Kansa and Cars

October 14, 2008

Sriram points me to this excellent example of a Virginia number plate that follows the principles of the Kansa Society.

However, I object to failblog categorising it as FAIL. This number plate is most emphatically WIN.


Commerce and Kansa

October 6, 2008

Kodhi sends in the following SMS:

There is a furniture shop called woodpecker which has lines like “No Children Section” and “Kids are parents responsibility especially in case of damages”

What gods. Finally a business establishment which goes to clear and unambiguous lengths to make children and parents feel unwelcome. Businesses which lead the way like this will have their deeds celebrated in song and ballad wherever Kansa Society members gather.


Infant Sacrifice Catches On

August 2, 2008

The Kansa Society’s advocacy of the slaughter and consumption of children is making its way into the mainstream media. This is most pleasing.

First, Namy Roy informs me over GTalk that she had recently watched a TV interview of Tom Hanks. When asked how he managed to satisfy the audience all the time, Tom Hanks apparently said that the secret of his success was regular infant sacrifice. Joyous.

Next, Mr. D. sends me a link to this wonderful T-shirt, featuring an owl which wants to eat your children:

I Will Eat Your Children

And finally, there is the new Mirinda ad, in which Zohra Sehgal expresses a desire to pickle infants with onions:

As gaspode points out, this diet explains that remarkable lady’s longevity.


Karva Chauth and Kansa

July 8, 2008

Over the past few years, Punjew men (axshully also Kayastha boyfriends of Punjew woomaans) have been fasting on Karva Chauth along with their wives and girlfriends. For some reason this is hailed as a triumph of women’s liberation and feminism.

This is bollocks. An equal sharing of foodlessness, dizziness and abstinence can hardly be considered a triumph of feminism. Wasn’t the whole point of feminism to make things better? All this does is spread the pain around more. If I was a paranoid maniac, I would suspect it was a sinister Allahabadi plot to make Punjew men week and feeble and incapable of rising up in glorious resistance. Wait, I am a paranoid maniac. Anyway.

The point is that true women’s liberation would involve nobody fasting and putting themselves through all that torture at all. If this was really a festival of louw, it would involve the couple going out and feeding each other rare delicacies. The idea would be to maximise pleasure, not pain.

Therefore, when the glorious Punjabi nation rises again, and throws off the cultural imperialism of the hated Allahbadis, Karva Chauth will be celebrated by the happy couple going out and feasting on a delicious infant platter for lunch. Instead of starving all day waiting for the moon to show up, Punjew couples will be eating babies through the day. Thus furthering three excellent causes: Saivite neo-Edwardianism, women’s liberation, and the continued growth of the Kansa Society.


The Brat Noise Project

March 23, 2008

The next step the Kansa Society must take has become clear. No, it’s not the t-shirt.

Dinner with the girlfriend,  while excellent (mostly because it was with the girlfriend) was tragically beset by wailing kids. These, it should be pointed out, were not even babies but misbehaved five-year old children. This ravaging of what should be a pleasant and romantic dinner by Bengali brats calls for a solution.

The solution, the girlfriend pointed out, is to adapt one of the great triumphs of the modern feminist movement: the Blank Noise Project Unwanted Gallery. The Unwanted Gallery, for those of you who do not know, is a brilliant concept. If someone harasses you, you photograph them with your handy mobile phone camera, and upload the picture to the gallery. This is strong for the following reasons:

  1. It removes the criminal’s anonymity, imposing costs on street harassment for the first time (well not the first time, because there has always been angry-mob-with-chappals, but honestly, how often does that happen in real life?)
  2. It puts control of the situation into the harassment victim’s hands, instead of having to rely on either a mob or a policeman
  3. It uses cellphones, which appeals to me as a telecom and technology geek
  4. It’s an amazing example of the fundaes described in David Brin’s The Transparent Society, and again this appeals to me as a sousveillance geek

So there. But as we shall see, these fundaes can be used not only as a weapon against sexual harassment, but also against evil parents who bring their spoilt children out, to devastate the peace and tranquility of shared public spaces. Just as there is a rogues gallery of eve-teasers, the Kansa Society can create a Rogues Gallery of misbehaved children. Any time a screaming kid is seen in public – whether in a train, a plane, a cinema, or a restaurant – public spirited Kansa Society members (or indeed, anybody who sympathises with the ideals of the Kansa Society) can photograph the juvenile, send the photograph to the Kansa Society, and rest assured that the misbehaving child will spend the rest of its days knowing that its crimes have been exposed to the world at large. Slowly but steadily, public misbehaviour by children will become stigmatised, and parents will learn not to bring them out into public. A Utopia will be created, all thanks to the Kansa Society.

