An American
lady was asked…..”Do you have children….?’’…..
She said…..”Yes”…….Two….
“One boy”
& “One Girl”
An Indian
lady was asked the same question…..”Do you have children….?”…..
She said….”Yes….but
not more than one every couple of years...!!”
This is a classic
example of how English is perceived by two different people in two
different nations.
A series of Pencil Sketches on the theme...."Laughter is the best medicine"......
Driverless Cars…
…….would you get into one…?
I still
remember there was a scene in the movie ‘Total Recall’ where a robot
driver drives a car. This happens in planet Mars in the future. What was once
in the realms of science fiction is coming closer and closer to reality.
Now we know that almost 90% of the flying by commercial aircrafts is done by autopilot.
So the question is can we replicate the same on ground…?
On air when
you are flying there is no traffic and autopilot for the most part does its
job. But the situation on ground is entirely different. There is traffic all
around us, pedestrians crossing, children playing, cows and street dogs (a
given in India), not to mention unruly drivers, road rage and what not……can
a computer navigate all this and take us safely to our destination.
The answer
I think is, it is IMPOSSIBLE. Now my skepticism does not arise from mere
speculation, it rests on the point of unpredictability, that human beings are
simply unpredictable. No matter how many cameras you install on your
driverless car, how advanced the AI is you cannot factor in the
unpredictability of humans. A driver may fall asleep at the wheel of his
car, he may be drunk, he might deliberately want to run you off the road, he
might jump a signal, not heed a stop sign, the possibilities are endless. It is
not a perfect world.
There is a
possibility in future about driverless cars but only in the case when all cars
are driven by computers. In this scenario the unpredictability factor can be
managed. Even then you must factor in certain situations wherein
unpredictability can arise such as children playing on the side of the road and
a ball hitting the car, a person suddenly crossing the road etc. I feel that no
matter what happens driverless cars are possible only in the perfect world.
No
matter how sophisticated a manufacturer claims them to be, I am not setting
foot inside a driverless car……how about you…???
What’s in a Name….?
Recently there was a controversy about the naming of a baby. Yes I am talking about the Saif-Kareena kid ‘Jeh’ or his full name Jehangir Ali Khan. All the right wing trolls have started name calling left and right and are saying that the Jihadi mindset leads to such naming.
There was a
controversy earlier too when they named their elder son Taimur. When
Shakespeare said “What’s in a name, that which we call a rose by any other name
would smell as sweet” the bard made the meaning clear. He insists names
are just that….NAMES and nothing else. But if you look deeper ‘Names’ are
paradoxical.
One can
argue that everything’s in a name and nothing is in a name. Take for example
the name ‘Nike’. Well it is a brand name but still…… suppose you go to a shop
and buy shoes without knowing the brand name and then suddenly they are
revealed to be Nike shoes. What happens next, immediately your
perception of the shoe varies. You look at them (the pair of shoes you were
about to buy) with a new eye. Everything about the shoe varies… its design,
colour and quality immediately hikes up.
But what
when it comes to non-entities. Be it a new brand or a person. Now if we
call the former non-entities you can say that since they are new and since they
have no presence, we might. But when it comes to the latter that is persons/people
we can’t say so. Saif Ali Khan or Kareena Kapoor may be highly
recognizable names but a Ramesh, or a Satish (….sorry I couldn’t resist…!!)
may be entities in their own right. They may not be as famous a Saif or Kareena
but then they may be a name to reckon with, in their family circles, in their
community, neighborhood etc.
Coming back
to the beginning does a name matter…? Does Jeh or Taimur matter. Well it
all depends on our perspective. Personally I feel…come on guys…..Jeh and Taimur
are innocent kids. Don’t give colour to their name already, it is the personal
decision of the parents to name them. The kids are in the budding stage of
their life and it is a shame that we are judging them already. This is what I
have to say to all their name callers …STOP NAMING….Period.
Client: Sreevatsa Realty, Project Name: Lianca, an Uber Luxury Apartment in Race Course
Client: Kannan Jubilee Coffee
For International Coffee Day and the branding done in such a way that it shows "The Kaapi of India" overlapping the TOI masthead and on the back side the history of Coffee was published.
