author of “A Long Way Gone”, the very compelling narrative of a child soldier in Sierra Leone, who ultimately learns to forgive his enemies, himself, and break on through to the other side (I should have had the words “spoiler alert” somewhere in this sentence.)

It was difficult to tell that the soft-spoken, smiling Ishmael Beah sitting in front of me could have ever taken the life of another living being - be it a fellow Sierra Leonean or even that of a chicken for a Ceasar’s salad. In comparison, I looked much more a killer in my passport photograph.

Yes, there were some very bad times in Sierra Leone, when thousands upon thousands of killers roamed the land. But there were also some very good times, during which Mr. Beah’s grandmother told him stories laden with morals, and times when the banyan trees in Mr. Beah’s village were the sole rulers that held dominion over the village courtyard.

And then there was a war. Not a war where some policy 75.01.897 affecting one million people was debated wildly at the United Nations, but a war where the sounds of the birds in the morning could not be heard over the now persistent gunfire. This was a war, where Mr. Beah could no longer swim in the river because it had turned a dark red, and highly unconducive to swimming.

It was this ability to humanize events and portray them in a compelling context that was the biggest revelation for me that evening. Mr. Beah’s narrative style, drawn strongly from the oral culture of story telling prevalent in Sierra Leone, took me back to my own childhood, where the tales of the Panchatantra and Indian mythology played a big role in shaping my consciousness.

Mr. Beah’s narrative took me back to a time, where I could remember and interiorize not only every story, but also the principles behind good storytelling, because the oral culture in India, like that in Sierra Leone, relies on the ability to package complex concepts in a memorable manner for its very survival.

This memorable style of narrative helps one to identify closely with both the story and the characters that shape its course - whether they are in Sierra Leone, or whether they are unraveling the mysteries of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. It is easy to see how narratives like Mr. Beah’s book are what will help the different people of the world understand each other, and bring us closer together in a manner that no pedantic work or government resolution ever will.

Sadly, the importance of humanizing events and presenting them in relevant contexts was lost on many members of the audience. Throughout the evening, I heard many intricate solutions to solve the problems afflicting Africa. Born in the womb of pity and nourished by immeasurable good will, these theories sought in one fell swoop to make Africa rich and prosperous, a place that Mickey could visit with family and friends. These theories seemed out of place, both with the spirit of Mr. Beah’s talk, and the mission statement of Project Africa - a student body that sought to celebrate Africa, not solve it.

In the course of my work in the not for profit area, I have never been ceased to be amazed with the degree of conviction that so many people have when they speak about Africa. If you take the same people, put them in New York’s Chinatown and ask them to find the way to the New Indonesia and Malaysian Restaurant, they would be horribly displaced and confused.

But ask them about a continent that is at least one million billion times greater in geographical area, and immeasurably more complex, and… lo behold! They roll their sleeves up in an assured manner, massage their palms for banging on the table and begin to expound. It makes me wonder…when did humility and the desire to ask questions, understand, and listen go out of style?

I do not mean to make blanket criticisms. There are many noble people I have met in the course of my not-for-profit career - people that have actually gone and established they permanent residence in the communities they want to change. Their statements are measured, and clearly illustrate the difference between more aid and effective aid. These people are inspiring - period - and often make me reflect about the most important factors that would help drive genuine change.

At these times, I think that if I were a child in Africa, I would want an excellent and thorough education. I would not be content with a limited skills straining exercise that would teach me to plant seeds or be a carpenter (it is not difficult to see how assembling IKEA furniture day after day can turn one into a rebel soldier.) I would want a complete education that would make my future bright and at all times, seem to be filled with options.

As an adult, I would want a wide range of jobs that I could choose from. I would not want the people of my country to be shown only in a hungry or negative light in the media, as I would be able to see that these portrayals would scare away the most resolute investor.

And lastly, I would want to relax at the end of a tiring day with a beer in my hand to go with a cool breeze playing with my ears. I would lie down on my reading chair, switch on the light and read a gripping narrative, a story that would make me pause and think of a book I once read, called A Long Way Gone.

As far as the keepers of time in our society go, I have no problems with clocks. Like worn out eye patches, aging oak furniture or curtains with personality, clocks tell us a lot about their owners. These mostly grand, sometimes cuckoo-driven objects help differentiate between the bland house and the unique home.

If only one could say the same about watches.

Sadly, over the last century, they have bred like prolific termites, whittling away at the self-esteem of scores of human beings.

