Reminiscing

(For the 25th Anniversary of Oberoi House, 2015)

I’m sitting in The Fletcher School library on a surprisingly chilly Boston summer day trying to collect my thoughts and hammer out a piece about the Class of 2003 for Oberoi B and I’m not getting anywhere.  To begin with, I’m not even sure how long it should be.  I could write a book with the material I have. Should I try to be funny or nostalgic, should I mention the darker shades, or should I just concentrate on the lighter moments? No, that’s not right, we are the sum total of all our experiences, good and bad, and whatever we do is etched in our memory forever.  This is really hard.  The bonds that tie the eleven of us are drenched with too much history and emotion to disentangle with just a few words, but I will try, and hope that someone will edit this into something worth reading.

I do not claim that the ’03 OB boys were any tighter than any other house or class, but to me, they represent something ineffably special.  Perhaps that sounds hollow, but this is one of those instances where the cliché, “you had to be there”, is most appropriate.  I cannot and will not list all the spectacular (mis)adventures we shared, but here are some vignettes of our time in that magnificent collection of white washed bricks and mortar that was home, and will always remain so…

My earliest memory of Doon is my B-form guardian Thakur teaching me how to curse like a proper Dosco on my first day.  I was sharing a quad with Aman Sinha, Rishabh Jaiswal, and Karan Singh. Next door resided the rest of our batch, Divyam Singh, Vikramjeet Singh, Rahul Goyal, and Pranav Prakash.  Strangers that time would forge into some of my closest friends.  We are not sure why the eight of us were thrown into main house straight in D-form, but for now let’s assume, it is because we were and are exceptional.  So the eight of us did not enjoy the cocoon like protection of the holding houses; we were exposed to the elements called seniors quickly and I like to believe we grew up pretty fast because of it.

I remember BLD breaking up a late night “intro” session in the common room where some of us acquired nicknames that we use even today.  Right, Mani?  There were the raids of tuck, the haftas paid to Mrinal to protect our Maggi, chotts fagging, and squabbling in the showers to get the last drop of hot water.  We learnt to navigate the murky waters of “quiz-ego”, “bagsing” the good stuff, striking deals in the CDH, trading chores, and hiding from the ubiquitous gaze of favor seeking seniors.  Through all that, within our little crew we joked, jeered, jammed, joshed, and jonsied away like pups in a litter.  It wasn’t always fun and games, but I would not change an iota.  If it wasn’t for all of it, I wouldn’t have anything to reminisce and write about today.

The following year, we were joined by three other characters who perfectly complimented our already motley crew; Rahul Singh, Ravinder Brar, Pranav Rastogi, and for a while Shyam Arya.  That completed our dysfunctional little family.  Like any other dysfunctional family, what I laugh about most in retrospect are the fights (yes, I know, I’m surprised too that porn didn’t make it to the top of the list), and we had a lot of them.  But it was odd I realized.  It was okay for us to fight, but if some “outsider” stepped onto our turf – that’s when the real loyalty emerged. The epic throw down by PP, “tune mere bhai ko mara”, or Karan Singh’s infamous “Ma ne bomb phodna nahi sikhya kya?” when confronted by a bunch of pesky Welham Boys on Diwali will remain indelibly carved in my memory.

No tribute to the class would be complete without a mention of our housemasters.  SDB – the kindest man who taught math but didn’t dole out food at tutorials.  JJR – about whom we wrote a song that you should ask Jaiswal about if you see him at Founders.  HMD – who escorted us on one of my favorite midterm to Kothri Sanae along with SAY and our OA counterparts.  When was the last time you tied up your housemaster and beat him up thinking he was going crazy to the tune of 90s Prodigy classic “Smack My Bitch Up”?  DMF – who I personally learnt so much from and of course, PKN and how he tricked us into revealing all the secrets of internal O-House politics before he took on the role of Housemaster.  I suppose a belated thank you is also due to JHH and BLA for not ratting us out after we were clearly caught jamming midterms in Mussoorie.

The OB class of 2003 is an accomplished bunch, not just at Doon, but in the world today, and although I do not have enough space to outline their achievements, I am damn proud of them.  As I finish writing this, I am filled with the shame of all the stupid, mean, and obnoxious things we did to each other and the absolute sheer joy of our shared adventures. But above all I am filled with a profound longing for my friends, all of whom I miss dearly.  So Oberoi B, Class of 2003, here’s to you.  You’ve been there for me through the teething of adulthood, and no time and space is ever going to change the respect, camaraderie, and love I have for each of you.  Thank you, mes amis. Vive le Oberoi!

