The Secret Drawer Stories

The hotel reflected the age and quaint character of the town itself. The town had gone through good and bad times but had survived to become a getaway destination to the large city just an hour away by road. The weekends tended to get crowded but on this Monday, the place looked empty. In fact many  businesses operated only on the last four days of the week. But for someone wanting a quiet day and night, Monday seemed perfect. 

The lobby felt dark as I came in from the bright sunlight outside. The furnishings were sparse and dark. The registration desk was lit by a table lamp. As I filled out the details on the form, the registration clerk told me that breakfast was included and was served from 7:30 till 9:30 in the morning pointing to the adjacent hall. He also showed me the door to the back garden area. He then handed me the room key - no electronic card here - and wished me a pleasant stay. I walked up to the second story room carrying the overnight bag taking the creaky staircase.

It was a small room. Really small. So small that if you took three steps into the room, you were likely to hit the other wall. On one side of this grand walkway, you had the bed and on the other, a chest of drawers. The bed was flush against the walls on two sides and the foot of the bed was just a couple of feet from the far (but not really far) wall. The only way to get on the bed was from the grand walkway. Add to this the fact that the bed was rather high and the whole thing had a claustrophobic effect which I assumed the website had described as cozy. 

As I took stock of all this, I dropped the overnight suitcase in the narrow gap between the foot of the bed and the wall while noting that I would have to place it on the bed to open it. The far wall had a window and an air-conditioner unit. The walkway ended at the window with a door to the right. I opened the door and was surprised to see a very spacious bathroom. It also appeared to be more modern compared to the main room. The hotel dated back to the late nineteenth century and the bathroom must have been added more recently. Maybe they stole some space from the room itself in the process.

All in all, a cute, quaint, and cozy room but it was too small. Beyond one night, one would likely feel cooped up. I decided to spend the rest of the afternoon walking the main street and browsing the shops that sold the inevitable tourist knick-knacks. I had dinner at a small diner and decided to turn in early for the night. I climbed on to the bed and sat up. Only then I noticed that the room did not have a television. Imagine that. 

Outside, the town seemed to have gone to sleep already. I wished that I had brought something to read. I got off the bed and opened one of the drawers although I expected to find nothing other than Gideon's bible. But there was no bible there. Instead there was a notebook with the intriguing words, 'Secret Drawer Society' written on the cover. It looked like the night was not a total loss after all. I picked it up and returned to the bed.

The notebook was a sort of a journal except it was not by one person. The pages were filled with entries by past patrons of the hotel who had stayed in the room going back a couple of years. Some thirty or so guests had left their memories and impressions. What a novel idea, I thought. I felt a sneaky delight as if I was reading a private diary.

Many of the entries were rather dull just sharing impressions about the hotel and the town. A grandmother having a day out with her granddaughter, or  a couple celebrating an anniversary. There were tips on what to see and such and recommendations for places to eat. But there were also some with more private thoughts. 

* * *

I walked out to the hallway outside and found the stairway to the back garden. It was a quiet night. I could not sleep and thought that stepping out into the garden would be good. Truth be told, I was feeling rather down having been told that my job was going to be eliminated. I had declined a fellow guest's invitation to visit the local bar. I did not want to tell him that I was a recovering alcoholic. I must confess that a part of me actually wanted to join him. 

I sat down on a bench in the garden and sucked in the cool wind. The sky was a riot of sparkling stars and looked magical. As I sat contemplating the stars, I was greeted by someone and turned to find a middle-aged man. 'May I?', he asked and I nodded and he joined me on the bench. 'Lovely night', I said and he agreed as we exchanged pleasantries. He introduced himself as 'Al' and said he was in Room 11. He seemed to be in a chatty mood and talked on while I mostly nodded and responded in monosyllables. 

He had overcome a drug habit after a long battle. What a remarkable coincidence, I thought. I had myself been sober these last four years. Suddenly, I was glad for his company for I had been feeling despondent and who knows, I might have fallen off the wagon that night. After almost an hour of mostly one-sided conversation, although my mood had improved, he said goodnight and went up the stairs. I too went back to my room and soon fell asleep.

