My first book is published, and available on Amazon!

Catharsis, by Roshni Prasad is a story of perseverance and chronicles a young girl's journey to finding the strength that she needs, to fight for her family and herself.

Read Catharsis here and please let me know what you think!

Related: Here's a post on the AI analysis I did on various drafts of the book to help me understand the emotions I was conveying: Can a quant help make a better poet? Catharsis, by Roshni Prasad is a story of perseverance and chronicles a young girl's journey to finding the strength that she needs, to fight for her family and herself.

She had felt her heart break once before, when her father dropped dead. There she was, a second mother to her siblings while her mother drowned her sorrows in alcohol. She was forced to grow up too fast, and took the first opportunity to slow down, which came in the form of her mother’s new boyfriend, Sam. But things changed forever when she discovered Sam’s secret; and now, her previous life seemed like a dream. Will she find the courage to fight for her freedom, or will Sam and his terrorizing ways trap her forever?

Read Catharsis here and please let me know what you think!

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Outlook: Girls in India: Young, Restless…. and Jobless

How is it to be a girl in India? In the past, I have written about the issues a girl in India faces – that was from the heart, based on my personal experiences. This time around, I thought – why not look at it using numbers, so that it would be objective. How is it to be a girl in India? In the past, I have written about the issues a girl in India faces – that was from the heart, based on my personal experiences. This time around, I thought – why not look at it using numbers, so that it would be objective.

I started by collecting data – it wasn’t difficult to find. I looked at the Indian 10-year census data, the latest of which was done in 2011. I looked at data from the various central government agencies, like the department of health, the department of skill development etc. I wanted the data to speak to me… I ran the data through some analysis modules I had written, and the data did tell me some interesting facts.

FACT: The girl child is not being killed as often as she was

Female infanticide has been a big blot on Indian society for many years. There is a distinct preference for a male child, and in some states, female infanticide is still a big issue. However, the good news is that overall, the chances of survival being born as a girl has slowly increased. As the figure below tells us, the number of women per 1000 men dropped drastically since Independence, but in the last three census, it is showing a strong uptick.

Figure 1: India Sex Ratio – The country is giving the girl child an increasing chance to be born…

FACT: Women are living longer in India

The life expectancy of women in India has been increasing.

Figure 2: India Life Expectancy – Overall life expectancy is on the rise, and women are living longer lives than men

In the 70’s, women had a lower life expectancy than men, but in the last thirty years, women are outliving men by about 4 to 5 years.

FACT: Their fertility rates are dropping

Figure 3: India Total Fertility Rate: Women are having lesser children

The Total Fertility Rate (TFR) in simple terms refers to the total number of children born or likely to be born to a woman in her life time if she were subject to the prevailing rate of age-specific fertility in the population. This has been dropping in the last 16 years, and it is a good sign.

I looked deeper to see if the underlying data would reveal anything beyond the averages.

The data was eye-opening. As Figure 4 illustrates, the fertility rates drop as the women get more education. This adds up, since as the girl stays in school, she doesn’t get married off early, and doesn’t have children earlier, and thus doesn’t have more children during her life time. Further, better education while postponing marriage and children, also opens her eyes to contraception and family planning, all of which help her and her family.

Figure 4: India Total Fertility Rate by education of women

The story, until now is all good, right?

But, what about getting a job?

That’s where the bad news starts coming in.

FACT: Girls won’t get a job easily

Figure 5: India Workplace Diversity – It’s tough being a woman in the workplace

Less and less women are being hired into the workplace. While the diversity in 2016 was pretty low, with twice as many men getting jobs as women, it has gotten worse in 2018, according to data available by the Skills development department. In 2018, women have only a one fourth representation in the workforce.

Is there overt discrimination in the hiring process? Most definitely. But I decided to dig further to see if there were other causes.

FACT: Girls need to develop skills to get a job

Figure 6: India Employability by Gender – More than half of job applicants are not employable since they don’t have the necessary skills for the job

This data is alarming. The country is producing graduates at an increasing rate, but more than half of them are not even employable since they don’t have the necessary skills for the job. It is worse if you are a female – 60% of females who graduate don’t have the necessary skills for the job.

