Crore+ salaries, golden eggs and such things

 

The Telegraph reported on July 26 that the director of IIT Kharagpur, addressing a meeting of parents in the context of repeated cases of suicide among students, has requested them not to put unbearable expectational pressure of a material sort on their wards - forget about Rs. 1-crore starting salary packages, he has urged them, face reality. See the above picture.

I am glad that he has pointed out the case of Sundar Pichai, and added that Pichai studied metallurgical engineering at IIT (followed by an MBA, which does NOT call for a prior engineering degree). I should like to stress here that Pichai's case well illustrates the fact that to become the CEO of a giant IT company, you do not need even a degree in IT or computer science. Digest that, ignorant parents and starry-eyed youngsters!

I only wish the learned director had spoken out loudly about how so many colleges (and plus-two level tutors/cram shops) are duping both parents and children with fairy tales about those multi-crore salary packages. They are just pie in the sky, folks, and, even if they exist, your chances of landing one of them are about just as good as winning a major lottery or becoming an IPL team captain. Look at your parents' earnings, kids, even after working for 20 to 30 years. Also ask them how many people they know who get salaries of crores a year (and have your parents actually seen the pay-slips of those who claim they do, or are they gullible enough to believe everyone who claims they do?). Then learn to live with the drab, humble reality. Otherwise, the bodies are simply going to pile up higher, as rosy dreams are shattered by the time you have spent one or two years in college, and you have found out how hard it is to live and work and thrive in the real world, and your  'mental health' cannot bear the terrible shock of the sudden let-down after so many years of fantasizing.

Ironic that I, who have warned thousands of kids merely against such suicidal daydreaming, have managed to earn a reputation in my town as the tutor who is a bad man because he urges his students against such greed and stupidity, whether it is theirs or their parents'! But of course, my karma is being recorded at a far higher level than the public's, and I am content.

Right now, you can find the news item if you click on this link, but I don't know how long they maintain them in their archives.

Recent stimuli for my brain

Thanks to Indranil Panigrahi, one of my favourite old boys who have kept continuously in touch since leaving school nearly three decades ago, I came across a wonderful article in The Statesman about what 'scroll culture' is doing to us. It is so cogent, comprehensive and articulate about the issue, and so accurate about the diagnosis ('we are not addicted to content, we are addicted to not being left alone with ourselves') and agrees so well with all that I have myself observed, felt and concluded that I need not add a single line to it. I shall only urge my readers not to scroll away 'for later', but read it now, attentively, reflectively and to good purpose - perhaps to redirect their own lives a little better, if nothing else. It makes a painful and eerie contrast with what all the gurus (literary, management-, fitness-oriented and religious) are telling us to do: happiness, health, higher performance at work, becoming better people overall, in short, real success in life, demands that you find time for yourself, learn to be comfortable alone, focus, increase your attention span (and retentive capacity), cut out the clutter inside and out, and STOP SCROLLING (or at least slow down)! Please do read: you will be doing yourself a huge favour!

In the same connection and context, I have begun to read a 2021 book called Dopamine Nation by Dr. Anna Lembke about how the entire economy and society have become geared to providing (and consuming) non-stop excitement, and how damaging that can be to all of us. I shall reserve judgment until I have finished the book, but I think the good doctor is saying a lot of things I have been saying myself for donkey's years. See, for example, this blogpost written fourteen years ago. Only recently a grown-up ex student complimented me on having put 'treasures' on this blog. That reminds me to exhort new visitors once more to explore older content here, not just stick to the home page...

On the other hand, there are rather strange visitors here sometimes. Someone who hides behind the sobriquet 'Mirror' has recently commented on one of my posts ('Why have I become so unsocial?') that my writing is 'too serious'. I have not said anything beyond 'thank you' in my reply, but some of my other readers might want to respond at greater length. Also, some organization has left a comment (which I have not put up for obvious reasons) offering to buy customers for my storytelling channel on YouTube. I am sure they themselves have lots of customers. To me, it only shows how desperate and  pathetic people can get! No, I am not taking up their offer. It only makes me thankful that I have lived a good life and made a decent living without having to sink to such depths looking for either paying students or non-paying listeners.

Another passing remark on the passing weather: it has been a low-temperature but horribly muggy July. It is drizzling even as I write. I love the rains (and the greens they bring), but the constant sweating becomes a bother and bore after a while. So also the proliferation of all sort of insects. The only silver lining is the hope that we might have a good winter with so much water underground. 

Oh, and I must mention this: many thanks to young Pratyush Pan (a most unusual sort of engineer) for coaxing me to watch the new movie Heads of State on Amazon Prime. It is a masala movie with a good mix-up of hilarity, 'action', wisecracks and some deep thoughts; childish, really, but wonderfully entertaining even for an old geezer like me. I especially liked the idea of a Black British Prime Minister teaming up with a covert agent whose role is played by an Indian actress (Priyanka Chopra). That's healthy multiculturalism for you. I also liked the PM's constant digs at the American President - who is brash, silly, but brave with a heart of gold, over the gross American penchant for hyperventing (catchy taglines, noisy but brainless slogans, wild exaggerations as part of normal speech) which, alas, through the internet, too dominated by American tech platforms, is spreading rapidly worldwide. I am glad about the pushback. Are you listening, Google and Meta?

I think I have given the serious reader (yes, I love seriousness more and more!) enough food for thought and engagement, so bye for now.

AI brilliance for my YouTube story

Something laughably stupid happened only the other day while I was experimenting with AI (Meta/Llama). I asked it to draw me a cartoon of a monster rising out of the ground to swallow a Russian peasant. This was meant to go with the latest story I was planning to tell on my YouTube channel. I didn't like the first effort, so I asked it to modify the picture: show fertile land, not a desert; make the monster appear as if it is rising up from the land, make the peasant middle-aged, not old, and so on. Every effort was more ridiculous than the previous one. One actually gave the monster the face of an old man, presumably AI's idea of what a Russian peasant looks like - though why it thought that would fit the bill is beyond me. 

Anyway, I gave up trying after that, and decided to use the first one, despite not being happy with it. You can see the result here. While you are at it, don't forget to listen to the story right till the end: it's a good one, and very thought-provoking.