The lesson on dispersion

      This teachers' day, I fondly remember a teaching tale from my time as an economics teacher at Akal Academy, Baru Sahib in 2017.

      February 25, 2017

Grading the answer scripts of the last statistics test, I noticed a wide variety in the marks scored by the students. There was an outlier on the lower end – a student who had done unusually bad on that test.

Today’s revision class was on the topic of dispersion.

After distributing the graded answer scripts, I tell them ‘Okay, let’s calculate the mean marks scored by your class’

They ask around for each other’s scores. To prevent confusion, I announce the list of scores. They sum up the scores, divide by the class strength and tell me the answer.

Bravo! Now lets calculate the range. Do you know the formula for range?

They quickly quip “H – L”

“Who scored the highest?” They look around and ask. “And the lowest?”

They find the two values and the range is calculated. I am told that on this 20-mark test, their class range was 16.

Woah, that’s quite large. Do you know that the other section had a range of 7 on this test. This means that their section is ‘less unequal’, they have less dispersion in their scores.

Next time, I want your class to have a higher mean and a lower range. Will you do that?

They nod with thoughtful looks.

Suddenly, I notice eyes full of concern for the girl who had scored the lowest. ‘Prabh – we will help you in the next test, you must improve!’

I had goosebumps. That was something I had not expected to happen. They realised that that the only way the range could be decreased without pulling down the mean was by raising the lowest score. And the concern had sparked empathy and a new sense of care in my class.

The chapter on dispersion could be so powerful. That was the greatest lesson I learnt from my students that day.

***

Dear RA, With Love

Published in JPAL, SA Internal Newsletter, September 2018

As I move on from J-PAL for doctoral studies, here is a reflection on my journey as a Senior Research Associate on Mindspark Rajasthan, written in the form of a message across time to my younger self.

Dear Younger Self,

The field is exhausting. Those unending vendor and staff calls, all the fires that you put out, all the PI calls that you brave at the end of a tiring day – you are a hero. Your idealism and commitment to ethics unmarred by practical challenges is worth saluting.

I know somewhere deep inside, you might have developed a sense of detachment from data, particularly on the analysis front. Trust me, it is just a matter of bandwidth. Once you have the time and mental space, this stuff is no hard nut to crack. It is sheer logic and pure joy.

The biggest thing you will learn is that STATA is not as hard as you secretly believed. I know that sitting in a remote field office, battling with so many real challenges, every little error that Stata threw up reinforced your belief that this is not your cup of tea. But just dump that thought. Seriously. The truth is that you will start loving data. It is going to be the coolest thing ever.

Let me give you a sneak peek into your future – two years from now you will be managing datasets which span billions of rows. These are system-generated datasets of students using Mindspark software in government schools of Rajasthan. The data is vast, voluminous and generated real time. I have recently discovered and that this is what people call Big Data! You remember those well-annotated do-files you saw your PIs making and editing? Yes, you will soon be writing do-files like those, all by yourself!

Trust me when I tell you that data is beautiful. It seems mysterious at first but as you keep on playing and exploring, it starts unravelling. You start seeing patterns, absence of patterns and surprises all along. You will start discovering hidden stories and solve unsolved mysteries. Your prior field experience will help you connect the dots and make you realise how data is truly a shadow of reality.

Having said that, the process will not be free of challenges. You will receive big dumps of system data to manage and analyse. There will be times when you will feel lost amidst reshaping, merging and appending datasets. There will be times when you will go down a rabbit hole and lose sense of the bigger picture. The journey will be circuitous – involving digressions and meandering pathways with lots of trial and error. Sometimes you will reach a dead-end and bump against a wall.

But the trick here is to keep trying and pushing. Your stubbornness will serve you well. Keep your target in front. In the process, look for ways and commands to reach where you want to. Check out stata help files, google your queries, ask your peers in office – don’t stop until you reach the solution. If at any point it becomes overwhelming, keep a notebook handy. Write the problem down. You will start buzzing with solutions and ideas by the time you have finished writing. Eventually, the walls will come tumbling down and you will emerge stronger with every challenge. The fruit of your labour will shine through every beautiful graph you output for your PI’s slides.

On this journey, you will not be alone. You will have a wise sage as your manager. His name will be Rama. He will demystify all the esoteric jargon and illuminate your mind with astounding clarity.

Brace yourself for the expedition that awaits ahead. You will be so grateful that you stuck the course and followed through.

With Love,
Your Older Self

Life as a JPAL RA

Fresh out of Oxford and armed with my research gear in August last year, I joined JPAL as Research Associate (RA). I was told during one of the interviews that an RA is essentially ‘the CEO of a project on ground’.

Now that I analyse my life over the past one year, I am amazed at the versatility of roles I have ended up performing and the multiplicity of skills I have ended up gaining.

My first month on the job involved heading to the hinterlands of my homeland in Punjab. Intensive fieldwork and piloting with my PI and co-RA amidst the remotest schools close to the international border was an extraordinarily adventurous and eye-opening experience. I was right at the grassroots interacting with people and navigating my way through the real world. I could finally relate to concepts learnt at grad school – whether it was spotting a tinge of ambiguity aversion in the choice made by a student or understanding unusual trends from data. That was my first and foremost role in the new job – that of a researcher.

On the weekly skype calls with my PIs, I felt like a reporter – meticulously organising my diary from the previous week and reporting the list of weekly events and insights from the field. My PIs would do a lot of brainstorming/design discussion on call which would drag up to 3 hours sometimes. What started as a bit of an overwhelming and challenging role eventually became something enjoyable.

A few months into the job, I realised that I had to be the lynchpin to get anything done. If it was about conducting a test at a school – then everything from start to finish was upon the RA. The design of question papers, the formatting, the printing, the arrangements, making a procturing plan to finally getting the papers evaluated and catalogued for future reference. As the project scaled up I eventually had a field staff of 30 who would do those jobs for me. Having been through the nitty-gritties personally helped me manage them effectively.

When I moved to Amritsar, I initially found the role of being a manager of staff to be slightly challenging. I had to make sure they had enough work to keep them busy at office. Then I learnt an important trick from one of the candidates who I was once interviewing. Funnily, I had asked him if he had had any managerial experience and if he could share any tips about how to handle shirkers. He said he ensured that he reached his office before everyone else to chart a delegation plan beforehand. Voila! That was such a treasure of an advice for me at the point of time that I adopted it instantly.

