Traditions and Gorillas

In the mid nineties a friend at RPI told me a story (he said it was an experiment, but I am not sure if it was really done or just a story).. so let's just call it that for now.

It goes like this. The scientists put three gorillas in an enclosure which was moated on three sides and on the fourth side was a tall metal gate which was electrified but not locked.

Initially the first gorilla attempts to open the gate but gets a shock so it comes back to the middle of the enclosure. Same thing happens to the other two gorillas. Soon there is a baby gorilla born in the enclosure. They also add another new gorilla to the mix. When these two new additions tried to go towards the gate, the other three pulled them back with a lot of warning. 

Soon the original three gorillas were long gone and new ones were added to the enclosure. The fence was not electrified anymore, but not a single gorilla made it out. If anyone tried, the others would stop them from the terrible fate about to befall them. 

Now there may be many morals to that story or many inferences from that experiment on behaviour, but my takeway is that sometimes traditions are just formed along these lines and we do things out of context to present day just because our parents and grand parents did so.

Now why bring up all this now? This week has a special day in it.. aka Valentine's day. So "tradition" has it that the kids give a "Valentine" to all their classmates, irrespective of wheather they like the person or not. 

This translates to us buying a bunch of cards, envelopes, pre packaged trinkets and putting them in envelopes and getting them to school. They have nicely segregated the Valentines for boys and girls.. so if there are are 20 kids in the class and you have 12 girls, you have to buy two boxes of 20 valentines. 

To make things interesting, the envelopes and the trinkets don't always fit and we cannot seal the envelopes easily with the heart stickers provided. If there is one item on the shelves this week that has no concept of quality, it must be the valentines.

In spite of all this, the joy on the kids face doing this activity is worth the griping over the quality of these things. I am not sure if we will ever eliminate this "tradition", given that it provides much needed jobs to a bunch of factory workers and also given that it keeps the paper and pulp industry going again.. well, one can always try to find a silver lining in this somewhere ?! 

Every year I suggest skipping this tradition for our kids but don't succeed in it. We also have a shoebox for each kid where all the valentines they received over the years are stored.

The good news? The middle schooler does not have to do this anymore. It seems to be like trick or treating. Once the kid goes to middle school, this is seen as an activity for "small kids" or as Jr. puts it "it is for kids", which is a hint to us that she should now be counted with the adults. 

Happy valentine's day to everyone in advance. May your weekend be filled with cards, candies and flowers and at the least, lots and lots of love!

A time that was

Almost two decades ago, yours truly could dance in a competiton from 8AM to 6PM and still go for the formal "social events" that went till midnight. 

It was the best of times and that was it. Then life took a different turn and the dance floor was something that was frequented only in dreams or while day dreaming and choreographing moves for some nice song on the radio. 

Recently, after a long time.. switched on the radio and listened to a few songs. One of them happened to be Justin Timberlake's Mirrors. Loved the song and it brought back so many memories of NSYNC and a group of us dancing to some of those songs that were remixed to select dance beats. 

A thought triggered another and an attempt was made to check out the ballroom clothes that have been packed up since 1999! They did not fit. It was a clear image of a square peg in a round hole when I looked in the mirror. 

So I started focussing on select poses in the hot yoga room that were good to get rid of the handles at the waist. Bikram Choudury's book had details on what pose does what and it was a handy guide. After three months I tried the clothes again two weeks ago and voila!

It is still tight around the lower ribs now, but not bad eh?

Feels good to be able to fit into pants that were stitched in 1996! 

San of course is just shaking her head and so are the kids. Now the next step is to put on some weight in the face without putting the weight back on in the hips. Must be a pose for that! 

ps. Mommy, not to worry! There are no plans to get back on the dance floor. Dancer's pose in the yoga room will be it.

Sport vs. Entertainment

Many many years ago during a world cup cricket game, I was in a heated argument with my dad that the game was fixed. There was no explanation for what we saw on the screen including the "thiruttu muzhi" of Azharuddin which was there for everyone to see. He did not even do a good job of faking regret at losing a very easy catch. My father, a die hard fan of cricket and countrymen did not agree. In fact we did not speak for a few hours after that argument. 

Years later, I was proved right when the whole match fixing scandal came to light and that very game was included in the list of games that was fixed. While it felt like vindication, I had stopped watching cricket. Occasionally I would come back and catch something that was genuine or go to Youtube and watch recorded videos of some truly great bowling or batting performances where you knew the chances of it being rigged were low or none. This was mostly limited to watching a select few videos which I can pretty much list here :

Sehwag and Tendulkar hitting double hundreds in ODI's

Sehwag's 195 against Australia

Sachin and Sehwag in the 2003 Durban World cup match against Pakistan

Waqar Younis and Wasim Akram bowling reverse swing and deadly yorkers on infinite loop

Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh getting batsman out clean bowled 

Shane Warne and Muthaih Muralidharan at their great moments

The occasional Benson and Hedges games in Australia and the ICC games also in Australia which bring back old memories from my middle and high school.

But, to be honest .. mostly Waqar Younis and the yorkers. 

Money or not, no one could have played those balls even if they were offered a jillion dollars.

That said, I stopped watching football for a different reason. Everytime I watched, my favorite teams lost. It was a superstition of sorts that would make any statistician jump up. Even San decided it was best for me to not watch any game that involved our favorite team(s). It was also because I thought the football games were rigged as well. Where there is money involved there is corruption and if Cricket can have that level of deceit, I concluded "what chance did football have?". Was told many times by my friends that "No, football is above all that."

Today I got to watch the second half of the Niners game with Seattle. I could not help think that it was rigged! It was just a feeeling, after watching the player's and coach's body language as well as some of the calls made by the referees with today's abiilty to do high tech action replays. 

Today my folks in India tell me "we now know it is all fixed. We just watch it for pure entertainment! There is no sports in it anymore!" 

So if there is a match fixing scandal that breaks loose 5-10 years from now and this match gets mentioned.. this time I am putting it on the record! 

Just saying..