In the morning, feeling refreshed and more cheerful, I went down to the dining hall for breakfast. I wanted to seek out Al and thank him for saving me. Not finding him in the dining room, I went looking for Room 11 but could not locate it. I stopped at the desk and asked the clerk and was totally taken aback when he told me that there was no Room 11 at the hotel! But I told him that I had met and spoken with Al who said he was in Room 11. The clerk shook his head and rolled his eyes. 

I was a little shaken as I started walking off. As I was reaching for the door, the janitor who was cleaning the lobby said to me, 'There was a Room 11 but it has been converted into a storage room now'. He then lowered his voice and continued, 'The previous owner used to stay in Room 11 often. He was known to be addicted to drugs and one night he died in that room as a result of an overdose. When the hotel was sold after that, the new owners decided not to use that as a guest room. It was quite a few years ago but many guests since have reported to seeing Al'. A ghost, for real, I thought with a little shiver. Well, at least I had not been hallucinating, thank God! Or had I?

* * *

Sunlight was streaming on to the bed through the window. I rubbed my eyes and looked at my watch. It was 9 O'clock and I realized I was late for breakfast. As I jumped off the bed and went into the bathroom, Gideon's bible fell down from the bed. Strange that I had picked it up from the drawer in the night to read. Stranger still, as I distinctly remembered that there had been no bible there. Somehow I had a vivid feeling that I had read something else, vaguely recalling Al from Room 11. As I returned the bible back to the drawer, I saw the notebook with 'Secret Drawer Society' written on the cover. Suddenly I had a spooky thought: Did I read that and not the bible? How did I end up with the bible? Did someone switch books on me while I slept? Did I actually 'meet' Al? I really did not want to know. I packed and quickly made my way downstairs with my bag. I did not stop to see if there was a Room 11.

If It Ain't Broke, Don't Replace It

We live in an era where we are expected to keep replacing perfectly serviceable things. This is especially true of electronic gadgets - phones, computers, and such. Anyone who has lived through the last four decades, especially as an adult, has had to contend with a constant stream of advances in technology, whether in home appliances or with the digital landscape. As newer and fancier models arrive in the shops, the temptation is too great not to jettison our old ones for them. With the intense competition to bring new products to the market, is it also possible that the newer ones aren't as reliable as the ones they replace? After all, more and more the mantra is 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it, just replace it'. 

Last year we had to call in an appliance repairman to fix our refrigerator. Many were busy and were only available after a couple of days. We finally found one that was willing to come by. The first thing he told us when he arrived was that he would have refused the call if our fridge had been one of the newer models. Ours was over seventeen years old but he said the new ones with all fancy bells and whistles were not made to last. After he repaired the fridge, he told us never to replace it and appreciated that the fact that we still had our old washer and dryer. Now, maybe he had not kept up with the technology and was not confident of repairing new models but our experience with the dishwasher has convinced me that the older models were real workhorses. I am always loath to replace something when it is still working well. My motto is, 'If it ain't broke, don't replace it'.

As luck would have it, the fridge broke down again after a few months and the handyman this time threw up his hands and admitted that it needed to be replaced. And so began a hunt for the replacement. We eventually settled on a model which would work without us having to fiddle with too many bells and whistles, or worse, having to download an app. I don't mind using apps to do my banking but I have no need to talk to my fridge or my coffee mug. Yes, I said coffee mug because someone gave me a mug that is capable of keeping the coffee hot for a long time. The mug can be controlled through an app to set the temperature. But the base needs to be charged and the whole thing has to be handled carefully as far as washing goes. Needless to add, the mug is sitting in its box unused. The point is the more the features, the more the complexity, and the more the chances the gadget will malfunction. More is not needed when less is adequate and more is not always better. 

I have written before about shaving razors (long back actually), a classic case where more blades are not better and disposable cartridge has only meant more plastic waste. Talking of waste, there is the coffee pod a monstrously wasteful product. I could go on but you get the idea. A lot of change seems to be change for its own sake like the annual releases of new smartphone models. But in some cases, changes have meant steady improvements to function and safety. I think cars over the last three decades have certainly become better although even here the proliferation of bigger vehicles has been a drag on the environment. Overall, people are keeping their vehicles far longer than they used to in the seventies or eighties. That is certainly a good thing. 

