Pitter Patter

All is fair in Love, War and Indian Elections

2012-02-07T10:33:00.000+05:30

The campaigning for the UP elections would be funny if it wasn't for the fact that we are talking about the governing of a nation here and for the fact that India's economic growth has been slowing down over the last 3 years, enough to make Standard and Poor sit up and warn India that it's rating is under threat.

The latest promise by the Congress in UP says it will give out a mobile bill subsidy to the tune of 20% in the rural areas of that state. I have two objections here - the first is the giving of a subsidy itself, irrespective of which commodity it is for. Any government, if it genuinely wants its people to progress, should focus on creating infrastructure and employment instead of wasting it's budgets on subsidies. The former has a far more long lasting impact on the lives of people and is sustainable as the government can slowly withdraw (after creating basic infrastructure) and let the private sector take over. Given India's precarious fiscal situation, committing budgets to subsidies is foolish and possibly economically suicidal.

My second objection is that mobile connections are hardly an essential service that they should be subsidised. If there is a market for mobile services in rural UP, market forces will ensure that services are provided at a rate that is affordable to the people. If not, mobile services are not the first priority for government intervention. It is useful technology no doubt but schools, roads, electricity, sanitation, good hospitals etc are far more useful and would go a long way towards improving the standard of living of the people. If the Congress party HAS to talk about subsidies, I'd rather it subsidise good quality education or health care. A mobile subsidy is merely a placebo for the populace and an avenue for dozens of middlemen to make profits.

But then the Congress is not alone. Parties have talked everything from subsidised laptops to erection of statues this election season. A clear sign that governance is no longer a question to be raised in election campaigning. In the aftermath of scams and corruption allegations, political parties continue to insult the electorate by talking handouts and subsidies making beggars of us instead of creating opportunity for production and productivity to thrive.

We, the electorate, are unfortunately foolish enough to fall for it. We forget that these benefits will disappear, like the smoke after the fire. We forget that we ARE paying for it - in the form of taxes, in the form of inflation, in the form of poor economic growth. The only people getting anything for free are the corrupt politicians and middlemen. Such is the state of Indian democracy today - touted as the world's largest democracy, we are nothing but a sham. Some day, the free lunches will come to an end.

I don't like the word "Compromise"

2012-02-06T22:42:00.002+05:30

I was reading something I wrote, as part of an essay competition, when I was in the ninth grade. The competition had asked us to explain a quote out of The Fountainhead, one of my favourite books (all Ayn Rand critics, please hold your horses... this post is not about her or the book). The crux of the essay was the issue of compromise.

Reading that essay today, I would like to add a subtext. Life is not about NOT making compromises. It is about not thinking of compromise as sacrifice. And there's a very subtle but important difference here. When we make a compromise, whether for the sake of "long term benefit" or "peace in the house" or because it seems like the "best" alternative available, it tends to be accompanied by a fit of self pity. As though we've given up on something or been forced to do so against our wishes. But I think a compromise made willingly, voluntarily is just a choice made in favour of one value over another, the happiness of a loved one over buying the latest gadget in town for example.

I think it's important to understand this distinction because interpreting compromise as sacrifice (by the way, I don't believe in the general notion of sacrifice for the same reason as above. I do think it's impossible to knowingly make a decision that causes harm to oneself without any proportionate gain) makes our relationships ugly and murky. The most common sentence uttered in a fight between two people is "I've given up so much for you" and it multifarious variations. We'd probably be better off if we understood it simply as choice without the undercurrents of self pity that the word compromise brings.

Newspaper wars

2012-02-04T17:32:00.001+05:30

On the 25th, The Hindu, Chennai's oldest English paper started an advertising campaign against The Times of India, India's most read English paper.

Hindu's campaign, for those who know the paper, is surprisingly cheeky (as intended by the publication... and being privy to a little inside information, I can say that with certainty).

Times of India, with it's customary confidence and arrogance replied back today.

Newspaper wars begin in Chennai???

I know many people in Chennai who believe the Times of India will never replace The Hindu. But TOI is a formidable opponent nevertheless.

This is a battle that will be worth watching... will The Hindu buckle or with the Old Lady of Boribunder get more intellectual?

The Paradox called Love

2012-01-30T13:02:00.002+05:30

... love involves (tragically, incorrigibly, but also beautifully) a desire for something that continuously transforms. Love is painful because we want the object of love to change and stay the same, love is a desire and a fiction that animates our greatest pleasures and our most profound sufferings. Love hold us to this life, keeps us faithful to it. Yet nothing can save us from our ultimate reentry into oblivion - the point at which no amount of consciousness or desire can preserve identity or the energies that we once called our own.

-- By David LaRocca in the afterword to Schematics: A Love Story.

I found this quote at Brain pickings

Filtering the Web

2012-01-24T14:28:00.000+05:30

Education should return to the way it was in the workshops of the Renaissance. There, the masters may not necessarily have been able to explain to their students why a painting was good in theoretical terms, but they did so in more practical ways. Look, this is what your finger can look like, and this is what it has to look like. Look, this is a good mixing of colors. The same approach should be used in school when dealing with the Internet. The teacher should say: "Choose any old subject, whether it be German history or the life of ants. Search 25 different web pages and, by comparing them, try to figure out which one has goof information." If 10 pages describe the same thing, it can be a sign that the information printed there is correct. But it can also be a sign that some sites merely copied the others' mistakes.

This quote appeared in an interview of Umberto Eco, an Italian author and semiotician, here. The interview was on Eco's curation of an exhibition at the Louvre and the release of his book, The infinity of lists, on the same theme. Eco gave the above answer to a question on how teachers can instruct children on the difference between good and bad in context of the lists provided by Google search. Eco calls Google a tragedy for youngsters who need to be taught the "high art of how to be discriminating". This fits in pat with a book review I was reading this morning on Brain Pickings of The Information Diet. The Information Diet, as per the review and the book blurb (I haven't read the book yet) is also about how to be discriminating about the information one consumes.

Eco's views and the subject of the book address a problem created by the information age - quantity has replaced quality in the process of knowledge acquisition.With the Internet becoming a major source of information for substantial amount of the world's population today, copy pasting has overtaken careful reading, analysis and adapting of information to contexts. And while, the internet as a source of information is invaluable, it must also be accompanied by the same criteria that was once applied to books as a source of information. The credibility of authors and the websites that publish information must become a part and parcel of the selection process in the digital world. Given that credibility itself can be ascertained much more effortlessly in the digital world, it's a pity more of us don't take the effort to be more discriminating in what we carry into our heads from the web!

It's also something that the education system, as Eco points out, needs to actively build into its manner of instruction. It isn't enough to ask children to do projects or articles or essays. They will simply copy paste (I have seen this happen... more than once). Children must also be taught how to acknowledge sources of information, write a bibliography and how to filter information especially from the digital space. Much of this (at least footnoting and bibliographing) is fairly common practice in the western world and in higher institutes of education. But not so in Indian schools, which while integrating technology and interactive learning, have not accompanied that with teaching children how to filter and navigate the labyrinth of information that the Internet is. Interactive learning and technology, in such a scenario, could prove more harmful than useful in the long run as children either acquire no knowledge and simply copy-paste or acquire erred information.

Books of 2012

2012-01-23T11:14:00.002+05:30

In order to not clutter up the home page with book reviews, I've decided to make a separate page for this year's book reviews. The link is also there on the sidebar :)

Finishing some unfinished business

2012-01-02T16:54:00.000+05:30

In the new year one of the things that I want to do is give a little more focus to my reading, make it organised and keep track of what I read and want to read. Am doing the keeping track bit on Goodreads. Having used the website for the better part of 2011, I find it a good way to add and keep track of all that I am reading. I like the interface, the reviews and recommendations. Besides, it's the only one that's gotten me to actually regularly update even though I have librarything and Shelfari accounts.

Attacking the former has taken quite a bit of thought. The idea of a reading challenge first caught my attention when I came across a reading challenge 2011 post on a blog that I follow. That was in early 2011. Through 2011, I made a promise to read more since I'd noticed a sharp decline in how much I had been reading lately. There was a time I used to easily finish a book a week. What I found as I neared the end of 2011 was that I had no idea whether I'd actually managed to up my reading or not. That's when I started keep serious track of my books on goodreads. I am happy to say that I did read more in 2011. By how much I don't know. As 2011 neared its end and I saw the books piled up in my cupboard as well as those in my "to read" list on Goodreads and my wishlist in flipkart, I decided I'd set myself a few goals in 2012.

While as Rehab was telling me when we were discussing this, reading should be effortless and free wheeling, I want to have clear goals for reading this year because there are many things I've wanted to read but I've just not gotten around to them or gotten through them. One of the things that tends to happen to me when I am reading is that there are books that I just give up on - either after a few pages or when I have been half way through. And then there are books I've bought on recommendations and then promptly forgotten about. And lastly there are books and authors that I've been wanting to read for a while but they keep getting pushed to the bottom of my lists and the back of my mind!

So with all of that in mind, I've been browsing around looking at reading challenges and I've finally decided to make my own reading goals based on everything that's been piling up and include a couple of online reading challenges that appealed to me as a part of that.

Now that I've given you enough of a background (whether you want it or not) to why I want to set myself a reading challenge (with many many small subsets) for 2012, I shall get down to actually stating the unfinished business that I hope to finish.

The Universal Set
Read 52 books in 2012. I want to get back to reading at least one book a week if not more this year. If I succeed in this, I shall aim to make this a habit every year and slowly increase the number of books. Having browsed a lot of book blogs over the last couple of days, I don't think reading 52 books in one year makes me a very huge geek as some people would like to believe ;) . Relevant some people, you know who you are so please take note. In fact I've realised 52 books just puts me at the bottom rung of the ladder of geekiness. Sigh!

Read for a cause
As a part of my read more books this year mission, I've also decided that I will put aside a fixed amount of money (as of now I am thinking Rs. 100-200) per book that I read. At the end of the year, I hope to use this money to buy books for the library of a government or municipal schools given that these schools often don't have good library facilities if any at all. I am still to figure out how exactly I'll go about this but I have till December to do that. This will also hopefully be motivation for me to read more than that target of 52 books and help me make that an enduring habit.

Mount TBR Challenge - reduce the To Be Read Pile in my book cupboard
I picked up this challenge while I was browsing online for reading challenges that would help me with my reading goals for 2012. To see the challenge and it's rules click on the link above. I plan to climb at least Pike's Peak (read at least 12 books from my personal library bought before 1st Jan 2012 that I have not read yet). The 12 books that I definitely want to finish this year are (in no particular order):

Birth of the Prison - Michel Foucault
~~River of Smoke - Amitav Ghosh~~
Madness and Civilization - Michel Foucault
Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Happiness Project - Gretchen Rubin
The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoevsky
A Dead Hand - Paul Theroux
The Black Book - Orhan Pamuk
Museum of Innocence - Orhan Pamuk
Neti Neti - Anjum Hasan
Zen and the Art of Motocycle Maintenance - Robert M. Pirsig

Some of these books are also a part of some of other reading goals but these are the first 12 books I could remember (without looking at my bookshelf) that I want to finish. If I manage to get to the top of Pike's peak by April 2012, I shall try and make it to Mt. Vancouver too (25 books out of my personal library bought before 1st Jan 2012). While I have plenty of books to finish at home, I am not aiming for Mt. Kilimanjaro just yet (50 books) because there are books that I want to read that I will either buy or borrow from a local library. Plus I want to keep some room for surprise reads.

Read some classics

I started reading classics when I was in grade 8 and then I think forgot about them by the time I got to grade 10. So I want to go back and read some Jane Austen (I haven't read Emma yet), Charlotte Bronte (Jane Eyre and Villete), Goethe (Faust), Dante (Divine Comedy) and whatever else catches my fancy here.

Read the books that I've marked to read on Goodreads/Flipkart in all my book browsing of last year

Defnite ones here are going to be:

Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
Small Gods - Terry Pratchett (I've been wanting to read Pratchett for the longest time!!!)
Wee Free Men - Terry Pratchett
The Declaration - Gemma Malley
Faust - Goethe
The Secret Lives of People in Love - Simon Van Booy
1Q84 - Haruki Murakami
Abarat - Clive Barker
One thousand and one nights - Hanan Al-Shaykh
War Music - Christopher Logue

Getting lost in a comfortable book challenge

This is another challenge I came across online. Now I totally get the idea of a comfort book. There are books that I have read millions of times and I love going back to when I am feeling off - Gone with the Wind, Thornbirds, Lord of the Rings, The Fountainhead... there are many. So I am looking forward to trying some books that others have love. I am still researching the books in the list on the challenge website. The only one that I know I am definitely going to read as of now is Jane Eyre. I shall update this bit in the next couple of days as soon as I have decided which five I am going to read!

UPDATE: Here are my five comfortable books to read in 2012:

~~Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte~~
Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley
The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - Annie Barrows and Mary Ann Shaffer

Read some books released on 2012

I've realised that even in 2011 or the years before that, I've hardly read any book released in that year. So I'm going to keep my ears and eyes open for new releases and try a few!

Phew! Now that I am done writing this, I shall get down to reading once I get home ;). I'll be posting some reviews of the books on this blog, if I feel strongly enough about the book that is and I'll definitely be keeping track on Goodreads and hope the size of the read list grows!

My thoughts on all the books I am reading this year are HERE

Leaving the City of Dreams - Year End Nostalgia 3

2012-01-01T09:20:00.000+05:30

Yes yes, it's already the new year. However, I am going to finish this last post about the year that was.

After three and a half years, I left the city of Mumbai to go to Chennai. When I made the decision to leave, some six months previously, I was tired. Tired of running around, tired of doing everything myself, tired of not being able to do everything the way I wanted to, with the ease and comfort with which I wanted to do them. Two months after moving out, while I cherish the easy pace of life, the good food and the not having to constantly run around, I miss Mumbai. I miss Mumbai terribly. I miss the sense of life and liveliness that the city gave me, the sense of me, the freedom to get out at any time. I miss my friends, the brunches, the teas, the conversations, the roaming. The feeling that one always had time because you could get out even at One A.M.

These are the things I miss about that city. The city not just of dreams but a city brimming with life; a city that does not know the meaning of lethargy. I will enjoy the peace, ease and laze of Chennai but I hope to go back soon!

South East Asia - Year End Nostalgia 2

2011-12-29T11:40:00.002+05:30

For my 25th B'day this year, I travelled to Singapore, Bali and Cambodia. I travelled alone (well almost. My sister came with me to Bali and I was plonked at her place in Singapore... Okay Okay... I only really went to Cambodia alone), I planned a trip entirely by myself from scratch and had a blast! What better celebration could I ask for really!

From cutting my b'day cake in Bali and wandering around it's lush rice terraces and beautiful, elegant temples to sunning ourselves on the beach and going jet skiing, I loved every bit of my three days in Bali with my sister. I definitely plan to go back to that island and this time for longer. I'd love to live in a small house/apartment somewhere near the rice terraces and walk around at leisure in the midst of the greenery, taking my time to soak in the peace of a slow life lived in harmony with nature.

The highlight of my stay in Singapore (apart from getting to spend time with my darling sister and eating some yummy food) was a visit to the National Orchid Garden at the Botanical gardens in Singapore. Orchids are my favourite flowers and I don't think I really have to say anymore about why I was so happy to be where I was! I must also say here that the Botanical gardens are perhaps the most serene part of Singapore and an early morning sunrise visit to these gardens was a completely awesome beginning to a wonderful day!

I also managed to click a picture inspired by a photo in the very first issue of National Geographic that I subscribed to (it had a cover story on Angkor and I had been planning this trip in my head since I read that article in 2009). The article had a beautiful night time photo of Phnom Bakheng, the highest temple in the area. When I reached Phnom Bakheng at dusk, it was milling with a gazillion tourists. Climbing the last of the steep steps up to the temple, I pretty much gave up hope of getting a shot of it without people in the frame - something that would replicate the serenity of the picture I had scene to some measure. I wandered around, clicking randomly and looking like a forlorn kitten, when to my luck, I got a window of a few seconds when there was no one between me and the front facade of the temple. In those few seconds my brain and my hands and my camera seemed to work pretty much on auto pilot. In fact, I didn't even realise that I had gotten a clear shot till after I clicked it. It doesn't come close to the Nat Geo photo and there's lots that could be better with it, but clicking it made me really really happy.

This trip was one new year resolution that I did complete (there were others too and so this year has been productive on that account!)!!!

PS: I plan to make more resolutions like this one :D

Abhi Nahin Aana - Year end nostalgia 1

2011-12-28T16:13:00.000+05:30

2011 draws to a close. And cliched as it may sound, year ends always bring on reflection of hits, misses and might have beens. So I am starting a series of posts of things that made 2011 for me, in absolutely random order!

The first thing I want to post, is a song that I am hearing as I write this post. It was a song released in 2006. I discovered it in 2011 and as I hear it, it resonates with much of what this year has been about.

PS: My blog is beginning to look like a review blog - something it was never intended to be. Time to get back to things more personal.

Technology abuse

2011-12-28T13:41:00.000+05:30

In 2009 a movie released that bought, what was then expensive, rarely used technology to mainstream cinema - Enter Avatar and the era of 3D. The stupendous success of James Cameroon's saga in 3D made it the buzz word. Suddenly everything is in 3D - films, newspaper ads, outdoor hoardings, television sets. It's the new money spinner - I mean just look at the 20K price difference between a regular plasma television with HD etc etc. and one with 3D.

James Cameroon, when he wrote (and made) Avatar, wrote it to ensure that the film maximised the impact that 3D technology can have and produced scenes that were stunning to say the least. Before Avatar, few short animation films as well as some NASA documentaries (please correct me if I am wrong here) used 3D - wowing us with images that were larger than life. Post Avatar, I can still name a few mainstream films that used 3D well (How to train your dragon, Alice in wonderland)... thankfully! So I won't write off the technology entirely but I do have a problem with how it is being used currently.

Today every film that is anything but a romance or a family drama is in 3D. I've gotten to a point where I go scouting for 2D shows of films because I do not want to see them in 3D; because 3D destroys what might have been a good film; because technology is being used for the heck of it, without rhyme or reason. This latest rant is stemming out of my experience of watching Don 2 yesterday in 3D (There were no 2D shows in the multiplexes I frequent here in Chennai... such a pity really!). 3D, with it's extended depth of field, made the film smaller than life. What should have been larger than life, thrilling action sequences became small, distant events. Heroes and villains instead of towering over the audience were dwarfed by it. And this perhaps, is the film's biggest failing. I daresay audiences who watched it in 2D would have enjoyed it more especially the chase and action sequences - so much more suited to the flatness of two dimensions. I daresay I will enjoy in more on TV at home... in 2D! I hope film makers realize, and soon, that they can do more harm to their craft than good by using technology for the heck of it. Till then I hope to stay away from pointless 3D as much as I can and save myself many a headache.

By, Of and For Book Lovers

2011-11-22T12:56:00.001+05:30

There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic.

-- The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Setterfield

Book love can be obsessive and to a degree far greater than one might think possible for something so benign as a few pieces of paper with some ink on them. But for those who know the power that a good author can wield with words, it is not a strange thing to imagine oneself completely lost. Reading a book about book lovers then, is almost like introspection. At so many points does one pause to say "Oh! I totally know where that feeling is coming from!" And so it has been with me. Over the last couple of months, I have completed two books based on a central character who runs or rather helps run a book shop. These books have engaged me far more, to the extent that I have forgotten meals (after a very long time) or other pursuits in order to finish them as soon as I possibly can.

