While looking after the affairs of SPQC last year, I had noted down certain things which if implemented could improve the SPQC experience. I’d made a mental note to implement them from this season (season 4). Most of them pertain to modifications in the format of the questions and the points system. I’m just rattling down points in a random order. I exhort the current “managing group” to give them a thought -

1. The essence of Infinite Rebound is the outlandish funda that resides behind each question. A certain “wow” element behind every question in an IR makes for a good round. IR is designed for long, workout-able questions where all teams have enough time to come up with a really “inspired” guess which often turns out to be the answer. With sixty questions being made on IR, the flavour of IR often gets compromised. Many questions are made just to comply with the “IR quota” which need not exist. Reduction of questions in IR to 30 would help a lot. Moreover, IR questions can be made one per day over the period of an entire month.
2. Moving over to the connects – points for individual questions in a connect need to be scrapped. This, I say, keeping a lot of factors in mind. If there are no points for individual questions, people can focus on getting the overall connect right. As there will be no exchange of sheets for evaluation, a lot of time will be saved. Also, if individual points are given for the connect, the “connect round” assumes a lot of importance over the other rounds. Say, there is a 10q connect with 10 points per question and an overall 100 points for the connect. The worth of the connect round becomes 200 points. With two such rounds, connects are worth 400 points and overshadow all other rounds. Infinite Rebound which is supposed to be the crux of the quiz gets reduced to a mere farce. Scrapping individual points for connect questions could do the trick. If not completely scrapped, the points awarded for each question should be very minimal. The Long Visual Connects (LVCs) are fine as points are awarded to each block of visuals and no points for individual questions.
3. All the “dry” questions which are often used as IR could be incorporated as a written round. If thirty questions are to be included as a written round, then perhaps they could be split up in 3 sets of 10 each instead of 30 at a go.
4. Print ads, identification of visuals, audio clips could be incorporated in another written A/V round instead of including them in the IR.
5. Also, I’d like to touch on the “answer slide”. Most often, the answer slide consists of just the one or two word answer. In the case of workoutable questions, an effort should be made to explain how the answer could have been derived from the question. Any supplementary text which would help the viewer to understand what the question was all about would be appreciated. Also, to create visual recall, the answer slide would do well to have a picture of the answer. For a question like, “Who became Murali’s 800th Test victim ?” – one can have a pic of Pragyan Ojha along with the answer. The effect is not so pronounced or evident in the above question. But with other high funda questions, pictures could make a clinching difference as the audience would be able to identify themselves with the questions rather than thinking of them as an exercise in rapid reading.

A typical quiz Thursday SPQC quiz could be framed in the following format -

• 8 Question Current Affairs Written  (8*5=40 pts)
• 15 IR Clockwise (15*10=150 pts)
• Connect/LVC (5 point depreciation per slide starting from 50)
• 8 Dry Questions Written (8*5=40 pts)
• 8 Q Dedicated Audio/Visual (8*5=40 pts)
• 15 IR Anticlock (15*10=150 pts)
• Connect/LVC (5 point depreciation per slide starting from 50)

Of course, this need not be the exact format of the quiz all the time. The idea is not to straight-jacket the QMs into conforming to a certain format. QMs can change the order, number of questions, perhaps introduce a new round. But if the above format is taken as a base to build upon, it would ensure equitable distribution of points. And the quiz will not be skewed towards a particular round or a particular team. I’m a little apprehensive that such a fixed format might just prove to be an impediment for first time QMs. In that case, the quiz could be shared by two first first time QMs who put in their best foot forward in making their half of the questions.

More than anything, this post is purely based on personal observation. I’d be glad if the current bunch of guys thought over this and made some changes if they felt right. Cheers.

