… or “How I derived the equation for a shattered heart”

Episode 1 is here.

Episode 2 is here.

Episode 3 is here.

Episode 4 is here.

We return to our meditations and study of the ATB after an unnaturally long break (the reader must bear in mind that any amount of time that is longer than the time to ferment batter for dosa is unusually long for the ATB – dosas and idilis being the very being of his existence and soul – apart from the acquired taste of OldMonk/SingleMaltScotch/StoutDarkBeer). The authors would like to apologize for this break and would also like to inform the readers that this break was for the pursuit of scientific theories regarding the ATB which shall be explained in further chapters. Also the authors were trying very hard to come to terms with living half-way across the world and the process of cooking food for oneself on a daily basis.

While the authors analyze and examine recently collected data, this chapter shall be devoted to some observations that are not completely proven, bordering on empirical and mostly conjectural. Though the authors understand that the readers of this series of articles are of the educated, informed and discerning bent of mind – the authors would like to humbly request the readers to bear with them. These observations are of a nature that is known to be difficult to rigorously prove mathematically using the various tools of calculus, trigonometry, geometry and complex numbers. Mostly, these pertain to that strange human emotion called love.

The readers would have no doubt read many famous treatises, quotes and stories about love and its side-effects (the more unfortunate ones would have witnessed a tragic waste of celluloid called ‘Pyaar ke side effects’ which in translated exactly into English means the ‘Side effects of love’ and loosely means ‘Please don’t watch unless you wish to end your life’). One particular quote comes to mind – “Le coeur a sais raison, que le raison ne’conne pas”. This is in French. And for those who do not understand French – the heart has its reason that reason does not know. While this may be applicable for most of the population worldwide including heroes and famous lovers in history – movies or otherwise ; this does not apply to the ATB – especially not the ones that will eventually become engineers (the ones that continue on to do an MBA usually become brain-dead and start behaving according to the French quote).

One must always constantly remember that the ATB has a reason to do everything – including love. Normal people and abnormal people (such as Bollywood script writers) would disagree, quoting the clichéd yet famous – “Love is blind” or “Pyaar andha hotha hai”. The authors would like to respond with a slightly jocular version – “Pyaar anda hotha hai – kabhi omlette toh kabhi aulaad”. But, the ATB, does not believe in such jest in most matters – most importantly love. An upbringing devoid of any opportunity for romance – except probably the passing interest in the female author of a textbook (more for her talent in illustrative examples and a separate volume 2 of the book with all the answers to exercise problems) ; the ATB approaches all matters of heart with extreme caution and lots of homework and background research.

Other researchers have shown, both theoretically and experimentally, that all women believe that men are attracted to women based on two characteristics alone – level of hotness and level of hotness. Subsequent studies showed that in the case of women the product of beauty and brains was constant from the perspective of men. Pressure from various women-liberation organizations and stark failure of the law (Aishwarya Rai, for instance) spurred further investigation and a third quantity was introduced which seems to apply reasonably well to most known cases. The third quantity is termed the availability – simply put, it is a measure of the probability of a given average male (note that this average male refers to the males in the middle of the normal distribution curve – which has been experimentally determined to be engineers –notably software engineers in potentially dead-ended jobs) being able to successfully woo a girl leading to marriage. Availability is calculated by taking into account the single status, the career-mindedness, the rationality, age of the woman into consideration. Factors such as the woman’s affinity to the Twilight series, Shahrukh Khan, Beyonce/Justin Beiber, SATC (positive affinity for these counts for 0) and Woodehouse, Tarantino, Metallica/Megadeth/Thelonious Monk and Transmetropolitan(positive affinity for this counts as 1) is accounted in the brains factor. Thus, the relation was later modified to the product of beauty, brains and availability is a constant. Surprisingly enough, this was popularized by a Bong(Bengali) with significant TamBram influences.

