There have been some dramatic events happening in the stock markets recently. The papers are full of news like “Sensex sees largest fall” and similar things that don’t make sense. And so, I’ve applied my higher powers of reasoning to figure out just what is going on. For your benefit, here’s a short FAQ on the stock market.

Q: What is this SENSEX business?
A: SENSEX is short for SENSeless EXperience. It summarizes what that stock brokers and investors feel when they are trading. Trading in the stock market is like putting a rabbit on a roller coaster. It just goes round and round and upside down, and the rabbit has no idea whatsoever of just what the hell is happening. But that doesn’t stop the rabbit from enjoying the whole experience.

Q: OK, then why is this SENSEX thing falling?
A: This is really a huge cover up by the government. If you ask the regular media, they’ll tell you some weird reasons like the “sub-prime crisis” or “credit market squeeze” or some random thing like that, but let me tell you, all that stuff is not true. The real reason the SENSEX is falling is something else. It’s falling because of an ancient egyptian mummy curse.

That’s right folks, you heard it here first. The Ancient Mummies were not very big fans of the stock markets. We know this because they built pyramids, and as everyone knows, you can’t trade in a pyramid scheme. It’s illegal. Anyway, so they cursed all the stock markets, and here’s the actual curse: (Translated)

A thousand moons from now, beyond hell’s stairs,
The world will be ruled by the bulls and the bears!
By the power of the sun, I put upon them this curse,
May their stupid stock market one day go in reverse!

And that’s the reason the stock markets are falling.

Q: Is that a bad thing? Does this mean there is a recession? All the stock markets worldwide are falling!
No, not all the markets are falling, only the ones in the Northern Hemisphere.

Everyone knows that stock market movements are cyclical – They go up and down. Much like the seasons – When it’s summer in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s actually winter in the Southern Hemisphere. It’s the same with the stock markets. The Northern Hemisphere is experiencing a recession, but the Southern Hemisphere is all booming. Soon, the boom will return to the Northern Hemisphere (because of the earth’s revolution), and everything will be fine once again.

But what about till then? Am I going to get laid off?
Yes, you’re going to get laid off. Because you’re reading this blog instead of working.

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Back in the College, we had this torturous thing called the Physics Lab. We were supposed to do physics “experiments” in the lab and learn from it. But these were not so much experiments as they were “fudge the readings till you get the right answer” exercises, and we were pretty good at it.

The expert at this, of course, was Chitradeep Chetty. He was so good at “reverse calculations” that as soon as we get the experiment, he’d start off with his math, working backwards from the expected answer to figure out exactly what the readings should be. And then, he’d change the reading a little, you know, to make sure the answer didn’t come out exactly right and get the teacher suspicious that he fudged the numbers.

So this one day, Chitradeep and I were lab partners in the physics lab. The experiment is to calculate the speed of sound in air using a tuning fork. We’d all gathered around the lab teacher, who was demonstrating the experiment to us.

Teacher: “…And so, you bang the tuning fork and hold it over this water tube, and a resonating sound will come.”

The teacher held up the tuning fork, but there is no sound. He tried again, but still no sound.

Teacher: “…Well, err…you have to adjust the length of the water column properly and the sound will come. Really, when you do it, it will come.”

Now, it was embarrassing enough for the teacher that his own experiment had flopped, but Chitradeep Chetty, not to loose any opportunity, raises his hand to ask a question.

Chitradeep: “But Sir, what does the sound sound like?”
The teacher looks at him suspiciously, presumably evaluating if this is a genuine question. he looks at Chitradeep’s small-puppy face, and decides that he is in earnest.
Teacher: “The sound will come like this: Woooooooooooooooooooooo“

The entire batch is suppressing it’s laughter.

Chitradeep: “Like how bad boys whistle at girls, sir? Like this: Whoooot Whoooooo Or is it like whistling at AutoRickshaws to make them stop? Like this: TWweeooooooooo?”

The teacher decides he’s had enough of this, and sends us all away to our places. As I’m setting up the experiment, Chitradeep has already started the “back-calculation”, and soon figures out that we need to get the water level to “15.5 cms” to get the proper result. And so, we pre-adjust the level of the water, and start banging the tuning fork, but absolutely no sound. We try and try with all kinds of adjustments, but the bloody resonating sound is just not coming.

After a while, we decide we’ve had enough, and anyway, we have the numbers, and that’s what matters in the end. So, we pretend the experiment is successful, make the relevant entries in the lab record, and tell the teacher we’ve finished.

