ramadocblog

“He was little but that did not stop him!

He ran towards the big elephant nay a care!

He did not have to worry cause he was an ant!

Forget elephant, even the tiger he wouldn’t spare!”

There are people who like the creepiest things in the world but I am sure they would not like this! They could very well be one of the most resilient beings in the world! I am sure that they were around with the Dinosaurs and I am sure they will survive even another big bang! 

You can find them in the remotest places and you can find them in the most populated ones! From ancient to the most modern, there have been so many devices and chemicals invented to get rid of them but take it from me, you cannot get rid of them! They will lay low for a while and come back with a vengeance! 

I am sure that even the most Heartful guy or gal would immediately pounce on them or crush them without a thought!

I am also sure that if a human does go to Mars, you will find a colony of them there happily munching on some martian rocks!

It has been said that these creatures can live without their heads for one week! Now all those who say knowledge is important can bow their intact heads in shame!

Apparently when you think or investigate them you would find that they are more close to humans in that they also have chambers in their heart!

And their heart (rate!) is close to ours! 

You may be scared of your wife but the only thing they may be scared of maybe these creepy things! Find them in your food in a hotel and you may get the food for free! But then you may not like to eat it!

They even have amazing latin names like Americana and Germania! 

Yes! 

The humble (??) Cockroach! 

It has actually been found that a cockroach can live up to a week without its head! Cockroaches are mainly nocturnal and will run away from light. 

Now remember how you were fasting the other day and felt good about it!? Well, cockroaches are tougher! They can live up to three months without food and a month without water! I do not think its humanly possible to beat that!

Now if you want to drown them these can put Phelps to shame! These pests can even survive being submerged under water for half an hour! They hold their breath often to help regulate their loss of water! Time for the swimming coaches to learn something new!

By the way they do not mind a drink! Apparently a cockroach species is drawn to some alcoholic beverages, especially beer! They are most likely attracted by the hops and sugar present in the drink or they get a high! Now what is the truth that, Hic! We may never know!

And talk about ancestry, it is believed that cockroaches originated more than 280 million years ago in the Carboniferous era! Also if you are terrified of the small roaches then you must avoid this place in South America where this species also has a one-foot wingspan! Now that is big! Big also is the legacy of Balraj Sahni the birthday celebrity of the day!

Now confirm the pest control appointment for tomorrow and sleep!

Shubh ratri!

“Will smith shot the kid not giving a hoot!

Agents all over shocked right to the boot!

He simply said I gave the kid some lemon

He didn’t squint! Now that’s surely a demon!”

If you meet a man or woman who does not wink or squint while eating the first sour green mango of the season especially without salt then he or she may most definitely be either an alien or a robot!

The best and tastiest memories of raw mangoes I had was when my mother used to cut them into long slice and put salt and red chili powder and put a tempering of mustard and oil on them! They were so good but you cannot eat them in a gulp! Only some pieces at a time and that too with frequent breaks in between! Then some curd rice since Mom told us not to drink water when we ate mango! I still follow that without any reason! Even the mangos we used to get at the road side which had the red and white powder were so tasty! The famous Totapuri mango which were a little sweet and sour may be the only mangoes you could eat without a wink! 

Apple was introduced much later though since we were in Jammu, it was also a big fad especially the red ones but I do not remember eating them! But my mother always used to tell about the Kashmiri apples which were supposedly as sweet as sugar! 

Now there are two kinds of Apple eaters apparently! The ones who eat the red ones and those who eat the greens! I like the red one since the green ones are usually sour and since I am allergic, it is better to avoid any sour stuff! The green apples though are a hit all over the world and in case you did not know, they are called Granny Smith apples! 

And yes! They are named after an actual Grand mother Smith! Unfortunately she was no longer around when these apples became famous of got named after her!

Read on!

So the original ‘Granny’ Maria Sherwood was born in 1799 in Sussex, England. In 1819, she married farm laborer Thomas Smith, and changed her name to Maria Smith. Together, they migrated to Ryde, Australia and bought 24 acres of land! 

One day in 1868, Maria discarded the peels and seeds from a box of French crab apples she had purchased at the market. She threw them onto a compost heap near a creek on their farm. Some months later, she noticed a little tree growing from the pile. 

She tended to it, and eventually it bore – not red apples – but green apples! She took care of the tree until the day she died in 1870, at the age of 71 without knowing or being aware of the fact that her tree and the green apples would one day be famous all over the world!

Finally several years later, an orchardist named Edward Gallard bought part of the Smith farm. He noticed this unusual tree and its green apples, and developed the seedling into an orchard!

As it turned out, the trees weren’t French crab apple trees. They appeared to be producing a brand new hybrid variety – a cross between a crab apple and a Cleopatra apple. 