It is time for the Brat Noise Project to take wing.


More Mommyblogger Mockery

January 12, 2008

The Mad Momma asks: Why is it alright to be openly intolerant of children?

It’s for the same reason it is alright to be openly intolerant of anything – salwar kameezes, Shashi Tharoor’s writing, chicory-blended coffee, and so on. Freedom of speech are there. Or as Skimpy famously put it, I am a free citizen of free India and I shall say what I want.

Of course the reason I express my intolerance of children more than my intolerance of anything else is that nothing is as much fun as enraging mommybloggers1. Enraged mommybloggers move about in herds, angrily clucking ‘Wait till you have kids of your own!’ or ‘You are horrible and have no empathy!’. The warm, fuzzy feeling to be obtained from people bitching about being mischaracterised as emotional and stupid – and doing so in an emotional and stupid manner is delightful.

The pinnacle of emotional outbursts, of course, was this point-by-point takedown by J. For my own amusement, and for yours, beloved readers – I will now respond to this:

kids will become irritating when they are given too much attention:–Dude if you are dating a woman or married to a woman and if she will not give you enough attention, you too will become irritable. Correct me if I am wrong.

Being an upright young man with Saivite neo-Edwardian values, I am able to separate my behaviour from my mental state. Kids are not. I blame their mothers, given that they seem to be unable to differentiate between being irritable and being irritating. This pernicious encouragement of expressing your feelings regardless of the consequences is undermining our society.

This is also probably the reason why kids in Delhi and Chennai are the worst behaved–whoa whoa wait a minute. Iam smelling discrimination here or you are a less travelled person who is like a frog in the well….kids are kids irrespective of caste, creed, religion and nationality. Every child of a specific age behaves quiet similar and this is one of the reason why all the mommy bloggers relate to each other irrespective of their financial and geographical status.

If every child behaved ‘quiet’, I wouldn’t be bitching about them online. And yes, it is discrimination. Man is endowed with the ability to discriminate between right and wrong. Without the ability to discriminate, there would be no way to promote virtue and punish vice.

Jobless doting female relatives, who do nothing but stay at home–what kind of a loser talks like this about the women folk who spend their entire life serving their family. WTF do you mean by “jobless”. Does jobless means earning money only. I really question your upbringing today which taught you to respect people on the basis of their revenue generating capabilities.

No ‘jobless’ means sitting on your arse while the domestic servants do all the work, the husband earns all the money, and the grandmothers do most of the child-rearing. What part of ‘do nothing but stay at home’ do you not understand? I use words with precision.

In the case of Chennai, because they actually are unemployed–Can you please support your statement by some figures (if at all you are intelligent enough to understand what I am saying). By the way in my work career I have come across some really intelligent tamilians and real dumb punju’s. (how does this sound since you are a punju)

Given that I have been abusing Punjews online since… oh, 2003, and with an especially popular campaign in 2005, and that I am widely acknowledged to be Tam – it sounds like validation.

and in the case of Delhi, because employment for Delhi women usually means fraud stay-at-home stuff like garment designing–FRAUD?????????? Are you a fuckin police or intelligent department official who can pronounce a profession as “FRAUD”. As a matter of fact can you design a garment? DO you know what kind of creativity goes into it. Have respect for every person who is trying to make a honest living yet tending to their responsibilities.

Yes, deciding to put sequins on a salwar kameez is very creative. And a business set up purely to satisfy ego, and which gives lower returns than a fixed deposit is an honest living. As for whether I can design a garment, I’m thinking of having a Kansa Society T-shirt up for sale on Myntra soon. Also, why do I have to be a fuckin pole or intelligent department official to pronounce a profession fraud? Nobody in my IIMB Batch was, and everyone used to pronounce either consulting, or marketing, or I-banking, or HR fraud. To say nothing of all the courses we used to pronounce fraud. Your grasp of lingo is really quite terrible.

With non-stop attention lavished upon it, the kid becomes a monster–How dare you call a kid “monster”. They are the only purest form of mankind left now. Rest all are busy talking bullshit (like you). Did you ever have a kid come to you and look at you with those innocent eyes and appreciate all tat you did for him / her? I have experienced that innocence and how can you call such children monsters, just because they are extra energetic and crying is one of the ways to express their needs (god created that way)

Well, there goes the argument for intelligent design…

Also, J, you are wrong. Kids are not the only purest form of mankind. Masabi, Skimpy, and Jugga are. There is no malice in Jugga’s heart. He loves all of humanity, without fear or reservation. So much so, that he hugs hijras on MG Road and gives them money. Read Skimpy’s petromax post to realise that he is fearless, and unconstrained by the mores of society. As for Masabi, you only have to gaze into his eyes to discover how innocent and pure he is.