If you are currently wearing a watch, take a look at it. How do you feel? Restless? Eager? Harried? I am sure, anything but tranquil, which in our age of quarterly earning reports is a state all of us are entitled to once in a while.

And yet, we continue to wear watches. I cannot walk down Eighth Avenue in Manhattan without being accosted by a well-meaning gentleman who wants to sell me a “Rolex”. This leads me to wonder if we have become a race of masochists, flinging money on the very objects that are a source of incessant pain.

But the proliferation of leather seats and medicines for treating the most mundane of ailments lays waste to this theory. We are clearly a race of comfort-loving beings that enjoys plush, cozy confines, cleared sinuses and non-jerking knees.

The person selling Rolexes outside Madison Square Garden is no more selling watches than Michael Jordan is selling athleticism. He is not selling an object that tells the current time, but an object that speaks of our current times.

Like the good people of Los Angeles love their cars, we like watches not for how they are, but more for how they speak about who we are. Watches have become nothing more than cars for the less affluent . We might not be able to afford a Rolls Royce, but we can take comfort in wearing this silver watch, and now can I please enter the tennis court of your member-only club and shout forty love?

There is a danger of being suckered into a Catch 22 situation here. Watches might speak highly of who we are, but at the cost of our self-esteem.

In the days of old, people told the time by the movement of the stars. A sailor at sea could always pinpoint her/his location by knowing the position of the Pole Star and the time of day. S/he could tell how close Greenwich was, and the time needed to sail on to a city with a better nightlife.

The very process of telling time was a humbling experience. The oceans, the stars and the multitude of life on the unpredictable waves reminded us of our insignificance in the grand scheme of things.

However, with the entry of the watch, people could tell time in complete solitude from the sea and the stars. There was no reason for human beings to feel humbled, and we began to be falsely reassured that we were the lord and masters of the forces that turned the world around its axis.

Even then, the process of empowerment was not an instantaneous one. People did have a lingering respect for analog displays. They could recall from early childhood that the act of telling time was a mysterious act explained only in Math textbooks.

With the advent of the digital watch, this respect born out fear faded away. The process of telling time was reduced to a process of reading numbers, a simple task that could be carried out effortlessly with a casual flick of the wrist.

Now, while there was really no reason to feel small, unfortunately the workings of the universe remained the same. The world was still a dangerous place filled with angry sharks and traffic jams. There was still very little we could do to always be on time, but the deceptively simple digital displays cleverly hid this fact from us.

If at first, we felt humbled, our repeated failures to be on time made us feel impotent, and this feeling of helplessness magnified under the pressure of that soon-to-be-coming appointment, and with every lunch that we missed.

Humanity already has a plethora of religious books and late night exercise infomercials to make us feed bad about ourselves. We don’t need watches to sit over our palms and hasten this process.

Can we not throw our watches in the nearest recycling bin, or mail them to the mad scientist who turns them into oil?

Wait a digital minute you say. Without a watch, how will the writer or the poet be able to look back upon an afternoon’s work without that all-important moment of satisfaction, when she or he looks at the watch with the incessantly moving hands?

Well, the poet or writer can surely feel his glass of tea that has now gone cold, relish the smell of deep-fried potatoes from a neighbor’s kitchen or listen to the chirpings of the recently awakened sparrow to sense the passing of the time. A more satisfying experience, I assure you - one that is connected more intimately to the rest of the world, filled with readers.

And what of the tired office worker, who looks at his watch at the end of a long work day, wondering just how long it will be before he can sink into his couch at home and bask in the comfort of a cold glass of water? In a world without watches, how will his thirst be quenched?

This worker can still tell the time. He just has to use another device. It’s called the cell phone.

I had always thought that I would never become a proliferator of exclamation marks. But just the other day, I used not one, but two exclamation marks in a communication. The resulting sense of shame has burnt searing scars across my every atom that makes up the fiber of my being.

It is small consolation - but I am not alone. Over the years, the population of P.O.E.M.s in our society has grown steeply. Today, it has become an epidemic and increased numbers of P.O.E.M.s flow dangerously across our hallways and buildings in short rhetorical bursts.

Who among us has not received a communication that utilizes exclamation marks not as an accessory, but as a life saving prop to complete a sentence? I receive hundreds every day. Here’s one from a communication that hit my inbox today:

Good morning! It was great to receive your email yesterday! Stay in touch and take care!! Oh…and by the way, I hope the weather remains sunny for the next two weeks!!!!!!! Speak to you soon!!!