So Gallard who was a truthful guy decided to name the fruit the “Granny Smith,” in honour of the little old lady who first cultivated it! This is so opposite to the usual credit hungry Homo Sapien! We must also appreciate Gallard for this! So anyway they were marketed and pretty soon became pretty famous and continue to do so even now! Some legacies live on long after people are gone just like the legacy of Manna Dey! One of my best sketches of him which probably reflects my respect for his skill!

Now have some sweet or sour apple and sleep!

Shubh Ratri!

“She takes the charge from day one!

Her sacrifices and her work stands tall

She is the mother the Jack of all trades! 

And also the queen of them all!”

In a famous song, The big B Says how when you curse us it feels like blessing while when we bless you, it feels like curse! The essence there was rich and poor while it is understood that the curse or blessing is dependent on the relationship between the giver and taker! If they are good friends and cordial to each other then keeping other things aside, it is understood that among friends any wishes is blessing and among enemies, any interaction even if it is soft seems like curse!

In the same way some people can mistake a complement to be a curse or sarcasm because in this day and age, people take more pleasure in criticism than praise! The age of true praise is dwindling and anyone who praises is seen with doubtful eyes! 

In that same way one of the biggest praise of yesteryears is now seen as a curse or not a compliment especially if you are good are many things! 

Now If you are a person with a multitude of interests and passions and have the undying urge to explore new things and acquire more knowledge and different skills. If you want to do many things at a time and try to practice to excel in them then instead of praise you are sure to get a critical assesment!

You will be called “jack of all trades but master of none!”

It is a great defence for the narrow minded person to give a insult in form of a compliment! The fact that someone tries to do many things must actually be an inspiration for everyone to get out there and do more stuff! If you stop and start comparing then you will never get anywhere! Once you realise that there always be someone who can do better than you, then you must try to do stuff different or with more variety that him or her! So if you sketch well but someone can do better then write a blog and if someone is a better blogger than you then write a poem and you get the drift!! 

Then the only competition you would have would be with yourself! 

Now coming to this popular saying, it was initially meant to be a compliment!

Let us see how! 

So the phrase dates back to the 14th century. At this time, the name Jack was typically used to describe an ordinary man. An example of this can be found in John Gower’s Middle English poem Confessio Amantis (1390).

“They seie, ‘A good felawe is Jacke’.”

It is said that these people were working-class and often had to supplement their meagre income by doing other jobs. For example, a builder would supplement his income by painting or farming. Thus, they were not particularly good at the extra jobs that they took on but they were good in one job and doing extra ones as a complimentary work!

So it could have meant that Jack was good in one work and not an expert in other work but still manageable!

The first places where the phrase was recorded was in Robert Greene’s 1592 booklet Greene’s Groats-Worth of Wit, where he refers to William Shakespeare as a “jack of all trades”! 

This was because he worked on sets of plays and learned all of the jobs and roles that he could and would fill in wherever he was needed! And he used the area as his learning ground and became one of the most well-known playwrights in history! So he was expert in all! A compliment!

In fact Jack and Cracker if mixed together actually means an expert!

So someone who’s a crackerjack is really good at what they do. Like a crackerjack of a magician will amaze you with every trick he or she performs.

In fact the word can be used for any excellent thing or person — you might say, for example, that your new car is a crackerjack or compliment your friend on her crackerjack of a performance at the school talent show! 

Now no one knows how the compliment became an insult but still if someone calls you a Jack of all trades then it is up to YOU to take it as a compliment or an insult because the person who says it may not realise the effort and dedication it takes to learn or do multiple things consistently and properly! The jack of all Trades as a compliment reminds me of this family of M S swaminathan who was responsible for the green revolution and his daughter and Birthday celebrity Soumya Swaminathan!

Now show your expertise in sleep!

Shubh ratri!

Peter principle by Laurence J. Peter and R Suttton!

Ebook and a very interesting concept! Now of course the book is written by someone called Peter though like Murphy’s law it could be the father or the son!

Even here like Murphy’s laws you have a back story since the original Peter Principle was like a series of articles based on the thoughts of Dr Peter who emphasized it on Lewis Sutton who is the father of R Sutton! This was because the Peter Principal came as an epiphany to L Sutton one fine day!That is the forward!

Now do not get overwhelmed! It is interesting and funny in a dark humour kind of way!

So in case you are planning to read the book then this is a preview only and if you do not want to read it then this is a summary of the relevant points!

The basic principle is that everyone in an organization reaches to his or her own level of incompetence and peaks!

Imagine a cricketer who is a great batsman, he or she would be promoted higher up the order and finally may even be made the captain! But it is seen that as he or she gets promoted higher and higher, he or she will finally reach a position where he or she will actually underperform!

