Have you ever been through a phase in life where you thought, “Whatever I say, the exact opposite happens. So from now on, I’ll say the opposite of what I actually want to happen.”

In a fairyland with chocolate fountains, there would be a teacher who would shatter your illusion of control and tell you that it is the phenomenon —  ‘Regression to the mean’.

And you would not need to wait until you are out of school and reading your own books to find this out.

But alas! What is life, if not suffering?

And, regression to the mean, for that matter.

The wood doesn’t care

I saw my friend leaping over a giant puddle to touch the bark of a tree, only to utter the abracadabra of the superstitious —  touch wood. This act was preceded by a statement that he didn’t want to jinx.

Half of his life is spent searching for wood. The other half, convincing me why it’s a real thing.

I don’t blame him. Fallacy is the norm when it comes to decision-making.

The thing about superstition is that it’s easy-peasy to propagate. An act as simple as withholding oneself from going down the path crossed by a black cat is all that is required to convince ourselves that nothing bad will happen. Crossing fingers, knocking on wood, and hanging a horseshoe above a door, to name a few. Any flame of reasoning, if it arises within our minds, is easily snuffed by the ‘why to risk it’ inner question. We would rather avoid the thirteenth floor when buying a house than swim in thick soup for the rest of our lives.

I imagine an ape infant. Millions of years ago.

He sees the sky flashing lights with a horrible sound. His mother hasn’t told him that it is a normal event coinciding with rain, simply because she knows no language to comprehend, discuss, and interrogate the event along with the fellow apes, let alone communicate with her child. The maximum she can do is run and hide in the bushes, just the way she had seen her own mother do it. The fear has passed down the generations because it is one of the few things that doesn’t need a language to be communicated.

On one such thundering night, the infant sees a massive boulder rolling down a hill, splitting into shards and hitting the trunk of a tree. Suddenly, the lightning stops. The rain goes away. The clouds disperse, and the sun greets with a golden hello!

The next time it thunders, the baby ape throws a rock on that tree because, in his experience, that is what had stopped the weather from growling further the last time. The superstition propagates down the line, with the ape now having grown into a buffed-up dad, yet carrying the same beliefs, throwing the rocks on the same tree, and teaching his kids to do the same.

A million years down the line, stands a human, not very different from his thumb-less ancestors, ready to knock on wood, for it will save him from the jinx.

This story is fictional, but it captures how apparent sorcery can echo in time and space.

Just because event X is followed by event Y, doesn’t mean X caused Y

This ‘X caused Y’ is what’s technically called post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.

The mistaken belief isn’t uncommon in training institutions. Spare the rod and spoil the child is the usual logic of the ones promoting physical punishment. And this is where Kahneman cameoed in the Israel Air Force.

During a lecture on improving leadership qualities, when Daniel Kahneman informed the flight instructors that punishment did more harm than good, the assertion was not met with applause, to put it mildly.

The instructors with thousands of flying hours to their names disagreed. They affirmed that whenever they reprimanded a cadet for an in-flight mistake, the subsequent training sortie usually improved. On the contrary, any verbal appreciation usually led to a worsening of future performance.

Kahneman was quick to catch the bias. X didn’t cause Y. But he was also ready with an immediate explanation for the fallacious conclusion by the instructors.

Regression to the Mean

Kahneman declared that the performance of the flying cadets was not a function of the scolding/appreciation but rather a mere oscillation around the mean performance.

He conducted a simple experiment then and there to prove his theory.

He picked up a chalk and marked a target on the floor. Everyone was asked to turn their backs to the target and blindly throw two coins at it in immediate succession.

The distances of the coins from the target were measured, and the results for each instructor were written on the blackboard. Then, he rearranged the results of the first try in decreasing order from the best to the worst, against the results of the second try of the respective participants.

It was observed that most of those who had performed extraordinarily well the first time deteriorated on their second try, and those who had performed unbelievably poorly in the first try improved in the second.

The performance of the instructors oscillated around a mean value. Any outlying ‘extraordinarily good’ or ‘unbelievably bad’ outcome was bound to be followed by a performance that was closer to the mean.

This regression to the mean was what the instructors had observed in their trainees. A fabulous flying maneuver was bound to be followed by an almost average one, and an outlier, pathetic performance was statistically followed by a better maneuver that was close to the average standard. It was mere statistics and not the magic of profanities uttered by the instructors, something that can be categorised as superstition of the learned.

This also means that when someone treats you badly after you’ve been nice to them, and vice versa, it is regression to the mean in all its glory.

Kahneman had an interesting take on this. He wrote, “The feedback to which life exposes us is perverse. Because we tend to be nice to other people when they please us and nasty when they do not, we are statistically punished for being nice and rewarded for being nasty.”

Are you smart enough to recognise regression to the mean?

TheUnknownDoktor

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Reference:

“Thinking, Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman

Your mom was right about at least one thing: Stop using your phone. But her remark would be even sharper if she knew that this alone could keep you from buying a house. Let’s understand the psychological reason behind it.

Every time you navigate to the broker app and check your portfolio, your chance of accumulating wealth plummets more sharply than a falcon diving for its prey.

Probably, the only place where hard work doesn’t yield much (except your workplace, of course) is your investment portfolio.

You check the numbers — red and green. Fluctuating with the whims and fancies of an orange-haired guy who probably wears diapers beneath that suit.

Your heart beat goes up a little. Your fingers get fidgety and you click on the chart ‘just in case’. The FOMO is real. And so is your depreciating wealth.

Checking your stocks incessantly is a perilous habit.

Bordering on evil.

Broad vs narrow-framing: The magic of statistics

Consider the following bet:

You toss a coin and receive $200 if it lands heads but lose $100 for tails.

Do you accept the gamble or not?

If it’s a no (If it’s a yes, good for you, but keep on reading), will you still reject the gamble if you are given 100 such bets?

If we calculate the outcome of the bet as per weighted probabilities, then,

50% (Gain of $200) + 50% (Loss of 100$)

= 0.5*200 + 0.5*(-100)

= 100–50

= 50

Thus, a gain of $50.

A decision theorist would gladly accept it, but not a layman for whom the psychological pain of losing $100 is way greater than the pleasure of gaining $200.

However, an interesting thing happens when you repeat the bet.

The final outcome as per weighted probabilities becomes,

25%(400) + 25%(100) + 25%(100) - 25%(200)

= 100+25+25-50

= 100

Thus, a gain of $100.

You can see that the expected value of the bet straight away doubled with two coin tosses.

Let’s now repeat the bet one more time. The following would be the outcome of three tosses:

The final outcome as per the weighted probabilities becomes,

12.5%(600) + 37.5%(300) + 37.5%(0) — 12.5%(300)

= 75 + 112.5 + 0–37.5

= 150

Thus, a gain of $150. Thrice the amount delivered by one toss.

If we go on like this, the aggregated gamble of one hundred 50–50 lose $100/gain $200 bets would return $5000 as gain, with just a 1/2300 chance of losing any money and a minuscule 1/62000 chance of losing more than $1000.

When you view the gamble as just one single bet, it appears risky despite being favorable because the pain of losses is way more than the pleasure of gains. But when you view the gamble as just one part of a series of similar bets, you intuitively realize that it’s a favorable proposal. And we have just proved it statistically.

The former approach, called narrow framing, is what many of us practice every time we face a similar gamble in our lives. The latter approach, called broad framing, is what experienced traders follow because they know that a stock sold in red one day is just a part of the bigger picture when the overall risk would vanish and generate returns in the long-term.

This is why experts preach about the ‘lock-in’ approach to investment, wherein you buy the stocks and forget about them for months, only to check once or twice a year, to avoid narrow framing.

He’s the CEO for a reason

Richard Thaler, an American economist, once asked the top managers of the 25 divisions of a company whether they would consider a risky decision that has equal probabilities of losing all the capital they control or earning double that amount.

All the managers confirmed that they would reject the gamble.

He then turned to the CEO of the company and asked for his opinion. The CEO replied, “I would want all of them to accept their risks”.

The CEO had naturally adopted a broad frame that considered all 25 bets at once and realized that it was quite a favorable set of gambles.

He could count on statistical aggregation to mitigate the overall risk. The reason he was the CEO.

Stop checking your portfolio!

TheUnknownDoktor

Reference:

“Thinking, Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman

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The average IQ of the room shot through the stars and the air smelled of brilliance. The hall was packed with the most renowned economists of the world, each a legend in his domain. You know, the kind of nerds whose discussions evoke a long ‘ewww’ from the teenage girlies but admiration from that quiet, mysterious kid.

In attendance were the future Nobel laureates Paul Samuelson, Milton Friedman and Kenneth Arrow along with the great statistician Jimmie Savage. Basically, all the names that are absolutely irrelevant for the purpose of this article. Maurice Allais—but remember this one — was a French economist who shot two questions at the crowd.

“What do you choose?”, he asked.

1. A 61% chance of winning $520,000 or a 63% chance of winning $500,000.

2. A 98% chance of winning $520,000 or a 100% chance of winning $500,000.

If your answer to the first question is 61% chance of winning $520,000 but to the second is 100% chance of winning $500,000, Congratulations! you think just like those Nobel Laureates.

Which is to say, contrary to the logic of rationality that the principles of economics propose. Even the greatest thinkers of the time answered in direct contradiction to the very theory (Rational agent model) they vouch for. Here’s how:

Imagine that the above gamble is played out as a blind draw from an urn that contains 100 marbles. You win if you draw a red marble and lose if you draw a white one.

In problem 1, most of the people choose the left-hand urn, even though it has only 61 red marbles as compared to 63 in the right-hand urn. Simply because the difference in prize is more impressive than the difference in the chances of winning.

In problem 2, a majority chooses the right-hand urn that guarantees money. All 100 marbles being red.

