Mayank Chhaya Daily

Can you acquire rizz? No

Rizz is not something one acquires. Either one has rizz or one doesn't. Those who have some rizz would understand what this word is, a word which is Oxford's 2023 Word of the Year. 

I suppose it is derived from charisma by taking ris from it and jazzing it up up with two Zs. Charisma has been rizzed up in a manner of speaking. It means “style, charm or attractiveness,” or “the ability to attract a romantic or sexual partner”. Charisma does tend to attract a romantic or sexual partner.  According to Oxford, Rizz was first known in 2022. However, it went viral in June courtesy of the actor Tom Holland. In an interview with Buzzfeed, he said said: “I have no rizz whatsoever. I have limited rizz.” Some nitpicking is in order here. If one has "no rizz whatsoever" one cannot have it is any measure at all, none, not even "limited rizz." But I digress.

I think charisma, if that is what rizz is indeed a shortform of, is not something you claim. It is something others accord you by various ways, including fusing up (my coinage just now for being effusive) in your presence. Charisma is not just sartorial. It is many things rolled into one where one cannot really find the beginning. In my authorized biography of the Dalai Lama (Doubleday, 2007, Dalai Lama: Man, Monk, Mystic and updated in 2019 as The Dénouement: The 14th Dalai Lama's life of persistence I wrote, "As with most seemingly gifted figures, it is perhaps futile to try to analyze or unravel or demystify the Dalai Lama. The reason they stand out in any crowd is because they have that indefinable quality. One cannot analyze charisma without simultaneously destroying that charisma." 

Whether Holland has no rizz whatsoever or limited rizz is not the point. The point is it is now the word of the year 2023. That certainly gives him a great deal of rizz.

 

 

Chooki, my AI partner, and I

It is a strangely exhilarating feeling for me that I am standing next to a girl that is entirely fictional, created by Artificial Intelligence using some specific prompts that I gave. Since I had no budget to have a real life model/actress to pose for the promotional material for my second single 'दीवारों पर निशानीयाँ' (Hints on the Wall), I had to resort to AI.

I must say the AI on Canva has done a terrific job of translating my prompts into an image that is so remarkably close to what I had in mind. It all boils down to prompts. It is no wonder then that prompts are going to be valuable IP. It is fascinating that I could not create the same image twice despite using the same prompts. 

The blurring of the line between what is real in this poster, namely and hopefully me, and what is not, namely the girl whom I have named Chooki, makes me feel quite light. It is as if I am on a spot where gravity is a third of Earth's where my feet are not fully grounded. Incidentally, Chooki was my childhood name. 

My embrace of this rather rudimentary AI is a precursor to the near certainty how I will be fully immersed with artificial general intelligence if I am still alive in the next five years. There are clear existential threats that AI and AGI will pose to humanity. Obviously, intelligent regulation of AI is going to be one of the most defining challenges, if not the defining challenge, for governments and legislatures across the world. 

In the mean time, I intend using the rather basic AI apps to create some fun visuals for my projects. 'दीवारों पर निशानीयाँ' is just the beginning. 

 

 

Celebrating the pressure cooker and the backscratcher

I have been wanting to write about a couple of inventions which I consider among the greatest for their everyday utility. One is the pressure cooker and the other is the backscratcher.

I have two different kinds of intimate relationships with the two. My relationship with the backscratcher is quite straightforward and one-sided—it scratches my back and I do nothing for it. You must make a distinction between a backscratcher and a buttscratcher that Peter Griffin in Seth McFarlane’s ‘Family Guy’ once hawked at a ball game with gusto. I do not use a buttscratcher.

My relationship with the pressure cooker is a little more complex in the sense that it requires some preparation to avail of its utility. It is intimate because what I make in it goes inside me. It cannot get more intimate than that.

While I have used the pressure cooker for decades, I have only just begun using the backscratcher. I must say I have become addicted to it. Before it came into my life, I had to engage in impossible contortions to scratch an itch on my back. You must have noticed how itches tend to rise in spots your hands cannot reach without causing a sprain. I seriously thought about installing a revolving backscratcher that ranchers use for their cattle but decided against it considering it would have abrased my back and damaged my spine. I need that, I mean a spine, in my profession.