Even in an office, you can have a person who is doing a great job at entry level! Then as and when he or she is promoted, he or she will reach a peak and then he or she will get a job in which he or she may not do a good job!

It is like the credit card scam! Your credit limit is at first a very low but easily achievable limit! You are then given an option to slowly and steadily increase your spending limit! Till you reach a point when you can no longer pay the limit! That is when they pounce on you!

Even in government jobs it is seen that a person who has been appointed because of a certain skill is given more and more responsibilities but then finally it will reach a point when the work suffers and how!

A person is good in a job then he is promoted to a better position till he or she reaches a plateau! or actually starts performing worse at the elevated position!

These are examples of Peter Principle which actually notes that every employee tends to rise to his or her level of incompetence! It actually concludes that every job in a hierarchical organization will be filled by a person who is incompetent!

The Peter principle hence states that a person who is competent at their job will earn a promotion to a position that requires different skills. If the promoted person lacks the skills required for the new role, they will be incompetent at the new level, and will not be promoted again.
If the person is competent in the new role, they will be promoted again and will continue to be promoted until reaching a level at which they are incompetent. Being incompetent, the individual will not qualify for promotion again, and so will remain stuck at this final placement or Peter’s plateau!

This outcome is inevitable, given enough time and enough positions in the hierarchy to which competent employees may be promoted. The Peter principle is therefore expressed as: “In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.”
This leads to Peter’s corollary: “In time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties.”

Which means that everyone does a primary job well as he or she is supposed to do! Later on they are given added responsibility and with each step they do the work well till they are promoted and given more and more responsibility till the time they reach a point when the work is incompetent! That is the stopping point! The Horror is that this applies to the managers of big firms and the officials in a government place! So the chief and the heads are actually reached point in which they are actually incompetent!

A solution has been suggested by the author that the person in such a position must be offered the position just one level below the current position and he or she will be competent in that!


Larger the hierarchy the easier the lateral arabesque or pseudo promotion! The incompetent employee is given a longer title and moved to a office in a remote part of the building with the Same salary or maybe a little hike! !

Case of levitation! Director with a huge salary but no one to manage! Suspended without a base to support! He is given a big job with office and perks but shunted to a place where he cannot disturb anyone!


Peter tells the story of Michael Patrick O Brien who was kept for 11 months on a ferry boat plying between Hong Kong and Macao because of a travel issue!

This leads to another interesting phenomenon especially in the Government sector! There are some forms which serve no purpose other than waste time energy and money! But incompetent officers insist on it because of customary routine! Like the case of Michael above!

The above are examples of Professional Automatism! Means are more important than the end! The paperwork is more important than the purpose!
But most of the time even if they don’t do any work, professional automatism still gets them promoted! In fact if you question or do not get with the flow, then you are not given any promotion! Here competence is harmful!

It was shown with a great example of a temporary teacher!
Probationer-teacher C. Cleary’s first teaching assignment was to a special class of retarded children. Although he had been warned that these children would not accomplish very much, he proceeded to teach them all he could. By the end of the year, many of Cleary’s retarded children scored better on standardized achievement tests of reading and arithmetic than did children in regular classes!
When Cleary received his dismissal notice he was told that he had grossly neglected the bead stringing, sandbox and other busy-work which were the things that retarded children should do. He had failed to make adequate use of the modelling clay, pegboards and finger paints!
If the whole company is incompetent then your competency is your curse!

Which made the author comment that Super competence is more objectionable than incompetence!

Of course the whole book is just an extension of the first chapter and ironically that was the most competent chapter and the author should have stopped there! He did not do it but still the book manages to hold your attention for a while with some notes and comments which I have enumerated…

The author states that there are three classes of workers the incompetent, moderately competent and competent!

The supers in both sides are liable to be dismissed!

Finishing your project within the budget is always bad! If you have any hope of getting a raise the next time make sure that your budget is spent! This is of course a known phenomenon! Do not be too competent is the key!

Examples of different types of incompetence like physical social emotional and mental! All with examples mainly of managers where even the appointing of assistants did not solve the problems!

Over some time though the author gets into his own brain and starts teaching doctors that many problems such as anxiety acidity and depression and many many more are due to a condition invented by him! On top of that the author is frustrated that the medical community does not recognise it!

Then in one chapter the author goes into naming syndrome and phobia and Philia mode! Naming things like compulsive alternation and the teeter totter syndrome! There is a whole list of things which he goes over drive in naming and giving definitions but like I mentioned before the essence is the same! The first chapter is the peak!

Many of the things he says he gives examples of some manager who did that and got nowhere and that makes for interesting stories! Now the stories are nice but repetitive!

Also how superiors treated subordinates and colleagues by body shaming subconsciously! Like how Napoleon towards his later years gave promotion only those with long nose!

