Scratchpad

Parle-G

2011-12-16T20:26:00.000-08:00

The luscious temptations of the modern world have ravaged all the reservations of our adolescence. Through our reservations we sought a deeper connection before jumping into a superficial closeness. The trouble for us is that in the modern world, those like me who have tried to jump into material superficiality have at first fallen in love with it, but then have stopped believing in everything, even love, after having realized the fakeness of things that were superficial.

We grew up in lack of superficiality and still haven't got used to being around it. In my teens, we all knew what it was to be around beauty and we know what it meant to long for it. But the age of visual excesses that we soon were to witness destroyed that continuity. Suddenly it was just hotness and sex all over and there was nothing else to achieve or dream for. All emotions, love and longing started appearing as an attempt to escape the reality of natural selection.

Having found some pieces of Parle-G in the jaggery nimkins from my last trip to home, I just realized how much more we now spend to get the same pleasure that we had with much less. I also have some nan-khatai, cookies made with flour, sugar and hydrogenated fat. We had our problems in the old world, but we knew hot to cope with them. Suddenly, there seems nothing else except a game of power.

Our only option in the new world is to keep the balance between expenses and income and hope that everything would work out for us in the end. We don't believe that anything else is achievable. If we feel sick, there are medicines and doctors at your service, but there would be no one tell that you're fine. Having consciously got rid of little things in our lives, thinking that they were irrational, we have nothing to love and nothing to fear of losing when we're gone. With no purpose to live, we know we would die in ignominy.

You could of course, just love superficiality and be married to it, but would you love it? People of my kind are still unsure.

internet banking in India

2011-09-29T21:33:00.000-07:00

I spent last 3 hours trying to buy a ticket from an Indian website. I had opened an account in India to avoid carrying cash/amex-checks with me while I am there, but I can't use the bank account for anything. Every time I try using the internet banking the password doesn't work. If I ask them for the password, they send me my password through mail (apparently that is much safe than resetting the password). I can't use the card for buying anything either because all merchants require me to login with password (another ridiculous lack of responsibility). I guess the only relief is banking exists in India and if you know the right people and are lucky enough things would work out for you. On paper, India has everything - democracy, freedom and capitalism but in practice, good luck if any of that works out for you.

personality type

2011-09-05T18:22:00.000-07:00

1.

1. Extrovert/Introvert
2. Sensitive/INtuitive
3. Thinking/Feeling
4. Judging/Perceiving

I should be an INTP but I somewhat lean towards ISTP as well. I think intuitively and then try to approach with rational/details. I am not a complete INTP and cannot live in my own workd. I rely on popular opinion but only to see how applicable my approaches are (makes sense to me, if I am an ISTP).

The ISTP personality type is likely to be analyst (which I am). I should be doing something that an INTP can do. The following link summarizes my problem:

http://personalityjunkie.com/2009/12/28/intp-personality-type-jobs-careers-interests-and-majors/

2. Another concept is that of Holland Code. My Holland Code seems to be IAC (Investigative, Artistic, Conventional). As I said, it is not easy being artistic and conventional. Wikipedia describes the following letters in the Holland Code :

Realistic - practical, physical, hands-on, tool-oriented
Investigative - analytical, intellectual, scientific, explorative
Artistic - creative, original, independent, chaotic
Social - cooperative, supporting, helping, healing/nurturing
Enterprising - competitive environments, leadership, persuading
Conventional - detail-oriented, organizing, clerical

what do you love

2011-07-30T06:34:00.001-07:00

It is only recently, I think, when Google started playing with the idea of monopoly. It owns tons of data, more than facebook, more than IMF or WHO or anyone who has their business model based on data. Having been at the helm of user-data for years now, it shouldn't be surprising if Google spawns a range of products that finally put this massive user-specific data to use.

So far, the results have been disappointing. Google buzz went nowhere. Google trends is practically unusable. Google new is still in its infancy (customizing news couldn't be that hard). Google+ probably has some capability to compete with facebook, but it still can't be the same. Facebook captures the spirit of college life and in a lot of ways keeps you tied to the college behavior - wild partying, exhibitionism, social gossip and spirited volunteerism. Google would have a tough time tapping into that market. People might like voice and video and wide range of selections Google servers fetch for you in fraction of a second, but a "Like" button is not something computer scientists can come up by themselves.

