Day 70

Baby Vidhi has reached Shimla with her mom. It's her first train and long distance journey. Apart from expected irritation from tiresome journey, she didn't exhibit any other worrying symptoms. Radhika had to sleep whole night on her side without changing sides on one birth so as to provide support and cover to Vedika and she definitely seemed unable to manage a good night's sleep. More detail as they come.

Day 67

Vidhi is showing signs of improved stability in her sleeping patter. She sleeps longer stretches at night and is awake for longer duration in day. Her kicks are growing stronger and she is becoming fond of gurgling and cooing when someone talks to her.



Heat in Bhopal is at its peak and has caused a little slowdown in her activity. Doctor has verified that her reduced activity is mere exhaustion from heat and is no sign of inherent malady.



Vidhi and her mom will travel to Shimla to her paternal grandparents two days later. That will be her first journey out of the house and first taxi/train/bus journey.

Links to share

1. Leading a team requires skills different from successful personal achievement. Here are nicely put tips for being a great boss.
2. Even in this day with GPS tracking, satellite mapping, Helicopter and what not, Amazon forests still remain out of reach of human. See fascinating narration of what lies inside through eyes of explorers who went in search of mythical city of Z.
3. Given this history, it is not wrong to assume that all government departments are wrong and ready to loot money. Frequent strikes by Air India workers seem to suggest entitlement. But every story has two sides. Here is a attempt to look from other side.
4. String theory suggests as many as 11 dimensions of Universe. Physical senses can see 3 dimensions. Brain can understand 4^th dimension of Time. Beyond that it’s mere imagination. But ain’t it fun!
5. Is character a well defined social concept?
6. There is science behind design of parking space and parking penalty!
7. And there is science behind walking: Part I and Part II.
8. Humans are fallible. Even those who sit at highest pedestal deciding fate of lives of people: judges. And they don’t make good decisions if they are hungry!
9. Look behind world of car salesman in US. Also good lesson in human psychology of selling.
10. The turning point of advertising: mix Sex and Ad.
11. Once American Airline decided to sell unlimited free flying passes for $300k+. It still lost. Because people just flew too much.?
12. Why do people overeat?

Cost of improper signage

Small things, yet very important. I am talking of traffic signage in India. Traffic signs are obviously very important for road users. They serve primarily two functions: information and warning. Informative signs provide directions, street names, speed limits, one-way streets, distance, nearest convenience facility, turn permissibility, and so on. Warning signs warn of work in process, diversions, traffic lights, stop sign, lane constraints, road block, weight limit, height limit, and so on. For drivers and pedestrians alike, they serve purpose to facilitate traffic, reduce inconvenience, reduce traffic jam, manage blockage and congestion, provide mental peace, and all in all are very helpful. In fact, I find proper signage so helpful — and this is not just limited to roads, but also in public areas like parks, hospitals, bus and railway stations, airports — that I feel instant gratification for that designer who decided to put a sign where he did in case I find one exactly when I need one.

In USA I’ve found signs to be absolutely well placed. Almost as if someone is reading my thoughts and the moment I feel I need directions, a sign happens to be right there as soon as I look up. This, unfortunately, hasn’t been the case in India. Indeed, while they are absolutely important to avoid unnecessary U-turns and save fuel cost and traffic congestion, I doubt anyone in Indian municipalities — which are responsible bodies for this kinds of works — pays any iota of attention to them. There are many problems:

1. Major issue is that there aren’t just signs where there obviously should be, like fork in the road or a flyover or traffic junction or closed road.
2. Content of signs leaves enough to be desired
   1. First, there is a issue of font size. There is hardly any standard for any sensible font size which can be read by driver is who driving at or below permissible speed limit. More often than not, it’s too small that you need to be parked to be able to read.
   2. There appears to be is no standardization on sign language too. Often for temporary signs (for construction work, for example, which in Indian case, temporarily last for up to couple of years) signs are not phrases but full sentence. Combine that will small font size and you are predestined to be unable to read it.
3. Biggest issue is of placement
   1. While vehicles are permitted on all lanes, sign is placed exclusively to cater to lane nearest to it, even when it is applicable to all lanes.
   2. Sign is too close to the point where decision based on that information can be made e.g. you are already on flyover when sign says where this flyover goes and where road below does, or sign on left lane is so close to junction that moving to left lane at that point is impossible, or speed-breaker sign is after speed-breaker.
   3. Sign is hidden behind an advertisement poster or an overgrown tree
   4. Sign has moved/shifted/turned by forces of nature and time or is misplaced in the first place where it points to direction which is wrong is vague (arrow marks the street where there isn’t any). This is specifically bad of places like Bangalore where concept of perpendicular road crossing is rare and you’ve multiple roads crossing at odd angles.

