Building and Sustaining the Digital culture during COVID-19 & Beyond

COVID-19 outbreak is a world-changing phenomenon that will have long-lasting implications for our global economy. It’s a once in a generation global impact event. This is the opportunity for each SERVICE PROVIDER to conduct an organizational re-framing of their pre-COVID business model, behaviors & practices. Flexibility and adaptability in operational control whilst continuing to operate as close to the prescribed core organizational culture, are the traits that will secure their futures.

We are witnessing that:

·       Pandemic has severely disrupted production processes.

·       Digital has helped through the rapid scale-up of platforms resulting in changes to the traditional boundaries of firms.

·       With the advent of new business models, digital platform first firms have been able to evolve rapidly. The year 2020 can be described as the year that “a forced test of many things we had thought about but not tried.”

Building and sustaining a digital culture during COVID-19 & Beyond would require:

·       Introducing flexible and adaptable operational controls to secure SERVICE PROVIDER’s future.

·       Skill & hire for technologies such WFH, digitally secure online presence, blockchain, and IoT.

·       And most importantly, enhanced Investments in automation space as the next big thing.

COVID-19 induced pandemic and disruption is being seen as the catalyst for a global reset and the acceleration of digital transformation. Across the organization, everyone must recognize that, for a business to achieve sustained innovation excellence, it is very important that an innovative mindset must be integral to every employee’s job profile. Also, Leaderships teams need to measure and reward innovation so that it becomes a core competency that drives priority-setting, resource allocation, talent acquisition, and the development of influential leaders.

New age leadership teams know that many old ways of working are basically incompatible with a successful digital transformation culture and a tremendous, yet subtle cultural change is required. Given that every company is different, according to Protiviti (https://www.protiviti.com/IN-en/insights/bpro102) the leadership teams should consider whether the organization is a digital follower, expert, or leader:

• Digital follower — under this category, a given company has developed a digital strategy and has a proven track record delivering on digital initiatives, which are typically focused on discrete aspects of the customer journey as well as internal process automation.
• Digital expert — under this category, a given company has a proven track record of adopting emerging technologies has achieved high levels of process automation and quantitatively manages digital aspects of its strategy enterprise-wide.
• Digital leader — under this category, a given company has a proven track record of disrupting traditional business models; digital aspects of strategic plans are continually improved based on lessons learned and predictive indicators.

Other experts tend to agree. According to the Danish business leader and leadership author Torben Rick (https://www.torbenrick.eu/blog/culture/culture-change-is-key-in-digital-transformation/) , digital transformation isn’t really about technology, it’s about organizational agility - and culture plays a vital role in the digital transformation of any business.

Building and sustaining a culture of digitalization is also the new core for each organization making an attempt to grapple with the onslaught of economic process fuelled by digital disruption from its competition. digitalization is regarding permitting technology to drive your organization – your product, services, client interactions, and core operations – so as to maneuver quicker. However, digitalization conjointly needs an organizational culture where folks are both ready and willing to adapt. Thus, digital culture and transformation go hand in hand. Ignore culture and risk transformation failure. Rick identifies digital culture transformation as leading the adoption of recent technology; it's the shift from ancient, analog culture, wherever choices area unit supported marketing research, careful business cases, and careful in-house reportage, to a digitally-driven surrounding, wherever choices area unit created by cross-functional groups supported live customer-centric information. It’s being ready to fail quickly instead of being averse to risk.

Organizations don’t transform, people do.

Digital culture is a company-wide change in mindset and behavior that has a good chance of succeeding only if it is instilled from those at the top. Leaders need to demonstrate their enthusiasm for new technologies and be prepared to develop new skills themselves in order to empower people to transform within the organization.

But then one might question, why all this fuss around digital and digital culture? Well, as it turns out, with empirical evidence, it does appear that digital organizations move faster, favoring continuous iteration over refining a product or service to perfection before launching it. Another fundamental tenet of digital culture that is highlighted in multiple articles is the great benefit of flattening organizational charts. When collaboration across teams is encouraged and valued over individual effort, and employees are trusted to make judgment calls – no matter what their role – empowerment follows, and this empowerment fuels motivation, which can lead to faster decision making and, ultimately, more wins.

As the teams learn to collaborate, the organization will become more transparent, and finally, as digital culture embeds in the business, the organization’s focus will inherently shift outward. Outside expertise and customer feedback will be sought-after rather than feared as the organizational culture changes into an agile and resilient digital powerhouse.

To summarize, digital transformation depends on having a digital culture supporting it because digital culture:

·      Enables focus on customer needs rather than internal processes

·      promotes agile thinking

·      places high emphasis on collaboration

·      drives transformation

·      empowers workers across the company

Creating a customer-centric value chain through Digital Transformation

Customer Journeys and resultant experience has been impacted severely due to the pandemic. When the lockdowns initiated and people started working from home, a lot of our daily habits, rituals, and work-related practices become digital. It affected us both as service providers and as customers or consumers. I believe that this digital-first customer behavior is here to stay. 

After all, what matters to customers is their experience derived throughout the journey when dealing with your brand. It doesn't matter to your customer as to what your processes are, whether your SOPs are documented in a certain way or whether you have a funnel of some sort through which you are categorizing your prospect or customer – what matters to them is their experience, across the channel of the interaction of their choice and at the time of their choosing. That's a big sort of a dilemma. As a company, as a brand, we are used to thinking about the process, while the customers have always been thinking about the experience. There seems to be a big disconnect. No wonder, in spite of massive investments by brands in streamlining their processes and attempts to enhance customer experience, the customer perception conveys a big departure from what brands think and what customers experience.

Digital, among other things, can facilitate in bridging the gap between the business process and customer journey. That's the best thing that digital technology affords us as brands or service providers when it comes to customer-centric value chains is that it can allow us to have much more control of the measurement and hence improvement in customer journeys and hence customer experience. However, there are certain rules that we have to follow which include the cycle of Predict, Intervene, Collaborate, and Integrate.

The following aspects are crucial to creating a customer-centric value chain:

·       The ability to predict in advance what the customer experience is going to be is a crucial advantage in delivering a superior customer experience. However, questions remain as to what this ability constitutes. Is it going to be a score that one calculates, based on a lot of factors? Well, as it happens, there’s a lot of factors, based on the demographic based on the past transaction history, based on their service, complaints that, have come to you or to your competitors. However, the more data points that we collect better becomes our ability to predict the kind of experience we are or can deliver. This is a crucial pillar of the customer-centric value chain. The focus is the customer and not the process itself.

·       Then next is the ‘intervene’ part. Once one can predict, the next logical question is what can be done about an adverse experience about to happen. Being able to intervene in real-time is critical and that makes one relevant as a brand for the customer in that moment of truth. Can we design the systems in such a way that relevant intervention happens at the right time in the journey?