Mid-way in the year, came the baseline assessment – a massive task to conduct our pre-intervention assessment of 5000 students in our sample. We planned bit by bit, prepared on war footing, working late into night, excited to finally begin with our baseline. We piloted, executed, learnt from failures and accomplished the gargantuan plan finally. To begin with, in order to hire surveyors, I had to take on the role of an HR manager. Suddenly, I was reading ‘how to hire’ guides online and then grilling candidates with my list of questions. Moving to the other side of the interview table was certainly a novel experience.

After this brilliant pool of people were hired, I took on the role of a trainer leading a team of 19 new recruits, training them about the tricks of the trade, the protocols and techniques of administering a task, conducting extensive field drills. Once this enthusiastic bunch was trained and ready, seeing them at work, working with students was such a fulfilling experience. I could see my younger piloting self in them – one who would return home dead tired after an exhausting day of repeating a script but with eyes full of exciting stories from the ground.

On other days, I would be couched in front of my laptop, organising and cleaning data to be sent to my PIs for final analysis. All throughout my role as a planner and manager moved simultaneously on the side.

Sometimes it would become overwhelming but working on an education project offered the luxury of internal satisfaction when field visits to schools were involved. Just a little smile or compliment from a cute kid at school would light up my day. The peace of knowing that the work is making a difference to a kid somewhere would compensate for the work hangovers.

There were some rare days when I had to don unique and completely unexpected roles as well. Once a filming crew from our donor USAID visited Amritsar. I had to be a director for a day – deciding filming locations for the team at schools and planning bytes and shots for them. At the hotel after school visits I had to be the TV anchor asking questions to the academicians invited to speak on the project. At the Chandigarh office, I was a pedagogue and content creator – thinking from the viewpoint of a 3rd grader if a question in a certain frame of words would make sense.

Amidst these diverse roles, there were some common lessons I ended up learning.

I became more empathetic to the plight of common people. Prior to joining JPAL, I had solo-travelled by public transport – train, plane, AC bus at the maximum. After moving to Amritsar, I travelled by a ‘local ordinary bus’ for the first time. It was such a heart-warming experience. The faces of village folks travelling alongside gave me so much peace, filled the crevices of my soul. They were never in a rush like people in the metros and seemed to carry around a state of equilibrium. Their presence alone was enriching enough for me. Besides the people, the rickety state of transport and delayed schedules taught me the most important lesson about public goods.

Also, my role as a manager opened my eyes to the state of unemployment in Punjab. I had never expected my interview room to bustle with so many candidates for a job posting with a salary that looked quite meagre to me. I slowly discovered that the local field staff I was managing were the same age as me, most were older, in fact. I was deeply shaken the first time I realised this. It was such a painful irony that even though we hailed from the same state, had enjoyed a similar childhood, but here in this office by sheer quirk of fate - I was the boss and they were my employees. It was a terribly humbling experience – the joy on their faces at landing this small field job opened my eyes to how privileged I had been.

It has been a year and 2 months at JPAL and I feel more mature, more humble and more committed than ever. Immensely grateful to JPAL for providing me this down-to-earth grassroot level experience that has shaped my worldview significantly.

Teachers who pass the students' test

Published in The Tribune, September 5, 2016

Every time I come across news feeds about teacher trainings and workshops, the student in me feels perplexed. I imagine a trainer, a senior pedagogue coming to these meetings pontificating to teachers about best practices in the field. I wonder why they don’t invite a student instead. Isn’t a student the best person to give opinion about what a good teacher should be like?

Having been a student from the last twenty years and having gained quite an eclectic exposure to teachers from Punjab to Delhi to Oxford, I think I have some interesting insights to make. While every human being is distinct and heterogeneity is evident in teacher quality, there are strings that are common across teachers who become their students' favourites. This teachers’ day, I make an attempt at compiling all the traits that I have keenly spotted in the teachers who have become my personal favourites over space and time:

Those who are passionate about what they are teaching. 

John Quah, one of my professors at Oxford had a contagious passion for his subject. The entire class would be spellbound by the end of his microeconomics lectures. I vividly remember his class on fixed point theorems. After scribbling the proof of Tarsky’s Fixed Point Theorem on the whiteboard, he remained in a state of trance looking at the proof and then told us ‘This proof is the most beautiful thing on this planet and who knows even beyond!’ The entire class was thrilled. Passion is contagious and has the power to ignite unparalleled enthusiasm and curiosity in the minds of learners.

Those who always encourage students to ask questions. 

It signals that one is the master of one’s subject and does not fear answering queries. I fondly remember one of my professors at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi – Mrs Leema Mohan who would always take questions from students with a wide smile on her face. Her patient and placid smile would be so encouraging that even the weakest ones in class would not shy to raise their hands and ask their doubts. She was in complete contrast to another teacher who would deride the students for asking questions that according to him were ‘silly’. The entire class admitted to having developed a phobia for the subject taught by this particular teacher at the end of three years. Creating an atmosphere where students feel empowered and encouraged to ask questions creates a beautiful two-way flow in a classroom. This is one of the foremost characteristics that differentiates a teacher from a preacher.

Those who make an attempt to link the worlds inside and outside classroom. 

One of my high school teachers Mrs Sargam Malhotra at Guru Nanak Public School, Ludhiana would always make it a point to narrate a story in every class. Every student would gear up for this moment in class putting their pens down and straightening their backs every time she would quip ‘Let me tell you a story’. Mrs Kochhar, my political science teacher at Sacred Heart Convent School, Ludhiana would embark on tangents and narrate inspiring personal life stories to make a point. Those stories stay with me still. One of the basic responsibilities of a teacher is to simplify concepts so that they no longer remain esoteric. The ‘Indian Economic Development’ class of my teacher Mrs Poonam Kalra at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi is an excellent example. Her lucid and graphic expositions of poverty, unemployment, hunger and other developmental issues beyond pithy facts and figures would leave the entire class charged with the spirit to make a change.