A few days ago I walked into a movie hall to watch a Christopher Nolan movie. My past experiences with The Prestige and Memento ensured that I was fully certain about not “grasping” the movie at all at first go. So, it was more like a walk in the park – just the freshness of the dew clad green grass replaced by the spit stained red carpet of Movietime. A bit of me rued the fact that there were no subtitles. Subtitles have become an essential part of my movie-watching experience. Without them, I feel a bit lost. When I can’t bother to pay attention to detail, I just read the subtitles to get a gist what’s going on, just like flipping through the pages of a really bad-ass book in order to complete it. At the Mahaquizzer three years ago, Q87 went like,

Complete John Updike?s famous poetic lament: ?I think that I shall never view  A French film without _______?.

I vividly remember answering the question with “subtitles” as the answer. The person who evaluated my sheet had a huge bout of laughter when he read that. The answer was in fact Gerard Depardieu.

So, it was a huge surprise when the initial few exchanges were in Japanese with English subtitles to boot. I quipped that the entire movie be this way, in exchange for which I received desultory glances. The movie caught pace as expected and Nolan tried to weave the entire universe into a ball of yarn. The plot was convoluted, garbled with non-linear narration and then the spinning totem right at the end, dwindling and waiting to fall at the blink of your eyelid. A friend had warned that there might be people wanting to stand up and applaud the movie once it got over, but thankfully nothing of that sort happened.As expected, once out of the hall, there was buzz about whether the totem fell or not. Patrons jumped back and forth with consummate ease. There is no merit in trying to take sides as Nolan’s movies are best left not deconstructed. I tried it once with the Usual Suspects – though not a Nolan movie. Eons of writers do it to earn their bread and butter. Here is a piece on Inception and yet another one on Memento.

The world around us wants answers. Answers to questions as part of our annual exams, answers to the malaise of global warming, answers to problems of better housing and sanitation in third world nations, answers to combat issues of terrorism and fanaticism. Companies hire individuals who have answers to their niggling problems, pay them handsomely and pamper them to no end. In this day and age, where the need of the hour and simplify constructs and help disseminate knowledge as far and wide as possible, it is a bit surprising to see junta willing to swear by a concept which poses nothing but questions and makes no attempt to demystify.

To come to think of it, it’s a lot like marketing. The marketing jargon forces to believe that the product is much more sophisticated than it actually is. Slim milk as a friend puts it, is nothing but a legalized way to mix water in milk. Then there are products with “organic” farming. A lot of uneasy prefixed and suffixes are tagged onto products making them Tata Photon+ or Musli Power Xtra or Bharat Petroleum Speed. By adding these syllables or jargon, the marketer is nothing but creating a Nolan-like construct as it is easy to “sell” complexity than simplicity.

When marketers make things complicated or fabricate a “Unique Selling Proposition”, they are looked down upon with a degree of scorn and contempt. When done under the pretext of something more acceptable like a movie, plaudits are not too far. As Raj Kapoor remarked once, “Fellini’s nude woman is considered Art but when I show a woman’s beauty on screen, then it is called exploitation.” It’s a war that marketers and consultants will never win. They shouldn’t try to. Just that it would be better if somehow both parties tried providing answers. Simplifying things. Sealing this post with a KISS – Keep it simple, silly!

Loved the movie. Very detailed. Immense amount of research must have gone into it. Should get nominated to Oscars and all. But I couldn’t bring myself to heap praises over it. And no, if you haven’t watched it yet, you  have not done any irreparable damage to your karma cycle. Come to think of it, inception of the idea in the viewer’s mind that inception of an idea during a dream in real lives is a possibility could be Nolan’s actual motive behind the title “Inception”. Now, that is what you call thought within a thought, motive within a motive

I love what people do with brands. One of the very few things that fascinates me. Stumbled across Ray and Keshavan. Amazing work they do. Attaching a pic below, can you identify all the logos that have been used to carve their name ? I got seven on twelve. You give it a go !

Edit:

Just caught a glimpse of Sujata Keshavan here. The female exudes grace. There is something about successful women in business. I mean they just look right. Also, she’s married to Ramchandra Guha. The world’s a small place.

