Category: relationships

Following up on my masterplan

In my earlier post on this subject, I had written that I might possibly put the contents of the letter I wrote on this blog. On second thoughts, however, I decided that those contents were mostly a private matter between me and the person the letter was intended for, and so it won’t be a good idea to post it on the blog. However, there are a few lines which I came up with which I think I’m fairly proud of. So as to not to disappoint you readers completely, here is one of those:

There is no point in my narrating the Ramayana for a year and then you saying that you thought I was narrating the Mahabharata.

To compensate for not putting the full letter as promised, I am putting here Rahul RG’s excellent commentary on the issue. RG was 3 years my junior at NPS Indiranagar, IIT Madras and IIM Bangalore. It’s in the form of a GTalk conversation. It’s slightly longish so I’ll put it under the fold.

Continue reading “Following up on my masterplan”

Breaking engagement

Another wedding of someone I know got cancelled. This is a second cousin, and she was supposed to get married one of these days. And the engagement was called off very recently. I have heard various stories about the reasons behind it, with the sum total of all stories sharing the blame between the bride, the groom, the bride’s family and the groom’s family. However, most of the stories sound speculative; rather, they look like cover ups, so I won’t go into them.

This was one of those typical NRI engagements. Boy comes home from US. Scrutinizes CVs on the way home from airport (ok nowadays this will be a long drive, but this is a slightly older story). A shortlist has been prepared by the time the boy reaches home. Dad sits by the phone and arranges interviews with each of the shortlists. From the boy’s perspective, it is more hectic than the placement process at IIMs. Sees a hundred girls in a couple of days. Vaguely remembers some of them and makes his choice.

Most girls who have lined up would be the types who are desperate for a foreign gandu (disclaimer: the a between g and n has to be pronounced short). Most offers get quickly accepted. And an engagement is hurriedly arranged for. Boy gets engaged and goes back. Girl gets ready to apply for a US visa. Girl’s parents make arrangements for wedding.

I had blogged about a similar topic before, and like I had said then, my take is that it’s a good thing that the engagement has been broken. A broken engagement is significantly better than a broken marriage. It is good that whoever were the parties who were responsible for the breakup, they had the foresight to realize things early enough and managed to prevent a mess. Yes, the boy and girl will have the stigma of broken engagements, but that’s again better than being divorced, right?

I think the blame should go to the generalized model in which arranged marriages take place. My personal contention is that arranged marriage is a great thing – it gives you the fallback option of finding a partner for you in case you aren’t able to find one for yourself in the normal course of things. It’s great that someone (usually parents) does the due diligence for you before you even meet the potential partners. It is great that there is a formal mechanism which gets you introduced to so many people of similar age from the opposite sex.

However, given some restriction that people from earlier generations have put, the full power of arranged marriages is not being unleashed. Ideally the role of the bankers and the brokers should end once the due diligence has been done and the two parties have met. Reality is far from the ideal situation. Time limits are imposed upon the length  of interactions. One doesn’t get the opportunity to collect complete information before making a decision. There are too many people lobbying for their favourite candidates. Multiple rounds of interviews are not permitted. Decisions, sometimes, have to be made “online”, in real time. And in certain cases, it is the bankers that make the final decisions, not the parties.

Ok I might be repeating myself but my rant is that arranged marriages are not being arranged the way they should be. This is producing wildly suboptimal results, and surveys won’t show the suboptimality of results. There will be too much selection bias since successful marriages are usually more visible than unsuccessful ones. And my intuition tells me that there are too few data points to get meaningful results for marriages that have been arranged the right way.

The right way? Yes. Bankers do the due diligence. Brokers and clearinghouses create liquidity in the market. Then they collect their fees and quietly exit, leaving the rest to the parties. Unfortunately apart from one friend (who is getting married next week) I don’t know anyone who insisted on this kind of a procedure. And this friend too was roundly bitched about in family circles for “spoiling girls’ lives by going around with them without hte promise of marriage”.