What does this mean? India sits on an opportune moment in history – 65% of her human resource pool is under the age of 35, and about 12 million individuals are expected to join the workforce every year. It is estimated that by 2030, India will be the most populated country surpassing China – with the median age projected to be 32 years, versus 43 in China. A young country with enormous potential. However, without the requisite skills, the young will be restless and jobless!

What is one thing you can do as a parent? In my humble opinion – don’t worry about getting your child INTO school – think about getting her OUT to the real world. Help equip her with the skills to be successful in life, and the workforce.

Pay less attention to private-tuitions, after-school cramming for tests. Instead, encourage her to take part in extracurricular activities. Sports helps build character. Volunteering and extra-curricular involvement helps build leadership and responsibility. It helps improve communication. Get her to take up a part-time job, even an internship. Teach her things that are not taught in school. Open her eyes to the world around her, and she will do just all right.

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Can a quant help make a better poet?

I have been intrigued by the applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The theory goes that you can program a machine to do things that humans are doing today. I buy the argument about machines replacing humans in routine, mundane tasks. But, can a machine take over the creativity process? Can a machine exhibit emotions like humans do? Can it write a poem or a story? In my own little way, I set out to find out...
Machines taking over humans' tasks - this is not something new. As we look around us, we see lots of examples of this. Afterall, the Automated Teller Machine - or as we better know it, the "ATM" - is a machine that replaced a human, the bank teller.

But with the growing attention and hype about Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, people are talking about two diametrically opposite scenarios: one in which machines help propel mankind into an amazing future, and the other where machines rule the world, to the point where humans become subservient to them.

While I believe that AI has the ability to make our lives much easier by taking over the performance of mundane tasks, there is still a question in the back of my head; can AI replace the thing that makes us human - emotions? Can it grow the ability to feel emotion and express it, through poems or stories?

I have been working on a book, a novella of sorts for quite some time now. It is titled "Catharsis" and tells the story of a girl who goes through some challenges in life. When I shared the first draft of the book with my teachers and my family for inputs, some of them said that it was "dark" and "not inspiring". While I agreed that it was a dark story - it was meant to be - I also knew that there was a good message behind it, one that was inspiring. Perhaps I didn't make it clear enough though, and I had to know for sure - had my book lost all the optimistic connotations I had tried to incorporate into it?

To get an independent view, I turned to a computer. I had just taken a few data analytics and machine learning classes from Berkeley and Stanford, and started researching a topic called "Sentiment Analysis", whereby you could have a piece of software analyze the sentiment of the written word.

After nearly a month of playing around with various algorithms and public domain pieces of software, I was able to get a lexicon called "DepecheMood" to analyze my book. I had to download the software, and feed it each chapter of my book and have it tell me the sentiment of the chapter. DepecheMood is the world's largest crowd-sourced sentiment analysis program whereby the community at large trains the software to understand and classify sentiment of a given piece of text into eight categories, viz: Afraid, Angry, Sad, Annoyed, Don't Care, Amused, Inspired and Happy.

I wrote small programs that summarized the sentiment of each chapter as an average of the sentiments of each line in the chapter.

The result was, as shown in the picture below, eye-opening for me.

Figure 1: Sentiment Analysis of the final draft of my book

From the picture above, it was clear to me that while my story did have a mix of emotions, there was nothing really exciting about the "mood" of the story. It did seem a bit monotonous, and arguably didn't have enough of the positive sentiments like Happiness and Inspiration. It did seem more skewed towards the negative sentiments.

The machine had answered my question, without a bias.

I set out to rewrite my book. It took me nearly five months to come up with the revised version. I resisted the temptation to feed each chapter in, till I was done with the writing. However, when I finished writing, I ran the analysis again, and here is what the summary result looked like.

Figure 2: Sentiment Analysis of the final version of my book

This time, the story had more ups and downs, perhaps more twists and turns in emotions. One chapter in particular (chapter 3) had the protagonist really afraid, but also inspired to do something about the problem she was facing. As the story progressed, you could see the protagonist being happy and overcoming her fears. I will not spoil the story further, but you can see that the final version looks completely different than the original version I started out with.

