feel-so-phies

I took a full seven days off from work and right now am cooling my heels in my very own house. I didn’t have to push too much to get this leave approved. Batman shift at work and two weeks of fasting did have an effect on my physical appearance. Now I don’t have to touch my access card until Wednesday :)

So, my first day at home, I slept until evening to have my body clock in sync with the time zone. Bangalore – Kannur, a time difference of 10-15 mins according to my understanding (don’t prove me wrong, I like it that way)

The second morning at home is usually spent updating my knowledge base. Mom tells me what all happened since my last visit. By afternoon I am enlightened with the stories of a few wedding, untimely death of our plumber, my tiny cousin’s exam results and so on.

Now let me tell you about this tiny cousin, who has a vague resemblance to Calvin. He had proclaimed at the age of three that he would ‘never’ go to school and my aunt became an icon of persuasion when she managed him to think otherwise. A couple of days back he came home with a scorecard, 9/50 in grade two maths. Even though it’s not big news for me*, it was like the key to a theory I was trying unlock.

My sister had the same problem in school. She was exceptionally dumb when she started schooling. Dad had to arrange for tuition when she was in first grade; the lady made her write A-Z for a week, the next day she pointed at ‘A’ and sister answered ‘ONE’. That lady never came back. Now she is doing her 7th semester engineering with an aggregate of 76%. On the other hand, when I was a kid I sang the entire book of rhymes when a poor guest asked me to sing ‘Humpty Dumpty’ and I still have my report cards with red and silver stars pasted on it. My engineering mark cards never had any stars in it; very often shining stars would hang around my head when the results come.

So my theory is that good and bad things are like two halves of a sine wave; without any external effort a good thing will turn bad and vice versa, in due time. If you put in enough effort, you can make the negative cycle a short one. But, how do you explain it when someone is born poor, lives and dies poor?!? Well, the negative cycle (his misfortune) was so long that he passed away before he could see the positive side and he could have done that by working hard.

This theory is still in its initial stage and I am open to criticism... All in the name of science...

*I have seen all the single digits in my mark cards; just a disclaimer, not particularly proud of it.