“ACCHE DIN AA GAYE…..”
OR ‘converse’ OF MURPHY’S LAW
Have
you ever experienced “on” days and “off” days? Well, I have – on several
occasions, more ‘off’ than ‘on’. Many of you would have experienced whatever
you do on a particular day turn out real good. You locate something which you had been searching
for a long time, you get a long-awaited phone call, one of your old chum turns
up unexpectedly after a gap of many years, you get a refund cheque from IT
department for a few thousand rupees etc., etc.
On
an ‘off’ day, you will see that everything goes wrong – the cooking gas breathes
its last much before the normal due date, the micro wave conks off, the milk
fellow / newspaper boy does not turn up, ‘Chennai Super Kings’ pathetically
loses the semis, and you pick up an argument with your spouse for no apparent
reason, and before you could count one, two, three, things get totally out of
control, you discover that the fuel tank is empty in your car, and you miss the
company car, and then you are late for the office and the boss fires you for
coming late every other day……
On
my ‘off’ days, I was in much more pathetic situations. But today, however, was
a wonderfully ‘on’ day for me. Ask me how…. But before that, I must tell you,
why I have captioned this blog “converse” of Murphy’s Law. As for ‘Acche din
……’, we all know what it is all about, thanks to our dear Modi Saab.
Those
who had been following / reading / ever read my earlier blogs, will know that
two topics which are close to my heart are ‘Murphy’s Law’, and ‘Elliots Beach’.
Murphy’s Law, as you may know simply states “ IF ANY THING CAN GO WRONG,
IT WILL". Now, what is converse of the law, or what is meant by
‘converse’ in the first place? Those of you who get goose bumps thinking of
‘Mathematics’ or those who used get agonizing and weird dreams on the nights
prior to Maths exams, please take a looooooooong breath.
Reference:
In
mathematics, the Pythagorean theorem – or Pythagoras’ therem – is a relation in
Euclidean geometry among
the three sides of a right triangle. It states that the square of the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle) is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides.
The theorem can be written as an equation relating the lengths of the sides a, b and c,
often called the Pythagorean equation
a square + b square = c square
where c represents the length of the
hypotenuse, and a and b represent the lengths
of the other two sides.
The
Pythagorean theorem is named after the Greek mathematician Pythagoras (ca. 570 BC—ca. 495 BC), who by
tradition is credited with its proof,[2][3] although it is often argued that knowledge of the theorem
predates him. There is evidence that Babylonian mathematicians understood the formula, although there is no evidence that
they used it in a mathematical framework.[4][5] Mesopotamian, Indian / Chinese mathematicians have
all been known for independently discovering the result, some even providing
proofs of special cases.
The
theorem has numerous proofs, possibly the most of
any mathematical theorem. These are very diverse, including both geometric
proofs and algebraic proofs, with some dating back thousands of years. The
theorem can be generalized in various ways, including higher-dimensional
spaces, to spaces that are not Euclidean, to objects that are not right
triangles, and indeed, to objects that are not triangles at all, but n-dimensional
solids. The Pythagorean theorem has attracted interest outside mathematics as a
symbol of mathematical abstruseness, mystique, or intellectual power; popular
references in literature, plays, musicals, songs, stamps and cartoons abound.
For
more pictorial representations, pl. go the link below:
Coming
to the ‘converse’ part,
Pythagorean Theorem
converse:
If the square of one side of a triangle is equal to the sum of
the squares of the other two sides, then the triangle is a right triangle.
Suffice
to say that every theorem or law has a converse. Now you know where I am coming
to – yes, the converse of Murphy’s Law, as I discovered this morning is
“
IF ANY THING WILL GO RIGHT, IT CAN “
Having
said that, and having sufficiently confused you, I will now get back to the
blog story, and in the end, you will understand how for a change, converse of
ML was proved right.
For
that, I must take you back to several months, when one of my Dubai friends
gifted me a ‘BlackBerry’ mobile phone. Mind you, that was when the so called
‘smart’ phones were yet to enter Indian market, and touch screen technology was
in its nascent stage.
This
‘friend’ never missed an opportunity to announce to the world that he gifted
this lovely piece to me, and every time I would shrink by an inch in the
company of other friends present, to be told about the great favour the guy did
me. However, before long, I discovered to my dismay that the piece did not have
the identification number ! Since this was a Korean / Chinese piece, the authorized
BB service centre will not entertain the work. I got it done by a local service
guy who charged me 900/- to ‘install’ some soft ware etc., (to assign the
unique ID), and another 270/- for the battery…. And I started using it as a
basic mobile phone without any apps, since the spurious thing wouldn’t support
any web application…. Thus, it actually turned out to be more of a
Black(mail)Berry than otherwise.
About
a fortnight back, the mobile was found ‘dead’. All my sincere efforts of resuscitation through cardiac / cardiopulmonary /
mouth to mouth etc., etc. had no effect at bringing back life to the
instrument. What bothered me more than anything else was the loss of contact
numbers (I had stored ALL numbers in this stupid piece). As one who would never
say die, I took the piece to two local service guys who toiled for many minutes
to infuse life to the piece, but gave up the fight, thoroughly exhausted. The authorized
service center guy said it’s a Korean piece and their service engineers won’t
even touch it ….. (seems original BlackBerry never comes with dual sim).
In
the meantime, I did a little bit of ‘due diligence’ on the various mobile
phones offered in the market, like the operating system, processor specs,
capacities of ram, internal / expandable storage, resolution, PPI, Camera
pixels etc., etc. and zeroed in on a model which was within my budget.
However,
as luck would have it, I was fiddling with the mobile today morning, and in a fit of anger &
frustration, held it on my left palm, and struck hard with my right palm, as if
breaking a lijjat papad. Believe it or not, there was that familiar music and
the welcome sign appeared on the screen !! And the damn thing is working as
good as before. Today is surely going to be my ‘on’ day, I thought, and it WAS,
going by what all happened during the course of the day. One resolution I have
made, however, is that I will never ever switch off the mobile. Who knows, when
I try to switch it on next time, I might find out that it has “attained acharyan
thiru adi – in sleep”
No way……
Enjoy......................
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