Analytical Ammaiappa Mudaliar

For any kid from the 90s who grew up watching Tamil movies this one, Samsaram athu Minsaram is unmissable. The title of the movie roughly translates to ‘Family is like electricity’ in English. And Oh boy! the movie does live up to its title with multiple heated arguments between father & sons, father & wife, son & wife, son & sister, father & daughter, first son and the wife of second son, father and the housemaid, housemaid and daughter’s father in law and the list just keeps growing.

This movie was later remade in Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam with the titles Sansar, Samsaram Oka Chadarangam, Onde Goodina Hakkigalu, Kudumbapuranam. I think people from all language backgrounds love one thing in common, that is to watch family feuds.

If you pick any two characters from here in random, you can definitely find a scene in the movie which has those two characters arguing with each other. Even though there are so many such scenes, one scene stands out from the rest of the movie and stands as tall as Chidambaram as one of the best scenes in Tamil cinema history. Yes, that scene that particular scene between Ammaiappa Muthaliar and his eldest son Chidambaram.

Please, do what this scene even if you don’t understand the language you can definitely feel the intensity of it.

Chidambaram feels he is the sole bread earner of the family. He works as a cashier in Indian oil. He keeps track of the amount of money he spends for his family penny by penny, day by day, week in week out. Occupational hazard, I guess. This discussion starts with Chidambaram trying to prick everyone with his harsh words and harsher calculation. The Argument reaches the peak at a point when Ammaiappa Mudhaliar asks Mr.Chidambaram to get out of the house. Chidambaram demands Rs 18,000 that he spent on sister’s marriage back with interest in order to vacate the house (which belongs to his Ammaiappan). Ammaiappa Mudhaliar without even thinking for a second orders Godavari to draw a line in the center of the house between Chidambaram and the others. Immediately Gothavari draws a straight line exactly dividing the house into two equal halves putting civil engineers to shame. Ammaiappan says the house will remain that way with one half belonging to Chidambaram and other half belonging to all rest until he repays the 18k loan with interest. The movie has an equally interesting second half and the movie ends with Ammaiappan repaying the 18k and Chidambaram realizing his mistake.

Let’s take the first half of the movie as it was and try adding little more math, fiction and obviously several other bullshit to the second half. This movie has too many numbers embedded in several different scenes. Chidambaram openly discusses his income, his brother’s salary, his loan etc. Ammaiappa Mudhaliar discusses his salary, his part-time job’s salary, PF Gratuity etc. To put in simple words people in this movie discuss everything that is mentioned not to be disclosed in the employee non-disclosure agreement which you are supposed to sign before joining any MNC.

Out of all the numbers let’s pick up only one number and build a story upon it. Rs 18,000 as a loan is a good number to build a story upon. Ammaiappan agrees to pay 12% interest from the date when this dispute happened on the 18k loan he borrowed from Chidambaram.The interest will be calculated based on the Reducing Balance method, where interest will be calculated every month based on the remaining principal amount and interest.

One thing that was not part of the original movie is that Ammaiappa Mudhaliar who is the owner of the house doesn’t charge any rent for Chidambaram’s portion, In our story he does. He charges 500 Rs as a rent.(There is also a scene in the movie where Uma w/o Chidambaram scares Chidu by saying to be thankful that his father doesn’t charge him for rent which may amount up to Rs 500). Let’s consider the house is totally 1000 sqft and Godavari’s line divides it into two equal halves of 500 sqft. So Technically Ammaiappan will be repaying loans by allowing Chidambaram to stay in his house until the cumulative rent amount across months equals the loan and interest he borrowed from Chidambaram.

In this case, Ammaiappan will be able to pay back his loan with interest in a matter of 43 months and Chidambaram will vacate the house. But this is very normal, there is no fun and there is no lesson left to be taught for Chidambaram except the fact that it takes time to repay loans.

But in our story Ammaiappan is little analytical minded and like any house owner Ammaiappan also has a set of rules for his house which follows. As soon as he decides to charge rent for Chidambaram’s portion, he tells him that each month he will keep taking 5.817832 sqft out his potion for the next 82 months and charge him rent only for the remaining part.

1st Month Chidhambaram’s portion — 500 sqft — Rent 500

2nd Month— 494.182168 sqft (500–5.817832)- Rent Rs 494.182168

So on..

Chidambaram for a moment thinks and agrees as he doesn’t have another option plus the fact that rent will keep getting reduced lured him. He was worried about the fact that he will keep losing space but he was determined to see it out even if it meant for him to stand on one leg.

Meanwhile Ammaiappan was so confident about his wife’s abilities to draw lines dividing house in whatsoever ratio he demands.

This is how Ammaiappan’s new repayment methodology works.

Day 0

Gothavari draws that line separating the family and the son.

Month 12

Chidambaram feels that his portion has become little smaller after his father took roughly 70 sqft out of it in the past 12 months. (12*5.817832). Chidambaram sells his easy chair as he was not able to afford space for it anymore.

Month 24

Chidambaram’s portion looks much smaller now. He has only around 1/3rd of his house for himself now and understands that it will shrink even more as the months move. He sells his sofa and buys a bean bag.

Month 50

Chidambaram portion is now only the size of a large balcony. He is no more able to afford space for kitchen, he keeps ordering food from Zomato, fresh menu and Swiggy cursing his dad for his analytical abilities and his mom for her geometrical powers. He takes solace in the fact that after 32 more months there won’t be any space deduction. His portion now stands 209.1 sqft and the left out loan amount stands at 4937.014 Rs.

Month 82

This is the last month of space reduction based on Ammaiappan’s rule. After this there won’t be any more space reduction and he will only be charging Chidambaram for the left out space and will repay remaining loan with that. Ammaiappan knows if he calls Gothavari she will straight away draw a straight line dividing the house into 22.93 sqft and the rest.

This time for a change he decides to split the portion for one last and final time.

This is how Ammaiappa Mudhaliar divides the house into two portions for one final time. Instead of drawing a straight line covering for the 22.93 sqft he decides to draw a rectangle approximately of dimensions 6.5*3.5 ft. in one corner of the house. If this method of repayment through rent is continued Chidambaram has to spend his next 185 months in ~23 sqft of land while his father pays back the remaining 2159.9967 Rs of the loan including interest.

6*3 is roughly the dimensions of the burial pit for the dead. Ammaiappan used all this math just to teach Chidambaram a hard lesson that when you die, you take nothing with you but six feet of land. Chidambaram gets to have a little more as he is relatively a tall person measuring 6.2ft. This story raises a question of who among Chidambaram and Analytical Ammaiappan is a person with a harder heart.

Analytical Ammaiappan did this calculation for teaching Chidambaram a lesson just by trial and error method. With modern analytical techniques and algorithms where models could learn weights, Ammaiappan will be able take a varying amount of land each month so that in the end, the rent is exactly equal to the amount of interest that he has to pay every month leaving Chidambaram deadlocked in 6.5*3.5 ft of land all his life as the premium doesn’t decay at all.

A world where people use analytical abilities and algorithms to take each and every decision in life to increase gains will not only be optimal but also cruel. Oh wait! Doesn’t this world sound familiar?