A Matter of Degree: Wedding Website for IIT and IIM Graduates ( wsj.com)

Helping people find the right bride or groom is big business in India where most marriages are arranged.

Parents and relatives weigh a list of criteria from religion and caste to skin tone and height in looking for an acceptable spouse for Indians reaching marriage age. And that has spawned a horde of online matchmaking businesses that promise to make the search easier.

Now a new website, iitiimshaadi.com, says it can help people seeking partners with a degree from an appropriate alma mater.

The site takes its name from two of the country’s biggest brand names in higher education, the Indian Institute of Technology and the Indian Institute of Management. Shaadi means marriage in Hindi.

Membership isn’t limited to graduates of those two institutions, and the site sets a higher bar for educational attainment by men than women.

The site restricts male membership to “alumni of Indian and international premier institutions” in fields like engineering, medicine and law. Women are required to have a degree from school with a “country-wide” reputation.

The site has lower entry requirements for women to give “a larger pool of choice to the men,” said the site’s founder Ajay Gupta. “It is not a chauvinistic discrimination, but some highly-educated men, in terms of practicality, like women who also consider taking care of the home a task as good as a job.”

Mr. Gupta says he came up with the idea for the site after struggling to find brides for his nephews, who are business-school graduates. His search on matrimonial websites kept turning up profiles that fell short of the family’s expectations.

“They were looking for intellectual compatibility, but at the same time wanted women who would understand their hectic lives and dedicate more time to the house—while doing some part-time work,” Mr. Gupta said. “Someone with a half-day job would have also worked.”

That combination can be hard to find in modern India, Mr. Gupta said. “One of the nephews has settled with someone with a similar intellectual wave length and an equally demanding job,” Mr. Gupta said.

Priya Florence Shah, who runs an online magazine called Naaree.com that offers business and career advice to women, says men shouldn’t be dismissive of ambitious professional women. “Career-oriented wives are more understanding of their husband’s work issues,” she said.

In an ideal world, Ms. Florence Shah said, men should share the load of staying home, taking care of kids or working part-time instead of the onus falling only on women. “If someone wants to choose a woman who is going to take care of the kids, it’s their personal choice. But for me, women like me, we are hoping for a more equal world.”

Since the launch of iitiimshaadi.com in April, more than 500 people have applied for listing, but only 70 have been accepted. The others were rejected since the site only lists profiles for people who provide proof of education.

That pales in comparison to mega marriage websites like shaadi.com, which has over 20 million members.

But smaller might be better for Indians in the market for a spouse with a particular academic background. The narrower focus on education is better, “unlike the general focus on castes and religion on the other matrimonial websites like shaadi.com,” said Prachi Tiwary, a graduate of the Institute of Management Technology in Nagpur.

India’s top business schools are big marriage markets, where men and women often shop for future spouses, said Ms. Tiwary, who married one of her classmates. But men can have a hard time finding spouses on IIT and IIM campuses, where men outnumber women, she said. They might be earning a degree that has employers chomping at the bit to nab them, but they “have to look harder for girls,” Ms. Tiwary said.

Mr. Gupta is not the only person trying to connect people who want well-educated spouses. Another site, premiummatrimony.in, was set up in January by three IIM Bangalore graduates. The website says they were inspired by “the fact that many of our friends from IITs and IIMs face the difficulty of finding the right partner.”

While enrolment at iitiimshaadi remains small, Mr. Gupta is already beginning to see returns. He said his family has found a potential match for one of his nephews.

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Hit the Reset Button in Your Brain ( from New York Times)

THIS month, many Americans will take time off from work to go on vacation, catch up on household projects and simply be with family and friends. And many of us will feel guilty for doing so. We will worry about all of the emails piling up at work, and in many cases continue to compulsively check email during our precious time off.

But beware the false break. Make sure you have a real one. The summer vacation is more than a quaint tradition. Along with family time, mealtime and weekends, it is an important way that we can make the most of our beautiful brains.

Every day we’re assaulted with facts, pseudofacts, news feeds and jibber-jabber, coming from all directions. According to a 2011 study, on a typical day, we take in the equivalent of about 174 newspapers’ worth of information, five times as much as we did in 1986. As the world’s 21,274 television stations produce some 85,000 hours of original programming every day (by 2003 figures), we watch an average of five hours of television per day. For every hour of YouTube video you watch, there are 5,999 hours of new video just posted!

