Life is Precious, even mathematically..

                Last week, an IIM-B student named Malini Murmu, committed suicide. Reason : Her boyfriend dumped her on Facebook. His status read “Feeling Super Cool today. Dumped my new ex-girlfriend. Happy Independence day !”. I agree that this status, might have hurt her badly. But that is no reason, for taking her own life. I’m not going to say this is right or wrong. Let us not rally on that. My point is something else, something much more important…., Life…, precisely.

Waste of Talent and Hope !!!

                Few months from now, she might have got herself a big job which paid her obscenely (imagine, an IIM-B graduate), get lucky and get loved again and much more. All this, had she lived. But, Alas, that stupid girl decided to pull her plug. Ironically, Suicide is the most cowardly act, which requires immense courage.

                Let us do a simple math, to find out how precious Life is. Let Mr.X be a fictional human being, living a healthy life, on earth. We’ll find out the probability for the same, I mean, for ‘a human being living a healthy life, on earth’. (Forgive me if this post is lengthy, but I have to get the math right, to prove it)

   1)      It is a scientific fact that a single human male ejaculation, during copulation, releases 180 million sperms. So Mr.X is that one little lucky sperm in 180 million. For math’s sake, let us keep it 100 million. So, one in hundred million, as of now.

   2)      Don’t we need an egg for an embryo to develop?  Yes. A human female develops 522 eggs in her life time. It is lucky that Mr.X’s parents decided to do it on that particular month. If they had decided to do it on some other month, it might have been Mr.Y or Ms.Z alive, not Mr.X. So now the probability of Mr.X being  alive is one in fifty billion.

   3)      Now this is the probability of Mr.X being born to his parents. What about his parents?  His dad being his paternal grandparents’ son and his mom being his maternal grandparents’ daughter? That’s a pair of one in 50 billion resulting in another one in 50 billion. I don’t even know how to calculate probability for it. So as of now, for simplicity, let us take one in 500 billion as the probability of Mr.X being born(which is much greater than the real probability)

   4)      This is just for a single generation. Even if we consider that human race started from 0 BC/AD, we have to count for 20 generations.  So you repeatedly divide, one in 500 billion, by 500 billion, for 20 times. That is definitely beyond the processing power of my brain. Let us scale it down again. Say, one in hundred trillion – the probability of Mr.X’s birth.

   5)      Now probability( I know you hate it at this moment) of human being formed?? There are billions and billions of species. If not for our brain, we might very well be extinct by this time. So,the probability of Mr.X being a human being(keep in mind that dinosaurs were ruling the earth a long time ago, and also recently in the Jurassic park movie) is let us say one in one quintillion.

   6)      Ok, just simple math from now on, the probability of earth being formed – hmmmm, I don’t know. But, after taking into consideration some amount for this event, let us say , as of now , the probability of Mr.X being born on earth is one in a googol (yes, I spelled it correctly, it was Mr.Brin who spelled it wrong).

   7)      Well, my last point and the most important one. Life.. Our scientists have discovered thousands of planets and stars, but none of them even have the slightest hint of life. If there is head and tail, you can calculate the probability, if head is the only thing, then I don’t know how to, it is beyond math. Life is something weird., even science can’t explain it and it exists only here.  There are infinite amount of heavenly bodies and so I have to say, the probability is one in infinity.

                So, at last, the probability of ‘Mr.X living a healthy life, on earth’ is one in infinity. If it is one in infinity for Mr.X, then it is so for you, and for me. If I am right, one by infinity is zero. So mathematically, you and me, should not exist at all, but fortunately, we do. We are here, against all odds. If Mr.X’s grandpa decided to pull his plug, just like, Shalini did, then Mr.X wouldn’t be alive and kicking, in fact neither his dad. If his mom and dad, had decided to take their lives, when Mr.X was two years old, he might very well be dead by this time, due to lack of care. My point is, your Life, though yours, belongs to others too. So it is not for you to decide, to commit suicide.