Even though I did not have the privilege of attending the after match IPL parties, the last two weeks were very hectic and sapped a lot of energy out of me. Not being a party animal, I had to scrap to complete my submissions on time week before last. Over the last seven days, I slept intermittently, studying out of fear more than anything else for the practicals and orals. The best part about studying in fear is that there is no external form of distraction so to speak of. The only distraction comes from within – if your train of thought takes makes you dwell on things you would normally not give much heed to.

While studying for my first viva, I came across two approaches of building a data warehouse. The bottom up approach where you create individual data marts (small warehouses) and then integrate these individual modules to make the actual warehouse. And the top down approach which entails one to build the whole thing in entirety and then divide it into components. One minor difference that the book mentioned was that the bottom up method had a higher proof of concept while the top down method had very little proof of concept. It hence suggested that one take the bottom up appraoch as the proof of concept would be there for all to see. Innocuous as it may sound, this point of difference became my plaything (muse for the artistically inclined) over the next couple of weeks.

Proof of concept is pretty much self-explanatory. To put it in simple terms, if what you ideate, think or follow translates into visible, tangible results then you got a high proof of concept. To explain with an example, a salaried job has very high proof of concept (we’ll call it PoC here on) as there is amount credited to your account at the end of each month. On the other hand, if you are an entrepreneur, there is minimal PoC. It is difficult to explain to people what you are doing, why you are doing it and what is coming of it.

When faced with a difficult choice to make, often we tend to choose the one which has the higer PoC. A lot of decisions we take are influenced by the PoC value attached to it.Is a higher PoC necessarily a bad thing ? It depends on what you are looking for.

Lets start with the engineering examination scene. I envy those lucky bastards who study in autonomous colleges. Because autonomy brings with it tremendous PoC. Examination results are declared almost instantly and the timespan for realization of your efforts gets reduced drastically. Very high PoC. On the contrary, we have very low PoC at the Univ of Mumbai. Examination results are not declared for two months after the exams leaving a lot of students shrouded in worry. A classmate of mine was nearly in tears when she messed up her practical exam in one subject. Because of this low PoC, she would not know if she’d clear the same for the next three months. She admitted that she would worry herself to death over this and would not be able to concentrate on her written exams. At such times you really do need a very high PoC.

Gambling and intra-day trading also have a high PoC. Within a span of minutes, you realize your money. And that is what attracts a lot of people to the equity markets and casinos. Because it’s human to take the path having a higher PoC.

Boy-girl romances provide an amazing insight into the PoC story. We have come to a stage where a simple “I love you. I will always be there for you unless ofcourse I don’t fall for some prettier female while coming to meet you” does not suffice. Abstract nouns have a very low PoC. Kindness, niceness, empathy, trust are often relegated as they fail to pull their weight  on the PoC scale (*very thrilled with the pun*). Something on the lines of “You are Vishwanathan Anand. You are not controversial enough to be India’s leading sportsman”. You need to shower praise in public, throw hugs, pecks on the cheeks, click lewd pictures – perhaps distribute them, make out – in rickshaws, movie theatres and behind closed doors to prove your concept of love. Everthing that is done thereafter is to ensure a higher proof of concept. It reminds me of  a Monica Bellucci movie I watched a few years ago – Combien tu m’aimes which when roughly translated means – Show me how much you love me.

Gautam Chaturvedi once very passionately mentioned that the only thing he really loved to do was to frame a quiz. And that his parents could never understand in the true sense why he quizzed, why he loved quizzing more than his Power Generators and Transformers. He then went on to explain that every six months – marksheets quantified his progress in his academics whereas quizzing had really low PoC. I’m pretty sure he’d use a quizzing funda to ace some interview in a couple of years and then it will all be worth it.

All good things have a really low PoC. Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Outliers, suggests that in order to be good at something, you need to devote 10,000 hours of your life to it. Geez, perfection does have a very low PoC doesn’t it ? Imagine waiting 10,000 hours for perfection to happen. And it might not happen at the end of it for all you know. Say you decide that you want to be more humble or more sensible or more compassionate from now on. Would you give in after three months ? Because there is no metric to measure if you have “grown” over the period. There is no tangible yardstick. Very low PoC. All the really invaluable qualities in life have a really low PoC. The whole idea is not to get intimidated and soldier along. Because when you take up a task with a very low PoC and when it reaches fruition, you’ll be the most content person on the face of this planet.