Logical enough, until you dive deeper.

If you look at problem 2, you will see that it is just a more favorable version of problem 1. Both the urns get an additional 37 red marbles (61 to 98 and 63 to 100) but the preference suddenly switches from the left-hand urn to the right-hand urn.

Why?

This is where the genius of Kahneman came riding like a knight in shining armour. What the general public dismisses as ‘obvious’ is usually an important principle that goes on to explain much more complex concepts in the domain of cognitive psychology.

The certainty effect and decision weights

Certainty effect is a cognitive bias where people disproportionately underweigh outcomes (than what their probability justifies) that are nearly certain. Stay with me, I shall make it easy for you.

Consider the following scenarios where your chance of receiving $1 million improves by 5%. Are they equally good?

1. From 0% to 5%

2. From 5% to 10%

3. From 60% to 65%

4. From 95% to 100%

If we assign a psychological value to each outcome on a scale of 0 to 100, based on their weighted probabilities, then we get the following:

1. From 0 to 5

2. From 5 to 10

3. From 60 to 65

4. From 95 to 100

While the increment in the weighted probabilities is no more than 5 in each, it is a no-brainer that 0% to 5% and 95% to 100% are way better deals than the rest. Simply because the former generates a hope of winning the prize that did not exist earlier (possibility effect), while the latter guarantees you the prize (an improvement from the 95% chance which leaves you on the edge of your seat), aka certainty effect.

The possibility effect is a cognitive bias that makes highly unlikely scenarios appear disproportionately overweighted than what they deserve. A good example would be people buying lottery tickets, willing to pay much more than the expected value for minuscule chances of winning a large prize. Or the settlement amount you are willing to pay outside the court just to avoid a minute chance of imprisonment, no matter how strong your case is. Thus, the psychological value of 5% chance is way more than what comes out mathematically.

Certainty effect, as we discussed, underweighs the actual mathematical value of a 95% chance leading to a diminished perception of the real probability. Imagine you inherit a property worth $1 million but your sister has contested the will in the court. Even if there’s a 95% chance that you will win, you may be tempted to settle the case for $40,000 outside the court just to guarantee peace of mind.

Everytime the possibility effect and the certainty effect come into picture, we pay a hefty price as a premium that goes against mathematical rationale just to satisfy our psychological perception of the gamble.

Verdict: Extremely lower (5%) and nearly certain (95%) probabilities sway from the expected psychological weightage as per mathematics. This psychological weightage, that we call decision weight, is represented as follows:

Probability (%)»»»»»»»»»»»»»»Decision weight (%)

0»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»» 0

1»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»5.5

2»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»8.1

5»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»13.2

10»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»18.6

20»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»26.1

50»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»42.1

80»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»60.1

90»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»71.2

95»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»79.3

98»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»87.1

99»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»91.2

100»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»100

One can see that the decision weights are same as the corresponding probabilities only at the extremes: both equal to 0 when the outcome is impossible and 100 when the outcome is certain.

However, as we depart from these extremes, the decision weights deviate sharply from the probabilities. At the lower end, we see the possibility effect —unlikely events are overweighted. For example, the decision weight that corresponds to a probability of 2 is 8.1. Mathematically, it should be equal to 2, which tells us that the rare event with a probability of 2 is overweighted by a factor of 4.

At the higher end of the scale, the certainty effect is in full display. A mere 2% chance of not winning the prize (98% chance of winning) reduces the decision weight by 13%, from 100 to 87.1. That’s a massively disproportionate reduction in the psychological value assigned to near certain probabilities.

This is what precisely happened in the Allais’s paradox.

Guess we share something in common with the Nobel laureates.

TheUnknownDoktor

Reference:

1. “Thinking, Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman

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One of them is “I know what I’m doing”.

Consider these gentlemen.

The only thing common among all four of them except their Darwin award-worthy overconfidence is that they are all dead.

1. Henry Winstanley - An English engineer who was so certain of the build quality of his lighthouse that he decided to stay inside it during a storm to prove its strength. Verdict: The sea took it on ego.

2. John Sedgwick - An American Major General who took the snipers lightly during the Civil War. “They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance”, he famously said. Verdict: Got relieved of his delusion.

3. Stockton Rush - The CEO of ‘OceanGate’. The company that made the submersible pod ‘Titan’ to reach the debris of Titanic. He ignored the dangers cited by his team of engineers and responded with “At some point, safety is just pure waste”. Verdict: Crushed in the depths of hell.

4. Timothy Treadwell - Believed that he understood grizzly bears like no one did and went really, really close. Verdict: Fed the bears his own liver that day.

We read news like these and move on with life, thinking we would never be in their spot because who on Earth has the time and resources to dive to the bottom of the ocean or play with hairy beasts. Well, it’s not about dying, per se. It’s about the common thought process that leads to it.

“I know what I’m doing”.

What You See Is All There Is

It isn’t possible to be a fan of Daniel Kahneman and not quote his pearls of wisdom when going down the rabbit hole of cognitive psychology. So here we go.

We are intuitive beings.

And we judge.

Be it your boss or your distant aunt. Everything about you is noticed and opined upon in whispers that are loud enough to reach back to you. Your dress, your smile, your ‘no’ to someone, your ‘yes’ to someone, your burp, your fart, you coming across as over-smart. Everything.

People say that it is easy to judge but it really is not. A true judgement requires a brainstorming that would exhaust the wisest of all. It requires an unbiased consideration of all perspectives of every party involved. The more information you have to base your judgement upon, the harder it is.

The easiest task is to pass a judgement based on limited information. That new girl in your workplace who smiled at your boss? Surely an opportunist who just wants to climb the professional ladder in the easiest manner. That intern whom you think rolled eyes at you today? Must have been feeling vengeful for what you did to him yesterday.

It is because when the facts are few, they fit coherently into a story that we frame in our minds trying to understand what could have happened. The more coherent a story appears, the easier it is to comprehend (cognitive ease) and the more truthful it seems.

Kahneman called it ‘What You See Is All There Is” aka WYSIATI.

Now, compare this with a complex case having convoluted facts and numerous contradictions in its arsenal. It isn’t easy to arrive at a judgement and the hearing keeps getting delayed. If you realize that the new girl is a bubbly person and smiles at everyone, your judgement seeks a hold. Unless bias or misogyny or being-a-hopeless-chauvinist makes you blind toward the facts.

This is one of the reasons why the candidates being interviewed for army officer vacancies are shown a still image for interpretation. It screams of an obvious clue but the candidates are expected to think out of the box.

Oh come on! Panic attacks are nothing

From “I know what I’m doing” to WYSIATI to this. One leads to another.

I’m talking about the denial of the existence of mental disorders in the world around us. All the more glaringly in healthcare.

The very nerds in white coat who are taught about mental health issues are the first to dismiss those of their juniors when they complain about toxicity and inhumane working hours.

There is an interesting thing about mental illnesses—they are invisible. And anything that is not visible cannot be validated until it is felt.

There are many individuals in this world who have not been mentally ill, or have compensated their distresses with such strong psychological defense mechanisms that they feel mentally healthy. It includes our parents. Even our bosses.

How do you tell them that their conviction in mental illness being a hoax is actually a result of their ignorance combined with WYSIATI?

How do you make someone aware of their lack of awareness? And that they probably shouldn’t believe they know what they are doing?

TheUnknownDoktor

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My legs don’t lie still and I lift them against the wall beside my bed while my torso lies flat. My elder cousin sister chides me for not changing into something comfortable. Not the position. The clothes.

A tight-fitting jeans held in place by an extra-holed belt. It was the usual home-warming ceremony for every belt I purchased. Getting the extra holes to fasten the tongue of the buckle around my skinny waist.

I’m five years old. A kid who has no idea that this simple comment by his cousin would connect all the dots retrospectively twenty years later.

Why don’t I change into something comfortable?

I wish I was taught that I don’t need to be taut.

It isn’t about the pajama

If you want to deliver sweet agony to anyone on the OCD spectrum, try asking them to correct a spirit level. I learnt it the hard way while fixing my pull-up bar.

I don’t even have OCD. Just the recesses of it. I have come long past the full-blown version I had in school. When I would jump over the shelves to correct the knot on my treasury tag file, just to make it a neat ‘figure of eight’. I remember doing that a hundred times in one day. My God…the soreness I had in my thighs.

The obsession part still lingers in my everyday life, though. Like the scar mark all of us have on our knees. This obsession is a reflection of my perfectionist attitude toward life. Something that I have inherited from my dad. He had no choice but to be perfect, considering that he was the eldest sibling of a single working mother.

His uptight way of life was a wall he made from the bricks life threw at him, cemented by his desire to keep the family boat afloat. Elder sibling syndrome in all its glory.

It all makes sense now. Why I had internalised that rigid way of life. Why I wanted things to be a certain way with no scope for compromise.

Why I kept my pelvis tight. To the extent that I had tender points in my whole abdomen and pelvis. Painful regions of contracted muscles that would yield in a sweet agony when pressed hard. Something that I have been dealing with for ten years now.

When my friends would go on a loo break in the recess, I would think how come they are so inefficient at controlling their bladder? For someone who would just wash his hands, have his lunch, and use the washroom only at home when school got over, it never made sense to me.

I had never learnt to relax. The tension in my bladder. The tightness in my muscles. The constricting feeling of the clothes. I had normalised it all. This alone was the reason that I suffered from an undiagnosed illness in the prime years of my life.

I have come a long way ahead. I can sense my uptight behavior hindering a pleasurable experience when I don’t feel like taking a shower before bed, even though I’m all exhausted and stressed.

I can see through my unwillingness to relax. And yet, it catches me up.

That boy lying in those tight jeans wins over at times. Refusing to let it go. At work. At home. With my partner. With strangers. It grabs my arm and whispers in my ear.