So, did I have the machine write me a story? Did it replace me as a writer? No. I had the machine tell me what was wrong with my story and helped me write a better story, with the message I had set out to send.

The future of machines making humans better, is a future that I see with Artificial Intelligence and robots.

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Love what you do, do what you love

I’ve always envied people who were good at something they loved. People who dedicated their entire lives to a sport, not because anyone was pressuring them to, but because they genuinely loved it... I’ve always envied people who were good at something they loved. People who dedicated their entire lives to a sport, not because anyone was pressuring them to, but because they genuinely loved it. People who could sit for hours in front of the same canvas, perfecting details that only the trained eye could perceive, because they felt the most at ease with a paintbrush in their hand. People who looked forward to a sociology or physics exam, because it was their equivalent of a match to an athlete or an exhibition to an artist. It was their opportunity to showcase their talent. To do something that they loved and be given due credit for it, to be recognized.

I’ve tried my hand at a number of things, to find ‘the one’, but in this case in terms of a calling rather than a person. I learned early on that art wasn’t really my thing. I still like to paint now and then, just for fun, but it’s never something to be impressed by. That’s okay though, it was always just for relaxation. Classical dancing, again, was something I did not enjoy much. That’s not to say that I don’t still let loose when an especially good song comes on at a party. Athletics were .... a no. Serious organized sports were never my thing. Unfortunately I have measly upper or lower body strength, nor any interest in becoming an Olympian. And I’m 100% okay with that. The only thing that has ever come close to being ‘the one’ for me would be writing. But there’s still a part of me that wonders if there’s anything truly special about my writing, or if it’s just ...

Regardless, it’s something that I love doing. And I’ve learned that only devoting time to things you’re good at but may not necessarily love is a sad way to live life. So I paint, and I dance, and I swim - whenever I get the chance. And I feel great afterwards. Because even though these aren’t things that I’m good at - and probably never will be - they make me happy. And isn’t that all any of us are looking for?

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"Cover" story

Sexual assault. I know what you’re thinking: this topic has been written about to death. Well, then why isn’t there any change happening? It’s easy for us to talk about the thousands of things that are wrong with society, but none of it matters unless there’s any change. And that change starts from the very first level. Sexual assault. I know what you’re thinking: this topic has been written about to death. Well, then why isn’t there any change happening? It’s easy for us to talk about the thousands of things that are wrong with society, but none of it matters unless there’s any change. And that change starts from the very first level.

There’s an inherent problem with the socialization in our society. When it comes to issues of sexual assault, our first thought is to chide the victim. After all, if she wasn’t wearing such a short skirt or such a revealing top, none of this would’ve happened, right? Wrong. This happened because of the abuser. No change in outfit would’ve prevented them from trying to get handsy. No longer pair of pants would have stopped them from trying to take what wasn’t theirs. Yet still, we continue to focus on the victim. How does that make sense?

I live in a society where girls don’t go out at night unless they’re accompanied by a buff boy. Where I have to put a jacket on over my tank top before answering the door. Where people have to carry around pepper spray in broad daylight to ward off attackers. Because the shame in such an incident lies solely on the victim. How can we expect to see a change, if we’re not willing to start changing our own households? Teach your children that touching anyone without their consent is not only a crime, but is shameful and an ugly thing to do. Eliminate the phrase “they were asking for it” from your vocabulary. Listen to people when they tell you that a situation is making them uncomfortable, and make a change. You can’t expect other people to make changes if you aren’t willing to yourself. If we all start small, we have the power to become a society where everyone can truly feel safe and isn’t that what we all want for our futures?

