Breach

Funny thing about gravity is – its persistence to get back what gets taken away from it. The sheer abundance of it, and the subtle way in which it works – makes us, kind of, oblivious to its existence. When you think about it, it is not all that difficult to work against gravity – each time you pick an object up, you are going against the force of gravity. But of course, gravity does eventually get it back, because that is what it does. Neither does it ask you to acknowledge its existence, nor does it question you when you work against it. Gravity just holds everything together, because that is what it is supposed to do. Gravity is magnanimous.

However, gravity too does have its limitations - go too fast, or to far away from it – and then gravity has no choice but to let you go. But then, you need to accelerate to something like 9.81 metres per second square to do that. To put it down simply – unless you are hell-bent on getting away from it, you pretty much cannot get away from it.

Now, would it not be a wonderful thing if something like gravity would keep us people together?

I guess, we could say that, trust, in a way, acts like gravity among us people. But trust, unfortunately, does not have the perseverance that gravity has.

Trust is selfish. Trust requires you to acknowledge its presence and reassure its being. Trust is feeble.

You do not have to accelerate a great deal, or go all that far away to break away from the holds of trust. All it takes is – one action, one lie, one comment, or one hint of betrayal. And unlike in the case of gravity, you can break the holds of trust even if you did not intend to. Trust is awfully complicated.

The only area where trust probably gets the better of gravity is – restoration. Once you get away from the holds of gravity, there is virtually no coming back. However, there is a reasonable chance that you can repair the trust you have broken. But do understand that it does involve honest determination and a lot of hard work from your side.

It is true that in some cases the broken trust may never return to where it originally was. But then again, sometimes, it is better that it does not return to where it was. In the end, all that matters is to have the bond with trust reunited.

In my personal opinion, the restoration process should only make the bond much stronger. After all, no one values trust – as much as the ones who have suffered from its violation.

Son of a Murphy!

I suppose most of you guys have heard of Six Sigma. In simple terms – Six Sigma aims at improving the quality of output of a process, by first identifying the causes of defects, and then removing them, while minimizing the sources variability, by using certain statistical methods.

Crap! Who was that guy who told me it was simple?!

Anyhow, now that I am done explaining Six Sigma, I figure I should not have done it! Instead, what I should have explained is about the Normal Distribution Curve! Okay, just forget it! The point I am trying to make is this – regardless of how controlled your process is, there is always going to be some variation. It is just normal!

Similarly, regardless of how smart a person is, he is bound to do something silly once in a while! It too, is normal!

This post is about one smart guy, who had an off day! Well, I guess you can blame it on the laws of statistics!

Anyway, it was way past sundown when this guy decided to leave office and head home. As he had to pick up some stuff on his way back, he parked his bike by the side of the road. He got the stuff he needed and got back to his bike.

He hopped on the bike, and was about to insert the key into the keyhole, while it accidentally slipped out of his grip and fell down. Actually speaking, it did not fall down. I mean, it fell, but did not go all the way down! You usually expect something falling down to hit the ground, right?! In this case it did not!

Okay, so where did the key go then? It so happened that the key was stuck somewhere in the fairing! As any sensible person would do, this guy got off the bike and started looking for the key. Did I mention that it was quite a dark night? He tried looking for it in the fairing, but could see absolutely nothing! Poor guy has his eyesight fading!

If you remember, I also mentioned that this guy was smart! He realised that his cell-phone had a LED in it. While most phones do have the option of using the LED as a torch light, his phone, unfortunately, did not! But being the smart guy that he is, he very quickly solved this problem! The only way to have the LED glowing was to switch the phone to camera mode, and depress the camera button half way down, to activate the auto-focus – which would, in turn, get the flash light to stay on, until the camera button is depressed all the way down – which would click the picture!

Do you not wish that you were as smart as him?!

Now that he had some light, he started looking for the key again. To his bad luck, the handlebar was locked with the wheel turned left, further reducing the access to the location where the key was. And while trying to manoeuvre around in the limited space, he clicked quite a few (terribly out of focus) photographs of things inside the fairing! And each time a photograph was clicked, the LED switched off – which meant he had to again go through the delicate task of keeping the camera in auto focus mode!

With persistent grit and determination – he finally managed to spot the key within the fairing! The task of retrieving it though, still remained. The key was lodged towards the bottom of the fairing, and right above the oil cooler.

The funny thing about the oil cooler is – though it is called as an oil cooler, it is freaking hot! Just imagine his situation – he spotted the key, but could not get to it because it was on top of something so hot! By now, you should have figured that he is not among the ones who would give up!

He put on his riding gloves, and got back to the task again! While the gloves insulated his hand against the heat, it certainly reduced the flexibility to reach into the tight space. But being in no mood to quit, he stuck on with the job, until he got to the key – and then yanked it out!

Bravo!

Well, this entire exercise took him some fifteen odd minutes! It did not really matter, because he finally had what he wanted! Obviously feeling proud with himself, and with a big smile on his face he hopped on the bike.

As he was about the insert the key in the key hole – you guessed it – he dropped the key again! And yeah, back in the god-damned fairing!