·       The third part is ‘collaborate’. Being able to collaborate in bringing the automation and human experience from both the employee side and the customer side together at that moment. This is also where the human part comes in. So you intervene and then are able to collaborate through an omnichannel engagement system where your employee, with your subject matter expert, can be tagged into that particular moment of truth and become contextualized to what the customer is reaching out there for and imagine the system being able to tag the right subject matter expertise from within the same automation system (for example a chatbot). So that's the collaborative part in bringing the human experience and both from the employee side, and the customer side together at that moment.

·       The fourth part is the ‘integrate’ part. Being able to integrate that flow mix into the core business process and provide seamless and continuous services even if one of the components fails. Once that happens, the great experience can be delivered, so your ERP, the back office, your CRM and when you combine all that together, you get an amazing value chain that's making your customers happy, excited, big advocates a few at the same time, making you money as well.

We all know customer experience delivery through various services comes at the top in the BPO industry. Even though the BPO industry has been facing many challenges in current times, we should keep eye on the ball in order to get through these difficult times. Customer-centric processes are the new normal where we are adjusting our business models according to the needs of the customer.

Traditional approaches, however, do not work when the operation is in thousands of agent’s homes. We witness that a lot of businesses often rely on their documented culture when challenged on how they wish to work. Yet culture is ethereal. Non-physical. Difficult to prove. But there’s little doubt it exists in every Service provider, especially BPO businesses. Service Providers or BPOs typically employ operating culture with a great practical purpose as compared to many other sectors. This may be because of the desired ability to influence the behavior of a large number of associates in an environment with relatively low numbers of managers & supervisors since managing large groups of people requires procedural controls to guarantee steady and predictable output. However, this also presents a dilemma of delivering consistent and predictable, and most importantly positive customer experiences across various touchpoints with different associates and other backend systems participating in the whole journey.

These days, thousands of contact center advisors and back-office staff are working from home with little or no managerial ‘eyes’ on behavior. How can the operation be evidentially controlled? How can Data Security be guaranteed? How can BPOs ensure that the operating culture is consistent, especially in a very dispersed and distributed workforce?

Digital is playing a key role in addressing all these aspects. Systems and practices intertwine together to provide a perfectly monitored, yet more collaborative environment, with virtual assistants (aka bots) not only helping automate tasks to bring efficiencies but also helping keep associates aligned with the culture of the organization. This brings benefits in areas of both experience and efficiency as well as ensuring compliance.

Customer-centric processes are the new normal where we are required to adjust our business models, practices, and processes according to the needs of the customer with a predict, intervene, collaborate and integrate cycle.

Overcoming Digital Challenges with Learning & Development

A lot of businesses, across the world, are disconnected digitally and may not have access to workers with the relevant skills and are hence facing multiple challenges in their business environments. Employees also, have scant little protection and usually do not have the necessary flexibility or skills to adapt to the markets in which they operate. These challenges can be faced, however, we need to embrace technology, and training programs need to be upgraded to equip our employees with the best skills.

The rapid evolution and adoption of technology on a widespread scale and further accelerated by the virus pandemic has led to a pressing need for businesses to adapt. While there is no doubt that the current situation induced by the pandemic is amplifying the adoption of new technologies, advancements in technology were already changing the world, from standards of living of the species to the very nature of work we do. It can be observed that even before the advent of the current pandemic, some features of the state of technological progress aka digital transformation were especially relevant.

The workforce imperatives of automation, digitization, and other similar technological trends are significant, and BPOs will need to invest in and hire for radically different skillsets and capabilities in which digitization could affect their businesses.

Main Workforce Skill related challenges facing business today include:

·      A Significant mismatch between technologies available & skills of the existing workforce

·      How to rapidly access or hire workers with the right skills amidst a challenging business environment

Overcoming these challenges require:

·      Alignment with a digital transformation goals of the organization by redefining individuals’ roles and responsibilities.

·      Adequate investment in training from top to bottom levels; for example, we have initiated large scale programs, remotely delivered, for employees to re-skill themselves in various digital technologies

·      Innovative and online virtual training methodologies which allow self-paced learning and certifications.

·      Incentivize through career growth options linked to self-paced re-skilling by employees.

One finds that one has to adapt to new processes and new tools to stay relevant. To further empower the Digital workforce, organizations need to first redefine individuals’ roles and responsibilities to align them with a transformation goal, which can further help in clarifying the roles and capabilities that the company needs.

We need to have Digital learning as an integral part of growth and career development

With a lot of the focus right now on employees, we have to reskill and redirect the workforce as needed — as one of the keys to delivering digital transformation for an organization.

With changing times, employees should start going back to the blackboard and reskill themselves for the new technologies and domains in their organizations. Success in the current business environment requires both digital-savvy leaders and employees with the required capabilities to make changes happen. We know that there are numerous ways in which companies with successful transformation record are enabling employees to embrace changes, however, two methods stand out.

The first method relates to reinforcing new models of working, methods, and behaviors as well, through formal mechanisms, long proved that it supports the organizational change.

Another is giving the workers a say on where exactly the digitization could and should be adopted. It has been observed that businesses are more likely to succeed when employees have a say in generating their own ideas about where digitization might support. To ensure that workers in key roles play parts in reinforcing change it is essential to empower the workforce. Success, largely, depends on both senior leaders and those employees and other stakeholders who are engaged during the transformation!

Supporting Workforce Amid COVID-19

As the COVID-19 pandemic spreads around the globe, organizations across all sectors have struggled to stabilize operations and put in place new guidelines to protect the health of their employees while maintaining service to their customers. CORONA pandemic has both immediate and long-lasting implications for how people work and participate in society. Also, it is critical to assess how organizations are creating ways to assure their customer base that service delivery operations will continue with the necessary quality, productivity, security, and compliance aspects in place.

BPOs created resilient, coordinated business continuity plans to reflect the new reality and moved with unprecedented speed: for example, within days, we enabled thousands of workers to work from home, shipping & installing desktops and other enabling infrastructure

Now comes the challenge of making it work as a ‘Business as Usual’ practice. Contemporary BPO operations are now located across a significantly larger geography, in many more locations. Lower levels of direct supervisory control…. but with the same resources to manage

BPOs are dealing with immediate imperatives of support for workforce during these times which include:

·       Looking after the health, safety, and well-being of remote working personnel

·       Reinforce culture and connection with employees

·       Scale an effective remote-working model

·       Ramp up workforce flexibility

New systems of engagement for employees are being put into place. What was once a fringe, nice to have employee monitoring and engagement platform has now suddenly become a critical must-have tool for a geographically and individually dispersed workforce. Collaboration platforms are now driving new levels of supervisory monitoring and coaching efficiency. These platforms and associated practices have been largely derived from consumer technologies to which certain pockets of the world are already addicted. This obviously alleviates the problem of training the already collaboration savvy (e.g. WhatsApp users in their personal lives) users to adapt to very similar-looking technologies now slowly spreading into the enterprise world.