At the same time, I recall experiences of studying under dull teachers who would merely repeat what was present in the textbooks or just fail miserably at explaining concepts to class. Our blank faces were unable to deter one particular teacher as he would continue enunciating his dry script or copying proofs from textbook to blackboard. He would fail to make us see the connection every time. Being able to synchronise my worlds inside and outside classroom has been one of the most crucial challenges growing up as a student.

Those who would go an extra mile to answer questions that are beyond the scope of the course. 

A good teacher doesn’t snub a question saying this is beyond your syllabus or that it isn’t important for the upcoming test. Even if it is something ineffable for the students at their current understanding level, she would draw a simplified analogy and help the curious students sneak a peak at the knowledge that lied ahead.

Those who are honest and say ‘I don’t know’ candidly. 

There were times when an unexpected question from class left a teacher blank or confused. Some brushed-off the question as being unimportant, some pretended about knowing and gave an ambivalent answer. At the other end of the spectrum were those who would honestly admit ‘I don’t know the answer to that question yet, but I shall get back to you’. And then they would get back the next day as a mark of sincerity. I still harbour oceans of respect for these teachers.

Those who hand back graded answer sheets in time. 

I had a teacher who would take at least a few months to return answer scripts of the class tests he gave. Then there was Pankaj Tandon, my microeconomics professor who would return the graded class tests right the next day after the test. I remember the entire class getting awed when this teacher gave a test on Monday and walked in with the graded tests on Tuesday. It showed us his utmost sincerity and devotion, the kind he expected of us.

Those who say a word of apology for a mistake made on the blackboard. 

There are some teachers who become too defensive to accept the mistake, some who admit the error but very discretely making sure to erase it before any other student notices, then there are those who openly announce in class that they were wrong before making a correction. Acknowledgement of one’s fallibility is one of the hallmarks of a great teacher. We came to respect such teachers even more.

While our education bodies keep coming up with eligibility tests and stringent requirements for qualifying teachers to teach, I do hope that someone up there is taking a note and making the students’ voices heard. It is time to raise teaching standards in our world by assessing teachers by the students’ criteria as well.

Chalkdust on my dastaar*

There is chalkdust on my hands, my black turban has almost turned white, my eyes are sparkling with a rare joy. I feel like my soul is overjoyed and recharged with fuel. A silent room has just come to life. I have just addressed an introductory economics class of twelfth graders at Akal Academy, Baru Sahib on the topic ‘Mountains and Indifference Curves’.

They have always seen the Indifference Curves flat on the blackboard or resting still in their textbooks. Suddenly those ICs had come alive in this class and risen from the blackboard and textbooks to acquire a three dimensional image. There cannot be a better scenery outside the windows for this class. They are marvelling at the contour analogy I have just introduced and fondly looking outside the window panes imagining themselves climbing giant mountains of utility.

There is a glow in their eyes that I have not seen elsewhere. It is this eureka moment that keeps returning when they finally understand something. I feel like I am taking them through a journey from ignorance to knowledge. I am reminded of my younger self that felt the same sense of discovery and thrill on learning these concepts and acquiring this understanding. It is not as if I have stopped acquiring more knowledge now, it is an ongoing process.

The Principal of Akal Academy at Baru Sahib was kind enough to let me quench my passion for teaching by allowing me to teach classes of eleventh and twelfth grade at their school for three days of my visit. Situated in a picturesque valley amidst the Himalayas, the school has a wonderfully tranquil air to it.

I was enamoured by their pristine faces. There were trains of innocent questions that I seemed to have fuelled by telling them that they have the freedom to ask any question in the world - even the silliest, most trivial question they can imagine.

‘Miss, why are we studying statistics under economics? Isn’t that meant to be in our math textbooks?’

‘In reality, how do you calculate arithmetic mean for 5000 students? You can’t be sitting and solving using that formula on the board, right?’

‘That thing about the marginal and sunk cost – that can’t be true, right? People don’t think that way – do they?’

Each question had emerged from the depths of their hearts. I felt like I had just set a million caged parrots free. They had buried these questions from long and finally liberated them. They energise me as I imagine myself in their shoes few years back struggling with similar doubts. It was the struggle with searching for answers that had made me so confident at the end of my twelfth grade. I answer each question and the glow on their face validates each of my answers, as if. 

 

The bell rings but they don’t want me to leave. They crowd around and ask me many more questions. The next teacher is waiting at the door with a rather surprised look.

I took upto 5 classes a day fuelled by their enthusiasm and would end up with aching legs and a tired throat by night. Strangely, some divine energy would wake me up afresh each morning as I would plan the lecture in my head and decide to tell them real life stories that would clarify the economics concepts.

On the last day, I tell them that I am leaving on the next day.

‘Miss please stay till weekend. Wish all your plans of going back tomorrow get cancelled’ - the sweet girl on the first bench quips.

There is something so priceless and beautiful about teaching. You are connecting to so many hearts by building bridges of knowledge. I stand smiling as the entire class crowds around for farewell pictures. I wonder if I have just discovered my calling.

*dastaar - turban

Naima's Ruksati

Lahore. 20th February, 2016

She was walking down the aisle with Mustafa and surrounded by family. She hugged her granddad and bowed down to get his blessing hand on her head. Then happily hugged her mom, her cousins, her aunts. It looked like a happy farewell with Naima actively acknowledging the arrival of the departing moment. She seemed calm and composed.

Then as we neared the exit, I came in the way of her hugging queue. I kissed her on her cheek and then hugged her tightly. The hug stayed on for longer than usual, I realised she wasn’t leaving me.

Then I heard a sob as we parted.

‘Arre rone dein, mann halka ho jata hai’, I heard someone.

Then I noticed that other hugs had become moist. As the procession neared the car, her eyes had started to glisten with sadness.

I came face to face with this painful parting feeling for the first time in life. I was standing neutral all this while, a mere spectator. But after that quiet sob at the end of the long hug, I was drenched in emotion. She had left me gravely confused. I thought I was just another friend but she treasures me more than just a friend. Her Abbu had told Papa how Naima had never had a close friend after Faislabad before coming to Oxford and that she was so touched to have finally found a friend. I was thinking at that moment why the sob had landed on my shoulder. Did the parting also have something to do with me? The sorrow was of leaving her parents, her siblings behind – but somewhere in that family tree, had I also silently sneaked in? I cried impulsively at seeing her in that condition, more after the car left.