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Aretha Franklin started the conversation, let's continue

R-E-S-P-E-C-T. I never really understood the phrase “respect your elders”. I’ve always been taught that respect is something that has to be earned, that you have to work for. But I don’t really understand that either. R-E-S-P-E-C-T. I never really understood the phrase “respect your elders”. I’ve always been taught that respect is something that has to be earned, that you have to work for. But I don’t really understand that either. To me, respect is a basic human right. It’s something that we should all have the privilege of experiencing from the moment we are born. You are expected to respect boundaries, you are expected to treat someone with decency, you are expected to communicate with people as if you are equals. And I don’t feel like there are levels of respect either. You either respect someone, or you don’t, and I don’t think age should be a factor in that.

I see all these stories in the news about bad parenting, and I think it all boils down to parents not giving their children the respect they are entitled to. When we treat children like their opinions don’t matter, and raise them to believe that they are not as good as someone else, then is it really fair of us to question why so many of them grow up with self-esteem issues? I’m not saying that every child with self-esteem issues is a product of a lack of mutual understanding and respect, but certainly a large proportion of them indirectly are.

Now it comes to loss of respect. Loss of respect is something you earn. It’s something that happens to you when you disregard the interests of those around you. It happens to you when you intentionally harm someone or something else, be it for personal gain or not. It happens to you when you believe that you are superior to others. So let’s end this notion that not all of us are entitled to respect, or that we must respect one person more than another. All decent human beings have an innate right to be respected.

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"Origin" by Dan Brown - A Review

“The Da Vinci Code” was the first book I read that had a lasting impact on me. Before that, there were a ton of books that had me totally engrossed, but they were the ‘read and forget about it’ kind of books. It’s the first book I can point to and say: “Now that was amazing”. “The Da Vinci Code” was the first book I read that had a lasting impact on me. Before that, there were a ton of books that had me totally engrossed, but they were the ‘read and forget about it’ kind of books. It’s the first book I can point to and say: “Now that was amazing”.

With schoolwork taking over my high school years, I found myself with little to no time to read for pleasure (my favorite past-time). That was until a few months ago. There was a lull in the academic workload assigned to me, and I grabbed the opportunity hungrily. The first book that caught my eye in my school’s library was “Origin”. I saw the name and was instantly reminded of my mother’s excitement when the book was first released. I picked it up, and took it home, with every intention of reading it slowly and leisurely. As you can probably guess, that’s not what happened. I devoured the book like a prisoner ravishing their last meal. I stayed up at nights and woke up feeling tired, yet completely alive at the same time. All in all, it took me around two days to finish, while juggling my extra-curriculars and schoolwork simultaneously.

Now I’ll start off by saying that it was a great book. The concept it was based on – the origin of life – is something that intrigues all of us, regardless of religious preferences. Dan Brown is famous for incorporating religion in his novels (after all, the protagonist is a professor of religious symbology). While his writing may come off as slightly controversial, I thought the incorporation of religion was extremely tasteful done – not too damning, yet interesting at the same time. The character of Ambra Vidal was exciting and fresh, though at times I felt she was a bit redundant. It seemed to me that her role in the book was to provide a tie to the Spanish Royal family. Sure, she may have helped out a bit here and there, but most of the grunt work was done by our beloved hero Robert Langdon.

The character of Winston was ingenious in my eyes – a way of distinguishing Brown’s previous works to this one. The supercomputer provided a much-needed tie into our current technologically advanced society, along with providing the air of mystery that surrounds artificial intelligence.

The plot was something that made this book one that I just could not put down. Where did we come from? Where are we going? Two questions that have plagued mankind since we first learned to think. Through the ups and downs of the novel, I found myself worried that these questions wouldn’t be answered, and my own curiosity would be rampant. Alas, we did find out the answers to these questions, and I’d be lying if I said that I was content. Frankly, I found the novel to be a bit anti-climactic, and a bit disappointing when it came to the profound revelations that were the entire premise of the novel. The idea of the primordial soup – while interesting – seemed a bit unoriginal and uninspired. Further, the idea that mankind was going to great places, living symbiotically with technology and thriving - while maintaining their position as the most dominant species in the planet - seemed rather utopian to me. In a novel like this, I expected something a bit more brutally honest, even though that may be synonymous with scary.

