Hysteresis And Impedance Of An AMP

Author: Ullas Aparanji

The best day of my life was the day I met my girlfriend. The worst day of my life was the day of our marriage. I’ll tell you about the worst day of my life. I’ll leave off talking about the best day to a better day. Now, don’t get me wrong - I have nothing against my girlfriend or marrying her. What I do object to is the concomitant charade that a marriage inevitably involves. They say that love makes the world go round, but, well, honestly, to give credit where it’s due, the centripetal force is doing a much better job of it, thank you very much.

I am all for the idea of a blink-and-you-miss-it marriage. I wonder why that isn’t the de facto accepted norm. Forget the norm, I wonder why that isn’t even the exception. I mean, I ask you - have you even heard of such a concept? Certainly not. Perhaps it hasn’t caught on because, er… You blinked and you missed it? A marriage should be like murder. A marriage should get over in a jiffy, before anyone has time to catch on to what’s happening. Why would you want to make it a protracted, long-drawn-out affair, unless you are a sadistic psychopath who relishes in the agonies of your victims? And, like with a murder, there should ideally be zero eye witnesses, or if there are indeed n eye witnesses to your marriage, you should ensure that the value of n becomes zero eventually. Rule number 1 of Crime101.

What is wrong with a normal marriage ceremony that goes on for hours (or even days, and if the involved parties are so inclined, maybe even years, or centuries (until death do them part))? It is a subtle thing. There is no rightness or wrongness about it. One man’s food is another’s poison, or whatever (this completely entitles you to poison your guests at the marriage hall, and at the time of the verdict, appeal to this proverb, and thou shalt be exonerated). It is the fake smiles and pretensions of happiness that ooze out in bucketfuls that I despise. The shorter the duration that one has to deal with it, the better for all parties involved. Ideally, the bride and the groom should be merely puppets, or decoys, or impostors, or call them what you will, while the real couple should be able to get married quietly and in peace elsewhere. In fact, all the more better if the guests are all given the address of an adjacent marriage hall rather than the actual one…

Anyway, I am rambling. I started off by promising to tell you all about the day of my marriage. And why it was the worst day of my life. I reached the marriage hall and found it pretty crowded. This is one of the main things I hate about the marriage custom. A battalion of bloodthirsty strangers are unleashed upon the poor, unsuspecting couple. Ok, fine, they are neither poor nor unsuspecting, because (a) they could afford to get married, and (b) they were the ones who had invited so many people in the first place, so how could they be unsuspecting? Let’s be honest and admit it - to the bride and the groom, most of the people who attend the marriage are strangers; the bride thinks that the people she does not recognize must be friends or relatives of the groom, and the groom thinks likewise; which is such a stupid thing, for it allows random strangers to walk in to a random marriage and even have their photographs taken and nobody would be any wiser (it would only be many days or months (or maybe even years) later when the couple one fine day decide to turn up the knob on nostalgia by going through their wedding album and they chance upon a photo with this random stranger in it and the wife says, “Dear, who is this guy? I remember you introducing me to him as your cousin but I forgot his name”, to which the husband replies, “My cousin? I was just about to ask you the same question. I thought he was your cousin” and after a few minutes of shocked silence in which their whole lives pass before their eyes, the full magnitude of the situation assails them, by which time the random stranger would have long since departed, having partaken of the feast). Just imagine if it was the President’s wedding. Why, nothing could stop someone from walking in with a gun, performing a massacre while smiling for the camera, and walking out swinging his arms, but not before helping himself to the dessert on his way out. Thank god I wasn’t a President, but that still didn’t preclude the above possibility. A marriage hall is a security nightmare (it is a well-established fact that Presidential bodyguards dream about marriage halls every night, and wake up screaming (no wonder Presidents often appear sleep-deprived; it is not because of the tension associated with their job - oh no, that’s laughable - the real reason, which nobody ever tells you, is because, how can you expect the President to sleep when his bodyguards keep waking up screaming every few seconds (which would make anyone wonder why the bodyguards were even sleeping in the first place, if they had a job to protect the President, which should naturally make the same anyone wonder who was really bodyguarding whom)?)). Perhaps I should have come to my marriage with bodyguards, or better still, with a gun…