All in all a good book to leaf through and if you are interested you can read it or you can just read my summary and the first chapter and you will get more than 80 percent of the essence of the book!

Now that is competence!

“He stood on the dias beeming with pride!

It was difficult but boy! what a ride!

The greatest achievement of his life!

He the lucky groom, she his clever bride!”

As the saying goes, behind every Successful man there is a woman! Historically apparently even that phrase is not accurate! Now of course the phrase has its roots in the idea that women often provide support, encouragement, and inspiration to the men in their lives. Historically, women were often responsible for managing households and providing emotional support to their husbands, allowing them to focus on their careers or other pursuits.

The actual phrase used many years ago was that, “Behind every successful man, There is s STRONG woman!”

I guess putting the prefix Strong for woman is not needed since they are naturally strong and here the strength is emotions and mental!

Now there is an invention by man but made famous by a woman! So much so that it was featured in a famous movie on a wonder of the world! Whew!

Read on! 

During World War II, an engineer named Richard James wanted to help the troops by inventing springs that could stabilize important instruments on naval ships during times of rough seas. While working on the springs, one was knocked off a table and “walked” its way down to the floor, then re-coiled itself and stood upright!

Does that ring a bell!?

Those fairs you used to go when you were young (er!) and that spring toy made either of plastic or metal? 

Of course it would work so well in the fair but the moment you get it in your home and play with it for a couple of days, am sure it would have got entangled and gone for good!

I cannot even count the number of such toys which were Fair purchases and turned out to be silly and costly afFAIRS!

So to continue the story!

Richard went home and did not think too much about it! But he did the more intelligent thing which every husband must do! Show the device to his wife! Or at least ask for her opinion! Even the first critic or reader of my sketches and blogs is my wife! Only when she identifies the person in the sketch do I go ahead and post! The blog does not need any approval (for now!)

So he told that how a loose coil of wire that had been accidentally dropped appeared to walk! And he thought and told her that it that looks pretty fun!

The ever supporting wife, Betty also like it! Now since it was slimy and may be a little kinked! We do not know the actual reason why she named it thus and that is not important! So anyway she called it Slinky!

It was first demonstrated to customers at Gimbels Department Store in 1945, and within the first 90 minutes over 400 Slinkys had been sold!

Yes! That famous spring toy we all loved to play with albeit for some time and the one which was featured in Jim Carrey’s movie Ace Ventura as coming down the steps of the Great Wall of China!

Of course Betty later on became the president and has always kept the toy’s price low so children could buy it! It originally sold for $1. Slinky has received many toy industry awards and honors over the years. Its television jingle is the longest running jingle in advertising history! Another industrial Giant with many awards under his name is birthday celebrity Anand Gopal Mahindra! 

Now control your urge to play with Slinky and sleep!

Shubh Ratri!

“She reached for her ears it was loud
The aching of her skull gave her no choice!
He stood there shocked beyond words!
Like the adage, music for some, for others; Noise!…”

Do you know what is NOISE? Well, of course the phonetic version you would know! And of course Music for one may be noise for another and vice versa! There is also a noise which is a frequent terminology used in the Photography world especially the Digital Photography world where you have lots of “Noise” which in that context means that the resolution of the Photo is not good! Now finally there is a Noise which cannot be heard or seen!
But it is very much present in our daily interaction and causes tons of problems just like the actual Noise! In fact there is an entire book written on this phenomenon co written by the man who bought you Thinking; Fast and slow! Daniel Kanheman! Lets make some Noise!

So the story goes how a longtime customer accidentally submitted the same application file to two offices. Though the employees who reviewed the file were supposed to follow the same guidelines—and thus arrive at similar outcomes—the separate offices returned very different quotes!

Professionals in many organizations are assigned arbitrarily to cases: appraisers in credit-rating agencies, physicians in emergency rooms, underwriters of loans and insurance, and others.
Organizations expect consistency from these professionals: Identical cases should be treated similarly, if not identically.
The problem is that humans are unreliable decision makers; their judgments are strongly influenced by irrelevant factors, such as their current mood, the time since their last meal, and the weather.
Even otherwise with the prevalence of Reels and WhatsApp videos and information, misinformation and trends decide many decision making! Sometimes your thoughts and belief system compels you to alter or change your behaviour!

This chance variability of judgments is called noise. It is an invisible but relevant burden on the bottom line of many companies.

Luckily some jobs which are really important for the smooth functioning of a company or even a country are are noise-free!

Clerks at a bank or a post office or at Passport control office perform complex tasks, but they must follow strict rules that limit subjective judgment and guarantee, by design, that identical cases will be treated identically! In fact here the issue happens when there is deviation from normal which is another Noise! But most of the time the collection of documents and scrutiny is normally within a well defined system of rule or regulation which ensures that there is either no or Little Noise!