Kranti noticed and offered her shoulder saying ‘Pagli, rote nahi hain’

I felt stupid for a while and laughed it off after wiping my tears.

After the Ruksati, we came home. The house felt strange without Naima. Then a call from Naima’s in-laws came. Her Abbu told us they had invited everyone over to their house. I went along with her Ammi, Abbu, Bara bha, Chhota bha and Bhabhi.

I felt as if I had become a part of Naima’s maika family. 

Reverse Cultural Shocks

30^th December 2015

Its been quite a while I have written a blog here. It has been six months since I have returned from UK. These six months, I have been through so many new transformations, learnt so many new lessons. I must ink them all here before I forget my old self and start believing I was this new self always.

The first month after returning was replete with reverse cultural shocks. I was aghast at the roads, the garbage, the systematic absence of queues in public as if I had subconsciously acquired a primed and polished Brit perspective on everything around.

I boarded a bus and asked the driver for a ‘return ticket to Chandigarh!’ He stared at me, confused and speechless. I walked confidently at zebra crossings without looking around, only to discover midway that the cars showed no sign of slowing down and that I had to run for life. I remember waking up in the Sarovar hotel at Delhi (where I was for the JPAL Staff Meet in July) and proceeding to the washroom sink to fill the kettle with water. It struck me after a lag of some seconds that this was India and tap-water was different from drinking water!

‘Oh shit, this is India!’ I had to remind myself multiple times.

***

Now that I compare myself with friends went to college in Ludhiana and stayed close to home, I notice such stark differences. It is as if I am learning so many things now that they had learnt within the last five years only. Two skills that hostel made me lack were – driving and cooking. I would cook at Oxford, but very rarely. Especially rarely after Naima introduced me to the Cowley world of ‘home delivery’ at Oxford.

Cooking at Chandigarh has been the baptism by fire. No more tortilla wraps, it’s a world with real rotis. Rotis made by kneading the dough first, spherical dough balls next, rolled onto the rolling pin and then heated on the tawa and made to inflate with a skilful art. It’s a hell of a roller coaster ride every time. The daal. The subzi. The Baingan Bhartha. The Aloo Gobi. Aarrgh! I have started to respect every single dish after being through the ordeal behind it. Quite naturally, I have started adoring my mother in a new way after being introduced to this new world. Somehow, I always took the breakfast, the lunch and dinner at home for granted. It was there because it was meant to be there. Now I know what it took mama to prepare that final good from the raw material she gets from the vegetable vendor on the roadside every time.

And then I have finally learnt to drive. It has been two weeks and I have driven to office by my car. It has been such an empowering feeling. Once I drove half way from Ludhiana to Delhi on the highway. Papa sprung up with joy. I am learning to shoulder responsibility and adoring Papa in new ways.

Mama papa say I have lived in an idealistic world till now. I have been a revolutionary, dictating how things should be! Papa has always encouraged and supported my passions. Now it feels like I am making inroads into the real world. My ideals often bump into practical constraints. My super-objective and sanitised Oxford self runs into trouble multiple times. I have to remind myself that I am not surrounded by economists afterall. These are lay men and women who get all astonished when I make cursory mentions of behavioural nuances I observe at play – anchor effects and bandwagon effects. They think I am throwing words around. Or probably think I am mad to think of simple real world phenomenon in such complex terms. It gets hilarious at times.

The new job at JPAL has been a blessing. It is challenging my axiomatic notions about the world, attacking my idealistic notions and hinting the dawn of new opportunities and responsibilities. I am right on the ground, close enough to people I have always wanted to study, and feeling their pulse. More on my diverse first job experiences soon. 

Words

***

If you asked me today ‘What is it that gives you the most joy?’

My most honest answer will be ‘Words’.

Yes, just words and nothing else. Neither economics. Nor psychology. Nor research. Nor teaching. Nor playing. Nor anything else.

Just words.

I can be secluded from all worldly chores and soak myself in the company of words.

Words that are pithy, terse or lucid. Words that convey oceans of meaning. Words that help me place all my thoughts in perspective. Words that put an end to all the rambling and place an entire universe of thoughts in orbit.

It has been a serendipitous occurrence. The discovery of a friend next door who needs help with the vocab preparation for her entrance. I had just casually skimmed through one of her books when I felt ensnared by the pull of words that jogged my memory. Words that I had commonly associated with numerous people in my head suddenly woke up from their state of dormancy.

Our initial word exchange went on to a spontaneous word game – she would think of a person and describe a peculiar trait of that person at length and ask me if there was a word for such a person. I would try to think of a word that would most closely match the description. We would invariably go on to tangents after tangents discovering a whole new world about each other, the people we deal with every day, our perspectives on numerous different types of people.

Moments like these feel so light and timeless. As if someone has just pulled me out from a diagram with multiple constraints and frontiers towering over my head to an unbounded space.

***

Music

Music,

Sometimes it flows like a liquid

Filling the crevices

That the weariness of the day created

To the cusp.

It takes the shape of all empty spaces within

Voids and vacuums of thoughts

And fills them all

With a rare glory.

Sometimes it is solid

And fits the inner surroundings

Like the last piece of jigsaw

Connecting with a click

Completing an incomplete tapestry.

Sometimes it rises

Like vapour

From the depths of the heart

Lending voice

To all that remained unsaid

All that remained unexpressed

And then travels

Like a wave

Connecting hearts

Through rhythmic heartbeats

That share a mutual melody

Until

Souls of songs and beings

Have perfectly

Synced.

Oxford Diaries

Hi Reader

I have temporarily moved to https://oxforddiaries.wordpress.com

Thought of compiling all my Oxford experiences in a separate space.

See you there.

Much love,

J

The Birthday Blog

Five years ago, I had stumbled into the reality of meeting someone who had told me,

"Didi, mera toh kabhi saal mein janam-din hi nahi aata"
(There is no day in the year which is my 'birthday'!)

He was an Éclair kid - Mahesh. I fondly remember the inquisitive and intelligent eyes of that twelve year old. For him there was no day called his 'birthday' because he never knew when he was born. Neither did his parents. They were too busy in the drudgery of doing manual labour as construction workers. No one remembers birthdays in their world, of course.

