Category: religion

Money and religion

No matter how much you preach, how much you write, how many arguments you make in favour of your stand that there is no god, the believers will ignore you. And given that believers usually have strong sense of belief, it is very unlikely that your preaching and reasoning will have any effect on them.

Instead, the easiest way for you to spread your message is to make the religious ones pay. Literally. Religious arbitrage, I call it. Religion usually comes with a set of beliefs. And superstitions. And the religious people are more likely or less likely to do certain things because of their beliefs. And you need to exploit these beliefs. Exploit them as much as you can, and try make money at the believers’ expense.

My argument is this: if you think your religion or the lack of it is better than any other religion, there must surely be a way in which you can exploit this to make money at the expense of the other religion. So go ahead and do it. Nothing talks like money.

I did my bit in this direction last Diwali. I went to buy a mobile phone, and figured that it being dhan teras the shopkeeper was loathe to send me away without selling me anything. I managed to get the phone for almost a thousand rupees below what it cost the shopkeeper (I confirmed this figure with a friend who is a sales manager at Nokia). The poor guy even gave me a bill for an amount much larger than what I’d actually paid.

You might claim that I could have bargained harder. But as I said, even religion has its monetary limits, and the shopkeeper would’ve figured that incurring the wrath of the gods would’ve been cheaper than selling the phone to me for lower than he actually did.

So stop preaching. Stop preaching when you know you have no chance. Stop bringing up the FSM in every line of conversation. And let money do the talking.

PS: Religion might just be a special case for this argument. You should be able to take advantage of all sorts of beliefs (including the non-religious ones) using this strategy.

What rate of interest did Kubera charge?

It is fairly well established that Tirupati Venkataramana (it is Venkataramana and not Venkateshwara – remember that it is a Vaishnavite temple) took a loan from Kubera in order to finance his wedding to Padmavati. And till date, Venkatarmana has been soliciting contributions from visitors to his shrine in order to help him pay off this loan. Given that the loan was for the purpose of getting married, I think we can quickly establish that it was a Personal Loan. What I’m trying to figure out, however, is what rate of interst did Kubera charge Venkataramana.

For starters, I think somewhere in our scriptures, we can find out the amount that Venkataramana borrowed. Rupees didn’t exist in that era, but I’m sure we can find some figures in terms of gold, or other commodities. And we should be able to estimate the rupee value of this loan by suitable backward extrapolation.

What might be slightly tougher is the time period. When did Kubera exist? When did Venkataramana exist? When did he get married to Padmavati? The date is important, for we should know how many years to discount for when we do the IRR calculations. However, I’m sure that with sufficient effort, we should be able to find the date of this particular transaction to the nearest millenium.

Then, there are the loan repayments. Let us assume that Venkataramana is in general a poor man, and his repayments can be approximated to the amount of offerings he receives from visitors to his shrine. Catch a few people sitting for McKinsey interviews, and estimating this amount is also not going to be very tough. We should be able to get fairly accurate figures for the last few years, and then we should be able to appropriately extrapolate backwards accounting for various regime changes (I’m assuming here that the temple, for whatever reason, will refuse to cooperate in this noble endeavour – else we can get the repayment amounts from the temple books).

We also need to remember that the repayment is not complete. People still contribute generously to the Venkataramana Personal Loan Repayment Fund. However, if we assume that the loan has already been repaid, we can get a floor on the rate of interest that Kubera charged. It is intuitive right – that if more money pours in, the interest rate would’ve been higher? Let us also assume that there were no repayments till about five hundred years ago, which was approximately when the temple was built. Assuming zero repayments till then, it again gives a floor on the interest rate.

Obviously, I don’t already have any of the data that I’ve mentioned here, so I can’t actually do the calculations. However, if McKinsey decides to solve this problem, they can do so in March during their interviews at IIMs. My prediction, however, is that the rate of interest will come out to be a number which, in normal circumstances, would be found to be usurious. Thus, we might probably be able to show that people are contributing to funding a greedy usurious rich moneylender when they contribute to the Venkataramana Personal Loan Repayment Fund. I don’t know what further use this might be put to, but I think the process will be an end in itself.

On a closing note, I would like to point out the greatness of our culture – which, even in mythological times, could boast of complicated financial products such as Personal Loans. This one factor, I think, is enough to show that our Indian culture is superior to all other cultures.

PS:  Sometime back, I was wondering if the Venkataramana Personal Loan Repayment Fund could be the largest money-laundering operation in India. However, a little thinking revealed that our political parties are definitely far far ahead when it comes to that.

A few random thoughts on statistics and terrorism

In the world of statistics and operations, people usually talk of two kinds of error – omission and commission. For simplicity, they are referred to as “type 1” and “type 2” errors. I can never remember which is which, but after a little bit of googling, I can tell you that type 1 error is the error where a correct hypothesis is rejected, while type 2 is one where we fail to reject an incorrect hypothesis.

The most common example for this is one of a quality control department. Suppose you are in the business of checking the quality of widgets. There are two kinds of errors you can make – you can classify bad widgets as “good”, or you can classify a good widget as “bad”. Which of this is type 1 and type 2 depends upon how you frame the hypothesis. However, let’s not get into those details – they don’t matter. All that matters is that you understand the two ways you can err – which is not hard to understand at all.