The pressure cooker is such a remarkable invention which is credited to the 17^th century French-born physicist Denis Papin. According to the Britannica encyclopedia, “The cooker heats water to produce very hot steam which forces the temperature inside the pot as high as 266 °F (130 °C), significantly higher than the maximum heat possible in an ordinary saucepan.” It first appeared as “Papin’s Digester” in 1679. Papin would be thrilled to know that we Indians use the heck out of his invention.

In fact, the cooker’s whistle, or seeti as they call in various Indian languages, as it lets out the steam is the ubiquitous urban sound that signals that life is normal. The steam has the fragrance of peaceful domesticity. Family discords calm disappear during the time the whistle is going off. The whistle tells you that no matter what life’s upending challenges are, the pressure cooker is one utterly reliable constant in hundreds of millions of households.

As technology goes, pressure cookers no longer fail. There was a time when the safety valve contained lead which would wear off over time. I am not sure, but I believe it is no longer used now. I have used my current pressure cooker for close to 25 years ever since arriving in the U.S. It bears all the burn marks of a battle-tested warrior. It is impossible to scrape off the carbon at its bottom outside. Every few days I try to get rid of it but give up.

I make all my daals and many of my vegetables in the cooker. The one thing that I do not/cannot make in the cooker is the one thing everyone else does—rice. I always get the timing for rice wrong. So, it is either undercooked or overcooked. I use the electric cooker for rice.

For Papin to think of something so exquisitely simple and yet so unfailingly efficient is extraordinary. Ditto the backscratcher.

I sleep with the backscratcher by my side in case an itch rises in the middle of the night. How is that for intimate?

Of course. I do not sleep with the pressure cooker by my side. That would be weird.

Some observations about end of Bombay's/Mumbai's Kaali-Peeli taxis

 

Today in Mumbai marked the last day of the Premier Padmini (Originally Fiat) taxis also known as the Kaali-Peeli because of their black and yellow colors.

Although such claims cannot be effectively substantiated or refuted, I am going to make it anyway. It is largely accurate. In the decade of the 1980s, I was arguably the most frequent user of the Kaali-Peeli among the city’s journalists. Unfortunately, my dear friend Shireesh Kanekar is no more around to bear witness to this claim because not only would he have borne me out but even told you a few stories about my cabbing habits.  I want you to accept my word in good faith.

With that as the backdrop, I record the end of the Kaali-Peeli with no particular emotion. As cars go, Premier Padminis sucked. They were like an iron box with four doors, four tires and a steering wheel. In their defense, they were a very hardy vehicle, especially considering Bombay’s/Mumbai’s intense monsoon season. What was hilarious about the Kaali-Peeli was that they created the illusion of moving when in reality it was the city going in the opposite direction out of sheer exasperation. (Literary exaggeration.)

In my 20s, single and earning reasonably well, I was a legend as an obsessive cab user among journalists. I once joked with Shireesh that if I had my way I would hire three taxis, one in front  and one behind just for the heck of it. It may sound foolish but I used to spend more than half my salary on cab rides. I took Bombay’s horrendous local trains only for about four years until 1985. Even during those four years there were any number of days when I used to cab it out. From 1981 right until I left Bombay for Delhi in 1989,  the Kaali-Peeli was my only means of transport.

So coveted was I as a customer for cab drivers in Kala Ghoda near my newspaper office that every evening about half a dozen cabbies would wait for me along the lane near Kandeel Juice every evening. It was like a harem of taxis that I had to choose from. I used to be particular about overall cleanliness but in particular of the seat covers. There were times when I thought that city’s best decked-up cabs used to wait for me to make my choice for the evening. It was only after I had exercised my first right of refusal that  the rest of the hoi polloi was allowed to use them.

I remember I used to be mildly irritated on days when I did not find a clean and well-equipped taxi. There was one where the cabby had only one handle to open all doors and roll down all windows. His wipers did not work on a particularly squally monsoon evening. He had to stop every few minutes to clean the windshield. Eventually, he was so annoyed himself that he unrolled about half a dozen cigarettes and spread the tobacco on his side of the windshield. Quite remarkably, that helped clear up the windshield. I had never known until then that tobacco could keep something clean.