I adored him. Deeply.

In the wee hours today, while doing my morning nitnem, reciting Jaap Sahib (Gurbani text) - I discovered something new.

The Guru said, 'Namastang ajaae'
(Salutations to the God who is not born.)
Sikhism believes that God is never 'born', neither does he 'die'. Birth and death are for lesser mortals only.

Mahesh has no birthday. My Lord too does not have a birthday. Enchanting. Isn't it?

***

The song

It’s a beautiful song
My heart sings it.
The trees down the road
Seemed to sing it too.

Did you hear? Do you see?
That plush red tree
At the end of my lane
That understood my vein
The melody arcane
And then jumped in the refrain
Moving its leaves

In an elegant rhythm
Taking my song 

To a higher new realm

That lady on the road
Seemed to catch my song
And smiled widely in turn
Carrying the smile along

I enter my room
It greets me with the song
Welcome back, oh friend!
Let us sing along

A whole new world chimes in
And joins in my glee
The harmonium, the tabla
Add another layer to the symphony

The spring in my walk
Oh! Where did it spring from?
This contentment along the sojourn
Carrying me lightly along

It was you, I know
In whose praise, this song flows
Endlessly, boundlessly
And it still goes

Mathematics – How I fell in love with it?

I have been lucky. Since school, I have had the experience to study from really exceptional mathematics teachers who have made mathematics shape my worldview like no other discipline has. 

It had started with Mr Osahan at school – a man who loved geometry and saw it in every aspect of life. And then Mr Manshant had deeply ingrained the twelfth class mathematics with a crystal-like clarity in me. Things were beautiful and you could see the beauty so clearly.

During undergraduate, I learnt that mathematicians are actually the most imaginative and creative sort of people. They work with things which cannot even be seen by human eye. When I was first introduced to the idea of dealing with an Rn space, I was boggled and quite terribly confused too. I clearly remember Mam Archana’s introductory Linear Algebra classes in college. Suddenly the entire world had changed as if – she talked of groups, fields, subspaces and I could never imagine a picture of the concepts in my head. I had walked up to her after class one day and told her that this was bothering me. It was making me uneasy – those lists of definitions and absence of pictures. She tried her best to persuade me to somehow extrapolate things from the tangible ones, try and imagine things in R3 and then try to assume a parallel in Rn. I was more confused and remained unconvinced for long. Why would you like to do that? It was stupid, I thought.

It was then a chance sitting with my mamu once (who is a mathematics enthusiast to the core), that I saw light.  “Why can’t I see these?”, I had asked him out of deep concern.

He had replied in that calm, unruffled tone - “We can’t see a lot of things in life, but that does not mean we stop studying them.”

“But what does that mean?”

“You can’t see God, but you still study Him, right? How is that? Through His PROPERTIES! Every morning you call Him Fearless, Benevolent, Omnipresent, Omniscient, Fatherly etc – those are His properties and based on those you conjure up an image of Him.

Similarly, you can’t really see a field, subspace – so you try to study them through their properties - a field through its eight properties, a subspace through its own properties. Thus you try to form an idea of how those mathematical objects may behave.”

The argument had satiated my curiosity, suddenly all the linear algebra classes assumed a new, higher role in my undergrad life. I started to revere it like nothing else. It was something transcendental, I felt.

Fantasy worlds with such exceptional properties leading me towards a perfection of sorts, it was a beautiful new realm for me. It excites me still, even more.

And then, I have to tell you about Dr Mohan Singh, a retired mathematics professor who has been my math-smitten uncle’s inspiration. I got a chance to study from him last year – and that too one-to-one. He taught me real analysis and topology. Mathematics would soon blend with theology and leave me all awed at the beauty of it. He is a man who lives and breathes mathematics. It was hard not to get more inspired, more excited, more enamoured by the field.

Once while explaining me a basis, he remarked – “For a topologist, a square and a circle is the same. Because they generate the same topology. If you go and tell this to a man on the street, he might laugh at you. But that’s the truth -a square and a circle are the same.”

Once our topology - theology detours had begun and we were coming to a conclusion that logic is not everything afterall. He gave me examples after examples from the history of mathematics where compromises were made even in a rigorous and seemingly-perfect field like mathematics (especially after Bertrand Russel discovered gaping flaws in Cantor’s set theoretical concepts). Since logic itself was not flawless, the point was that to reach God and when dealing with the domain of spirituality to study the Ultimate Perfection in the cosmos, one must abandon all logic and proceed with submission in heart and that's it.

I expressed deep unease. But then the topologist analogy helped and clarified things perfectly. Just like the concept of ‘circle and square being same’ is illogical for a common man but perfectly logical for a topologist, similarly, what might be seen as illogical in the world of spirituality might be perfectly logical from a higher perspective. After all, it is not the 'absence of logic' but a domain where a 'higher logic' prevails! *

A couple of days ago, at a workshop on bayesian inference, the instructor made a tangential remark somewhere during his lecture. He knew of a guy who claimed to see five dimensions when meditating under a blanket with a flashlight! (Considering time as 4th dimension in the 3-d space is all normal humans can imagine.) Makes me wonder, perhaps there are creatures on other planets who can see higher dimensions beyond R4.

As I think of it, I just get even more wonder-struck!

Wow.

*Caveat: Just to prevent any misinterpretations, when I mention spirituality, I do not mean religion or any superstitions built around them. Spirituality is about recognising one spirit in all human beings and rising above prejudices. On a personal level, I am a serious believer in rationality and feel that I have acquired this trait from my belief in Sikhism.

The Intensity Of Longing

Sharing a soulfully electrifying qawaali by Khusrau : it has held me captive for days, will hopefully grip you too.

Moments, memories and merriment

Reader

I cannot not write this. I don’t think I can do justice to narrating some very tender emotions through words but something still propels me to write, at least attempt a description of some very treasured moments I had a fortune to be a witness to.

Every Tuesday, a group of students go outside the Hanuman temple in Kamla Nagar (in Delhi University) and play with kids on the footpath. These kids go to school but hail from marginalised sections and resort to weekly begging. Tuesday is the day of service at this temple and devotees throng with much zest and sweets. And these kids throng the footpath and chase the devotees to maximise their earnings both in cash and in kind (the prasad).