I apologize for digressing yet again. I reached the marriage hall and found it very crowded. I do not like crowds. Correction: I do not like mobs. And a marriage hall can never contain a crowd, for it is always a mob. You might ask, what’s the difference? Here is an operative algorithm to find out for yourself and I very strongly encourage you to try this experiment the next time you are in a marriage hall: Close your eyes and throw a stone in some random direction. It is bound to hit someone (open your eyes only when you hear a scream of agony). If it doesn’t hit someone, no harm done… Carry a spare stone in your pocket and throw that one. The probability of both the stones not hitting any random person is infinitesimally low (to increase confidence in the probabilities, you can carry a third stone as well (if you are shocked, hey, come on, I was originally about to suggest hand grenades instead of stones)…). What follows is the crucial differentiating factor between a crowd and a mob… If you are in a crowd, then the people will have the presence of mind to call for an ambulance, while crowding around (well, duh, that’s why they are called a “crowd” in the first place) the wounded person in the hope of administering first aid (you are strongly encouraged, at this point, to throw the spare stone and observe the results). Of course, none of them probably realize that only one of them can be successful in administering first aid. Anybody else, if successful, would make it a second aid (or, an nth aid, for a given value of n > 1), you see… But perhaps now might not be an opportune moment to point that out to them, lest the target of the first aid alter to become you. If, on the other hand, you are dealing with a mob, as I claim the case to be in a marriage hall, the mob will hunt you down (well, come on, why else are they called a battalion of bloodthirsty strangers?), to the background music of the agonizing screams of the wounded person. At this point it is vital that you run to the bride or the groom and catch hold of any one of them and tell the mob to leave you alone if they wish to see the person you are holding walk out alive. At this point, the mob will devour you, which goes against every natural principle of any self-respecting novel where the villain makes the very same dialogue you made and gets away with it, giving a maniacal burst of laughter (for which I am sure you would have painstakingly rehearsed) while everyone else says, “You will never get away with this!”, while in fact watching the villain actually get away with this. The fact that this does not happen now is because (a) this is not a self-respecting novel, (b) you probably haven’t rehearsed the maniacal laughter bit well enough, and above all, (c) because the people never really cared about the bride or the groom in the first place, and their fake smiles and wishes to the couple were only done out of the courtesy that a vulture bestows to its prey as it waits for its death before proceeding to swoop down and devour it, which means that your threats of harming the couple never really was any threat in the first place, because nobody cared two hoots about what happened to them, and secondly, it goes to prove the stated theorem, because, come on, they were obviously there at the wedding, just for the food, and not to forget the desserts as well. QED.

Theorem 1.1: A marriage hall will always contain a mob and never a crowd.
Proof: By experiment described above, and left as an exercise to the reader.

Speaking of desserts, it reminds me of yet another theorem I have come up with in the domain of marriages, but perhaps I shall save that for some other time, considering that I have already digressed too much (hint: the theorem concerns somehow making the desserts vanish, or locking up the room containing the desserts and liquidating, and then vaporizing the keys of the room, and subsequently observing the behaviour of the mob, and in the extreme case, possibly witness cannibalism at first hand (you are NOT encouraged to seek the autographs of the cannibals at this point), because always remember that they are here primarily for the food and the desserts, and if they are denied this basic primal satisfaction, they would be happy to make a dessert of the bride and the groom themselves).

Having completed every step of the preceding proof in meticulous detail, let us return to the point whence we had departed, viz., I reached the marriage hall and found it crowded. I hoped that nobody would notice me, because the moment they did, they would come swooping down on me like vultures upon a dying lamb. And that was when I would have to plaster a fake smile on my face for the next few hours and accept insincere greetings from strangers and relatives of whose existence I was totally unaware (one would think the bride and the groom were clowns in a circus to be smiling so incessantly (and of course, with all the costumes and heavy make up, one wouldn’t be wrong in thinking so, really)). If this eventuality transpired, I decided not to smile at all the whole time. I mean, I ask you, what would be your natural reaction if you went to a circus and saw a clown frowning at you? You would probably run as far away as possible, because surely a frowning clown bodes something scary… That’s what I was going to be in this marriage — a frowning clown. Ok, scratch that — I’ll be a glowering clown. This would deter people from smiling at me, and slowly, people would even stop congratulating me, and soon, people would just walk out, and the whole drama of the marriage could get over a few hours earlier! What a cool idea! Store it in the refrigerator!