2013-14 International Relations Lectures Semester I

2012-2014 IBDP International Economics Lecture Slides

Great Student Resource for IB Economics

An excellent source of information for IB Economics students including Extended Essay, Internal Assessment and other video lectures...

Good luck!

IBDP HL Microeconomics Lecture Slides

MLA Citation and Other Resources

This is an excellent resource to ensure that your work is properly formatted.  Please remember, if you are using a cover sheet you do not require to have the same information repeat on page 1.

Please make sure you adhere to the norms before submitting your work.

Things I Hear in Class...

I hear things.  Some mindbogglingly insane things in my class.  Some, require documentation for posterity.  This is my attempt to do so... (no names are used to protect the identity of such genius, but these are 11th and 12th graders)

An answer in my last Economics test...
I believe that Mr. Maity is amazing teacher (A)
Awesome suits, looking classy everytime. (B)
I can sense that he is also an amazing pitcher (A)
Mr. Maity is like a lime. (B)
Sour at first, but becomes sweeter. (A)
I'll study a lot for the next test, I so sorry...

Student: Isn't Belgium in China?

An answer in my latest Economics exam...

"Since I do not know the answer, here is a short story about economy.

Once upon a time, there was a boy named Econ.  He was always sick and his body immune systems were poor because his blood cells, red blood cells lacked.  One day, blood cells in the chromosomes of his abdomen were hurting.  So he went to toilet to digest his blood cells.  The atom inside the electrons of his blood cells started neutralizing with hydrochloric acid that he by mistakely drank.  So when H20 and other nutrients and dirts were coming through his anus, it was so painful.  When they all came out, the was like "oh, my..." Later this story was pass through his friends and they called him "Econohmy" which later became one of the study subjects.  Therefore, Econohmy, as h tends to 1 limit = Economy. d(Econohmy)/dx = Economy. [sic]"  

True story

“If there is high debt the government cannot invest and the consumer confidence of the population is less, because there is a high chance of firms to go bank robbed [sic]”

Student: Won't increasing pornography increase the population?

Student: Sir, great news!

Me: What?

Student: We stopped farming and started paying taxes!

Me: So, anyone know why we celebrate Teachers' Day?

Student: Someone died, isn't it?

Me: Natural manure is a way of increasing soil fertility.

Student: Why are they using man-whores on fields?

Me: Anyone know who was responsible for the Bhopal Gas Tragedy?  I'll give you a hint they are a British company involved in the Olympics.

Student: Marks and Spencer?

Me: Anyone know who started the First Gulf War?

Student: Stalin?

(On receiving the test paper)

Student: Oh this is positively orgasmic!

Me: First Asian to win the Nobel Prize in Economics, anyone?

Student: Yao-Ming or someone like that?

DFW FTW! Also Starring Randy Pausch

David Foster Wallace is one of my favorite authors.  Perhaps even one of my favorite philosophers or thought leaders, and it is ironic that I found so much solace in the words of a man so deeply disturbed that he could not find it bearable to live.

I wanted to share DFW commencement speech at Kenyon College in 2005.

It left a profound impact on my when I first heard it after DFW passed away in 2008, the year I graduated from college.

Recently, a group called "The Glossary" took an excerpt from the speech, a section called, "This is Water" and made a striking video.

Also, in the vein of great speeches is Randy Pausch's "The Last Lecture" - which was truly a roller coaster ride of sorrow, inspiration, and joy.  

Enjoy, and be inspired.

Are Old People Poor?

A great read on the changing levels of income inequality (nay equity?) in the United States now that the baby boomer generation is beginning to retire. Also gives an interesting perspective of how manufactured inflation by the FED has destroyed the life savings of an entire generation.

Also in the theme of equity, recent studies showed that even Capuchian monkeys have the concept of cooperation and fairness, and do not take kindly to income inequity.

The first is an except from a TEDx talk about income inequity and monkeys - "Capuchian Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay".

The second video shows how Capuchian monkeys cooperate to beat the system - "Monkey Cooperation and Fairness".

The need for equity and fairness is not a human construct, but seems it might be an animal instinct.  But I suppose we humans are more selfish than monkeys.  Evolve much?

Click here for the entire TED talk.