Every time I come to Éclair, these kids rush to me – with open arms and faces lit with rare joy and hit against me clutching my legs, some hanging on to my arms. In a matter of seconds, I am surrounded by a full mob of roaring, cheering faces welcoming me in this grand way.

However, my juniors who are now the regular faces at éclair would tell me how they have to nudge them from their places on footpath to come, and in my absence, they wouldn’t run to them the way they did on seeing me.

I would try to tell the kids every time I met them how their Oishee didi, Harman didi, Sonali didi and all others who came loved them soo… much, expecting they would return the love to them in the same way.

But probably bonds are always a function of time, a positive function of time. And my reassurances to them would not work.

It has been almost a year now. I have been away and my ultra enthusiastic juniors have been managing Éclair. This Tuesday, before departing for Oxford, I went to see them.

I was slightly before time and Oishee and others had not arrived. They saw me and rushed to me as usual, curling around me. My mom was along and I told them ‘yeh meri mumma hai’ amidst the cacophony and they hugged her too, even harder, in the same mad, violent manner.

Another moment and Oishee, Sonali and Harman arrived on the other side of the footpath. They saw them and guess what…

They ran.

To them with the same fervour and even more, shouting ‘Didi,Didi’. A whole sea of cute faces leaving their prasad at the temple and running to ones they love so deeply. Surrounding them, pulling them, shaking hands, shaking them.

I can’t express the exponential joy of witnessing the scene – the joy of witnessing a love bud sprouting, the joy of seeing a whole coterie of people expressing their innermost feelings. Its as if something flows across individuals through those gestures – some divine vibes as if.

And then while they played dog-and-the-bone with Harman and Sonali as team captains, I noticed the cute Roshni clinging on to Harman caressing her arm with her hand occasionally while watching the game.

You know what, these kids don’t really come to éclair for just the sweets or the fun of playing games, they come for love – for the sincere care and affection, for having someone who listens to them and brings out the child in them after all the hardships of living in poverty.


…

Okay, I feel really incomplete. I started writing this post to describe that scene of kids running shouting Didi, didi. I doubt if I conveyed the intensity of that scene in its true form. I feel like an old worn-out Kodak camera that could not capture a beautiful scene of nature through its tinted lens. In search of a DSLR which can capture those moments better. Somebody like my friend Priyanka Dass Saharia would do an amazing job capturing it with her writing skills. Or probably writing isn’t a good idea, can anyone actually go and capture the scene with a real video camera?

It happens every Tuesday.

Around 5 pm.

Outside FMS.

Opposite Hanuman Temple in Kamla Nagar.

You should go see it for yourself, really :)

Some pics from that day, of the eclair class in progress.

The Priming Effect

I have had enough of this academic existential crisis and thought I had grown out of it after the Michaelmas break. Questions like 'what is economics? why am I here exactly? what good will it be to anyone?' had sprung up in oodles, caused a lot of furore and I had finally conquered them after a month-long introspection. Things made much more sense in the Hilary term and my mind could see the interconnections, intricacies and interrelations in my discipline more vividly and clearly than before. Things from the real world and the classroom had started to come in sync, life moved so beautifully smooth until this morning when Bang! I am hit with the biggest revelation.

All this while I had a sleeping hypothesis deep down that the discipline I was studying was having more subtle priming effects than I could imagine. I was aware of it, so I was always guarding myself against the ill effects, but a lot of my fellow friends in the economics circles were starting to become more self-centred and stingy. I do not blame my friends, they have been blinkered by approaches that sound perfectly rational and logical and have ended up internalising them.

I had once read somewhere about Amartya Sen, that he was known as an ‘economist with a heart’ – The metaphor had struck me and stayed with me all along college, I knew before undergrad that the discipline I was entering into was going to prepare me to be ‘heartless’. Somehow in the scheme of things, I was destined to meet Aleesha – my closest friend in college in whose company, I was able to put economics, ethics, morals in different compartments of my mind and carry on with the business of life. Those ideals never mingled, so no disturbances were created.

Of late, I was struck by the fact, that I had certain kind of tender emotions and completely selfless motives but my friends were just not able to understand! Especially now at the postgraduate level, I am forced to doubt myself at times, I just don’t reason the way the milieu around me does and I call up Aleesha often only to be reassured that I am not an oddity afterall.

Going down the memory lane, I remember complaining to one of my EcoSoc friends once in undergrad college, how the Economics Society had become more like a ‘Politics Society’. If you happened to stand near two ecosoc people at any random point in time, you were quite likely to hear bickering about a third ecosoc member, a very generous outpouring of jealousies and backbiting than any discussions about economics.

Do you notice something? All these friends I allude to in the previous sentences, were economists. ‘Strange correlation!’ I always thought in my head.

This morning I got to know that the relation was causal. My professor referred to it in her lecture today and I have been quite perturbed since then.

The finding is that economics and business majors are more likely to resemble homo-economicus than students from other majors. One explanation is that repeated maximisation exercises with agents who are self interested utility maximisers, make economics students more likely to mimic the behaviour in real life. Those lagrangians, hamiltonians had such grave impacts on people – I could never imagine.

Initially, research had found out that this could be the result of self-selection i.e. it may be the case that only ‘selfish, dishonest’ students chose to study economics. But later findings (especially the paper by Lopez-Perez and Spiegelman) reported significant treatment effects meaning that it is the teaching of economics and the learning that is occuring that explains the selfishnes (the problem of endogeneity is tackled using political affiliation as an instrumental variable in this paper).

I have strange feelings at the moment. Isn’t it a shame? The models were meant to be benchmarks and I was always reassured by my professors in undergrad that economics does not rule out altruistic behaviour, you can always incorporate it in the utility function of the agents. Unfortunately, those cases have ended up being side-lined to just some ‘special cases’ in the literature, analysed by behavioural economists only.

Seriously think its time for some change.

Disclaimer: Written by an economics Mphil student with no 'selfish' motives.

The link to the Perez-Spiegelman paper can be found here.

Raag Malhaar

D-8 Allnutt South.

It was a furnace – the west facing room would receive the burning afternoon sunlight, the walls would absorb them so perfectly and retain their imprint till the night, reflecting it on everything and every being inside the room. Sometimes, the overhead fan seemed like a saviour. Sometimes, it felt like the villain, spreading the heat in the room more evenly than before. Even buckets of water sprinkled all over the room would make no difference.