I am curious what happens next but I am somewhat disappointed that Google is more interested in providing more content than actually improving the content itself. The what do you love feature, seems another attempt to provide a new "product" based on data. Absolutely nothing seems to have changed for the search content itself. In first tests, I don't see any intelligence that is being used.

1.1.45 आद्यन्तो टकितौ

2011-06-07T12:39:00.000-07:00

1.1.45 इग्यण: सम्प्रसारणम्

2011-06-07T12:33:00.000-07:00

सम्प्रसारण happens when इक् occurs at the place of यण्

A serious man

2011-06-06T14:25:00.000-07:00

Recently watched Joel Coen's A Serious Man - a very interesting movie. I got to see those early elements of Coen's bright, almost tinted cinematography.

It was difficult movie to understand, not purely because of the Yiddish words that I had never heard - Dybbuk, Mishna, Hashem, Goys, (to sit) shiva. - but also because of the ever-shifting focus of the story - about the failed marriage, responsibility of an unemployed brother, desire to cheat. It was almost as if the director was consciously trying not to give any closure to the viewers.

The idea was rather simple but explained in a rather deliberate mysterious fashion - One doesn't always understand the hashem. We can try making sense of the world and just try our best, but after a certain point, we need to accept the mystery. This is not the kind of existentialist comedy that Woody Allen would write, but one that is somewhat darker and strange in a lot of ways. I would certainly remember the movie for its humor.

local Hindi

2011-04-20T10:46:00.000-07:00

I do speak Hindi, especially at home or when I am with friends from UP. But I generally prefer to stick to English when talking to anyone else. Hindi may be what a lot of my friends think it to be - the "national" language, but for me, it has been a very local language and every time I am in India, it seems to be getting more and more localized.

I see a very compelling reason to speak Hindi only to people from UP. There is a certain flavor to Hindi of UP, that only people from the region can appreciate. A lot of times, the vocabulary uses so much of Urdu or Sanskrit, that it is practically a language different from that of Bombay or Delhi. Hindi in UP is not just the language of city-talk, but it also has been the language of law and business.

Yet is the other "mainstream" form of Hindi - the variety that relies on English for sophistication but keeps the only "local" aspects for Hindi expression - that has been welcomed and accepted. Much as I like to distinguish this form of Hindi from the one I speak, there is a certain music and nonchalance to this city-hindi that I find amusing.

The Mumbai-Hindi is really the best example; it is spoken in a city inhabited by everyone from around India - the bhaiyas, the madrasis, the ghatis and the bongs. They are all there and they use the mishmash of Hindi and English to go by. The nonchalant "masti" of the life in the city- whether it be impoverished or elite - is expressed very well in the form of Hindi that has evolved in the city. Hindi of Mumbai might have the same syntax as that from UP but it derives a lot of words from Marathi and other local languages, apart from, its Mumbaiya character.

Delhi has its own form of Hindi - yet again - influenced by neighboring states. The Punjabi and Hindustani are so close in syntax and mood, that for me it has always been difficult to distinguish Delhi Hindi from Punjabi. If I were to speak the Hindi of Delhi I would rather choose Punjabi because I think there would be a lot more justice served that way - both to Hindi and to Punjabi. It is hard not to acknowledge the role that a common syntax and general appreciation of poetry that Urdu has provided to the whole of North India. If there is one language - with its variants loosely similar to each other - through North India, then it is mostly because of influence of Urdu.

However, the influence of Urdu as well as the usability of a common Indian language has declined over last century to the extent that Hindi is only a shallow reminder of the past. Hindi is not used for any purpose except admittance of unyielding local ways. An average North Indian speaks Hindi only as long as he or she is describing his "local" feelings. The moment there is need to be assertive or to say something pithy - the language unconsciously switches to English. the only exceptions are those who have accepted English completely and never choose Hindi to communicate with anyone.

If you don't believe that, do a very easy experiment. Just start disagreeing with a Hindi speaker and tell him that he is wrong about everything he is saying. Most likely the Hindi speaker would re-tell you everything in English - only expecting you to find it all more authentic, reliable and convincing. Such is the Hindi that has flourished in the cities of India. Despite its charm and amusement, there is really little that it has to offer. It would not be incorrect to say that the Hindi of big cities is really a local flavor of English, rather than that of Hindi.

a crisis of beauty

2011-04-04T20:45:00.000-07:00

There is that essential charm in theology - the story of Christianity. The effect of religion is at least as deep rooted as is human history - partly because religion itself is a record of history.

