Atlas Shrugged. But I Stayed Firm.

Whether you’re a teenager feeling alienated about the world not appreciating you, a senior Republican seeking to curb government spending in the economy, or somewhere in between, Ayn Rand is quite likely to pop up in conversation. Champion of libertarianism, ardent advocate of individualistic thought and action, cheerleader of capitalism taken to its free-market extreme – it’s hard to ignore Ayn Rand. Over 50 years after the publication of her masterpiece “Atlas Shrugged”, Ayn Rand’s books still sell in the millions every year. Which is quite normal, if you’re one of the best-selling and most influential authors of all time. What’s not very normal, though, is the fact that there are even dating sites exclusively meant for the followers of Ayn Rand.

Now that would be decidedly odd – two objectivists dating each other. Would the rules of dating be twisted in their case? Think about it – objectivists despise altruism and regard selfishness as the ultimate virtue. So if an objectivist girl tries to break up with her boyfriend, what would she do? Would she shower him with acts of altruism until he can’t take it any longer?

“Honey, you’ve been cooking all my meals for me. You’ve been granting all my wishes in the bedroom. Last weekend you whisked me away on a surprise trip. You’ve been cleaning up after me every single time. I can’t take this anymore!!! Just break up with me already, will you, instead of subjecting me to such extreme levels of relentless altruism???”

Or imagine two objectivists that meet online, start chatting and fall in love with each other. But when they finally meet, the guy decides that he wants nothing to do with the girl.

Girl (visibly hurt and disappointed): But why do you want to break up? You said I always reminded you of Ayn Rand – the way I spoke and expressed my thoughts. Do I not remind you of Ayn Rand any longer?

Boy: That’s the trouble – you do! It was fine as long as you spoke like Ayn Rand – but you also look like Ayn Rand!

I’ve always had a strange equation with Ayn Rand. It all started back in the days of school when I managed to garner an unjustified reputation for being a voracious reader. Don’t get me wrong – I do like reading and I think it’s far more enriching than all of TV and most of the movies – but I’ve never been a voracious reader. I wish I was – but a combination of a short attention span, other avenues of distraction, lack of patience, etc. has meant that I really don’t read as much as I would like to.

And you know how it is in school – it’s easy to get stereotyped. You tend to get placed into one of the buckets that are so prevalent – the geeky type, the athletic type, the hoodlum type, and so on.  And because I came across as a quiet type and was competent at English, people assumed that all I did with my spare time was read. Maybe it was also because I enjoyed writing and didn’t have any other claim to fame – in terms of being a supreme athlete, or playing a guitar and being all musical, or getting involved in an infamous scandal involving drugs or alcohol, or being a ladies man – that I was bracketed as an intellectual that spent all his time reading. Well, ok…I exaggerate – no one really thought of me as an intellectual. But yes, the reading reputation stuck.

And you know how it is with Ayn Rand – anyone who reads books would most likely have read Ayn Rand, or claimed to, at any rate. So the minute I told someone that I hadn’t read Ayn Rand, their jaw would drop and they would exclaim in a state of shock, “What??? You HAVEN’T read AYN RAND??? But I thought you read a lot!!!” And I’d look away apologetically and mumble something about meaning to get around to it. And the truth is, I did get around to it – more than once. Or maybe it was only once. But it was just too intimidating – a thousand-page book written in really tiny font – it just scared the pants off me. Plus it was supposed to be philosophical – and even though I didn’t think of myself as having soap-dish levels of shallowness – I generally steered clear of philosophical books. I liked reading for fun – this did not seem like fun at all. It always felt easier to just look sheepish and put up with the shocked proclamations rather than to read Ayn Rand. So yes…I figured that was the end of that. Life rolled on and I started working and reading even lesser than in the student days.

But this year, I resolved (even though I’m not generally a New Year’s Resolution sort of chap) to read more. So far, I’ve stuck to the resolution – having managed to finish off three books since the beginning of the year. And that’s when this thought suddenly crept into my head and has refused to let go ever since – why don’t I give Ayn Rand another crack? I didn’t know if it was just false bravado fuelled by the misplaced confidence of having read three books within a month – but it was one of those thoughts that you just knew would not go away until you actually went ahead and did something about it. So I checked with a Rand fan for further encouragement, and with that little bit of push, I finally summoned the courage to take on Ayn Rand.

