Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?

One of my favourite thought exercise is to romanticize about the chaos theory. So this other day, I was having a conversation with one of my dear friends regarding the multiple ‘what-if’s in our life line. Isn’t it incredible that random actions by random actors cause incredible repercussions to your future?

Sometime in 2002. I was attending the centralized allotment process for admission into an engineering college. For those who are unfamiliar with the process – people are called in order of the rank they get in an entrance test and they choose which college they want to study in. People with the higher rank therefore have more choice and usually have higher chances of getting into the college they want. I was chatting to this girl who had a rank just above me and she wanted to get into college X. We could see the live updates of the seats remaining in all colleges right in front of us. With 5 people to go; there were still 2 seats left for her preferred college. She was quite hopeful. But just as her turn came in; the board suddenly showed 0. She was quite disappointed and had to settle with some other college; lets say college Y. I came to know later that there was actually still 1 seat left when she had gone in for the allotment. What had happened was a clerical error and eventually I got allotted that seat. She could have gone ahead and given a complaint and this would have probably been sorted out in her favour; because I myself didn’t have an objection. But she and her parents waved it off and said they didn’t want the hassles. We became friends and after a few years I was still in touch with her. She studied for 4 years in college Y, she met a guy there, she fell in love with him, she got married to him recently and is now expecting a child – all because of a clerical error by a government employee. You might say it was all meant to be; it was fate yada yada – but isn’t it just so damn interesting that someone totally external to her world has affected her destiny and the destiny of generations to come?

Now what would have happened if the girl went and complained? That brings back to the discussion I had with my friend. How would that have changed my life? Would I have the same friends that I have? Would I have taken the same career path as what I have? Would we two have ever met? Questions and more questions. Life is an incredible collage of choices and coincidences.

There is this short story ‘A Sound of Thunder’ by Ray Bradbury written in the 1950s which discusses this theme in-depth. The protagonist goes on a time travel adventure to hunt Dinosaurs. The catch is that the Dino can be killed only at the moment when their natural death would have occurred anyway and you are not allowed to veer off from a precise predefined pathway. But the guy steps out of the path momentarily squashing a bug, whose effects change a lot of things in the future that he goes back to. It is a really good read and I would suggest you have a look at this whether or not you have are fanatical about the Chaos theory. You can read it online here.

Consider this – The 5 minutes you took reading this blog post; if you had spent those 5 minutes doing something else (probably more interesting) what would have changed in your life? You never know.. That’s the beauty of the butterfly effect!

One fine evening, tired after the days work, I found myself seated on my couch at home lazily surfing channels on the idiot box, unable to decide what to watch. This thought I’ve had a for a long time resurfaced – Life has become so damn complicated nowadays with all the choices that we have and the small decisions we are forced to make everyday. See, around 15 years ago, in the same scenario I would have come back home, turned on the TV and watched whatever show in whatever language without being confused about what would entertain me the most. Simply because we had just one damn channel (good old DD National) those days. TV seemed so much more enjoyable then without all this work.

But that sounds so counter intuitive, doesn’t it? Our brains have been trained over the years to believe that choice is always a good thing. It needn’t be. Choice has a dark side too. Think about it. Having to choose something over something else adds an additional responsibility on you. You suddenly think about stuff like ‘Did I choose right? What if what I chose ends up bad? What if I haven’t explored all possibilities?’. It just adds so much more pressure. Don’t take me wrong. I’m not here to say that we shouldn’t have options to select from. But too much of it usually ends up bad.

So eventually, I started looking around on the Internet on the topic; and happily found out that I wasn’t the only with this thought. Relief – I am not that weird as I thought I was. There are people way smarter than me who feel the same. I found this very interesting book by Barry Schwartz titled The Paradox of Choice. Do read it, it is very well researched and explains the concept quite beautifully. The book is available on a lot of places on the web (:grin); but I’ll make your life easier – Flipkart or Amazon.

PS: I do have a copy of the book with me; so if you know me in person; you know you just need to ask for it :)

A good informal interview with one of my favourite journalist and author, Sir Mark Tully.
Watch it on ndtv.com.

I am currently reading one of his books – India in Slow Motion. Highly recommended reading! Maybe I will post a review in a few days too :)

After all the hype and controversies the film finally released yesterday in Trivandrum and I was there to see it first day first show. And… hmm, the book was better! To make it clear, I wasn’t a huge fan of the book either. Thought it was a fairly good novel, but not as good as it was made out to be. Just too much hype! So all in all, it was a bit disappointing.

There are some flashes of brilliance in the movie. The scene in which Sophie’s parent’s gets killed is one of the best I have ever seen. Kudos to Ron Howard for that shot! Technically the movie was sound and the location choices were excellent. But there aren’t too many more good things I can point out about the movie though. I would have expected much more from the team that made Apollo 13 and the likes. Well, Tom Hanks didn’t have much acting to do, just delivering long dialogues as if he was reading passages from the novel. Audrey Tautau was disappointing too. She was amazing in Amelie, but in this her acting seemed a bit artificial. Paul Bettany is an exception here. His role as Silas the albino is commendable.

The part I least liked about the novel was the over-dramatic ending. This was made even more over-dramatic and dragged out in the movie. Even the theatre audience, who have seen many a masala climax, seemed to agree with hoots, sighs and loud wise-cracks.

I wouldn’t recommend this movie unless you are die-hard fan of the book and want to see how everything translates on screen or if you can’t resist the temptations, and is too curious to find out what all the hype is about.

So my review: An ordinary movie, nothing amazing. 6 on 10 :)

This is about a novel, in which God calls on a cell phone, a Maruthi 800 (with AC) beats a Lexus, the Microsoft Word easter-egg saves the world and which ends with a Bollywood style car chase and group photo scene. Could all that make a good novel? Well, it does my friend. It does!

“one night @ the call center” by Chetan Bhagat is a story revolving around six call centre workers. The story is about these people who are all finding it difficult to adjust to the problems they face in life and on one particular night find themselves attending a call… a call from God.

There are two things that made me like this novel. One is the racy humorous style used by Chetan. Two, the ease & swiftness with which I could identify with the protagonist Shyam. I have never worked in a call center, I already own a Maruthi 800 (has no AC) and I haven’t done a lot of things described in the novel (though I would love to ;)) but I could find traces of him all over my life. Chetan claims to have written this book to portray the mind of the average Indian youth. I don’t know whether I am the average Indian youth, but if I am then he has definitely succeeded.

I wouldn’t say this a perfect novel… the plot does go on expected lines and there is some unnecessary melodrama at times… but these flaws are well compensated by the casual conversational style of writing. You never feel bored and wouldn’t feel like putting this down before finishing it. Definitely a must read, folks. And it comes rather cheap too, just around 100 bucks for this nice book. Don’t waste any time… get one, read it now!

About the author… “one night @ the call center” is Chetan Bhagat’s second novel. If the name doesn’t ring any bells, he is an IIT + IIM product who shot into fame with his best selling novel “5 point some one”. I haven’t read that yet but definitely my next book.

Links:

• Official Site » (chetanbhagat.com)
• Buy Online » (firstandsecond.com)