Line of Sight

It was a photo-op that photo journalists dream of. This was the thought in my mind as I saw the President staring at a derriere of a girl whose face we could not see. During the school days a friend and I had the dream of becoming photo journalists with National Geographic as the dream job just because we were under the innocent impression of the organization not having any budget for the camera equipment. While I had such innocent thoughts in my head, my wife thought otherwise. ‘You men are all alike. With such important event of the G8 meeting, only a man will let his mind wander.’ I smiled and reminded her that for a President, all work is important.

What intrigued me was the expression on the face of the French President as if he wanted to say ‘I pity your country where such visions may be rare. In nous (our) France we have such quality of derriere (a French word already used in English) as pure average’. That is what friends are for I guess. With friends like these, who needs enemies! Instead of preventing him from getting embarrassed, Monsignor stood back and joined us. ‘I am sure you guys in the office also do this all the time’ my wife broke my line of thought. ‘In the dusty world of an auditor, I can assure you that the guy who brings us tea is the only sight for sore eyes’ I assured her.

I mused to recall when was it that the last time I made such a glance and to tell the truth, I could not remember purely due to advanced age and loss of memory. But I have the nasty habit of staring into space when in deep thought. Though I have been careful where I stare, I have had some close calls when I may be staring at a female colleague or any part of her anatomy which may not be registering in my brain or even on my retina. However, the stared person would have no inkling of what is registering on my retina and may form a purely sexist opinion of what all men are. Frankly speaking, I think the President was very such victim of line of sight because the line of sight is not always the line of interest. I have heard people to search for inspiration at the unlikeliest of places. Not everyone is a saint to deserve inspiration under a Banyan tree. One programmer told me he found solutions while smoking a cigarette while another found benefit in a large cup of coffee which took 20 minutes to drink. One confided me that for solutions he normally went to the toilet.

‘Let us not crucify anyone by trial of press’ I chided my wife with the typical legal line. ‘A man is innocent until proven guilty. Let us see the other angle….. sorry view point …. Oops reason why his head may have turned in that angle.’ That sent my wife into raptures of laughter. I continued my defense for the President. ‘He was looking at a point behind the target’s body and not on her body.’ ‘Why would he do that?’ asked my wife immediately. Here is where I wished my brain were a computer which I could replace with a new one every six months for a faster clock speed. To answer her I needed a quadruple processor not the current dual processor. ‘He was looking at the wake of her walk which resembled the state of the world economy.’ The immediate answer froze her to the point of belief. ‘Huh’ Now I had the confusion advantage which lasted for precisely 5 seconds because pat came the retort, ‘what good will that do? Convince me scientifically.’

I racked my brain and remembered a colleague during my early days of employment. ‘Residual science’ I announced as if any fool would understand. From her expression I knew that I had to explain. ‘This is one statistical method of analyzing the data left over after processing data under any known process. The ‘residual’ data is like the ‘wake’ of a ship. From the wake we can determine the direction of the ship and its size even.’ Hands on hips she asked, ‘When a girl walks, where is the wake?’ ‘In the air’ pat came my reply. ‘Who can see it?’ she demanded. ‘Only men can see…. silly’ I closed the issue.