The ATB carefully applies this formula to any interest that he finds in girls of his college. He then builds complex stochastic simulation models using Matlab/C/C++ (mini-projects under the guise of graphic editors) to validate his calculations before initiating contact. Recall that the ATB by now has understood that club in colleges are the best medium of interaction with members of the opposite gender under the guise of organizing fests (the reader is referred to the sample conversation in the previous chapter). Very rarely (usually one out of a three hundred times – this is extrapolated and sampled over all engineering colleges since it is quite impossible to find three hundred girls in a single engineering college except if it were an all girls engineering college, which the authors were unable to find in India) the conversation takes a different turn when the girl answers to “Do you like Batman comics?” with a “Which series are you talking about – Hush or the Dark Knight? Personally, I wasn’t so impressed with the Dark Knight series, considering Sin City was epic.” Or, “Dude - Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Inglorious Basterds – that is the order of awesomeness”. Or, “Top of the morning to you” – a classic Woodehousian opening. This is about the time when the ATB explodes into a million drops of testosterone [sic] and causes several segmentation faults in his brain.

With enough luck and no other amit_123s (refer to Krish Ashok’s blog for complete definition) competing, the ATB initiates outings in the form of a group meeting of the literary committee when most other members have classes. Venues in this case will shift from the classroom on the ground floor to the canteen or coffee shop. After several of these meetings, the ATB summons enough courage to ask the girl in question out for coffee, and then after several coffees for dinner and so on. It is of importance to note that the ATB does not broach the topic of relationships and the where-is-this-headed – he simply assumes that the girl will eventually figure out since in his universe all relations are nothing but a mathematical mapping from one set to another and mathematics never lie. This is invariably the most significantly incorrect assumption that the ATB makes despite knowing the axiom that women think with their hearts and not their heads. Invariably another competitor makes an entry – does all the things that the ATB did with a little more panache, all the while expressing his undying affection for the girl. By the time the ATB realizes this and hastens to express in clear chronological order his story of affection and love, he is met with the world’s most potent weapon – the LJBF or the Let’s-Just-Be-Friends. The weapon is so destructive and effective that most nations in the world have strict usage policy and non-proliferation acts in place – despite which women across nationalities, religion, color, race and sit-com preferences press the proverbial red-button with nonchalance.

Therapy for the ATB now consists of copious OMR, Dream Theater progressing to Megadeth progressing to Judas Priest progressing to Children of Bodom progressing to Katatonia progressing to Eternal Tears of Sorrow and then suddenly mellowing down to classic jazz and blues as he slowly accepts fate and starts preparing for the future. He slowly gets back to his old groove of reading graphic novels, spending nights trawling the Internet/LAN for offbeat music and cult-classic movies and conducting marathon quizzes with stage threes for the college quiz club. He begins to haunt empty classes in the night studying not just the notes and standard texts, but additional books to add to his knowledge. Some begin to mug up GRE wordlists and have been known to be able to recite them forwards, backwards, sidewards and occasionally in binary/ASCII/Klingon as well. He puts in efforts, pulls strings and gets himself a summer internship in a large company/research institute/HAL and vows (and successfully does) to finish the internship and learn something useful.

The ATB will use his blog as a form of catharsis and pour out all his pain and sorrow in the manner posts that range from side-spiltingly funny to long fictional series to short stories (these two seem like the lives of others, but most often reflect the ATB's own experiences) to depressed one liners to suicidal code (most commonly this takes the form of a small C program that tries to send itself Signal 9 as defined in on Linux systems).Mostly these are manifestions of heartbreak and sadness, but readers are directed to take extreme caution if they chance upon such blogs. They are requested to initiate contact with the ATB and try to ascertain his mental state and determine if he needs medical or emotional help. Close friends of the ATB are to be notified of the ATB's state and in extreme cases request emergency medical help.

While the ATB learns the meaning and usage of uncommonly pointless words such as prevaricate and lugubrious , the third year of college draws to end and we end our current installment here. The next chapter shall follow the ATB through his final year in college – which is one of the most important ones and the one that the ATB will remember with bittersweet memories for life. Readers are encouraged to search the internet for blogs of ATB engineers/techies that they know or have heard of for posts from the times of their engineering. These posts are poignant, deep, and sometimes depressing stuff woven in the form of short stories or C code that on compilation creates a 23.45MB binary which essentially just prints “Goodbye cruel world” and exits. What most people fail to notice is that by inserting a break-point just before the printf, and at that point taking a dump of the data-segment of the program produces the aforementioned short-story when converted to ASCII. Shahjahan might have built the Taj Mahal for his love out of marble, but the ATB painstakingly expresses his love in binary (the last known program to be written in binary was the first compiler that was ever written). This is not just the first of these instances of failure in love, we shall come across more as the ATB plods on through his existence and insects in mess-food.