DHONI AND ME
Indian politicians who died mysteriously
Infographic: Nehru family tree
Instances when India could have faced military coup
Famous encounter specialists of India
Actors turned politicians who made it big
LAUGH AT MY EXPENSE—DO I RESEMBLE DHONI?
There is this story about a young girl who impressed the king by her extraordinary intelligence. The king promised to give her any reward she wanted .The smart girl merely requested that she be given grains of rice every day.She clarified she be given one grain on day 1, two on day 2, four on day 4, 8 on day 5 and so on—doubling every day. The king hardly realized what he was getting into when he acceded to what he thought was an easily affordable request.
LAUGH AT MY EXPENSE—DO I RESEMBLE DHONI?
Mathematics students among my readers will tell you that at the end of a few months the king would have to part with an astronomical amount of grain – a few billion grains--the likes of which he would never possess.
I refer to the power of compound interest, logarithmic growth , exponential growth and such other concepts .
I was recounting this to someone when he told me that what is happening in Japan runs along the same lines. He said that the Richter scale too measures earthquakes in terms of logarithmic increase. To clarify destructive power of earthquakes here is the chart:
5 on Richter scale is equal to 32 kilotons of energy
6 ………………………………………. 1 million tones of energy
7…………………………………….32 million tones
8 ………………………………..1000million tones
9………………………………..32000000000 tonnes
Phew !Think about what the Japanese are experiencing seemingly endlessly.
In a strange twist of events we in India are experiencing a quake of no less effect than what the Japanese are experiencing. Quake of a different kind.
In my boyhood I used to hear of corruption of a few thousand rupees. In my college days I was aghast that someone could swindle a few lakhs. Then lakhs became passé and I started hearing of crores being siphoned of. Now the 2G scam runs into –hold your breath-- 1.76 lakh crores ! Truly logarithmic growth .
I also recall my dad referring admiringly about his friends who were lakhpatis . My brother had friends in the 70’s who were worth a crore and he would call them major success stories. My friends earn over Rs 2 crores per year and they call themselves failures!
My parents owned a small house in Mumbai that they sold in the mid sixties for Rs 10000 and spoke in hushed tones about this ‘bonanza’ . In the 1980’s I tried to buy an apartment in Mumbai and found that at RS. 2000 per square foot I could only gasp in pain. In the late nineties apartment costs ran to Rs 10000 per square foot and I almost had an heart attack.These days brokers have found a creative way to talk to me without shocking me.
Last evening I spoke to my broker and told him I wished to buy an apartment about 50 kms outside Mumbai hoping that the prices there would be affordable. He told me that it would cost my only RS. 2000. I was pleasantly shocked at this apparent fall in prices .I put the phone down and excitedly told my wife that at last we could own property in Mumbai and requested her to prepare sweets with the finest ghee as a token of thanks to the Almighty for his benevolence. Just as she was frying jalebis the broker called again.
‘I was not finished when you put the phone down’ he said
I looked at the wife and told her that maybe prices had fallen further. She looked at the pooja room and promised to shave my head bald like Dhoni if I bought the flat the broker was talking about.
‘But sir if only you had waited a moment. I wanted to tell you that the price of an apartment in that locality is RS 2000 per square inch.’
Do you think I had to shave my head?
K.R.RAVI
WWW.KRRAVI.COM