Maybe that’s why there is only one way I want my Americano, and nobody can make me wear the pajamas here.

TheUnknownDoktor

A flash flood had submerged their necks leaving only the heads bobbing along the waves of peril. Were it not for the human chain they formed, their impromptu plan to trek in the valleys of Mahabaleshwar would have turned into a lifelong lesson for us college juniors.

The terrain was unforgiving but what kept them alive was the trust they showed in each other. The trust that the one holding their hand would lead them to safety.

You don’t really need help of a certain herb smoked in a rolled up piece of paper to contemplate the importance of this five-letter word.

Trust is an indispensable tool at the disposal of Man. And animals, for that matter.

Take my Senior Consultant of Medicine, for example. I remember sitting with him seeing the OPD when a patient presented to me with breathlessness. “What’s his oxygen saturation?”, he asked.

I quickly pulled out my pulse oximeter and told him the reading.

“92, sir!”

He thought for a minute and then asked me to perform an arterial blood-gas analysis on him. But immediately, he applied the oximeter again on another finger of the patient, just to confirm.

It then read “96”.

The value was no longer abnormal.

He looked me in the eye and said, “Tell me. How can I trust you again?”

A laptop bathed in oil

I was in first year of college and had just bought a laptop. A 360 degrees foldable tablet-cum-laptop I couldn’t take my eyes off. More so because I imagined doing the stuff of writers on that machine. Going all clickety-clack on its keys as I poured my thoughts on the screen.

One day, my roommate asked for it. He was planning to watch a movie and although, I’m not very fond of sharing my gadgets — because of reasons that would be obvious very shortly — I agreed.

The next day I got my laptop back in a condition that had my heart shattered. There was a layer oil on the keypad and the screen. Basically, everywhere my rommate’s fingers wandered. Who doesn’t like munching on snacks while watching a movie, after all?

It was not a major offence. But it was something that consolidated my already established opinion. That I can’t trust anyone just like that.

Maybe people aren’t as uptight and anxious as me when it comes to living life. Maybe I take it too seriously. Like not wanting my books dog-eared by another classmate. I agree that I had asked him to not disturb my bookshelf even before he had a chance to sabotage the corners of the books, but not like I could have waited for that to happen. I knew them. I knew how they do what they do. I knew that these things didn’t matter to them and I might come across as a snobbish jerk but I couldn’t help it. I like my things a certain way and that’s the reason I can’t trust people enough to share them.

Just like my senior consultant who liked it his way. Immaculate. Flawless. No chance of error whatsoever because for him, patients reigned supreme. It was his way of conducting his professional life.

It is my way of keeping my gadgets.

Not oiled.

A little obsession is the rule of life, I guess?

TheUnknownDoktor

The espresso arrived in a shiny white cup, bathed in sunlight, casting an eloquent shadow on the only cookie beside. This is all it takes to put a smile on my face because I have a clearer sense of what I reject than what I seek — a reflection of my not-so-flexible personality.

The sophisticated customers you see in cafes, placing very precise orders with very specific customizations, aren’t always snobs who pretend to be superior to others. Many have an outer shell toughened with tightly wound perfectionism to make life less unpredictable. That’s why they prefer ‘the usual’ because it doesn’t kickstart the fight or flight reaction their nervous system is so habitual of.

I’m rigid in a special manner, though. It’s not just the taste but also the fascia. The whole abdomen and pelvic region that goes stiff like a wooden board and constricts me from within. The muscles, the nerves, everything becomes irritated as if physically manifesting my behavior on the outside.

I have considerably outgrown the anxious, uptight kid I once was a decade ago while preparing for the medical entrance exam.

Even though the behavior has largely changed, the fascia still holds the memory.

Of the habits carved out that haven’t faded.

The miracle drug

It was the night of boundless despair. My tummy screamed from inside as I coughed my guts out. The acid in my airway just wouldn’t budge. The stiff fascia was pushing my stomach so high that the sphincter couldn’t work and acid refluxed constantly all the way up, spilling into my upper airway.

I am certain that had the doctors witnessed my symptoms, they wouldn’t have brushed them off as just another case of GERD. It was the label affixed to my ailment. Plain old GERD (Gastro-esophageal reflux disease). This happens when your set of symptoms does not fit into one cliche diagnosis. Either you are a freak or a hypochondriac. Imagine getting a Band-aid for an amputation. This is what it feels like.

My misery knew no light at the end of the tunnel. I was in a chasm that kept cracking towards the centre of the Earth. There was one last resort, however.

The drug that was prescribed to me when all of it began.

Ten years back.

A strip of escitalopram — an antidepressant — lay untouched on my bookshelf. I had ordered it that morning itself, driven by an impulse I can’t explain.

It was mainly to feel better and come out of the dreaded sorrow of helplessness by numbing down my negative emotions. But partly, it came from the idea that I was on the same drug for two weeks while preparing for my entrance examination. The symptoms had originated then as mild discomfort, and were managed by this medicine by my doctor. Although it just consolidated his belief that my illness was all in my mind, his confidence would later prove to be fallacious. We doctors are notorious for this.

What escitalopram did was soothe the nerves entering the core of tender points in my fascia. The constantly irritated bundle of fibers blaring the ‘pain’ alarm.

Calm nerves lead to relaxation of tender points, releasing the deep knots within my fascia and muscles. The effect was magical. Within five minutes, the cough stopped. I finally had a Eureka moment.

And I knew that the effect didn’t stem from the anti-depressant action of the pill.

The daze

Escitalopram goes by the brand name Lexapro in the United States. It is the most common prescribed anti-depressant because of its minimal side-effects. When I say minimal, it’s relative. Because in the absolute sense, they are still a lot.

The biggest downside I find of escitalopram is the sedation it brings along. The calm of serotonin surge also makes you sleepy. The thought process becomes foggy, and your decision-making ability slows down. Calm indifference takes the centre stage, and cognition goes into hibernation. Dream takes over reality. This was the state I appeared for my exams in. The final year exams of my graduation degree.

I remember sleeping for ten hours each night, even before that dreaded theory exam of Surgery, when other students put in an all-nighter to complete the syllabus. I remember waking up early in the morning and forcing myself to walk while studying because my brain was in snooze mode.

Things would have been better had I known that black coffee negates the sedative effects, something that I realized three years later.

For most, a cup of coffee is just that.

For me, it is the difference between reality and dream.

Whenever I have to pop in lexapro.

TheUnknownDoktor

My left wrist was bandaged with a hot roti (a bread made in south-east asia) because nobody had told my mom that warm compressions needed to be aesthetic.

I remember telling everyone at home that a basketball had sprained my wrist. That it hit at an unusual angle. That it wasn’t my fault.

It actually wasn’t. Not any more than standing up for your self-respect is.

It was the fault of the punch that had landed in the most unfortunate manner on that stocky kid who bullied me, that gave me the sprain. Kids don’t realize that their words can pierce through the protein-deprived shell of insecurity that many body dysmorphic teens carry.

Right after my wrist got hurt, I enveloped it with my other hand like a splint, trying to make the pain go away. In that moment, the bully grabbed my wrist and encircled it with his thumb and index finger touching by the tips of each other.

“It’s just that easy”, he said, making a snapping sound with his tongue, which of course implied that breaking my bones was no big deal for a giant his size.

Alas! Brother forgot that my bones didn’t carry my will.

TheUnknownDoktor

Picture this lady.

Now remove the lights, open the roof, reposition the stage to the centre, make everyone wear a cloak, hand them a goblet of wine, and you have the symposium as it began two millennia ago.

Uh, correction, remove the lady completely because, misogyny and all that.

A symposium, currently, is described as a conference where experts have discussions on a particular subject. Very esoteric stuff, let me tell you.

And they began in the same manner, when philosophers would gather and have discussions under the influence of alcohol. For my dear friends who think it is unfair, it’s all about chronology. You have to be a philosopher first and then drink and ramble. Not the other way around.

The word comes from ancient Greek syn = “together” and posis = “drinking”.

It used to be a simple social gathering after a meal where musings were exchanged in the company of wine and music.

In fact, ‘The Symposium’ is actually a Socratic dialogue written by Plato in 380 BC. It is a collection of extemporaneous speeches delivered by a group of Athenians attending a banquet. And what they are discussing is what men always discuss when they have nothing to talk about — love and sex. They are praising Eros, the god of love and sex, to be precise.

Next time you attend a boring symposium, grab that extra glass. Make Plato proud.

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References:

“A History of the World in 6 Glasses” by Tom Standage

Symposium (Plato)

All I want to hear is, “I totally understand. It happens”.

All I want is reassurance. A warm hug.

A friendly tap on the shoulder, not a brisk yanking of advice.

I want to hear what embraces me gently, not what tries to solve my problem.

Because frankly speaking, I’m aware of what I need to do to get out of my once-in-a-while gloom.

We all are adults. We know that loneliness sets in now and then because every friend is busy with their own life. Everyone has graduated. It’s not college anymore.

Do you think I need to be told that interacting with people around me and indulging in a productive activity shall dissolve the loneliness to a great extent?

Do you think I’m oblivious to the fact that an intensive workout shall leave me feeling good?

I’m aware. Dear friends! I’m aware.

But don’t you realize that nothing can be a substitute for ‘everything’?

The ‘everything’ that included a warm coffee session with your best friend in college days?

How can an intensive workout match the feeling of being validated and understood over a brunch?

How can it be a substitute for the long drives and fun treks?

The urge to help

Naturally, every one of us has this tendency to craft a solution for our distressed loved ones.

We can’t see them in pain. We can’t see the smile waning off their face.

Hence, we immediately come up with a solution that sounds perfect in our own head.