The advantage of being in a crowded place is that you can blend in with the crowd until you become inconspicuous. Possibly in the extreme case, depending upon your expertise at staying inconspicuous, you could hope that your fossils would get extracted eons hence by your great-great-grandchildren. This was my hope at the moment as I sat myself in the last row of chairs. Because, come on, everybody ignores the last benchers. My hard-earned experience teaching too many classes stands testimony to that. Only, there was a small glitch in the plan — if I didn’t get married, how would I have great-great-grandchildren to extract my fossils eons hence? Maybe I should go and announce that the marriage had been called off (and at this, relish the expressions on everyone’s faces, as they had been delivered the catastrophic news that they would be denied the desserts), but the associated risk with such a scheme would be that my girlfriend might hear it too and actually make it a true announcement by calling off the marriage. No, I couldn’t risk that. Possibly after waiting for a couple of hours and still not finding me, all these people would get fed up and leave. Oh well, whom am I kidding? Of course nobody would notice my absence or even care to wait for me, because remember, they were here solely for the food! It didn’t matter — once they had had their fill, they would all leave. That would be when I would materialize and finally marry my girlfriend in peace. I rubbed my hands in glee as I felt like a criminal mastermind for having come up with such an ingenious plan, and like any self-respecting criminal mastermind, I would have fingered my collar at this point, except I was wearing a collarless shirt.

Actually I could have walked out of the place and come back after a couple of hours, and nobody would be any wiser. The only thing that kept me from walking out right now was that I didn’t know which way was the exit. I am navigationally challenged, you see. God knows how I even managed to get in here properly without losing my way. If there was an award ceremony for the navigationally challenged, I would lose my way to the place and thus not be able to collect my prize. Anyway there was another reason why I decided not to walk out. It was plain survival instinct — the entry and exit points of a marriage hall are the places with highest population density, so much that it would be a census-reader’s delight. This meant there was higher likelihood of being recognized by someone at the exit… So I had to stay put, blend in, and camouflage myself here. I felt like a soldier in a war. You see, all is fair in love and war. And in this case, this was both.

You know what? It could be possible that I might attract attention merely because I was dressed so grand. I was lucky so far that nobody had scrutinized me carefully. In fact I was lucky so far that I didn’t see anyone whom I knew, although in all fairness, I very well might have seen someone I knew but not recognized them. I am prosopagnosic, you see. I probably wouldn’t recognize myself if I saw myself in the mirror (but then again, this was probably because of all this costume I was wearing at the moment, which the marriage custom dictates) but recognition, or rather, recognition failure, need not be a symmetric relation. If a couldn’t recognize b, it does not necessitate that b should not recognize a. This luck might not hold longer. So I quickly ruffled up my hair to look like I had just emerged from a tornado, because, come on, which groom would ever emerge from a tornado on the day of his marriage? I also unbuttoned the top three buttons of my shirt to give the appearance of having emanated from a dogfight, and then scratched myself on the arms a couple of times to give the appearance of having been mauled by wild bears. I now defy you to call me a groom — for surely, no groom in his right mind, after having been through three successive catastrophes of tornadoes, dogs and wild bears would be staunch enough to endure a fourth catastrophe of getting married on that same day! Now nobody would ever believe that I was the groom even if I went up on the stage and announced it. I deserve a gold medal, nay, a diamond medal for my cleverness. In fact, the scientist in me was tempted to do just that, viz., walk onto the stage and disclose my identity and carefully observe the results, or the lack thereof. And tabulate them and plot them on a graph neatly. But wiser instincts prevailed and I stay put.

I suddenly realized that I was a sitting duck here for any of the people around me to strike up a conversation with me, and if that happened, I would have to invent a lot of lies, or I would get exposed. No, there was an easier alternative. I took out my phone from my pocket and pretended that I was talking to someone. Nobody would strike up a conversation with someone engaged on the phone, especially if the appearances of that someone were incentive enough not to talk to them. Where is my second diamond medal? In fact, start mining for the third medal, because I did the most clever thing next. Nosy strangers abound everywhere — on, below and above earth, and they would pry and listen to others’ perhaps private conversations as if they were listening to the gospel being sermonized by God himself. So, to keep prying ears at bay (not that it really mattered, considering that they would anyway hear an imaginary conversation, but still…), I began talking about Quantum Mechanics and Particle Physics, and the effect of these theories on Electric Current, which was my line of work. The most foolproof way to repel people at a marriage hall is to talk about Quantum Physics, preferably its effect on Electric Current. You will see people walking away from you as you do it, as though you were enveloped by a force field that repelled anyone who got too close. Initially, they will walk slowly and backwards, smiling at you all the while, hoping they could get away unnoticed, but eventually (at the Quantum Threshold), they will turn and run. Those who do not will drop down like flies before your very eyes. You will never be troubled by a soul. Ever. Take that as Theorem 1.2. The proof, as is customary, is left as an exercise for the reader.