Usually, that’s the end of the lab, but because of Chitradeep’s brilliant demonstration of his whistling skills earlier, the teacher has been watching us, and now says “Show Me your Experiment“, and walks over to our table.

Chitradeep and I look at each other. Now we’re in trouble. Our experiment is certainly not working, but our lab record claims a very good result. Chitradeep has always been the innovative kind, and he’s not the one to back down from a challenge like this. He invites the teacher to sit down, and stands behind him. He signals for me to just pretend to go along. I have no idea what he’s up to, but follow his lead.

Me: “So, here’s the water column at 15.4 cms, and now I’m going to take this tuning fork over the water column, and we will see the resonance.”

I bang the tuning fork on the pad and bring it up near the water tube. Chitradeep removes the cap from his pen and holds it inverted near his mouth.

Just as I bring the tuning fork on top of it, Chitradeep whistles into the cap, producing a shrill, shrieking “Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee” sound. The teacher looks rather flambungeled, and looks around to see if we’re fudging something. Chitradeep has put away the cap, and again makes the “innocent small-puppy” face. The teacher doesn’t know what to say. He suspects Chitradeep is up to something, but doesn’t know what to accuse him of.

Me: “…And, taking that reading from the tube, we use the formula for the resonance…”

I shove the lab record into the teachers face, and he looks at all our calculations. He’s trying to find a mistake there so that he can pin us down. But he can’t find any, and so, reluctantly, he lets us go. As we walk out, the teacher gives us the “sooner-or-later-i’m-going-to-get-you” look, but we run away to our freedom!

Chitradeep’s “innocent small-puppy” face has rescued the day once again!

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Back when I was a kid, my dad was really worried about me. He wanted to see me as a ‘complete person’ and as an ‘all-rounder’. I just wanted to buy the latest tinkle and WWF cards. This, as you can imagine, let to lots of “conflicts-of-interest” between us.

Dad: “There are bigger things in life than Tinkle, you know”
Me: “Like the mega-annual, 250-page special Tinkle comics edition? Wow! Are you going to get me that?”
Dad: “OK. Let’s start again. You need to develop new hobbies.”
Me: “I don’t like new hobbies. They’re boring!”
Dad: “I’m going to introduce you to a new hobby. Here, let me show you my stamp collection!”
Me: “Why would anybody collect stamps? Why don’t you just go to the post office and buy some?”

Dad gave me a cold stare at that point. I knew, from experience, that saying anything after Dad gave that cold stare meant that he’d get angry and I won’t get to watch cartoons on TV later. So, I kept quite.

It seems that Dad used to collect stamps when he was back in College. He had a huge lot of pen friends from all over the world, and even had a huge collection of all kinds of exotic stamps. He gave that collection to me as some sort of coming-of-age-type gift, so that I could carry on this marvelous tradition in our family.

When I saw the stamp collection, I had the same feeling a tiger cub has to anything that moves: “How can I eat this?”. I carried this stamp-collection, which was in a 200-page-thick special-stamp-collecting book around, hoping I could do something with it, but nothing came to me.

I was discussing this problem with a classmate at school the next day, when the dude from the next bench overheard us. He turned around and looked at me with his nerdy eyes and thick glasses. I automatically assumed that I was “disturbing” him or something, and proceeded to say sorry. I never understood what these nerds were listening to the teachers for. It was all there in the book. Couldn’t they just read it themselves?

Nerd: “I’m interested in your stamp collection”
Me: “Well, that’s good. At least one of us is. Hohehehahahah!”

Apparently, nerds are not big fans of silly jokes. He then murmured that he wanted to make a deal with me. He wanted my stamp collection and was willing to make a deal for it.

Me: “What are you offering in return?”
Nerd: “The royal-rumble-special-edition-WWF-card-collection”

My friend and I gasped! The most coveted set of cards that every kid wanted, and this nerd had it. Oh my God! How stupid of him to give up this invaluable treasure in exchange for some stamps! And not even first hand stamps, but used stamps that you could no longer put on letters. What a simpleton! Without finding out where the nerd got his super-special WWF cards, I made a deal with him. The stamp collection and the WWF cards exchanged owners, and I returned home very satisfied that day. My Dad caught up with me on the dinner table to find out how my hobby was going.