In contrast, medical professionals, loan officers, project managers, judges, and executives all make judgment calls, which are guided by informal experience and general principles rather than by rigid rules.
Even you would have experienced how no two doctors or two mechanics would ever word by word to each other’s diagnosis and/ or treatment! Of course this does not mean that they do not respect each other, but some decisions are not bound by strict rules! Only by Guidelines which can be treated differently by each professional which gives rise to Noise!

And if they don’t reach precisely the same answer that every other person in their role would, that’s acceptable; this is what we mean when we say that a decision is “a matter of judgment.”
This is an acceptable situation and is the reason why people take second opinion or another “look”.

Academic researchers have repeatedly confirmed that professionals often contradict their own prior judgments when given the same data on different occasions.
For instance, when software developers were asked on two separate days to estimate the completion time for a given task, the hours they projected differed by 71%, on average.
When pathologists made two assessments of the severity of biopsy results, the correlation between their ratings was only .61 (out of a perfect 1.0), indicating that they made inconsistent diagnoses quite frequently. Judgments made by different people are even more likely to diverge!

Research has confirmed that in many tasks, experts’ decisions are highly variable: valuing stocks, appraising real estate, sentencing criminals, evaluating job performance, auditing financial statements, and more. The unavoidable conclusion is that professionals often make decisions that deviate significantly from those of their peers, from their own prior decisions, and from rules that they themselves claim to follow.
This is the very reason why you have the series of courts! How one court gives a judgement which with the same evidence and proofs is either corrected or changed by a higher court!

It is less well known that the key advantage of algorithms is that they are noise-free: Unlike humans, a formula will always return the same output for any given input. Superior consistency allows even simple and imperfect algorithms to achieve greater accuracy than human professionals.
Like how it has been suggested that you give the same set of parameters to a machine the second time and expect a different result is actually an example of Insanity!

In a now popular study done in 1981, 208 federal judges were asked to determine the appropriate sentences for the same 16 cases. The cases were described by the characteristics of the offense (robbery or fraud, violent or not) and of the defendant (young or old, repeat, or first-time offender, accomplice, or principal). Of course you may think that judges would agree closely with each other since there were no distracting details and probe contained only relevant information!

But it was NOISY! The judges did not agree. The average difference between the sentences that two randomly chosen judges gave for the same crime was more than 3.5 years. Considering that the mean sentence was seven years, that was a disconcerting amount of noise!

Aggregated over the assessments made every year, the cost of noise has been measured in billions and the value of reducing noise even by a few percentage points would be in the tens of millions! And you thought the future is Noise cancellation headphones! The future is Noise cancellation! But of a different kind!

So how do we take care of this noise?
Well, one of the most radical solution to the noise problem is to replace human judgment with formal rules known as algorithms that use the data about a case to produce a prediction or a decision!

Practically put, no emotions! No NOISE! Of course when this cannot be done then you must bringing Discipline to Judgment and it has been suggested that professionals should be offered user-friendly tools, such as checklists and carefully formulated questions, to guide them as they collect information about a case, make intermediate judgments, and formulate a final decision!
Now Judgement and Noise reminds me of birthday celebrity Rajat Sharma!

Now turn off the Noisy (listening kind!) Television and sleep!
Shubh Ratri!

“The little child looked at him eagerly!

He wanted to know when will it snow!

He was not taught before and by anyone!

That stare you can but unless you ask, how will you know!”

The other day in a group it was argued that a good Guru or teacher is someone who does not prevent you from asking questions! If you do not ask then you will never know! 

As the song from Journey goes, “So many messages lost in silence!”

Of course when we were young (er!) asking questions was frowned upon and this was the norm! You simply had to do what you are told! It was army in all the forms of life whether at home or at school! Which is why many times most of us have been trained to just follow and not question! Maybe the reason why innovation takes time to come!

The go to people those days to ask questions were our immediate seniors and siblings or cousins! 

In medical college it was the seniors and peers! 

Now of course you have Dr Google who has the answer to everything except your future!

One of the popular sites for question and answers was actually started by couple of Facebook folks who started asking questions!

So a Question-and-Answer site lets people ask questions and receive answers from anyone who is willing and hopefully knowledgeable enough to reply. 

Question-and-Answer sites  have been around since the creation of the Internet!

Sites like, Ask Jeeves and Answers.com, were the the trailblazers to the new trend. Ask Jeeves, launched in 1997 and became an overnight hit with millions of users visiting the site looking to have their burning questions answered. Jeeves of course was the Intelligent Butler starring in P G Wodehouse books! In fact his quotes are still golden! So just like in the novel ask Jeeves site knew the answer to all of your questions which could be posted in conversational language or by keyword searches! 

