The Mother of all Technologies

A revolution (to be henceforth known as the February Revolution) took place in our home this month. My mother-in-law discovered Short Messaging Service.

All of us blessed with parents, parents-in-law, and sundry aunts, uncles and neighbours of over 50 years of age must have gone through the ordeal of familiarising them with ‘gadgets’ and technology. I remember trying to teach my Mom the (what I thought) simple exercise of clearing up old messages from her cell phone. What ensued was an hour of struggle, during which I pulled out clumps of hair and gnashed my teeth almost continually. Finally, I gave up. And cleared all the messages myself – all 653 of them, over the next 3 hours.

At that moment I was even weak enough to excuse my teenage son for the ‘nostrils-flare fiery-glare rude-words-fare’ he treats me to when I ask him simple questions like ‘How do I copy songs from my laptop into my cell phone?’

It really is a mental block. The ‘Technology Block Syndrome’, which seems to develop once you cross a certain age, though the exact age at which it develops is a much debated issue. I think the onset age for TBS is 55 onwards. My son seems to disagree – he believes the age is closer to 35.

Anyway, empirical evidence shows TBS afflicts about 90% of people above 55. So, it really was a pleasant surprise when my mother-in-law first caught hold of my 10-year old daughter, Ananya to teach her to send text messages, and subsequently took to ‘sms-ing’ like fish to water.

There was much excitement – and commotion in the initial days. A few bewildered men and women got hit by stray bullets - Amma was unwittingly sending messages to wrong numbers! They got badgered with message after message from her. Sample this:

6 am. Amma to Mr. X: ‘Going for a walk’
6.30 am. Amma to Mr. X: ‘Who am I talking to’ 
6.45 am. Amma to Mr. X: ‘I am Amma.’

Poor hapless souls, who had no clue who Amma, aka Vijaya Srinivas was! Some of them, like Mr. X, actually called back, fascinated by the mysterious Amma - probably wondering if these were some kind of coded messages...

More mirth was to follow – what with the fervent texting spree to friends and family. It gave a whole new meaning to ‘hypertext’... ;)

At about this time, she embarked on a trip to Dindigul, on her own. And thus started a persistent stream of messages! She even started using sms lingo like a pro. ‘R u in for lunch?’ and ‘Call before kma goes to school’... kma here being Kannamma, the pet name by which she calls Ananya.

Here is a string of texts that started with the train journey:

12.05 pm. Amma to Sudarshan: 'Train moving'
12.06 pm. Amma to Madhusudan: 'Train moving'
12.30 pm. Amma to Sudarshan: 'So far so good'
12.37 pm. Amma to Madhusudan: 'Had soup good company'
1.00 pm. Amma to Madhusudan: 'Had lunch'
1.01 pm. Amma to Sudarshan: 'Had lunch'
1.02 pm. Amma to Suchi: 'Had lunch'
4 pm. Amma to Madhusudan: 'In Pune'
5.30 pm. Amma to Sudarshan: 'In Daund' 

and so on, till the next day, when she reached her destination.

Well, I must say – at least one need not worry about the well being of one’s dear ones with this kind of minute-by-minute status updates.... I have to say, most people today (including me) need to learn from this – they just seem to vanish into thin air when on an out-of-town trip!

She even made an attempt to strike a conversation with Amartya... 

4 pm. Amma to Amartya: 'whatsup? answer by sms'
4.15 pm. Amma to Amartya: 'Did you get the sms'
5 pm. Amma to Amartya: 'ANSWER'

As you can see, it started off rather amicably, and ended ... well...! Amartya, of course, is quite immune to all attempts from immediate family to make conversation. You could even say he was the only one who dared violate the hypertext transfer protocol... :)

Initially, the inadvertent typos that crept in while she was struggling to master the keyboard made the messages all the more fun to read – ‘Did kma go to pchool today?’... But now she is pretty adept at it, and has serious conversations with friends and relatives of all shapes, sizes and ages. Yesterday, a reverent ex-student smsed her, ‘Who do you think will win today’s match?’

We were quite surprised. And impressed!

Well, maybe, in telling this story I have taken a few artistic liberties, gone a wee bit beyond the truth – but by and large I have NOT deviated much. So, you see, it really is nothing less than a revolution. And now I have a technologically empowered ma-in-law!

Truly, hats off, Amma!

Here’s looking forward to many more February Revolutions... in every household...

Kho-Khoya Khoya Chand

Well, a warning right at the start - this post is not about the film... it is simply a reminiscence of the days gone by... those fancy-free days of fun, frolic, and most importantly - Free Play...