Imagine my embarrassment when all of a sudden, I got a sharp ring on my phone. Here I was, for all the world appearing as if I was mired into the deepest conversation about Quantum Wells and Tunnels, and suddenly, an actual phone call disrupts the illusion. Thankfully for me, nobody was paying any attention to me to realize my charade. What did I tell you about how you can escape from people just by talking about Quantum Physics (especially its effect on Electric Current) in a marriage? My next hypothesis is that you can even escape your marriage by talking about Quantum Tunnelling. I call it the “Quantum-Tunnelling-Your-Way-Out-Of-Marriage Hypothesis”. The hypothesis is on the verge of getting converted to a theorem, and the diligent reader is encouraged to attempt the proof on his own. Anyway, I immediately cut the call before anyone could notice. I quickly glanced at the last 3 digits — 376 and realized it was my girlfriend calling.

At this point, I must hasten to point out an astonishing fact — namely, I do not store people’s phone numbers in my phone. I prefer to remember them instead. Yes, your mouth dropping open is the perfect reaction. I remember every single one of my contacts’ numbers (which, to be honest, isn’t really a great feat, given the fact that the cardinality of the set of my known contacts equals one…). What is the point, you ask? Points, I reply. Because you see, there is not just one reason, but many. Firstly, storing numbers on a phone is such a security nightmare (I would be willing to bet that it is the second most recurring nightmare of Presidential bodyguards). Just imagine if your phone got stolen. How would you call up your near and dear ones to inform them of the loss, if you didn’t remember their numbers? Ok, fine, if your phone did get stolen, how would you even call anyone, let alone your near and dear ones? You are strongly encouraged to look outside the window at the beautiful parrot sitting on the tree while I move over to point number two. If someone did steal your phone, imagine what a wealth of information you would be inadvertently giving them. When they realize that you have not stored any contacts, imagine their howl of frustration at your attempts to thwart their attempts, following which they come after you and chain you up to a chair and gag you up and, brandishing their swords, tell you, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. Tell us your girlfriend’s number”, and you scream “NEVER”, except, you suddenly realize that you are gagged and so cannot really scream, which makes you wonder how your captors could expect you to tell the relevant number when they have gone to the trouble of having gagged you, which you try to patiently and politely explain to them, but which once again is lost owing to your being gagged… And if all this makes you wonder if trying not to store people’s phone numbers was what even got you gagged and bound in the first place, then wouldn’t it be much better if— look, a rainbow-coloured parrot outside the window!

Having admired the beauty of the parrots in question sufficiently long enough to forget why they were even being admired in the first place, let us now return to the thread in my narrative whence we had forked… I recognized my girlfriend’s number and cut her call. Damn! She would be wondering why I hadn’t come to the marriage hall yet. It was imperative that she not believe that I had ditched her at the last minute, because if she thought so, she might call off the marriage. I asked a person nearby where the washroom was, and he pointed me to it. I had a plan up my sleeve. And I was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, which meant there was ample space for more plans if the need so arose. I went inside the washroom and locked myself up so that nobody could see me. Then, I flipped up my phone to the list of missed calls and called her back.

As soon as the phone was answered, I didn’t let her speak but spoke urgently: “Help! They have found me! Help me! No no! NO! Don’t kill me! AAAARRGGHHHH!” And I let my voice trail off into a dying gargle, and cut the call at this. I wiped a tear from my eye at my stupendous acting skills, and though, strictly speaking, the dying gargle wasn’t necessary, I believe I should enroll myself for the Oscar awards. I would have wiped more tears from my eyes, except I was saving them for my acceptance speech of the aforementioned awards. Mere medals wouldn’t suffice to indicate the mark of my genius. They should erect statues in my honour.

