As a child, I used to wonder when people asked me what my dad was and got a reply from me that was always wrong for them. I used to say, my father is my father, a man, a person. What else, for god’s sake? No. they wanted to know what my father’s job was. But then why should they ask what he was. They could ask me what his job was. But then I did not know then that, when we grow up, we become our jobs. Hence the question… what are you?

Btw, I was a banker. Dunno, what ISB will make of me. Hopefully, a person.

PS: I got inspired by a line from Taxi Driver starring Robert De Nero / directed by Martin Scorsese

Cause and effect relationship is not as easy to establish as we may want to. We often confuse cause for effect and vice versa. Worse, we confuse correlation with causal relationship.

Superstition is an effect of this misunderstanding of the causal relationship Vs correlation. People go to saloons only on Thursdays; every time they go out of house they have to carry some talisman with them; every time they hit a century they look up; all serials begin with K word; they don’t want to buy black cars; they believe to have 999 on car number plate is lucky. There are many more and each of these is because someone somewhere has been able to give out ‘one’ example or two of how by doing these acts, performances improved or results were better.

The only crib at ISB last few days is that the term break has been lost thanks to a lot of assignments that we have been asked to submit. We think that our term breaks get spoilt because of assignments. Meaning that, assignments ‘cause’ to spoil our term breaks. Actually, it is the other way round. Because we have a term break, we keep postponing submission of all assignments till term break and work during them. Because of this procrastination, there are so many assignments to work on in a short span that we end up submitting inferior quality reports. Now, we know that assignments do not screw up our term breaks, but term breaks screw up our assignments.

Causality is one of the least understood concepts.