There you go! You came to me with a problem, and I coughed up a solution that sounds fine to me, no matter how impractical it is, because I can’t deal with the anxiety of not being able to help a friend in need. I had to justify my sense of worth with an outcome, which I hereby serve to you on a plate of absurdity garnished with reason.

The patients with clinical depression, who are bereft of an inherent motivation to perform tasks can very well relate to what I’m trying to say.

I remember being the only student in a psychiatry class, and the Head of the Department sat just a metre across from me.

“Ask me anything you like”, he showered generosity.

“Why don’t depressed folks just perform a physical exercise, when it is known to enhance our mood?”, I asked naively.

What followed was a session of pure bliss, wherein I was informed about the nuances of mental illness, suicidal ideation and more.

“Depressed patients lack an inherent motivation to perform basic tasks. Sure, exercise can physiologically help to dampen the effects of depression. But how will the patient initiate the exercise without an impetus, when his neural circuits aren’t conducive to that? How will he sustain the exercise without his motivational neural pathways kicking into action?”

And there went the explanation for why “Just move your body” is a bs advice to be given to a psychiatric patient.

If not emerging out of empathy, your advice is most likely to be useless. And you cannot empathize unless you have experienced what it feels like to be in the other person’s shoes.

This is why most people throw impractical advice to people with a mental health problem, or any other situation that they have never experienced themselves.

The one who has been on a shrink’s couch is seldom quick to judge and is always more empathetic and understanding than any other random person.

My point is, most of the time, your friend just seeks a warm company. An affectionate touch of empathy. A plain and simple “I’m there for you”.

Advice flows in plenty all over the internet. One can just Google and be informed. The reason your friend chooses you is because he expects empathy which a glass screen hinged on a few buttons cannot provide.

TheUnknownDoktor

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It all began in college. Having cracked a tough medical entrance, I had secured admission to an envy-provoking medical institution. Life was good. Making new friends and developing new skills was not on the horizon anymore. It was in the palm of my hand. I had caught lightning in a bottle.

“This is my path, finally. All paved with gold”, I thought.

Then life threw at me a rock so large that I tumbled down all the way to a dark, secluded place in a chasm of endless despair.

I could see people above enjoying their life and making memories, but they couldn’t see me. I was the only person in the audience of a drama performance, sitting in the dark, visible to none, while everybody in this world was out there on the stage, illuminated with plenty of sodium lamps for everyone to see.

I and my struggles hid in plain sight. This was not the kind of invisibility cloak I had dreamed of.

When I was a kid, watching all the fantasy TV shows with magic as the common theme, I would think, what if someone was troubled by a supernatural entity that couldn’t be discussed with others because nobody else could understand him?

Something akin to Harry approaching the Muggles to save himself from the dementors?

The child in me never knew that it doesn’t exactly need to be supernatural. There are certain phenomena that nobody may ever understand because they fall into the blind spot of science.

Whatever is counterintuitive but true is just a step away from a scientific explanation to be rendered intuitive and true. Until then, it is mystical.

So, when something is inexplicable and can’t be empathized with unless experienced personally, it is akin to magic. Quite a dark one.

And I was unfortunate enough to be in those shoes, running away from a soul-sucking sickness, trying to explain my condition to the Muggles of healthcare — the doctors who thought they knew everything.

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The beginning

I remember the day clear as a mirror. I had woken up from sleep, and my throat was burning. I didn’t feel like having breakfast, and my tummy hurt.

A quick consultation got me diagnosed with GERD (Gastroesophageal reflux disease). An illness in which a valve-like structure — called the sphincter — otherwise preventing the contents of the stomach from entering into the food pipe, malfunctions.

It fails to close properly, and as a result, acid literally comes up the food pipe into the throat and even the nose. It also trickles down into the windpipe and initiates a cough reflex. The resulting symptoms are burning pain in the throat and beneath the chest, cough, sneeze, runny nose, etc.

There exists no medicine to strengthen the sphincter. The only possible medical intervention is to take proton pump inhibitors that reduce acid secretion and lessen down the impact of the disease while the body heals on its own.

Sometimes, a Helicobacter pylori stomach infection is the culprit and hence I was administered a course of antibiotics as well.

But all in vain.

I was not improving, but the gastroenterologists dismissed me as a case that was not worth much attention.

Anybody who has suffered from GERD knows that lifestyle changes are important for the cure. Some of the adjustments that need to be made are avoiding oily food, caffeine, chocolates, and raw tomatoes, raising the head-end of the bed to prevent reflux, and having smaller and more frequent meals. And if someone fails to improve, the doctor quickly labels him as a lazy lad who didn’t put in enough effort for improvement. I was blamed similarly despite employing all the corrective measures.

“It’s not that big a disease; stop whining,” the men in white would say.

I got several invasive tests done. A portable camera through a scope was inserted via the mouth into my stomach to visualize what was wrong. It’s called endoscopy, and it was done three times and came normal every single time.

Unable to see the light at the end of the tunnel, I pleaded with the doctors to surgically correct the defect and tighten my sphincter.

It required me to undergo another diagnostic test called a 24-hour pHmetry to observe whether my disease was significant enough to benefit from the surgery. Whether the benefit-to-risk ratio was in favor of having my innards handled and manipulated in a procedure that could go wrong in many ways.

So, I had a scope inserted in my food pipe via the nose for 24 hours, which measured the amount of acid my food pipe was exposed to.

And the verdict came not in my favor. The result showed acid reflux, but it wasn’t significant enough to cut open my tummy.

Another test was performed to assess the motility of my food pipe, called esophageal manometry (sometimes, the coordinated muscular movement called peristalsis is dysfunctional, which can cause sphincter problems). But alas! It was again normal.

By now, the doctors were fully convinced that it was ‘all in my mind.’ I was wasting their time on something I should have ignored as if it wasn’t real.

I was dejected and helpless. There wasn’t a day when my throat wouldn’t burn. I was unable to eat or drink anything and lost 10 kg of weight in just a month. My skeletonization was in progress, and it appeared like I was getting decomposed alive. Nobody had a clue what was going on. I changed innumerable doctors, but everyone failed to see beyond the walls of orthodoxy.

During the COVID lockdown, the acid trickled down into my windpipe and damaged its inner lining. The latter could no longer act as a barrier against the bacteria, and infection followed. I coughed thick greenish-yellow sputum tinged with blood streaks. The cough was so vigorous that my chest hurt whenever I coughed. I wanted to end it all. My helplessness knew no bounds.

Unable to satisfy even the most basic and bottom-most rung of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, I was very demotivated and low in spirits.

My life seemed like a free fall without a parachute. And the worst part was that nobody could understand my pain. It was not a fracture or a paralysis to glare in their face. People wondered why I was getting skinnier. Some made fun of my condition, while others ignored.

And I continued to suffer.

Despair was in the air. I remember assessing my wrist for the exact point that could end all my troubles. A single nick on the bounding pulse would exsanguinate my worries.

It was the morning of an exam, and I broke down. A barrage of tears flooded down my cheeks. My friend hugged me and assured me that whatever came, we would handle it together. After somehow appearing for the exam in a mentally clouded state, I headed straight to the psychiatry department.

Sitting in the shrink’s chair, I vented my heart out. How I had been suffering from a mysterious illness, and nobody had a clue about it. He quickly labeled me a malingerer and dismissed my complaints. The downslope didn’t seem to end.

When grief strikes, we go through many stages, from denial to anger to, finally, acceptance. The process of emotional healing requires empathetic support from friends and family. When this support is deficient in your journey through the gloom, you are left fighting alone in a strange, cold world where nobody understands you.

Rising from the ashes

After two years of squirming in the thick soup, the cosmic wheels turned a little.

Fortune smiled upon me, and I came across this video of Dana Sterling.

A physiotherapist by profession, she described a concept called the ‘myofascial continuum.’

She explained how all our body parts are wrapped around in a tough sheath called fascia which was hitherto supposed to be only a supporting structure with no essential role whatsoever.

This layer of connective tissue wraps all our muscles, nerves, and blood vessels. In the first year of medical college, while performing dissection, nobody bothers about the fascia. It is a structure that is carelessly removed while focusing attention on the apparently more important muscles, nerves, and blood vessels.

But Sterling believes that everything in our body is connected to the other via this fascia and that it has the ability to contract (a big statement as it was long since believed that fascia is a non-contractile structure). Sterling says that when a region of this fascia gets contracted into a tousled mass called a tender/trigger point, a distant point much away from this tender point feels the stretch. The distant point then manifests as a pathology because the fascial stretch reduces the range of motion of that particular part.

To understand this, let’s create a hypothetical scenario. Suppose you are in a group of four, and each person holds one corner of a bedsheet without pulling it toward himself such that the bedsheet lies slackened. Now, if one person suddenly pulls the bedsheet toward himself, the other three experience a pulling force that has actually originated from one particular point much away from them. Consider that point as the tender point and the bedsheet as the fascia. A similar stretch is experienced at locations further away from the focus of contraction (tender point) as the fascia is stretched in the body.

So, if your shoulder feels stiff and painful, it could be that the fascia around it is getting stretched because of a tender point (felt as a taut band or a knot in the muscle), say, in the back. Releasing that tender point releases the stretch of the fascia at the shoulder, and the person improves. That’s the concept of the myofascial continuum in physiotherapy.

This breakthrough has been a boon for people with chronic pain. Sadly, though, many practitioners are still unaware of this phenomenon.

It was the ultimate Eureka moment for me.

I could sense gravity, a constricting force in my pelvic muscles, which made me suspect that this phenomenon was at work.

But there was a problem. India is deficient in skilled physiotherapists. Most of them couldn’t crack the medical entrance and instead studied for a bachelor’s degree in physiotherapy from a tier 3 college. All they ever do is sit in a toilet-sized room and perform infrared therapy, whether indicated or not.

