Toilet Vastu

Just like scientific ideas are created and updated on a regular basis, superstitions are also being made and revised every moment. If you own a house which is at least 20 years old, chances are that it was not built according to the principles of Vastu Shastra. Evidently, Vastu made an appearance, or rather, a reappearance, during this period as something the middle class can add to their burgeoning collection of internalized follies. Practically nobody knew about Vastu till two decades ago, and no one was the worse for it. Almost all of them follow it now and still no one is the better for it. So, what is the net result?

Position of toilets as per Vastu

Over this period, proponents of Vastu weaved a great web of intricate falsehoods to terrify the common man into submission. Most architects now prepare the layout of the house within Vastu prescriptions, which would be further vetted by an expert, who will be usually very simple in his dealings with the clients (“I am only expressing my humble opinion. It is up to you to accept or reject it with consequences”). Recently, one of my friends bought an apartment after years of savings and meticulous financial planning. As soon as his family moved in, a well-dressed gentleman appeared on his doorstep and introduced himself as a Vastu practitioner. He asked my friend whether it would be a trouble if he just saw the layout of the rooms for a short while. Being flush with pride at the ownership of a fine apartment, my friend readily agreed. The expert examined the rooms and came up with a shocking conclusion that the toilets are located at the wrong places which may produce negative energy that can even prove fatal.

The Indian middle class is notoriously averse to take risks. So, even though my friend was well aware that nothing of the sort of what the expert had predicted will take place, he opted the path of least resistance. He changed the position of the water closets so as to face north instead of east as in the original layout. It cost him as much as Rs. 50,000 considering the difficulties that had to be overcome to run the re-routed piping. At the end of the day, my friend is happy, but a little wary about another expert coming along and making a contradictory or supplementary assessment.

When he narrated this incident to me, I was a little intrigued. As we all know, Vastu originated several centuries ago, and how can it specify something as exotic and foreign as a water closet invented many centuries later? I made some research on the Net and came across this very informative site www.vastushastraguru.com which explains the aspects a potential house owner must give due attention to. The following paragraph in blue colour lists the salient points I collected from the site.

“Toilets and bath rooms are a major source of negative energy if they are not built as per rules and guidelines of Vastu. As per Vastu Shastra, the toilets and bathrooms in a home must be separate and not attached, but since the urban living space is limited, we may have to use attached bath rooms. The problems generated by non-compliant toilets are financial issues such as weak finances and loss of money by various means and health issues like mental tension and stress and frequent – lethal and minor – accidents. The best and second best positions of toilets are shown in the diagram. The best location for a toilet or bathroom is the North-West part of the home. The second best location is the North-East part, and the South-West part, by excluding the corners. 11 things which you must do is listed as follows.

1.    Water closet (commode) should preferentially be aligned to North-South axis in toilet.

2.    Build toilets in West or North-West side of north of a room depending upon whether toilet is with bedroom or separate.

3.    Toilets can also be constructed on South side.

4.    Place commode inside the toilet in West, South or North-West side of West.

5.    Fit the pot, in toilet, in such a way that while using the commode the person never faces East or West.

6.    Construct toilet 1-2 feet higher than ground level.

7.    You can have entrance door of the toilet on East or North wall.

8.    The flooring of toilet should slope towards East or North so that water drains from these sides.

9.    Store water, taps etc. in East, North or North-East.

10.  Color walls of toilet as desired, but prefer light colors.

11.  Provide a small window in the toilet in East, West or North wall”

Don’t you think this is just bullshit?

If you don’t, let’s have a look at what the injunctions of shastras make on ordinary people. The ancient text Nitya Karma (Daily Routine) lists a number of rules to be practiced by the Brahmins while defecating. They are,

  
1. With water in a brass vessel he should go to a 'place set apart for this purpose' at least a bowshot from his house, and choose a 'clean spot on level ground'.
2. He should avoid the temple compound, the edge of any water body, ploughed field, the vicinity of any sacred tree, as well as thoroughfares and other places frequented by the public.
3.  He should not evacuate on a light-coloured soil.
4.  He should take care to hang his triple cord over his left ear and to cover his head with his loincloth.
5.  He should not relieve himself sitting on the branch of a tree or on a wall.
6.  While evacuating he should not look at the sun or the moon, the stars, fire, a Brahmin, a temple, an image, or one of the sacred trees.
7. He should keep perfect silence.
8. He must chew nothing, have nothing in his mouth.
9. He must do what he has to do as quickly as possible, and rise immediately.
10. On rising he should not look back behind his heels.
11.  He should then wash his hands and feet.
12.  Then, taking the vessel in his right hand, and holding his private parts in his left hand, he should go to the stream to purify himself from the great defilement which he has contracted.
13. Having arrived at the edge of the river or pond where he proposes to wash himself, he should first choose a suitable spot, and should then provide himself with some earth to be used along with water in cleansing himself.
14. He must be careful to provide himself with the proper kind of earth. Earth of the white ant, nest, salty earth, potter's earth etc, are not suitable.
15. Provided with the proper kind of earth, he should approach the water but should not go into it.
16.  He should take some water in his vessel, and then go a little distance away and wash his feet and hands again. If he has not a vessel he should dig a little hole in the ground with his hand near the riverside and fill it with water, which he should use in the same way, taking great care that this water shall not leak back into the river.
17. Taking a handful of earth in his left hand, he should pour water on it and rub it well on the dirty part of his body. He should repeat this operation using only half the amount of earth, and so on three times more, the amount of earth being lessened each time.
18. After cleansing himself thus, he will wash each of his hands five times with earth and water, beginning with the left hand. So also his feet.
19. Having thus scoured the different parts of his body with earth and water, he will wash them a second time with water only.
20. After that he will wash his face and rinse his mouth eight times. When he is doing this last act he must take very great care to spit out the water on his left side for, if by carelessness or otherwise, he unfortunately spits it out on the other side, he will assuredly go to hell.