Of course with BPOs being dependent heavily on ‘tribal knowledge’ for achieving efficiencies and economies of scale, this presents a slightly different problem towards taking this knowledge amongst a dispersed workforce. 

Covid -19 and its impact on the Workforce in BPO industry

Global lockdowns have severely disrupted the life of the traditional BPO industry. However, at the same time, it has also been opening new avenues. Will the changes in the Digital workforce management play out the escalating challenges faced by the traditional BPO industry during the COVID-19 global lockdown?

Some of the following notions will be challenged severely over the coming months:

·      A wide belief that one simply can’t move thousands of agents into a work-at-home model without a massive disruption

·      Remote work may not be productive enough

·      Security is a major challenge

·      GIG may not stand as a serious option for the BPO industry.

It was widely believed that one simply can’t move thousands of agents into a work-at-home model without massive disruption. Especially when call volumes in some industries are going through the roof. When COVID hit India, the scramble was on to move workers out of densely packed contact centers to their homes. Stretched managers had even more loaded on their shoulders to make it happen, and quickly. To use a metaphor; BPOs had to deliver an oil and filter change to an engine whilst they were still running... during mid-flight.

Also, prior to 2020, there was a lot of skepticism in some circles about the value of digitization and digital transformation; the rapidness of this change is the key highlight. Pandemic changed things overnight. For example, a certain organization went from 500 odd VPN users to over 9000 in a matter of a couple of weeks. COVID-19 pandemic has made us learn, the hard way, that technology will aide us in fighting any future disasters.

How will these changes play out in the Covid-19 world?

A critical step for BPOs is to develop clear workforce strategies to help determine the digital skills and capabilities that they currently have—and will need—to meet their future goals

Digital driven re-skilling of the Workforce is necessary along with an opportunity for BPOs to conduct an organizational transformation & re-framing of their pre-COVID business model, behaviors & practices. As it turns out, in coming months we will see that to manage and mitigate the impact on their workforces, businesses must see that:

•       Digital technology will improve people’s ability to work from home or anywhere. New Geographies will open for BPOs to source talent from.

•       At many companies’ employees may not commute all the time. It’s widely expected that many will have at least a hybrid virtual component, even when the industry goes back to in-person or “in-office”.

•       Digital has created seismic shifts in the mix of skills required to succeed in the labour market. It has also changed the terms of work, giving rise to work from anywhere, short-term assignments, aiding the rise of GIG economy and its foray into BPO space.

•       Automation and related technologies will help the organization become resilient to future pandemics. Optimizing the processes helps make the operations flexible

We believe that digital transformation, pervasive connectivity, and openness to “try” GIG will be a game-changer for BPO in the coming months and years

How would a billion year old civilization look like?

One of the most ancient and perhaps the most enduring questions that humankind has been asking since picking up the first stone and striking fire has been around the topic – are we alone? Why does loneliness bother us is very simple – we evolved as social creatures, comforted in each other’s company and yet prone to slaughter each other if things get too crowded either physically or intellectually…

But the question does keep us engaged – are we alone? And what if we are not, and then what would other intelligent life look like. Would we even recognize it if it was sufficiently advanced? Would it even be biological in nature anymore? What kind of energy would it be harnessing? Oh, there are so many questions and the exciting part is that we are at least now beginning to be able to “speculate” about it. With only a couple of centuries out of savagery (some argue that we are not come out of that even today), we have indeed covered much ground in terms of being at least able to think about it.

Most the general chatter on the net seems to suggest that we would, in all probability, be unable to recognize it for what it was… and that should not come as much of a surprise to many people. Would a bacterium be able to speculate regarding the thought processes of a human? Personally, I doubt it.

Chris Manning opines – “All sorts of things that we assume without even realizing that we are doing so may no longer be true. Civilization may not consist of discrete entities. They may not exist in a well-defined region of space. They may not even be in space as we understand it. In Isaac Asimov’s short story “The Last Question”, the super-computer gets more and more advanced. It reaches a stage at which it is located in hyperspace and made of something which is neither matter nor energy. Perhaps the billion-year-old civilization will be something like this”

SUSAN SCHNEIDER – thinks – “I do not believe that most advanced alien civilizations will be biological. The most sophisticated civilizations will be postbiological, forms of artificial intelligence or alien superintelligence.” Mysterious universe presents an interesting view based on her work - https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2017/10/aliens-may-actually-be-billion-year-old-robots/

According to EarthMysteryNews.com – The astrobiologist Paul Davies of Arizona State writes in The Eerie Silence “I think that biological intelligence is a short-lived phenomenon. If we ever face artificial intelligence, I believe it is post-biological in nature”.

With the advances in technology, it seems that most of the thinkers and those who bother to opine on the net seem to be gravitating towards the “beyond biological, immortal, beyond matter” kind of beings so much beyond our comprehension as to be incomprehensible… well almost!

And then there are others who are speculating about a billion-year-old civilization on earth itself although, in my opinion, that is a separate issue altogether. What do you think? Let me know with your comments!

What it will mean to find Earth's Twin out there

One of the most ancient and perhaps the most enduring questions that humankind has been asking since picking up the first stone and striking fire has been around the topic of who we are and what are we doing here. Is there a destiny or are we just result of random mutations through a cycle which started billions of years ago.

Related to search for our place in the universe are the questions relating to whether there are worlds out there which are earth like. At first the whole question of whether there are any extra solar planets at all was a huge problem for us. It was indeed a formidable question for our kind with our primitive equipment and the ability to squint through the fog of earth’s atmosphere and then the gaseous envelop of our solar system. Through this foggy and often obscured picture, we used to wonder if there are any other rocks circling other stars. Logic of course told us that formation of the solar system shouldn’t be unique process which happened only in our neighborhood, but our ability to experimentally and by observation prove what was common sense was limited.

Well, not any more. For quite some time, we have been able to at least deduce the existence of extra solar planets, if not see them directly. An exoplanet (or extra solar planet) is a planet orbiting a star different from the Sun (the "exo" prefix means "outside" in Greek). Up until now, one has found mainly gas giant planets, which are easier to detect than telluric planets. An exoplanet or extra solar planet is a planet that does not orbit the Sun and instead orbits a different star, stellar remnant, or brown dwarf. More than 1800 exoplanets have been discovered (1849 planets in 1160 planetary systems including 471 multiple planetary systems as of 2 November 2014).