Now my girlfriend would know that I hadn’t ditched her, and so she wouldn’t call off the marriage. More importantly, she would think I was in mortal danger, and thus immediately announce that the celebrations must cease until I was found. And thus all the guests would be asked to leave immediately. When they did leave immediately, I would go and get married to my girlfriend. And maybe even have all the desserts since the guests wouldn’t have had the time to take them. Oh, I didn’t know if my victory was more sweeter or the desserts would be.

Just then, my thoughts were shattered by a high-pitched scream coming from the adjacent cubicle. I realized then that this was a woman. Who had probably heard my beautiful acting over the phone and really thought there was a murderer in the adjacent cubicle. But, why was a woman here, unless possibly it was to give me my Oscar awards? But surely, she wouldn’t be so desperate as to want to give me my rightly-deserved awards in the washroom, would she? It suddenly hit me that I had entered the ladies’ washroom. I am navigationally challenged, you see, and this gets in the way of my plans sometimes. Never mind— I must get out of here immediately before people came in, because finding me in the ladies’ washroom was the surest way to draw attention to myself. And that was the last thing I wanted now. I quickly hurried out and thankfully did not run into anyone else. I realized that this could serendipitously work in my favour as the lady would describe how a murderer had committed a murder in the adjacent cubicle, and she had heard the victim’s pleas and screams of agony at first hand, and at this, the police would be called (while, in parallel, I would be calling up the Oscar Awards committee), which was the most effective means of dispersing the crowd.

And when the crowd dispersed, I would marry my girlfriend, while at the same time, collecting my Oscar Awards, preferably doing both on the same stage…

By the time I walked back to the main hall, I was fully confident that the chaos would have been set in motion. My girlfriend must have already announced that I was absconding and so the guests would have to leave. At the very least, I expected to find posters of my face plastered on all walls, announcing rewards to the first person who found me, dead or alive (at which, I would have been tempted to point out that a dead groom would not be of much use). I fully expected to run into people screaming and coming out as I went in, and I hoped to put out my foot and make some of them trip just so as to add in to the general chaos. However, I was surprised to see that nothing had changed in the hall since I had left it a few minutes ago. Ok, the physicist in me screams that this was not true, because the positions of the molecules, and their momentums and velocities would have certainly changed, owing to Brownian motion, but I temporarily suspended the physicist in me down a Quantum Well, as I assessed the gravity and its associated gravitational constant of the situation. I knew my theorem was true, but I didn’t expect that everybody would be craving so much for the food that they wouldn’t even listen to the bride begging them all to leave immediately! I wondered how my girlfriend would be taking this response from the crowd. I surreptitiously peeked at the stage and nearly reeled at the sight that met my eyes.

My girlfriend was standing arm in arm with someone else. There was no doubt that the man was the groom, considering his fancy attire. My girlfriend had betrayed me. She must have set up the murderer onto me just so that she could marry this other person. It all made sense. It all fit perfectly. Except, there really was no murderer, because I had acted out that part when I called her up, and was awaiting my Oscar Award for the same.

Or could it actually be the case that she had really set out a murderer on me, and my call to her with my award-winning performance only convinced her that her contracted assassin was successful? And if so, that meant there was an assassin lurking around here somewhere because he knew he hadn’t killed me, but was hoping to do it soon.

I had told you earlier that a marriage should be like murder. I now realize that a marriage hall is the best place to commit one, because nobody would be expecting a murder to take place there. And as I had mentioned earlier, it is so easy to blend in to the crowd that nobody would ever know there was a murderer in their midst, because, you see, everyone would be so busy concentrating on the food or the desserts. Potential murderers, please note that I am NOT giving you ideas.

At this very second, someone could be searching for me, bearing down on me with a gun in his hand. I knew what to do. Keeping my girlfriend in my sight, yet staying far away, I picked up my phone and dialled her number. I had to tell her that I had exposed her plan and was still alive. Her phone rang, and all the while, I kept my eyes upon her as she stood on the stage. My call was answered at the fourth ring, and I froze. Because I could see her standing on the stage… Without a phone in her hand… And yet somebody had answered this call.