Then came another revolution in form of Yahoo! Answers! So while Yahoo! was officially incorporated on March 2, 1995, and was created by Jerry Yang and David Filo, the website began as a search directory for various websites, and soon grew into an established Internet resource that featured the “Yahoo! Answers” platform! Officially Yahoo! Answers was launched in mid-2005 and Answers was finally made available for general availability on May 15, 2006. Yahoo! Answers was created to replace Ask Yahoo!, Yahoo!’s former Q&A platform which was discontinued in March 2006. 

Finally the website which can lay the Numero Uno claim to the number one site for Q and A is; Yes! Quora! At least that is the situation whenever you place any question in Google and you are sure to get an answer!

Now when you have several answers to one questions then the issue is which answer is correct!? 

Like even the question about the origin of name has several answers in Quora! Like one says the full form definition(s) of the acronym or abbreviation “QUORA” is: “Questions or Answers (Internet » Websites ).” “QUORA” means a question-and-answer website created, edited and organized by its community of users! While another answers says that the name comes from the root word quorum, which represents many people coming together to accomplish a common goal! Another answer says Quora is believed to be a combination of the words “query” and “ora”, which means “voice” in Latin!

So Quora was co-founded by former Facebook employees Adam D’Angelo and Charlie Cheever in June 2009. After consulting with friends and eliminating ones they didn’t love, they narrowed it down to 5 or 6 finalists, and eventually settled on Quora. The closest competition that Quora had was Quiver! 

The world and Quora now has lots of answers to your questions but which is the best one for you is the million rupees question now! Of course the answer to the question of who is one of the first Indian artists to use oil paints and to master the art of lithographic reproduction of his work? The answer is obviously the birthday celebrity Raja Ravi Varma! Now for many Indian artist he is the answer to all questions but since I dabble only in black and white sketches, the dedication reflects my answer! 

Now log out of Quora and sleep!

Shubh ratri!

“He was hanging in mid air nay a care 

Just a thin rope holding him high!

He was a trapeze artist of great repute!

With every jump he tries to reach the sky!”

How do you feel when someone calls you a retard? Well, of course angry but still it is really great that you understand the meaning of retard so that actually makes you not one! Now that is not a justification of calling or getting called a retard! 

Now, do you know a similar sounding word called Leotard?

Read on! 

Well, it has nothing to do with retard and was in fact quite an intelligent work and is in fact named after its inventor who not only was intelligent but also has a song inspired by him!

So the story goes that Jules was born in France and was a good student! But he wanted to fly! That is good you may ponder but in his case, he literally wanted to fly!

So while he was on track to become a Liar…I mean, Lawyer; he began to experiment with trapeze bars, ropes and rings!

Of course the apple didn’t fall far from the tree since he was actually trained by his father who taught gymnastics and managed a swimming pool!

Remember those famous acts of Trapeze artists where they balance on top of a rope! Well, Jules would practice his trapeze stunts suspended over the pool!

Falling would make him only wet and a little upset! 

The one thing Jules was annoyed with was the fact that there were no tight dresses which could fit him in one piece without any flying over or over hang!

In the movie incredibles, the official superhero cloth designer always used to say that a super hero must not have a cape! Simply because it will get stuck somewhere and that does happen to the supervillain so that is that! 

So the mother which was necessity in this case and not his own mother (though she might have done the stitching for all we know!); made him design a skin-tight, knitted one-piece he invented to allow him total freedom and aerodynamics! 

Because it was so form fitting, there was no danger of any fabric catching or flapping as he performed!

Also you must understand that unlike the puny skinny kids like me at that age, Jules was a well built man so he had no qualm of showing of his tight corners or masculinity on full display much to the apparent delight (I am assuming!) of ladies and gents alike! 

With his slim fitting Superhero single fit outfit Jules was unstoppable! 

In 1859, Jules invented the flying trapeze act!

He became the first person to complete a somersault in mid-air and the first to jump from one trapeze to the next! 

Now you will scream (like a retard!) that you have seen this often so what is so great about it?!

Well, Jules was the first one to do these stunts high up in the sky for the FIRST time WITHOUT any safety net! 

As far as the song is concerned, the song: “The Man on the Flying Trapeze” by George Leybourne was inspired by him! And no! I am yet to listen to the song but I am sure it will be a high flying one!

Anyway, Jules sported his skin-tight uniform for the rest of his career. And sixteen years after his death, the name “leotard” caught on! (Maybe that is why it is called Sweet sixteen!; Now that is definitely a retarded joke!). 

Paris ballet schools were the first non-circus performers to adopt the leotard. And over a century later, leotards are still sold and used at dance and gymnastics schools to this day or night for that matter! 