According to Observatoire de Paris - The planets of the solar system can be divided into two groups, the telluric planets and the gas giant (or "Jovian") planets. The telluric planets are spherical bodies with a crust of rock, and the gas giant planets are spheres composed of gas and ice (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune). Pluto is a solid body, whose composition consists of a variety of rocks and ices. An exoplanet (or extra solar planet) is a planet orbiting a star different from the Sun (the "exo" prefix means "outside" in Greek). Up until now, one has found mainly gas giant planets, which are easier to detect than telluric planets. However, due to the increasing sensitivity of the detection methods, one already begins to observe the first planets of sizes comparable to the Earth.

So, as we can see, thousands have been discovered in the past two decades, mostly with NASA's Kepler space telescope. The first extra solar planet discovery was confirmed in 1992, although they had been predicted long before. Planets are difficult to detect directly because they are so much dimmer than the stars they orbit. The Sun is a billion (10⁹) times brighter than Jupiter and 10 billion (10¹⁰) times brighter than the Earth.

According to space.com - These worlds come in a huge variety of sizes and orbits. Some are gigantic planets hugging close to their parent stars; others are icy, some rocky. NASA and other agencies are looking for a special kind of planet: one that’s the same size as Earth, orbiting a sun-like star in the habitable zone. The habitable zone is the range of distances from a star where a planet’s temperature allows liquid water oceans, critical for life on Earth. The earliest definition of the zone was based on simple thermal equilibrium, but current calculations of the habitable zone include many other factors, including the greenhouse effect of a planet’s atmosphere. This makes the boundaries of a habitable zone "fuzzy."

There are various available methods for detection of these extra solar planets, short of visiting them with FTL ships. If one is interested in details of various methods, then please visit website of Las Cumbres Observatory.

But a more interesting question is – what would be the social impact of a finding of Earth’s Twin out there? There is a lot of interest in the study of this phenomenon across the world by both religious and political leaders – for the same obvious reasons. Most of the apprehensions border on possibility of chaos and widespread anarchy. Why? Well you have to take a deep look at how our society has been structured since the birth of formal civilization thousands of years ago.

According to Wikipedia - The cultural impact of extraterrestrial contact is the corpus of changes to terrestrial science, technology, religion, politics, and ecosystems resulting from contact with an extraterrestrial civilization. Although closely related to it, the study of the cultural impact of extraterrestrial contact is distinct from the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), which attempts to locate intelligent life as opposed to analyzing the implications of contact with that life. The potential changes from extraterrestrial contact could vary greatly in magnitude and type, based on the extraterrestrial civilization's level of technological advancement, degree of benevolence or malevolence, and level of mutual comprehension between itself and humanity. The medium, through which humanity is contacted, be it electromagnetic radiation, direct physical interaction, extraterrestrial artifact, or otherwise, may also influence the results of contact. Incorporating these factors, various systems have been created to assess the implications of extraterrestrial contact. The implications of extraterrestrial contact, particularly with a technologically superior civilization, have often been likened to the meeting of two vastly different human cultures on Earth, an historical precedent being the Columbian Exchange. Such meetings have generally led to the destruction of the civilization receiving contact (as opposed to the "contactor", which initiates contact), and therefore destruction of human civilization is a possible outcome. However, the absence of any such contact to date means such conjecture is largely speculative.

According to an article on The Conversation - Habitable exoplanets are bad news for humanity. What did not make the news, however, is that this discovery also slightly increases how much credence we give to the possibility of near-term human extinction. This is because of a concept known as the Great Filter. The author hopes for a barren Kepler-186f and argues - If Kepler-186f is teeming with intelligent life, then that would be really bad news for humanity.

As philosopher Nick Bostrom once said: - The silence of the night sky is golden … in the search for extraterrestrial life, no news is good news. It promises a potentially great future for humanity.

In my opinion, this is a way different way of approaching a monumental question of whether we are alone in the universe, or ever have been? Doomsday scenarios abound across the literature of our species. But I ask why should it always be an extinction trajectory?

Well, as it turns out – according to space.com - Announced on July 23, 2015, planet Kepler-452b is larger than Earth and orbits a star nearly identical to the sun, but older and therefore hotter. The planet's orbit is nearly the same as Earth's, and its year is about 20 days longer than Earth's. Kepler-452b is 1,400 light-years away.

John Traveler in this article - What the Discovery of Earth Sized Exoplanets Means for the Human Race – goes on to say - To find that we are not alone in the vast cosmos will undoubtedly have substantial impact on human cultural, socio-religious, and intellectual paradigms. It’s safe to predict, such a discovery might have the greatest impact on human perspectives since ancient humans first experienced the cognitive foundations of logical thought and reason.

I firmly believe that human society would be changed for the better. Of course there will be some changes which a certain section of society might not like. The strangle hold that our current political and religious organizations have upon us would be loosened a bit. We may even suffer through a period when the faith system collapses, forcing humanity to start believing in itself rather than a divine intervention and overseeing. But we will pull through. We have come a long way in the last 400 years and we have survived 200,000 years of super volcanoes, earthquakes, global climate changes, flooding of epic proportions, genetic changes, and epidemics and have achieved, well almost, a global civilization.

My hopes for humanity are high. More on this in the next post.

“Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people” – Carl Sagan.

I return to my favourite theme of the Universe and all of creation. Somewhat grand with a hint of vagueness in restarting my outpouring of thoughts, the act of focusing my consciousness on the grandest stage of them of all. How did material complexity, then single-cell life, then animals and consciousness emerge from chaos? We still don’t how many universes are there? Is everything the result of a meaningless cosmic sneeze, or of an intentional First Cause?

As Robert Lanza puts it – “You’re not an object — you are your consciousness. You’re a unified being, not just your wriggling arm or foot, but part of a larger equation that includes all the colors, sensations and objects you perceive. If you divorce one side of the equation from the other you cease to exist. Indeed, experiments confirm that particles only exist with real properties if they’re observed. Until the mind sets the scaffolding of things in place, they can’t be thought of as having any real existence — neither duration nor position in space.”

As the great physicist John Wheeler said, “No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon.” That’s why in real experiments, not just the properties of matter — but space and time themselves — depend on the observer. Our consciousness isn’t just part of the equation — the equation is us (I guess).

I am greatly moved, almost emotionally, by one of Post-Impressionist Paul Gauguin's most famous paintings – “Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?” Our quest to understand who we are is in part a quest to understand the destiny and purpose of our origin and existence. For the forthcoming few weeks, I shall be focusing my attention on these aspects before moving on to more humdrum issues requiring focused thought.

Here are some of the places on this planet that I have visited!

• View my profile
• Create your own travel map.

Humour and Human Civilization

Humans throughout the centuries have pondered and discussed on what sets apart a group of animals and a society. In my opinion, one of the essential ingredients of any successful civilization or society is humour and its ability to laugh at itself. The more tolerant a society, better the quality of humour.