Dad: “So how’s the new hobby coming along? Did you find some friends to trade stamps with?”
Me: “Oh, yeah. I made a really good deal today.”
Dad: “Excellent! See? Once you open up your mind to interesting hobbies, you automatically discover so many new things. What did you trade?”
Me: “Oh! I got the very-very-rare Tatanka super-clash trump card!”
Dad: “Eh? Which country does that stamp come from?”

My Dad hit the roof when I told him that I’d traded his stamp collection for a bunch of WWF cards. I didn’t understand what he was so upset about! These WWF cards were oh-so-much-cooler than the boring old stamps! Things got worse, later that day, when the nerd-kid’s Dad called my Dad. Apparently, the nerd kid had stolen the WWF cards from HIS brother to satisfy his “excessively compulsive” habit of collecting stamps.

And so, the transaction was reversed, and my Dad took his stamp collection, and never let me near it again. It’s a pity that I lost the WWF cards. But the good part is that he never pestered me about the hobby again.

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A fellow blogger, Sundar Rajan, made the mistake of inviting me for an interview on his blog. I said some really dense things like “Art is the side effect of someone’s passion” and other absurdities like that. Head over to his blog to read the full interview. You will not be disappointed!

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Have you noticed how everyone seems to “Want to get out of the city and reconnect with nature” these days? It’s almost like a fad. People keep saying how they went to this-or-that forest and how beautiful it was. I’m not really a “nature” type person. I LOVE living in the city and hate to get out of civilization. But I am alarmed at having found NOT ONE person that agrees with my view. It seems everyone is a “nature lover”. And so, to correct all your misconceptions, I want to show you why it’s a bad idea to go out and better to stay in.

The ‘You need to relax and connect to nature‘ Argument

People are always telling me this. I don’t get it. Why do I need to connect to nature? I mean, I’m always connected to the phone network and my email, how can nature be better? Plus, there are so many dangerous things out there.

Suppose you are out camping, enjoying the bonfire and the peace and quite. And then, suddenly, a Mad Hyena attacks you. What are you going to do? Tell Me? TELL ME! No camping enthusiast has ever satisfactorily answered this question, EVER! There is also the risk of snakes, leeches, ghosts and godzilla. Why would anyone take such a big risk just so that they can go out and camp?

Besides, you can relax in the city. Just head out to the nearest video game arcade, and you can relax all day if you want. Plus, all the hyenas in the video games can’t jump out AND you have a gun in the video game and you can shoot anything you like. Now that’s true relaxation!

The ‘Pollution is bad, get out and smell the fresh air‘ argument

People tell me that they want to get away from the City “To get away from the poisonous pollution”. Everybody has a misconception that Pollution is dangerous and all that nonsense. Let me present to you the correct side of the argument:

Pollution is good. I can think of several beneficial uses for pollution. Firstly, it drives away all the pesky crows, pigeons, sparrows and bees away from the city so that we don’t have to endure their droppings. Secondly, they say inhaling pollution is like smoking a pack of cigarettes. Isn’t that great? You get to experience all the fun that is smoking without all the problems like Lung Cancer and all.

The “You need nature to receive enlightenment and inner peace” argument
All the false propaganda spread by these “naturist” says that you really need to be amidst nature to experience bliss. And to that, I say ‘Bah! What Bull!‘. You can experience enlightenment and inner peace right here in the city. Getting up early to beat traffic, getting cheated by tampered auto meters, fighting and swearing at strangers! Such a wide array of emotions and excitement! Also, spending hours stuck in traffic gives you so much time to meditate. It’s a great deal, I say!

Also, there is “inner peace”. Everyone knows that inner peace can be easily obtained by going shopping to the nearest shopping mall and buying things that you don’t really need. You can even get bonus inner peace if there’s a sale going on. Every weekend is an opportunity for inner peace! I’ll bet if Buddha was born in today’s age and he chose a city to meditate in, he’d get enlightenment 10 years early!

In conclusion, let me just ask this: Why would anyone expose themselves to the rain, cold, predators and mad hyenas when they can sit inside a 10×10 room with one window? Plus, you can watch TV and Rakhi Sawant if you’re in the city. What are you going to watch when you’re camping? The stars?

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As all of you already know, this blog is a part of my latest get rich quick scheme. This is a part of my master plan to take over the universe. Only thing is that it has not been working very well! So, I’ve been on an overdrive in the past few weeks to convince people to invest in my blog. “It’s just like investing in the stock market, only better” I’ve told them. And, the very nice folks at ReviewGist saw this fantastic business opportunity and have bought advertising space on the Blog! Hurray for me!