I would try my best to keep my calm. But the heat would become one of the rarest of the rare reasons why anger would well inside me. Especially in the third year, when I would see it as a symbol of injustice. My preferences had not been respected even though I had deserved to get a room of my choice, based on my merit in the college residence. But in those days, anarchy ruled, nobody cared and so I was, stuck.

I would whine and fill pages after pages of my diary sometimes, only to be reminded by my own self that it was fine. After all, I only would say in my morning prayer every day ‘Whatever You do, is good for me’ (Jo Tudh Bhavai Saee Bhaleekar) and then complaining about the state of things later in the day was like being double-faced.

And so my mind would wander over to tangents, for hours after hours – afterall what was the good hidden therein, of me being unfairly allotted the hottest room of the block?

As it was programmed, the good unfolded very soon as my search for it became more and more intense over days. It unfolded so beautifully, so perfectly.

I had started playing harmonium in second year after a long interregnum of 6-7 years. The gap perhaps made the activity more enjoyable and meaningful. I would experiment with different ragas, some of them would just rise from within, I had left them dormant in my memory for long. From one, another would emerge, and another and still another and I would be entranced by the compositions that would come out of my fingers, so effortlessly. I would be surprised at myself– was it really me playing?

One of these hot, whining afternoons, I remembered a small note of Malhaar (the raag known for causing rain!) that I had learnt while young. I started experimenting and recreated the whole sthaai and antra. Youtube helped and I found an amazing shabad sung by Bhai Nirmal Singh* – It said:

Baras megh ji, til bilam na laao

(Rain down cloud, do not delay)

Although I used to sing raag malhaar when young, the same hymns, the same compositions never had the same kind of resonance back then. Now the raga would emerge out of the depths of the sultry heat, I could feel the power of every word. As if my entire soul would cry for rain, for an escape from the furnace. It was pure joy!

Sometimes I would sing for hours altogether and then look back after a while and an eager neighbour would be sitting on the other end of my bed  enjoying the music and pressing for ‘one more’. Once, out of sheer coincidence (was it?), it started raining. I was too elated...

My harmonium had become like an air conditioner. 

It cooled my soul, my thoughts, my perspective on everything. I can never forget the peace I felt in those heated afternoons, they were the coolest ever!

Thanks to the heat, I understood real meaning of raag malhaar and the compositions in my scripture. Thanks to the heat, I found a terrific way of dealing with my anger and complaints.

Today, a friend shared this ‘miyan ki malaar’ youtube link on facebook (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7R4kdCi1zY)– and it brought back a whirlwind of old memories and triggered this post while the lovely malhaar is still playing in the background.

They continue to elate me. All smiles.

*Bhai Nirmal Singh's Baras Megh Ji link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7BVWrrEOFo

The Treadmill

Five weeks through the Michaelmas without much reflection, without much introspection have been quite perplexing. I was trying to juggle between a whole plethora of things, making thousands of friends and thousands of people who would shout ‘Hi Jalnidh’ to you on day-2 of stay in this foreign land – it has been an incredibly beautiful and overwhelming time too, in some sense.

And so all this while, a certain degree of disappointment always lingered deep down my heart. Things just didn’t connect. I was here for a purpose and here I was, meeting a whole lot of people whose only purpose in life seemed a transitory ‘enjoying Oxford’ cliché.

At our Rhodes farewell dinner, I was quite touched by the words of one of the earlier Rhodes scholars, Rohan Paul. ‘For me, Rhodes experience was about engaging in a dialogue – an internal and an external one’ he had said. And now every time I would face questions of ‘what I was doing here’, those words would come back and stir a whirlwind of emotions. Rhodes is not a mere source of funding but has a higher purpose to it – and for me, the purpose though not defined exactly, it brings back to my mind, faces of Bhoora, Keshu, Arjun and loads of street kids for whom I want to do something more substantial.

I write this post so flushed up by the Rhodes Conversation at the Rhodes House today – I am overjoyed at the discovery of so many people who seem to be circling in the same orbit as me and for whom, a life without introspection lies incomplete. The conversations hovered around everything to discovering who we are, who we are trying to be and how we relate to others and to Rhodes.

Somebody mentioned about student life as being ‘life on treadmill’ – of endless and continuous and perfunctory striving. I feel I have been on the treadmill for five weeks and now I am off. The internal and external dialogue just began. I found a great cohort, finally. Eureka!

My Essay for Rhodes

My Essay for Rhodes now available at
http://eureka-wow.blogspot.in/2013/07/my-rhodes-essay.html

-Jal

RHODES - LESSONS, EXPERIENCES, SECRETS

“So what is it you have in you that got you Rhodes?” a junior interviewing me for DU Beat casually asks.

“Hmmm…I don’t know.”

She stares at me blankly, not expecting the bluntness of the answer.

My mind runs into the multiple regression classes of econometrics and I wonder if I can make a list of factors and run a regression. The coefficients of the regressors could better decide the weight of each individual factor and give a precise answer.

She presses me again for reasons and I tax my mind and heart to spew out some, uncomfortable with the lack of rigor and precision in my answer.

As I sit down to write this blog, my mind races back and forth the events that transpired last year, around this time in June. My inbox is full of queries regarding the Rhodes application. Actually I have lots to tell and I figure out that it is becoming highly inefficient writing separate mails to different people. Moreover, I am a big proponent of knowledge sharing – information and anecdotal experience from a senior is also included in that ‘knowledge’ coz I think sometimes it can give you that edge that others might be deprived of.

And so, without bias I write this post – for you, dear junior.

I know you are inquisitive and ambitious. I know you have googled for Rhodes and histories of past scholars, just to land on that ‘perfect recipe’ that goes into winning it. I have some little experiences and advice to share, they may not all be connected, so I am writing out points.


1. A first year once asked me, “I am planning to write a paper on ABC subject in my break because I work for XYZ society in college which promotes the ABC subject. Do you think it will help me in my CV for Rhodes?”