The first was The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon - a recommendation and gift from a dear friend. It is a mystery novel of sorts where a boy, whose father owns a antiquarian bookshop, traces the anguished history of author Julian Carax and tries to discover who is destroying Carax's little known works. Along the way, the boy discovers love and friendship in unlikely quarters. While the plot of the mystery became predictable after a while, the book kept me bound by virtue of the protagonist's fierce desire to protect the last known copy of The shadow of the wind, the last novel by Julian Carax. As someone who fears the demise of physical books in the face of the advent of ebooks (there are many points for and against that debate an I am not getting into it here. Suffice to say that I love my paper books to the ends of this earth and have no qualms carting them around with me no matter where I go), I can empathise with the boy's anguish as he fears an author lost to the world.

Zafon's prose is beautiful as he paints Barcelona in shades of antiquity. It seems a world far far removed, untouched by technology, where friends meet everyday and lovers write letters (a lost art!). He manages to transfer the moods of his protagonist on to his reader (or was that just me) and so compels one to finish the journey so normalcy in life may be restored.

The second book was The Thirteenth Tale, an excerpt from which appears at the start of this post. I picked up this book from a list on "Best book cover art" on Goodreads. I fell in love with the rich cover and then the plot summary intrigued me. For once, I went in search of an edition with exactly that cover and though I found other editions with different covers more easily, I wouldn't buy them. The Thirteenth Tale, is about books and stories on almost all levels. It is the story of a famous but reclusive author who decides to tell her true story before she dies. Vida Winter has invented many histories for herself while she was alive but as illness eats away at her, she decides finally to tell the truth about her past to Margaret Lea. Margaret Lea is an equally reclusive biographer and prefers to write biographies of authors already long dead. Margaret's father owns an antiquarian bookshop where Margaret has spent all her childhood. At the time of Vida's invitation to be her biographer, Margaret lives in an apartment above the bookshop and spends most of her time with the old books and almanacs there. Vida's story eventually also helps Margaret deal with events of her own past that she has not yet been able to come to terms with.

As author and biographer talk, they reminiscence about their favourite books. Jane Eyre makes a repeated appearance as do Sherlock Holmes and Wuthering Heights. Books become expressive of personalities and behaviour as Vida's doctor recommends that Margaret read Sherlock Holmes in a bid to snap out of her winter induced depression. Setterfield explores how story telling is central to human life, how stories can be more powerful than the truth and most importantly how the telling and receiving of stories is cathartic. When Vida talks about the stories we weave around our birth, it takes me back to conversations with my parents as they described my birth and early childhood - moments that are not a part of my conscious memory but at the same time stories that I can now tell as if they were. The Thirteenth Tale hooks you in the dreamy manner of a book that promises to transport you to a different world. It makes you lose yourself in its folds by describing exactly that feeling of being lost in a book and completely cut off from the rest of the world. For any bibliophile, making the journey with Margaret and Vida, is at many points an introspection with the luxury of some outsider actually naming in words the way you feel inside when you read those words.

For that introspectiveness, I have enjoyed reading books about fellow book lovers. A genre that I intend to explore not for its plots but for the insight that it brings to me.

Hunger Games

2011-07-06T17:22:00.001+05:30

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is the first book of a trilogy. The story is set in an uncertain time in the future in what is now North America and in the book, the country of Panem.

Panem consists of a Capitol surrounded by 12 districts. Each year, to remind the districts of the consequences of rebellion against the Capitol, the Capitol holds the hunger games. Each district is required to send one boy and one girl between the ages of 12 and 18 to participate in the games. To win the Hunger games the participants must eliminate each other within an artificially created environment known as "The Arena" till only one of them is alive. The Games are televised and broadcast across the country as a show of the Capitol's power over the districts. In its setting and premise the book is highly reminiscent of Battle Royale, the Japanese movie. There too rebellious adolescents are kept in place by a fight to the death.

The Hunger Games begins in district 12, the poorest of the districts with Katniss Everdeen volunteering to take her 12 year old sister's place in the Hunger Games. As a thriller Hunger Games scores full points. There are enough moments, nicely interspersed to keep you flipping the pages, enough to make me want to complete the trilogy.

As an exploration of war and its effects on freedom and morality it falls short. I would have liked to see Katniss make a few more tough choices. The book circumvents tough choices in fairytale fashion with the Capitol relenting almost too easily. Personal conflict is almost absent as Katniss hardly faces a dilemma that calls for her morals, actions or choices into question. What would she have done if it came to her survival vs. that of a friend? Would she value her life more than a past kindness? Would she consciously rebel against the Capitol and the powers that be? There is no choice that Katniss is called on to make that compels the reader to evaluate the ethics of war, dictatorship and rebellion; choices whose consequences are unpalatable for Katniss and the reader.

While there is promise of retaliation by the Capitol in the other two books of the series, I do wish this one had examined the personal choices that people make in situations of extreme stress with a little more depth.

A P.S to the Post: After reading the other two books, I think the only key character who represents the personal crisis that is created by war, dictatorship and rebellion is Gale. At the very end of the tale, it is his choices that are worth thinking about. I wonder if he would have played the Hunger Games differently as opposed to Katniss or Peeta. Sure would have made for an even more engrossing read.

In a P.S that is longer than it should be, I should also say that I think the ancillary characters add much more meat to the story than do the protagonists. They represent the entire spectrum of choices that people must make in situations where Peace is not an option.

The death of the villian

2011-07-05T16:41:00.001+05:30

For many decades Bollywood has had iconic baddies. From Ajit as LION to Amjad Khan as the unforgettable Gabbar Singh to Amrish Puri as Mogambo. They were unabashedly bad making no excuses for their actions. You had to hate them and in doing so love the characters. They often became more defining than the heroes themselves, stronger protagonists whose destruction became the raison d'être for the film.

Somewhere today this memorable character has disappeared. In the fuzz of grey characters there are no villians anymore. Only people with questionable actions and morals spanning the spectrum between black and white without being either. So much so that the category of "Best actor is a villainous role" has all but disappeared from award shows.

One could argue that this is more real, more nuanced, that people are hardly all good or all bad; that it is time that Bollywood got more realistic and less over the top in its portrayal of characters. And this is an argument that does hold good. Films have gotten more realistic, less melodramatic and on the whole more relate-able. I don't think I ever believed that someone like Mogambo or Shaakaal could exist with all the fancy hideouts with women dancing in silhouettes.

While I am all for realistic portrayals and characters who are relate-able, I do wonder if the blurring distinction between good and bad is what has led to audiences often complaining that they don't understand what the movie is trying to say. Yes, all of us are grey and by that token, grey characters should probably be easy enough to decode. Only they aren't; they aren't because in a two-three hour film, you get but a fleeting glance of their lives and their thoughts; they aren't because decoding them is too much work when you are out looking just for entertainment; they aren't because decoding them raises uncomfortable questions about your own life and actions.

And lastly I lament the passing of the villain because I wonder if it also means the passing of the hero. Batman, after all, wouldn't be Batman without The Joker.

The meaning of modernity

2011-07-04T22:07:00.000+05:30

Mom was here recently and we were having one of our long winding, jumping from here to there, no end in sight discussions and the topic came around to one of the things that almost always crop up - the tradition vs. modernity dichotomy and what it really means to be modern. Is modernity only about blindly abandoning your tradition/culture? All around me I see two extreme patterns. One is an endorsement of everything western and the abandon of everything Indian. The other is a fanatical endorsement of everything Indian and ancient and a denouncement of everything western as decadent and morally bankrupt. What I see very little of is questioning. What I see very little of is true progressiveness and a critical thinking.

To my mind, the blind adoption of an alien culture is a sign of capitulation to hegemony and not a sign of modernity or progressiveness. Modernity, the way I see it, is the ability to evaluate what values are important irrespective of their origin; to be able to use all the access to information and exposure to different cultures that we have to our advantage and find a balance that guides our choices and our behaviour through life.

At the same time, unquestioning obedience to one's own culture, at a time when life and society are completely different from the circumstances in which the culture and its practices originated, does lead to a situation where one's values are often impractical to follow or implement.

What is important, then, is to understand the larger purpose that a culture and a value system serves in preserving a civilization. Value systems are an ordering influence, a compass to align individual behaviours to be non-conflicting. They encompass broad values that determine the direction that a society or civilization takes, its attitudes towards production, distribution and consumption, its notions of right and wrong, of justice. It comes not with the legal sanction of the station but the moral sanction of the people who chose to follow it.

In that larger abstract framework, modernity lies not in the blind adoption of a system based on its origins but in the ability to recognize values that are universal, that benefit humanity beyond national borders and that provide support and direction in times of tension, dilemmas and choice.

More about Singapore - of winding lanes, dolphin hoops and deceiving flowers

2011-04-26T10:46:00.002+05:30

Once I got back from Bali and was fully recovered, which by itself took a full day, I got a chance go around Singapore and explore somewhat. My experience of Singapore proper started with Arab street. Sister and her friends took me there for a lovely sit down dinner and I happily gobbled my way through lots of hummus and foul (now the name might be a tad deceptive there but it's actually a pretty tasty dish made with dried fava beans and loads of olive oil!) amid much conversation and merriment. But what really does catch the eye about Arab Street is the funky street art. The brightly painted walls of roadside cafes add a lot of character and much excitement at chancing upon something quirky as you wander through these little winding lanes (I doubt I could find my way around that place again!).

Singapore, by the way, is a foodie's delight. There's all the "stall" food, the food courts serving all sorts of Asian food and lots of lovely little restaurants. My favourite, and I regret not having my camera along as I went to meet a friend for dinner, was Marche's. A swiss eatery, more than the food, or the "pick what you want" from different counters, what I loved was the way the whole place was done up. Under the streets of Singapore, Marche's had recreated Heidi's farm - complete with vegetable and fruit cards piled high with veggies and fruits to a little barn - all in lovely wood and warm hues. The place looks so inviting that even someone stuffed like a Turkey would feel hungry there. In fact, I really do regret not taking more pictures of Singapore, the city.

But well... coming back to my chronological chronicle, after the night spent at Arab Street, I behaved like a good tourist and decided to make my way to Sentosa. So on to the MRT I got and headed straight to Vivo City. Apart from being the mall from where one takes the train to Sentosa, the star attraction for me at Vivo City was the Nat Geo store. I was all but lost in there for a couple of hours and after glumly picking up just one book (weight and cash constraints you see) I had to literally throw myself out of the place. I would have gladly spent the entire day in there browsing through all the photographs, magazines, books and maps they had in there. However, I did have an agenda for the day and so with another longing glance at the store, I left and went up the escalators and got myself on the monorail to Sentosa.

Sentosa looks very impressive from afar but as you draw closer the artificiality of it all starts to seep through. It's not the kind of beauty that I particularly appreciate. I'd prefer nature to do it's own thing, a little wild and unsculpted. Man trying to imitate nature at her own game is, to me, a bit of a losing battle. We are better off building steel and glass skyscrapers or the Taj as monuments to our skills. The imported silver sand beaches are nice to walk on but I much prefered Coronado, an island off the coast of San Diego, for that or even Goa simply because they are natural... the sands there belong there and the little rocky outcrops create delicious pools of water in which to wiggle your toes.

Anyhow, there I was at Sentosa and after a little bit of random ambling around I decided to head to Underwater world. Once again a pretty big disappointment. I was done touring the entire place in half an hour flat. After Monterey bay aquarium, a definite let down. Apart from the size, the thing that really disappointed me here was the lack of any substantial information near any of the displays and the complete lack of respect that visitors seemed to be showing towards the creatures. So out I walked into the sunshine and plonked myself with a cheese sandwich and my book (recently bought at the Nat Geo store) on the beach outside Underwater world to wait for the Dolphin and Fur seal shows.

This was the highlight of going to Sentosa for me. The pink dolphins and the fur seals are absolutely absolutely cute and adorable. Nothing in a picture or a film comes close to how you feel when you see their "smiling" (dolphins) and expressive (fur seals) faces up front. The show however generated mixed feelings in me. To be absolutely honest, I'd never end up seeing any of the animals up close except in a zoo/aquarium. I don't think I have the enthusiasm to go looking for them in their natural habitats. But watching them being made to do tricks to loud rock music with little fish being tossed to them as motivation for our amusement somehow seemed to make a mockery of their existence. It seemed to me that they were being made to earn their keep. Not fair... since humans are the ones merciless destroying their natural habitats in the first place. I'd be far happier to just watch them swim or waddle around at will. The fur seals also seemed to have similar thoughts as one of them completely refused to move and perform his bag of tricks mid-way into the show and needed much massaging and coaxing to get him moving again.

At this point, I got a call from sister's friend saying she was going to the botanical gardens to take some pictures. Since I'd been planning to visit the gardens myself and I was more or less done at Sentosa and in fairly low spirits, off I went. The Botanical Gardens, I am glad to say, was a lovely end to a day that I would have otherwise written off. Rolling hills, soft grasses, lakes tucked away behind huge trees and wonder of wonders... an entire sprawling section devoted to Orchids!!!

Now I should tell you, Orchids are my favourite flowers. I love them for the vibrancy of their colors, especially that vivid blue, and for the delicacy of their structure. They seem so frail and yet they are amongst the hardiest of flowers. And then this article in an issue of the National Geographic gave me even more reason to be fascinated by this highly diverse family of flowers. So imagine my happiness when I saw a signboard that said National Orchid Garden! Oh the sheer joy of it!!! Happy to pay the entry price and glad that I was carrying a spare battery and memory card for my camera, I joyously ran along and dragged friend also along. We clicked and chatted the evening through in, what was for me at least, complete bliss. As the sun set and more photography became impossible, two tired but happy girls headed home with plans to come back for sunrise the next morning. We did amaze ourselves by actually making it there for sunrise the next day and we shot the swans and wooden gazebos covered in creepers in that magic morning light. A hearty breakfast of fresh fruits and coconut water later we crashed and then saw only the Singaporean evening thereafter.

PS: Links in the article lead to the photo albums (except for the nat geo article link). So please do click on them :)

Bali

Bali - Rain, sun, and some temple touring

2011-04-23T13:25:00.002+05:30

When I said Bali, a dear friend immediately commented that my trip sounded like I was doing an Eat, Pray, Love number. Well, we (my sister and I) certainly did eat. We went to temples too (though I am not sure we prayed). And unfortunately we found no Xavier Bardems :( . But I can't say I have any complaints.

Kuta, where we were staying, is the heart of touristy Bali. With a dozen lodges and inns, uncountable eateries, bars and discotheques and unending rows of shops, it caters to all the necessities of a tourist destination. Additionally, Kuta is also home to the Bali bombings (2005) memorial. Beautifully lit at night and smack in the middle of the busy Jalan Legian (the arterial road in Kuta), it draws almost every tourist in the area. It is also the only sombre note in an area that defines the 21st century notion of Fun.

Knowing that we had a little more than 2 days in Bali (technically we were there for 3 but counting arrival and departure we were left with about two and a half days), sister and I had packed in our sightseeing schedule with the things we absolutely wanted to see in those two days. What we didn't account for was the rain and cloudiness which forced us to adapt and change our plans on the 3rd April. With the rains playing spoil sport, we barely caught sight of Mount Batur and its caldera lake. But when we did, it definitely was a sight worth seeing. The next time I go to Bali, I am going to make sure I have enough time to do the midnight hike up Mt. Batur to the crater itself!

One of the reasons I had chosen to combine Bali and Cambodia (Angkor at any rate) was that they are both Hindu cults and there is, even today, an element of Indianization in their cultures and way of life. I figured they would give an interesting perspective on how religions and cultures spread and adapt.

During our stay in Bali, we visited three temples - Gunung Kawi, Goa Gajah and Uluwatu. The first two are smaller temples, the last a major tourist spot. One of the first things we noticed about temples in Bali is that they are very one with their natural setting (Angkor in this respect was more like India). They are not tall, imposing, cloistered spaces meant to intimidate or over awe. Instead they are squat, horizontally spread and with plenty of space for people to gather. At Gunung Kawi and Uluwatu, we could not see the main temple complex till we were very nearly at the doorstep. Another interesting departure from how the temple experience is constructed in India is that there is no priest at the temple officiating over everyday prayers. People of the community to whom the temple belongs may go make offerings and pray in whatever manner pleases them. Priests officiate only at special occasions and ceremonies. Our driver Gusti, at the Gunung Kawi temple, also performed an everyday ceremony for us... the way the locals would. He also took us to his village and while we were too late to see the ceremony at his family temple, the size of the temple offering his mother-in-law was carrying quite stunned us.

Temples in Bali are also highly personal in that each community has its own temple into which outsiders (including other Balinese) are not allowed. Larger temples such as Pura Besakih, Uluwatu and Tanah Lot are temples where all the Balinese pray (outsiders are still not allowed... even if you are Hindu) but the smaller community temples are meant for the community alone. The community gathers there each evening to pray, sing and dance, as Gusti informed us.

How religions adapt to local culture was evident in more than just how the temple is built and the absence of a priest. While in India it would be unacceptable to bring meat near a temple or religious ceremony, we learnt that in Bali, no ceremony is complete without the sacrifice of a pig and that the delicacy/offering for the day is made with the blood of the sacrificed pig! The depictions of gods and of Hindu mythology also varies pretty drastically. Gods in India are clean shaven and well groomed. Not so in Bali. They sport huge handlebar mustaches and elaborate hair-dos. Sis and I did end up having an interesting debate on why the Gods would end up looking so unlike the local people and figured it was probably an attempt to make them look more intimidating.

At Uluwatu we also saw the Kecak dance that is performed every evening for tourists at the temple's amphitheater. The Kecak is interesting in that it is not accompanied by any music but instead by a rhythmic chorus that tends to go on in a monotone. The dance that evening was depicting a part of the Ramayana (The Ramayana is the major epic in Bali and most dances will depict one or the other part of the epic) - from Sita's abduction to Anoman's (Hanuman) burning of Lanka. Based on a traditional village purification ritual, the dance began with the lighting of the lamp and the priest blessing the chorus. The chorus interestingly, is not just the chorus but also forms the set as well as the props for the dance. The high point of the dance was the actual lighting of Lanka for which the entire stage was set ablaze.

But Bali was not just about temples. We spent a good part of our second day on the island at the Nusa Dua beach jet skiing and sunning ourselves - much needed relaxation for the sister and me. About this though, the less said the better ;) I'd suggest anyone who wants to know how it was gets themselves a beach, a deck chair and a nice mocktail :)

Pics First Impressions

First Impressions

2011-04-21T14:17:00.002+05:30

My first impression of Singapore was that it was quaint (Yes, it was the first impression... though it does continue to last at least in part). The reason for it was perhaps was the drive from Changi airport. Driving entirely through the suburbs, I only saw short buildings masked in part or wholly by trees. Added to the fact that my sister's place seemed to be similar despite being, technically, in the middle of the city.

With wide roads with barely any cars on them and shaded side walks it looked more like a countryside town than a thriving metropolis. I am guessing I also have Mumbai to blame partly for that. I've begun to assume that unless a place is full to the bursting of people, buildings and vehicles, it isn't really a city. And so for that one day, and one day alone (a visit to the Central Business District and to the Malls cured me of most of the "quaintness"), Singapore was pretty and refreshing and a sight for sore eyes!

Pics Trotting around

Trotting around

2011-04-21T13:17:00.000+05:30

So this year, for my 25th B'day, I decided to treat myself to vacation in the South Eastern part of our continent. For those who did not see on Facebook or twitter (or have forgotten since they have better things to remember), my itinerary looked thus:

On 31st March 2011, the end of the financial year, yours truly clambered onto a flight and flew off to Singapore.