The first emotion a person experiences after reading such an email is disbelief sparked by the perfectly plausible question: How can anyone be so impossibly happy?

It is only when you see that very P.O.E.M weeping tears into a latte at a coffee shop, or witness his or her picture underneath a newspaper headline that proclaims “Angry Worker Lets Loose on Seven”, do you realize that happiness might not be the culprit generating these forests of perpendicular punctuations.

What then is behind the sudden deluge of exclamation marks? How did we end up as a race incapable of endings with a more placid state of mind?

It is not as if we have always been a race that has evolved by expressing itself in heightened intonations. A cursory look through the correspondences of the years gone by reveals an extreme paucity of exclamation marks.

I searched extensively fin the history books for a “Thank you for your letter!!!”, but there was no mind from the past that had recorded feelings for posterity in such an excitable manner. The norm for our ancestors has been to utilize dignified full stops, commas and when forced - semicolons.

To give just one example, here’s how the famous British poet John Biltjaman began to a letter to his friend not very long ago.

It was great to receive your letter. It was a breath of valour scented air after all this Guinness with journalists and high tea at Killney with the editor of the pro-German Catholic paper.

As many of our modern day P.O.E.M.s do, Mr. Biltjaman thanks his friend for his earlier correspondence.

However, he does not use an exclamation mark to illustrate and complete his point. Doing so would have allowed Mr. Biltjaman to treat this thought as completed and his mind would have been free to lazily chase after another thought.

But Mr. Biltjaman stays the course and explains that his friend’s letter served up many delights after many harrowing experiences:

1. Guinness with journalists (where he mixed boring with pleasure)
2. Having tea at Killney (not as good as the tea in Darjeeling or for that matter the town of Earl Gray)
3. Sipping the tea in question with the editor of the pro-German Catholic paper. (who can surely drive any human being right back to Guinness).

After reading this explanation, would his friend have any doubt that Mr. Biltjaman was not indeed delighted to receive the letter?

Can we then not have a world where more and more people never have any doubts about the fruits of their delightful actions? How can we escape this hidden scourge of exclamation marks that is eating away at the foundations for good communication - surely an essential requisite for any society to flourish?

We can start by being thoughtful, and refusing to carry the disease of small talk from our arena of spoken interaction to the written realm. A desire to be honest and detailed can send a harpoon into the most stubborn of these punctuations.

But it is not easy. Even the most cognizant can slip into these cunning traps of habit.

I recently wrote to an acquaintance over the Internet that “I enjoyed his writing!”

This was a lie. I had no definite thoughts regarding my acquaintance’s writing. I didn’t know enough about his writing to elucidate about the high Guinnesses, the tea bags that and boring editors that were responsible for his turns of phrases and feasts of reason.

Using the exclamation mark allowed me to convey a feeling of substance, of which in this regard (and many others), my mind had none. By using the exclamation mark, I acted dishonestly and did a disservice not only to myself, but also my acquaintance.

He would have no doubt appreciated a follow-up question for information that would have allowed me to form an opinion. All he got instead was an exclamation mark.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not against the usage of exclamation marks - I am only opposed to their proliferation.

We can certainly use exclamation marks when they add to our already honest and detailed sentiments and thoughts. National anthems and speeches urging people to strike are good cases in point.

Take the case of the US National Anthem (as written on the White House web site):

O’er the ramparts we watched
Were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ red glare
The bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night
That our flag was still there.

Wouldn’t this have read better with an exclamation mark, as follows:

O’er the ramparts we watched
Were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ red glare
The bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night
That our flag was still there!

Precisely.

It’s not everyday that you hear Nobel Prize winning economists referred to as “idiot savants”. However, Nicholas Nasim Taleb does not shy from calling a spade a spade, or a white swan, black. “The Black Swan - The Impact of the Highly Improbable” works on many levels offering practical advice for the hardened investor and generous doses of philosophy for the everyday seeker of happiness.

Till black swans were spotted on the coast of Australia, it was always assumed that all swans were white. Black swans caused disruptions, not only in ornithologist meetings, but also in the popular human imagination at large.

To state the obvious, life serves up infinitely more complex variations than the coast of Australia. Black swans occur far more frequently than we think. Yet the human race (that includes Nobel Prize winning economists) steadfastly continues to underestimate, even ignore, the impact of the highly improbable.

The tendency to ignore outliers severely limits our ability to predict the course of history. A cursory look at any of the major historical milestones, be it World War I, the fall of the Soviet Union, the stock market crash of 1987 and 9/11 reminds us of how powerful black swans can be.