Wikipedia defines humour as – “Humour or humor (see spelling differences) is the tendency of particular cognitive experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement. The term derives from the humoral medicine of the ancient Greeks, which taught that the balance of fluids in the human body, known as humors (Latin: humor, "body fluid"), control human health and emotion”.

Erma Bombeck made the most fundamental and yet simple statement about civilization when she said - "When humour goes, there goes civilization.". Mind you, society of a kind does exist without humour, but it is not the one where ideas and the human spirit prosper and grow. Victor Borge also remarked that "Humour is something that thrives between man's aspirations and his limitations. There is more logic in humor than in anything else. Because, you see, humor is truth."

Of course there have been some very serious attempts at understanding humour (pun intended) and mostly it has to do with understanding the human psychology. Dr. Chaya Ostrower in this PhD study and the book – “Without humour we would all have committed suicide", has taken a serious side to the study of humour. But humour is a complex phenomenon and more often than not, it has been extremely culture context specific. There are some important questions to identifying what is funny and humorous against sterile and stressful or even plain obscene.

One might start by asking what is the purpose of humour? Why do we laugh?

According to Dr. Chaya Ostrower - Humour is a complex phenomenon. There is no general theory of humour or even an agreed definition. When we try to define exactly what counts as humour and what does not, or how humour operates, we find it quite difficult.

According to him - Humor is comprised of three components: wit, mirth, and laughter. Wit is the cognitive experience, Mirth the emotional experience, Laughter the physiological experience. We often equate laughter with humor, but there are many instances of laughter (tickling, nervousness, etc.) that clearly have little to do with humor. Similarly, there are many instances of humour that do not result in laughter (due to the mood of the appreciator, the social context, etc.). Humour is a quality of perception that enables us to experience joy even when faced with adversity. Stress is an adverse condition during which we may experience tension or fatigue, feel unpleasant emotions and sometimes develop a sense of hopelessness or futility. You cannot feel stress, angry, depressed, anxious, guilty, or resentful and experience humor at the same time. Like beauty being in the eyes of the beholder, humor is in the funny bone of the receiver of the experience.

This makes it extremely difficult to define what would constitute humour and this very quality has been often taken in various science fiction stories, such as Star Trek for instance, where both the Vulcan Spock and later the android Data, display considerable difficulties in understanding human context of humour. Different cultures have different expectations of humour so comedy shows are not always successful when transplanted into another culture.

Hence you’d find the humour of one culture totally incomprehensible to someone from another culture.

Mark Twain, a giant in American literature, in Following the Equator: A Journey around the World, said - “There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages.”

There is of course a systemic view of humour, which is sort of, let’s say, non-humorous.

Philip Dorrell defines humour as – “Most people think of humour as something that exists for the sake of entertainment, or for adding spice to social occasions. But humour is an aspect of the human mind, and as such, is almost certainly part of a system for information processing. So what sort of information is being processed when we laugh at something funny?”

According to him - most humour follows a pattern like this:

First we think that something is true, based on clues given to us, But then we are presented with further evidence, which shows that we were wrong, In fact we were so wrong, that there was something wrong with the thought processes that lead to the initial conclusion.

And at the end of this process, we feel pleasure

Conveyance of Humour, though not necessarily confined to the territory of books alone, is the cornerstone of what we would recognize as a truly tolerant civilization or society. I loosely refer to society and civilization in the same context although there are people who would enjoy spending an evening differentiating between the two. The fact that humour is an essential ingredient of a successful leader and hence helping lubricate the functioning of a society was captured by Dwight D. Eisenhower when he said - "A sense of humour is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done"

Humour would be pointless if not conveyed to the masses and it is here where the role of an author or a writer becomes important. Albert Camus once said - “The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.” The importance of books in the development of humanity & spread of humour cannot be understated".

Barbara W. Tuchman has very aptly captured the thought - “Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are engines of change (as the poet said), windows on the world and lighthouses erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.”

Thus, in a sense, humour defines our identity as a species apart from the general animal kingdom and also defines our species. Without humour, we'd rather be animals herding together in vast numbers. In some parts of the world, this is still true to some extent :-)

The Socrates Triple Filter Test!

In ancient Greece , Socrates was reputed to hold knowledge in high esteem.

One day an acquaintance met the great philosopher and said, 'Do you know what I just heard about your friend?'

'Hold on a minute,' Socrates replied. 'Before telling me anything, I'd like you to pass a little test. It's called the Triple Filter Test.'

'Triple filter?'

'That's right,' Socrates continued. 'Before you talk to me about my friend, it might be a good idea to take a moment and filter what you're going to say. That's why I call it the triple filter test.'

'The first filter is TRUTH. Have you made absolutely sure that what you are about to tell me is true?'

'No,' the man said, 'actually I just heard about it and...'

'All right,' said Socrates. 'So you don't really know if it's true or not. Now let's try the second filter, the filter of GOODNESS. Is what you are about to tell me about my friend something good?'

'No, on the contrary...'

'So,' Socrates continued, 'you want to tell me something bad about him, but you're not certain it's true. You may still pass the test though, because there's one filter left: the filter of USEFULNESS. Is what you want to tell me about my friend going to be useful to me?'

'No, not really.'

'Well,' concluded Socrates, 'if what you want to tell me is neither true nor good nor even useful, why tell it to me at all?'

The mystery of human Mortality

Living forever is just for Hollywood. But why do humans age? We are born with a robust toolbox full of mechanisms to fight disease and injury, which we might think should arm us against stiff joints and other ailments. But as we age, the body's repair mechanisms get out of shape. In effect, our resilience to physical injury and stress declines. Theories for why people age can be divided into two categories:

1) Like other human characteristics, aging could just be a part of human genetics and is somehow beneficial.

2) In the less optimistic view, aging has no purpose and results from cellular damage that occurs over a person's lifetime.

A handful of researchers, however, think science will ultimately delay aging at least long enough to double life spans.

Wish all of you a very Happy Diwali

Diwali or Dīpāvali is a significant festival in Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism, and an official holiday in India. Adherents of these religions celebrate Diwali as the Festival of Lights. They light diyas—cotton string wicks inserted in small clay pots filled with oil—to signify victory of good over the evil within an individual.

Diwali is the abbreviation of the Sanskrit word "Deepavali" - Deepa meaning light and Avali, meaning a row. It means a row of lights and indeed illumination forms its main attraction. It symbolises that age-old culture of India which teaches us to vanquish ignorance that subdues humanity and to drive away darkness that engulfs the light of knowledge.

Diwali, the festival of lights, even today in this modern world, projects the rich and glorious past and teaches us to uphold the true values of life.