On April Fool's day, I landed in Singapore, was promptly picked up at the airport by my lil sis and then had a very scenic drive to her place. The city-ness of Singapore didn't really sink in on that day... but more about that in a separate post.

On 2nd April, sis and I strapped on some seat belts (I have seen seat belts in more colours than I can remember on this trip) and flew to Bali amidst much questioning on how we could want to spend the day in any way other than watching India win the cricket world cup. We did, incidentally, watch the match at the only sports bar showing cricket at Kuta in Bali.

On 3rd April, amidst wishes stating that all of India was celebrating my birthday, sis and I toodled off to sightsee in Bali. We covered Ubud and the Batur volcano, 2 temples (Gunung Kawi and Goa Gajah) and our driver's village

4th April presented anything but Monday morning blues as we headed to Nusa Dua beach for jet sking and some somnolent sunning. Lunch at Jimbaran beach and then a visit to the Uluwatu temple for the sunset and the Kecak dance completed our travelling for that day. Back in Kuta, we shopped till the shops shut :)

5th April - some last minute shopping later, we clambered back onto our flights and flew right back to Singpore

6th April - yours truly in complete vacation mode slept the day through before heading out at night to Arab street, a street with great food and some funky street art.

On 7th April I finally got on with exploring Singapore on my own and headed to Sentosa. I must admit it was a disappointment. The Doplhin and fur seal shows were cute but I have issues there too (I have a separate post planned for this one... so please wait patiently). The evening ended well as a friend of sister's met me at the botanical gardens and two shutter happy women went clicketty clack! The National Orchid garden was a place of sheer delight since they are my favourite flowers (people can generally take hints... I love flowers and bouquets :P )

So happy was I with the gardens that the two of us woke early on the 8th to catch the sunrise there. Of course, we resembled beached whales for the rest of the day! A quaint, gorgeous Swiss restaurant also resulted in much tummy happiness as I caught up with a college friend for dinner.

9th was the typical lazy weekend with sis and I catching a movie and generally lazing around with my getting completely excited about leaving for Angkor the next day!

On the 10th a bunny rabbit couldn't have been bouncier as I counted the hours to my 11pm flight to KL and then on to Siem Reap in Cambodia for 4 days!!!

11th April - Cambodia impressed me from the first moment! A very smooth visa process later (Bali had us standing in the queue for half an hour) I reached the hotel and set off within the hour on my explorations. Starting with the first temples in the Angkor region (the Roulos temples), onto Angkor wat and finally the sunset from the highest temple in the region - Phnom Bakheng. (Much much more on Angkor in a separate post again).

Day 2 of Angkor began with sunrise at Angkor wat and breakfast in its serene grounds followed by a visit to the walled city of Angkor Thom, Preah Khan and Ta Prohm. In the evening, I chose to take a break from the temples and visited the National Angkor Museum and rounded off the evening with a traditional dance performance along with dinner at one of the restaurants in Siem Reap.

Day 3, 13th of April, I decided to get out of Siem Reap and went to the farther Banteay Srei, the only temple commissioned by a Brahmin as opposed to a ruler of the Angkor Empire. On my way back I stopped at Pre Rup and the proceeded to see the Floating Villages on the Tonle Sap. Driving back to the hotel, the driver took me to his village to see preparations for the Khmer new year and meet his mother and the evening ended with a traditional New Year dinner at the Hotel.

On my last day in Siem Reap, I decided to spend some time just walking around the town and saying byes to the friends I had made at the hotel. The high point of my return journey was the landing in Phnom Penh. The aerial view of the Mekong Basin and the confluence of the Mekong and the Tonle Sap was just gorgeous.

Back in Singapore, I spent 15th and the 16th eating, shopping and generally lazing around. And sooner than I liked, it was time to pack up and come back

This trip has been fulfilling for many reasons. As the first trip that I have planned entirely on my own, it has been quite an experience. I have learnt loads on what to do and what not to. I've also learnt something of the kind of travelling that I would like to do in future. The thing I am really glad about is the places I chose to visit. Not only were they beautiful and relaxing, they also gave me differing perspectives on my own culture (which is another of the things that I plan to write about in subsequent posts).

So, on that note, I do hope everyone who is going to be spammed with links to the posts and pictures and those who are going to stumble upon them, do enjoy reading (and seeing) them.

On the edge

2011-03-23T00:34:00.003+05:30

Pic by Rehab

When she first moved to Mumbai, everyone told her to be careful on the trains. "Don't stand near the door... it's so crowded that you may fall off," they told her. It wasn't an act of rebelliousness or even fool hardiness, but right from day one, she always stood by the door. Right there. On the edge. She loved how the wind whipped her curls - sometimes over her face, sometimes away. In that 40 minute ride, she forgot how sweaty Mumbai was. She forgot the smoke, the claustrophobia, the smell of sewage, trash and too many people living in too little space.

From her vantage point she could see the clear morning sky, sometimes with puffy white clouds. The greenery along the tracks was the most greenery she saw in any one place in the city. It brought back memories from childhood... of walking along wide roads bordered with trees, sheltering her from the harsh northern summers. The fresh, cool air transported her to the hills, to the treks that she went on in the monsoons.

Standing there also seemed symbolic of her life. Sometimes moving so fast that she just about managed to keep her balance; sometimes precarious, forcing her to pay attention to every little move lest she do irreparable damage; sometimes carefree, like free, unobstructed wind; sometimes a wordless conversation with a nameless stranger. Everyday that edge became a different metaphor to an ever changing life.

Each day now, as she walks the 10 min walk to her office, she sighs, almost wistfully, in memory of those two years.

Corporate lesson - Perception is both the smoke and the fire

2011-03-15T22:38:00.000+05:30

In the last week I've been a ringside observer to an interesting "clash of personalities" as I would put it, politically correctly of course, in office. It brought home the first corporate lesson I ever learnt - that intentions matter not one bit. Perception is god. Not your own... but others' perception of you and your actions. No one will ever bother to talk to you or ask you if you really intended something. But they will judge you on what they perceive to be your intentions and motivations. And act on that judgement.

Funnily, while this used to bother the hell out of me three years ago, today I see the practical utility of it in the corporate sphere. In a world where everyone is playing one gigantic game of Chinese whispers, it is simply not practical to attempt fathoming the intent behind every act or, on the other side of it, trying to explain oneself. In an organisation with a few hundred people, judging on actions and consequences is not just practical but almost a heuristic necessity.

The fact that one is judged on one's actions and it's effects on the people around (on the people not the job) alone has its pluses and minuses. For the extremely political (and at the same time prudent), it's a great way to smoke screen your intentions. For the un-political and yet prudent, it makes choices and decisions simple - as long as you can get your intentions and actions to match - you don't have to ever explain yourself. It is however, suicidal for the imprudent. If you are political and imprudent, you will get caught red handed. If you are un-political and imprudent, you will be hanged, most likely without a hearing.

Repression

2011-03-14T09:25:00.000+05:30

I'd written something in my diary a while ago and when I revisited that today, I decided it's something I'd like to post here. At the time I wrote it, I was debating between two courses of action - Hamlet's dilemma: To do or not do; To say or keep quiet.

As I was debating my choices my thoughts turned towards a word that has been used and abused and misused in personal and societal contexts - Repression. And on a very personal level this is the conclusion I came to:
Repression is not what society does to you. It is first and foremost what you do to yourself - because of fears, insecurities, past hurts and other what nots. It's the pessimism that leads to procrastination and sudden out bursts. Staccato, halting steps instead of fluid motion. The only way out perhaps, is to love your self. Love yourself irrespective of anything and for everything. To be completely, irrepressibly in love with life - a task that life makes difficult but hopefully, not impossible.

Image: Corbis

Protest

2011-02-11T18:08:00.001+05:30

I got a forward from my dad the other day asking all of us to bring the government to account on rising fuel prices. As comparison, the forward offered a comparison of fuel prices in Malaysia and Pakistan. It's an email that made me seethe quite a bit.

To my mind, the argument offered in that mail is not only flawed, but it is this expectation that price must be artificially controlled without finding solutions to the root problem that is dangerous. Asking the government to intervene and set an artificial price sends a clear signal to the government that it can get away with populist measures which have no long term sustainability. India saw the result of a highly controlled and subsidized economy in 1991 when we had foreign exchange reserves enough to afford only two weeks of imports. And it seems to me that we haven't learnt.

Yes, fuel prices impact a lot more than just the cost of driving your car around. They affect some of the most basic things such as food prices and the cost of public transport. It is an all round pain to have fuel prices go up repeatedly. But there is a reason that fuel prices are going up around the world consistently. The reason is the way we consume energy, especially energy generated out of fossil fuels. It would serve us better to look at how we as individuals consume energy and ask for the government to invest in infrastructure and public transport development and into research on cleaner, more efficient utilization of fuels rather than asking for price subsidies. Yes, it doesn't have the immediate impact of reducing one's expenses and hence, may seem "impractical" or "unattractive" as a solution but what about the fact that government investment in infrastructure and R&D will create new jobs, increase per capita GDP, make current fuel prices more affordable and in the longer run, reduce fuel prices as well.

So, yes I wish we'd think about the things we ask for when we protest, the results we want to see and spend our energies in getting lasting results as opposed to sending mass mailers asking for a price cut!

PS: a friend raised a valid question about taxes and the fact that the government could easily reduce those to cut fuel prices without giving a subsidy. I admit I hadn't researched that. And the conversation with him has made me start reading a fair bit on taxes. So post on that coming up soon. Hopefully, better researched this time :)

Portrayals

2010-12-29T23:20:00.001+05:30

Am sitting and watching Troy for the nth time. Wolfgang Peterson's rendition of Homer's epic poem. Each time I watch this movie one fact always strikes me - the Trojans, throughout the plot, broke the rules of hospitality, of war and its codes and of fairplay. The Greeks played by the rules. And yet, sympathy is inevitably with the Trojans. We mourn with them because their land was attacked by the power hungry Agamemnon. Yet it was Paris who abducted his host's wife; Hector intervenes in a one-on-one fight between Paris and Menelaus, breaking the code of war and the Greeks are attacked by night.

Homer's portrayal of the war is far more nuanced and picking sides is difficult. Homer, like in any epic, addresses ethical questions, presents grey areas and demonstrates the price each character has to pay for their actions and decisions. The movie is facutally faithful to Homer's epic. But by the sheer feat of casting twists the balance in favour of the Trojans. Eric Bana, as Hector, commands dignity and sympathy. Homer's Hector is not nearly as endearing as the man with the face of a boy. Peter O' Toole's greying, respectable and frail figure makes it seem inconceivable that he could be wronging anyone. He orders the Trojans to attack the Greeks before the Sun has risen.

Agamemnon is no paragon of virtue in the epic but he is particularly dastardly as the power hungry Greek monarch in the movie. His looks, according to me, playing no mean role in achieving this. Achilles is redeemed and perhaps the only character who portrays some of the shades of grey that Homer endowed the fabled warrior with. But then again, Achilles is such a conflicted character that you could hardly paint him black or white. He is the only one of the Greeks who retains some sympathy. Odysseus, one of the heroes of Homer's Illiad, and on whom Homer wrote a second epic poem, has become a grovelling chieftain in the movie, his only role being to convince Achilles to fight for Agamemnon.

Troy is beautiful movie for it's wonderful visual landscape. But it is a much more interesting movie for how the director manages to tilt sympathy clearly in the favour of Troy, despite all their misdemeanors through the actors who play each role. Homer makes no final judgement. If anything, he celebrates the Greek victory. The movie is clearly a Trojan saga and not a Greek epic. Such is the power of human faces, of people who become heroes.

Strawberries and cream

2010-12-15T18:51:00.001+05:30

This is perfect weather to eat, eat and then eat again some more. So I had a bunch of strawberries sitting in my fridge - strawberries that were just the right mix of tartness and sweetness; that would bite you tongue one second and spread the most delicious flavour the next. And as luck would have it, I also happened to have some fresh cream and icing sugar sitting next to the strawberries :D.

While not really a typical winter dessert, this really is a most satisfying dessert - to make as well as eat (maybe a little more satisfying to eat :P). I love watching the cream run fluidly one minute and then thicken into this wonderful, shiny, fudge texture the next. And when you've been whipping it by hand, the transformation is all the more magical for you can feel the cream change it's texture in that fraction of a second when some chemical reaction that I am not aware of makes it all come together.

Cream done, chop strawberries and time to gorge. Sweet and tart at the same time; smooth, soft cream slipping down your tongue and the pitted, textured berries hitting your palate. I love the contrasts that make this simple combination one of the loveliest and most comforting desserts.

Winter evenings

2010-12-12T21:38:00.000+05:30

It's one of those perfect evenings. Cold, but not so much that you can't sit out. Just enough to make you want to snuggle into a warm blanket, up to a loved one. It's the kind of evening to drink warm, comforting tea and curl up on the bean bag with a good book. An evening made for endless conversation and meandering reminiscences. The evening makes each fragrance deeper and each desire more languid.

The only time I have liked seeing a traffic jam

2010-10-28T01:49:00.000+05:30

Today I took off from Mumbai for Chennai. I usually heave a sigh of relief when I do that, glad to be leaving behind traffic snarls and dusty, hot trips, eating a lot of dust and breathing smoke. Chennai is pleasanter simply because I usually have a car to take me where ever I want to go. And when I don't, I do have the luxury of simply refusing to budge. There's also dear mommy to fuss over me and daddy to crack all the jokes and a bunch of relatives who can be hilarious and exasperating at the same time. However, this post isn't about why I like Chennai and I've been rambling on here.

So anyhow, my flight took off and I was sitting in a window seat as usual (I refuse to sit anywhere else in a plane. I just love window seats!) and was staring intently out the window. Not that one could see much, at least until we took off. And once we did, I saw one of the most gorgeous sites ever. A thousand, maybe more, twinkling in a four lane band across the city. I do have my fair share of pity for anyone who did happen to be a part of that band of light that seemed to light up Mumbai for it must have taken them many hours to get anywhere at all, but from up above, it truly was a wonderful sight. Almost as though the city was lit up for Diwali. I wish I had not put my camera in the offboard luggage this one time! Sigh! So yeah, this time I have no picture to put up with my post (finding an appropriate one on corbis or something ain't gonna work this time). :(

Oh, but of course, we must prove we are secular!

2010-10-04T23:04:00.002+05:30

The recent Allahabad High Court judgement on the land dispute at Ayodhya is to be commended (I refuse to call it the Babri Masjid case because this is NOT the criminal trial associated with the demolition of the mosque. This case was concerned with determining the ownership of the land on which the Mosque stood). It is to be commended because it does the only sensible thing that any court of law, that has the interest of the majority of this nation, can do. It split the land three ways between all the contenders and expressed its opinion on the numerous evidences present before it.

The judgement however, has come in for much criticism from some noted intellectuals of Indian society. Two in particular stand out in my mind and I find them very problematic. The first was a criticism made by lawyer Rajeev Dhawan on NDTV on the day the judgement was announced. According to him, the judgement is panchayati because the judges acknowledge the historical veracity (in the face of evidence presented by the Archeological Survey of India) of the Hindu claim that a temple once stood in the place where the Mosque was. He also has a problem with the fact that the court accepts the Hindu belief that Ayodhya is indeed the birthplace of Lord Ram. Today, a friend sent me a link that led me to this article. Historian Romila Thapar, in an op-ed article in The Hindu, criticises the court judgement stating that the ASI evidence is faulty (without once saying why it is faulty) and that while the Mosque is an integral part of Indian culture, the beliefs and historicity of India's largest religious community has no bearing on Indian culture.

I find the grounds on which these two criticisms have been made worrisome because it seems to me that the intellectuals of the country are in a constant effort to prove that they are "secular" and "broad minded" by siding with the party that has the fewer numbers. The idea of being secular is not the unquestioned protection of the miniority but the acceptance that all communities (including the majority community) have equal rights. It saddens me that in the name of secularism, we have made the majority discourse of this country the minority discourse; that people are afraid to stand up for the Hindu faith for fear of being called fascist or non secular. Why are we so belligerent in our secularism and in our stand on equality? Why can we not be broad minded enough to give the majority its due as well? Why must that always be branded as Hindutva or fascism? It is this pandering to the minority that has, in my view, caused a certain section of the majority to rise up in violent protest. While this does not make their protest right, it should give us cause to think about how we approach notions of secularism.

The land dispute in Ayodhya is first and foremost, a religious one and secondly a historical one. In a religious dispute, faith must be taken into account for the simple reason that none of us can prove or disprove the existence of God. God is a notion we subscribe to on faith and so the historical belief in Rama and Krishna too is based on faith. Second, from a historical point of view, the court only says that a temple once stood on the land where the Mosque was. No where in its judgement does the court say that the Hindus must build a temple in that spot. It only allocates one third of the disputed land to the Hindus. The claim to build a temple has been made by political leaders. It does not augur well for a noted historian to discredit the judgement of the court based on a factually incorrect and biased reading of the judgement.

Lastly, the court is not condoning the act of demolishing the mosque. There is a separate criminal trial pending in court for that. It is only sorting out a civil dispute over the ownership of land. To tie the two issues to each other is to take away from the mandate of the court in this particular case and discredit its prudence. The court has, in my opinion, done admirably in ensuring that Ayodhya does not once again become the cause for a blood bath. It has, in its judgement, upheld the essential equality of all communities in a secular state and has accepted and given legitimacy to two historical facts: that a temple existed in that spot and that a mosque existed in that spot.

In terms of upholding religious faith, perhaps Romila Thapar and Rajeev Dhawan and anyone else who feels the court has been one sided should consider this - only one of the parties has a religious culture and mythology associated with Ayodhya. That community happens to be The Hindus. It is right that their faith should be upheld. The Muslims built a mosque there. That is a historical fact which has not just been recognised but also awarded. However, they do not have any religio-cultural mythology associated with Ayodhya. And therefore, try as the court may, it will find no faith to uphold. These are things we should recognise before we cry foul and rail eloquent about minorities being wronged and secularism being cast aside. Given the tensions and diversity of our society, we cannot afford to be so insecure and defensive about what it means to be secular.

Questions, questions, questions

2010-09-26T11:33:00.006+05:30

The simplicity of Krishna's argument, and the utter difficulty of practising it, always stuns me. Krishna, through out the Gita, makes a very simple point - Do what you must, what the situation demands (from a larger cosmic point of view) unfettered by personal desire, power, lust, envy, anger, fear, vengance or any other emotion. Do it out of love he says. Not the love that is personal and exclusive, but love that is as large as life and all inclusive. Only then are you acting in favour of the cosmic balance of the universe.

It is this same principle that allows Krishna to manipulate and break the rules of righteous war, to dupe the Kauravas at every stage of the battle, allowing the Pandavas to win. Yet, at the end of the war, the Pandavas have done Krishna's bidding without understanding his purpose (with the possible exception of Yudhishtra who is the only Pandava who enters heaven).

Yet, as an individual, when I think about anything, it is hard to view a situation free of personal prejudice. How does one, at any point, determine whether a course of action is being undertaken because that is truly what the situation demands or because there is a subconscious desire for a particular outcome that one has not been able to identify yet? When do you know that you have peeled back all layers of prejudice and conditioning and desire? How does one calculate the merits and demerits of a situation without taking into account the gain or loss (happiness or sorrow) that one is expecting from it?