I knew that this was probably the assassin my girlfriend had hired. Very probably in this same room. In fact, I wouldn’t at all have been surprised to get a tap on my shoulder at this point as the assassin said into the phone, “Behind you”. That was just the sort of dramatic thing any assassin worth his weight in blood (well, you see, they value blood more than salt, unless, of course, the salt was in the blood…) would be paid to do. Mere assassination is too mainstream, and the more bells and whistles that an assassin promises, the more he is paid. However, no such dramatic shoulder-tapping ensued, which was somewhat of a disappointment. Instead a guy spoke my name. Aha, I knew it! The assassin even knew my name, and I would be willing to bet he probably even knew the positions of every atom and electron in my body to the nineteenth significant digit, but perhaps I was expecting too much by thinking the assassin was a physicist. Ok, I am not denying that possibility, because physicists would make great assassins, because (a) well, they are Infinite Potential Wells, and (b) they probably have got fed up of not finding the results to their research, and are willing to kill people out of sheer frustration, if not anything else.

Anyway, the person on the other end of the line said, “We are here to help you. Are you hurt? Where are you?” Oh please, I expected better from him. Every assassin makes such a dialogue to lure you into a false sense of security and forcing you to show yourself so that he can kill you, and as he does so, says, “ When I said that we are here to help you, I meant help you on the way out of this world, haha.” Only one word in what he said caught my attention. One word alone: “We”. What did this imply? There were more assassins! He was not operating alone. How many more were there in the fray? And more importantly, how could I escape? In the degenerate case, this entire marriage hall could be full of assassins. Every single member here could be an assassin, pretending to be interested in the desserts! This entire marriage could be an elaborate act put up to carry out a murder. I wouldn’t put it past my girlfriend to concoct such a scheme, because she would have reasoned that were I alive, my reaction to her news of intending to marry that other guy would be something along the lines of, “Over my dead body”, and so, she would indeed try to ensure that she married this guy preferably over my dead body, literally and figuratively speaking, and hence the assassins. I should perhaps stop calling her my girlfriend and call her my girlenemy instead.

Meanwhile the person on the line was calling my name repeatedly. I asked slowly and carefully, “How many more of you are there?” The most natural response to this should have been a blood-curdling maniacal laughter and the words, “You can run away from us but you can’t hide! We are everywhere!”, and so I was disappointed by his actual response, “Your girlfriend is searching for you. We hope you aren’t hurt”. Yeah, right - so that you can hurt me? I replied sarcastically: “Yeah sure, she is searching for me while getting married to someone else”, and I cut the call at this.

But even as I cut the call, my eyes were riveted to the screen of my phone. Because I noticed the number. While it was certainly the case that the last three digits of the number were that of my girlfriend, none of the other digits were! Horrors upon horrors! All this time, I had assumed that this was my girlfriend’s number, but it was someone else’s, and worse, I didn’t even know the number. The first time I got the call today when I was pretend-speaking, I assumed it was her just by looking at the last three digits. Subsequently, oh my god, I blindly redialled this number and pretended to be dying, when in reality it was some stranger who got to experience the magical aura of my thespian skills, and not my girlfriend. I didn’t have to call her my girlenemy anymore because she was still my girlfriend. Or at least I hope so. All of this, you will smugly say, could have been completely avoided if only I had stored her phone number and not decided to bank on my faulty memory. You are kindly entreated to admire the plumage of the parrot outside the window yet again.

There were still some loose ends. Such as, for instance, who was this guy who spoke to me on the phone? How did he know my name? How did he know my number? I was still reluctant to part with my assassin theory, although I was willing to compromise by making a few minor changes to it. Oh, if only I could get it published in a respectable journal!

It was essential for me to get to my girlfriend immediately. Since she had never even got to hear the pretense of my dying, she in all probability thought I had ditched her in the last minute and thus she was now getting married to this other person. Although, to be honest, it did look pretty suspicious that this other person was so conveniently available at just the right moment for her to get married to in case I didn’t turn up. My assassin theory continued to hold water, and blood as well. It was now finally time for me to reveal myself.

I walked up to the stage in slow, dramatic strides. Just like in the movies. There was even background music playing at the marriage hall. This was the point in the movies where the hero gets shot because he is attempting to thwart destiny. I expected to hear a gunshot any second now. How I wish someone should have filmed me at this point. If not, this would be such a crippling, debilitating, devastating loss for the thespian world. Merely filming me live for a couple of hours would make such a great movie. It would make for such a great movie that they would have to rename the Oscar awards and instead appellate the awards after me, and thereafter proceed to give me the awards. Even if they hadn’t filmed me, they should have at least photographed me, for it would surely have got nominated to Nature’s Best Photograph Award, for surely, I am Nature’s best gift to mankind!