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, there’s a reason: The processing capacity of the conscious mind is limited. This is a result of how the brain’s attentional system evolved. Our brains have two dominant modes of attention: the task-positive network and the task-negative network (they’re called networks because they comprise distributed networks of neurons, like electrical circuits within the brain). The task-positive network is active when you’re actively engaged in a task, focused on it, and undistracted; neuroscientists have taken to calling it the central executive. The task-negative network is active when your mind is wandering; this is the daydreaming mode. These two attentional networks operate like a seesaw in the brain: when one is active the other is not.

This two-part attentional system is one of the crowning achievements of the human brain, and the focus it enables allowed us to harness fire, build the pyramids, discover penicillin and decode the entire human genome. Those projects required some plain old-fashioned stick-to-itiveness.

But the insight that led to them probably came from the daydreaming mode. This brain state, marked by the flow of connections among disparate ideas and thoughts, is responsible for our moments of greatest creativity and insight, when we’re able to solve problems that previously seemed unsolvable. You might be going for a walk or grocery shopping or doing something that doesn’t require sustained attention and suddenly — boom — the answer to a problem that had been vexing you suddenly appears. This is the mind-wandering mode, making connections among things that we didn’t previously see as connected.

A third component of the attentional system, the attentional filter, helps to orient our attention, to tell us what to pay attention to and what we can safely ignore. This undoubtedly evolved to alert us to predators and other dangerous situations. The constant flow of information from Twitter, Facebook, Vine, Instagram, text messages and the like engages that system, and we find ourselves not sustaining attention on any one thing for very long — the curse of the information age. My collaborator Vinod Menon, a professor of neuroscience at Stanford, and I showed that the switch between daydreaming and attention is controlled in a part of the brain called the insula, an important structure about an inch or so beneath the surface of the top of your skull. Switching between two external objects involves the temporal-parietal junction. If the relationship between the central executive system and the mind-wandering system is like a seesaw, then the insula — the attentional switch — is like an adult holding one side down so that the other stays up in the air. The efficacy of this switch varies from person to person, in some functioning smoothly, in others rather rusty. But switch it does, and if it is called upon to switch too often, we feel tired and a bit dizzy, as though we were seesawing too rapidly.

Every status update you read on Facebook, every tweet or text message you get from a friend, is competing for resources in your brain with important things like whether to put your savings in stocks or bonds, where you left your passport or how best to reconcile with a close friend you just had an argument with.

If you want to be more productive and creative, and to have more energy, the science dictates that you should partition your day into project periods. Your social networking should be done during a designated time, not as constant interruptions to your day.

Email, too, should be done at designated times. An email that you know is sitting there, unread, may sap attentional resources as your brain keeps thinking about it, distracting you from what you’re doing. What might be in it? Who’s it from? Is it good news or bad news? It’s better to leave your email program off than to hear that constant ping and know that you’re ignoring messages.

Increasing creativity will happen naturally as we tame the multitasking and immerse ourselves in a single task for sustained periods of, say, 30 to 50 minutes. Several studies have shown that a walk in nature or listening to music can trigger the mind-wandering mode. This acts as a neural reset button, and provides much needed perspective on what you’re doing.

Daydreaming leads to creativity, and creative activities teach us agency, the ability to change the world, to mold it to our liking, to have a positive effect on our environment. Music, for example, turns out to be an effective method for improving attention, building up self-confidence, social skills and a sense of engagement.

This radical idea — that problem solving might take some time and doesn’t always have to be accomplished immediately — could have profound effects on decision making and even on our economy. Consider this: By some estimates, preventable medical error is the third leading cause of death in the United States, accounting for hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. You want your diagnostician to give the right answer, not always the quickest one. Zoning out is not always bad. You don’t want your airline pilot or air traffic controller to do it while they’re on the job, but you do want them to have opportunities to reset — this is why air traffic control and other high-attention jobs typically require frequent breaks. Several studies have shown that people who work overtime reach a point of diminishing returns.

Taking breaks is biologically restorative. Naps are even better. In several studies, a nap of even 10 minutes improved cognitive function and vigor, and decreased sleepiness and fatigue. If we can train ourselves to take regular vacations — true vacations without work — and to set aside time for naps and contemplation, we will be in a more powerful position to start solving some of the world’s big problems. And to be happier and well rested while we’re doing it.

Daniel J. Levitin is the director of the Laboratory for Music, Cognition and Expertise at McGill University and the author of “The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload.”

MySnaps from USA-1

MySnaps : Getty Villa, Los Angeles

England Cricket Team's Tour of Hitler's Germany ( from the Economist)

Herr Howzat?