I was in Pune, and I rummaged through the whole city. I also travelled to Jaipur but all of them were a disappointment as they knew nothing about the theory.

Then, I contacted a physiotherapist in the USA who was well-versed with the fundamental concepts. Since I was a student and long-distance therapy couldn’t work, she advised me to search for some physiotherapists nearby in Mumbai.

My stars aligned, and I met one. She was the first person to initiate some improvements in my illness. But after a while, I reached a standstill. The kind lady then referred me to a friend of hers who emerged like a knight in shining armor.

He, too, had a clinic in Mumbai and approached patients holistically with a bird’s eye view.

As I stood bare-torsoed in front of him, he spotted the problem in an instant.

“You are breathing wrong,” he said.

I was breathing with my chest, not my tummy. The tension in my abdominal muscles was visible to him. I wasn’t fully using my diaphragm to breathe, and hence, my pelvis, which had somehow contracted into multiple tender points, refused to relax.

What’s more, I would sometimes unconsciously pause my breath when stressed, physically or mentally. This was a result of my disturbed, tensed-up fascia.

This resulted in the fascia lining my stomach being pulled upwards, taking along with it the sphincter we discussed. The resulting abnormal location of the gastro-esophageal sphincter disturbed its functionality, as in a hiatal hernia (the esophageal sphincter herniates through an opening in the diaphragm called esophageal hiatus), leading to severe acid reflux intractable to medical treatment.

What followed next was a series of visits twice a week. I would travel to and fro Pune and Mumbai for my physiotherapy. I learned abdominal breathing — which recruited my diaphragm in a better manner —and various abdominal relaxation exercises to release the myofascial trigger points.

The improvement was dramatic. I could see my worst nightmare vanishing before my eyes. It was magic taking its due course.

The struggle was real, though. By the time I reached college, the gates would be closed, and I would have to jump over the walls. It was quite tiring as well. The travel, the therapy, and the constant effort to study amidst all of it. Ultimately, I had to pass my exams also.

Even after the therapy ended, it was a long process wherein I had to be mindful of my breathing patterns and muscle tightness.

I wish I could say that I’m perfectly alright now. I wish I could end this fable on a happier note. But life isn’t a fairy tale, and the universe is indifferent to how the curtain falls.

Even after significant improvements, I have a long way ahead.

That’s just how my cookie crumbled, but thankfully, I had very supportive friends. Few, but enough. I always preferred quality over quantity and that is what helped me navigate the choppy waters. I had, and I’m still having a tough time dealing with the issue. Looking back, the disease was debilitating enough, but more than that was the fact that I wasn’t understood.

The journey was tough, but if I had to point out the silver lining, I would say it has made me a more empathetic doctor. Having been on both sides of the table, I know what a patient feels like and how a doctor should behave.

I’m aware of the grinding feeling of helplessness—the desperation to try anything and everything that could possibly affect a cure.

I’m aware of the need for soft skills in my fraternity, the need to not ride high on ego, and the need to accept that nobody knows everything.

Empathetic assurance goes a long way. Sometimes, all one requires is someone to say, “I’m with you, and we will fight together.”

TheUnknownDoktor

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References:

Myofascial pain syndromes and their evaluation

Focused review: myofascial pain

He was a French surgeon, who, quite contrary to the stereotype of sophistication, took ‘for science’ to a mind-shatteringly different level.

It could have been his way of exploring the dark side, for all you know. Who else would batter the dead for an experiment? But let’s be mature — or act at least — and give the guy a benefit of doubt.

For science, he raised the toast.

And produced results that had sound scientific backing.

Meet Rene Le Fort.

His hands couldn’t contain the charisma of his inquisitiveness and instead lay bare on the unsuspecting skulls of the dead.

He subjected the heads of cadavers to blunt force using a club and a cannon ball and also dropped them off great heights. Then, he proceeded to boil them to remove the soft tissue and examine the pattern of distribution of fracture lines. Legend has it that he even dropped pianos on cadavers but that’s a stretch. Chinese whispers, all the same.

He came up with three major types of mid-face fractures:

Technical aspects aside, his work was the ‘shoulder of the giant’ in the field of oral and maxillofacial surgery.

As they say, your personality is your post-graduation. No wonder he chose orthopaedics.

TheUnknownDoktor

References:

René Le Fort

Le Fort fracture classification

If dad jokes were a dialect, they would be Cockney.

The word ‘cockney’ means “cock’s egg” (from Middle English cokeney), a slang for townsperson. It is used for the group of people who were born within the sound of Bow Bells — the famously noisy bells of St Mary-le-Bow Church on Cheapside in the City of London. Those bells got destroyed by the German bombs in WWII, though, but the name stuck.

The Cockneys have the most amazing slang in the English language, for the simple reason that they rhyme and are humorous. Basically, the best of both worlds.

But that’s not all. The rhyming word is used as a substitute for the actual word. They say apples and pears instead of stairs. Trouble and strife instead of wife. And Plates of meat for feet.

The witty absurdity doesn’t stop here. The complexity steps up a notch further. If you end up making a silly mistake, you may hear ‘Use yer loaf’. Actually, loaf of bread rhymes with head. So, loaf is often used for head.

Similarly, have a butcher’s is slang for ‘have a look’, because butcher’s hook rhymes with look. A Cockney may greet you with a “how you doin’, my old china?” That’s because china plate rhymes with ‘mate’.

The funny thing is that the word that rhymes is often dropped, baffling everybody who is unaware of the dialect. I mean, how can someone make sense of the word tom being used for jewellery just because tom-foolery rhymes with it?

Sometimes, the rhymes can get really convoluted. For example, bottle means a** (because bottle and glass rhymes with a**). But since bottle rhymes with Aristotle as well, Aris (short for Aristotle) becomes another word for a**. Now, Plaster of Paris rhymes with Aris, making plaster yet another candidate for a**.

Plaster=plaster of Paris=Aris=Aristotle=bottle=bottle and glass=a**

Cockney rhyming slang has infiltrated America as well. The most hilarious is why a Bronx cheer is called a raspberry (Remember that a famous dessert in Britain is called ‘raspberry tart’).

As if the slang weren’t causing fits of laughter already, the Cockneys have their own interesting pronunciations seeping into the mix. For example, the cockney spelling of ‘Ealing’ — a London district — is supposed to come from: “E for ‘eaven, A for what ‘orses eat, L for where you’re going, I for me, N for what lays eggs, and G for God’s sake keep yer ears open”.

As I said, it’s fun.

TheUnknownDoktor

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References:

“The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way” by Bill Bryson

The ultimate guide to Cockney rhyming slang

Cockney Rhyming Slang

Cockney

‘Dark’ and ‘history’ can not be mutually exclusive wherever the USA gets involved. Especially when what else gets involved is the people of another continent being chained and starved, only to be brought dead in the cargo containers of a ship all the way to the Americas.

Scientists believe that the reason blacks are more prone to hypertension is because of the way they were evolutionarily….ahem….Americanally selected. When millions of slaves were transported across the Atlantic in ships, they were kept hungry and thirsty. It was believed that their sub-human status didn’t accord them the entitlement of having food and water. Yeah, a very US thing.

Only those Africans whose kidneys were better able to absorb salt and water and produce a concentrated urine survived the journey to America, while the rest died of dehydration.

This tendency of the kidneys to absorb more salt and water also rendered their blood volume more than that of others, fuelling the prevalence of high blood pressure, aka hypertension, among the African-Americans of today.

Just a hypothesis that is not backed up by significant research data. But the point is, the ramifications of slavery extend far beyond our imagination. That era wasn’t just unethical. It was the proverbial butterfly flapping its wings.

And the tornado is still very much visible. Read on.

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The influence of bananas was just bananas

Banana originated in South-East Asia and reached Africa somewhere between 2000 BC and 1000 AD, where the Europeans first encountered them. The name ‘banana’ itself derives from the Bantu language of West-Central Africa.

The enslaved Africans working on sugarcane plantations in the Canary Islands were fed banana and rice as a staple diet by the Portuguese, who controlled those islands until 1479. Too many carbs, if you ask me, but not like they had a choice.

You probably don’t know but banana grows throughout the year and is productive to the extreme. It delivers 200,000 pounds per acre. That’s ten times the yield of yams and a hundred times that of potatoes. And that too with an extremely minimal labour input.

So the slaves were also forced by the landlords to grow banana on the limited ground that they were provided, to supplement their meagre rations. It took less time and made them available round the clock to be used for other tasks. Like how the corporates today provide health insurance but make the employees slog for extreme hours that deteriorates their health in the first place.

The banana was indispensable for the slave industry of the Americas, but it grew to become the quintessential cog of its export economy as well.

Until the late nineteenth century, banana was sold as a luxury in minute quantities in the US stores despite them being quite close to the banana-growing regions. The reason was its perishability. But as the era saw the development of refrigerators, steamships and railways, large-scale export of the bananas became possible.

The yellow fruit captured the market single-handedly and many US companies like the United Fruit Company (now, Chiquita) and the Standard Fruit Company (now, Dole) established widespread banana plantations in the Caribbean (Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti), Central America (Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama and Guatemala) and northern South America (Colombia and Ecuador, which are still the world’s biggest banana exporters).

The US banana companies dominated the economy of these countries. So much so that the United Fruit Company (UFC) and the Standard Fruit Company (SFC) controlled the railways, telephone, telegraph, mail, electric lights and the mail. In the 1930s, in Guatemala, the UFC was the largest owner of the country’s railways, the largest landowner and the largest employer.

The US banana companies, in the banana-producing countries, soon came to be known as El Pulpo, meaning ‘the octopus’, owing to their strangulating grip over every aspect of their economy.

The absolute economic control gave these companies a huge influence over the politics of the banana-producing countries. The banana companies had their own police and customs. They even bought the politicians who ensured ‘pro-business’ policies and generated a coup against the governments that raised taxes and strengthened worker rights.

Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, the US Marines invaded and occupied many of these countries to serve the interests of the banana companies. As I said, a very US thing.

But even the devil must have said “enough” on the night of December 6, 1928. Thousands of UFC workers, along with their families, had gathered in the main town square in Cienaga, Colombia. Wearing the cries of justice on their sleeves and the hunger of equality in their heart, they carried lanterns glowing like the sun.

Their manifestos were on their tongue. The demands were simple. Provide toilets at workplaces, pay wages in cash(as opposed to coupons that could only be used in UFC shops selling items at inflated prices) and frame basic labour protection laws. And, you know, maybe not make them work their fingers to their bones for a start?

Just then, arrived the boots thudding in rhythm. The chorus of slogans was broken by a metallic rattling of rifles. The army had arrived.

In crisp olive greens and shiny shoes, came a rigid gentleman. General Carlos Cortés Vargas climbed onto a balcony that overlooked the square. His troops took positions on the rooftops and the perimeter of the plaza.

He pulled out a piece of paper and began reading the decree.

The workers and their families were given five minutes to disperse. Otherwise, the army would open fire.

The clock struck, but nobody moved. The mothers held their kids tighter as if the mere act of hugging them could ensure protection.

They must have thought that a violence of this intensity could not be anything greater than an empty threat, but they forgot that the US had the reins, and so there was no bar to what could happen.

Then came the sound, sharp and clean as a whisper at midnight. The rifles had been cocked.

Shots pierced the silence of the night with a satanic shrill. People screamed, cried and howled. Bullets sliced through flesh. Blood stained the manifestos. Horror stained their soul.

The flash of the muzzle enlightened the square with terror and pain. The firing lasted for a few minutes, but the trauma was etched forever. The soldiers stepped among the dead and counted aloud, but nobody agreed on the final number. The government said it was nine. The historians claimed it was in hundreds. The survivors, though, spoke in hushed tones that there were thousands dead.

This came to be known as the Banana Massacre of Colombia. Something that was engraved forever in the annals of history by the author Gabriel Garcia Marquez in his famous book, One Hundred Years of Solitude.

The following are some letters regarding the massacre that we weren’t meant to see.

The dominance of the US banana companies in Central America and northern South America grew to such heights between the late nineteenth and the mid-twentieth century that these countries came to be known as, you guessed it, ‘banana republics’.

Every time a news anchor in the prime time debate calls his country a banana republic, it is not just a lame insult to the party in power but also a stark reminder of a dark past. One that killed many and impoverished all the working class of the poor developing countries.

It’s a sensational piece of history that makes us think whether the current MNCs in our nation could ever rise (or fall, to be more correct) to a position that it cripples our economy, all the while wearing a facade of development.

TheUnknownDoktor

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References:

‘Edible Economics’ by Ha-Joon Chang

Carlos Cortés Vargas

Banana strike and Military Massacre of 1928 in Santa Marta, Colombia: A socio-political reading

Einstein scribbling numbers on his notebook to invent the LASER on paper, and a toga-wearing Roman wondering about the futility of life. Both would be characterized as ‘science’, linguistically speaking.

In ancient times, science was more appropriately called ‘natural science’ and came under the purview of ‘philosophy’ because anything that got you staring into a void with a finger on your chin qualified to be called so.

That’s why Newton’s most famous book, Principia Mathematica, which spoke about the Law of Universal Gravitation, was subtitled “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy”.

The ancient scholars didn’t put much thought into separating humanities from physics, chemistry and biology, because, just think about it, there were plenty of other ways to discriminate.

‘Science’, comes from the Latin ‘scientia’, meaning ‘knowledge’, or the quality of being an expert. The etymological ancestors of science gave cameos in words such as ‘omniscient’, meaning “all-knowing”, and ‘prescience’, meaning “foreknowledge”.

But the Latin root literally meant ‘to distinguish or separate one thing from another’. Its base word being ‘scindere’, meaning ‘to cut or divide’. The relation becomes clear when you realize how science dissects reality to understand it.

This ‘distinguishing’ sense reflects well in the word ‘conscience’, which literally means ‘a joint knowledge’ of the difference between right and wrong.

The Proto-Indo-European root (the hypothetical parent language of a large number of Indian, Asian and European languages) of ‘science’, i.e., ‘skei’, means “to cut”. From this PIE root came the word ‘schism’, meaning ‘a deep division’, often of a belief or an ideology.

And later, ‘schizophrenia’, quite literally, ‘a splitting of the mind’.

And that’s how science is related to shit, whose Proto-Germanic root, “skitana”, means “to cut or split”, because the process of defecation is essentially the separation of waste from the body.

That, or because the turds come out in segments. I’d love for this to be the reason, but alas, it’s probably the former explanation.

We are not done yet. You may criticize me for dragging this out, but do you know that ‘criticism’ itself means “to separate, decide, distinguish, judge”? It comes from the Greek kritikos, meaning “able to make judgments” (from the PIE root ‘krei’ — “to sieve,” thus “discriminate, distinguish”).

We often criticize actors for their performance in movies and also for the facade of humility that they display, preaching about nature conservation while flying on private jets. But do you know that being an actor literally meant being a hypocrite?

The word comes from the Greek word ‘hypokrites’, which itself comprises of two roots — ‘hypo’ meaning ‘under’, and ‘krinein’ meaning ‘to judge, separate, decide’ (again, from the PIE root ‘krei’- “to sieve,” thus “discriminate, distinguish”).

So, a hypocrite was one who responded ‘under judgment’ on the stage. He answered with a moral or philosophical undertone, weighing decisions and delivering speeches that reflected moral stances. All with a careful judgement on his part.

But gradually, the meaning of ‘hypocrite’ underwent a metaphorical shift, and it’s easy to understand why. Picture an ancient Greek theatre where actors wore masks, spoke in stylized voices and pretended to be someone that they weren’t. This theatrical sense stuck.

Thus, referring to someone who pretends to be someone else by putting on a show.

Even the word hypocrite is about separation. A fake division between who you are and who you pretend to be.

So, science is built on the same linguistic foundation as criticism, acting, and taking a dump. Pun not intended, but science has always been the art of cutting through crap to get to the truth.

TheUnknownDoktor

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References:

‘Words from Hell: Unearthing the Darkest Secrets of English Etymology’ by Jess Zafarris

Origin and history of science

Origin and history of criticism

Origin and history of hypocrite

Thud thud

Thud thud

Thud thud

"Help me", she wailed, banging on the roof of their car.

"I'm on fire", came her screams, seconds before the flames swallowed her whole.

She was in one of the thirteen cars piled up on the highway that foggy morning. It was the worst road accident in Canadian history.

Stan and Ute Lawrence, trapped in their own vehicle, couldn’t save the girl. They were rescued when a firefighter reached them, just in time.

They were reported to have sustained only minor scratches. “Unscathed” was the term used, comfortably ignoring the fact that some wounds don’t bleed but burrow deep.

That night, they couldn't sleep.

Their legs refused to rest.

Chaos, bottled tight inside, loosened cork after cork, wine after wine. Glasses, held by trembling limbs, met their lips with a clandestine promise of serenity.

Balancing on the edge of their nerves, the tiniest of things tipped them off, uncovering the rage and frustration simmering within. Irritation pervaded the air. Irked by everything and calmed by nothing, they searched constantly for an invisible enemy lurking in the shadows.

The crash had ended.

But the trauma had just begun.

Their brain, mind and body would never be the same.

“Prior to the advent of brain, there was no color and no sound in the universe, nor was there any flavor or aroma and probably little sense and no feeling or emotion. Before brains, the universe was also free of pain and anxiety.”

— Roger Sperry

The brain after the storm

Life swings between highs and lows.

A ping-pong match of bliss and grief.

A living, breathing testament to the saying: “This too shall pass.”

But not everyone has the luxury of letting things go. Some moments don’t leave. They dig in, nest deep, and anchor hard in our brain, dictating our thoughts, beliefs and behaviors long after the event ends. A shade of trauma that tints every subsequent life experience with the color of fight-or-flight response — a perpetual state of heightened stress hormones.

It’s trauma wearing a thousand faces.

The girl who flinches at a gentle touch.

The man who numbs his rage with rum.

The child who hides shame beneath a mask of arrogance.

The kid who learned to earn love by never saying "no."

It’s all there, deep in their hearts.

Trauma rarely arrives screaming. It lurks in unobtrusive ways, fortified by psychological defenses that neither let them slip away nor dissolve into oblivion.

That’s what trauma does. It changes you for the worse. It takes the blueprint of life and tears it into a million fragments, leaving you looking for the missing pieces of the jigsaw.

But trauma isn’t just emotional. It’s also physical. It literally rewrites the brain.

During a flashback, if we scan a person’s brain using fMRI (functional MRI), we see a dramatic shift in activity.

The scan lights up areas as they devour oxygen, showing us in real-time which regions are in overdrive.

And what we find is startling.

Words held hostage by memory

Marsha was a schoolteacher living in the quiet suburbs of Boston. Life was ordinary, until it wasn’t.

One summer afternoon, she picked up her daughter, five-year-old Melissa, from day camp.

While driving home, Marsha heard a persistent beeping indicating Melissa’s unfastened seatbelt. As Marsha reached back to fasten it, she accidentally ran a red light.

Right then, a car slammed into hers, killing Melissa instantly. Marsha was seven months pregnant, but the fetus also didn’t survive.

Thirteen years later, she was enrolled in a neuroscience study on trauma. She was put under the fMRI scanner, and a script narrating the incident in vivid detail was played on a tape recorder.

Within seconds, her heart rate and blood pressure spiked, and she came out breathless and drenched in sweat.