One last point. I must write about what Sunayana had pointed out in a comment on this blog last week. About how you are not supposed to be seen in public with an unrelated member of the opposite sex. For this can create problems in due diligence. I think if this one condition gets relaxed, arranged marriages will turn out to be much more successful. As will arranged engagements. So bankers, listen out. Remedy this before I hit the markets – which is in about two years’ time.

On Alonso and Delta Hedging and Creating Positive Black Swans (and louvvu of course)

Yesterday, on the Twisted Shout blog, I had blogged about Xabi Alonso, and his methods for scoring goals. Complete with videos of a few of his goals, and incomplete because I couldn’t find a few other videos, I explained how he goes about the entire process. He takes long shots, I had explained. From a distance. Hoping to catch the goalkeeper off guard. And accurate enough to get the ball in the net most of the time.

Towards the end of The Black Swan, Nassim Taleb talks about how you can make black swans work for you. He talks about industries such as moviemaking and book publishing, and he says they traditionally thrive on positive black swans. They lose a little money on most projects – books or movies, but make significantly more money when one of them succeeds.

The book industry, Taleb argues, has now lost its traditional revenue model. Nowadays, the norm for publishers is to dole out huge advances to authors who will potentially write blockbusters. This, Taleb says, now exposes the publishers to huge negative black swans. The advances are so huge that if a book sells well they recover their investments. If not, they are prone to losing a huge amount.

I notice a similar problem in the romance industry. Suppose you have been hitting on, or even seeing, a girl for a long time, and it’s now time for measurement. By conducting the measurement experiment now, you are exposing yourself to a huge negative black swan. You have already made considerable investment in the relationship, mostly emotional but also monetary and temporal. And what if the measurement doesn’t go the way you want it to go? You are already in the D (desire) of Kotler’s AIDA. It will take a long time for you to recover from it, and this could even be career threatening, as I had discovered the hard way a couple of days years back.

Now, my theory with relationships (I don’t know how much you want to trust this – since I’ve never been in a relationship) is that in order to succeed, both parties should be at least in the I (interest) zone. And one of the parties has to be in D zone. This is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the relationship to go thorugh.

So, how about testing whether the other person is in the I zone when you are also in I zone? If she is, then well and good – you can start the process of figuring out if you want to get into D, etc. If she isn’t you can quickly cut your losses and move on. If she does admit to being interested in you, it’s great. It’s a positive black swan. And if she tells K, you haven’t really invested much in the relationship so it shouldn’t be hard. Right? So that’s how my mind ran when I thought about this problem yesterday.

I sent her a mail asking her for permission to put blade on her. I explained to her in the mail (i’ll probably blog the mail at a later date – I’m quite proud of my efforts on second thoughts I won’t blog the mail. I think she deserves exclusivity to that masterpiece) that I ever since I met her a few days back I have gotten really interested in her, and am considering the possibility of blading her. That if she is not interested in getting bladed by me, then there is no point in my continuing and wasting both our times and energies, and so she should tell me that right now. I sent this mail to her earlier this evening and I’m still awaiting her reply.

So where does delta hedging fit into this?  It is like the road to Ithaca as this poem mentions. It is about the journey being more enjoyable than the destination. It is about the process of doing something being more enjoyable than the results. It is from the excitement you get just by doing something for the heck of it. These are all what I call as second order effects. They are, in effect, derivatives. First order derivatives of something you are doing, which is effectively the underlying.

As I had mentioned in my previous post, by going ahead with the blading, the only thing I had to lose was my confidence. My form. And if I had gone about blading the conventional way, poking and probing, and making small inroads, the process too would’ve been excruciating, and would’ve added to the pain of the blade not succeeding. So was there a way in which I could hedge out the loss of form and confidence?

I think I’ve been fairly ingenious in going for my long shot. I’m doing something unusual by going about it the unconventional way. Add to this the joy of sitting and drafting that letter to her (yes, it’s a masterpiece). And the possibility of the insights I might gain from this process. And of blogging it, as I am doing now. As soon as I had hit upon this method, i realized that the second order advantages from this were huge. And would easily hedge away any blues that failure in my attempt would bring. It was like getting a put option along with a stock. You knew that your losses were capped.