I dropped in at a bookstore on my way back from work. When I reached the bookstore, it was among the first books I could see. They even had a sale going on – a 20% discount. This was it – all the stars were aligned, the entire universe was conspiring towards me picking up “Atlas Shrugged”. Except, when I actually picked it up, I could feel all the confidence just draining away from me, the way a foot soldier might feel when he suddenly discovers that he’s going into battle against cavalrymen. Or the way a sheep might feel when it accidentally stumbles into an abattoir. Or the way Income Tax officials might feel when facing Nitin Gadkari if the BJP comes to power. Or the way a recently quit alcoholic might feel if you handed him a bottle of 40-year-old single malt. Or the way Narendra Modi might feel if he’s stranded on a desert island with a dozen of Lashkar-e-Taiba’s most promising new recruits. Well, you get the picture.

It really does look terribly scary – there is an inverse relation between the size of the font and the thickness of the book. And it’s not a favorable inverse relation like in a children’s storybook – it’s the inverse relation exploited to such good effect by the people who draft the terms and conditions so that no one would read them. How could I read a thousand pages of terms & conditions? Once again, I felt like I just wouldn’t be able to do it – but eventually I managed to pull myself together by remembering tales of heroic inspiration and went ahead and bought the book.

Now, if only I could get around to actually reading it, rather than writing about it!

Is Fine Print Really all that Fine?

The other day while handing over my car for valet parking, I decided to read what was written on the valet card under the “Terms & Conditions” section. Astoundingly, it had a statement that said, “Valet parking is done at the owner’s risk. Management will not be held responsible for any valuables missing in the car, or any damage to the car.” Or something to that effect.

While the valuables missing part still sounds like a fair point – why does management refuse to take responsibility for any damage to the car? Ok, I appreciate the fact that management has taken the trouble of parking my car – something that would otherwise have taken considerable time and frustration depending on the part of the city I’m in – but why would they not take any responsibility if they damaged my car? It just gave me this feeling that while I was sitting there enjoying a drink or two (not more, in case this gets treated as confession for drunk driving!) with friends, the valet guy could very well be using my car to play a game of chicken against a roadroller or a combine harvester. And when I finally got my car back it would no longer be recognisable and management would just shrug their shoulders and nonchalantly tell me “Well, we told you we’re not responsible for any damage to the car.”

In this case, though, you could still say, “Well, management did not ask you to hand over your car to them – you can bloody well park it yourself if you have a problem with it and do not trust management. If there’s anything Karl Marx has taught you, it’s never to trust management.” But what about all those huge stores that ask you to keep your baggage at the baggage counter? You don’t have a choice there – yet the other day when I was reading one of those baggage slips it conveniently stated, “The store is not responsible for any loss of belongings handed over to them”. Why would you insist that I leave my stuff in your care and then refuse to take responsibility for it? Turns out it was the same with my dry cleaning receipt – even the tiny, friendly neighborhood dry-cleaning guy refused to take responsibility in case he “cut, tore, stained, dyed, damaged or altered” my clothes! Does any entity that I ever hand over something to temporarily take responsibility for it? What if I come back to claim my shirt from the dry cleaners only to be handed over a handkerchief, with an unapologetic “Well, this was all that was left of your shirt after we accidentally shredded it, so be thankful that we’ve at least salvaged a handkerchief out of it. Look at the back side of your receipt – we’re not responsible for any damage!”

So you can imagine my paranoia when, while booking a cab to the airport, I quickly looked up the terms and conditions for Meru Cabs. Rather naively, I thought it might provide some semblance of comfort – that they’d be happy to be of service, promise to do their best to ensure timely service and that if a cab didn’t reach me it was only due to an act of god or at least a fairly dramatic calamity. It turns out this is what they had to say -

Meru makes no representation or warranty that:

a. The service will meet your requirements;

b. The service will be uninterrupted, timely, secure, or error-free.

Meru shall be entitled at any time without giving any reason or prior notice to terminate the booking of taxis done by the Customer.

Reassuring, isn’t it?

It also made me wonder what else I’d signed up for. Valet parking slips, baggage slips, dry cleaning receipts - these are still terms & conditions that the average human being has a chance of reading – what about the other stuff that you cannot possibly read? Like the terms and conditions when you sign up on any website, or for a bank account or a credit card – that’s typed in such a small font size and in such boring legal language that no average human being would dare read any of it? What if I suddenly got a call one fine day that went something like this?