To my utter disappointment, not a single bullet whizzed past me. Not a single bullet even hit me. Not a single bullet was even fired. There wasn’t even the smashing of plates or glasses. I would have at least been satisfied if somebody swooned on the spot, or at least screamed in distress, but I wasn’t even granted this satisfaction. I walked up onto the stage as if I was welcomed by a cheery band and a red carpet, both of which actually were true.

This should have been the point where a deathly hush should have enveloped the hall. This should have been the point where the band should have stopped playing and some of the guests should have wondered if they had suddenly gone deaf, or if the marriage hall had become engulfed in vacuum, and if so, wonder why they hadn’t died yet, or if they had and were now ghosts. This should have been the point where someone should have dropped a pin and the sound of it should have echoed across the hall seventeen times. That none of it happened should have been cause enough for my alarm, if only because the dimensions of the room were amenable only for reverberations and not echoes! If I had only paused to ponder over the implications, what followed might have been averted. I stood on the stage amidst all the noise, and though my girlfriend was still quite a distance away, we made eye contact. I smiled at her. The kind of smile a wolf gives to its prey before devouring it whole. The kind of smile that should have made her cower, if not outright sent her running away screaming. But she smiled back at me.

Put yourself in the… paws of the wolf. It’s not everyday that its dinner smiles back at it. I ask you what should the poor wolf do? Well, howl, as befits a wolf. But besides that (if only because I was most decidedly not a wolf, or at least, not yet), it would probably approach the dinner with an inquisitive, careful and healthy curiosity. At least, if the wolf was a physicist, which, trust me, isn’t too much of a stretch of the imagination to think about, if you could only picture the wolf wearing glasses and a lab coat.

I approached my prey, er… I mean, girlfriend, and said “Congratulations!” She said “Thank you” and smiled at me. This made my blood boil, and take it from me, my blood has a very low boiling point, and it has been proven empirically on several occasions. With Bunsen burners. State-of-the-art Bunsen burners. What insolence on her part to go ahead and betray me in the last minute and marry someone else, and on top of that, smile at me and say “Thank you”! An insane rage possessed me as I stepped forward and slapped her hard on the face, screaming out the word, “TRAITOR”! In fact, I strongly contemplated shouting out the words, “Et tu, Brute!”, but didn’t do so, because (a) it had three syllables, as opposed to “Traitor”, which had only two, (b) I wasn’t a big fan of Shakespeare anyway, and didn’t want everyone in the audience to end up thinking a Shakespearean tragedy was being enacted live on the stage, when in fact a live tragedy was being enacted, to give no credits to Shakespeare, (c) in the true spirit of making such a dialogue, I would have to fall down as Julius Caesar, and I wasn’t inclined to do so, but was hoping the opposite, and (d) I wasn’t Julius Caesar, nor was she Brutus (although, the appellation, brute would be quite apt for her, I guess). Ah, now the band stopped playing at last. I was about to slap her a second time, when I observed her face up close. I almost fainted as I saw that it was not my girlfriend, but some random girl whom I didn’t even know.

Had anyone else been in my position, they would have been devoured by the mob at this point. Ok, to be honest, had anyone else been in my position, they wouldn’t have, owing to prosopagnosia, walked up to a random girl on the day of her marriage and slapped her, but let’s leave that technicality aside for the moment. I deserve an Olympic medal for the agility of my mind, considering what I did next. True, the Olympics rewards physical agility and not the mental kind, and so they should invent a new sport, honour it by giving it my name, and then proceed to give me a medal. In fact, proceed to give me all the medals since nobody else could beat me anyway.