Changes have not merely remained in the technological realm but have permeated all aspects of daily life. I think as a generation, we have adapted to these very well although there may be room to debate how well. But we can certainly claim the right to look back and sigh about some of the things that arguably worked better before. 

Take the case of eBooks. It is amazing that you can carry a small library in a little handheld device or even your phone. You can feel good about saving trees by not having the printed version. But what I did not expect was to pay such a high price for eBooks. Why do they cost as much as their hardcopy brethren? After all, the cost of production should be negligible in comparison to the latter? Furthermore, you don't even actually own them. You have just acquired a license to read them. Unlike the printed books, they cannot be lent to others, sold in the second hand market or donated. In my book (no pun intended), this is a bad deal. One of the joys of buying and reading a book is the ability to share that joy with others. If I cannot do that, then at least I shouldn't be paying a premium to read the book. I can see why the print industry is still going strong.

So, go ahead and look back wistfully on the good old days when things used to be built to last. I do hope that that applies to our bodies too! In any case, indulging in nostalgia is a luxury readily available when we are old. 

One final thought. Technology has been the driver of dramatic changes in our lives. But ironically there is one area of tech that is seemingly bucking the trend. Systems written in COBOL, that venerable old language, are still around and are in fact supporting many important sectors like banking, insurance and government. Sixty years on and still chugging along, COBOL, I am sure, will be replaced eventually but like I said, if it ain't broke, don't replace it!

Being And Number-ness

I publish this article with a little reservation. I am not sure if all my readers will find this interesting and I wondered if I should share this post here. But then Of This And That is supposed to be ramblings about nothing or anything and all things in between and I decided to chance it. I beg your indulgence but it is possible that I will lose some of you half way through (I am of course making the assumption that that has never happened before). 

First, a puzzle to warm up. I came up with this a few years ago and shared it with a few friends when we were all exchanging different puzzles. This blog post itself is the outcome of my further reflection on the final poser.

If : 

3 + 8 = 102

6 + 9 = 23
10 + 5 = 15
5 + 13 + 31 = 144
Then: 7 + 11 = ?

When you have solved that, try 1 + 1 = ? using the same logic. 

***

Numbers have always fascinated me. I have written about numbers before pointing out how the interpretation of various things represented by a numeric measure affects us (see: Life by Numbers). Provided there is an agreed basis, we can compare different things by measuring them against that basis. This does not have to depend on language. If I count the number of bananas in a basket, I am going to come up with a fact, not an opinion. But if you ask me if they are large or small, then there is room for debate.  

The way we represent numbers can differ though the world has standardized on the decimal representation and place values. When we write a number, it is understood by default that the base is 10. The decimal system uses the symbols 1 through 9 and 0. It is possible to use a different base - the Babylonians used 60 as the base. This sexagesimal system needed symbols for the numbers 1 through 59 but it did not have 0. The Romans used a completely different way of writing numbers but without the place value concept. It resulted in a very cumbersome system not suited for performing calculations easily. You can read more about my rant on it in A Roman Affair.

The place value concept along with zero makes it possible to have an elegant and compact way to write numbers, and to do advanced mathematics. You can have any number as the base - you will need separate symbols for all the numbers below the base and 0 to be able to make it work. In a base-8 system (octal) for example, which will use the symbols 1 through 7 and 0, the positional weights will be 1, 8, 64, 512, etc. just as in the decimal system we have 1, 10, 100,1000, etc. In the digital world, the binary system rules. Everything is 0 and 1. The positional weights go 1, 2, 4, 8, and so on. Note that 10 in any system will represent the base e.g. 10 will be the base value 8 in the octal system.

Now something strange happens when we try to use 1 as the base. I can certainly imagine such a system but how will I represent numbers using it? In any number system as seen above, the actual base does not have a separate symbol which means that '1' cannot be used. This presents a problem for the 'unary' system. Based on the examples above, I will need symbols to represent all numbers smaller than the base of 1 but no number is smaller. If I use 0, I cannot write any number other than zero because the place value will always be zero. Does this mean we cannot construct a 'unary' number system? 