I once joked with A L Quadros, the general secretary of the (Bombay) Mumbai Taximen’s Union that they should adopt a special resolution thanking my unfailing patronage of the Kaali-Peeli. It was when I wrote a feature about Bombay’s taxis, then the second highest in the world, for the Associated Press.

In those days, there were exceptionally few, if at all any, air-conditioned Kaali-Peelis. I suspected that was because Premier Padmini’s terribly weak engine could do only one of two things—either actually run the vehicle or power the AC. It could not do both at once.

It was my habit to offer rides to my fellow journalists as a matter of routine since I was going to take a cab anyway. There were those who lived en route from Churchgate to Dahisar (where I lived for a bit) and then Andheri. These were long and expensive rides. I used to pay about 150 rupees in the 1980s one way to Dahisar from Churchgate and about 120 to Andheri.

The final exit of Premier Padmini from Mumbai’s roads may be a source of nostalgia tinged with sadness for many. For me, not so much even though I used it so much. It was just a vehicle, and it is pointless to anthropomorphize it. I liked it as much as one would like any reasonable convenience.

Now that it has permanently gone off the road, I can pretend be wistful about the Kaali-Peeli. But I would not be convincing at all.

Bishan Singh Bedi beguiled spectators and befuddled batsmen

Cricket for me in the 1970s meant Sunil Gavaskar, Bishan Singh Bedi, Farokh Engineer and Eknath Solkar. Come to think of it, that pretty much covers almost all aspects of the great game.

In Bedi’s passing today at age 77, a big piece of that magic has been erased. On hearing the news, the image that instantly materialized in my mind was Bedi in his flannels and a colorful Patka ambling to the crease and bowling a deceptively lethal delivery. Not only did the ball spin but so did the batsman’s head as well.

What made Bedi even more remarkable was that his runup to the crease was so beguiling as if to cleverly hide the sting that he was about to deliver. Not suspecting lethality in his body language was a fatal mistake so many batsmen, 266 of them to be precise, made during his glorious Test cricket career.

It was amazing how consistently he maintained the length and trajectory of his ball. Between 1967 and 1979 when he played 67 Tests and ten one day internationals Bedi took 266 wickets at an average of 28.71. At his retirement, he was the highest wicket taker for India.

Charismatic and outspoken, Bishan Singh Bedi was a natural cricketing star like so many of his era. The idea that a bowler could claim so many wickets by spinning the ball was quite captivating for me. Bedi, of course, was part of the great Indian spin quartet, the other three being Bhagwat Chandrasekhar, Erapalli Prasanna and S. Venkataraghavan. In the era of menacing fast bowlers from the West Indies, England and Australia these four felt like some great Indian trick.

Watching videos of Bedi’s memorable wicket hauls it becomes even more extraordinary that someone could gently give the ball a flight, length and spin that would look so easy to hit out of the field and yet the batsman just could not. Bedi’s leg spinners often had angles which were bewitching.

The aesthetics of Bedi’s left-arm leg spin to a right-arm batsman are a sight to behold. To be so deadly all the while appearing to be so deceptively harmless was a fantastic talent that Bedi possessed.

Maiden overs, meaning bowling six balls without giving away a single run, was also one of Bedi’s particular skills. As opposed to a fast bowler, who uses speed and swing as his tool, a spinner depends so much on the unpredictability of the way the ball would gently turn either away from or into the batsman.

So much of what Bedi did was through his fingers and wrist without changing the overall body action.

As I said in my Facebook post “Bishan Singh Bedi beguiled spectators and befuddled batsmen.”

Here is to him.

"Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word"

I am reupping, as I have occasionally done, an imaginary interview I had done with Oscar Wilde on his 159th birth anniversary today ten years ago. This was published on October 16, 2023.

Today is his 169th birth anniversary.

***

I sometimes think that Oscar Wilde wrote hundreds of witticisms, aphorisms, epigrams and maxims first and then built his plays and stories around them. Also, many of his characters appear to be Wilde’s alter egos who speak the way he would. They all seem to have been created as dummies whom he would animate with his lines.

On his 159th birth anniversary today, I thought it might be inventive to do a brief imaginary interview where all his answers are quotes from his own characters. There may be some minor rearranging to make them work but by and large they have been used verbatim.