Some pearls of wisdom

ONE. Give people more than they expect and do it cheerfully.

TWO. Marry a man/woman you love to talk to. As you get older, their conversational skills will be as important as any other.

THREE. Don't believe all you hear, spend all you have or sleep all you want.

FOUR. When you say, 'I love you,' mean it.

FIVE. When you say, 'I'm sorry,' look the person in the eye.

SIX. Be engaged at least six months before you get married.

SEVEN. Believe in love at first sight.

EIGHT. Never laugh at anyone's dreams. People who don't have dreams don't have much.

NINE. Love deeply and passionately.. You might get hurt but it's the only way to live life completely.

TEN.. In disagreements, fight fairly. No name calling.

ELEVEN. Don't judge people by their relatives.

TWELVE. Talk slowly but think quickly.

THIRTEEN! .. When someone asks you a question you don't want to answer, smile and ask, 'Why do you want to know?'

FOURTEEN. Remember that great love and great achievements involve great risk.

FIFTEEN. Say 'bless you' when you hear someone sneeze.

SIXTEEN. When you lose, don't lose the lesson.

SEVENTEEN. Remember the three R's: Respect for self; Respect for others; and Responsibility for all your actions.

EIGHTEEN. Don't let a little dispute injure a great friendship.

NINETEEN. When you realize you've made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.

TWENTY. Smile when picking up the phone. The caller will hear it in your voice

TWENTY- ONE. Spend some time alone.

End of an Era – Geocities!

Last week, Yahoo finally announced the end of Geocities…

Before Twitter, before Facebook, before MySpace – heck, even before Friendster, there was a service known as GeoCities. For those who grew up on the Net in the 90s, it was about as close as you get to what we know today as social networks. It was essentially an organization of like-minded user-created homepages in different topical communities like sports, entertainment, and tech.

Back in the proverbial day, GeoCities was the place where many a modern-day internet nerd cut his or her teeth. After a spectacular dot com purchase of $3.65 billion and an equally spectacular dot com bust, its closure marks the end of one of the earliest ages of the social web.

I remember starting my first page with Geocities. Although, with the Yahoo’s focus elsewhere, it makes sense to shut down what is essentially an internet relic. Still, to those who look back with nostalgia, October 26 could well be a wistful day.

If you don’t know what Geocities is, or rather was, then here’s a wikipedia link for you!

But if you are familiar with it, it’s official end is certainly a bit nostalgic. When every thought that just by making a web page, one would get rich overnight. Was something like the completely misunderstood business of AMWAY :-)

Without a sound business model, people were thinking that just by making some loose web pages sticking together, they could make millions.

Of course there were always those enthusiasts who were doing it for the fun (like me).

GeoCities began in mid-1995 as BHI, which stood for "Beverly Hills Internet," a small Web hosting and development company in Southern California.

The company also created its own Web directory, organized thematically in six "neighborhoods." The neighborhood included "Colosseum," "Hollywood," "RodeoDrive," "SunsetStrip," "WallStreet," and "WestHollywood." In mid-1995, the company decided to offer users (thereafter known as "Homesteaders") the ability to develop free home pages within those neighborhoods. Chat, bulletin boards, and other elements of "community" were added soon after, helping foster rapid growth. On July 5, 1995 Geocities added additional cities, including "CapitolHill," "Paris," "SiliconValley," and "Tokyo." By December 1995, the company, which now had a total of 14 neighborhoods, was signing up thousands of Homesteaders a day and getting over six million monthly page views. The company decided to focus on building membership and community, and on December 15, 1995, BHI became known as GeoCities after having also been called Geopages.

Whatever said, the closure of Geocities marks the end of an era!

The New National ID or Unique Identity Card project!

There’s been so much talk of the mega project of issuing unique identification number and card to every Indian. UPA Government’s ambitious project to provide every Indian with a unique identity card. In its manifesto, the Congress had said this would be possible after the publication of the national population register in 2011. Besides addressing security concerns, the UID project will overhaul and direct the delivery mechanism for public goods and services to intended beneficiaries.

However, has anybody imagined how life possibly could be under the shadow of this all knowing and super powerful card? On a lighter side, I have come across a great email from one of my friends. Sharing it here… just to give a taste of what’s to come… So Friends, Enjoy your new ID card !

Nandan Nilekani's.. ....Fully integrated ID card system for Indian citizens

Operator : "Thank you for calling Pizza Hut . May I have your..."

Customer: "Heloo, Heloo, can I order.."

Operator : "Can I have your multi purpose ID card number first, Sir?"

Customer: "It's he..., hold........ ..on..... .889861356102049 998-45-54610"

Operator : "OK... You're... Mr Singh and you're calling from 17 Jal Vayu. Your home number is 22678893, your office 25076666 and your mobile is 09869798888. Today morning you landed in India at IG International Airport. Welcome back, Sir. Which number are you calling from now Sir?"

Customer: "Home! How did you get all my phone numbers?

Operator : "We are connected to the system Sir"

Customer: "May I order your Seafood Pizza..."

Operator : "That's not a good idea Sir"

Customer: "How come?"

Operator : "According to your medical records, you have high blood pressure and even higher cholesterol level Sir"

Customer: "What?... What do you recommend then?"

Operator : "Try our Low Fat Pizza. You'll like it"

Customer: "How do you know for sure?"

Operator : "You borrowed a book entitled "Popular Dishes" from the National Library last week Sir"

Customer: "OK I give up... Give me three family size ones then, how much will that cost?"

Operator : "That should be enough for your family of 05, Sir. The total is Rs 500.00"

Customer: "Can I pay by! Credit card?"

Operator : "I'm afraid you have to pay us cash, Sir. Your credit card is over the limit and you owe your bank Rs 23,000.75 since October last year. That's not including the late payment charges on your housing loan, Sir...."

Customer: "I guess I have to run to the neighbourhood ATM and withdraw some cash before your guy arrives"

Operator : "You can't Sir. Based on the records, you've reached your daily limit on machine withdrawal today"

Customer: "Never mind just send the pizzas, I'll have the cash ready. How long is it gonna take anyway?"

Operator : "About 45 minutes Sir, but if you can't wait you can always come and collect it on your Nano Car..."

Customer: " What!" Operator : "According to the details in system, you own a Nano car,...registration number GZ-05-AB-1107. ."

Customer: " ????"

Operator : "Is there anything else Sir?"

Customer: "Nothing... By the way... Aren't you giving me that 3 free bottles of cola as advertised?"

Operator : "We normally would Sir, but based on your records you're also diabetic.... ... "

Customer: #$$^%&$@$% ^

Operator : "Better watch your language Sir.. Remember on 15th July 2009 you were convicted of using abusive language on a policeman... ?"