Yet another reading of a retelling of the Mahabharat and I only have more questions. Still more questions and no answers at all (that in itself is perhaps, a good thing).

PS: I do recommend everyone to read at least a couple of retellings of the Mahabharat. The retellings themselves are an exercise in understanding perspective and points of view. Some of the ones I've read are:

Mahasamar (Narendra Kohli): This one is in Hindi and was recommended by a friend who knows the epic better than anyone else I know!
Palace of Illusions (Chitra Banerji Divakaruni): The Mahabharata told from Draupadi's perspective, the woman who is the pivot of the plot of the Mahabharata.
Mahabharata retold by C Rajagopalachari: This one was my first, perhaps the simplest, as the tale would be told to a child.
Difficulty of being good (Gurcharan Das): This is not a direct retelling of the Mahabharata but an analysis of its characters and plot, the lessons that can be drawn from it and the continuing relevance of the epic in present times.
Jaya (Devdutt Pattanaik): This is one I just finished. It is a simple retelling but what I love about it is the little side stories and the notes at the end of each chapter pointing out the moral, sociological and political debates and setting the historical context of vedic lifestyle for the reader. It brings out both the context that created the Mahabharata as well as the underpinning values that make it eternally relevant.

All of these books are available in India on http://www.flipkart.com and http://www.indiaplaza.in

At this point, I am regretting not knowing to read a vernacular language such as Tamil. Would love to read a folk retelling of the epic!

The memories we talk about

2010-09-19T13:26:00.000+05:30

I recently finished reading a book by one of my favourite Indian authors - Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. The book is called One Amazing Thing. To cut a long story short, it is the story of 9 people trapped under the rubble of the Indian Embassy after an earthquake. And as they wait to be rescued, they begin to tell each other stories of that one amazing thing or moment or event of their lives. And as I was reading each story I realised, they were all sad in some measure. No story was completely happy, from start to finish.

And so I started thinking back I realised that we tell our sad stories more than our happy stories. We take the happy stories for granted and wallow in the sad ones. Like telling them somehow eases the pain or gives more purpose to our lives. And that's really all wrong. Purpose in life should come from its happy parts. The things that made you giggle and laugh till your jaws hurt, till you are clutching your tummy and rolling around helplessly, hoping something will make you stop before you choke. And those moments are rare. Much rarer than all the sad things that life has to offer (it really has plenty of those).

One Amazing Thing is poignant and the stories are beautifully told. But somehow, I finished thinking amazing things should have left me smiling more than sighing.

Home

2010-09-19T12:47:00.002+05:30

A per chance conversation had me thinking about "Home" and I realise that whenever someone asks me that question, I don't really have an answer and my answers are hardly ever the same. Today, "home" might be Delhi, tomorrow it'll be my little flat in Mumbai and day after, it'll be Chennai. I don't have a definite space that has been home since i can remember. Home for me has been transitory, changing, more a function of where I find comfort than a specific house in a specific city.

It's this way for several reasons. I've grown up and lived in several places - Chennai, Hyderabad, Delhi (which was my longest stint @14 years and even there I've moved three houses), Ahmedabad and now Mumbai. Till some years back, it was really simple. Delhi was home. I'd lived there the longest, made some of my best friends and happiest memories and my parents still lived there and I still went back there for little breaks and holidays.But now, I haven't been there in almost three years - since my parents moved back to our "home town" of Chennai, my friends have move out and some have moved back and Delhi, people tell me is no longer the same. I definitely need to go there sometime soon... walk the streets of where I used to live and the nostalgia of times really well spent.

Today, for every long weekend, every festival I go back to Chennai. In my head Chennai has always been the city in which my grandparents live. It's never been happening and visits to Chennai have largely consisted of relative visiting, eating, more relative visiting and more eating. Some of that has changed. Now it's where my parents live and some of friends work there now and I get to see a slightly different, "younger" side of the city. However, though I try to think of it as "home" in the more permanent everlasting sense, it doesn't quite seem that way. Visits to Chennai or rarely ever comforting or even relaxing. If anything, they end up being more hectic and with more decisions to make than I do in my working week. It doesn't have the ease and innocence of childhood, nor any memories of the same (all those are in Delhi, remember). PS: And it seems like I don't even have any pictures of Chennai. Must click the next time I am there.

And finally, Mumbai - where I've been for the last two and a half years. It's a city in which I've truly lived alone, discovered many things, including much about myself that I did not know. I now have a little apartment here (on rent, but nevertheless!) that is my pride and according to me the most comfortable place to come back to after a day at work. Mumbai is full of advertures had, happy memories, sad memories, it is a place full of loves found and lost. At one time, I considered wanting to live here forever. But not anymore.

So I wonder where would I make home? Or for that matter, where is the place that has the peace and solace of good times spent with people who still matter?

And yes, slightly sentimental post to begin with but at least I am writing again!

Things I am being lazy about

2010-09-02T14:36:00.005+05:30

Things I am being lazy about

So on an afternoon when I am getting bored, friend and I decided to put down a list of all the things we want to do and don't get around to doing. So he put up a post on his blog and tagged me. So here I go:

1. Write more... especially fiction
2. Enrol for dance classes
3. Learn swimming
4. Put up my friend's wedding pics
5. Edit my thesis for publication

There I go. This will hopefully get rid of writer's block also.

Tagging back:
Flyin Fiddlesticks

People I am tagging:
Arjun
Rehab
& Cynduja

Tag Name: I Dont/IDont/iDont (if you are an apple fan)

Revisting and retelling history

2010-05-31T10:24:00.000+05:30

Amitav Ghosh has a talent for description. He describes in a way that makes me feel like I was right there, looking, watching, hearing. It's the quality I loved about Hungry Tide - I could use that book as a tour guide when I do make it to the Sundarbans. In an Antique Land also has that power. It makes me want to get up, go explore, see a new city beyond what tourists see.

It moves between the 1980s and the 1100s, smoothly; the Egypt of the Jews interwoven with the Egypt of Muslims.It encompasses two countries - India and Egypt - and examines the layers of their relationship with each other - the demands of politics and economics bringing them together, the differences in culture setting them apart. The discourse of three religions that have been in constant conflict in modern times - Islam, Judaism and Hinduism - throws up a synthesis that the modern mind would not imagine.

Through the story of a Jewish merchant and his slave and the Author's quest to decipher their lives, Ghosh shows how history is constructed and how we ourselves never examine the stories that build our interactions and notions of other communities. It is a fascinating journey of discovering little told or remembered stories, the kind that make you think that you too will be a part of history someday. It is a story that makes you realize that most of history is outside the textbooks, hidden in memories and tales

The book is slow, and there are no heroes - much like real life. It is a slow re examination of ingrained notions and its pace is as determined by the reader as by the author.

Candles in the cake

2010-05-09T20:29:00.000+05:30

Age is an interesting thing. We long for it, come to hesitate about it, come to terms with it, and finally fear it. As children we want to grow older so that we may participate in the mysterious and seemingly important world of adults. As we enter adulthood, we begin to feel distaste towards growing old too soon. The realisation strikes as we suddenly no longer desire to be in the shoes of those older to us. Envy of the college and school “kids” while our parents assure us that 25 years is by no means too old! But there comes a point when for a while we come to terms with our age and begin to enjoy it without longing to be younger or longing to be older.

Kundera puts this interestingly in Laughable Loves. “Age weighs heavily on me. But I don’t feel it so much as I see my son grow.” The character finds the pain of her fading youth outweighed by the joy of watching her son attain manhood. Joy in children, in people apart from us makes the fear of old age and impending death recede till it seems almost unreal. A time when we are thankful for what we are for it makes possible the joy of creation and the joy of watching a child grow and take shape.

Over the last week, I read two books that explored parenthood, albeit briefly, and the idea of aging in their own twisted ways – Sula and Laughable Loves. I find the point that Hannah makes in Sula interesting and enigmatic – We love our children. That does not mean we like them. I wonder how many parents make that distinction. Do they even think in terms of liking their children? Or do they just love them because they are their children? Is it necessary to distinguish in between liking and loving children? I wonder...

In Laughable Loves, two women explore how motherhood has, in the one case, made her comfortable with her age, and in the other case deprived her of the memory of her youth and forced her to age in mind as well as in body. The one finds joy in watching her son grow, the other has decided to make herself old for her son finds himself unable to love a young mother. Reading this, I realised that I’ve never really thought of my parents as being young or old. In my mind they haven’t aged in the 24 years that I have known them. Yes, my father now has more grey hair than he did when I was a baby but in my mind there is no concept of age where my parents or grandparents are concerned. They seem so constant. I find it as hard to imagine my parents in old age as I find it to imagine their youth.

I wonder how I feel about my own age. Sometimes I think I am still a child in many ways, the passing of the years not having done much. Sometimes, I feel the change. As the youngest in the family, I find it impossible to think of myself as old, but then the number of the candles on the cake increase every year.

The importance of being India

2010-05-04T15:52:00.000+05:30

I walked into office yesterday morning knowing fully well that we'd have to change the media schedule of a campaign due to India's brilliant performance in the WT20. Our campaign schedule was drawn up on the reasonable assumption that India would come second in its group, beating Afghanistan and losing to South Africa and thus, occupying position C2. However, India or rather the Indian cricket team decided to delight this cricket crazy nation by winning both matches.

How does this affect an advertising campaign you might ask? Well you see, the schedule for the inter-group matches had been drawn based on the above mentioned reasonable assumption. As a result the team C2 would play it's next three matches (the Super Eight round) in prime time according to IST. However, we thought India coming first in Group C meant that not only will the dates of its matches change but also a shift in the timing of the matches from prime time to later in the night (as per the schedule for team C1). Which in turn meant that we could run our campaign without cricket stealing viewer-ship from other programs in the prime time.

So the morning began, with a flurry of phone calls, to channels, to clients and Star cricket and many others. Changes in schedules, reallocation of spots and many other complicated maneuvers were being considered to ensure that our campaign didn't clash with the matches. Until... a representative from ESPN-Star Sports informed us that the match schedule had been structure to not change irrespective of whether India came first or second in Group C; that it would still occupy position C2. After all, how can India play in the anything but prime time when more than 80% of any cricketing event's revenue comes from the Indian sub continent?

Ah... the sigh of relief at the emancipation from a few hours of torturous number juggling and millions of phone calls. And yes, a shake of my head in wonderment at the importance of being India in the world of Cricket.

Loaded Dice

2010-05-04T15:11:00.000+05:30

I was reading an Economist article yesterday about the Greek economic debacle. After looking at the declining investor confidence in Greek bonds and the likely repercussions of the IMF rescue package, the article went on to talk about the generally dismal state of Euro-zone economies and the impending crisis that may strike Spain and Portugal. There was an interesting statistic at the end of that article – the average Euro-zone public debt is 68% of GDP. That of the US of A is 70%. Still it is only Europe that is in crisis and not America.

In its conclusion, the article also gives a brief answer to the reason for this discrimination between Europe and America – the world’s reserve currency is the US dollar. In effect, what this means is that the rest of the world cannot allow America to be in crisis for very long. It is in the interest of the global economy to ensure that America is always bailed out on soft terms, at least for now.

At the time of the 2008 Crisis, there was a lot of debate on the larger, global implications of the kind of global financial system that has been created over the years. One of the arguments, that has existed for a while, and came to the fore in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 crisis runs thus (and here I am paraphrasing from several sources): One of the primary reasons that we are a skewed global economy is that we do not have an objective international currency that penalises excess debt and credit both. We have created a system whereby, one side (in this case America) is always rewarded, regardless of debt or credit and the other side is always punished simply because, the international currency is the American Dollar. All economies hold their surpluses in dollar terms thus, making it in everyone’s self interest to ensure at the well being of the dollar by hook or by crook. This has led to the creation of a financial system that is benchmarked on nothing, whose value is based on biased speculation and not the fundamental value of the resource.

Yesterday’s Economist article brought this to the fore again, albeit in a very subtle manner. And to me it is unjust indeed that some countries should suffer and others not simply because the dice has been loaded since the beginning. I wonder if any generation, in the near or far future, will have the courage to dismantle this unequal system and create a level playing field.

358 years of Inspiration

2010-05-02T21:16:00.000+05:30

It could have well been a thriller, the pace at which the story moves. By the end of it, you are definitely holding your breath, wondering whether Andrew Wiles will succeed in achieving his childhood dreams. And if there is something other than the Last Lecture, that makes a case for following your dreams and passions, it is Fermat's Last Theorem by Simon Singh.

It isn't the kind of book you would expect for something written about a mathematical theorem and the solving of it. For most of us, we left behind the dreary world of maths and its incomprehensibly abstract theorems in school. Okay, I'll correct that, most Indians I assume pursued a part of it into engineering. But we certainly left it behind at that. Simon Singh's Fermat's Last Theorem brings forth not the dreariness of a maths question in an exam but the thrill of puzzle solving. The absolute elation at having gotten in that last piece of the jigsaw puzzle after painstakingly working through the edges to the center.

He tells the story of the world's longest unsolved puzzle (Fermat's Last Theorem remain unproved for a whopping 358 years) instead of presenting the mathematical proof. He builds the anguish that has surrounded the mathematical community and the edginess of not being able to sleep with an unsolved question in the head with the panache of a mystery author. What contributes to the pace of the book is the fact that it is low on jargon and high on history, low on technology and high on personalities. Simon Singh guides the reader through the entire fascinating history of mathematics starting with Pythogoras. He demonstrates what must have inspired geniuses like Pierre de Fermat and Andrew Wiles by giving the reader a first hand glimpse of what they read and what they saw. Through many an anecdote, he sketches a vivid portrait of the beauty and perfection that the discipline of mathematics aspires to and the passion that drives most mathematicians.

For me, the most elating discovery was that the utterly incomprehensible (to me) and abstract edifice of mathematics (I dreaded the subject in school and barely cleared it, I must confess) is built upon only 8 simple axioms that even I can comprehend! It brought me closer to understanding the beauty of maths that draws many minds to it. After much time, I've read a book that has made me want to recommend it to everyone I know. And yes, as an after thought, it is ironic that it is a book on mathematics, and I am sure my mom will be elated about the same!

Love between the covers

2010-04-29T11:27:00.001+05:30

Finished reading a series recently (or rather a section of a series spread over 3 books) - the Change Series by S.M. Stirling - and was hit by the extent to which the death of one of the principle characters affected me.

(Plot spoiler alert! Don't read the next para if you intend to read the series!)
I'd been reading the series for a while at the time, almost a month through the three books and Mike Havel emerged as a strong and charismatic character right in the first book. And so when in the third book Mike Havel dies a heroic death, I could have easily been one of the mourners in his funeral procession who felt his loss completely. It didn't matter that I had flipped to the end of the book as I started it and I knew he was going to die before I began the book. My reaction was just as intense.

As I read, I become intensely involved with everything about some of the characters and I can usually come up with both a history and a future for them beyond the pages of the book. In much the same way that we find out about the new people that we meet, I flip through the pages of a book, greedily looking for information about the people I like, the people I wish I'd meet on the street someday. The impact is even more intense with series' than with single books and with books I've read multiple times versus books I've read only once. A simple function, I think, of the amount of time one spends with the characters and the deeper understanding that one develops about them. And even when the plot or storytelling deteriorates in quality, I read on simply to stay involved with the people I've fallen in love with. They become a part of what I know about the world I live in and I react to them in my imagination in much the same way as I would to real people in the real world. And as in real life, while the curiosity about those around us diminishes with time and the attachment does not, so it is with people who inhabit the pages of a book.

Love and anger

2010-04-25T14:46:00.000+05:30

Read something recently that struck a chord:
It is an intelligent woman indeed who can distinguish between anger and love.

It is possible to be angry with someone and still love them. To not condone their mistakes and still be there.

PS: I am being prolific today... it is just one of those days.

Chocolate vs. Men

2010-04-25T11:50:00.000+05:30

Chocolates ... I know very few women who don't like them. And for good reason are there so few who do not like chocolates. Chocolates score over men in almost everything given that they produce the same hormonal effect. Here's a shortlist:

They do not have issues - commitment issues, independence issues, alcohol issues and many others.
Easy decision tree. They just want to be eaten.
The only "space" they need is in your mouth and stomach!
They smell nicer and definitely not of sweat.
They don't argue about growing beards and mustaches that poke.
They taste infinitely better
They are low maintenance.

There you go. A reason for each day of the week to like chocolates.

This post is dedicated to women like Curry who absolutely love chocolate :D

Cultural Apathy

2010-04-25T11:25:00.001+05:30

I see in people all around me a lack of appreciation for those whose way of life is different from our. It is most obvious in reactions to food. So of course Indian Chinese is better than Chinese Chinese never mind the fact that the Chinese were the ones who came up with Chinese food.

What is even more disconcerting for me is the fact that this cultural apathy often gets tied in with some sort of jingoism where by everything done the Indian (in this case) way is right and every other way in the world is just a compromise or a second best or the actions of an ignorant mind.

To me the only solution to this apathy like in gearing our education system to expose people to different cultures and create in them an appreciation of varied ways of life. At an age when we are free of prejudice, if we are not fed with propaganda, we may be a world of more tolerant and sensitive people. We may be people whose understanding of others living in myriad parts of the world goes just beyond their nationality; we may find more joy in exploring the unknown and letting it flow through us instead of judging it in a fit of jingoistic superiority.

Behind the glass walls

2010-04-22T00:24:00.001+05:30

Was browsing through some photos from last year's trip to the San Diego Zoo and was suddenly struck by the whole mockery of having Polar Bears in the temperate zone. "Not so polar!" as a friend commented on the photo. This year, at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, I saw some Penguins pattering around in a temperature controlled enclosure. In one way it was really great. I saw animals I'd probably not have the chance to see otherwise and some of these places are doing a really great job at breeding species that are otherwise declining rapidly due to the destruction of their natural habitats due to one or the other reasons.

But as I browsed through those photos of Polar Bears and Gorillas in these mammoth glass enclosures that are cages nevertheless I ended up thinking how sad it is that the only places that we can see some of these animals is in cages because there are so few of them in the wild. Also, somehow, the experiences just do not seem to compare. I end up feeling much more awed watching a National Geographic or David Attenborough documentary on Gorillas than to see one doing exactly the same thing (which is to be chomping on some twigs) behind a glass wall.

The triumvirate of advertising

2010-04-17T10:50:00.001+05:30

I was sitting in a presentation yesterday when a thought that often strikes me made its appearance once again - that advertising agencies develop a point of view on the most profitable segment of the population and translate that consumer profile across business, products and brands.

Okay, now let me try and explain that in plainer English. In the nearly two years that I've worked in an ad agency, I've seen, in pitch after pitch, consumer profile after consumer profile, certain commonalities. And my take is that each agency, by virtue of the kind of place it is and the kind of people who work there, comes to evolve a certain kind of consumer they are comfortable talking to irrespective of the product category they are working on. The reason I think this happens is that there is a match between the value systems of the agency and of this "consumer profile". The work also tends to talk far more effectively to this audience and the clients we end up working with are also in the same space.

My point really is this: it isn't just about the brand and the consumer. The choice of consumer and brand is as much about the agency as well and creative work reflects the character of an agency and its people as much as the character of the brand.

PS: I really started thinking about this because of a tweet sent to me by Rehab! So well yes, here's my first post on advertising!

Indispensable

2010-04-15T13:30:00.001+05:30

There's a piece of recitation I remember from my school days. It was titled The Indispensable Man. It went somewhat like this (I am not quoting exactly):

Whenever you are feeling important, take this simple test: Fill a bucket half full with water. Dip your hand in it, up to the wrist. You may splash about and shake the water. The hole that is left when you take your hand out is the measure of your indispensability.