I have added a couple of lines of my own in what some might call sacrilegious intrusion but I think Oscar Wilde would understand. 

The setting of the interview is soon after his release from “gaol” as he prepares to flee to France from England where he was sentenced to three years of hard labor for his homosexuality, in particular his relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas. Imaginary Excerpts:

MC: As you look back at your tumultuous life, which part of your past you wish you could reclaim and relive?

OW: No man is rich enough to buy back his past. Men become old but they never become good. How many men there are in modern life who would like to see their past burning to white ashes before them!

MC: At this stage of your life and career it seems you are quite like a drunkard in the gutter.

OW: We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars. After all, in this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants and the other is getting it. I have experienced both those tragedies. (The last line is mine)

MC: Are you a cynic now that things have gone so terribly wrong?

OW:A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Price cannot become value by wearing a couple of diamond rings, mink and mascara. (The second line is mine).

MC: Your homosexuality has prompted the prudish England to treat you as the devil himself.

OW: We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.

MC: Do you think that the public will eventually forgive you?

OW: Yes; the public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.

MC: Life seems to have become penurious for you now after such enormous success. How do you think it might affect your natural charms and sense of romance?

OW: Unless one is wealthy there is no use in being a charming fellow. Romance is the privilege of the rich, not the profession of the unemployed.

MC: Do you have much love left now? And if you do, to whom would you give?

OW: To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.

MC: Those who know you well say that you have killed what you loved; your own spirit.

OW: And all men kill the thing they love,

By all let this be heard,

Some do it with a bitter look,

Some with a flattering word,

The coward does it with a kiss,

The brave man with a sword!

And as for those who know me well, they are neither seen nor heard. (The last line is mine).

After months of trepidation, I am coming out as a touchscreen hater

It is official. After months of trepidation, uncertainty and second-guessing myself I am coming out.....as someone who nearly detests his touchscreen phone.

For one, it is too woke for me. At the slightest touch it wakes up and reacts. If the screen is already active, it changes to the next one even with a tiny touch at the edge. I suspect now it changes even when I breathe. Yesterday, I genuinely thought it opened a random app by merely looking at it. I have a strong feeling it may jump out of my hands and start taking morning walks with me, discussing world affairs.

It perceives slights where none exists. Too woke, like I said. I regard myself as preternaturally enlightened and awakened about all human affairs. My phone though seems to surpass me. I think it has acquired consciousness all its own. The other day on my morning walk I tripped over an uneven sidewalk. My phone cackled. Or at least I think it did.

I have decided to go back to the rotary phone where the dial took agonizingly long to turn because of an old, rusty spring as well as layers of grime in its gaps. It might be unwieldy to carry the rotary phone but at least it won't be anywhere close to as woke and sensitive as the one I have now. The only problem is the cable may not go far. Also, I wouldn't be able to surf the net on it nor karaoke. However, I am willing to pay that price to have a device that is not so touch-me-not.

Of Amitabh Bachchan, Peter Ustinov and I

AB by MC

On Amitabh Bachchan's 81st birthday today, I am reminded of the actor, playwright, and director Peter Ustinov, more specifically his delightfully witty autobiography 'Dear Me'. Although it was originally published in 1979, I got to it only in 1990. I was immediately hooked because of Ustinov's effortlessly witty and hilarious writing style. 

I had bought a copy for me sometime in late 1990 and was itching to gift one to someone. That is where Amitabh Bachchan comes in. That Bachchan shared Ustinov's profession was a good enough reason for me. Add to that the fact that I knew that the superstar was a voracious reader.

After an interview with AB sometime in January, 1991 for the New York-based weekly India Abroad and its wire offshoot, India Abroad News Service, I sent him a couple copies of the paper as well as some other newspaper clippings of my wire service story. For good measure, I also sent him a copy of 'Dear Me'. 

As is his wont, AB made it a point to send a formal letter of thanks. In particular, he mentioned that he was reading Ustinov and found it "thoroughly" enjoyable. That was 32 years ago when AB was not yet 50. I had an instinct that he would enjoy Ustinov's wit and evidently he did.

P.S. The headline to this short post accords me too much lumens per square meter or lux. (I refuse to explain whose unit of measurement lux is.)