Imagine that the universe is the set of natural numbers {1,2,3...}. Using 1 as the base, there is no way to express the numbers in writing. It is a kind of singularity if I may use the term where all the numbers can only exist in potential form. Now consider the binary system where all we are doing is introducing the zero which really represents nothing but makes every number visible. All of a sudden we have all these numbers becoming manifest. A big bang of numbers, one might say, which immediately made me think of the origin of our universe. 

Our universe is said to have begun with the Big Bang. What was there before that point of singularity? Science does not talk about it and perhaps cannot talk about it. On the other hand, the Chandogya Upanishad declares, 'All this was Existence or 'sat' (Being) in the beginning, one only, without a second'. Note that Existence does not come into being. It just was, is and will always be. This 'sat' (or Brahman) is the essence of everything in the manifest universe. Before the universe came into being, there was just pure undifferentiated Existence that is Brahman. How did the universe come about? The universe of names and forms arose because of the principle of Maya, the mysterious power of Brahman. 

In the natural number universe, can we say that there is just 'number-ness' in the beginning, and all the numbers become manifest by using the principle of zero? That 'number-ness' is the 'sat' or the essence of all numbers and zero is the differentiating principle or Maya? Maya literally means 'that which is not but seems to be'. Zero though not strictly a number, yet seems to be one. It may be a loose analogy but I found the connection interesting. 

One final thought on this. I sort of resolved the issue with the unary representation by dropping the zero and using just 1. I know this breaks the rules but now every place value is 1 and every number is represented by 1s. In this set, there are 1s everywhere you look. All numbers are just bundles of 1s - {1, 11, 111, 1111...}. Knowing '1' is knowing all. As for our universe, the Upanishads say, 'All this is Brahman'. And by knowing the essence ('sat'), we know everything. 

Ah, how the mind can go from zero to infinity in no time at all! I do hope this ramble about 'being' and 'number-ness' has not led to some kind of numbness but has proved stimulating. You can decide if it is profound or silly or profoundly silly.

***

[For those still trying to solve the puzzle, all the numbers on the left side of the equations use the decimal system. On the right hand side, the answer is expressed using different base. The base is the first number on the left side of that line. For example, 3 + 8 = 11 (decimal). Converted to base 3, this is  102. On the last line, 7 + 11 is 18 (base 10) or converted to base 7, it is 24 (base 7) so the answer is 24. Now applying the rule to 1 + 1, the answer is 2 (decimal) and we should convert this to base 1, but how do we express any number with 1 as the base?]

Paper or Plastic?

The pace of change in India has been dizzying in the last few years. Every time I visit India, the change is palpable - in terms of new highways, faster trains, malls, metros, etc. There is definitely an optimistic forward-looking vibe all around, at least in the places I visited. I found the highways to be very good but the frequent speed breakers kept shaking up my joints. Whether they keep speeds in check or not, they are definitely bound to break other things and provide auto mechanics and orthopedicians with a steady stream of clients! The rest stops along the way are clean and well maintained. Even on the smaller highways I noticed little coffee shops and clean public toilets. But as soon as you reach the city limits, you will meet the inevitable congestion making you wish you had taken the train.

One area where the change has been the most dramatic is the explosive growth in the adoption of digital payments. Thirty years back, when I was working in in India, I had to accompany an executive visiting from abroad when he wanted to purchase a hand-woven rug from one of the arts and crafts emporia in Bangalore. We ended up in one of the showrooms on MG Road where he was able to find what he liked in a few minutes. He then wanted to pay for it using his American Express card. That's when things kind of ground to a halt. 

It turned out that American Express at that time required merchants to call them on the phone to get the transaction approved. This should have been routine except on that day the phone lines were busy or down and the store just could not reach Amex office in New Delhi (yes, they had to call that office). For the next forty minutes or so they kept trying to get through while also trying the patience of the American visitor. They even tried to use the telex (look it up if you don't know or have forgotten what that is) to contact Amex. It was a frustrating experience to say the least.