It is a pleasant morning. In a little more than three hours, I will be off to Colaba to participate in Tata Crucible – my third attempt. Talk about really lofty ambitions – back in my rookie year – I’d made a mental note that my third crack at Crucible would be my most realistic chance of making it “on stage”. Needless to say, the chances of that happening are as remote as an IRock(sp?) concert without its share of desperate want-to-bes (which is often referred as wannabes or wannababes or wannaboobs or whichever way you intend to look at it). Sophomore year was even more agonizing – as I managed to reach nowhere yet again. That solidified my resolve to do well in the third attempt. The plan was to start working – bit by bit – day by day – so that by the time today dawned I’d be just revisiting notes, bullet points et al which would have had random bits of junk about the Sandoz Foundation and Sumantra Ghoshal.You are free to scoff at me right now, but yes, when I want to do something badly, I am very meticulous about it.

It was about this time last year that a very impulsive post fluttered a few feathers – People. The whole idea was to evolve out of this rut. In a way, I could have done it silently discreetly without putting up the post. But then, I have my own subtle ways of seeking attention. That I am forced to write this post again – not more than a year later – after just about 13 posts indicates that I might have failed at some basic level. One alternative is to stop “doing” people altogether, which I had aimed at twelve months ago. But when you take this route, it’s very difficult to walk the talk – as I figured out. So, I propose a white paper which would be essentially titled – “Do the ‘Right’ People”.

There will be a lot of heated debate over who could be classified as ‘right’ and what the other category could be called. I’m inviting suggestions for naming the other category. And if no one else, I’m sure Anna or Tanush would come up with something hard hitting like “The flea that almost always kissed a different chimp’s ass.” (without intending to of course). The ‘right’ category could be named – “The balls that refused to spin”

Now, since this is a world of free thought (free as in liberty, not the free in free beer), I will use my subjective snobbery to separate the right from the rest. And you can use your subjective snobbery to repudiate my choices. Then we can have, “subjective snobbery duels” and if they are any interesting we can have a “subjective snobbery club” in college. As there is no greater joy than being able to masquerade subjectivity at the expense of rationality, it should be great fun.

So, here starts the fun part. I lay down a few pointers which *could* help identify the right from the rest. And I seriously do hope that you don’t see the (b)right side of things. For if you do, you’ll surely lose out on a hundred other friends who would otherwise have been the pillars of strength at times when you need reassurance or when you need money or when you need hedonism or when you need to feel good about yourself or when you need a rosier interpretation of lyrics. I have tried to be as shameless as possible while making assumptions and accusations. “Subjective Authority” you see. But since I will look back at this post from time to time, I did not want to be harsh on myself. If you tick most of the points, I’ll be tired of you in no more than 72 hours. So, let’s not waste each other’s time. You can go back to perfecting your justification skills, I might as well go back to reading Asterix which I’m yet to complete. I need to -

1. Be wary about people conversing in English

Samazhta nahi hai. I love the language because I can play around with the words. Improve on spellings, usage of words & phrases, learn grammer grammar and understand the world around me. The fact that I know the language does not place me on a higher plane. That the Beatles sing in my language doesn’t prove anything. A lot of people earn their reputation standing on the shoulders of giants. A very few stand who on the shoulders of the beloved language to realise that they are inconsequential as compared to the behemoth who is nourishing them. The most are admiring themselves – standing tall, above a lot of people, above everyone else, above all those who refuse to stand on the shoulders of this giant – quite oblivious to the fact that they are nothing but parasites feeding off this adorable giant.

2. Be wary about people thinking in English

This bunch doesn’t understand contextual differences. I am sorry. People around the world react differently to differnt situations. Growing up in New York or Madrid or Paris is much more poetic than growing up in Nagpur or Mumbai or Pune. That foreign literature, entertainment and art is primarily aimed for their own consumption. We can’t replicate the California model in Mumbai (at least not in the Goregaon to Andheri corridor where I spend most of my time ). The refusal to think in the Indian context, the reluctance to adapt models in this context, to ape what is thrown at us my the foriegn media is highly disappointing.