While the big reveal did leave me thinking for days after finishing the novel, my thoughts were more along the lines of the flaws in the answers provided to these two massive questions rather than their validity. They did however, spark some existential questions in my head, but that’s a topic for another day.

I feel like I may be a bit biased. To me, “The Da Vinci Code” will always be the pinnacle of mystery novels, and though I would’ve loved to have had its position in my head usurped by “Origin”, it still remains the reigning champion. One of the hallmarks of Dan Brown’s novels is their ability to make you question your beliefs – it’s part of what makes them so interesting. This novel definitely succeeded in that aspect. As for making me see the world differently (something that I experienced with “The Da Vinci Code”), I think my opinions remain unchanged.

Book Rating: 7/10

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Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

I admire people who feel comfortable with their bodies. It seems like they’ve reached a level of self-confidence which sometimes seems unattainable to me. But it’s false that only fat people have body confidence issues. I have friends that have been deemed ‘skinny’ or ‘perfectly curvy’, who have been told time and time again that they have amazing bodies, but the thought of wearing a swimsuit gives them anxiety. I admire people who feel comfortable with their bodies. It seems like they’ve reached a level of self-confidence which sometimes seems unattainable to me. But it’s false that only fat people have body confidence issues. I have friends that have been deemed ‘skinny’ or ‘perfectly curvy’, who have been told time and time again that they have amazing bodies, but the thought of wearing a swimsuit gives them anxiety.

While I do think that confidence is built by (sadly) external validation, this just proves to me that being comfortable with your body comes from within. It’s like that saying, ‘You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink’. I’m still searching for the secret to self-confidence, and if I figure it out, I’ll let you guys know. But for now, I realize that validation is not going to be the answer to all my problems, and that if I want to change and feel more comfortable in my skin, I’m going to have to take steps towards that and not depend on others to push me there. And I feel like a lot of that comes from stepping outside of your comfort zone.

So, try wearing that top that you think accentuates your rolls to a party. Or wear those pair of shorts even though you hate your legs. Or wear that dress even though you don’t think you fill it in enough. At first, it’ll be hard. You’ll feel vulnerable and judged, but eventually, you’ll get to a point where you learn to love your body, every aspect of it. Because to someone, somewhere, you are the epitome of beauty. And you deserve to be the epitome of beauty in your own eyes too.

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Written in stone?

I think people are afraid of permanence. People get cold feet before weddings because they’re afraid of being with one person permanently. They’re afraid of getting piercings and tattoos because they’re permanent. They’re afraid of having kids because they’re going to become a permanent fixture in their lives. To be honest with you, I’m terrified of permanence. I think people are afraid of permanence. People get cold feet before weddings because they’re afraid of being with one person permanently. They’re afraid of getting piercings and tattoos because they’re permanent. They’re afraid of having kids because they’re going to become a permanent fixture in their lives. To be honest with you, I’m terrified of permanence. I can’t think of a single career that I’d be happy to do for the rest of my life, I can’t think of a single place I want to settle down, I can’t think of being with one person forever. It all just seems too ... permanent. But on the other hand, maybe I’m just afraid because I haven’t found the one career, the one place, the one person that I’d want to settle down with forever. Maybe I’m just waiting for a calling, something that brings me such immense joy when I think of it that I can’t imagine not doing it. Something that I’m so passionate about that doing it forever doesn’t seem like long enough.

But then there also becomes the issue of dependence. The more permanent something is in your life, the more dependent you are on them. They become your defining points, they make up your personality, they become a part of you. For a while, I avoided dependence like the plague. I thought it was a sign of weakness, a sign of not being self-sufficient. But I know now that is usually not the case.

There’s no problem with being dependent on something or someone, everyone is. Maybe you’re dependent on your parents for their support and guidance. Maybe you’re dependent on school for giving you something to work towards, a goal. Maybe you’re dependent on your friends to get you out of a slump. All of that is completely fine. The only problem is when the thing you’re dependent on is toxic. When you’re dependent on drugs, or a bad habit, or an abusive parent. If your dependency takes more than it gives, that’s when you know something’s wrong. But then again, getting out of something like that is easier said than done. Regardless, something has to change.

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