On the other hand – if she accepted – the returns would be huge. It would be a positive black swan. Capped losses and uncapped gains! Once I had figured this out it was a no brainer that I should go for it. And I have gone for it. A long shot a la Alonso. And I’m waiting for the result. Wish me luck.

Vyaasa and correlated hedges (and louvvu)

Some follow-up over my yesterday’s post on louvvu. This is a little arbit so if you are the serious  types, you needn’t read on.

I’ve been told by my “ex-bladees” that i can become ferocious and scary when I’m putting blade. I don’t konw what it is about me, but it seems i become very intense when putting blade and that immediately puts the woman off and she gets scared of me. This reminds me of Veda Vyaasa. Vichitravirya’s wives were paranoid when he came to them in order to help them prolong the Kuru dynasty. One shut her eyes so tight that the kid was born blind. The second went so pale that the kid was born paler than Nicole Kidman and Andres Iniesta put together. And for the third night, they just decided to send a maid.

The difference between then and now was that back then the women were forced to sleep with Vyaasa just to ensure the continuity of their dynasty. They had no choice. Now, though, if the woomaans see a ferocious blader, they’ll just run away. Ignore. Become hostile. And I don’t think it’s been pre-ordained that I’m going to be instrumental in the prolongation of any dynasty. I think I should just stick to writing stories.

Over the last few days, I’ve been on high amplitude high frequency. Hyperactivity intervowen with extreme NED. I realize I’m a flow person. When things are going fine in general, I’m able to do everything else also quite well. Assume that for hedging purposes I do more than one thing at a time. If something goes bad in one of those, then it pulls down my performance in the rest too. It affects my form in general. It’s something like VVS Laxman losing badly in a game of tennis. And finding the next morning that he can’t hold a cricket bat.

So yeah, given that I’m a bad blader, if I do end up putting blade in the case I described yesterday, I have a feeling it might have a much bigger impact in life. Because the different threads in my life are usually so intervowen, I rarely come across a “nothing to lose” case. I cansay “i have nothing to lose but my form… ” but my form is critical. So I don’t know if I should be willing to lose it.

Ok I’ve written this late night so I might be rambling a bit. But I suppose you get the gist of it. As for the case I described yesterday, I think I’ll go for the long shot. I’ll assume I’m just practising. And go for it. If I do succeed, great. Else, all i lose is my form 😛

Falling in louvvu can be hard on the head

It’s been a long time since I hit on someone. Two years and four months to be precise. Actually, even that is not so precise. You could give it a standard deviation of ten days, for I don’t really know as to where to draw the line on my blading. After that, I haven’t hit on anyone. Promise. I’ve had two fifteen minute crushes (one in a bus and one at a cane chair shop) but didn’t have the opportunity to talk to either of them.

Apart from this, I have quit two jobs. I have been through two periods of joblessness (one of them fairly protracted). Things have been very bad on the family front. I have been through a protracted (over two years) period of low confidence. Putting blade on someone has been the last thing on my mind. It also hasn’t helped that I haven’t met a single new bladable interesting girl in this period of time.

So when I suddenly come across this fairly interesting girl, I don’t really know what to do. One part of me tells me that I’m totally out of practice, and will only bring misery upon myself if I go ahead with the blading. This part tells me that I’m not ready to put blade yet. This reminds me of the pain I went through in my previous blading attempts. This tells me that the girl might already have a boyfriend, and that she lives in a different city.

The other side tells me such opportunities are rare, and I should go for it. This part reminds me of the goalkeeper theory in case she has a boyfriend. When I put forward the question as to the probability of making it given that it’ll be long distance, this part tells me about the Alonso theory (I’ll blog about this on the TS blog in a couple of days). This part tells me that if i keep passing up on half-chances like this, I am likely to die a virgin. And that I must go for it.

Even if i decide to go for it, I don’t know whether to take it to heart or treat it like a long shot. My late father used to talk about his “thread theory”. “Imagine you need to move a mountain, and you have a thread”, he used to say. “You put the thread around the mountain and give it your best shot. If you succeed, you’ve moved a mountain. Else you’ve only lost a thread”. I know that if I don’t put my heart and soul into this, I won’t be able to give it my best shot. On the other, putting heart and soul into this would increase my costs significantly. Unlike Alonso, my best shot isn’t my long shot.