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Superstitions and one way implication

India seems to have had a rich history when it comes to mathematics. Our ancestors are supposed to have done great things such as inventing the numeral system that we used today. However, I’m not sure how good we have been at logic. I’m not talking about anything advanced here. I’m thinking of basic stuff such as one way implications.

What is common to the following superstitions/customs?

  • You should never shave your head unless you are offering the hair to God
  • You should never light a fire in front of your house
  • You should never throw around vessels on the floor

The list goes on but I can’t remember anything else right now. However, I can assure you that there are several more of these. This is definitely not an exhaustive list, but it is most likely an exhausting list.

What connects all these is the fact that they are associated with death. You are supposed to shave your head when a parent dies. Similarly a fire is lit in front of the house when someone dies. And throwing around vessels is part of the death ceremonies.

What has happened is that all these one way implications have been misunderstood down the generations and have turned into two way implications. The rule states “if someone in the house dies, you light a fire in front of it”. And down a few dozen logically illiterate generations, it has been understood as “you light a fire in front of a house if and only if someone who lives there dies”. Note that suddenly, a one way implication has become a two way implication! Similarly with shaving your head and throwing around vessels. And with the rest of the exhausting list that I can’t remember at this point of time.

So the next time someone rebukes you regarding one of these stupid customs that are supposed to be “associated with death”, while they are only associated in one direction, tell them that they are saying this because they and their ancestors couldn’t understand simple logic.

Life expectancy and age of thread ceremony

Over ten years back, my mother had asked my father when they were going to conduct my thread ceremony. My father had replied, “You think either of us will die soon?” My thread ceremony eventually took place in May 2001, some five years after this conversation.

You frequently come across mostly elderly relatives lamenting the fact that youngsters nowadays don’t have much interest in religion, and parents are also not doing their bit. They crib that earlier, most boys would have their threads by the time they had reached double digits, and this would ensure a more religious upbringing. However, nowadays, with thread ceremony being delayed up to the twenties, and even up to the day before the wedding (for people belonging to castes that wear the thread, the thread is a prerequisite for marriage), the elders feel that this is preventing kids from being more religious.

I’m not sure if the increase in average age has to do anything with how religious the parents are. It’s simply a consequence of higher life expectancy. If you are a boy belonging to a caste that normally wears the thread, you need to have had your thread ceremonies in order to conduct your parents’ death ceremonies. If you don’t have the thread yet at the time when one of your parents dies, some other relative has to do this thing, and you are supposed to get bad karma from this.

Hence, even fifty years ago, when average life expectancy was quite low and it was reasonably common for people to tell jai when their kids were still young, people would want to make sure that there was a good chance that their sons had a thread by the time the parents told jai. And hence, the thread ceremony would happen fairly quickly after the kid had attained the minimum age of 8.

Nowadays, with people living longer on the average, and the probability of someone dying leaving behind a young kid being fairly low, there isn’t much incentive to have the thread ceremony really early. People prefer to wait until their sons are old enough to understand the significance of the thread, the ceremony, etc.

In the name of equality

In temple towns such as Horanadu and Sringeri, the temple has a virtual monopoly over accommodation for tourists. There have been a few private lodges springing up in both places of late, but indifferent quality means these are places of last resort for tourists. The temple accommodation, however, is well maintained and clean, and most importantly comes cheap. The undifferentiated twin bed room goes for about Rs. 100 per night in both places.

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Death Markets

I wrote this in a mail to the Satin group. This was in response to a mail by Amit Varma talking about priests in Haridwar who conduct the pre-ashes-dunking ceremony, and their fees, and the bargaining, and what could be a decent solution for the problem. I thought it might make sense as a standalone post, so I’m reproducing it here.

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Dickheads

I don’t understand why most temples ban photography inside the premises. I mean there are so many strong things that are there inside temples that are “capture-able” that it’s almost criminal that photography is banned. My mom says the ban is so that unscrupulous elements don’t take pictures and then distort them. If this is the reason, then I think it’s better to allow these unscrupulous elements to collect bad karma by distorting images. Anyways.

One signboard inside the Horanadu temple said (ok i’m translating here) – “parents are requested to ensure that their children don’t pee inside the temple”. Unfortunately, by the time I saw this notice, I’d already seen one other that said photography is banned inside the temple. However, I don’t think the temple had done a good job of putting up this signboard in all appropriate places. Before I’d seen one such signboard, I’d already shot a small video of the mangalarathi. It isn’t too clear but then I shot it in a “no video” area so …
Anyway the point of the photography ban has to do more with the Kalaseshwara temple in Kalasa (some 10 km from Horanadu). There, I noticed an unusual thing – a face had been painted on the lingam. I mean, I thought the purpose of the lingam was because Lord Shiva has to be worshipped in the phallic form. Now, when someone goes and draws a head on it, I don’t really know what to say.

The thing is this isn’t an isolated occurrence. I saw in Sringeri, too, in a couple of places, where a face had been painted on the lingam. I seriously don’t know what the painter was thinking. Or was it a conscious effort by the uber-moral Sringeri mutt to de-sex the lingam?