There is this beauty in religion that it can explain everything - even things that science cannot. Nothing comforts more than when all nature is explained through a simple story. It is really the story that makes religion so graspable and far reaching.

There are many other things woven into religion but primarily it is the the human story that forms most of its appeal. Religion stands time, the future - and our being outside of the realms of time is pondered over and is explained convincingly by religion. Nothing else nearly achieves that.

The feelings of love, family and other values can be easily irreversibly tied together with this story. The story only provides beauty and its only the beauty itself that religion is tied to. Unfortunately we tend to claim more than beauty from assertions of our religion. That is where the beauty of religion fails to converge with the nature of its appeal. This is the crisis that we deal with.

being capitalist or socialist

2011-02-08T19:31:00.000-08:00

Reading a book on history of conservatism in America, I feel that the reason for someone to agree with Socialism or it's opposite- Capitalism is purely circumstantial. If one sees Socialism in his past, then he tries to revolt and put personal freedom in front. On the other hand, when one is withered with the power-driven society, then the way to revolution is mostly about forming communities and sharing the benefits.

In our times, of course there is a sort of convergence between the two tendencies, even though is not uncommon to see either of the extremes in media. I think all civilizations have had a dualism of some kind ; the particular case of capitalism and socialism is indeed the most remarkable of them all. The causes of two world wars in last century might seem to be rooted in racial strife or manic dictators, but they probably have had more to do with the conflict between these two economic philosophies.

I recently learned about the book "Road to Serfdom" by Hayek, an Austrian economist, who along with others in the Austrian academia who have had limited freedom during the war years, equated socialism with totalitarianism and claimed that authoritarianism is inherent in socialist ideals. In the back-drop of failing socialist policies in Europe and later due to the failure of Stalinism in USSR, the works of Hayek influenced many neo-liberals in America.

Ottoman Empire

2010-11-28T17:12:00.000-08:00

I have recently started reading about Ottoman Empire. As usual taking notes on the way.

-The basis of Ottoman rule in Albania was a feudal military system of landed estates, called timars, which were awarded to military lords for loyalty and service to the empire

पाणिनि

2010-10-12T09:53:00.000-07:00

पाणिनिविरचितव्याकरणपुस्तकपठनम यत्नम करोमि|

http://www.archive.org/details/ashtadhyayitrans06paniuoft

Taiping Rebellion

2010-10-03T04:11:00.000-07:00

Religion in China has always been a mystery to me. It is hard to find a neutral and comprehensive account of modern China. The exoticism in most of the books on contemporary China doesn't appeal so much to a non-westerner like me. I think that due to lack of free media, the massive language barrier and the unwillingness of Chinese people to discuss current events on the country, it is somewhat difficult to have a general sense of religion in China.

The official theory of "no-religion" in China didn't sound very much plausible to me. Having grown up in India I do think that "not having a religion" doesn't necessarily mean a lack of religious conviction. In fact most of the societies that were conquered (and partly humiliated) by West at some point have witnessed radicalization of the "religion" to some extent.

An interesting event is the Taiping Rebellion. This was a religious movement but ironically enough was suppressed by the Western forces. It seems like the feudal system of China had given in to the Western forces. The Qing rulers having been of Manchu origin (most of the Chinese people are of Han origin) might have helped quite a bit in getting support for a rebellion against the rule.

It is hard not to compare this with the 1857 sepoy mutiny in India. It happened about the same time and was in some way a repercussion of the new Western control. It is remarkable that in India, the rebellion was initiated by sadhus - a group of religious people who could never have been supported by the Moghul ruler (Muslim). But still the mutiny was later headed by a Moghul ruler. In other words, the mutual opponents had united against the Western forces. Most Indians seem to have had little trouble in considering the Western forces as their enemy. In the Chinese context this would be similar to Qing and Hans attempting to unite against the British.

However the "mutiny" can hardly be compared with the Taiping rebellion. The mutiny was neither as widespread nor as deeply entrenched in society as the Taiping revolution. About 20 million people are known to have died in the rebellion. The fact that the rebellion was started by someone who wished to be a part of the civil (imperial) services alone suggests that China was indeed being governed much better than India and that China's was a much more integrated society unlike India, where Muslim rule never influenced the rural Hindu population. It is not surprising that the Taiping rebels had clear ideas of governance after dislodging the Qing rule.