I immediately pulled out the handy stone from my pocket and hurled it at the main lights, which shattered instantly, plunging the stage into darkness. Screams now began emanating from the crowd as I shouted, “I am armed!” Look, I didn’t tell a lie, because I did have two arms, and so I was technically “armed”, as was everyone else in the room. If they chose to impute a different meaning to my statement and start screaming, that is not my problem. I jumped off the stage and headed to the densest section of the crowd. The densest section of the crowd, as stated earlier (I should have made that into a lemma, for it came in so handy), is always at the entry/ exit. Here lay my path to freedom. I dived into the crowd and picked up the spare stone from my pocket that I always carried (to prove handy theorems, you know) and threw it near the stage and immediately heard a scream. I shouted to the people around me, “Somebody’s hurt at the stage. They need first aid. Hurry!”, and immediately the people around me started moving towards the stage that was ensconced in darkness. I sprained my hand in my attempt to pat myself on the back for this clever stroke of genius and walked out of the marriage hall, a free man! I should have helped myself to the desserts on the way out, but there wasn’t enough time. Actually, you know what? I bet I could go back in there and keep talking about Quantum Physics, and its effect on Electric Current, while making my way to the dessert counter and people would just automatically move out of my way. Every neuron in my brain was ready to actually try this out, but I had too many thoughts on my mind trying to figure out what all had happened that the dessert was deserted.

As I walked out of the marriage hall, I looked back at the entrance to see what the customary board announced about which bride was marrying which groom. Two random names that I didn’t recognize. Good lord, I had walked into the wrong marriage hall! I am navigationally challenged, you see, and it is turning out to be such a challenge to me. Poor girl, I wonder how that bride must have felt to be assaulted by a random stranger looking like he had emerged from a tornado, been in a dogfight, and having got mauled by bears, and on top of that, being called a “Traitor” by him? Perhaps I should have gone back and apologized to her, but then, I wasn’t feeling suicidal at the moment, and so abandoned that idea.

So now I was lost. I didn’t know how to find the right marriage hall, because I didn’t remember the address. Even at this moment, my girlfriend might be waiting for me to turn up in the right marriage hall, and what a shame that I couldn’t make it. I took out my phone and called her up. She answered saying, “Where have you escaped and gone off to?” I honestly didn’t know where I was, and so I told her the best landmark I could, namely, the wrong marriage hall, which I identified by reading out the names of the bride and the groom. She said she would be there in a few minutes. As soon as she cut the call, I relived the events of all I had done in the past few hours. In the back of my mind, something was nagging me about my call to my girlfriend but I couldn’t quite figure out what.

She soon came and called out my name saying, “I am so glad to see you haven’t escaped. We were all so worried about you. The other doctors called you up, and later told me something about you screaming for help! I was so worried.” I suddenly realized what was nagging me about my previous phone call to her. It was the question she had asked, “Where have you escaped and gone off to?” That seemed such a strange question to ask. Escaped? From where? And even now, whatever she just spoke seemed confusing. Just then, she approached me and I felt a prick of an injection and everything went dark. At this point, in any self-respecting story, the protagonist groggily wakes up to find himself tied to a chair. When I woke up, I found myself locked up in a room. But not tied to a chair (how disappointing). My girlfriend entered along with another man, and they both were wearing white coats. My girlfriend spoke to the man, “Thank god he did not get too far away. And he didn’t cause much damage. Good thing we found him so quickly.” The man replied, “Yes, you are right, Doctor!”. Then they both walked out and locked the door. I looked around the room and realized that it was familiar to me. I vaguely remembered having been here before. There was a bed. Upon the head of the bed was a label with my name on it. There was also a table beside it with a book lying on top of it.

Sigh, the day of our marriage was the worst day of my life. It was on this day that I realized that I never was about to get married to her. It was on this day that I realized that she was my doctor in this place they call the asylum. It was on this day that I realized that she wasn’t even my girlfriend. It was on this day that I realized that I didn’t even have one. The best day of my life was the day I met my girlfriend. The worst day of my life was the day of our marriage. It just so happened that both were the same day…

Oh, I am so sorry I forgot to introduce myself. They say my name is AMP. The label on the bed reads, “Acute Megalomaniac Paranoid”. I glance at the book on the table. The title reads: “All Memories Purged: Alzheimer’s Malady’s Patients”. And a subtitle in a slightly smaller font below it reads: “Anecdotal Musings Perhaps, ranging from Absent Minded Professors to Authors Mightily Prosopagnosic, causing events ranging from Amusing Marriage Pandemoniums to Amazing Medal- worthy Performances”. A book review on the cover page says: “A Master-Piece”. Hello reader, I am just Another Modern Physicist. ___