                You might be a Gollum, going madly for the Lord of the Rings, saying “My own.. My Precious”. But at some point, you have to stop, to think that the ring is not as precious as the life, that seeks it, is.

                According to Dumbledore, “To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure”. Yes, true, but it should seek you, not the other way around. We might be ugly, bad, rotten to the core, depressed, broken and thousand other things. We might even be bankrupt, but always remember that we have got the most precious thing that infinite others couldn’t get- Our LIFE. Don’t lose it for anything, less precious than that.

You have given some minutes of your life to me, for reading this post. I should really thank you because, I(hopefully you, too) know how precious your life is and every minute in it, is. Thank you, again.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

                When the idea of blogging cropped up in my brains, the purpose of this blog and its posts were pretty vague to me. But one thing was lucid; I was determined not to review books or movies, because whatever one’s opinion be, on these two, there will definitely be another, completely contrary to the first. However there has to be exceptions to any rule and the exception to my rule has the name

                                                    

                                           ‘The Murder of Roger Ackroyd’

That is what the cover looks like !!

                If you are a bookworm or if you like crime novels and if you have not read this book so far, then do not read this blog post any further. Buy this book, read it first and then read this post. You must be thinking that I’m insane, to shoo away the very little readers by poor blog has. But trust me if you read the book you’ll definitely boomerang to this post, read the post  and will either totally agree with me or totally disagree with me. Just black and just white- no shades in between.

 Ok Badhri, enough of bullshit, take the plunge.

                ‘The Murder of Roger Ackroyd’ is written by Agatha Christie and was published first in 1926. I went to Crosswords, a bookstore, last week. There were two racks  named ‘Crime/Mystery’ and one rack was filled with Agatha Christie’s novels. She, simply, is the Queen of Crime. And this book is her Masterpiece.

                Just like, almost, every other Christie’s work, there is a murder and the queer Hercule Poirot investigates it. After reading each chapter, I went through it again in my mind just to make sure that I did not miss any clues provided by the author. Before this book I had read 8 Christie’s  and not even once I succeeded  in identifying the murderer (yup pretty dumb on my part ;) ). This time I was determined to guess the murderer right, before she announces it.

                But I daresay I failed miserably. Don’t think that I’m modest or something. I could never have guessed it because, Dr. Sheppard is the murderer, and that bloody person happens to be the NARRATOR.

                Not even a single cell in my brain could possibly have guessed that narrator could also be framed as a murderer. After reading this book I felt, what do they call, betrayed. And so did lot of others who initially read this book in the 1920’s. There is an unwritten rule that narrator should be truthful and definitely not a murderer. But I(and you too :p) have to agree that Agatha Christie, once again managed to hoodwink us, bigtime. And this exactly is why, I think ‘The Murder of Roger Ackroyd’ is considered her masterpiece.

                The first 350 pages of this book are just like any other crime novel and the last 20 pages are unlike any I have come across so far.

                This is the best crime novel I have read so far.( The best is always, Harry Potter, for some weird reasons) Before this, my most favourite Christie’s novel was ‘And Then There Were None’. 

And ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ is also worth the mention.

Recently one of my friends asked me this, in FB “Do you still like Christie’s books?”

I don’t know what she meant by it.

                

 But my answer is this : 

                 Yeah , Christie’s novels are always the same, almost. I have read nine so far and there are plenty of them left to be read. I’ll stop reading her novels, the very first day I guess the murderer right.....

India Against Corruption, and me too..

                It was a quiet evening, as usual, in Salt Lake City. I was sitting in the front seat of an auto and intently listening to the conversation between two loquacious girls in the back seat. I was so engrossed in their conversation (not that I understood a thing… they were speaking Bengali, nevertheless you cannot question my dedication :p ), I missed getting down at my destination, Central Park (notoriously famous among young and not quite young lovers of Salt Lake City). So I had to walk few meters back. And when I was about to reach Central Park, a shriek from loud speaker greeted me- "Inquilab Zindabad !! ". What I saw next, totally took me by surprise.