Am sure you've figured the point that the piece above is trying to make. There was a point of time, I'll confess, when I believed the above to be largely true. I still believe it to be mostly true in the context of organisations and workplaces. After a brief period of adjustment, everyone WILL get on with things, and your office will continue to function without you. And no one will be happy or sad for all eternity.

On the personal front however, it is a much grey-er area. On the one hand yes, life does not stop and we learn to be happy and move on. So if it is about mere functionality, then yes, no one is indispensable. But then people are not about mere functionality (that's the domain of machines). When one does look a little deeper than mere functionality people do become indispensable. They are capable of causing lasting happiness or sadness to those they come in contact with. There is a warmth and comfort and sense of security that they do provide. And while someone else can provide some of that, no person is completely replaceable. There will always be something missing, a little void that only that person can fill. There will also be the happiness that only a person can provide.

Kaleidoscope

2010-03-30T22:15:00.003+05:30

A conversation between two women. An unlikely conversation.
Two strangers, if people who have something intimate to share can be called strangers. So what if they've never met before.
Inspired in part by a painting by Kasturee Kailash and in part by my slightly morbid, over active imagination.

I am profoundly jealous of you.

And you, you have my disbelief... no not disbelief, incredulity might be a better word.

Why are you incredulous? We are not the same after all.

Maybe even incredulity isn't the right word to convey what I think about you.

You do know that I think you are a fool to have let go of what I desperately crave. I am also thankful that you did. But still...

That is why I am... curious, yes that's more appropriate, curious. Curious to know why you crave it so much.

And I, I have a morbid curiousity to know why you let go of it.

Maybe, maybe we see the same thing but want different things.

Or maybe we want the same thing and see different things... like two people standing on either side of a wall with different wallpapers on both sides.

I wonder which one is real then.

Both. None. I'd probably plump for none.

We won't ever know which one it was will we?

If there is such a thing as heaven or utopia and all of us reach it, we might.

Till then?

Till then you and I will sit like this. Staring at our portions of the sea, each seeing a different view.

Is religion really a matter of private practice?

2010-03-28T20:49:00.002+05:30

Okay today's my day for writing on religion. And I really didn't want to include this in the previous post. So here we go.

There's an age old argument with respect to religious practices and the public space. It's an argument that's constantly brought up by those who do not condone or appreciate public displays of religion (i.e., processions, public pujas, dancing on the roads, so on and so forth). I have to be honest here and count myself amongst those who have regularly used the argument in criticizing the nuisance that a public display of religion causes (PDR let's call it). It goes thus: Religion is a personal thing. Why, oh why can't people practice it within the confines of their homes? Why do they have to bring into the public domain like this, disrupting our lives and causing a nuisance?

I was thinking about this while I was writing the previous post and I realized, there is NOTHING private or personal about religion. There never was. Since the beginning of human civilization, religion has always been social, practiced by groups and used as a tool for exercising power and ordering the group/society.

Most ancient religions (and the ancient roots of modern ones) started as an attempt to come to terms with forces of nature that, at the time, were beyond rational comprehension. As science, evolved to explain those, religion took on the role of higher and higher levels of abstraction, representing causality that we were at a loss of words to explain. From forces of nature to creation, religion has tried to explain all that the science of the day does not have an answer for. It is not coincidence that the first scientists were men and women of religion (across societies).

As religion became more abstract and more and more a matter of belief as opposed to the quest for knowledge, it evolved yet another purpose alongside - that of a tool to create social order and discipline. And so emerged rituals.

Religions, from the time that each of them acquired a critical mass of followers, have always been a tool for co-opting dissent, a way to give legitimacy to power, rule and inequality; a pressure valve to ensure that an essentially unequal society does not collapse into anarchy due to discontent. After all, God's will is a more palatable explanation that survival of the fittest.
So no, religion cannot be practiced in privacy (Spirituality yes. Religion no.)

Whenever I think about religion, I always run around wondering why they engender so much conflict? Especially if one takes a sanctimonious view of religion, the conflict seems to be contradictory and paradoxical to the basic premise of there being a higher good. But see religion, as a tool of power and there are two answers to that question of conflict that I can see (there are probably many more than two).

First, religions have become like higher level individuals, fighting for space and other resources with no meta-religion to order them.

Second, religion is a convenient way of not taking political responsibility for developmental and economic inequality. The rise of Hindutva is a good example. Blame the unemployment of Hindu youth on reservations given to minority communities (never mind the statistical fact that in a country composed of 84% Hindus, the majority of unemployed are likely to be Hindus as well) as opposed to having an informed conversation on the faulty model of economic development that led to burgeoning public sector debt and the absence of a robust, profit oriented private sector to create wealth. (Personal disclaimer: I am not a supporter of the reservation policy of the Indian Government. But the argument against reservations is a different one and I don't want to confuse issues here. For the purpose of how religion is used to abdicate political and democratic responsibility, this example is an eminently suitable one.)

The highly political nature of religion is something, we in our daily lives, never come to realise. We confuse, all to easily, our personal value systems with a society's religious beliefs. The fact that we consider religion to be personal is what endows it with the immense political power that it exercises in the world today. So maybe one answer is to see religion like any other political ideology?

Interactive Voice Response

2010-03-28T20:04:00.000+05:30

My friend and I were talking on friday when we came up with this utterly ridiculous line of conversation:

He: Imagine if we could actually call God!
I: We'd get an IVR system
He: Ha! And what would that sound like?
I: For Muslim, press 1
   For Christian, press 2
   For Jew, press 3
   For Buddhist, press 4
   For Hindu, press 5 for further options
   For Confuscian, press 6
   For atheist, press 7
   For I'm feeling lucky, press 0 and talk to the available God.
He: What are the further options under Hindu?
I: For Ram, press 1
   For Krishna, press 2
   For Ganesha, press 3
   If you are a premium subscriber, press 4 to speak directly to Vishnu and press 5 to speak directly to Shiva
   If you have subscribed to our Female goddess service, press 6
   For I'm feeling lucky, press 0 and talk to one of 3 million Gods.
He: hehe
I: Ya, ridiculous isn't it?! How do we come up with these!

Organised religions are a bit like an IVR. We are all clamoring to talk to different operators in the same call center. Much like customer care, the answers are also the same. Why then do we fight?

The way we were meant to be

2010-02-23T14:59:00.000+05:30

"God did not mean for us to be this way. If he had, he would have given us _________"

I've heard this refrain a million times and if you push the refrain enough, it always ends with the other person saying "yes, maybe we'd be better off in the caves, the way we were supposed to be." But I always do wonder why we as a species are the way we are.

Let me clarify what I mean here. Why are we, human, so different from other animals? In terms of sensory abilities and physical endurance, we are far far inferior to most high-order mammals. Most commonplace answers such as "language" and "learning and teaching" apply in great measures to other species as well. Why, then is it, that we alone moved out of our evolutionary beginnings as bi-pedal hunter gatherers?

The book I'm reading currently (I am a strange loop) throws some light on this. Our ability to create analogies and isomorphisms expands our ability to create, manipulate and extend things beyond their natural uses. To be able to use coal not only as fuel, but to be able to modify it and use it to create steel. Our capacity to process perceptions and to be able to reference things (from others of our species, written words, our own memories) allows us to move beyond that which we can directly experience. There IS a greater mental capacity that has enabled us to move beyond the caves and our intellect isn't a self-effacing fancy.

So my only answer to those with that refrain: Evolution (I prefer that word to God) may not have meant for us to be this way, but it certainly did not mean for us to be stuck in the caves. The way we are right now is a function of the countless choices made in every single moment not just by humans but by all of existence. We may have been something else but I very much doubt if we'd have been stuck in the caves for all eternity.

Jet Lag

2010-02-11T09:35:00.001+05:30

The effects of jet lag surprise and humor me. So I am going to list them down:

My tummy is highly confused... wants food at odd times and more so, odd food at odd times.
I wake up at 2 at night instead of sleeping at 2 at night
As a corollary to 1 & 2, I now eat chocolate at 2 at night
I am much more productive when I am jet lagged (not very surprising given that I sleep two hours a day)
I get weird, time skipping dreams!
I don't know what day or what time of the day it is... mind-body-reality disconnect :P
I remember things I haven't in years... in the middle of the night... including the periodic table and gifts I bought and never gave to people :|

And I am hoping all of this, including the productiveness, passes by this weekend. It really isn't very good to be so efficient :P

Desire

2010-01-27T22:37:00.003+05:30

This post has been the toughest in the series so far. Tough because of jet lag (:P) and also because desire is so multifarious and omnipresent. My experience of desire, of any and all kinds put together, tells me it is inexhaustible. It exists in endless supply, mutating, manifesting, intensifying, invigorating and exhausting. Desire is the cause of both great happiness and great sadness and both pass in their turn as desire renews itself with a different face. Desire is also motivation and aspiration; the root of the drive to do something beyond just surviving.

"To want to get rid of desire, in the quest for everlasting peace and happiness, is itself a desire; a desire that we will never be able to fulfill for desire is written into our very nature as human beings. It is what sets us apart from other animals; that we are programmed to move beyond surviving."

I must admit I was more than mildly surprised and glad to hear this in our first session, now exactly two weeks ago. I heaved a sigh of relief knowing that I wasn't going to be told that I must give up all my worldly pleasures to achieve enlightenment; that it was possible to live with the same intensity of emotion without it affecting my equilibrium (personal confession: my emotional equilibrium, or lack of thereof, was part of the reason I was in that course in the first place. The other reason I was there was because of intellectual curiosity sparked off by what a friend experienced through the same course a few months ago).

But now I am digressing all over the place. To get back to desire.

One of the paradoxes that I've always had trouble resolving in what I call the "detachment doctrine". Almost every philosophy and self-help paradigm preaches detachment and creating a distance between oneself and the situation. My problem with this doctrine is that in the kind of detachment preached, I cannot find the motivation to act. So the question that plagues is that are desire and peace at loggerheads? Can they never co-exist? And as I said in a previous post of mine, personally I'd rather give up peace than give up the idea of desire.

However, to get a different handle on desire, consider this proposition that Sadhguru put forward: It is not desire that brings you misery. It is that even in desiring, you have not moved beyond survival. Only your survival standards have gotten higher but in your minds desire is still seen only in the perspective of survival. So you desire money, fame, power, sex, comfort and so and so forth. Those desires need to be indulged in but with the awareness that they are survival desires, that they will go through phases and while one will and should rejoice and mourn them, one need not disturb oneself internally over them.

Desires that go beyond survival, whether it is in the realm of intellectual innovation or spiritual growth, are by their very nature, desires that don't cause misery. The quest here is for something internal that does not necessarily have a physical manifestation. These abstract desires are also boundless and never ending but here each step is a step higher and each level of fulfillment has a satisfaction all its own without bringing with it the frustration that there is still so much more to achieve. Here also one encounters failure but failure in this realm does not bring with it misery. Disappointment yes, but with it also the strength to move on and do more.

In the first hearing, the above two paragraphs sounded eerily like the "detachment doctrine" to me. However, what Sadhguru goes on to say is this: there is your physical self and your non-physical, abstract self. What one needs to do is to restrict the joys and pains of the physical self and not let it affect the equilibrium of the non-physical or abstract self. It is when the non-physical self gets affected that there is a loss of peace and calm. Physical or survival desires are externally motivated, today largely by the "keeping up with the Jones'" syndrome. The reason we get so strongly affected by them is because we have fallen into the trap of defining our abstract selves (or many a time not even realizing that there is something in the human being that pushes it to go beyond just physical survival) in physical terms with reference to others.

So what is important is to not try to get rid of desire but to understand the different kinds of desire and keep each one in perspective and let it affect only that much of ourselves; to not let physical desires become the ruling passion of our lives.

Responsibility

2010-01-24T09:42:00.003+05:30

My idea, and I'll be presumptuous enough to say that most people's idea of responsibility is one of a duty to be done, of being accountable, of a set of rules to be followed, and of being the causative agent of a consequence. In this sense, responsibility is burdensome. There is always the stress of having to be "right" else to face the music, the risk of being blamed for the consequences, the pressure of other people being dependent on you and the power, pleasure and pain of being able to conduct another person's life even for a tiny moment. Stress is almost the spouse of this responsibility then isn't it? But then evading it isn't entirely pleasant either. Afterall we all want to be married (most of us atleast)! Evasion of this kind of responsibility brings with it a sense of guilt and paradoxically, there is an almost instictive desire to take on as little of it as is possible for none of us want to be blamed for that which goes wrong.

In understanding responsibility in this manner, what we have done is to link it inexorably with action. Not just link it, but make it an afterthought to action. One has "done" something so one must be "responsible" for it. It becomes a matter of staking claim. One takes responsibility (and thus, praise and admiration) willingly and voluntarily when the going is good and shuns it as far as possible when things get rough. Responsibility here also becomes defined in a highly external sense, with respect to what we "owe" those around us.

But like all the other things that we talked about in those seven days, Sadhguru offered us another away of looking at the idea of responsiblity. One that is internal and does not have connotations of praise or blame attached to it. Responsibility could, very simply, be the ability to respond to the things that surround us and make up life. In this sense, responsibility preceeds action. It is not about taking a particular course of action or being answerable to someone. It is only the choice to respond as a living, thinking, feeling being to all that and those who surround us. So I am not only responsible for myself, my family, those I love and care about but for everything and everyone who constitute each moment of my life. I am not responsible for them but I chose to respond to them. The moment I choose not to respond, that moment, to that person or that situation, I am dead. This responsiblity has no rules, no rights, no wrongs, no pre dictated and absolute paths of action, save to respond. It gives one the freedom to respond with any kind of action or to respond with inaction if that is what seems suitable.

So, if inaction can be responsibility, what is the point of responsibility really? This is the first question that popped into my head. Wouldn't it be that much easier for people to evade action especially now that they could claim to be doing it out of responsibility?

But the fact is the two things are entirely different. To not act out of lethargy or fear of the consequences is evasion, a nothingness where one seeks to cease to exist, to not matter to existence. To chose not to act out of full knowledge and to responsibility is another form of action. It is a considered, consciously made response. It is a choice of one set of consequences over another.

Taking on this kind of responsibility makes one's capacity to act limitless. The minute one takes the limits off what one choses to respond to, the possibilities, choices and options are truly mind boggling. It is also the first step towards never feeling helpless. It can bring about a much greater intensity of feeling and at the same time give the emotional flexibility to act out of choice and not prejudiced reaction. It is that felling of control over each moment of one's life and circumstances, of being consciously alive and not just living. It is freedom from the need to blame and from having to take blame; of acting with the knowledge that one has not only the strength but the willingness to face the future, what ever it may be, with joy for whatever it is, it is still life. It is being able to play to win but being able to accept loss too. It is, I think, what the sportsman spirit was meant to mean.

As with acceptance, we were asked to practice this for twenty four hours. The experience of even little things like walking in an over-crowded Mumbai local station changed for me. I saw the anger and irritation dissipate quicker, easier to restore the happiness of feeling the winter sun on my toes (that, y the way, is one of the things that gives me the greatest joy. Feeling the sun on my toes... just my toes.); to stop reacting and start responding.

Am not going to say much more here. This one you have to try to see what it does to you. I can assure you though that freedom from the necessity to blame others is itself worth the trouble this one is going to take to begin with!

The next topic for my series is a bit of a mystery. Even to me. There are three to chose from and I cannot decide. Am going to spend the rest of my weekend thinking them over. And It'll be up sometime soon depending on how quickly I get my packing done.

PS: In writing that last paragraph, I've done the ego inflating thing of assuming that people are reading the entire series. Oh well! Never hurts to make oneself happy about something one is going to do anyway. :D

Acceptance

2010-01-22T10:16:00.000+05:30

The question our teacher asked us was:
Can this moment, this exact moment, right now, be anything different from what it IS?

The straight and simple answer to that question is NO. This moment cannot be any different. In that sense it is inevitable. Anything I do will only change the next moment. But this moment, as it exists right now, is inevitable. Accepting this inevitability of present moment is not fatalism (there is, I think, a tendency to jump to the conclusion that to accept something as inevitable is equivalent to subscribing to fatalism) but an act of realism. The present therefore, needs to be accepted, not grudgingly or helplessly but with a full awareness of that which is and with complete knowledge of the nature of this acceptance.

Before I move on to what exactly this acceptance does, there's one more clarification that needs to be made, for we use the words of the English language too loosely and vaguely. To accept is not the same as giving in or becoming helpless or subservient. It does not mean that one becomes a victim of circumstance and resorts to a life of lethargy and laziness. Acceptance here is being used in it simplest and most literal sense - to acknowledge reality, to take complete cognizance of it as a fact.

But why accept? What does it do and how is it related to the idea of freedom that I talked about in the previous post? Acceptance does two things: first, it lets one enjoy the present completely and fully. For it is only the present which exists. The past is dead and the future only a projection or illusion of one's imagination. It brings home the fact that only the present exists; that this present, this moment is unique, has never come before and will never come again in all of existence; that the ray of sunshine that dances on your feet, as you walk on a busy street is your ray of sunshine, that the little cloud you see rumbling on the horizon will not be there in the next moment. Knowing this, I can attest from personal experience, adds a lot of beauty to every little thing that surrounds you. It makes one aware of all that one takes for granted, brings a sense of joy to every step taken, every sight seen, every sound, every smell and every touch. It makes wallowing in the past seem shallow and worrying about the future seem pointless. And that, is a great relief.

The second thing that acceptance does, and this is how it relates to action, is that it ensures that the mind has complete information about any situation that it finds itself in. To acknowledge reality is to acknowledge everything about reality without prejudice and without fear. When in denial or when in a hurry to think ahead without first thinking of all that constitutes the present, the mind only has incomplete information. It only sees that which it wants to see. But when it accepts with full awareness, it sees everything that there is to see in that moment. This brings both clarity and objectivity and gives one the power to shape the next moment in whatever manner one wills. It brings about the mental flexibility to do what must be done in any situation and the competence to do that which is required in the manner that one best can.

The evening that we discussed this notion of acceptance, we were asked to focus on practicing it for at least the next twenty-four hours. To consciously tell ourselves to accept the moment as inevitable, to focus on everything about the present without wishing for this moment to change. I am going to take the liberty of putting down two small instances.

For those of you who know me, you also know that I've been going through a bit of a turbulent time (bit is an understatement!) in the last few months. While the eye of the storm has now blown over, I've been victim of my greatest weakness: mulling things over and over again in my head; of letting them turn around in ever distorting spirals, succumbing to anger, guilt and grief in turn. That night, once I came back home, I sat on my bed and for the next hour focussed only on accepting every part of what had happened just as it had; accepting all that it was in the present (however different from what I had really wanted); accepting that I could not change that which already is but only that which was to come. It may sound unreal right now (it certainly sounds fantastic to my skeptical ears) but the happiness and peace that descended as well as the confidence I felt in facing whatever came the next morning or the next moment was unbelievable. I'll not lay claims to having achieved that state permanently. I'll be honest, I slip into my ruminations of old now and then, but they are rarer and less intense. It is slowly becoming a memory in its entirety as opposed to bits and pieces that I must analyse.