None of this, of course, matters to traffic police should they decide to cite you for violation. You may have driven on a road couple of kilometers before you see a speed-limit sign (if you do, despite above) yet you are expected to somehow know that and not exceed that. You may come across a traffic junction and keep looking if and where is the signal for you, for it’s either placed at strange angle or is behind a tree. Blind turns and road conditions ensures that one may drive at full speed only on roads where one has driven few times. Do not expect speed-breaker or turn sign will warn you. You will have to remember that. That and that pothole which is just there unannounced ready to engulf you with your car.

And improper signage is not just small annoyances. I personally have wasted quite a lot fuel and time on missing a turn or driving on a flyover when I am not supposed to. Subsequent course correction adds to unnecessary traffic congestion and caused road rage. Compared to investment of putting useful, readable, properly placed signs, returns on overall fuel, time, accident saving, and public convenience is expected to be high. I do not have numbers with me but I’d expect them to have one of highest return-on-investment for any public expenditure work. Yet, there is no future where I envision this will happen any time far.

Day 55

Received Vidhi's birth certificate from Municipality of Bhopal. They have misspelled my name and missed the 'i'. Let's see if correction works. If not, I hope, it won't be much of a problem.



On her front, baby darling is growing smoothly. She has started to respond positively to her mother's face and voice and smiles often. Her newest habit is sucking her fingers and fist. She seems to find immense joy and juicy delicacy in it for she ends us licking and sucking at her fingers often with sounds akin to eating tasty fruit. It's an constant source of amusement and annoyance to Radhika to make her stop doing this. We try not to encourage her to have a habit of sucking thumb.



Radhika also tells me that baby Vedika has followed family footsteps and have started watching F.R.I.E.N.D.S which is our family sitcom. It keeps her engaged for few minutes at least. Night 11pm-1am remains her favourite play time.

Birthday wishes

Birthdays are special occasion for most people. Special day, celebrated, purely because it happens to be the day on which the self, which, of course, is the center of known universe — not in cosmic sense but in sense of world around it — came into existence in its own conscience. An exercise in narcissism, no doubt, yet perfectly valid, for any other metric of time is intellectual, theoretical, abstract, and in any practical sense, immaterial. A person’s conscience has only one true timescale which runs from birth to death. Of course, why the day, and not moment, hour or minute, and why annually, and not in any other periodicity, is purely conventional.

Most people like to make their birthdays special day for themselves, affording themselves luxury of their favourite pastime, meal, indulgence, or anything that brings them happiness. Most of remaining people are generally upbeat their birthdays if not making a fuss of it. Rest, just let it be.

For those who care, of course, receiving birthday wishes is expected. It is desired from one to wish another birthday wish, if former happens to come to know about this, and is in presence of later, even if there is no familiarity between them. At their annual frequency, birthdays, naturally, become convenient touch points with people whom one would place in acquaintance category — not too friendly to connect often, yet preferable to be in touch with. Given that people expects and like being wished on birthdays helps the matter.

What doesn’t help, apparently, is the mechanism for helping you remember their birthdays. People expects, surprisingly, that you wish them because you remembered their birthday. This also applies to any wish-requiring occasion such as anniversary. An emphasis on expensive brain real-estate marks the importance person has in your life. Even if you took help of any of technological aids (calendar, reminder), you are not to disclose, for it will reduce well-being conveyed by your wish. No wonder impact of my ‘Happy Birthday’ drops a notch soon I tell them — only on being asked how come I remember — that I remembered it because I was reminded by my calendar system. I must pretend that I remembered. My getting external help seems to suggests farcical wish and not a genuine one. That I bothered to make note in may calendar and took effort to wish is easily swept away. Of course, wiser next time, I just remember. That is not to say that people don’t know it but they would rather not have this be stated explicitly. How many birthday wishes on facebook, a purely rhetorical question, mind you, are because your friend saw the reminder on top right? Yet, would one dare to draw the attention to the same? No one does, of course.

Seems I find this topic little more fascinating than I imagined — I have written on the same couple of years earlier too.

Day 54

Latest measurements...

Weight = 4.3kg

Height = 53cm

Circumference of head = 38cm



According to this chart, she is supposed to be 4.8kg 56cm.

