Taken for Granted Chapter 4 - AR the elder brother

If you want to sell refrigerator to Eskimo, pen to an illiterate or contact lens to a blind man you may need a lot of luck. But brother AR could sell ice to Eskimo and Statistics to a statistics professor.

CUT TO: In jail the only thing you own is your past. The rest they take away. The inmates in jail hate me as I look very polished. They think that I might be a spy or informer. The officers in jail hate me because I am supposed to have links with terror outfits. The torture just goes on.

FLASHBACK: The torture called Statistics had just began and the only average I was concerned with was average of Sachin and Lara. But Mr. Lalwani our teacher had other ideas and he used terms like sigma, variance etc. The very idea that numbers can be useful leave alone exciting was alien to me. I made bored faces. Suddenly in middle of the class I was asked to show my homework. Shankar smiled as he thought that I was going to get creamed today. Katha was concerned. She had not helped me with my homework this time. But my homework was perfect, it was rather exceptional. Of course I had not done it. AR did it for me. In return I had to say his taught lines in front of his girlfriends convincingly. They were things like what a great brother he was or how sensitive he was. But since I was getting my work done, I didn't care. Like the Sprite Ad says - Give Money (do homework in my case) to people and they would say anything.

CUT TO: A tall man stares at me. He has me alone in a interrogation room. He is telling me that if I           co-operate they would let me go. But I don't have any terror links. He tells me that I can help myself. He tells me to reveal all I know. He says that he is like my elder brother. That I can trust him.

FLASHBACK:  My Stats oral exams were near. Mr. Lalwani thought now that I was a brilliant student and I did not want to change that impression. The only problem was that I was horrible in Stats. AR told me that I can help myself, all I needed was some trust in myself and Cricket. I did not believe in him. But Cricket and AR can actually sell Statistics to a Statistics professor. Mr. Lalwani never expected the bouncer we were going to deliver. AR explained to me that difference in the average of first innings and second innings of a batsman in a test match -(say Sachin) is Variance in comparison to his overall average. The most common score he gets is mode and the scores arranged in sequence of no of runs scored would have a median. When I presented this in my oral exam, Mr Lalwani was very happy.He was thrilled to hear about practical implementation of stats.  He still uses my examples in class. I liked the fact that I sold stats to a stats professor that day. I also liked the fact that my elder brother was there to protect me and guide me.