ReviewGist is this startup company that does product reviews for you. But it uses some voodoo-Artificial Intelligence-magic-thing to automatically gather reviews from all over the web and come up with an objective ranking for the product. I’ve found it very useful. Check out the review of the N95 (My dear dear phone) and the gaming consoles (My dear dear dream).

Now, as a way to expand the business, I’m going to try to convince everyone why it is a good idea to give me money and I can promise absolutely nothing in return. Except my eternal gratitude. I have a lot of that to give away this month. So, if you’d like to buy advertising space on this blog, please email me at aditya@pointlesswanderings.com, and I will pledge my soul to you as a Thank You!

But wait, it gets better. I’m starting a new service for all YOU READERS OF THIS BLOG! I’ve even prepared an advertising pitch for it:

Do you feel like you have more enemies than friends? Does everyone in the world seem to be out to get you? Would you like to see your friends insulted and humiliated in public? Don’t worry! The Pointless Wanderings blog is here to rescue you!

For the low, low introductory price of Rs. 250, I will grant you this wish – I will write a slandering, mis-informed, utterly untrue, but entirely believable post throwing muck on your least favorite person. Doesn’t it sound GREAT! Have the pleasure of humiliating your enemies from behind the cover of anonymity! That too for the low price of Rs. 250*! Hurry! Don’t wait! DO IT NOW!

*Conditions Apply. Lots of them actually. Least of them not being that you offer me police protection. Rs. 1000 extra charge is victim is in the same country as me, and Rs. 1000 extra on top of that if the victim is related to either Deve Gowda or the Buffaloes.

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Today, we have a special interview with a special person. Meet Pappu Pandey! Pappu Pandey has been spending the week at the recently concluded Auto Expo, and has graciously agreed to do an interview for us. What follows is a transcript of this interview.

Me: “So Pappu, you’ve been at the Auto Expo for the past 3 days. What interesting things have been at display at the Expo?”

Pappu: “Oh yeah! This year’s edition was sizzling! I mean what hot models! I went around to all the booths, clicking all the pictures my camera could hold of the beauties. All dressed up in exotic colors! I’ll say! Red is definitely the color of the season.”

Me: “Errr…. You are talking about the cars, right?”

Pappu: “Oh! Hmm… Oh yeah, definitely the cars. Of course! Not the models promoting the cars, but the cars themselves. Yeah, yeah. That’s what I meant!”

Me: “Anyway, did you have a chance to check out Tata’s brand new Nano? I believe there was a lot of buzz about it?”

Pappu: “Oh, there was a buzz all right! Everyone is going ga-ga over the Tata Nano. But you know, I think you shouldn’t buy one.”

Me: “Why is that? I was actually thinking of getting one of those! Why shouldn’t I get one?”

Pappu: “Tata has got this backwards. I don’t think it is the 2-wheeler folks that are going to upgrade to the Tata Nano. It’s going to be all the auto-rickshaws fellows that are going to upgrade to the Nano. I did some investigating, and found that the AutoRickshaw costs just a little more than 1-lakh, so it’s going to be actually cheaper for them!”

Me: “Really? That’s very interesting!”

Pappu: “Yeah! The Nano is going to be the new Auto. “NanoRicks”, they’re going to end up calling them, which, you must admit, sounds like an underwear company’s name. The tag line is going probably going to be “NanoRick: Kyonki Yeh Andar ki baat hai!”

Me: “Sounds plausible. But what do you think of all the environmentalists stand that it’s going to increase pollution and congestion?”

Pappu: “Pollution Shmolution! It’s all a way to scare people into believing this Global Warming nonsense! By switching Autos to Nanos, it’s going to reduce the net pollution!”

Me: “You don’t believe in Global Warming?”

Pappu: “No! I won’t believe in it till it’s hot enough to make an omelet on Anupam Kher’s head!”

Me: “Thanks for the colorful metaphor! It was nice talking to you, Pappu!”

Pappu: “No problem! Goodbye, and always remember to brush your teeth!”

Me: “What?”

Pappu: “You know, you have a higher chance of dying form teeth decay than from global warming. So, put the important problems first!”

Me: “All right! Bye bye! Pappu Pandey, Ladies and Gentlemen!”

Pappu Pandey is the secret identity of this great super hero. His secret identity is secret from some secrety-type reason. You can, however, email him at pappu@pointlesswanderings.com

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