But I never saw kids throwing tantrums in mumbai–Dude refrain from making such statements. How many kids did you sample and from which cities. Can you once again provide some statistics.

No. Can you provide some statistics on kids being the purest form of humanity?

have seen this with my own nephews and nieces also. The one who curls up with a Roald Dahl and generally doesn’t talk is the one whose parents are a doctor and a physiotherapist, and who therefore hardly see him. On the other hand, the Nephew Who Bites has lived his entire life with a stay-at-home mother, a stay-at-home grandmother, a drop-in-practically-ceaselessly grandmother, and a father who is an ameer-baap-ki-bigdi-aulaad, and so doesn’t need to work— I am an Associate Director in a big firm in Manhattan and my husband is a software professional. We both spend few hours in the morning and few in the evening with my 22mths old son. Contrary to your statement he bites us, he throws tantrums, he screams his lungs off on roads / malls, spits food. Well his grandparents do not stay with us. (now its your turn to start battering working mothers)

No, I shall stick with my theory of attention as it stands. Since his tantrums are not being caused by nurture, they are evidently being caused by genetics. So it’s still your fault.

And where I’m concerned, Ma and Papa used to just leave me alone and whack me every once in a while, and I am now a model of manners, rectitude, decency and sobriety. So much so, that people refuse to believe that I’m Punjabi.—-hahahahaha. This was my fav part out of the whole blog. Dude get a life, you were deprived of love and attention your whole life that’s the reason u r spitting venom at mothers who are showering attention on their kids.

They’re so busy showering attention that they can’t recognise literary references. Oh well.

Think about it. You devote an entire blog to the kid, and nothing but the kid–How about devoting entire life for my kid. The happiness he gave me, nothing else can ever match it. I will not mind giving up everything for him.

Well, you’ve given up spellcheck. ‘Appauled’?

1: This is not strictly accurate. As Ravikiran discovered, making sexist comments at feminists is huge fun too. But enraging feminists will lead to undesirable friction with the girlfriend, and who needs that? So mommybloggers it is.


More Fuel on the Mommyblog Fire

January 8, 2008

Two points:

First, Falstaff is a cheap guy. He talks about Coase and childfree-airline tickets without referencing me.

Second, a more important point about mommyblogs in general.

I’ve been discussing this point with junta, and the consensus seems to be that kids will become irritating when they are given too much attention. The more attention a kid gets from its parents, the more it thinks of itself. It becomes spoilt, throws tantrums, and eventually the Kansa Society has to be called in.

This is also probably the reason why kids in Delhi and Chennai are the worst behaved. They’re brought up in environments full of doting female relatives. Jobless doting female relatives, who do nothing but stay at home. In the case of Chennai, because they actually are unemployed, and in the case of Delhi, because employment for Delhi women usually means fraud stay-at-home stuff like garment designing. With non-stop attention lavished upon it, the kid becomes a monster. While in Bombay, both the parents are off at work, the kid has to fend for itself, and grows up a clean and sober Goregaon type personality, with excellent social skills, and a bindaas attitude. In my months in Bombay, I saw Gujew aunties abusing Landmark for stocking books. I saw people expectorating with enthusiasm. I saw Jain monks in a fistfight. But I never saw kids throwing tantrums.

I have seen this with my own nephews and nieces also. The one who curls up with a Roald Dahl and generally doesn’t talk is the one whose parents are a doctor and a physiotherapist, and who therefore hardly see him. On the other hand, the Nephew Who Bites has lived his entire life with a stay-at-home mother, a stay-at-home grandmother, a drop-in-practically-ceaselessly grandmother, and a father who is an ameer-baap-ki-bigdi-aulaad, and so doesn’t need to work. Between these extremes, I have a soft-spoken and well-behaved niece whose parents run the nine-to-five gamut. And where I’m concerned, Ma and Papa used to just leave me alone and whack me every once in a while, and I am now a model of manners, rectitude, decency and sobriety. So much so, that people refuse to believe that I’m Punjabi.

Anyway, the point of all this is that a surplus of attention turns kids into monsters, fit only for slaughter by the Kansa Society.