Voice: “Sir, this is The United Cotton Farm speaking. We’d like to thank you for signing up for our Lifetime Slavery job programme. We expect you to report to our fields in a week’s time.”

Me: “I think you’re mistaken. I did no such thing.”

Voice: “No sir, you did. Read point number 34 in your terms and conditions agreement when you signed up for a newsletter from www.takemytrip.com”

On the other hand, there is also the more entertaining possibility that the corporations know that no one’s ever going to read any of that stuff, so they might as well just have some fun and write whatever they feel like, knowing that everyone would anyway sign under the sentence at the end that says “I have read the terms and conditions, am not under the influence of alcohol and hereby agree to the same”. For all you know, it might look something like this for a credit card application form.

Terms & Conditions

1. This is all written in such a small font size that we’re absolutely sure you’ll never ever read it. We could go ahead and write whatever the hell we want here and you would still sign at the bottom.
2. In fact, we could just put the entire text for “The Fountainhead” here and you would not be able to tell the difference. Even though that was in equally small font size and you probably did read it.
3. This could well be a Faustian pact – we shall sell your soul to the devil in return for the privileges of this credit card. You could only get your soul back once you’re absolutely debt-free, which we know will never be the case. Which means that your soul shall be the property of the devil for the rest of your life. Rumor has it that Jimi Hendrix sold his soul to the devil in exchange for legendary guitar skills, whereas you’re just doing it for an ordinary credit card. Well ok, not ordinary – it’s our Super-Exclusive Privileged Platinum Secret Society Fancy Air Miles Extra Fuel Points credit card, but it’s still a piece of plastic at the end of the day. It might be a tough economy but selling your soul for a credit card doesn’t exactly portray you in glowing light, does it?
4. In case you’re still reading this, we shall deter you by constructing really long and boring sentences wherein we shall absolutely get rid of the full stop as a punctuation tool by joining a dozen sentences together through clever use of words like henceforth, herein after, notwithstanding, unless, wherein, hereby, in the event, in which case, in accordance with, as stated in and so on. Although we might grant you the odd comma or two so that there’s some semblance of punctuation.
5. Unless otherwise stated, this contract ensures that you are a slave to our evil corporation and are henceforth liable to part with a sizable portion of your income to contribute to our profits for the rest of eternity notwithstanding the circumstance of your ending up in an impecunious state in which case the corporation shall hereby be entitled to all your material belongings unless you can get all your friends and family to also sign such a contract wherein we shall be entitled to their life savings along with the exclusive privilege of selling their souls to the devil in the event that the corporation chooses to engage in a business transaction with the devil in accordance with the laws governed by the Union of India as stated in the Business with Gods & Devils Act, 1984.
6. This contract entitles us to subject you to never-ending spells of the kind of boring instrumental music that is now associated with call centers, hotel lobbies and commercial aeroplanes, in the likely event that you do contact any of our personnel in case of any grievance. Nothing shall be out of bounds, not even Kenny G or Lionel Ritchie.
7. If you’re really resilient and are still reading this, we could also throw in some gibberish – stuff that absolutely makes no sense at all –just to drive you bonkers.
8. The Sugar Plum Fairy has left the building.
9. The Eagle has nested.
10. The Black Cobra’s venom has been neutralized.
11. Ok, that wasn’t very good gibberish, we admit. In fact it sounded exciting and mysterious, like the dialogues from one of those spy movies where you cannot tell the good guys from the bad because everyone’s too busy double-crossing each other.
12. So we shall now switch to random, irrelevant social commentary – hopefully that should discourage you.
13. What about them Mayans, eh? Terribly wrong about the end of the world, although we feel people should cut them some slack. If that’s the only thing they got wrong, that’s not too shabby at all. We’ve been wrong on so many more fronts – religion, numerology and Mamata Banerjee, just to name three things off the top of our heads. So go easy on the Mayans, ok?
14. And what on earth is the deal with the quick brown fox that keeps jumping over the lazy dog? Can’t it just go around the dog, or at least try asking the dog to give way? Just once?
15. Communism is a bit like growing your hair long or participating in life-threatening bike races – it only makes sense when you’re in college.
16. We admit that we quite enjoyed watching the movie Life Of Pi. But when they promised us that the movie would make us believe in god, we couldn’t help but wonder – can stunning visual effects really make you believe in God? We think not!
17. Finally, here’s a politically incorrect joke, just to reward you for going through all this: What was the sentence announced by the judge when the diabetic was found guilty of murder? Death by Chocolate!