Of attoseconds, electrons and our irresolvable blurry existence

If you think a nanosecond is unfathomably small at 10 raised to minus nine or a billionth of a second, then think about an attosecond. It is 10 raised to minus 18 or a billionth of a billionth of a second. 

If you want understand electron dynamics, you need to operate at the scale of attoseconds. That's what this year's winners of the Nobel Prize for Physics have been doing. They are Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier. 

The citation accompanying the prize is striking. It says, "Fast-moving events flow into each other when perceived by humans, just like a film that consists of still images is perceived as continual movement. If we want to investigate really brief events, we need special technology. In the world of electrons, changes occur in a few tenths of an attosecond – an attosecond is so short that there are as many in one second as there have been seconds since the birth of the universe. The laureates’ experiments have produced pulses of light so short that they are measured in attoseconds, thus demonstrating that these pulses can be used to provide images of processes inside atoms and molecules."

Just think about this bit: "an attosecond is so short that there are as many in one second as there have been seconds since the birth of the universe."

To begin with our brains are not equipped to fully process the passage of even one second, let alone a nanosecond, a femtosecond (which is a millionth of a billionth of a second) and then an attosecond. Add to the fact that atoms are the smallest unit of matter. Residing within an atom are electrons, protons and neutrons. It is that electron dynamics that attosecond measurement offers insights into. My point is that it is beyond pointless to grasp this scale because we cannot and yet Agostini. Krausz and L’Huillier did that.

At the atomic level and even smaller, it is no surprise then that our material world becomes a blur within a blur within a blur. Hence, for us it is nonexistent for all practical purposes. So what are we as a life form squabbling and arguing over at our macro scale? Essentially, as a collection of blurry atoms and even blurrier electrons-neutrons-protons we are just entangling our blurs. It does not resolve anything. 

The moral of this post? There is none. 

NASA's astonishing OSIRIS-REx concludes in splendid success after 6.2 billion kms

The sample return capsule from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission is seen shortly after touching down in the desert, Sunday, Sept. 24, 2023, at the Department of Defense's Utah Test and Training Range. The sample was collected from the asteroid Bennu in October 2020 by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft.

Credits: NASA/Keegan Barber

On September 8, 2016, NASA's planetary mission OSIRIS-REx, an acronym for "Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer, took off from Cape Canaveral, Florida. It returned to Earth yesterday in the Utah desert after a little over seven years. 

In those seven years the spacecraft traveled over 4 billion miles  or 6.2 billion kilometers to reach an asteroid named Bennu which at that point was some 200 million miles from us.  On Oct. 20, 2020, it unfurled its robotic arm, briefly touched down on the asteroid and collected dust and pebbles. The asteroid sample weighing about 250 grams was packed in a capsule for its return journey. That sample is now safely home with NASA scientists for a months-long, if not a years-long investigation, into its composition and through it look for answers to some profound questions, including about the origin on life. 

The sample represents over 4 billion plus years of history about our solar system. It is pristine and untouched by human hands. 

Whichever way you look at this, it is an astonishing mission by NASA. Imagine the variables since the mission was first proposed in 2004 and twice rejected for various reasons. Imagine the confluence of technologies and human intelligence that went into mounting it and executing it first to takeoff, then to swing around Earth, then to reach Bennu, then to observe the asteroid closely for over a year to look for a safe spot to rendezvous, then to rapidly drill its surface for a sample, then to take off at 1000 kilometers an hour to thrust away from the asteroid and then on to a journey back home and then finally calculate its return precisely so that it lands safely. If your mind does not boggle at the splendid feat, get it examined.

But after all that OSIRIS has no rest. It has already been renamed as OSIRIS-APEX (OSIRIS-APophis EXplorer) to explore Apophis, an asteroid roughly 1,200 feet (roughly 370 meters) in diameter that will come within 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometers) of Earth in 2029. The spacecraft was here after traveling a total of 6.2 billion miles only to drop off this sample before embarking on another sample collection duty. We should be grateful to machines.

To think that such brilliant scientists have to share this planet with thousands of politicians across the world indulging in assholery and bigotry and skullduggery on a daily basis. 

Take a moment from your lives and read a bit about such missions.