I don’t know if it is rational to be irrational when you are thinking of putting blade. This, once again ties in with the above point as to whether I should put heart and soul into the long shot. Vyshnavi is firm when she tells me that I should be completely rational and never lose my head. Neha has also maintained that the most important decisions in the blading process are taken by the head, and not by the heart.

Then there is the issue of the advisor. Especially for an amateur like me, an advisor in the deal can be of great help. However, sometimes the problem with an advisor is that you should necessarily take his/her opinion on things. If you do something against his/her advice, you’ll get blamed for it. Thankfully, Neha, who was my advisor on my last attempted deal, did a fairly good job. She gave me her space, and gave her expert advice only when asked for. However, the choice of Neha as lead advisor on that deal presented a new set of problems.

My mother considers herself to be an authority on relationships, and got upset that I had selected Neha to advice me on that deal (my mom knew the girl I was blading then). She had made me promise to her that I make her advisor on the next deal. However, getting your mother involved in a deal is never a good idea. What if it doesn’t work out? Won’t she feel bad about it then? Shouldn’t I be telling her about the deal only when it has a good chance of becoming pukka? Or should I just keep the promise.

The blading procedure itself is another story. From my long career, I get the feeling that my half-rude half-arrogant half-sugary (i know it doesn’t add up; i don’t care) doesn’t generally make the right kind of impact. After every breakdown of a deal, I jot down a set of “learnings” in my head and promise to make use of those in my next deal. However, I’m not confident at all of not repeating my earlier mistakes. Also, if my own style hasn’t been working, is it fair to assume someone else’s style just for blading? Won’t I be dishonest to the woman by not showing her my true self? Won’t there be the risk of my mask falling off?

And how should I approach this? The last few times, I made the mistake of getting on to the wrong ladder. i suppose I should somehow get onto the right ladder at an early stage. How do I manage that without appearing despo? It’s ok to tell people “i’m considering the possibility of working for your company” but you’ll get slapped if you say upfront “i’m considering the possibility of marrying you. need to think about it”. Anyway.

I think I should first figure out whether this will be a long shot or whether I should put my full enthu for it. Once that is done, then I can either strategically pass, or unleash, as the case may be. I will probably go for it without a formal advisor this time, just using one or two friends as sounding boards. I’ll probably just stick to my own countrax style – I usually believe in being honest.

Even if I take care of all this, there is this old problem of figuring out what things are like on the other side. The old problem of quantum mechanics will remain. The whole process of “non-destructive testing”. The problem which I’d famously called “Schrodinger’s girlfriend“. I request you to wish me luck on this.

Instant D Moments

I don’t know how manyeth time it was. I don’t normally keep count of these things, though given my superior long-term memory, you might expect me to. There have been two earlier instances where this kind of a thing has been documented. There was one more yesterday, which I’m not going to write about since I didn’t think it was too significant. After all it lasted for hardly a minute.

I’m talking about instances where you see a girl and instantly feel the desire to put blade on her. Going by the AIDA framework these are cases where D happens within a couple of seconds of the first A. Where before you know it, there is a strong attraction that you face towards this person. And you are usually so shocked or so stunned that you finally end up doing nothing, and fritter this opportunity away.

Madwoman tells me that the total worldwide supply of such “instant D moments” (as I’ve christened this just now) is limited, and that by enjoying a large number of such moments, and yet doing nothing about it, I’m doing a great disservice to society in general and myself in particular. I don’t know about this. But I’m not sure if this kind of thing can be really manufactured. In case you drive yourself to desperation, “instant I moments” (again going by AIDA) can be manufactured – you get interested in every girl you meet. But instant D moments – I think – cannot be manufactured.

Given that there is some sort of an “extrernal force” which decides upon these moments (note that this statement doesn’t imply that I’m religious), the first thing I wonder is what the distribution of these moments is like, and whether Madwoman’s statement about the same holds. I’m reminded of this case where when brains were being distributed across India, a fixed quantity was allocated to each state, which meant that per capita, the larger states (BIMARU; let’s not count Maharashtra or AP here since there are several states within states there) got shortchanged. Also, there is the accusation that the giver of brains forgot to stir while distributing in Bihar.