Merely hearing the script activated the same physiological responses that she had experienced at the time of the accident. Her brain couldn’t tell the difference between memory and reality. To her nervous system, the accident was happening again.

But what stunned the researchers was what the brain scan revealed.

1. The amygdala, the brain’s fear centre, lit up like a firework, indicating a panic mode.

2. The visual cortex, responsible for image processing, flared as well, lending proof of vivid flashbacks, playing in full color behind her eyes.

3. The prefrontal cortex, the thinking brain, went offline.
   But the most shocking of all,

4. The broca’s area, the brain’s speech centre, went dark, rendering her speechless.

The brain, in its trauma-locked state, had literally shut down her ability to speak.

This single finding explained so much.

Why victims of assaults and accidents sit mute and frozen in the emergency rooms. Why the photographs of combat soldiers show hollow-eyed men staring mutely into a void. Why, even years later, traumatized patients find it impossible to recount their trauma. To articulate the terror, rage, and helplessness they feel.

Because trauma doesn’t just haunt. It grabs the tongue and hijacks the mind, strong-arming it into believing that the terror isn’t over.

That the past isn’t past.

That you are still very much inside it.

What the wound whispers

When trauma shuts down the voice, the body becomes its echo.

Gut-wrenching feelings try to escape but end up burrowing through the body, turning skin into a prison scratched from the inside.

The victims become hypersensitive to harmless stimuli. They fail to differentiate between a friendly hug and an abusive grip. Between firecrackers and gunfire. An elevator transforms into the burning room they once couldn’t escape. A missed call becomes an echo of the parent who never came back.

The fight-or-flight system runs on a hair trigger. Every small conflict feels like life-or-death, wreaking havoc on relationships.

When the slightest of events fool your brain into thinking it’s the past all over again, your emotions go into overdrive. Anger takes the wheel and your partner reaches for the brakes, calling it quits.

When the dust settles, you're left stunned.

“Why did I say that?”

“Why did I react like that?”

And your brain, desperate for an answer, finds the easiest one.

You blame them.

They started it.

They pushed your buttons.

They made you act like a jerk.

Nobody in their right mind would want to be with a person like this. Even when they know it’s the trauma speaking, the relationship is too sharp a blade without a handle to be held onto.

And when the overactive fight-or-flight system burns out, the reptilian brain takes over. The lowermost portion of the brain that is the most primitive evolutionarily speaking, and controls the basic functions of life like breathing, circulation, etc.

Just as a snake or a lizard sits frozen in the corner of a cage in a zoo, the reptilian brain makes you numb. It dissociates you from your surroundings so that you don’t feel alive. You don’t react to danger at all, let alone stay hypervigilant.

That person you know who has a history of trauma but gets repeatedly abused by everybody? She is numb enough to react to danger and so is used like a doormat.

We have seen that trauma makes the amygdala squirt signals of panic and fear. A persistently activated amygdala makes one too afraid to live a normal life. A doorbell startles the heck out of them. A shady corner gets their heart racing. A traffic light sweats their guts out.

Trauma is a beast clawing at you from the inside. It offers you two choices, and you would want neither of them. The only reasonable choice is to slap the hell out of its two hands, showcasing the red and the blue pill. No, you want none.

You want healing. You want your body to realize that the past is over.

That there is a whole life ahead of you, and it is going to be far better than anyone could ever imagine.

TheUnknownDoktor

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References:

“The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma” by Bessel van der Kolk

Roozendaal B, McEwen BS, Chattarji S. Stress, memory and the amygdala. Nat Rev Neurosci. 2009 Jun;10(6):423-33. doi: 10.1038/nrn2651. PMID: 19469026.

Post-traumatic stress disorder

A zebra is blessed by evolution to have black and white stripes that confuse bloodthirsty flies and prevent bites. But do you know there’s a mathematical formula that decides whether the pattern on the skin becomes the leopard’s spots or the tiger’s stripes? Have you ever wondered why the zebra doesn’t have horizontal stripes?

Imagine what the horizontal stripes would do to a tiger.

Hint: starve him to death.

A tiger’s stripes enable it to camouflage itself amongst the tall grass, helped by the fact that its prime prey — the deer, is colorblind for red. It views the tiger in a greenish tinge which gets masked in the grass. The stripes help the tiger to become a walking ghost in the jungle.

This patterning of skin is dependent on certain chemical and physical processes, fairly predictable with mathematical formulas. I’m telling you this today. Alan Turing told this to the world about seventy years ago, in 1952, the same year he claimed to be a homosexual, and was subjected to chemical castration that led to his suicide.

And yeah! He’s the same guy who cracked the German coded message that helped to defeat Hitler, and later developed core programming that is the foundation of all computers, enabling you to read this article today on your device.

Yet, he was considered a criminal by his own country because of his sexuality.

The gem that lay hidden

Around the same time as Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA (in 1953), Turing published this seminal paper that discussed the mechanism of the formation of colored patterns that we see in Nature. The former discovery overshadowed the latter hypothesis but its importance wasn’t any lesser.

He postulated that patterns form through the interaction of two chemicals:

1. Activator — the chemical responsible for the pigment of the spots/stripes; promotes the production of both itself and the inhibitor

2. Inhibitor — inhibits the production of the activator

He termed these chemicals ‘morphogens’ and stated that these chemicals react and diffuse through space at different rates leading to the formation of a characteristic pattern. This concept was termed a ‘reaction-diffusion system’.

The catch is, that the medium of reaction-diffusion bears an instability or a randomness that allows for the patterns to appear. The diffusion should be heterogeneous. A homogenous mixture of the morphogens would lead to a uniform hue. Consider a completely gray zebra.

Think of it like an ink dissolved in water. The water ends up taking a uniform shade of the ink, but if you spread the ink on a surface and blow on it randomly, you generate a pattern. Thus, instead of diffusing (spreading out) evenly, the morphogens spread out at different rates.

[A simulation of particle A (green; present in the whole background) and particle B (red; fed in the system at a constant rate) undergoing reaction (A + 2B = 3B) and diffusion (B spreading outwards), and thus, leading to the formation of stripes. (Source: A Reaction-Diffusion Model Generating Turing Patterns)]

These patterns, arising out of ‘reaction-diffusion’, are called, ‘Turing patterns’.

For a better understanding, let’s consider an example.

This is a cheetah.

Suppose its yellow fur is like a forest that catches fire on an extremely dry and hot day. The resulting fire would turn the whole forest (here, fur) into a blackened clearing.

But we have firefighters as well. And these firefighters gather around the fire, wherever they can, and water the edges of the fire. Since the firefighters can’t reach the centre of the fire, that area gets burnt and becomes black, but the fire can’t spread further because the edges are taken care of.

This results in patches of burnt areas (here, the spots of the cheetah), intervened by areas of intact forest cover (here, the yellow fur).

Now, the movement of the firefighters in the burning forest is a random process. Had the firefighters failed to spread out at all, the whole forest would have turned black whereas if they had moved in a manner that allowed them to reach every nook and corner immediately, the whole forest would have been saved. Owing to the heterogeneity in their movement, we get the pattern.

The fire, here, was the activator and the water coming from the firefighters was the inhibitor, in a crude sense.

This result of the reaction-diffusion, Turing hypothesized, could be predicted with partial differential equations. You don’t need to be well-versed in it, but just have a glance.

Scary, I know.

What you can easily understand, though, is that depending on the numbers in the equations, we get either spots, stripes, or any other pattern. The numbers denote the speed and extent of diffusion of the activators and the inhibitors.

One more variable takes the centre stage — the curvature of the surface. The curvature affects the rate of diffusion, and hence, the resultant pattern.

This article explains how the different curvatures in this lizard exhibit different kinds of patterns. In fact, as the lizard grows (B-D), the skin curvature changes and so does the pattern on it.

Spots and stripes are two different outcomes of the same process. They are the same ‘reaction-diffusion’ playing on different surfaces.

But there is one thing to know here. The reaction-diffusion system isn’t just limited to the skin patterns.

Fingers and fins are the magic of Turing patterns

The digits formed during embryonic life are the result of the reaction-diffusion system, regulated by Hox genes.

The same interaction between the activator and the inhibitor molecules determines the specific number and thickness of the digits. How, you may wonder?

By producing a specific pattern of stripes during the foetal stage.

The mesoderm undergoes condensation in the form of closely located strips, resulting in a pattern like this:

These strips then undergo chondrogenesis (formation of cartilage) and in mammals, further ossification to become bony digits.

Let’s not dive into the details of the genes involved, but you can see that as the expression of the K_hox genes decreases, the number of digits increases with a decrease in their thickness.

As the digits become narrower and more closely spaced with a reduction in the expression of K_hox genes, you eventually get a limb bud with no digits.

Does a limb bud with no digits remind you of something?

Imagine what a fin looks like.

Whatever the number of digits, including zero, the underlying mechanism of their formation is the same ‘reaction-diffusion’ between an activator and an inhibitor.

This is one of the first examples where scientists have actually found the hypothetical ‘activator’ and ‘inhibitor’ chemicals. To keep the scope of this article within the reach of the laymen, interested people can read more about it here.

Let’s see the next fascinating application of this concept.

Narcotics and Turing Patterns

In the 1920s, Heinrich Klüver studied visual hallucinations experienced by patients receiving mescaline. He named the patterns seen in the hallucinations as form constants.

He found that these patterns — the cobwebs, spirals, and tunnels, are seen by many individuals, no matter the cause of their hallucinations.

After decades of intense work, researchers found that form constants arise from simpler linear stripes of cellular activation patterns in the retina. When these linear patterns from the circular retina are transferred as neural impulses to the visual cortex in the brain, the latter interprets them in a rectangular field of view. This contorts these stripes into the above-displayed form constants.