3.  Pay homage to people carrying a guitar. And then stay away from them.

Dear guitarist folks, you bunch are Demi-Gods. Why do you never want to elevate yourself to God status? The biggest complaint I have is that you bunch are escapists. You take to the guitar when you are bogged down with other trivial problems. That you never bother to work your way around those problems. That you never appreciate struggle. That you want miracles to happen without ever working towards the end result. That you play for the crowd.

Just show a bit more dedication to the cause no ? God status is not too far. Just speak to your friends who are fine exponents of Lezim, Malakhamb or the Sarod for that matter. Ask them what they practice for. Ask them how many people tear their shirts when the see them perform. Ask them if they can get away with substandard performances and still be venerated for it.  Ask them if its worth improving yourself for the love of the chord, if you get the drift. To cap it on a very bromidic note -  just do it for the chord, not for the accord or the record.

4. Check Facebook DP before opening a conversation

You Facebook DP tells a lot about you as a person. Ironically, it tells a whole lot more about your really close friends as well. Say if I wanted to marry you now, I’d of course show your Facebook DP to my mom first. And what if she goes like – which one of the three do you want to marry !?!?! This guy in the middle ?? That would be a foot in the mouth moment no?

It is nice to have lovely freinds.  But if they can’t live without being addressed in public domain each day of the year, without being separated from you at least at the basic display pic level, then it is too much baggage to carry innit? I am not even touching upon highly fashionista terms like “identity crisis”. We will brush that under the carpet.

5.  Look out for unsolicited unidirectional personal barbs

You’ve lost me and my attention if you are sitting next to me and utter things like -

• Look at his shoes. Who the hell wears them these days
• Just by the looks of him, he looks gay
• She’s actually wearing a skirt. Do you realise how funny that it is
• That is a cheap pair of jeans
• The person has no dressing sense
• How much do you think he spent at the bar last night
• Hey! There is a giraffe head coming out of her backside

How do you care as long as the the giraffe head is not tickling your ribs? Yeah, I do understand that it might end up giving you an eyesore. And that would be the end of the world as we know it. But a few complimentary words here and there don’t hurt.

6. Not lose my calm in front of prima donnas

Given a choice I would like to lock all the prima donnas that I find in a room and not allow them to come out till they have proved Fermat’s Last Theorem. That would muffle the fragrance of pretence in the air a bit. I need to keep my head when in a flock where people want to have it their own way. Else, I’ll end up saying something very nasty and all fun would be destroyed no ?

7. Not bother. Unclutter. Uncomplicate.

You do shit. You get out of it. Take care. Thank you.

(Might just add a few more if I find something convincing, which I’m sure I will in a few more days)

Don’t get me wrong. None of the above mentioned points are vile, embarrassing or “bad” to simply put it.  In fact if you aspire to be a beauty paegent winner or a performer or an entertainer or a sportsperson or a media guy or a management consultant, you’ll need these attributes aplenty. Just that they don’t work for me. If I don’t remind myself of these things, I’ll end up chasing chimeras for the most part of the next few years. And chasing a chimera never got anyone anywhere, did it ?

So, the next time I don’t pursue you with full gusto or act like a complete “jackass” -  which is a very hep word these days, and not give in to your false sense of subjectivity, it is not because you are “wrong” or I am “wrong” or because “my subjectivity is much better than your subjectivity”. It’s just that I’m tired of chasing chimeras. I’m tired of running around in the search of an oasis bang in the middle of the unrelenting desert. I’ll just keep faith in serendipity and keep trudging along. And to the few good men whom I know, give me a huge kick up my backside, if I fail to walk the talk this time around.

I had started this post on the 28th of March and funny things happened at Crucible – totally unexpected and undeserved I may add. And the analogy I provided entails nicer things to happen to IRock in the years to come as well.