For those reasons, the rebellion does seem more similar to Russian revolution. When the feudal Tsar system had failed to govern the country and was losing wars in foreign excursions (Japan) the Bolsheviks party emerged and attempted to overthrow the Tsar rule. The difference of course is that there was no Western interference in Russia. Chinese "Gordon" defeated the short-lived government of the Taiping rebels. It took more than a decade to wipe out the rebels.

The other major difference is the unique religious nature of the rebellion. The fact that a "foreign" religion was used to root out a feudal system is quite remarkable. The rebels were primarily Hakka ( a migrant newcomer group among Hans) and Zhuang and both were economically disadvantaged. Christianity definitely has had the appeal to the common people. Chinese case would've been no different. That Christianity wasn't seen as a foreign religion suggests that the differences between Eastern and Western religion were either not obvious or immaterial to the average people in China.

In modern China, only about 10 % of the total population is atheist. Confucianism is deeply entrenched in Chinese society. As things were Buddhism was an inquiry and skepticism to Confucianism. For the most part things are still the same. Only 3-4% of Chinese are Christians. The ancestral worship and spirit-worship might be widespread but such ritualism is accepted both by Christians and Buddhists alike in modern day.

pilaf

2010-08-22T17:03:00.000-07:00

I used to think that the similarity of words pilaf and Hindi Pulao is because of a recent exchange of recipes from the East. But apparently rice was grown in the central Asia when it was imported from South Asia in ancient times. The Muslim traders returned to South Asia what we know today as Biryani. The modern Hindi word pulao comes from Sanskrit pulaaka (which means a lump of rice, ref. A Sanskrit-English dictionary , Monier-Williams).

The word pilaf is found in Turkish, Greek, Armenian and some other Central Asian languages.

Tony Judt

2010-07-25T21:56:00.000-07:00

I just started reading the book - Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 which I had been referred to by New York Review of Books. The book is very well written. It has the fluidity of a fictional work and yet the objectivity of a journalistic text. The author, a well-known historian, does acknowledge his own perspective in the description of events since 1945.

I am learning things that I had no idea about and I am so overwhelmed that I am compelled to taking notes. Here are a couple of facts that I think are interesting to note.

1. The book talks about the thirty-year war. The scale and extent of this war and the consequent deprivation of the involved states make it seem no less devastating than the First world war.

2. Stalin is know to have ordered shooting of 23,000 Polish officers in Katyn. He later blamed it on Germans.

3. The civilian losses exceed military losses significantly except for UK and Germany.

4. The war casualties were massive but there was a lot of damage also caused by lack of supply of food. Greece to my knowledge was not a major participant in the war. But it did seem to have suffered a lot of lateral damage. A third of its population for example suffered from trachoma in 1945. Pollution through industrial had shot up the infant mortality. In the British zone of Germany the number was about 25%.

5. Hitler's Nazi pogrom needs to be understood in the backdrop of the Reich. Nazis had expelled 750,000 Polish farmers from West to East in order for the ethnic Germans to return to the volksdeutsche. The soviet union moved more civilians during the war. The trend was reversed after the war, with Stalin having kept his promise he made in 1941 - that he would return Prussia back to Slavs where it belonged.

One reason why the author thinks the movement of people was at much larger scale is the failure of League of Nations. They governments were careful not to rely on changing boundaries (like they did in WWI) but instead depend on moving peoples.

says a new yorker

2010-05-31T09:09:00.000-07:00

The world is denigrated with this game of power that I see everywhere now. I am starting to feel a bit of suffocation. Partly because of disinterest and partly because of initial failures make me feel a bit emaciated now. I feel the suffocation in my soul caused by withdrawals and half-hearted attempts.

I don't and cannot blame individuals for that because it is my own tendencies that have caused my failures and withdrawals. This outlook of a power game that I see to have developed is only a consequence of my own discernment and judgment. There is a certain part of me that considers this game to be natural and to be the truth itself and yet there is this part that makes me withdrawn, jaded and having lost in this game.

I wish more often if it was easy for me to be normal and be willing to play the game or be completely oblivious to the existence of the game. It is not the sorrow of having lost that I feel. Instead there is a certain guilt, sometimes felt that of having abused alcohol in the past, and having abused self-indulgence at other times. Nothing changed this rather morbid view of the world where everyone is a predator or a prey. There are no emotions, purposes and feelings; everything is a struggle for materialist and acquisitive rewards. There is nowhere you can attach yourself to. There is nobody who you can truly trust to be yours. You want to go everywhere and be everywhere but you really belong nowhere.