That bad digression aside, I once again wonder about the distribution of these moments, and wonder if I’ll feel like that ever again. Given that I’ve let at least three opportunities let go, I don’t know if I’ll get another chance. I dont’ know if i’ll get another chance which I can convert. Over the last few days I’ve been telling myself that I need to ask to get things done. That by not asking for something I’m giving myself a zero chance of getting it. But then, when an Instant D Moment strikes you, you stop being rational and forget the theory you formulated an hour ago.

Such is life

Commie uncle and family

This blog post is about a relative of mine, who, for purposes of this blog post, shall be called “Commie Uncle”. That name is intentional, for he is surely a commie. Ages back, he managed to land himself a PSU job with the help of a recommendation from his cousin’s wife’s cousin’s girlfriend’s cousin’s uncle. And no sooner had he got his appointment, he became prominent in the union, and started fighting against the very person who had recommended him for that job. About four years back, he had visited us, jubilant in the knowledge that the left would play a major part in the UPA government. My father and I had tried to drill sense into his head, but not to much avail.

Continue reading “Commie uncle and family”

Hierarchy of wedding invites

1. Email sent to a mailing list, with scanned invitation attached
2. Email sent to a number of individual email ids, all on BCC. Addressed to “Dear All” or some such thing. Scanned invitation attached
3. Email sent to you only. Starts off with a “Dear Karthik, trust you are doing great.” blah blah. Scanned invitation attached
4. Email sent to you only. Starts off with a “Dear Karthik, trust you are doing great.” blah blah. Scanned invitation attached. Then the person checks on IM if you’ve received it and asks you to come.
5. Email sent to you only. Starts off with a “Dear Karthik, trust you are doing great.” blah blah. Scanned invitation attached. This is followed by a phone call.
6. Email or phone asking for your address. Physical card arrives by snail mail. You get a follow-up call.
7. You meet in some random place (such as a train or at work) and the person physically hands you the card.
8. The person comes to your home and hands over the card to you

Tell me if i’ve missed something. There’s a reason I’ve used integers for the numbering. There is an infinite number of real numbers between each pair of integers in order to fit in more levels.

my latest love story…

Dear _______,

Hope you remember me. We had seen each other briefly during the Landmark Quiz at Bangalore on November 1st this year. The first time I saw you outside the auditorium, when I was waiting to be let in. For the first time in many years (don’t know how many), my heart skipped a beat when I saw someone. I must say you look breathtaking. Gorgeous. And add to that you attend quizzes! Couldn’t be better!

Briefly forgot all about you as i cribbed to Dushyanth about our juniors at IIMB. Then got to the task at hand and cracked the prelims. You were still out of sight, out of mind. And then I qualified for the finals. Was part of the team “vidi vici veni” (or some such stupid thing Dushyanth had come up with). Team 8.

I clearly remember that you were sitting in the second row close to where I was on stage. Remember establishing eye contact with you during the course of the quiz and maybe exchanging a smile or two while I was on stage. For the length of the finals I was up there, I drew my inspiration from you.

Then shit happened. Derek, as is his wont, chucked us out of the finals mid-way through the quiz. I remember hopping off stage and parking myself in the second row, a few seats away from you. We were separated by some guy who’d accompanied you, Shamanth and aadisht. The eye contact continued. I clearly remember us exchanging a few more smiles for the rest of the quiz. I also remember explaining a couple of answers to you. All the pain of not having done well in the finals was erased.

Then the quiz ended. I have this idiotic habit of drinking a lot of water, especially when it is provided free. As a result, I had gotten quite pissed off and rushed to the men’s room. By the time I emerged, you were gone. Lost in the madding crowd. Lost forever?

____ (I don’t even know your name), if you are reading this (I sincerely hope you are), please drop in a comment with contact details. It is after more than a year that I have had a crush on someone. And it would be really tragic if the story I have narrated above didn’t have a continuation.

Lots of love,
Karthik