Customer: [Faints]

Enjoy your new ID card !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Lawyer and the Blonde

A lawyer and a blonde woman are sitting next to each other on a long flight. 

The lawyer asks if she would like to play a fun game The blonde is tired and just wants to take a nap, so she politely declines and tries to catch a few winks. 

The lawyer persists, that the game is a lot of fun. I ask you a question, and if you don't know the answer, you pay me only $5; You ask me one, and if I don't know the answer, I will pay you $500.' 

This catches the blonde's attention; and, to keep him quiet, she agrees to play the game. The lawyer asks the first question. 

What's the distance from the earth to the moon?' The blonde doesn't say a word, reaches in to her purse, pulls out a five-dollar bill, and hands it to the lawyer. 

Now, it's the blonde's turn. She asks the lawyer, 'What goes up a hill with three legs, and comes down with four?' 

The lawyer uses his laptop, searches all references. He uses the airphone; he searches the Net and even the Library of Congress. He sends e-mails to all the smart friends he knows, all to no avail. After one hour of searching he finally gives up. 

He wakes up the blonde and hands her $500. The blonde takes the $500 and goes back to sleep. The lawyer is going nuts not knowing the answer. 

He wakes her up and asks, 'Well, so what goes up a hill with three legs and comes down with four?' The blonde reaches into her purse, hands the lawyer $5 and goes back to sleep.

Life Changing Habits!

Most of the time we do things, say things unconsciously and then regret uttering them…

Here’s a simple method of turning your life around - Make these Breakthrough habits part of your life and positive things will begin rapidly. no warrantees though and you can’t sue since this is free advice! However, it has high degrees of certainties that if followed, in general, provides desirable results… and perhaps bring you what you’ve been missing.

Practice these Habits and watch what happens.

The First Habit

Let go of your negative feelings. Pay attention to what you’re saying, thinking and doing. Watch all the time. Stay awake to what’s happening. Be on the lookout all the time. When you see some negative thought, you stop it. When you see some negative feeling, you stop it. When you see you’re taking some negative action, you stop it.

If what you’re thinking, feeling, saying or doing is negative, end it. Stop it.

If I hand you a red-hot metal rod you drop it in a split second, right? Negative feelings, words, thoughts, actions, all those are hot metal rods. Drop them. Negative, not-liking, disapproval, negativity is burning up your life just like a red-hot fireplace metal rod burns up your hand.

Drop the negative feelings like you would drop a hot red metal rod.

Here’s the test. Is it negative? Then, it’s negative and hurting your life. Drop it.

The Second Habit

Hold in mind what you want. Hold in mind means what you keep in your mind or visualize. Hold in mind means the thoughts and feelings that occupy your mind all the time.

You get what you hold in mind. Whatever is occupying your mind, your thoughts and your feelings, is what you manifest in the material world. It’s the law of attraction.

Positive attracts positive, negative attracts negative. Love attracts love. Negative attracts more negative. Positivity is the same energy as positive, success, abundance, health, money, peace.

If you hold in mind “I can’t,” you’re right, you can’t. If you hold in mind “I don’t have it,” you’re right, you don’t have it and you aren’t going to have it. You’re holding the wrong thing in mind. You’re holding in mind what you don’t want.

Fake it until you make it. Stop thinking you don’t have it. Hold in your mind only what you want. Prove it to yourself. Make a good effort. What do you have to lose? If I’m right you get to have everything.

If I’m wrong, you’re no worse off. Here is a little hint: If it doesn’t work, it’s because your mind talked you out of doing it. Your mind talked you out of making a decision. Your mind talked you out of being determined and persistent. You (like everyone else on the planet) have spent your entire life collecting negative feelings.

Here’s another hint: You can easily see what you’re holding in your mind. Watch what you’re saying all the time. Watch what you’re thinking. And, you can see what you’re holding in your mind by paying attention to your feelings.

Now remember, this is not about affirmations. This is not about hanging signs around your house and car. This is about holding in mind what you want. You do that by dropping thoughts, words or feelings which express what you don’t want.

The Third Habit

Make a commitment to be positive and loving, in spite of what’s happening. Decide: “I’m going to be positive and loving in spite of whatever is happening.” Make that your motto.

Be positive in spite of what happens. You live your life automatically reacting with emotions you learned as small kid.

You’re not a kid anymore (at least I hope so, if you have the patience of reading this!), but you’re still doing the same thing. End the habit of automatically reacting. It’s just a decision. Something happens that seems to be negative. You react. You leave the present moment and you go off. Does that ever solve anything?

Anger, breaking into hysteria, feeling bad because someone gave you a dirty look or disagreed with you? Negative, negative behavior doesn’t do anything for you except make you more negative and non-loving.

It never solves anything. It never helps anything. Perhaps you know that. Perhaps you even agree with me, because you have experienced it yourself many, many times. But we all like to avoid a decision. However, I strongly recommend that you make a decision - I am going to be loving and positive in spite of whatever happens.

Remember the hot metal rod? Begin by letting go of the hot metal rod called negative, non-loving reactions. Try it. Prove it to yourself. Be positive and loving in spite of whatever happens, whatever is going on, whatever they’re doing or saying. Be positive and loving and watch what happens.

When you’re positive and loving in spite of whatever, you’re moving over to the side of love. Love conquers all. Love transforms. Love is the answer.

Try to be positive and loving in spite of whatever happens. Should I be saying that – “Try”? As Yoda once told Skywalker – there is no try… you either do it or don’t.

I bet, you will be one of the happiest and you will have most of the things that you want in life. Of course I am not some crazy nut telling you that be positive and think that you are going to get a million dollars tomorrow and perhaps in a month or two, you would get it. Of course not. The world, the universe does not work that way. One has to direct conscious thought and then follow up with relevant actions to get from point A to point B. what positive thinking helps with is ensuring that we do not get discouraged if the journey from point A to Point B happens to long, tiring and arduous.

Prove it to yourself. I always thought good luck was something mysterious that happened to people for no good reason. Now perhaps I am beginning to understand.

Atlantis… found at last!

The romance associated with the lost city, island and civilization of Atlantis refuses to die down. During my recent visit to Dubai, I got a unique opportunity to visit the hotel Atlantis famed, among other things, for its “lost chambers” which portray the story of ancient civilization of Atlantis.

The city of Atlantis is one of the most historical mysteries. Around 350 BC, Plato was the first to write about this somewhat magical island in two books. The Greek philosopher and teacher described, in great detail, the advanced technology of this ancient place before it suddenly vanished "in a day and a night" beneath the Atlantic Ocean.

There is no consensus on how to interpret the so called “myth” of Atlantis.

According to Wikipedia – Atlantis (in Greek, Ἀτλαντὶς νῆσος, "island of Atlas") is a legendary island first mentioned in Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias.

