Saturday 2 September 2006

Cuteness explained

Dee & I had our first meeting for our PaEV1 project. Our meeting was far more productive than what my quaddie, A, has been having for his project. He leaves promptly at nine in the evening to work on PAEV and returns at two in the night after having watched a movie. So far, he's managed to watch Omkara, Les Miserables and The Unrecollectable.

I, on the other hand, have not had to rely on PaEV meetings to watch movies. Having created an average of one movie per day of the break right on the first day of the term break, I had very little carrot to distract myself from making the initial document that we set out to do. Plus, an email reminder from a professor saying "You're a week late, duffer!" is a pretty big disincentive all by itself2.

Anyway, once our PaEV idea document was scribed and owls despatched to our pre-occupied team-members for comments, Dee & I had a lengthy discussion on cuteness. I had posted eons ago that I had one theory on what made something cute. I never got down to blogging my theory, though. But Dee & I were able to elaborately define the broad area of what would and would not be considered cute. Actually, it was Dee telling me her views, and I was trying to impress her with my listening skills. By the way, my listening skills are legendary; I have a diagram from yesterday’s conversation to prove it.

It transpires that the factors that lead to cuteness can be of two kinds (I had suspected this all along) - the lusty and the non-lusty. Yeah, some of these factors can fall into either category (the diagram below makes that evident). And you could also have situations where people negate an aspect of their cuteness with some other part of their character. And, there could be cases where a person is cute due to multiple reasons, one of them being lusty and the other, non-lusty.

Anyway, being an Engineer, I shall resort to this fabulous diagram (I can hear the applauses, thank you) to make things clear. Oh, and the "size of eyeballs" factor is what my original theory was. That's what helps Nickey to be perceived as cute and Mr Tinkles as ugly.



"All right, smart engineer," I hear you say, "so what's the point of all this?" Well, here's the meat of this post. If you're a guy and are trying to hit on a girl, you should position yourself in the lusty-cute type. People with casts on their legs fall into the non-lusty cute category. Seriously, breaking a bone or tearing a ligament while playing basketball won't get you anywhere on the lusty-cute-index4. Even if you are wearing a cast and getting a lot of attention, it's the wrong kind of attention. It's the kind of attention that kitten get because they're small and vulnerable. There's no difference between you and the li'l bird that a lady on her morning walk picks up from the street, says "oh, cho chad" and puts it back in its nest. Apparently, this is a reinforcement of Darwinian theories here… I won't bore you with that (even though Biology was one of my favourite subjects till XII5); instead, you can check out this article on NY Times.

Right, so that was what I've learned about cuteness in the last 24 hours. Shall update this space if my views alter significantly.


Notes:
  1. PaEV = Planning an Entrepreneurial Venture - a course that we have.
  2. No, I made that up. ISB's professors are more polished than I've described.
  3. Dee - I've made some modifications to this diagram from yesterday. Hope you don't mind.
  4. The author is in a state of vexation due to the newly-found realisation of his cast's dismal value.
  5. Primarily due to the opportunity to dissect rats.

9 comments:

ankur said...

i wud suggest increasing the frequency to 2 movies/day and not indulging in 'cute darwinism'..!

btw...did this revelation come by after ur 'cast debacle'..? :)

~a

Chiranth Channappa said...

Yep. The conversation with Dee stimulated me to do some more research on the net - that's when it hit me.

Anonymous said...

ha ha ..nice post.Thought u were in bangalore since i didnt see u.On acompletely unrelated note, I see two motor wheelchairs(or whatever they are called)parked near ur block .. are u using both ?

Guru

Chiranth Channappa said...

@Guru

Thanks. I was here all the time, but hardly moved out of home - my parents had come over for the break.

The other wheelchair is for Bankim - he was already injured for a week by the time I had my accident. Same story - ligaments; but he's started to walk with the help of crutches now.

Ford Prefect said...

I agree with Ankur ... Never again iin your life would you get an oppertunity like this ... BTW has everyone in your batch taken PAEV ??? Everyone I talk to seems to have opted for this course ... Now this is what I call self inflicted pain ;-)

Chiranth Channappa said...

Hi Ford, I managed to raise the average to 1.6 on the last day of the break :-)

Yeah, there are loads of us who've taken PaEV. The official stats are around 200 :o

GR Kiran said...

Nice post .. the next diagram, I suspect will be a 2x2 matrix but thoroughly enjoyable nevertheless ! Almost looks like the cast was a pre-conceived strategic move which bombed !!! Hard to believe that YOU are not getting the "right" kind of attention even with your Maddy looks !!!

Chiranth Channappa said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Chiranth Channappa said...

@Kiran

Nopes, dude.. no pre-conceived strategic moves there. C'mon, you were an eyewitness to the basketball game!