 So, this is what the ancient texts urge men to do, quite expectedly, within the limited resources available at that time. This is quite sensible, compared to the nonsense of the Vastu gurus roaming about in our towns and villages.

Programmable Geographic Validity for ATM Cards

ATM fraud is now increasingly common all around us. With the explosive growth of Net Banking and ATM transactions, there are chances that your ATM card and PIN can be compromised sooner or later. Opting out of the ATM system and foregoing the convenience of Internet banking would be out of the question, considering the sheer convenience they provide. Crime gangs are very sophisticated now. Skimming and spy cameras can crack your PIN surprisingly easier than you think. Once these details are stolen, the criminals can withdraw money from any machine in the country, or, as was seen in a case exposed two weeks ago, from foreign countries as well. Even if the ATM is made secure by a combination of legitimate cameras and physical security, the card’s PIN is still vulnerable at a POS (point of sale) terminal. How many people will cover the keypad while punching in their PIN? Normally, it is no bother for an unscrupulous salesman to note the number as you are typing. The machine will be held in the salesman’s hand, which makes it difficult to enter the number, and you end up taking more time for the operation, which would be enough for the swindler to make a mental note of your PIN.

Once the card number and PIN is leaked, it is only the sweet convenience of the thief that stands between you and your money. He can forge a card in no time, and withdraw cash from an ATM located thousands of kilometers away. You’ll come to know it only when the payment alert is received on your phone. By the time, the money would’ve been lost forever. Even though all ATM kiosks are supposed to be entered without wearing a helmet or any kind of face mask, this can’t be effectively implemented in a machine that is unattended by a security guard. Banks may recompense the victims for their stolen money from their insurance cover, but the resultant hike in premiums will only end up as increased costs on the customers themselves. How can we bring in more security to our cards, without much investment on the part of banks?

My suggestion is to enforce programmable geographic validity to ATM cards. While it may be a matter of pride to brag that our card can be used anywhere in India to withdraw money, its real-life utility is rather limited. Who wants his card to be valid in Kanyakumari, Dibrugarh, Kutch and Leh simultaneously, and all the time? Only if a person plans to travel to these places need his card to be valid there. Statistics shows that a person’s life is much more predictable than we think. Just take a moment to guess where you’d be at 6’o clock in the evening next Friday, and compare afterwards. Even inside a state, one person’s travel route is somewhat fixed most of the time. 99.9% of the people follow predictable routes 99.9% of the time. This may be tested, repeated and can be proven true or false based on trials. Hence, this hypothesis must be scientific! So, who needs one’s card to be valid all over the country all the time, making them sitting ducks for any adventurer who cares to have some fun?

In the proposed programmable geographic validity system, the regions where the card will be valid can be configured by the user. By default, the card shall be valid only in the home district where the card is issued. The user shall be able to use Net Banking or Mobile Apps or USSD codes to add or delete other districts, states or regions for additional coverage. If a person from Kerala having validity of his card only in Ernakulam district in the state wants to travel to Shimla via Delhi, he can configure the validity to include the states of Himachal Pradesh and Delhi using his mobile phone or PC. He shall be able to set a time period also, for this ‘roaming’ validity of the ATM card, say 2 weeks or 1 month or forever. For truly high flying businessmen, the existing system of universal coverage can be continued. Banks may charge a nominal fee for additional validity to meet the additional cost on software. There must still be a provision for those customers who couldn’t extend the validity, but want to withdraw money or use the card urgently. Such users shall send the serial number of the machine displayed prominently on it through SMS from their registered phone to the bank’s designated number, which should be accepted as a request for one-time validity extension for that machine.