Uncovering unlikely cricket fanatics

May 10th 2014 | From the print edition

• 

No ball

Field of Shadows: The Remarkable True Story of the English Cricket Tour of Nazi Germany, 1937. By Dan Waddell. Bantam Press; 259 pages; £16.99. Buy fromAmazon.co.uk

THE evidence is a bit thin, but it seems that Adolf Hitler was not a cricket-lover; apparently, he thought batsmen who wore pads were sissies. However, the Nazi Reichssportführer, Hans von Tschammer und Osten, was. Gratified by a good lunch at Lord’s with MCC, England’s premier cricket club, he invited an English team to play a German XI. Three games were played in Berlin in 1937, and, unlike England’s football team which was photographed a year later raising a cringe-making Nazi salute, the English cricketers offered a rather muted Sieg Heil.

The English won three games easily. The German players were short of experience (the LBW rule utterly defeated them). Their strength was a bowling attack led by Felix Menzel, who had first played against an English team before the first world war.Some skilled detective work by Dan Waddell, an occasional crime-writer, reveals this unlikely story in an eccentric and improbably entertaining short book. MCC chose as the leader of the tourists Major Maurice Jewell, a former captain of Worcestershire when captaincy was an occupation that was reserved for amateur players. He was in his early 50s, and his team was the Gentlemen of Worcestershire. They were gentlemen of leisure, as he was, or successful businessmen with time to spare, or the sons of such men; four of the team had actually played first-class cricket—as amateurs. The only advice given by Lord’s was not to hand a propaganda coup to the Nazis by losing.

Cricket breeds fanatical followers, and Mr Waddell believes he might have found in Menzel a prize specimen. Shortly after the British army arrived in Berlin in July 1945, Menzel and four companions walked out of the ruins and asked an officer if he would arrange a game of cricket for them. Such undying devotion to the game in a singularly hostile environment, says Mr Waddell, means that, among cricket obsessives, no one can lay a glove on Menzel. Fancy that; and him a German, too.

MySnaps from Prague

Never Before Has A Boy Wanted More: Thoughts from India ( from Quora.com)

Oliver Emberton, founder of Silktide

Visiting India defied any tidy, one-sentence quip I could think of. It left me a mix of enchanted, bemused and horrified – often at the same time.

The first thing you notice is the people. Not as individuals, but as an overwhelming force of numbers, spilling over the streets like a river. This is a place where the population increases by 200 million every ten years.
 
Such growth in numbers seems to be pushing society to limits a visitor can struggle to comprehend. I’ve travelled around tribal huts in Africa and slums in South America, but this was something else.
 

Poverty I expected, but it’s the side-by-side contrast of rich and poor that made my eyes melt. Lamborghini’s drive nonchalantly alongside cattle. Ancient monuments stand in the midst of collapsing shanty towns. Pristine colonial palaces overlooked children walking through the garbage.
 
In some places, I saw hoards of immaculately suited Indian teenagers, with perfect hair, tapping on their iPhones. They would look overdressed in Italy. Across the street a man with two withered legs would carry himself on his palms across the sand. Later, our jeep would overtake an elephant.
 
In the cities, virtually every hotel, tourist attraction and many restaurants all had metal detectors outside. The funny thing was, everyone set off the alarms, and guards would just bow and usher you through. At the Red Fort in Delhi, hundreds flowed through the detectors every minute with no-one even present to check them. Somewhere, there’s a very rich Indian selling metal detectors.

The city of Agra is home to the Taj Mahal and a wealth of other attractions that probably feel like their pretty sister gets all the attention. The foreigner admission fee for the Taj plus two other monuments is just 750 rupees ($14). That’s 40 times more expensive than the domestic price (20 rupees) but it’s still cripplingly low. Flanked by barbaric poverty on every side I want to scream:for the love of God, raise your prices.
 
Indeed, the western entrepreneur in me desperately wanted to run the place for a day. The best photos I’ve seen of the Taj are from the river behind it, yet there’s no way to get there? Build a bridge, and charge me to cross it. Offer overpriced boat tours. Collect donations from tourists. Build a proper museum, adorned with the finest of Indian culture. There were countless people hard-selling art we didn’t want to buy - I would happily pay just to walk round and look at it. And somebody, open a damn gift shop. 2 million people come here a year. Earn some more money. Please. 

Whilst the Taj was predictably spectacular, for me it took a backseat to Delhi’s Akshardham Hindu temple (above). I’m about as non-spiritual a person as you’ll ever find, but strolling through this ageless gem, lit by the setting sun, I was sincerely moved. Their musical fountain would shame the Bellagio. It’s a work of staggering, unique beauty and a ringing endorsement of what India can achieve; the 86,000 sq ft complex was built by 11,000 workers in under 5 years.
 