Brain Drain Hither

A great article in the Hindu by a foreign exchange student about his educational experience in the premier college in India.  Many of the reasons stated here are some of the reasons I left Stephen's and went off to Hamilton, so the story resonates with me...

The 2007 US Housing Bubble Explained

Disclaimer: I do not own this video.

The key thing to understand is the role of the Central Bank (The Federal Reserve) in allowing this fiasco.  Lack of foresight and greed combined to create a toxic business environment.  Not since the Enron scandal, have so few gutted so many...

IBDP HL Macroeconomics Lecture Slides

Spending Patterns

I recently conducted a minor experiment in class where I asked my students: 

"What would you do if I gave you five hundred rupees right now?"

The sample size was 75 students.

The results yielded some interesting patterns, and not a small measure of memorable comments.  As expected the majority of the students wanted to eat out or save the money for a future time.  However, what was curious was the number of students who held debt or were spending money on betting on sporting events.  Only one student had "donate it" as their choice, and more than ten percent had "cigarettes" or "alcohol" as their choice of expense.

Figure 1 is a frequency chart of the data

Figure 1 - Choice Frequency Bar Graph

Figure 2 is a breakdown of the most common choices and ignoring outliers.

Figure 2 Choice Pie Chart

Here are are also some of the choice comments received:

• "Hide it under my pillow"
• "Save it till you get more, then spend bigger"
• "Give to friends as loans and charge interest"
• "Make a deodorant flamethrower"
• "Depends on my roommates financial condition"

Thank you all for participating in this exercise.

The source of this idea comes from an Open Space campaign.

Barefoot Economics

A superbly insightful discussion on the theory of "Barefoot Economics" by renowned UC-Berkeley Economist Manfred Max-Neef.  He presses on key ideas including confluential learning, the folly in divorcing "humanity" and economic progress, a new definition of economics and the concept of "under-developing nations".  Ignore his crazy rant on "The Mayan Calender".

Keep watching to hear author and activist Derrick Jensen talk about how the Dominant Culture is destroying the world.

"Your love don't pay my bills, I need money..." 

~ John Lee Hooker

Source: Democracy Now

Students are the Priority

(Fiduciary Disclaimer: This is a joke!)

I did an impromptu survey in my economics class about what they had to complain about their educational experience.  In my own perverse way I was trying to assess the way students prioritize their world and their learning environment.  I am listing these in the order they were suggested.  

1. No vending machines
2. The desks were too small
3. The wall colors were not soothing
4. The toilets did not have toilet paper (this is due to vandalism)
5. The toilet flushes rarely work
6. Alternative toilet paper (not sure what this means)
7. No dedicated pen store on campus (no wonder my students come to class without pens)
8. A 4G wi-fi system (not sure what this means either)
9. Food
10. No swimming pool
11. No movie theater
12. No smoking lounge
13. No hookah bar
14. No bar
15. No proper pool table in the students lounge (yes, we have a pool table in the student lounge, but apparently it's not proper)
16. No shooting range (so we want guns on campus?  Make up your minds)
17. No go-karting circuit
18. No cotton candy machine in the Gymkhana (KIS speak for tuck shop)
19. No polo grounds (no horses for that matter either, or did they not realize that?)
20. No golf course (yes, mountain top golf courses are all the rage these days)
21. No paintball course (more advocacy for guns on campus, strange)
22. Teachers (the note was "teachers who are both good and evil" - I wonder where that leaves me?)
23. No good concerts like Tiesto on campus
24. Better and more attractive notebooks
25. New textbooks (the present ones are almost a year old)
26. No Jacuzzi (for the SS Dept please!) 
27. A better Student Council (I suggested, perhaps better students as well)
28. Everything

I'm surprised no one mentioned that we don't have a Space Program idea... 

Bazinga!

Know Thyself, Challenge Thyself

I'm becoming increasingly attracted to “confluential” studies – integrating different fields to arrive at universal solutions for the development of humans as a species.  There needs to be a change in the common social belief - a zeitgeist if you will.  A social, economic, and scientific revolution is overdue and I hope it happens in my lifetime.

A friend recently told me about how more and more people are becoming aware of injustice.  Young people and students want to do something about it, but the options are currently limited.  While that is true, in my opinion, the movement has not reached critical mass to precipitate a change.  We still live in a world where the top 300 people have the wealth equivalent to the bottom 3 billion.  Take a moment and fathom that staggering statistic.  How can we hope to overturn the status quo, particularly politically and economically in such a toxic environment?  And science, the forbearer of our future, is servile to politics, economics, and the social zeitgeist.