My other experience was more mundane but nevertheless significant to me. On Friday night (a week ago), we were given a list of things in class that we needed to bring on Sunday early morning for the puja. Now I normally have an off on Saturdays. But as Murphy would have it I was working this particular Saturday and as Murphy would again have it, I had to buy pretty much everything on that list. I knew I wouldn't make it back in time on Friday or Saturday to pick up anything. My usual self would have freaked out at this situation and gone into hyperventilation. I would have made a dozen phone calls and fretted to a million people. I'll also admit that sitting there listening to that list, I did freak out mildly and go into a tizzy of sorts wondering how ever was I going to manage it?! But sitting there and telling myself that this was and that I just had to work around it saved me a lot of time and my vocal chords, I might add. It did all turn out right eventually :)

And now I realize that I haven't been very brief with my experiences. I hope I've gotten the point across. Freedom requires mental and emotional flexibility. Acceptance provides the mental flexibility; responsibility the emotional flexibility. That's going to be my next post. However, I think I'll take a break over the weekend. Or maybe I won't. :)

Freedom

2010-01-21T09:36:00.002+05:30

Am going to start where I left off yesterday: at Freedom. The idea of freedom has existed since time immemorial. Freedom from subservience to the forces of nature, freedom from hunger, freedom from slavery... Freedom. The most commonplace understanding of this ideal that drives much of civilization can be stated thus:
The ability to act as I want, unhindered and unencumbered.

In interpreting this notion of freedom, we make the implicit assumption that constraints, compulsions and hindrances come only from other, external sources and not from ourselves. So what the above notion of freedom translates to is essentially this: the ability to act in a particular, pre-determined manner in spite of the external situation. It is driven by personal likes and dislikes and prejudice. What it also means is that if actions are pre-determined then so are the consequences. Where then is the freedom? Sure, I've done what I wanted to but is that really freedom? If one looks at this notion of freedom from another angle, isn't it nothing but bondage of a different kind?

Here's a simple example to illustrate what I mean (and it's something that's happened to me so I know what it feels like :) ). Let's say I have guests at home for dinner and there's this show on TV that I really really want to watch. In fact I've been waiting for weeks for it to go on air. The TV in my house is in the dining room where everyone is sitting down to dinner at the exact time of the show. Now, my insisting on watching the show would result in either everyone having to keep quiet during dinner or my not being able to hear anything properly. The former will leave the guests disgruntled and the latter will leave me irritated and feeling a little cheated out of watching the show properly. The first situation (that of the guests shutting up) would fit part with the notion of freedom stated above. After all, I did manage to do exactly as I wanted. I even managed to manipulate the external situation to suit me. Yeay!

However, here's what someone not involved in the situation might think of the situation: Isn't wanting to watch TV so badly just another kind of dependence? Maybe I'd actually enjoy myself more if I sat with the guests without grudging the fact that I am not watching TV. I could always catch a re-run later. But this is a possibility that would never occur to me if I were so completely hell bent on watching the show.

While the example I've given is rather trivial, the point is simply this: true freedom lies in having the mental and emotional flexibility to act in a manner best suited to the situation. It lies in taking each factor into account in proportion to its importance to the decision taken. There are situations in which emotions and personal preferences have a large bearing. There they need to be accounted for. In others, where it is immaterial, personal prejudices need to be set aside. For example, at the work place, I might not like someone but I should be willing to work with them if they are the best suited person for the job at hand. At the same time I can choose not to associate with them personally outside the work space.

Krishna, that most pragmatic of gods, explains this to Arjuna in the Gita when Arjuna hesitates to fight the war against his cousins and puts down his weapons. Throughout the Mahabharata, Krishna himself demonstrates this principle. He does what he must to ensure the victory of Dharma; of good over evil. Being utterly involved in the situation he still displays the ability to strategise objectively, detach himself and do what he must.

This notion of freedom however, requires two other things - acceptance of the present moment and responsibility. That's for tomorrow and day after though.

Karma

2010-01-20T09:44:00.003+05:30

A quick background to the series of posts that I am going to be writing over the next couple of days:
For the last week I've been participating in the Inner Engineering Program run by the Isha Yoga Foundation. If you find the work that Isha is doing in the areas of environment, rural rejuvenation, prisoner rehabilitation and education worthy of your support, you can vote for them on Chase community giving here before the 22nd of January 2010.

Apart from the initiation into the Kriya, the program also included a discourse on certain basic aspects of life pertaining to the inner well being of each individual. Over the last 7 days we've discussed "the business of happiness" (as our teacher put it). We've explores a new way of looking at ideas such as responsibility, desire, reaction, action, freedom and karma. In this and the next few posts, I am going to set down my understanding of what was said and some of my experiences in applying the same over the last week.

Karma
Karma was one of the last things we talked about. But I am going to being with Karma. I am beginning here for two reasons: a) Understanding Sadhguru's explanation of Karma and how we create it made everything else fall into place much better. b) Before this program, and even more so after it, I think Karma is one of the most misused words.

Karma is commonly understood in two ways or contexts. First, as action or duty that one must perform as a part of one's place in society and the world. The other denotation of Karma, and the one commonly used when talking of the Hindu way of life refers to the "good" or "bad" deeds credited to your spiritual account. According to commonly understood Hindu philosophy, Karma is what determines the fate of an individual. The depth of Karma and its mystery lies in the fact that the accumulation of Karma is said to transcend lifetimes (if you are a believer in multiple lives that is. If you don't, hold on till I am done with this piece. Karma can still count. The cynic in me insists on this disclaimer.)

Now here's an alternative way of looking at Karma offered to us in these seven days: Karma is conditioning. Conditioning through experience and education. Let me delve a little deeper into what is meant by conditioning here. The human brain processes sensory information through four processes: cognition, recognition, sensation and reaction. For example, when the eye perceives a flower, the brain first cognizes that it is seeing something. Then from previous experience it identifies or recognizes it as a flower. This recognition then produces a sensation of pleasure or pain, pleasantness or unpleasantness based on the stimuli. Lastly, the brain reacts to the sensation and goes on to store the experience of the stimuli in a particular category based on the reaction. It then uses this reaction as a reference point for how to react to the same stimuli at a later date.

A baby is born without any preconceived notions. As it begins to experience the world through its sensory faculties, cognition, recognition and sensation occur automatically in the human brain.These three processes are essential for the survival instinct to function and to protect the physical body. The fourth process, that of reaction, is part voluntary and part involuntary. Reaction begins as an involuntary function as we categorize experiences as "I like this", "I do not like this", "I love this", "I hate this" and so on and so forth. As this habit of reacting becomes more and more innate, we begin to confuse sensation with reaction. Sensation is a physical response that is essential to judge whether a stimuli is conducive to life or not. Reaction on the other hand is our response to that stimuli.

Constant categorization thus, creates in us a pre-conditioned response to situations and stimuli that follow a certain pattern. This building of a library of pre-conditioned or pre-determined responses is the accumulation of Karma. What it prevents one from doing is to see the uniqueness of each situation and it is this inability to see a situation free from the prejudice of a prior experience that creates a determinism in the way we lead our live. Karma.

As we grow older and more aware of our inner capabilities and of the control we have on ourselves, we have the option of not accumulating this Karma. By learning to experience and respond to every situation without the response becoming a rigid rule. Learn from the past but let it not be a determinant of your every future action. Situations may be similar but are never quiet the same. Making love to the same person twice is hardly the same experience is it? The path to Freedom then, lies in being able to see this uniqueness of every situation and every moment and giving oneself the knowledge of the various ways in which one can respond and the flexibility to respond differently each time.

I'll stop here for Freedom in another post in itself.

Meaning

2010-01-15T11:12:00.000+05:30

Have been reading a rather lot of some blogs lately. And here's a not so shocking thought that never ceases to surprise me: You can write with one meaning and the reader can derive completely another meaning from what you write and it is still as deep and as meaningful as you meant it to be. Every thing wraps around the things that bother each one of us and words take on meanings that we want them to take, say the things that we cannot find our own words for, and create meanings that will give us comfort and solace.

By the sea shore

2010-01-11T15:14:00.001+05:30

Sitting on the shore, watching the relentless waves, I look around at the city I've come to love but not quite think of as home yet. I look at the millions who crowd every little crevice here, at the abandon and anonymity they find in being utterly public. I revel in the silence you can find only in the senseless and intelligible noise of the crowd. The complete solitude of being surrounded by strangers. Moments when honesty is easy, confessions are natural and fears melt with the setting sun.

I enjoy the serenity of utter chaos and confusion for it is not unlike the one in my mind as I ponder where to go from here.

Prejudice

2009-12-29T14:11:00.002+05:30

Discussion over lunch with boss and colleagues and much of the prejudice I've seen over the last one and half years in my time here resurfaced. A blanket injunction against Muslims without a sense of history, assuming that religion is to blame and not more human qualities of conquest, desire and greed.

Every time I hear a conversation like this, I think of the damage our education system and politics have done to the teeming multitude that constitutes this nation. How many of us pause to question, find out, read? Somewhere (and I don't know whether to blame the system or each individual who chooses to accept without thinking), we have become creatures of rote as opposed to creatures of curiosity. Politics has exploited this amply, feeding the frenzy. Each time such conversations happen, it disgusts me. I want to sit them all down and give them a crash course and a reading list.

Prejudice has become a way of co-opting dissent in the public space. Of creating a populace that fulfills the agenda of un-enlightenment, of unquestioning obedience in a democracy. No wonder Indian democracy is a success!

I am reminded of a dialogue from the Fountainhead. Toohey says to Dominique(paraphrasing): If you fight a man on the basis of his capability and achievement alone, he can fight back. But prove that he is against religion or god and you've got a case that cannot be fought. Not with logic. Not with the mind.

That seems to be, to me, the main problem here. We've all been made to believe in the non-issues, leaving the issues that really matter to each and everyone of us unscrutinized. Power has used prejudice, not just in India but across the world, to create a self-sustaining cycle where the dominated live under the illusion that the power is actually in their hands. In the mire of prejudice, we forget fact, causality and the things that actually affect us. Potent potent tool to divide and rule.

PS: Reading list (Thanks to Rehab for the suggestion):

Disclaimer: Am sticking to books I've found useful and enlightening on Indian history else the list is endless. A lot of this also concentrates on the Partition and subsequent Kashmir conflict (on which I did my dissertation in college) but I think Kashmir, like no other issue in modern India, illustrates the point of prejudice and warped sense of history that "Indians" have.

Also, the idea behind this list is to put together books that differ in perspective and none or all together lead to any one definite conclusion. So it includes both non-fiction and fiction that has been spun around India's recent past.

Okay, too many disclaimers. I will get on with the list.

Revenge & Reconciliation by Rajmohan Gandhi
Freedom at Midnight by Larry Collins and Dominique Lappierre
The future of freedom: Illiberal democracy at home and abroad by Fareed Zakaria
Kashmir: behind the vale by M.J Akbar
Kashmir: a tragedy of errors by Tavleen Singh
The Ice Candyman by Bapsi Sidhwa
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

Okay, that's all I can think of now. Will add to this list if I think of any more books.

2009 was

2009-12-29T12:37:00.000+05:30

One of discovering and rediscovering. Asking and finding, challenging the old and accepting the new. Of looking within and seeing the unexpected. Of finding passion, courage and the love inside me. Of seeing the world anew, of rediscovering faith and hope. Of old ties and new.

The year gone by has changed much. But it is still only a lump of clay spinning furiously on the potter's wheel. The coming year may begin to tell what this clay of 23 years will shape itself into. It is time to rebuild with greater awareness, hope and joy than before. Time to start enjoying the uncertainty and stop trying to know everything 60 years too soon. Time to try things new and different, time to do things a little differently for once and maybe more than once.

There has been much to rejoice for, much to lament, much to ponder over and much to accept. It has been the most tumultuous year so far and one that has left an indelible mark on my life as it will be from now. For all the chaos, heartache, tears and smiles, it has been memorable in the way that only such turbulence can be.

So here's to a wonderful year and here's to all the people who have made it so. Some of you have been in my life from much before and will continue to be a cherished part of it. Thank you for being the absolute wonders that you are. Some of you I have found recently. Thank you for showing me the things you have, for giving so much and taking as much in such a short while. I hope you will remain what you are. To those of you whom I have hurt, I can only say Sorry. I know that doesn't make it right but that is all I can say for now. I hope you find greater happiness.

To life, thank you for shaking me out of my complacency.

Am looking forward to the new year with a vengeance.

Santa Claus

2009-12-18T16:26:00.003+05:30

In the season of Santa Claus, it is time to put up a stocking for all that one would wish for. Only this time around, I am the only one who can give myself the things I wish for. It'd still be a good idea I think to put up that stocking and drop the wishes in. Just so I can remind myself of the things to look for when it is my turn to play Santa Claus for myself. And yes, as someone commented recently, I am wishing for a LOT this year. Fortunately or unfortunately none of it costs money :P So yes, recession is not an excuse for not getting the gifts I want.

Wordless exchange

2009-12-10T16:23:00.001+05:30

I was thinking about books and I remembered this little incident that happened to me sometime ago. I was walking down the ramp at Currey Road station, on my way back home from office. I was scurrying in my characteristic impatience and had a book in my hand - The geometry of god (I haven't ended up reading much of that book but more on that later). As I was running down that ramp, I suddenly felt a tug on my hand and looked down to find a man yanking at the book. I stood still, he took the book from me, turned it over, read the summary at the back, returned the book to me, smiled and went on his way. I smiled back and continued on mine.

Such things happen only in this city. I wonder how I might have reacted to this in another city.

Dreams

2009-12-10T15:19:00.000+05:30

Something I read that I want to put up: quoting from the Queen of Dreams

The dream comes heralding joy
I welcome the dream.
The dream comes heralding sorrow
I welcome the dream.
The dream is a mirror showing me my beauty
I bless the dream.
The dream is a mirror showing me my ugliness
I bless the dream.
My life is nothing but a dream
From which I will wake into death,
which is nothing but a dream of life.

Seeking Solace

2009-12-02T09:42:00.003+05:30

I've been thinking of how I, for one, always seem to seek solace in people who are distant from my situation, who cannot offer understanding, sympathy or empathy. I am finding more comfort in inanities, random conversations, talking to those who are utterly unconnected to the things that weigh me down in solitude. And maybe once the smiles are a little more permanent, I'll get down to untangling my heart.

Little nothings

2009-12-01T09:23:00.003+05:30

Today morning I woke up missing an old pair of jeans that I had. I threw it away a few months ago because of a couple of irreparable tears in unmentionable locations. But today I just miss that pair.

PS: And I see the blog posts are getting teenier. Long one coming up as soon as I get my thoughts together on that topic

Desire

2009-11-25T09:15:00.003+05:30

Many faced and multifarious, all pervasive and ruling every thought and action in some form or the other, Condemned, envied, longed for, wished away, brushed under, denied, fulfilled, guilt-ridden, indulged, baseless and meaningful. Desire.

I've been thinking about desire a lot over the last few weeks. It's also been the most difficult thing to acknowledge, for it seems the most shameful, most condemnable. But why should it be? In this one life, why should we not be unabashed about our desires? Why should we not live fully and completely, reveling in the endless cycle of discovery and fulfillment?

Acknowledging its presence has brought both a certain degree of peace and acceptance.

Nose fight

2009-11-25T09:09:00.002+05:30

Read this lovely post called Heartbeats yesterday. It reminded me of this nose fight that I once had. Lovely, cute, innocent, full of desire and anticipation and oh so mundane! It'll stay one of the cutest memories that I have for a long time to come.

I

2009-11-14T12:43:00.002+05:30

To say "I love you" you have to first know how to say the I.

The above has always been one of my favourite quotes. In fact, I even had it scribbled on the wall in my hostel room in MICA. Yesterday, I found the same concept explained really beautifully in an article that someone gave me to read.

There are, the piece said, 3 relationships that define each of us as human beings:

Our relationship with ourself
Our relationship with others
Our relationship with spirituality/god

The first, one's relationship with oneself, is the fountainhead of all else. It is what defines how we see and react to the world. What you give yourself is what you can give to the rest of the world. Love yourself and you will love the world for what it is, hate yourself and you will only find fault with the world, accept yourself the way your are, with all your flaws, and you will find the capacity to accept others without finding fault with them. Love yourself and you will find the courage to make the choices that make you happy. Selfishness, in the deepest, innermost core of every human being is important to creating common good. Only when you want the good for yourself will you be able to want good for others too.

And while Rand maybe offensive to many (the quote is from The Fountainhead), I think the piece is above is what she truly meant when she advocated self interest above altruism. True good for others can spring only from wanting the good for yourself. And as I have discovered in the last few weeks, you cannot love another unless you love yourself. You can only admire, listen, compete, compare. But you can say I love you only when you say the I.

Truth

2009-11-11T10:55:00.003+05:30

A friend posted a thought on telling the truth or rather questioning the necessity of telling the truth. And it is something I've been thinking about a fair bit over the last couple of weeks. I've tried making do with half truths and almost truths. Fact is beyond a point it just doesn't work. Not with the big things. Not when it affects so many people so deeply (yourself not the least). Deciding to tell the truth isn't easy either especially when it does not reflect to well on yourself (to put it mildly) and goes a long way in hurting a lot of people.

However, as those in advocacy of the truth would put it, there's no point whatsoever living with a Democles' sword hanging over one's head. It is the tougher choice to make at the moment. But only at the moment. It is by far the easier choice to make for life for when this time passes, one will be rid of it forever. One will be able to put behind and truly move on in life. There will come a time when we will all be happier for the things that are coming to pass now.

Manifestation

2009-11-10T09:30:00.003+05:30

Two friends have now said the same thing to me: Your deepest desires manifest themselves even if you try really hard to push them under the carpet. You wish for something really badly and you send that energy out into the universe and it comes back to you. So be careful what you wish for.

I'd put it more optimistically: if you are sure of what you want, wish really hard for it. It'll find its way to your life. And then have the courage to recognise that it is what you wished for and don't turn it away just because it didn't come at the time or in the manner that you expected it to come in.

Ignorance is Bliss

2009-11-09T21:26:00.002+05:30

Was having a conversation with my mom today on how all we "intellectual" and "thinking" people have done is to complicate our lives. She gave me the example of a second cousin of my dad's who just got married (she's just my age folks!) and was perfectly fine with whatever she had and without any fantastic notions of compatibility or romance or connect or whatever other hogwash that we come up with in the name of enlightenment, intellect, exposure blah blah blah...

Well, you see mommy, it is a double edged sword. You gave us books to read when we were little. We became the intelligent, broadminded little know-it-alls who were always the teacher's pet in school and got good grades. But along with that our imaginations also flew. We discovered thoughts and desires which we might not have chanced upon in our limited experience of the world. We learnt to look, question and re-examine everything. We learnt to want things and we learnt how we could get them. We got addicted to the joys of curiousity and the search for more.

Ignorance is bliss indeed but once you chose to think, you can't escape it. Neither can you escape the consequences of suspending or ignoring your thinking for a short period of time for it will always come back to you multiplied manifold.

Morals and Values

2009-11-06T16:13:00.002+05:30

This post follows a little tweetcussion started by a dear friend on morals. Now that word usually puts me off a good deal. Let me try and explain why. Morals as I see them are injunctions imposed by society on those who are its members. They make a pronouncement on good vs. bad, acceptable vs. unacceptable and more yins and yangs on the same lines. Nothing really wrong with that on the face of it. Every society or group of people or community needs definitions of the acceptable and unacceptable. However, why morals to me have become problematic is that over the years, societies have forgotten why they have those morals in the first place. They have come to be blanket injunctions enforced by self appointed moral policemen (and women... no gender discrimination here). We have examples aplenty. Some of the more trivial ones have been contributed by politicians in our own country. They have enforced the morals of Indian society through vandalism, force and verbal harrangues. Ask any of them why Valentine's day is immoral and they don't have an answer.