In Plato's account, Atlantis was a naval power lying "in front of the Pillars of Hercules" that conquered many parts of Western Europe and Africa 9,000 years before the time of Solon, or approximately 9600 BC. After a failed attempt to invade Athens, Atlantis sank into the ocean "in a single day and night of misfortune".

Scholars dispute whether and how much Plato's story or account was inspired by older traditions. Some scholars argue Plato drew upon memories of past events such as the Thera eruption or the Trojan War, while others insist that he took inspiration from contemporary events like the destruction of Helike in 373 BC or the failed Athenian invasion of Sicily in 415–413 BC

According to MythWeb - According to the philosopher Plato, an advanced civilization that sank beneath the waves, a legend based perhaps on Minoan Crete. The fabled island-continent derives its name from the Titan Atlas. It was said to be out beyond the western headland where the immortal giant holds up the heavens by means of a pillar on his back. Plato maintained that Atlantis was a real place, not a myth. He in turn had heard of it from certain wise men of Egypt, whose civilization spanned the era when Atlantis was said to have flourished, whereas earlier civilizations in Greece had been wiped out by natural catastrophes - or so the Egyptians said.

One of the balanced presentation of facts around Atlantis can be found on Atlantis and Paleogeography.

Others attribute Plato with saying that the sea god Poseidon (Neptune) was given Atlantis and on a hill in the middle of the island the god built his mortal wife a large home. This palace was surrounded by five rings of water and land connected only by tunnels large enough for ships to pass through. Atlantians were amazing engineers. They built palaces, temples, harbors, docks and a complicated water system - all about 12,000 years ago. Farmers grew the food on a field not much larger than Oklahoma State. Behind this massive field there where mountains touching the sky where many of the wealthy villagers lived. Plato described spectacular buildings, fountains that had both hot and cold water, stone walls covered with precious metals and huge statues made of gold (somewhat difficult to believe, but hey – anything goes in mythology!)

Another concise version about Atlantis can be found here.

A very interesting description of Plato’s Atlantis is given in - Atlantis: the Myth." Encyclopedia Mythica from Encyclopedia Mythica Online. [Accessed October 04, 2009].

My visit into the very modern version of Atlantis and its lost chambers was very different and expensive (at least from an Indian perspective).

One cannot but be amazed at the sheer audacity of what has gone into building the artificial island where the current Atlantis stand!

Dubai is an amazing marvel in itself and even more so is the series of islands – one of them being the Palm Jumeira on which “Hotel Atlantis” is located. It hasn’t been cheap, but it is definitely one example of the amazing technological advances that humanity has made in a single century!

In my next post, I will be writing more on the details of this modern age Atlantis…

Now that’s what I would call a Challenge in Life or PUNJABI confidence!

George Bush was sitting in his office wondering whom to invade next when his telephone rang.

'Hello, Mr. Bush!' a heavily accented Punjabi voice said, 'This is Gurmukh from Phagwara, District Kapurthala, Punjab .. I am ringing to inform you that we are officially declaring the war on you!'

'Well, Gurmukh,' Bush replied, 'This is indeed important news! How big is your army'

'Right now,' said Gurmukh, after a moment's calculation, 'there is myself, my cousin Sukhdev, my next door neighbor Bhagat, and the entire kabaddi team from the gurudwara. That makes eight'

Bush paused. 'I must tell you, Gurmukh that I have one million men in my army waiting to move on my command.'

'Arrey O! Main kya..' said Gurmukh. 'I'll have to ring you back!'

Sure enough, the next day, Gurmukh called again.

‘Mr. Bush, it is Gurmukh, I'm calling from Phagwara STD, the war is still on! We have managed to acquire some infantry equipment!'

'And what equipment would that be, Gurmukh' Bush asked.

'Well, we have two combines, a donkey and Amrik's tractor.'

Bush sighed. 'I must tell you, Gurmukh, that I have 16,000 tanks and 14,000 armored personnel carriers. Also, I've increased my army to 1-1/2 million since we last spoke.'

'Oh teri....' said Gurmukh. 'I'll have to get back to you.'

Sure enough, Gurmukh rang again the next day.

'Mr. Bush, the war is still on! We have managed to get ourselves airborne....

.. We've modified Amrik's tractor by adding a couple of shotguns, sticking on some wings and the pind's generator. Four school pass boys from Malpur have joined us as well!'

Bush was silent for a minute and then cleared his throat. 'I must tell you, Gurmukh, that I have 10,000 bombers and 20,000 fighter planes. My military complex is surrounded by laser-guided, surface-to-air missile sites. And since we last spoke, I've increased my army to TWO MILLION!'

'Tera bhala hove....' said Gurmuk, 'I'll have to ring you back.'

Sure enough, Gurmukh called again the next day.

'Kiddan, Mr.Bush! I am sorry to tell you that we have had to call off the war.'

'I'm sorry to hear that,' said Bush. 'Why the sudden change of heart'

'Well,' said Gurmukh, 'we've all had a long chat over a couple of lassi's, and decided there's no way we can feed two million prisoners of wars!'

NOW THAT'S CALLED PUNJABI CONFIDENCE!

THE BEST EQUATION OF MAN & WOMAN

I sincerely hope that no animal rights or for that matter woman rights groups would take this seriously… this is purely supposed to be on the lighter side of life…and to borrow (and adapt) from Khushwant Singh… with satire towards one and all J

Equation 1

Human = eat + sleep + work + enjoy

Donkey = eat + sleep

Therefore:

Human = Donkey + Work + enjoy

Therefore:

Human-enjoy = Donkey + Work

In other words,

A Human that doesn't know how to enjoy = Donkey that works.

++++++++++++ +++++++++ +++++++++ +++++++++ +++++++++ ++ ++

Equation 2

Man = eat + sleep + earn money

Donkey = eat + sleep

Therefore:


Man = Donkey + earn money

Therefore:

Man-earn money = Donkey

In other words

Man who doesn't earn money = Donkey

++++++++++++ +++++++++ +++++++++ +++++++++ +++++++++ +

Equation 3

Woman= eat + sleep + spend

Donkey = eat + sleep

Therefore:

Woman = Donkey + spend

Woman - spend = Donkey

In other words,

Woman who doesn't spend = Donkey

++++++++++++ +++++++++ +++++++++ +++++++++ +++++++++ +

To Conclude:

From Equation 2 and Equation 3

Man who doesn't earn money = Woman who doesn't spend

Man earns money not to let woman become a donkey!

And a woman spends not to let the man become a donkey!

So, We have:

Man + Woman = Donkey + earn money + Donkey + Spend money

Therefore from postulates 1 and 2, we can

conclude

Man + Woman = 2 Donkeys that live happily together!