All because a masculine man who wanted to be a Lawyer decided to wear a tight dress and fly! Masculine roles with a sensitive touch reminds me of birthday celebrity P. Samuthirakani!

Now wear your two piece night dress and sleep!

Shubh ratri!

“It was made in an instant
Without a chance to think
Jump into the water first
Then think about float or sink…”

In the amazing book by Daniel Kahneman called’ Thinking, Fast and Slow you have a section on something called Heuristic and Bias.

The whole concept has now taken a management level and Heuristics is an important phenomenon!
Remember that famous joke on how in an interview one person was asked, “What is your greatest positive quality?”
The person answered I make quick and prompt decisions!

So he was later asked some complicated mathematical problem like what is the square root of say ten thousand and he answered instantly “ten!” (or something; the answer is not important here so do not get into the accuracy!)

The interviewer shouted, “But that is completely wrong!”

To which the person replied, “I said I make prompt or quick decisions! I did not tell that I make the right decisions!”

That is closer to Heuristic!

Though it sounds like Heretic, which means someone whose beliefs or actions are considered wrong by most people, because they disagree with beliefs that are generally accepted; Heuristic is close but means something else!

The root meaning is from Ancient Greek which literally translates to “I find, discover”! And is thus the process by which humans use mental shortcuts to arrive at decisions.

Practically, heuristics are simple strategies that humans, animals, organizations, and even machines use to quickly form judgments, make decisions, and find solutions to complex problem!

Some common examples in day to day life are like how a person is stuck in traffic and makes an impulsive decision to take the other route even though he or she does not know the way. Someone is offered a job and accepts it without further details and so on!

When you apply affect heuristic, you view a situation quickly and decide without further research whether a thing is good or bad

This is an important tool in marketing and sales because Impulse buying is a great way to make sales!

There are some variations to this and modifications like a term called the anchoring and adjustment heuristic. Here you use a starting point to anchor your point or judgment, but then you adjust your information based on new evidence. Like how a A salesman initially offering a high price and eventually arriving at a fair value with the customer!

In another terminology called the availability heuristic, you use the information available to you to make the best guess or decision possible like trying to guess the population of the city you live in even though you have never looked up the exact number of people and like closer to the election your assuming that most people in your city will vote a certain way because you and your immediate community are voting that way!

There is another terminology called the Common Sense Heuristic which is defined as a practical and prudent approach that is applied to a decision where the right and wrong answers seem relatively clear cut. The commonest example for this is like how if it is raining outside, you should bring an umbrella. Other cited ones are how you (not me since I cannot stress enough that I am a Teetotaler and proud of it!) choose not to drive after having one too many drinks or how you (this is definitely me! since I am very choosy of the food I eat!) decide not to eat food if you don’t know what it is!

You also have the Familiarity Heuristic which is how something, someone or somewhere familiar is favored over the unknown. Like a group is deciding between a new restaurant and a restaurant they have been to many times and ultimately goes to the restaurant they usually go to or How a driver takes the familiar route to work every day even though there is another, faster way and finally consumers buy the same brands over and over regardless of the quality of the products!

Finally (at least in my blog! Since Heuristics is a behemoth in sales techniques!) you have the Representativeness Heuristic! This was one of the first ones to be described by Daniel and was a part of an experiment done!
In the original experiment on representativeness heuristic during the 1970s, psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman gave participants descriptions of a man named Tom.
They characterized him as organized, detail-oriented, competent, and having a strong moral compass. Based on these details, participants were asked to guess Tom’s college major.
Using representativeness, the participants assumed that Tom was an engineering student even though there were relatively few engineering students at the university where the study was conducted! It was a fallacy because here there are lots of assumption made which may not be true!

Some very common examples are assuming someone is arrogant and self-absorbed because they are reserved, quiet and rarely interact with people! or
how we judge someone’s nationality using only preconceived notions based on the way they look and talk even though you have not spoken to them or learned anything about them.


In medical parlour, if you see a doctor with clean white coat we assume he or she is a dermatologist! While one with white stains on the pants is an Ortho GUY! Or one with a complicated steth is a cardiologist! Or one with the Knee Hammer is a General Physician! Or a LADY doc with a green Ot dress draped half heartedly may be the Obstetrician!
These are all examples of the Representativeness Heuristic! And finally a well adjusted smartly groomed person with a clean coat and calm demeanour maybe the ENT! Now this final statement is suspect since I am ENT so this is not only an example of Representative Heuristic but also Bias! Another example of Bias is like how I like the tamil Version Gajini directed by celebrity Murugadas Arunachalam more than the hindi version since I am a South Indian! Though both are really good!

Now make a Non Heuristic decision to sleep!
Shubh ratri!