Humans as a species prefer having authority figures reign over them.  It is the Savannah spirit of having herd leaders.  We need someone to take the blame.  It is never our fault.  No soldier is ever responsible for war… they were simply following orders.  Consider the Stanford Prison Experiment, or the rise of authoritarian governments like Mao, Mussolini, Hitler, Pol Pot, Kim Jong Un… the list is endless.  Why do we allow ourselves to be subjugated?  Perhaps it is our inherent animal nature to have a leader to follow – to take orders.  The ones that break out of this mold become the subjugators.  We rarely question leadership, and when we do, we approach it with chaos, indiscipline, and in a morally ambiguous manner.

So, where does that leave us?

Well, for my part I hope to make my students economic revolutionaries – to have the ability to think for themselves, develop a sense of social responsibility and question what most of us around take for granted.  Challenge the zeitgeist.  That doesn’t mean they should become anarchist, or ape around in the classroom pretending to be challenging authority.  It is unfortunate most students are too immature to truly perceive what I mean by challenging conformity.  It means to allow oneself to become a free thinker - to question life in the Socratic sense. 

Recently, I had a conversation with a student about the role of women in sport and at the end of the conversation she said, “Wow, I’ve never even thought of that”.  And therein lies the rub.  We have stopped thinking because we are surrounded by different machinations aimed at keeping our youth distracted and absorbed in intellectually mundane activities.

Not to mention a majority of privileged students squander their educational opportunity – the ability to think and question and challenge the social norms – and instead feel satisfied festering in a pool of their intellectual poverty and distractions.  It is sad how in some of the best schools in the world has a culture that belittles intelligence than celebrating it.  They are happy, following in the footsteps of their silver spoon and entitled lives.  It is quite saddening and pathetic.

However, it is our responsibility as teachers to create the watershed moment in our students thinking.  Teachers and educators have enormous influence on how we think and perceive the world.  Sometimes it scares me how much power and influence educators really have – much more than any CEO.  We are shaping the mindset and vision of an entire generation of leaders and the effects of this influence is going to resonate for years to come. 

Challenging the socially accepted norms is the foundation and hallmark of innovation.  We must be taught to think and question.  But that is what is lacking at most places, and in most teachers, and consequently in most students.  Let’s hope that changes.

An interesting commentary on the apathy and indifference of India's elite.

The Irony of Social Service

This weekend I went back to the CMS orphanage with the KIS NHS students to work on completing a painting job of the orphanage walls.  As always it was fun, but I noticed something strange...

Many of the students, mostly non-NHS members, who were there to just tag along, came  quite impeccably dressed with earphones sticking out of one ear...

The irony of the sight was quite amusing.  Watching a handful of students paint a boundary wall in gaudy yellow or play with little underprivileged orphans in branded clothing and shoes and headphones, I could not help but smile at the sight.

The poor little kids must be thinking, who are these strangers in strange attire and why are they in my home looking so bored?  I would.

DOSCO Class of '03 Fallen Comrades List

As our 10 year reunion date approaches, I was just putting together a list of my fellow Class of 2003 DOSCOs who are now married.  This list includes DOSCOs who left after A-form as well; so all in all about 80 odd people.  Not in chronological order:

1. Angad Singh Gand
2. Shashi Vaish
3. Ravinder Brar
4. Kunj Behari Maheshwari
5. Abhimanyu Singhi
6. Bishen Singh Arora
7. Ankit Khaitan
8. Abhenav Khettry
9. Jatinder Pal Bhattal
10. Abhishek Singh
11. Yeaffer Ahmed
12. Kaushlendra Singh
13. Akhil Jain
14. Ruchika Sabrewal

Did I miss anyone?

First Order Condition...

There was a boy called Peter, he hated remembering things, so he became creative.


But he remaied true to the truths of reality, refusing to accept the mumbo-jumbo of science.

Yet he always remembered the important things...

In his groove he knew the answers to impossible questions

But all this power drove him to madness... and an unfortunate end.

In his fond memory, each year, we award the Retard Hat prize.

Long live Peter.

My Old School Prayer

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up by narrow walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way in the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.


Rabindranath Tagore.
(For some reason this has been making rounds on the internet with the wrong words...)