Three Men in a Boat

When I started reading Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome, a humourous book written in 1889, I had not imagined that what lay ahead of me. Book is through and through hilarious story of three good-for-nothing lazy hypochondriac friends who decide to take one week trip along the river to help them relax. From story point of view, book offers little; rather, one can say that there isn’t really an story. Indeed what constitutes this 200 odd page narrative is collection of numerous meanderings off-shots tales which either recounts some historical episodes from protagonists past or are part of wild and vivid imaginations. Narrative is definitely old English yet flows freely and isn’t trouble to read or understand. In fact, this book affirms faith that despite hundred and quarter century of time difference and thousands of miles of cultural difference between me and them, basic human nature has hardly changed. If a minor annoyance must be noted then that should be about convoluted names and British history of various places on river they visit which a modern and non-British reader may find unfamiliar. Best way to present what is awesome about this book is exhibit collections of quotes from within. And if you don’t find them hilarious, then perhaps this book isn’t for you.

Book introduces our protagonists and their hypochondriac nature:

It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patent medicine advertisement without being impelled to the conclusion that I am suffering from the particular disease therein dealt with in its most virulent form.

I had the symptoms, beyond all mistake, the chief among them being “a general disinclination to work of any kind.” What I suffer in that way no tongue can tell. From my earliest infancy I have been a martyr to it. As a boy, the disease hardly ever left me for a day. They did not know, then, that it was my liver. Medical science was in a far less advanced state than now, and they used to put it down to laziness.

And when they decide to take trip down the river:

…said, however, that the river would suit him to a “T.” I don’t know what a “T” is (except a sixpenny one, which includes bread-and-butter and cake, and is cheap at the price, if you haven’t had any dinner). It seems to suit everybody, however, which is greatly to its credit.

Describing one of the member of journey:

You can never rouse Harris. There is no poetry about Harris—no wild yearning for the unattainable. Harris never “weeps, he knows not why.” If Harris’s eyes fill with tears, you can bet it is because Harris has been eating raw onions, or has put too much Worcester over his chop.

Oh and oh, three men in a boat also have a dog with them. His introduction follows:

To hang about a stable, and collect a gang of the most disreputable dogs to be found in the town, and lead them out to march round the slums to fight other disreputable dogs, is Montmorency’s idea of “life.”

Montmorency’s ambition in life, is to get in the way and be sworn at. If he can squirm in anywhere where he particularly is not wanted, and be a perfect nuisance, and make people mad, and have things thrown at his head, then he feels his day has not been wasted.

Planning for the trip:

“Begin with breakfast.” (George is so practical.) “Now for breakfast we shall want a frying-pan”—(Harris said it was indigestible; but we merely urged him not to be an ass)...

And packing for the trip:

I said I’d pack.

I rather pride myself on my packing. Packing is one of those many things that I feel I know more about than any other person living. (It surprises me myself, sometimes, how many of these subjects there are.) I impressed the fact upon George and Harris, and told them that they had better leave the whole matter entirely to me. They fell into the suggestion with a readiness that had something uncanny about it. George put on a pipe and spread himself over the easy-chair, and Harris cocked his legs on the table and lit a cigar.

This was hardly what I intended. What I had meant, of course, was, that I should boss the job, and that Harris and George should potter about under my directions, I pushing them aside every now and then with, “Oh, you—!” “Here, let me do it.” “There you are, simple enough!”—really teaching them, as you might say. Their taking it in the way they did irritated me. There is nothing does irritate me more than seeing other people sitting about doing nothing when I’m working.

I’m not like that. I can’t sit still and see another man slaving and working. I want to get up and superintend, and walk round with my hands in my pockets, and tell him what to do. It is my energetic nature. I can’t help it.

And so on and so on. I could cite many, trouble being the given the wandering nature of book, quotes tend not to be just quotes but paragraphs themselves. Not good for blog but a recommended read. You have no excuse since it’s even free and available on Project Gutenberg.

Day 47

Today Vidhi got her second dose of immunization: two injections and three oral drops. She didn't flinch in pain much, like earlier, but is behaving little annoyed. Later in the day she exhibited symptoms of fever, which was expected, and was fed oral paracetamol drops. She has shown signs of recovery though her temperament remains uneasy.



Last week she took longest break in her potty so far - a week without one. Bravo girl! It's a feat you'll not be able to manage later in life so enjoy. Of course, it had her mom worried. None the less, all is well that ends in badspread going to wash.

Some more pictures are shared..