These suggestions can be implemented without making any software or hardware change on the hundreds of thousands of ATMs and POS terminals installed in the country. The only hardware change is to paint the machine’s serial number on it. The required software changes are on the bank’s servers, where an additional module would do the trick. Once the system is functional, banks may charge the customers a nominal fee for each validity extension. The users who don’t want to part with even that may set national validity on their cards, and opt not to use the system any more.

This is a Win-Win solution to banks and customers alike, I think.

Bankers' Sense of Humour

Have you heard the adage “If you want to buy a secondhand car, buy it from a doctor; and if you want to buy a secondhand heart, buy it from a banker”? The logic was that both wouldn’t have been used much by the first owner! Bankers are still perceived to be personification of evil, or at least, reincarnations of Shylock. In a few years’ time, when engineering graduates will take up most of the banking positions, this might change, but for the time being, it is not much use expecting any sense of humour from bankers.

So did I thought.

Until today morning!

Three days back, I had received a mail from Kotak Mahindra Bank – a usual one, detailing safety tips while responding to SMS for banking transactions. But the subject line was intriguing – “Tips for Safe Baking – SMS Fraud”. Obviously, ‘banking’ was misspelled as ‘baking’.

No big deal.

The amusing part of the deal was a message I received from the same bank today morning, with a subject line “Just to confirm that we have not diversified into baking”. Opening the mail, there was more, to have a hearty laugh, which ran thus.

“We sent you an email sometime this week whose subject line read "Tips for Safe Baking: SMS Fraud". We would like to apologize and set the record straight. Kotak Mahindra Bank has not entered the baking business. And has no serious plans of doing so anytime soon, no matter how much dough there may be in it. :). What's more, to the best of our knowledge, baking is more or less a safe activity. Unless, perhaps, you overheat the oven?”

The clever use of ‘dough’ was the icing on the cake, to continue in baking parlance!

Would you believe it? Reading this message in the morning at office lifted my mood up.

So I thought I would better tweet the bank, acknowledging their immense sense of humour, which one would hardly expect from a bank’s help desk.

Hence I tweeted thus, including the bank’s twitter handle, “@KotakBankLtd sends a funny clarification mail on a misspelled warning sent earlier. Never thought bankers could've humour sense! Good one!”

Whatever you may say against them, Kotak’s customer response is fast and prompt. A few minutes later, I received a reply tweet.

“@sajith2009 Hi, plz elaborate your exact issue to assist further. ^Kotak Team”.

I was lost for words. However, I replied to them thus.

“@KotakBankLtd This regarding an earlier mail on 'banking' misspelled as 'baking'. Your clarif mail was amusing and my tweet was appreciative”.

To which, they replied “@sajith2009 Ohh Sorry about that! We have already highlighted the issue to relevant team to rectify the same. ^Kotak Team”

Now, once again I am not so sure about bankers’ sense of humour!

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Really Tired or Acting Up?

Lionel Messi retired from international football at the remarkably tender age of 29. For the last few days, newspapers and social media alike are eulogizing the farewell of this Argentine star, who commands a sizeable chunk of fans in Kerala. This is not surprising, since its society is generally left-leaning and this has prompted a few politicians to associate Messi and fellow Argentines with Che Guvera and the failed communist revolts in Latin America. When their hopes were pitiably dashed in Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, they adopted the martyred Che as their messiah!

How the Keralites became so fond of Argentina and Brazil in world football? One obvious reason is that the home country, India, is a nobody in football. Our obsession with cricket has relegated all other games to the background. Watching a game, any game for that matter, without a favourite to cheer on is boring for spectators. But why Argentina? The origin of this worship goes back to 1986 and the Mexico World Cup, where Argentina snatched the cup riding on the mesmerizing performance of a short-statured genius – Diego Armando Maradona. The Mexico games were the first World Cup football tournament ever to show live on TV in Kerala. After all, TV came to the state only in 1982, in the run up to Asian Games held at New Delhi that year. Many people, including teen-aged myself, saw firsthand on TV the heroic action we had earlier read only as narratives in newspaper reports. That fascination we Keralites had felt for the Argentine team has not still worn off, even though we see the next generation glued to TV now.

But what about Messi? Did he make such a sacrifice in retiring from international football? The answer is a resounding ‘No’. He will continue to play in club football in Europe, which is raining money on to his pockets. And football is essentially a club game! International games are so scheduled as not to clash with club fixtures. They are generally held in the months of June and July, which is the vacation period of European clubs. According to FIFA’s rules, if you are selected by the national team, you have to play anyway – with only a fraction of the remuneration you used to collect from clubs – and that too, at a time when you are to be resting and relaxing for the next club season. This is the real reason behind the ‘poor form’ of many star players who were consistently performing spectacularly in club football till a few weeks before. So, what this means is that Messi want to concentrate only in making money from now onward, and he is not to be pestered with demands from the national team. I think Brazil’s Neymar would soon follow him.