Category: India

Hello, My name is Navin, and I am a practising numerologist

(Update: This was written long ago; I was younger and less mature. I probably wouldn’t do something like this now, but leaving the article here, as there are various lessons to be learnt. The original article referred to in this article been removed but a copy exists on the Wayback Machine. Also, just as that article started getting serious questions asking for numerological advice, even this post started getting similar questions, so I disabled comments on this post.)

…while part of me is ashamed of this, the rest is enjoying being cruel to idiots.

It all started when I wrote this supposedly humorous article (Wayback Machine link) titled ‘Star Numerologist Sanjay B. Jumaani to be awarded the Bharatt Rratnaa’. You would think, that to anybody with an IQ greater than their age, it would be obvious that this is not intended to be taken seriously. You would think that the first few commentors (Full2Faltu and Krish Ashok) would have convinced the doubters that this is all a job.

And you would be wrong. Things started going downhill from the 7th comment onwards. Incredibly, people managed to read past such wisecracks as ‘[Jumaani has predicted that] the astronomic rise of the Sensex in 2008 after it is renamed to Sensekks’ and then at the bottom of the same page, they started asking me for numerological advice. Seriously, what is wrong with these people?!

Anyway, considering the satirical nature of the parent article, I decided to give smart-ass / humorous answers to the questions. To the MBA student wanting to know whether he will get an ‘international placement’, I suggested that he should apply only to companies whose names start with a ‘B’ and he will get an international placement – in Bhutan or Burma.

But I also tried to work in some serious suggestions. To the guy who wanted to succeed as an entrepreneur, I bluntly said

Numbers don’t play an important part in your life. (Fortunately or unfortunately) success in your career will depend upon hard work and smart choices.

To the guy with terrible English facing ‘lost of problem in […] life’ I suggested:

Based on the limited information you have given, I have the following recommendation: the numbers 8 and 3 are important in your life. Do a 3 month course on English speaking; it should include at least 8 hours per week. And after 8/3/08 your fortunes will improve.

I felt rather proud of having given useful advice in the guise of numerological humor. Apparently, however, he was not interested in doing any actual work for success and sent this follow-up: “Plz suggest how i become sucessful with the changing of name” and he ended this paragraph with “because u r the toperson to whom i can trust to take suggestion”.

At this point, I give up. I admit defeat. If you can’t lick them, join them. I have started actually giving numerological advice and making predictions about their life. I can see how writing this satirical article was actually divine intervention which helped me find my true calling in life. If people want my advice who am I to deny it? Young women want to meet me in person. (Seriously. Check it out for yourself. And I know that they are young because I know their birth dates! Ha ha.) This seems like a much better career choice than debugging C programs. So I am going to start using cold-reading techniques to guess their past and then predict their future. I am going to tout “scientific numerology” and design experiments for them to figure out their perfect numbers and colors and days of the week. I want to find out how easy it is to get ‘satisfied’ customers through pure bullshit. This is all of course, purely in the spirit of scientific inquiry and the relentless pursuit of knowledge.

And before you condemn my cruelty, remember that these people are asking me for advice on a page where at the top it says “Bollywood news for idiots. Humor for the rest of you…”, and at the bottom it says, “BasKya.com is a satirical website. Which means that all content is meant to be humorous and for entertainment only. It’s not true. If you cannot handle that fact, close your browser, and step away from the computer.” They are asking for advice in the comments of an article which says ridiculous stuff like Sanjay B. Jumaani is being given the ‘Bharatt RRatnaa’ for future contributions like “the complete annihilation of Pakistan in 2011 when he will go undercover as Arabian numerologist Sanj-e-Jumma-i-imaani and will give them bad numerological adivce.” And these are educated people. One is a doctor (who is presumably out there giving medicine to other people), and another is a lecturer (who is shaping the minds of our coming generation). Would you show any pity?!