Morals have also become, over the years, a convenient way to avoid making a difficult choice or taking responsibility. "I have better morals than that. I don't want to upset people" or "What will people think of me if I say or do such and such". And so in the name of morality, we keep quiet, do nothing, or do things that we do not want to do.

But then doesnt society need some standards? Aren't there things that are acceptable or unaccpetable? Doesn't society need to pronounce judgment to keep order? True, society does need to keep order. That, and convenience, is the whole point of society. Else we might as well be living solitary lives. But what society should be talking about is values and not morals.

To my mind the difference is essentially this: values are things that prompt us to think, help make choices and answer to that eternal larger "purpose of life" question. Morals tend to be action points: do this, don't do that. And there in arises the problem. Action points are always relative. They don't work for everyone and they are not always good or right or acceptable. Values, on the other hand, stand for things define attitudes that are beneficial to society and to individuals. For example, learning or knowledge would be a value. And it is a value that is applicable across societies and cultures and individuals. However, how one chooses to learn is entirely upto each individual. You cannot pass a moral injunction claiming the study of say medicine as the only true path to knowledge (sorry... nothing against the profession of medicine per se). Peace is a value. The moral injunction of not killing proceeds from that. But if I were to pass a blanket injunction saying "Do not kill" it would serve no purpose (for there are times when wars are justified. Hitler could hardly be allowed to go on a rampage in the name of a moral that says "Do not kill").

Values in that sense are more objective and it is from value that actions arise. I'll end with a lovely definition of good and evil that I came across when reading Shantaram. I am going to take the liberty of paraphrasing: anything that helps the universe move towards greater complexity and order is good. Anything that hinders that is evil. For the exact quote refer here. I think that's a great starting point to get thinking on how to define that ultimate set of yins and yangs centering around good and evil (such loaded words both!).

PS: this post is dedicated to all those people who have used more question marks than full stops in their conversations with me. You know who you all are. Love all of you. keep the questions coming... they make me feel very vibrantly alive.
Special mention: Cynduja for starting the tweetcussion and this post. :)

PPS: I don't know how articulate I've been above. Would welcome comments and a debate. If all of you agreed with me it would be boring. ;)

Points of view

2009-11-05T12:40:00.003+05:30

Was discussing this with a friend yesterday and ended up quoting what another friend had told me when I was complaining about no one getting my point of view: "It is your point of view. Why should anyone else get it?" (forgive me if I am not quoting exactly). But yes, I'd have to agree. Points of view are unique and while we may agree with each other, no two people will see the same situation in exactly the same way. Makes for infinite and interesting perspectives.

Also reinforces one thing: one must ultimately and always reach one's own point of view on anything. And that however similar two people maybe, we have to agree to disagree and go our own ways where required.

And I'll finish off with another quote (from Anthem, a book I am rather wont to quote from): "In the temple of his heart, each man is alone, as he must be."

PS: this train of thought also reminds me of something Milan Kundera had written in Ignorance about memories and shared experiences. That post is here

Dear Heart

2009-11-04T09:36:00.002+05:30

Dear Heart, lie a little still for yet awhile. I know I haven’t let you speak much in the years passed but I hear you loud and clear now and I know I will find the courage to walk down the path you want me to. I don’t promise that it won’t hurt but I promise I won’t give up without a fight.

Understand, dear Heart, that I must clear up the mess of my mind before I can begin to give you the things you want. And yes, two years of my shutting you up have made you as impatient as ever (you were never particularly wont to waiting it out you know) but just a little while more and you can have your way with me.

I promise not to be the other seagulls of the flock and protect you with the convenience of food. I understand Jonathan now and that the pain in making that swooping dive will be well worth the ecstasy that it will bring someday.

Keep your voice up dear Heart, for in its impatience, despair and hope I shall find both myself and my courage. They say the mind is superior to the heart but I realise now that it is only so once it has accepted what the heart has to say and not by silencing it into submission. This dear Heart, I shall remember the next time I make a choice.

Courage

2009-11-04T09:31:00.002+05:30

This and the post below this were written on the same day as "Sacrifice" but I chose not to publish them then. Am publishing them today because I know clearly why I wrote them.

Find me the courage to make a choice; to find contentment and happiness in that choice.

Find me the courage to hurt, to share, to discover, to explore.

Find me the courage to break the bonds that I try so hard to keep.

Find me the courage to face my demons and yet be optimistic for a happy ending.

Find me the courage to say that I have made a mistake or that I am about to make a bigger one.

Find me the courage to say that it is not too late.

Wishes

2009-11-04T09:23:00.003+05:30

Every night descends like a cloud

Bringing thoughts that lay long forgotten

Strange memories, unspoken desires

And a tear rolling gently down my cheek.

The day passes in conversations

As I search for hidden meanings

Signs perhaps that will tell me

What lies behind the clouds.

In this bright sunny land,

I wish for the warmth of winter.

I wish for my heart to lie still

To let me hear the voice of my mind.

Or maybe I wish for the courage

To walk alone on a cluttered path.

What I wish for most,

Is to know what I wish for

Sacrifice

2009-10-16T09:14:00.004+05:30

Over the last couple of days, I've been having a conversation with a friend and with myself. And I am reminded of a scene from Atlas Shrugged (we've been talking about this book too!) where Dagny is standing with John and Fransisco in Fransisco's house in the valley. I'll not get into every line of that scene here (sorry to those who haven't read the book enough times to know what I am talking about). However, subsequently Dagny introspects about the nature of sacrifice in the context of human relationships (I think the idea of sacrifice with respect to material needs has a different connotation and different implications. Also they are take the form of trade offs since they are more measurable). This is essentially what I've been thinking about for sometime now.

I better appreciate now the nature of the dilemma she was contemplating and John was ostensibly facing. I can see where the temptations come from and why they are so tempting. Why it is sometimes easier to contemplate making the more "acceptable" choice knowing that one will hurt oneself in some measure, greater or lesser. I also realise that it is not easy to decide which choice is the sacrifice; that human relationships are not linear balance scales nor are they a fixed quantity where the sum of all relationships must always be the same. I don't know what choice I will make or when I will make it but at least I know what questions to ask myself this time around. And that I've found some measure of the courage it will take me to make either choice.

Social Service Version 3.0

2008-12-20T17:08:00.002+05:30

I am a decided shop-a-holic. Anytime I get close to being unhappy or moody, I indulge myself in retail therapy - clothes, shoes, jewellery... basically the works. The other day I was walking back to the station with a friend and we were talking about this addiction that we share... and about how we spend all our money. And I, came up with a cute little justification: It is my version of social service. I am making everyone around me richer by spending all my money and not saving it :)

So there you go! No more guilt trips after a retail binge... it beats a food binge any day :)

Inversion

2008-11-29T19:52:00.003+05:30

Yesterday...
The city was noisy, the crowds pressed together. I could smell the sweat on the person next to me, making me wish I had a more palatable way of getting around. I pushed my headphones in tighter, the music blocking out the sounds of the morning traffic. I walked fast, keen to reach my destination, not wanting to linger.

Today...
I breathe the morning air & look at the familiar faces around me. Someone brushes past in the crowd, hurting my shoulder, but I can only smile. The bright sun warms my toes and I wiggle them in pleasure and walk at leisure to my destination, the same as yesterday. The song in my ears gets over mid way. I switch my player off and put it in my bag. The horns blare aound me and the vehicles whiz past but they don't make me wince... not today. Today I can only smile at everything that I once frowned at.

Deception

2008-10-02T21:17:00.000+05:30

29.09.2008

It is a story of a day ago...

I sat alone in the train... except for the two women in the far corner. I was on my way back from an evening out with friends – a play followed by dinner. A cab ride to the CST station and a long walk down the platform later, I found myself in the second class ladies compartment, almost empty only because it was 10:30 pm on a Sunday evening.

The train pulled out, wind coming in through the window grates ruffling my hair gently. My head was buzzing with a thousand thoughts – thoughts of the evening gone by, thoughts of home, thoughts of the week ahead, of my boyfriend who would be here the next weekend. As was my habit, I put on my player, the music in my ears drowning out the sounds that I did not want to hear. Two stations later, as the train ground to a halt, a woman got in and sat herself down on the seat opposite to mine. I would guess her to be around 50, long hair dyed with henna, tied up in a bun, stray wisps escaping here and there. Her eyes were rimmed with kaajal, smudged probably by a long day out. She carried a handbag and polythene and was dressed in a salwar kameez. There was nothing particularly striking about her and I would not have given her a second glance had she not tapped me on the shoulder and asked me where I was getting off. “Kurla,” I replied thinking that she probably wanted the seat next to the window that I was currently occupying.

Seeming satisfied with my answer, she settled down opposite me. She took out the bright yellow plastic bag that she was carrying and pulled out two garments from with. As she donned them, I realised that she was getting into the headscarf and hijaab that many Muslim women across countries wear. While again there was nothing to raise eyebrows about the fact that she was donning a headscarf, what struck me was that at her age she found it necessary to go through this pretence.

To my eyes, here was a woman who had been out, probably for the larger part of the day, on work or an errand or maybe a personal visit to someplace. For the part of the day that she was out, she had not deemed it necessary to wear the hijaab and the headscarf. However, now, returning home, she found it necessary to wear them.

I have known many Muslim women – some chose to wear the headscarf, others not to, and to me neither of these choices have defined their liberalness of thought. But why did this 50 year old woman have to pretend? And which part of her was pretending; the part that had spent the day out without the hijaab or the part that was going home with it? What compulsion suppressed her preference or desire for one state or the other? And as I saw her lie down on the seat and go to sleep, a slight furrow on her forehead, I wondered at the deception that her life must have become – a deception not so much of others as of herself; a deception that probably has now become a source of comfort for in that deception also lies choice and free will.

"Muahs!"

2008-09-23T09:25:00.002+05:30

Oh we must... blow air kisses and give fake hugs. Else how can a page 3 gathering ever be a page 3 gathering. I happened to go, with two friends of mine, to the premier of Saas, Bahu aur Sensex and I was left highly amused by the gathering of starlets and wannabe starlets.

The fun started right from the moment that the three of us walked into the little enclosure in front of Fame Adlabs (with the customary red carpet and camera flashbulbs). At the entrance was a suited chap handing out bright yellow flowers to all of us. "I've seen him somewhere... can't place him, but I've seen him in an ad or something," said my friend. We let the moment pass, waiting for enlightenment to strike us on the identity of the "flower" guy.

Up in the lobby, we were treated to a never ending view of models, wannabe models, wannabe starlets and such like networking with a vengance. We, for our plart chose to divide our tasks. One of us would concentrate on the clothes, one on the shoes (I volunteered for this part since I have a shoe fetish anyway), and the third looked around for random people that we might recognise. Some combinations are worth a mention - Khaki shorts and pointy bright red heels, Something that looked like a nightie with candy pink heels and a pair of tiger print heels that made a totally stand out statement.

Somewhere in all this observation, my friend remembered where she'd seen our "flower" guy before. "Oh! He's that chap... the one in the underwear ad!" And as she said the words, we realised, of course this was the guy from the Rupa underwear ad. From underwear ads to handing out flowers at a premier... dear me! Such are the lives of those in-between rich and famouses that throng this tinsel town - neither celebrity nor anonymous nobodies; saved from embarrassment by neither fame nor by anonymity.

And so we looked on, bemused and amused, at legs tottering on stilletoes, flashy shirts and underwear models turned flower guys till we were let into the hall. What happened there on is another story for another post.

A Great Maroon and Yellow Snake

2008-09-12T10:03:00.004+05:30

There's something to be said for the Mumbai Local. Within a month of everyday commute you realise what a pain life would be without it. As you get on and get off the train twice a day, you also begin to realise what a microcosm of Mumbai each compartment is. Each journey affords you a peek into how the people of the city live their lives.

The platforms. People hurrying hither and tither; people sleeping on the benches; people waiting for other people. Buzzing, moving and always crowded. Standing on the platform and looking around, I realised that that piece of concrete was not just a boarding point for the locals but a place where people live a part of their lives - eating breakfast, catching up with friends and loved ones, listening to music or just reading. The slush and muck of the Mumbai monsoon that makes me screw up my face in disgust is not even noticed by most of them as they walk on casually.

Compartments with people packed in as tight as is humanly possible, with people hanging out of the door and hanging on to dear life, as the maroon and yellow snake makes its way across the metropolis delivering people to their destinations. In that little compartment, you can make out whose had a bad day at office (or at home depending on the time of the day), who is new to the city, who has lived here forever. Regulars smile at each other in anonymous greeting, never knowing each others names, only recognising faces.

Standing at the door with the wind blowing at me, I see a multitude of images. Green grass and pretty yellow and red flowers alternate with drains, garbage and refuse generated by an over populated city. Scenic views of the city's skyscrapers are punctuated with peeks into the windows of chawls that line the track side - a woman hurrying on with her daily chores, boxes piled up, beds laid in a row, one against the other, all shaking as the train rumbles on. The air is sweet and fresh with the smells of the morning one minute and acrid with the smells of pollution and waste the next, the tracksides lined with people performing their morning ablutions, finding anonymity in the very public nature of their actions.

As I alight at my destination, I too join the swarm of people heading out on to the roads. I often look back at the train pulling out of the station and shake my head in wonderment at that snake that makes life in this dense city possible.

A Client Visit - Nothing routine about this one!

2008-09-09T21:57:00.004+05:30

It was a client visit. It was also a one in a million kind of experience... something that is not likely to happen to the same person twice. It was also murphy at his glorious best. So, without much further ado, I am going to launch into a chronological description of what turned out to be an extremely eventful site visit.

The place: the Bandra-Worli Sea Link - one of mumbai's largest infrastructure projects and something that many thousands of mumbaikars are looking forward to.

It began like any other client visit - with a drive from office... not to Nariman Point (which is usually the end point of many a client visit) but to the Bandra Reclamation area. Across the bay is being built the Bandra-Worli Sea Link. The builders, HCC, generously consented to having a whole lot of us from the agency over and showing us the sea link (which is nearing completion). Reaching the Bandra end of the construction site, we headed straight to the exhibition center, where after much tom foolery on our part, we were taken through the entire construction process as well as a corporate film (to help "understand" the brand better) . We then headed for the part that most of us had toodled along to the site for in the first place - the ride to the actual sea link and if possible a climb to the top of the tower of the cable stayed portion of the bridge.

Well we got to the bridge alright. And here began the awesome part. The view from the sea link is just amazing - the sea stretches out to the horizon on one side and on the other side, across the bay is the coastline of Mumbai with its fishing villages nestling between posh, high-rise buildings. The view got even better as five of us got into a lift and began the slow, 100 meter journey up to the towers from which 600 meters of the 4.7 km long sea link is suspended.

As we rose up, we saw more and more of Mumbai... all the way up to Malabar Hills on the southern side and the Andheri coastline on the northern side. We then alighted on the walkway between the two towers that hold the bridge up. If the view from the sealink was amazing, this was simply breathtaking. Looking down, the waves made it seem as though the bridge was swinging gently on its 140 taut steel cables. Our excitement reached its peak when we realised that helicopters and aircrafts were flying beneath us and not above us!

And then Murphy struck!!! Having dropped us off at the walkway, the lift was on its way back down to bring up the rest of our colleagues so that we could have an inspiring brainstorming session right up there on the top. However, the lift obviously had other ideas as it chose its descent as the appropriate time to get stuck, robbing those standing below of the amazing view from the top and leaving us on top with a mind blowing view but not much else.

Many frantic calls later, we decided to make our way down a construction stairway with only fishing nets and ricketty railings to aid our 100 meter descent. Suffice to say that we reached the bridge again. Suffice also to say that this was product testing and brand experience at its very best - terms that have come to mean our living for those of us who work in an ad agency.

"Shady"

2008-09-04T13:41:00.003+05:30

English is a funny language and its words even funnier. Imagine you are walking on the road with a friend and (s)he says to you, "Let's go to a shady place." While you may not exactly slap the other person, the thing that pops into your head when you hear that is, "ewww that sounds so gross." And it does too.

Now imagine this: You are climbing up a mountain (or should I say trekking). You are walking on rocks, through under growth and there are spiders, crabs and insects all around you. The sun chooses this very day to be at its sunshiny best and is beating down upon you. No matter how you twist and turn, it is sure to catch your back, your head, or some other part of you. Beads of sweat drip down your face and soon your clothes will feel like you went for a swim wearing them.

When someone now says to you, "Let's find a shady place", believe you me, you are going to jump at the opportunity and try to accomplish the task in a jiffy. And if the other person leads you to one, you'll thank and bless them.

Such are the vagaries of the language brought to India by the British.

In Love Again :)

2008-08-18T09:07:00.006+05:30

Lush green, rolling hills, paddy fields and gurgling water. I came to Mumbai expecting weekends full of malls, lunches and some lazy days at home. Instead I've rediscovered the excitement of exploring virgin lands; of doing things that scare me and yet leave a sense of achievement at the end of it all; of breathing in sharp, pure and pristine air; of feeling like I am touching the clouds; of the sudden brightness in the midst of rolling mist.

Two fun filled weekends - one on a tough yet fulfilling trek to Harishchandragarh, the other waterfall rappelling - have brought joy, peace, and excitement. They've been an opportunity to be with myself, to be away from the same old stories and gossip, to find tranquility within, to discover what the body and mind can do when they have to, to break the monotony of buildings, trains, traffic, and everything else that comes with staying in a city.

I've fallen in love with the lush, serene landscapes, the soft gurgling of the water, and its capacity to hurt, heal and pamper. I've fallen in love with the idea that I can be by myself or with people. I've fallen in love with that moment when you realise that your life is only in your hands; in love with the moment when you know what you have to do without having known it a second before. I've fallen in love with the softness and harshness that nature can offer and in love with the human body and mind's ability to face it, flow with it, and become one with it. I've fallen in love with this surprise that I have discovered for myself.

Foreign Education In India

2008-07-15T09:26:00.005+05:30

http://www.thehindu.com/2008/07/15/stories/2008071555180800.htm

This is an interesting article analysing the request by foreign university (and higher education providers) to be allowed to set up campuses in India. The writer points out some of the obvious flaws of opening access to primarily private institutes. These include:

The fact that these universities would only offer programs that are in high demand in the market and would not invest in research intensive courses that might not generate as much profit;
They might not be able to provide access to underserved sections of society as they will be interested only in making profit and not offering equitable access;
That it would be difficult to regulate the quality of education that these institutions would provide and that it might not be the same as what they provide in their home countries.

All valid concerns but a little pointless in my opinion. If one looks at the larger context of the state of Education and especially higher education in India, then it is apparent that the government does not even have the funds to cater to the streams that are in demand. The author of the article himself admits that hardly 10% of the relevant age group attend institutes of higher education. Given this scenario, to me it seems that it is better to let private universities address the market demand. This way, the government can focus on sectors that might not generate as much profit.

Coming to the second point, of providing access to underserved sections of society, it is first important to have the capacity to serve a populace as large as ours. Second, once that capacity exists, it will distribute itself across the socio-economic spectrum to ensure its own survival. Yes, quality will suffer but this is where the government will be able to pitch in once the pressure to provide for the basic infrastructure is off its shoulders. Also, even with an entirely Indian system of education, the government has not really been able to ensure quality except in the few IITs and IIMs. Most Indian universities hardly provide even the basic infrastructure required for higher education. So, that is hardly a valid reason to refuse access. If anything, mechanisms need to evolved to ensure a basic minimum standard is met and this criteria would need to apply to Indian as well as foreign based universities.