I was on a visit to Bhanpura a miniscule village of about 70 houses in Shajapur, Madhya Pradesh (NOT the Bhanpura on Google maps, which is a town near Mandsaur, also in MP) and had made friends with a bunch of school kids there over math problems and a spontaneously staged skit.


Day 2, lunch time – and they insisted I play with them – first ‘pakdan paath’ and then kho-kho. And I did. Oh boy, I sure played kho-kho. My joints creaked and my breath rasped as my lungs and bones protested and cursed me in unison... but my heart was singing.... and I played on, and on, and on...

And I loved every nano second of it! I can’t even start to describe the sense of elation I felt...Playing in that long-forgotten way - under the blue sky, the slightly over-warm mid-January sun, united in that strangely deep way with that bunch of kids as only children can connect....

No fierce competition and one-upmanship, no pressure to perform... just pure enjoyment of every precious, playful moment.

It set me wondering - do city kids today ever get a chance to play that way? I doubt it – it would be rare, if at all. If some kid actually managed to slip in even 30 minutes of free outdoor play between school, home work, TV, video games, sports coaching and hobby classes – he would not just be a lucky kid, he would HAVE to be Superkid!

And the sad part is, the kids just don’t know what they are missing.

Some of you might feel like retorting to that with ‘What is there to miss – they have so much more in their lives nowadays!’ If that is so, just think back a bit... think of the games you played a child – Sathodi (called pithu in and around Delhi), Stapu (hopscotch), Chain, Paala (Boundary), Vish-amrit, Tippi-tippi-tap (what-colour-do-you-want), I-Spy (ice-spice to us as kids...), Langdi tang and the quirky and quaint ‘Elastic’... the list just goes on. But just stop and think of yourself playing those games.... shut your eyes and bring back the feelings they invoked in you...

Aur ab bolo - are urban kids today missing something or not?

But honestly, Free Play is a thing of the past for us deeply urban beings – as are fountain pens and 5-paise churans in plastic pipes. The only place where it still exists is in our villages – though there too it is an endangered species – threatened by various forms of ‘development’.

The craving for that feeling of pure, undiluted joy still remains, though.   Nowadays, city people try to indulge this craving by paying hefty amounts to go for various kinds of ‘Adventure Sports’. Well, I agree, it serves the purpose to some extent – but really, I do believe that the best things in life come free. They just can’t be bought, sold or rented.

Yes, I am happy I played kho-kho in Bhanpura that day. I am happy I shouted down my lungs and bones and got into the ‘Free Play’ mode.

Suddenly, for no reason, I feel happier. Richer. Freer.

Redefining Probability? Probably.

I am knee-deep in random experiments. Amartya, my teenaged son has his 12^th grade exams coming up, and he seems to have found a simple rebuttal to my ‘Don’t you plan to study’ refrain. It is the simple and effective retort ‘Why don’t you study and teach me? Aren’t you supposed to be a math teacher?’

I have rechristened this simple and ingenious strategy to keep a nagging parent at bay as 'Bayes' Theorem' ... you see, I am studying Probability...

Anyway, my own continued trials and tribulations with my teen terror has inspired me to rethink many of the other terms and examples used in Probability, too. Here are some:

Random Experiment: is defined as an experiment that can be repeated numerous times under the same conditions. Some examples are: the tossing of a coin, the throwing of a die, or calling Amartya every morning to try and get him out of bed.

Now, it should be easy to understand why a random experiment is also known as a ‘trial’...

Subjective probability: describes an individual's personal judgement about how likely a particular event is to occur. It is not based on any precise computation but is often a reasonable assessment by a knowledgeable person.

For example, according to a reasonable assessment made by me, on any given morning, the likelihood of Amartya getting out of bed after being called once  is 0, after being called 25 times is 0.2, and after being called 75 times is 0.5.

Relative Frequency: describes the frequency at which Amartya’s various relatives (his father, sister, grandmother and me) appear in his room to try and get him out of bed.

Impossible Event: is an event that just can NOT happen, whose probability is 0. For example: the event that Amartya wakes up before 11 am on any day when there is no college, including a day immediately preceeding an exam.

Certain Event: An event that is SURE to happen, whose probability is 1. For example: the event that Amartya logs onto FB on any given day of the year, including a day immediately preceeding an exam.

Independent events: are two events that do not affect each other at all - when the probability of an event A occurring is totally independent of another event, B and vice versa.

For example: Let A be the event of Amartya spending more than 5 hours on Facebook on a given day; and B be the event of there being an exam the next day.

Then A and B are independent events - as the probability of A remains 1, it is absolutely unaffected by event B.

And I end by redefining Mutually Exhaustive events...

Mutually Exhaustive Events

The above series of 'Mutually Exhuastive Events' usually ends
 with this - a Mutually Exclusive Event.