I thought the question had such a Delhi-hue to it (sorry, Delhi-ites :p) Somehow, the idea of doing things just for the sake of bolstering one’s CV was a shock to me when I had first encountered it in college. I generalize it at my own risk, but I think ‘most’ people (there are exceptions) in colleges in Delhi (and may be elsewhere too) join a society not because they are passionate about it, but they are passionate about it because they want to join a society! So, the net result is that the passion is a feigned one, it dies down very soon and takes a shameless backseat as soon as CV and power considerations start dominating.


I hope you get the clue. If you think one can succeed in life with this sense of fake passion, you should really give yourself a second thought. I think I made it till the end because I never followed that idea and my enthusiasm for things I was passionate about, showed in every round till the final. It was genuine, so it came naturally. (Btw, I was hardly an active member of any society in college.)

In the final round, Mr Kumar Mangalam Birla had asked me quite tersely – “You have done quite a bit of social work. How do you think it distinguishes you from the social work done by other candidates?”

I was taken aback at the shallowness of the question, but probably they were testing me. I starkly told the panel what I had in my heart that I never did any social work so that it would give me an edge ‘over others’. I just taught kids because I would shrink within myself everytime I would see a bunch of street kids romping around my house. I had just asked out of genuine concern one day, ‘Parhoge kya’? And they had nodded and expressed so much enthusiasm that a little class had started under the shade of a tree. And then, I never had any intentions of making it grow, somehow my friends had heard about it and had started volunteering. Slowly, Éclair had scaled in size and made quite a big impact in the lives of the kids. But I told them that I hardly knew if things like these were even comparable across individuals. Probably other candidates had done something even better and that I could even learn from them, but my knowledge was limited to my work in an absolute sense, not a relative sense.


2.  Honesty is the best policy
Now this is something my friend Aleesha would be the best person to advise you. If you ever get a chance to meet her, you would be surprised and probably flabbergasted to discover that such people do exist. Every breath, every step, every word she utters is true, as simple as that. Be it the question of stating her score, getting a letter signed – she would rather take the long way and retain her honesty than shun it for the sake of short-term convenience.

When I first came to college and attended my first class in St. Stephen’s, I discovered that the professor was barely audible, the writing on the board barely legible and that I could understand virtually nothing. After the class, when I enquired around, I noticed a strange thing. Though people didn’t understand, they never admitted that they didn’t; there was always a ‘yes’ to the question ‘did you get that thing?’ but on further inquiry, I would conclude that even they were in the same boat as me. In other words, there was a false cover of cognizance of everyone’s lips but inside they were blank. But Aleesha was different. ‘I don’t know’, ‘I didn’t get it’, she would admit boldly without any sense of embarrassment in her voice, in that classful of smart people.

I was always touched, greatly.

I had once attended an international conference on the concept of death in different faiths. I remember eagerly listening to Dr Jaswant Singh Neki (eminent Sikh scholar and retired psychiatrist from PGI, Chandigarh). Somebody from the audience had put him a question to which he didn’t know the answer. It was a new and different field for him and he had never thought about the topic. I remember his words so distinctly

“Mai iss vishay te aapni aggyaanta iqbaal karda haan” (I admit my lack of knowledge on the subject).
(I’m not sure if I have translated that justly, hope you get the power of those strong words said in Punjabi).

It was an international conference and he was such a renowned academician. The message was that he had no hesitations saying, “ I DON’T KNOW ”

Je ne sais pas.

As simple as that.

I myself have never been that much of a perfectionist as Aleesha but I did pick up vital lessons from my experienced and had internalized them to quite an extent.

In the first round of Rhodes interview I was asked a couple of technical questions – I didn’t know the answer to a few of them. Instead of feeling ashamed or just to camouflage my ignorance I had not maundered – I had told the experts, ‘I don’t know’

They had switched the topic and asked me other questions. I had left the room feeling sheepish about my ignorance and lost all hopes. But then the call for the final interview had come…



3. Stochastic factors and Glucose
So junior, you have been making a list of factors right? – Sincerity, passion, honesty,…

But I’ll tell you the ultimate secret?

Even if you enlist all the factors possible – SOP, references, cv, confidence, lessons learnt from a conference… you would not be able to enlist them all. You will end but the list won’t because there are so many of them, because some of them aren’t even thinkable – they might be remotely related to one’s success.

In other words, in life as in econometrics, there are loads of stochastic factors apart from the deterministic ones captured so elegantly in what economists call the ‘error term’. It is a random disturbance, it may move up or down and alter the results. You have no control over it, how much ever you try. It is random.

I think there’s something really divine about the random disturbances. Some things are just unexplainable, unknowable – we club them under the error term. And faith in a Higher Power is just a belief that human abilities are insufficient to explain everything and that a random component exists!

I ended up saying a lot of that theory in my interview, you know :p and yes, my interview got steered to questions of religion, spirituality and faith.

On a lighter note, I’ll tell you another story about one stochastic factor in my Rhodes experience – Glucose.

If you’ve read Kahneman’s ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’ – you would know about the theory. The point is that human mind becomes lazy at times when glucose levels fall down. Restoring the sugar levels in the brain however brings back alertness. An experiment was once conducted on eight parole judges in Israel who spent entire days reviewing applications for parole. The default decision was denial of parole, only 35% of requests were approved.

A group of psychologists did a funny thing. They recorded the exact time of each decision and plotted it against the decision taken. The times of the judges’ food breaks were also recorded.

Guess what they found?

Maximum approvals were granted at times right after meals, the graph showed spikes after food breaks! The point was that tired and hungry judges tended to fall back on the easier and convenient default option of denying requests for parole. Fatigue and hunger had a role to play.

In my final interview, as I was pacing up and down the corridor of the Four Seasons Hotel in Mumbai. My turn was next and I was trying to ease all the nervousness and pressure. Four candidates had already gone in before me and each interview was about half an hour long. So two hours had slipped by and I thought, the jury (like the parole judges) might be tired. The Kahneman story flashed in my mind repeatedly and I thought (quite dramatically) that depleted glucose levels would be the deciding factor in the result that evening.

The giant door of the interview room opens. Mr Vir Chauhan comes out to escort the next candidate inside.

‘Miss Jalnidh Kaur’, he calls out.

I am already mid-way and I rush to him.

‘Miss Kaur, would you mind waiting for another ten minutes, the judges want to have a tea break’

I almost jump!