                At the entrance of Central Park, there were about two hundred people, with candles, drums, loud speakers, waving Indian Flags and what not-s. Reason: LOKPAL BILL. They were singing something in Bengali and dancing( Ahem.. I should say, protesting). In a nut shell, except for an Old Gandhian fasting, it was like a mini replica of Ramlila Maidan.

Central Park Entrance

                Just like every other youth in the protest, I was drawn to it (with Ratchagan BGM in my brain) and was about to ask for one candle. But at that moment, something in me, stopped me (might be cinematic, but trust me I stopped). I took out my phone, took a few snaps and went home. 

Reason: One small thought originated from some remote corner of mind, that I’m not the right person to be a part of this rally against corruption. Simply because, I am corrupt.

                My corruptions are not as big as that of our esteemed politicians, but I am corrupt enough to be called as Corrupt. I don’t know to drive, but I have the driving license with me because I managed to bribe the RTO and get me one. It would have taken a day for me to get the darshan of Balaji at Tirupati, but I managed to come out, unscathed, in two hours, just because I greased someone’s  palm to cut me through the queue, right into the shrine. And I can keep blabbering for pages, but that is not the point. I abused my money, for a cause(s) greater (I should really say, cheaper) than its value, which is a perfect case of corruption. We protest with full fervor against the greased palms, but we conveniently forget that it is, we, who grease those.

                Scores of youth took it to the streets, the Lokpal protests, in the past few days. A big thanks to them, because it was their involvement which took the protest to the next level and made the government to pass the bill (Hmmm.. hopefully so, without any more hitches). But how many of us, given the chance and position of the politicians, will abstain ourselves from being corrupt? Pause for a second and fathom your own mind. Or say a lesser degree. How many of us will not not bribe from today onwards??

Think.. Think..

                The Lokpal Bill itself is ingenious, a real stroke of geniousness inspired from similar bills in few other nations. But, but, but, on second thoughts, don’t you really think that the bill is fundamentally flawed?? The strength of this bill is drawn from the strength of the people of this nation, who are , simply, corrupt.  Lokayukta or whatever the body against corruption is named, consists of handpicked people from this corrupt lot. This exactly is the flaw of the bill.

                There is a saying in tamil- “Thirudanaai paarthu thiruntha vittaal thiruttai olikka mudiyathu”., which means, we cannot abolish thieving until the thief himself considers it as bad and restrains himself from doing it. India’s this fight against corruption will not be successful, unless each person realizes his level of corruptness and refrains from being corrupt. Untill and unless, it happens, I swear that this Lokayukta will be the most corrupt body of this nation. To put it in gaming terms, Counter terrorists will be the real terrorists.


                Without self-realization, the whole Lokpal thing is like the patriotic feel which you get after seeing Freedom Struggle movies on Independence day.. It'll drain from your mind the very next morning. There might not be another Anna Hazare in the future, but there will be people like you and me. And it is with this section, the change has to take place. It need not be instant. But it has to be gradual. Everyday, we have to become as less corrupt as possible. It is just you, to monitor you. No commission, no body. Only you and me.

                Phew… Your brain must be brimming with the word Corruption. Sorry, but I couldn’t find an equivalent one. And yes, I can hear you swearing against me like “ Who the heck are you to say this?? Are your thoughts saintly?? You are saying this ok, but how much goodness is in you to really say this??”.

                No. I don’t say that I’m a good person or a person with saintly thoughts. I’m not at all significant to me or anyone. You can call me an Oaf, pervert, sadist(hopefully..not a rapist.. I’m not that bad) and what not, call me everything. Yes I’m not a great guy, but I did have this one good thought and thought I had to share with someone, thus resulting in this post. Thanks for patiently reading this thing. I owe you some time, in your lifetime.

Links that might interest you:

1) India Against Corruption - the Official Lokpal site

2) I Paid A Bribe - Well, the name says it all