All in all, given the overall scenario of paucity of funds as well as infrastructure in the education sector, it seems to me to be better to allow foreign players (after appropriate screening) to set up campuses to cater to the demand that is emerging and is only likely to climb higher.

Paradoxes

2008-07-04T21:46:00.003+05:30

It is the 21st century and we do live in what we like to think of as a liberal world. I for one, have what may be a bad habit. I generalise based on the few people that I know and the few experiences that I have had in my rather young life. While it works for me lots of times, sometimes I am rudely woken up. I imagine all of upper-middle class, educated, working, young Indians to be like me and my friends. After all, why not? Brought up in large cosmopolitan cities, in english speaking schools, college educated, working in progressive industries such as the media and advertising.

And then an encounter surprises me, delights me with the diversity and makes me ponder about the paradoxes that exist in the seemingly globalised parts of this country. And so let me narrate a small incident.

I was in office in a meeting along with my senior planner with a sales representative from a TV channel. She (the sales rep) was narrating the plot of an upcoming serial to us. She got to the crux of the plot where she essentially wanted to say that the younger daughter-in-law was made to sleep with her older brother-in-law to produce a heir for the family. What amazed me was that she could not get herself to say the word "sex" or even the phrase "sleep with" and finally resorted to "mate".

It made me think about the paradoxes that exist in India - the confluence (or confusion) between tradition and modernity; the tense relationship that exists between the two that often explodes in various forms - debates on censorship, vandalism on Valentine's day, a march for Gay rights, a controversial re-writing of religious myths etc. It reminds me that Liberalised India is still young, that we are still gestating, that not everyone subscribes to a modernity that is essential Europe and America inspired.

It also amazes me that we are able to survive as a country with so many contradictions, paradoxes and differences; that we have room for everything without breaking apart at the seams.

First Impressions

2008-06-25T13:43:00.003+05:30

Mumbai... crowded, buzzing, moving, changing... expensive, cheap, fast, slow... new, ancient, modernity, tradition... skyscrapers, slums, highways, lanes... Glass, dirt, sand, concrete... Sea, rocks, walls, air... multifarious, monochromatic, knowing, anonymous... dream, reality, confluence, separation.

Untill the Words Come...

2008-06-24T16:04:00.003+05:30

... here are a few pictures of a trek I recently went on to Matheran (2 hrs. from Mumbai).

It's Been A While

2008-06-24T15:52:00.002+05:30

It's been a while... not just since I wrote, but since I visited my own blog. A lot's happened. Putting it factually, I've moved to Mumbai and finally started work.

One and a half lazy months at home have not prompted me to write nor has the move to a new city (though my head is abuzz with thoughts). Maybe a prodded visit to my blog will. I shall keep my fingers crossed. :)

There will come a time to say more, I guess.

In a Box

2008-03-27T12:03:00.002+05:30

It is difficult to pack away two years in a box... things collected, memories made, that little life that was mine and is for a few more days. The simplicity, now lost, as I think about what to take and what not to take. The strings of attachment are difficult to untie and I wonder if snapping them isn't a better idea.

Curtains and rugs are no longer furnishings but a sign of something that I created, that were a symbol of a Life that I began alone; things that will now have to be put in new trappings. The wrenching away is almost a physical pain. Boxes are not enough for a lifetime of two years! :(

A Mnemic

2008-03-16T20:57:00.002+05:30

At the Almost End

2008-03-16T19:31:00.003+05:30

At the almost end
I'm left speechless.

Too much gone by
In too less a time.

I can't gather all the memories
And I can't leave them behind.

The cocoon is dissolving,
It's threads coming loose.

At the almost end
It's a walk in reverse to the beginning of the road.

Enlightened!

2008-02-15T10:53:00.004+05:30

We certainly are an enlightened bunch of people! Who cares about Raj Thackery's ruckus in Mumbai. "Oh dear me, all this politics is so boring!"!!! How much more interesting is Rakhi Sawant's 'fight' with her boyfriend on Valentine's Day on a national news channel(Headline Today). We must know all that was said and done between the two even though I doubt the guy in question was her actual boyfriend (I mean who would want to be abused on national TV unless he was a paid lout!). Not only must we know, we must also make STD and ISD calls so our voices may fill the airwaves and for 15 seconds we may no longer be anonymous nobodies of no consequence. Through all this we never stop to ponder the logic of what is happening or even wonder at how the new cameras managed to get to Rakhi's house at the precise moment of the fight.

I was at a cafe with my boyfriend for 2 hours and this is all we saw on the television scree n in front of us. You would think, in this day and age, with so much happening, news channels would have something sensible to telecast or that even if they wanted to give nymphets like Rakhi Sawant her 2 minutes of fame, they would restrict it to the aforesaid 2 minutes. But no they must go on and on about it.

Maybe I belong to the old school but I sincerely think journalists and news channels and papers can do so much more than they do. With the technology and access that we have today, they could do a much better job of what the earliest of papers did so painstakingly. But no, they must loiter with their cameras and microphones outside Rakhi Sawant's house!

Then again it is not just about the channels or papers. It is also about those who want to mindlessly watch this again and again, gaining a sort of voyeuristic pleasure out of the whole exercise. Why and for what earthly good are the questions that pop into my head at this point!

A Li'le Poem For Us

2008-02-13T22:37:00.005+05:30

10^th Feb , 2008. 2330 hrs.

Moonlit stripes – across a face and onto the wall

Gentle and serene nightfall in hinterland

The cold of winter and the warmth of love mingle.

A hand changes the face of the world for me

Makes me feel so beautiful

A beauty created of itself and for itself.

The warm stripes of the morning sun

My hand swishes open curtains in welcome

But there’s warmth beside me too, welcoming me to the morning.

Beauty unknown and unsought

Love unasked for and found

Selfless and selfish.

In the time that I was most content

I found what I had searched for in vain –

A lifetime to live and love – Together!

And so I think, in those first rays of the morning,

As we often lose an object finding it only when we need it not,

Such is love.

Like a flash of lightening,

The sun that peeks after the rain,

Like the wetness of the rain contained within.

The Economics of Identity

2008-02-02T14:02:00.000+05:30

In response to a comment made on the previous post on nationalism, I personally think that the safety and comfort factor comes from the fact that a concept like nationalism gives a group of people a common identity to ascribe to. In doing so, they also assume that their interests are best served by protecting the group. Not only is it necessary to protect one's own group but also to fight for resources etc. against other such groups - basically a zero-sum game situation (it is assumed that all resources operate under a zero sum game while it may actually not be so).

It is only when we realise that the fight for resources need not be a zero sum game that the discrimination on the basis of identity is like to reduce or disappear. I think we are still a long way from that because we still trade preferentially with some groups over others. International politics still gives greater weightage (more often than not) to the identity of the trading nations as nations and cultures as opposed to looking at their needs and ability to produce as well as pay for what they consume.

Until economics is played on an egalitarian footing (I don't mean this in the sense of all countries having equal wealth but in the sense of economics not factoring in identity variables into transactions) I don't think that this notion of "my culture/country/caste/religion is better than theirs will wither away.

Boundary Less-ness

2008-02-02T08:24:00.000+05:30

My brother and I have been having an interesting conversation following a post of his on his blog. So am copy pasting the post as well as the conversation following it (in the form of comments). It is interesting and I could hardly re-write it any better. In a certain way it is not just a question of nationalism or identifying with one's country but also with how we see and understand ourselves. It is really a much larger debate and the outcome is debatable and unpredictable. It would be interesting to see where all the "boundaryless-ness" of cyberspace leads us in terms of thinking about and understanding ourselves as human beings.

Nationalism - Time to move on?

As India celebrated its 59th Republic day this last Saturday, I was struck once again, as I often am, by the fervor with which we Indians assert our "Indianness". Maybe this is just an illusion, but I do find that Indians on the whole are much more patriotic than a lot of other communities. We want to do good for India, we want to help "Indians", we want our country to succeed, become a global power, have a soaring economy... We are an extremely proud race, proud of our history, our diverse cultures, the fact that our civilization is so old, etc etc - and yes, some of these are, indeed, pretty remarkable things.

In the larger context though, I find myself less and less inclined towards nationalism/patriotism towards one particular country. I do strongly believe that, though few people realize it, nationalism really is a thing of the past, and is a largely redundant concept in today's increasingly global world. I think nationalism was a wonderful way in the past century for people to form their identities, to rise out of slavery and colonialism, to come together under the common banner of a country, attain their independence, and gain a sense of self-worth. But I think the need for nationalism pretty much ended there - and the future we are moving towards is one where I believe the concept will eventually cease to exist the way we know of it today.

There are already glimpses of this - the European Union being the biggest example, with a number of "countries" coming together under a common banner, as they realize how interlinked they really are. And it would do us all a world of good, I think, to pause for a bit and muse on how dependent we are on the rest of the world today. Every basic need of ours is met by things that are probably made on the other end of the planet. We communicate with people all over the world, exchange information at unimaginable rates across vast spaces. Really, if you think about it, our very existence is intrinsically linked to a huge network of people all over the world. And this is something that's very much a development of the last 50 years or so - one could not have said this at the turn of the last century.

So why does nationalism still linger on? Why is the first question on our minds when we meet someone still "Where do you come from?" I believe the answer to that is the fact that nationalism gives us all a strong sense of identity. It is easy for me to concretize my "Indian" identity, as opposed to my global, human one. And a sense of identity is so important to us all, isn't it? And this really, i believe, is at the root of all our forms of categorization of people - on the basis of race, religion, creed, caste, sex, nationality - this need to associate a distinct identity with oneself, and identify other people who attach the same identity to themselves. And its all right having an identity for oneself - but the problem really arises when we use it to categorize other people, judge them, and use it as a means to differentiate between people.

So where does this end? In my opinion we will see a visible decline in nationalism as more and more people steadily realize that they do share a common identity with every other human being on earth - that of being human, and a creation of God. The shared sense of a common, interlinked existence and a common spiritual purpose to life is what will truly bring people together, and break all these barriers of categories we've set up for ourselves. Countries will continue to exist - but will be mere administrative units. And preserve our diverse cultures we will, and maintain our individuality we will - but the realization that fundamentally we are all one, and that our most basic identity is the one that connects us with every other soul on this planet, and with God, will enable us to truly accept each other as part of one global family.

"We desire but the good of the world and happiness of the nations....That all nations should become one in faith and all men as brothers; that the bonds of affection and unity between the sons of men should be strengthened; that diversity of religion should cease, and differences of race be annulled... Yet so it shall be; these fruitless strifes, these ruinous wars shall pass away, and the "Most Great Peace" shall come.... These strifes and this bloodshed and discord must cease, and all men be as one kindred and one family.... Let not a man glory in this, that he loves his country; let him rather glory in this, that he loves his kind."

Nithya Ravi said...

Hmmm... interesting and while I agree that nationalism in the jingoistic or patriotic sense is becoming rather dated because of our interdependence on and our interaction with people from all parts of the globe, I think nations will linger on as a way of expressing cultural identities.

Also, I think the need of distinguishing ourselves as unique is very strong which is why we adopt multiply multiple identities which identifies us with some people but distinguishes us from others, making the whole combination unique and thus, setting each one as distinct from the other as an individual. So even if the identity of a nation fades, something else will always take its place.

And the problem is not with the identity or classification itself but with how we use it to discriminate, stereotype, dominate and exploit. Therein lies the problem and not in the fact that these identities exist because ultimately things like sex, religion and caste are only means of concretising the abstract known as existence.

January 31, 2008 11:33 PM

Nikhil said...

Agree totally with all that - and i agree that nations will continue to exist as administrative and cultural units. But I must again reiterate that over time I do think it will cease to be the strongest part of our identity - which it still is for a lot of us. India is a difficult example because even at the micro level these things are a strong part of our identity - not only does it matter to us that we're indian, it also matters which state we're from, what religion we are, etc. A better example is the US - Americans can be very very patriotic and nationalistic. But it doesn't matter that much which particular state they're from, for example. That for me, is a reflection of what nationalism will (or at least, should) become one day - where all these boundaries still exist, but they don't matter that much. And it would still be a part of our identity as we see it, but we would not allow it to discriminate against others, as our shared common identity as i described it would be more valuable to us.

February 1, 2008 7:12 AM

Nithya Ravi said...

Sure... but my argument is essentially this that if not nationalism, there will another identity that will become equally powerful, evocative and discriminatory because identities or ideas of the body as a social construct is how we identify ourselves.

So it is, from a purely philosophical and academic point of view, not important which identity occupies that position but that AN IDENTITY does.

History has seen a long succession of such identities from caste to religion to language... the nation is probably the most abstract of these identities so far because you can't really define it (it transcends the geographic definition of a state as well). Blood has been shed in the names of all these identities sometimes to a greater degree and sometimes to a lesser degree. There is a certain cyclicity to it only that the level of complexity increases with the level of abstraction that one invests into the identity.

February 1, 2008 9:50 AM

Nithya Ravi said...

PS: this conversation makes for an interesting post in itself... maybe you should copy paste it beneath your original article... or with your permission i will do so on my blog.

February 1, 2008 9:51 AM

Nikhil said...

sure there is something that does and always will form our identity - but its not just circular. Let's take an example. Fifty years ago, in India, your identity was not just that you were an Indian, but also included which part you came from, what your religion was, what your caste was, your subcaste, your family name, etc. Today we've shed some of the more micro-level identities, but still hold on to some large ones. You and I dont hold on to all the things our parents hold on to as a part of our identities. So its not just cyclical - but sort of spiraling outwards, where our identity is, as you said, becoming more and more abstract and high level. So the next stage in that, I think, is developing a global, human identity. And who knows what after that... :)

I'm not contending, therefore, that we will lose things to hold on to as part of our identity - I just mean that what we hold on to will eventually become more high-level, and hopefully reach a stage where we won't have to discriminate amongst each other on the basis of that.

Discovering, Refreshing and Rejuvenating

2008-02-01T09:55:00.000+05:30

Yesterday at 6:30 in the morning, I was not snugly curled up in my bed as I usually am. I was sitting in a bus and we were on our way to a place some 270 kms from MICA called Tejgarh in the South Eastern part of Gujarat. Tejgarh is part of a tribal belt and the place we were to visit was the Bhasha Adivasi Academy. The academy was started by an individual by the name of Ganesh with the vision of empowering tribals. The academy runs a post graduate program in Tribal Studies as well as certificate courses in Health, Education, and Administration.

On reaching the academy we interacted with the student and faculty there. To me the most amazing part of the whole experience was to actually see a place that was actively and effectively empowering a marginalised community to be a part of our so-called Urban Modernity if they so wish to be. And the work of the academy is perhaps far more fruitful than any number of reservations that the governments in this country can make for it allows these people to choose the manner of their assimilation; it allows them to perserve their own culture and value systems while at the same time giving them the skills and tools to be a part of post-liberalisation India. The people who have passed out of the academy work in villages and in the academy itself and help empower others from their community.

The interaction also helped dispel many pre-conceived notions about who tribals are, what makes them tribals, their value systems, way of life and practices. Tribals are not necessarily half-naked people dancing around fire and talking in 'primitive' languages. As Sonal Behen there said, "I can where a saree or a jeans and talk in English or Hindi but what really makes me a tribal are my beliefs and the social practices." This I think holds true for all of us and our community identities. We belong to a community not because of the appearance but because of the history, the shared pasts and values and beliefs.

The other interesting experience I had yesterday was in translating the experiences of the people we interacted with from Hindi to English for the rest of my classmates. It was engaging, challenging and for the first time I really understood the meaning of the phrase "Lost in Translation". To be responsible for what others understand and learn is an indescribable feeling not only of a certain power but also responsibilty. It also made me listen more keenly and engage with the people there and establish a rapport.

We also went to see ancient cave paintings and tribal artefacts museums at the Bhasha Center. But more on that in another post for I am now running out of patience and steam.

P.S: Will upload photos as soon as I have collated them.

Doors Wide Open

2008-01-21T23:15:00.000+05:30

Been a long long time... two months to the day actually... at many points I thought I would write, but I never got around to it.

I revisited my diary today... it's been half a year since I wrote in it. Even today I did not write in it. Just went back in time, relived memories and feelings and shook my head in wonder at how much things have changed, at how much things can change, how the unexpected can turn your world upside down. Says something for why one should leave the doors in one's life wide open for the winds that blow. You never really know which one will make you dance with joy and twirl with happiness.

Here's to a new year, a new life, joy and happiness!!!
:D

Happy Words

2007-11-22T19:30:00.000+05:30

In my long association with the English language, I've developed a certain fondness for some letters of the aforementioned language. I've noticed that words with these letters tend to make me happy, much to the eternal amusement of all my friends. So after a rib tickling session of spouting some of these words today morning (in the c(o)urse of an assignment), I decided to put some of them down here so that others may not be so befuddled when i choose to go around spouting nonsense.

Now, without more ado, here goes...

Words with 2 'g's placed consecutively: There's something wonderfully lively and picturesque about words such as "giggle", "waggle", "wiggle" and "wriggle" (not to forget "piggie"). They seem to represent the actions they stand for and they roll so nicely off the tongue and are really quite pleasant to the ears.

Words with 2 'o's placed consecutively: "toodle", "doodle", "coodle", "whoosh", "swoosh"... try saying these words and you'll know what I mean when I call them happy words. Better yet try saying "waggle whoosh" together and the point will really get home.

NOTE: with due apologies to Dipti, I must also include words like "booey", "gooey" and "phooey" here.

The letter 'e': I don't think this one needs any explanation at all!!! eeeeeheeeeeeheeeee

A few more random happy words/phrases from my dictionary: "swish twish", "diddly squat" (this one is actually slang for doing nothing!!!), "pop" as in "pop goes the weasel, "plonk", "oink"!!!

Keep smiling :D

P.S: The title of this blog is another addition to the list of phrases :D

Shared pasts?

2007-11-21T18:58:00.000+05:30

They say a sense of past is what distinguishes the human life from an animal life. Each moment is, for a man, the sum of all past moments lived. Memories...

I found and interesting way of thinking about memories just yesterday. Two people share an experience or a moment but they do not remember or recollect it similarly. So when we think about shared experiences, are they really shared? And this is what probably makes each of us unique. That our memories are unique even if our experiences are the same. That what we choose to remember of each moment is different.

Sounds of Silence

2007-11-20T20:45:00.000+05:30

The silence around is palpable. Some one sitting half a world away was able to sense it. But to me it is a beautiful silence. Sunny and warm in the mornings, wonderfully cold in the evenings and nights. The kind of silence in which you hear yourself best; the kind of silence that I found when I came hear initially.

Calm in the racuous laughter, serenity in the music, ease in the vivacity. The silence of a life that is comfortable, easy going, and by now familiar to all those who inhabit this little island out of nowhere.

Walking down the long winding road in a quietness that is so still that you can touch it, I can hear the blood flow in my veins, I can hear my lungs expand as I breathe the fresh, nippy air. At nights the crickets buzz much like the thoughts in my head and I can hear them clearly too.

In comparison, the noise of civilization is almost offensive, the air oh so foul. But my soul yearns for that too. To be back in the world I knew in the March of 2006. Come March 2008, I will walk out of this island, back into the waters I came from. How then will the island look from outside?

For now its serenity is as captivating as it is all demanding.