And when it comes to giving kids too much attention, mommyblogging is the pinnacle. Think about it. You devote an entire blog to the kid, and nothing but the kid. And while in the normal course of things, the kid forgets the attention it gets as an infant, here the attention is public, archived, and up to be accessed at will. The Little Emperor generation created by the Chinese one-child policy will be as nothing compared to the generation created by mommyblogging. Legions of spoilt brats will stalk the nation, thinking too much of themselves.

Mommybloggers have a lot to answer for.


Coase and Kansa

November 22, 2007

On the flight back to Bangalore from Delhi, I was on seat 16D. There was a kid on 16C. There was another kid on 14C. And yet another somewhere around row 20. And they all howled through the flight.

Howling kids are always annoying but the problem is even worse on a flight. You can’t walk away to a quieter place. The kid can’t be taken away to a quieter place. You’re basically trapped listening to the howling kid.

In many ways, the situation is the reverse of Alex Tabarrok’s flu vaccination:

People who have the flu spread the virus so getting a flu shot not only reduces the probability that I will get the flu it reduces the probability that you will get the flu. In the language of economics the flu shot creates an external benefit, a benefit to other people not captured by the person who paid the costs of getting the shot. The external benefits of a flu shot can be quite large. Under some conditions each person who is vaccinated reduces the expected number of other people who get the flu by 1.5.

Since a large fraction of the benefits of the flu shot, perhaps even a majority of the benefits, go to other people and not to the person paying the costs, the number of people who get a flu shot in the United States is well below the efficient level.

In the case of Alex Tabarrok’s flu vaccination, there was an external benefit. However, in the case of howling kids, there is an external cost. The kid is suffering, but the kid’s howling makes all the other people in the aircraft suffer more.

What are the implications? Well, Alex Tabarrok is asking people who are benefiting from the positive externality to send him money to compensate him for creating the externality:

I just had my flu shot. Please send your checks to my George Mason address.

I only got the shot because, as you well know, I’m altruistic. I care about you. But do send your checks, that will help.

Applying the situation in reverse, the parents of the howling kid should give all the other passengers money to compensate for the suffering they have inflicted on them through their inconsiderateness. This has staggering implications. If each of the passengers is to be compensated 500 rupees for the suffering they have endured, that raises the cost of carrying a kid on board by 9 kilorupees. The best way to implement this would be to make the price of the ticket for a kid 9 kilorupees – in sharp contrast to Simplify Deccan’s abominable policy of letting infants travel in laps for only a 250 rupee surcharge- and give all other passengers a five hundred rupee discount or rebate.

Alex Tabarrok also says:

Of course, we know from the Coase Theorem that there is an alternative approach. We could charge people who do not get their flu shots. (Thus, if you haven’t had a shot you must still must send me a check.) Or to reduce transaction costs we could fine people who get the flu.

The equivalent of the fine in this case would be making the cost of the ticket for the kid 9000 rupees, but not distributing the extra money to the passengers. That would still have the beneficial effect of making it too expensive to carry your kid on board a flight.

Of course there is a way to cut out transaction costs entirely. You can bring in the Kansa Society, which will slaughter the kid. No howling, and no worrying about surcharge transfers. Oh sacred simplicity!


Cull the Kids Instead

April 1, 2007

Right. These days the BMP is klling stray dogs. This has a lot of animal lovers unhappy, leading to many anguished blogposts (two examples here and here). And inevitably these posts attract commentors who shrilly and hysterically go ‘But don’t you know that stray dogs are killing children? Are you more worried about dogs or children?’ Practically the only thing missing is the actual statement ‘Will someone please think of the children?

So I have the solution. After all I’m naturally brilliant. Rather than culling dogs, let the BMP cull kids who stray into public spaces instead.

This solution pleases everyone. Animal lovers will get to see Bangalore’s stray dogs gamboling wild and free. And with no kids on the streets, there will be no attacks on them by dogs either. And the BMP will surely kill the kids more humanely than it is killing the dogs.

Fewer children will also have beneficial downstream effects. To start with, it will reduce pressure on the strained and overburdened education system. Systematic culling will eventually attenuate the supply of students so much that there will no longer be a constraint in the number of university seats. Nobody will be tense about their board exams any more. With seats going free, reservations will also cease to be contentious. In fact, with no new generations to perpetuate it, the caste system itself will cease to exist.

And you thought that the Kansa Society was only about ensuring peace and quiet in restaurants and public transport. Piffle. Our agenda will transform the whole world into a paradise.


My New NGO

March 16, 2007

I am starting an NGO called the Kansa Society. Its aim is to promote the slaughter of irritating kids. I will be the Chairman Emeritus and Kodhi will be the President. But Jabberwock and Nilu are welcome to join.