Why do we find ourselves so unprepared for Black Swans and their consequences?

Taleb contends that we are hard wired to draw absolute inferences on the basis of repeated observations. It was a process that worked extremely well for our ancient ancestors. After a mauling or two, they learned that tigers were not good for their health and ran away on spotting one.

However, this line of thought does not work in a more innovative era, where numerous complex and interrelated variables are at play. Here, repeated observations hold far less meaning.

A more relevant analogy for our unpredictable world is not of the man or woman escaping the tiger, but that of the turkey, which after being fed heartily for a thousand days, wakes up to an entirely new fate on Thanksgiving.

Our penchant to view and explain the world through stories also contributes to black swan blindness. Narratives allow us to simplify the world and squeeze it into our head. As a result, abstract statistical information does not influence us as much as anecdotal information, no matter how intellectually sophisticated we might be. (You might read millions of statistics about the improving situation in Sierra Leone, but decide not to go on the basis of one bloody photograph of a dead person). We make the world a far simpler place than it really is by connecting random points to form a narrative.

Even black swans cannot escape the workings of our anecdotal mindsets. Once a vivid black swan event occurs, we weave it into a narrative fabric and indulge in analyses and predictions - an activity that has kept many “experts” employed and occupied in the United States after 9/11.

The tendency to simplify also causes us to ignore what Taleb calls “silent evidence”. These are breathing, even vibrant, but sadly muted facts that help explain many a phenomenon - the thousands of dynamic, extroverted people who fail to become CEOs, the millions of gamblers not kissed by “beginner’s luck” or the risk taking dashers who are failed, extinct and dead Casanovas (be warned, if you set out to be a Casanova, the odds are highly stacked against you)

Ultimately, Taleb blames the decline of empirical skepticism as the single most important factor causing black swan blindness. He worships at the altar semi-skeptic philosophers and scientists, the Poppers, Poincares and Montaignes, who believed that one must state a hypothesis and set out to prove it wrong. Pursuing the opposite and more popular method, something Taleb poetically labels, Confirmation Shonfirmation can be deceptive .

Along the way, Taleb makes frequent jumps from poetic and metaphysical ruminations to more practical matters. This transforms the Black Swan into one of the best advice books of recent years. The common strand running through the realm of the practical in Taleb’s world is simple: Maximize your exposure to positive black swans and minimize exposure to negative black swans.

Enhanced positive black swan exposure explains why it is better to be a publisher than a writer and a venture capitalist over an entrepreneur (if financial gains are your thing). It also suggests why one would be better advised to be a speculator than a doctor or prostitute (more scalable professions). Black Swans make a compelling case for investors to pursue the barbell approach, through which they save a majority of their savings in ultra conservative ventures, and allocate a smaller portion towards high-risk speculative bets (rather than invest in “medium risk” funds).

Beware of pursuing positive black swans! Planning your life around a positive black swan event (I will win Indian Idol or play a lead role in the next Yash Chopra movie) is risky. People are happier when faced with small and repeated success. Not surprisingly, unhappiness is the exact opposite; like spoons of castor oil, we want our unhappiness served in less frequent doses.

Taleb ends his book by examining the flaws of the Gaussian bell curve, or the GIF (Great Intellectual Fraud). He delves into a through analysis of why fractal Mandelbrotian mathematics is more suited for a Black Swan world, rather than the Gaussian curve that places a very low emphasis on deviation of the mean or average. With the recent surge in fractal applications (the compression of the Encarta encyclopedia and special effects development in movies such as Star Trek), fractal mathematics will soon enough carve out a space in popular imagination.

Taleb is a writer who is clearly passionate about his subject matter. This tends him to place too great an emphasis on the random and unpredictable events at the expense of the more mundane pursuits. True, wildly unpredictable events are important, but so are the efforts of billions of day to day things being carried out by day to day people. If the Beatles were black swans, their hours of music practice weren’t.

However, to criticize Taleb excessively for ignoring the mundane would be to miss the point of his book. Ultimately “The Black Swan” carries an important message in a world that is more interconnected than has ever been, and at the same time filled with the most number of all-knowing experts per square inch of our planet.

The Black Swan - The Impact of the Highly Improbable teaches us the value of being humble. Black swans remind us to be more cautious, as we attempt to predict the future, and explain the past. It shows us that the words “I don’t know” are not the words of the foolish, but that of the truly wise.