Yet it seems wherever you go in India, garbage surrounds you. It gathers like fatty residue in the arteries, clogging the edges of roads and buildings. Sometimes it spills high into waste mountains that people scavenge, set fire to, or stroll over like a parkland.  
 
Imagine if all of the waste tips and bins in Europe were emptied into the streets. Then multiply your population density by 10. Even with pictures, it’s incomprehensible. 

India is possibly the most resplendently colourful place I’ve ever seen. It seems baked into their cultural DNA - from glorious clothing, to painted vehicles to technicolour buildings – and the strong sun make those shades even more striking. The only thing that ever tones down the hues is a haze of dust and morning fog.
 

Everywhere new buildings are rising, and it looks like they’re struggling to keep up with demand. In a hotel in Jaipur, the softly illuminated glass and wooden interior would be impressive in London, were it not for one detail: none of the light switches lined up. In one glorious, ancient palace the chandeliers dangled precariously from half unscrewed fittings.

People here sell like nothing I’ve ever known. I was given a pitch to buy a $6 shirt that would shame any America car dealership. No problem sir. Everything looks great on you. We can have it tailored for a dollar. Their eagerness to move heaven and earth to sell is truly impressive, if a touch disconcerting. One shopkeeper sent his 10 year old daughter to follow a tourist back to their hotel, because they didn’t have money on them to pay for a dress.
 
It can be frustrating as well. One shopkeeper tried to sell us earrings for 4,500 rupees ($83) that we saw earlier on the street for 300 ($5). The price is determined more by what you look like, than by what you’re buying. On numerous occasions, a tour guide would lead us conveniently into the depths of a rug or jewellery store. Once seated and offered tea, his ‘friend’ would deliver a finely honed presentation to a captive audience. I might have walked off in disgust, if only they hadn’t been so damn good at it. My girlfriend remarked “I didn’t want to buy a thing, but now they’ve spoken, I do”.

I wish that talent was better placed though. When that same passion gets put into something bigger than selling rugs, the world had better watch out. There’s a tidal wave of new Indian entrepreneurs building here, and it’s only just starting to reach our shores.

What can I say about the people? They’re impossibly diverse. 1.2 billion people with 22 official languages – they have nearly double the population of Europe and speak nearly as many different tongues. I met delightful and horrible people. Many were proud of their nation, others bitter. All generalisations seemed worthless.
 
That said, travelling with my girlfriend we did perceive a fair whiff of sexism. Sometimes in a queue, with her in front of me, a man peered around to address me first, and then other men. Served at a dining table, I would be asked what the lady would like. With the exception of a few western hotels and the airport, we never saw any women working outside of the home or fields. 

  
With the relentless hawkers, beggars and sellers, you soon develop a shield, and for me this was one of the most unpleasant things about my trip: how it changed me. Near the end of my journey, as a group of us clamoured into a jeep, a young woman approached. Showing us the twisted stumps where her arms should be, on cue, she began to cry. Everyone in the jeep looked at each other, paralysed. My mind was racing – I knew this was contrived, but surely I should give her something? We’d turn down countless beggars before, but this woman has no arms. A couple of seconds later our tour guide slipped 10 rupees (about 20 cents) into her pocket and we drove off.
 
I felt many things as we drove away. Self loathing that I couldn’t overcome my wretched beggar-shield to give this woman – what – two paltry dollars? That could buy her 10 meals. Anger that I’d been hardened into someone who could do such a thing within just a week. Fury that a country with 20 nuclear reactors and a billion dollar space program can allow any of their people to exist like this.

I think a holiday can tell you as much about yourself as the place you visit. India made me very grateful for many things that are too easily forgotten. As a holiday it was an unforgettable experience and one I intend to build upon – I know I only had time to experience a tiny speck of this vast land.
 
For all the frustrations and the horrors, I came away greatly impressed by India. It’s easy to feel despair at the scale of the problems they face, and to feel like any amount of time or money would never fix them, but that’s not my impression. The land buzzes with potential, mostly untapped, and it’s growing up fast. 
 
At a train station I saw people building up piles of sand with shovels to extend the platform. It might seem like a small thing, but it made me smile. One day, that platform will help carry millions to work, to build businesses across the globe, to travel to their airports where some will probably fly to visit quaint ol’ England, long past its prime. The future belongs to these people, and it’s incredible to see it coming together, one shovel of sand at a time.

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A short video of my trip

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