“The white barrel had hot steam coming out all around!
With delicate precision, coconut flakes over it was found!
The brown hot river had stones of pulse!
Eating that hot Puttu was his first impulse!”

After a long time, I had Puttu today and it was really bad! Hard and thick and hardly any coconut in between and to top it off, the Kadala Curry was thick and had no flavor and the banana was raw and sour! Of course I had no mood to eat but then that is an independent matter altogether!

Practically though Puttu has no actual taste of its own! I can literally see my Keralite friends folding their Mundu getting ready to kick me!
Now since anyway the Mundu is folded, I can tell you that the favorite breakfast of my dear Mallu friends is not from Kerala!
Keep your Mundu on and read on!

Now I have never been a fan of the Puttu and if given a choice between two tasteless breakfast main that is Puttu or Idli; I would unhesitatingly select Idli! You can simply eat the Idli with the Chutney powder or if it too hard or cold you can always make a good Idli Uppuma which actually tastes really good!

Now by their own both Puttu and Idli do not have much taste unless the Idli is made by my mother and her trick was that she always used the cloth to place the MAVU or flour! Those Idlis used to be so soft and hot that you can hold one end and the other end would break! My dad used to say how they must be like Malli poo or Jasmine flowers! So soft and delicate! Though the real taste of Idli is the samabar or the chutney! or even the spicy chutney powder with Ghee or Til oil! Like me, my mother did not have much inclination to make or eat Puttu! It could also be the fact that for five odd years in Calicut Medical college, the only respite for a vegetarian for breakfast was the Humble Puttu! Since the Idli could literally break my jaw!

Similarly like the Idli, the side dishes like the Hot Kadala Curry or the cheruvar payar curry or the roast bananas are the ones which give taste to the Puttu!
Again exception is the Puttu made by my brother Rakesh who used to make his famous brown and white puttu as part of the Puttu festival whenever he used to come home! In fact whenever I get or rarely make Puttu, my kids exclaim, “Oh! The doddu (a short form of dodappa or periappa which means the elder brother of the father or Tauji!) breakfast! During those times of course the special side dishes are again important but still my brother’s Puttu were so tempting and hot that you can eat at least some early bites without anything! Till your whole throat becomes dry and craving for some fluid!

The Special twist which I used to do in the Kadala curry is to roast some shallots and grind and put them in the gravy with some coconut milk! Also like my mother I used to make the Banana as morabba in Jaggery! We get this special Nendra banana which I used to cut in small pieces along with the skin and heat them along with jaggery and a little cardaomom! It is better since it’s more fluid than the dry Puttu! Also my brother puts a little sugar and salt in the dough along with a liberal dose of coconut gratings! The way he comes loaded with his multple Puttu instruments would put a Thatta kada (cart shop in Kerala) owner to shame! Then it could also be the fact that he serves it piping hot and we all would be eagerly waiting for him to push the Puttu on our plates! Since the day he makes Puttu which is usually for dinner, we would not make anything else! So all the hungry and eager faces would stare at him for his precious hot delight! The bloating sensation and the fullness the next day and the deep sleep may not be a coincidence!

So finally coming to the origin of Puttu since the Mallu friend with the folded Mundu is feeling cold! It has been said that the puttu was first made in Tamil Nadu. Today, puttu is also made apart from Kerala in Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry and Sri Lanka! Even as far as the Assam there is a similar dish called Sungapitha!

The origin of the story is that puttu was mentioned in the 15th-century Tamil poet Arunagirinathar’s book ‘Thirupugazh’! But during the time there was no mention of Puttu in any Malayalam book!

There is an interesting snippet about puttu in Thiruvilayadal Puranam written by Param lyotthi Munivaran in the 16th century. The Thiruvilayadal Puranam narrates the story of Sivaperumal of the famous temple in Madurai. Once, Lord Ganesha, in disguise, approached an old lady who was selling puttu on the way side and offered to help her. However, the old lady replied that she didn’t have money to pay him any remuneration. Lord Ganesh then told the lady that he would accept the crumbled bits of puttu as his remuneration. The legend says that the entire puttu made by the old lady, that day, was crumbled. Even today, crumbled puttu is presented as and offering for the idol of Lord Ganesha in Madurai!

Now my dear Mallu friends, do not fret! Puttu record is by Kerala only! So a world record has been created for the longest puttu ever made!
Twelve final year students of Oriental School of Hotel Management, set the World Record by making the World’s Longest Puttu which was around 18 feet! Now that is a great reason for the mallu dance! And thinking how the recent malayalam movie has stirred up a craze for an old Tamil song sung by Birthday Celebrity S Janaki; It means that if it is good then Mallus or Keralites will take it!

Now if you are planning for the Puttu tomorrow then do not forget to soak some chickpeas overnight!
Shubh Ratri!