Some of those reading this and who know me personally might be wondering whether my computer got taken over by my evil twin today. Because I am a rather nice guy otherwise. My only excuse is that fact that somehow this set of doctors, lecturers and MBAs who are too stupid to be anywhere near the internet and who believe in numerology has just irritated beyond my normal limits. The way I think about it is that these people are such idiots that if I weren’t doing it, someone else would be doing it, and charging them money for it! At least, I am doing it for free.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments below.

P.S.

I am sure that after reading this article, some smart alecs are going to post more queries on that page asking for advice with the intention of pulling my leg. Don’t even think about it! I am an all-seeing, all-knowing numerologist and I can see through all the paltry tricks of your small minds.

The background score of Tare Zameen Par

This is an (old) blog post by Aamir Khan about the process they followed for recording the background score of Tare Zameen Par which I found very interesting:

The work on the TZP background score is going rather well I think. We went surprisingly fast too. And interestingly we ended up recording live! Which hasn’t been done in films for around… what…15 years or more.

Let me explain. When we score for a film we look at a scene/sequence, decide at which point in the scene we want the music to start, were it should end, and were we want any changeovers in between etc. Now once all this is decided, and the creative is clear, the recording begins. Which now days can be quite a technical process. All keyboards are connected to a computer on which the picture is dumped. On that the start point is marked, a grid created, tempo tweaked around to fit the length of the music, etc, basically this means that a lot is done mathematically. All this as a result of the advent of computers. Not a very organic way to work in my opinion but definitely more controlled and practical. This is generally called sequencing/programming. So you sequence/programme a piece and then dump it in sync with the picture.

Going ‘live’ means that the musicians playing the instruments don’t peer and jab at a computer, instead they look at the screen as they play the instrument, with a conductor guiding them for cues and timing and intensity of playing. So they play live in sync with the picture. They don’t follow a grid, they follow the scene and the feel of what the characters are going through. Anything goes wrong you try it again. If the take doesn’t have the right ‘feel’ then you go again. Each take is different. Now this is how background scores used to be recorded 15-20 years ago.

In fact we went one step further, we were working without visual aides of cross marks on the scene to give ‘in’ points and ‘change over’ points. So the ‘in’ point was ‘felt’ rather than pre-marked and counted in. Not only that, the music was not written and never locked in, so when Loy or Ehsan or Shankar or Tubby (one of their musicians) were playing, they often were also improvising from take to take!!! At one point we decided we wanted a harmonica for one of the pieces. Not a synth harmonica sound but a real harmonica. Not a problem if you are in Bombay where a harmonica and a player are a phone call away. But we were in of course were in Panchgani. So Loy sends Sachin (my help) to the Panchgani market to look for a harmonica… which Sachin miraculously finds! Then Loy, who I discovers plays the harmonica rather well, goes on to breath life into that 8inch piece of metal and we’re cruising! Mind you all this is happening in a house not in a studio.

Actually since I’m doing this for the first time for myself (I’ve worked on background recordings when I was an assistant director some 18 years ago) I found this the most natural way to work. But Shankar, Ehsan and Loy were freaked out as they haven’t worked this way for ages, probably never. At first I suspect they thought I was mad, then they began really enjoying themselves jamming away.

Cameras to prevent teacher absenteeism in rural India

Update: After writing this post, I looked at the original research paper and wrote a much more detailed post on this topic which is worth reading.

Interesting idea:

Esther Duflo, a French economics professor at MIT, wondered whether there was anything that could be done about absentee teachers in rural India, which is a large problem for remote schoolhouses with a single teacher. Duflo and her colleague Rema Hanna took a sample of 120 schools in Rajasthan, chose 60 at random, and sent cameras to teachers in the chosen schools. The cameras had tamper-proof date and time stamps, and the teachers were asked to get a pupil to photograph the teacher with the class at the beginning and the end of each school day.

It was a simple idea, and it worked. Teacher absenteeism plummeted, as measured by random audits, and the class test scores improved markedly.

Found: here.