The scientists believe that the linear patterns of cell activation occurring in the retina are Turing patterns and can be explained by the reaction-diffusion model wherein one neuron acts as the activator and the other as the inhibitor.

Isn’t it crazy how immersive this concept is? It’s like the whole universe is dancing to the tunes of Turing patterns.

No wonder that it resurfaced in the paper ‘A Theory of Biological Pattern Formation’ by A. Gierer and H. Meinhardt, which forced the biologists to notice what Turing had said before departing forever.

In 2013, Queen Elizabeth issued a posthumous pardon to Alan Turing for the mistreatment that he had received from the nation. Notice how it was a ‘pardon’ and not an ‘apology’. Typical British.

We can’t even imagine what we have lost with the death of Alan Turing. His thoughts were like the dream that always eludes recall. Way, way ahead of people at that time.

What is amazing is that humans can’t solve the differential equations that he had devised to predict the results in reaction-diffusion systems. We need computers for this purpose, something that Turing was able to do with a pen and paper.

TheUnknownDoktor

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References:

Earthly mission

Introduction: Alan Turing and the Zebra’s Stripes

The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis

A theory of biological pattern formation

The Mathematical Code Hidden In Nature

Reaction-diffusion in a growing 3D domain of skin scales generates a discrete cellular automaton

Hox Genes Regulate Digit Patterning by Controlling the Wavelength of a Turing-Type Mechanism

A Mathematical Theory of Visual Hallucination Patterns

Periodic stripe formation by a Turing-mechanism operating at growth zones in the mammalian palate

Alan Turing

Thousands of passengers didn’t realize that the Grim Reaper stood in the hostel of the B.J. Medical College in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. His scythe hooked the plane shortly after take-off and brought the flying machine crashing downwards to everybody’s death.

The Air India Boeing flight departed from Ahmedabad for London on 12 June 2025. Within thirty seconds, both its engines failed, and ‘Mayday’ was announced. Only one passenger survived. The crash even killed some of the medical students on the ground, present in the hostel during that unfortunate moment. A heart-wrenching culmination of corporate mismanagement that attributes zero value to the life of a common man.

The investigation is still underway, but one thing is clear among the experts: the technical failure that resulted in the crash is an impossible scenario in the world of aviation. This wasn’t a bird strike or a weather disturbance. But a one hundred percent mechanical fault.

The DGCA in India has ruled out any inherent defect in the Boeing aircraft ,which has been involved in many such disasters recently. But it should not be taken seriously. Money must have exchanged hands, as is the norm in this country.

Shortly after the accident, there were multiple reports of Air India pilots making a U-turn midway in the air, diverting the plane back to the airport.

You must have guessed that it’s the horror of the recent tragedy, still fresh in the aviation industry, that has made the pilots ever more cautious.

Let’s dive deep into the ‘why’ of it.

The Availability Heuristic

It is a psychological phenomenon wherein what can be most easily recalled is given the most importance while making judgements. This bias operates because of the relative fluency with which a recent incident pops up in our minds, especially when associated with heightened emotions.

Hence, the reason why you double-check your seatbelt and keep the pressure off the gas pedal after an acquaintance suffers a road traffic accident. It is the reason why you ensure extra security after a recent burglary in your neighborhood.

“After each significant earthquake, Californians are for a while diligent in purchasing insurance and adopting measures of protection and mitigation. They tie down their boiler to reduce quake damage, seal their basement doors against floods, and maintain energy supplies in good order.”

— Daniel Kahneman, ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’

And this is why the Air India pilots have been making U-turns. One of them even had a panic attack seconds before take-off, just a day after the recent Ahmedabad crash.

As the psychologist Jonathan Haidt said, “The emotional tail wags the rational dog”.

The post-crash anxiety isn’t a new phenomenon. Every time a plane crashes, we see this ripple effect.

People make choices by consulting their emotions, and that’s when the availability bias comes into effect.

It is a mental shortcut that involves measuring the probability of something based on how easily its example comes to mind. And because a recent emotionally charged incident is bound to be recalled easily, we assume that it happens frequently.

In simpler terms, things that come to mind more easily are believed to be very common despite being statistically uncommon.

This fallacious trap is further fueled by our media that dances to the tunes of the public. Events that attract disproportionate attention, usually because of their emotional appeal, receive extensive coverage by the media. And irrespective of their rarity, they come to be seen as quite prevalent in society by the mass reporting.

The availability heuristic can often be viewed as a case of substitution of a hard question (What do I think about it?) with an easier one (What do I feel about it?).

What it means from an evolutionary perspective

We are hunter-gatherer brains entrapped in millennial bodies. Our psyche has been deeply affected by the conditions our bodies have evolved in.

A recent disaster hypes up our vigilance, and that helps us avoid similar scenarios, at least for a while.

In our daily lives, intuition comes first and strategic reasoning second. We can try our best to be an analyst, but deep down, all of us are slaves to our emotions.

TheUnknownDoktor

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References:

‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’ by Daniel Kahneman

Availability heuristic

What Is the Availability Heuristic?

Air India Flight 171

Air India pilot suffers runway PANIC ATTACK day after jet crash killed 279 as airline in chaos with 7 flights disrupted

Just one toxic relationship is enough to make you feel how an arrow stabs the heart. But did you know that this metaphor has strong roots in history?

The word ‘toxin’ comes from the Greek word ‘toxon’, meaning ‘bow’, and the word ‘toxic’ comes from the Greek word ‘toxikos’, meaning ‘pertaining to archery’.

This is because the Greeks always dipped their arrowheads in poison whenever they went to war. Such strong was the association that ‘toxon’ became ‘toxin’.

Archery was ubiquitous in those times. That’s why there are so many people with the names ‘Archer’, ‘Fletcher’ (meaning ‘arrow-maker’), and Bowyer (‘bow-maker’). This particular sport has lent a barrage of names in the English language because of its high popularity back then.

The term ‘point blank’ doesn’t mean ‘zero distance’ as is fallaciously believed. Although, it ultimately comes to that.

The blank in point blank comes from the French word for ‘white’: blanc.

It refers to the white spot in the middle of an archery target. There’s a concept in archery that you don’t aim directly at the target but slightly higher. This is because gravity acts on the arrow and drags it downward. Thus, if you aim at the target, you hit slightly below. This is where the term ‘aim high’ arose.

However, this concept doesn’t apply if you are extremely close to the target. This is when you aim directly at the blank point or the white spot in the middle —the point-blank range.

Enough room to swing a cat

The origin of the phrase enough room to swing a cat comes from, again, archery.

It is believed that the archers would put a cat in a bag and hang it from the branch of a tree. The cat would wriggle vigorously causing the sack to swing, thus becoming a difficult target for the archers, who were bored enough to practice on a stationary mark. Yeah, history is dark.

For my smart readers who must be thinking that the phrase letting the cat out of the bag must have the same origin, you are up for another story.

In the medieval markets, piglets were sold in sacks. This helped the farmers to carry them home easily. Then, some people did what eventually happens in a civilization —fraud. They would secretly substitute the pig with a far cheaper dog/cat. If you discovered the con, you would let the cat out of the bag.

Thrilled? You are welcome.

TheUnknownDoktor

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References:

‘The Etymologicon’ by Mark Forsyth

Origin and history of toxic

The ancient Greek roots of the term Toxic

Our heartbeats would race faster and faster as the reverse counting would approach its end. Hiding in our make-shift household lacunae, we would feel the anxiety pounding against our chest.

The plain old hide and seek. It was a ‘thrill’ to say the least.

But what exactly is thrill?

No, we aren’t here to discount your already existing knowledge regarding the word. Rather, we would arrive at that exact same meaning by traversing through a winding path of interesting trivia.

Are you thrilled?

Origin of ‘thrill’

The word comes from the Middle English thirl, which meant ‘a hole’.

Now, the lovers of crime stories may find a murder thrilling in the contemporary sense of the word but the meaning becomes eerily literal from a historical perspective.

Because before adopting the current ‘woohoo’ sense, it was first used to describe the perforation of the human body with a sharp weapon, i.e., making a hole through it. To thrill was to stab.

By the 15th century, it referred to the act of penetrating an enemy line.

Then, ultimately, the piercing of the heart with emotion or sound. Like what happens when you are on a roller-coaster ride.

If we trace back the Middle English root ‘thirl’, we arrive at the Proto-Germanic root —Thurhlijana, meaning ‘to penetrate’ or ‘to go through’.

The ‘thurh’ in thurhlijana is what gave birth to ‘through’.

You won’t believe these words came from ‘thrill’

Since we are talking about holes, let’s not forget how many we possess already.

The ‘nose-thirls’ aren’t some esoteric jewellery that your girlfriend knows about. They are the very ‘nostrils’ you use to breathe.

The butterfly effect of ‘thirl’ has had far-reaching consequences for our vocabulary.

The Middle English word ‘eye-thirl’ meant ‘lookout holes’ in a wall. The Viking conquest, however, brought another word for it — ‘vindauga’. It meant ‘eye of the wind’. ‘Eye’ because you could see through the lookout hole, and ‘wind’ because wind could easily pass through it.

This ‘vindauga’ is what transformed into ‘window’.

Maybe, if the Vikings hadn’t invaded, we would be calling the windows eyestril or something.

This is one example why the debate colored by linguistic chauvinism stands moot.

Language is a cauldron of culture. It’s a constantly changing affair whether we like it or not. Here, ‘purity’ means nothing.

Do you know that post-Brexit, UK officials advocated to remove the French language from the cover of the passports? Irony shot through the roof because ‘passport’ is itself derived from French.

TheUnknownDoktor

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References:

Word Perfect: Etymological Entertainment For Every Day of the Year

Origin and history of thrill

'Pro-Brexit' petition demands no French words on passports, misses the obvious

French words on blue British passport : What you need to know