Fast forward to today. On my visit to India recently, I was trying to get some breakfast at the famous little corner canteen, Veena Stores in Bangalore and here I was the one holding up proceedings, wanting

to pay with cash. Well, actually not holding up because the rest of the shoppers were using one of many different phone apps to place their orders at the two self-service kiosks. By the time I paid for my order with cash, at least ten others had completed their transactions pushing me to the back of the order queue. When I saw another person fumbling with cash, I immediately guessed that he too was visiting from abroad and I was right. By the way, this is a fast food store by Indian standards which is to say, it will leave the so called fast food outlets in the US in the dust when you look at the sheer volume of transactions and the speed with which orders are fulfilled.

When I first came to the US, I was often asked 'Paper or plastic?' meaning 'Cash or credit card?' when paying for things. Over the years as the use of cash decreased steadily, this question changed in meaning with plastic bags taking over the old paper grocery bags. Yes, plastic bags did replace paper causing the explosion of single use plastic bags in landfills. We have come a full circle now with reusable bags instead of paper and plastic. And we can swipe, insert, or tap credit cards or flash the smartphone for payment at the checkout. QR codes are not ubiquitous as they are in India.

India seems to have leapfrogged the the paper/plastic stage and gone directly digital. The need for point-of-sale machines has been made redundant with payments being made using the phone everywhere. Even street vendors display QR codes and accept digital payments. Visitors are not able to join this revolution since it requires both an Indian bank account and an Aadhar card. Fortunately you can still use plastic, at least for now. And cash of course but cash is no longer king, it seems.

I wonder what that executive would say today if he saw folks buying things from the smallest street vendors and paying for them digitally. Back then, based on his experience with the credit card purchase, he expressed the opinion that we would not be able to bring advanced software solutions to the Indian market, something I was pitching hard for. I was an impatient young man then! Now impatient young and old people are waiting for me to complete my cash transaction.

Middle Seat Musings

The other day I had an epiphany. Epiphany is too strong a word but I had a realization. You see, we have had this three-seater reclining sofa for a number of years now. The middle seat does not recline. No one wants to sit there and consequently it has been the resting place of TV remote, unopened mail, and whatever books or magazines that we are reading at the moment. Clearly, this is being underutilized. 

It is not just on the sofa that the middle seat is less desirable. In a car, if someone has to sit in the middle of the back seat, it is quite uncomfortable. The hump in the middle of the floor forces you to have one leg on either side of it colliding with the feet of the passengers flanking you. Cars on the road mostly run with just one person inside so this is not a big issue perhaps. But that points out that the cars are underutilized. Ironically, in and around major cities, the roads are often  jammed with cars but most of the cars have just one person occupying them.

The couch and car seat are trivial examples but I think they speak to a larger issue. There is a lot of unused capacity in what we own these days. Homes have grown in size over the years here in America with the average size of a newly built home increasing by as much as 50% over the last four decades. In many homes, the number of bathrooms exceeds the number of bedrooms, and I have to wonder if the house is moving into the hotel category. How much space we need may be a subjective issue. But how much of the house do we really use? I grew up in houses where the rooms served multiple purposes, as living/sitting/playing spaces during the day and transforming into bedrooms at night. Now we have dedicated spaces for living, dining, sleeping, home office, etc. which means that each room is only used part of the time.

We may not pay much attention to utilization when it comes to homes or cars. But there are industries where utilization is a major concern. Hotels want all their rooms to be booked. Airlines are very focused on filling every seat of their flights. They routinely overbook flights to allow for cancellations so that when the flight takes off, all the seats are occupied. They will offer upgrades and discounts to get them filled at the last minute. And full flights bring us back to that detested middle seat.

Travelling by public transport including airplanes does involve giving up one's personal space to some extent. Sharing that space with strangers does not come easy to people especially if they are used to all that excess space in their homes and cars. Long flights are exhausting in general. Unless you can afford to fly business or first class, you are going to be constrained and confined. With headphone wires, phone charging cables and laptops, one can barely move one's limbs, let alone get up and walk. 

Occupying the middle seat in a plane is particularly torturous. If you are sitting in the aisle seat, you at least have some free space. The window seat offers a certain privacy if you can call it that. But in the middle seat, you are wedged between two others with very limited opportunity to move about. The window and aisle seats get their own armrests and you would think that the middle passengers should get two armrests to compensate for the extra inconvenience endured. But in practice, they have to fight the passengers on either side for the armrest. They should in all fairness be given a discount for all the discomfort. Of course, by charging extra for the other seats, one could argue that the airline is in effect charging less for the middle seats.

I recently read reports of innovative cabin designs for planes including one which eliminates the middle seat entirely while still providing the same or increased capacity. That sounds like a win-win solution to me. Of course these are at the concept stage and there is no telling when such designs will be implemented. But one can certainly hope. As things stand, even Buddha, who famously advocated the middle path, would hesitate to recommend the middle seat on airplanes. 

On a personal level, I hope to find the golden mean between cramped seats and oversized homes. I am going to start by sitting in the middle seat of the sofa more often. I will also examine other aspects of my life. That will be my new year's resolution. 

(April 14th is celebrated as the start of Solar New Year in India)

What's In A Name?

During the recent Oscar Awards ceremony, the song 'Naatu, Naatu' from the Telugu movie RRR was adjudged the winner. There were a handful of Indian movie industry figures who were interviewed by a reporter at that time. As they talked about how they were proud to represent 'India', I was struck by how the interviewer kept talking about 'South Asian representation'. It looked like we were about to be rebranded as 'South Asians'. That was not all.

There is a tendency to refer to all Indian movies as Bollywood in the US. The fans of RRR were understandably upset when the Oscar host called it a Bollywood production. And how about the term 'Bollywood' itself? The Indian cinema industry is much more than the Hindi films made by Bollywood.  Given all this, to call RRR a South Asian movie is lazy and a travesty (I am reminded of the time when all South Indians were clubbed under the term 'Madrasi' by North Indians). 

This is not something new. The term 'South Asian' has been in vogue for quite a few years now. But I think people in India or for that matter in the diaspora for the most part prefer to identify themselves as 'Indian' primarily. The country is of course referred to as 'India' (and in the constitution as 'India that is Bharat') and I find the use of the more generic 'South Asian' mildly annoying as it tends to erase the nationality.

The term 'Indian' in America is a source of some confusion thanks to Columbus. When he arrived in the Caribbean in 1492, he assumed that he had reached the eastern part of India. He set out to find a new route to India and had reached some place. Ergo, it must be India. Such was his logic. Without any verification, he decided to refer to the local people as Indians. He did not even set foot on the main land mass of America. I am sure he had some idea of what India was about but did not want to face the fact that he had not reached India. 

In the end, he lost the opportunity to get the continent named after him. I could care less about that but the fact remains that this led to the Caribbean Islands becoming West Indies and India being referred to as East India. How else do you explain the name 'British East India Trading Company'? It should have been easy to see that there was no West India. After all, for centuries, Europeans had been trading with India. How hard was it to accept the error of a misguided explorer and allow the native population of America to retain their own identity and spare the rest of the world some confusion?

As a result of Columbus's mistake, the native population of America became Indian. The Indian diaspora in America are Indian Americans. The terms 'Indian American' and 'American Indian' are not interchangeable by the way. I found out that the term Asian here does not typically include Indians even though India is a huge part of Asia. I suppose the term South Asian was born out of all this confusion.  

If 'India' is being subsumed into 'South Asia', the reverse is true of  'America' which rather than being a generic has come to stand for just the United States of America. What about Canada and Mexico? Actually, no one even asks whether we mean North or South America when we say 'America'. I think America is really an idea that the US strives to represent. I would like to submit that India is both a country and an idea. 'South Asia' is too nebulous a term identifying neither a country nor an idea. 

So what's in a name? Clearly a lot more than what Juliet thought there was. On the other hand, many immigrants in America routinely change their names to make it easy to pronounce. Many have two names, one ethnic and another English. The fact that many ethnic names cannot be represented correctly with the English alphabet does not help matters. Does this mean a loss of identity? In the melting pot that is America, I guess we have to expect a melding of cultures and that includes names and origins. One hopes that the various sub-cultures will nevertheless continue to flourish. This in fact is the unique lived experience of India over the ages.