It should be probably be a relief to discover that I am not the only one to feel that way. But then if you really don't take optimism that seriously, even discovering other people like yourself supports the tendencies of withdrawal. To flock with your own type and to derive normal pleasures from the same class of people makes you feel having become the part of the classification process and the perceived hierarchy. I tend to reject the need of consolation by trying to become part of one community or some other. When you don't believe in a larger goal and a larger world, there doesn't seem any reason to be fulfilling responsibilities of a smaller group of people. The acceptance of lack of a larger goal only makes your own existence more meaningless. I think this is where the feeling of emaciation might emanate from.

What is the right way to deny this game? I find refuge in believing in that it is not through withdrawal or denial but by endearment and creativity. For those who see ideas as separate from reality and in turn hold on to ideas more than material acquisitions the only way to exist is to seek means to realize the ideas one holds on to. This should not create a distance from reality but rather create a close connection with it.

2010-02-14T20:14:00.000-08:00

State of Economy and right to information

2010-01-27T16:46:00.000-08:00

Almost everyone who reads news and occasionally scans the opinion pages of the newspapers has given some thought to the state of modern economy. The crisis that appeared in mid-2008 is an unprecedented failure of financial systems. Personally, having had a chance to work in a financial corporation during the time, I realized like many others, that a deeper introspection of the consumer driven economy would follow the crisis.

Since then, those in the media have given us complete opposite outlooks on the crisis. Some have called this the end of the neo-classical economics while others don't think this is going to be more than a cyclical crisis.

There has been for example, a lot of discussion about whether a consumption based economy is sustainable or not. There are those who have always thought that consuming at one end of the world and producing at the other end doesn't usually result in desirable uniform growth. An extreme case like that of the current crisis arose when the sellers of risk ended up forcing the production of risk. Fundamentally it is not much different from the colonists lashing the farmers in poor countries to support high production in the world, or merchants burning harvests while people starving at some other place in the world.

Of course, that is the nature of our systems; and to some extent, humanity itself. To make it all fair we have rules and regulations. A game without rules, most of us would agree, can't be played for long.

The good news is that rules aren't that many and are really simple to follow. But again, it is hard for businesses to follow rules that inhibit profit-making. After all the profit-maximization functions don't take parameters like happiness and pain as input. Hence despite all law and order, when the manager of a company takes charge he is more likely to see the revenues and sales than his moral responsibilities or goals of the society.

There lies the fundamental inadequacy of the regulations and the pretentious self-criticism of the media. It would take a lot of effort and time to understand why honesty and integrity in our world are mere vanities of the poor and working class.

What I've found rather amusing are the attacks on large corporate firms in the visual media - from Michael Clayton to Avatar. But sadly other than minor insults and complaints against "large" bonuses there hasn't really been much thinking or introspection on the matter. We still don't have an alternative to large corporates. To generate more jobs and revive the economy, we would still need the corporates, the CEOs and their compensations. It is just not possible to shun everything and start over, not for most of us except in an avatar-like fantasy.

We neither have escapes from our basic tendencies of trying to be rich and powerful nor do we possess enough desire to start things over. For those reasons and many others, the current system isn't really going away. There are ways of slow evolution which the system might adopt, but neither our basic tendencies (of hunger, avarice and desire) nor the resulting economic system can be put on hold for even a little while. What would happen for example to our political goals in the global arena? Where would America be if its not the most powerful and the most benign country in the world?

A sudden reversal of our system is neither feasible nor desirable. We still would continue to be an industrial society. Mixing go-green, savings accounts and Buddhism is great on paper, but unless we embrace fundamental changes in our system, all of it would only amount to hypocrisy.

The acceptable way of solving the current crisis or attempting to do so, in my opinion, is to establish transparency in our systems. The deeper thinking on goals of the individual and society would automatically follow. In our current system, it would be argued that freedom of the individual to get the information he wants is very limited.

The laws of this country have put so many filters on the information through devices ranging from security concerns to corporate interests that the laws curtail the freedom of the individual.

I emphasize on freedom on information not just because it is the fundamental right of an individual in the society, but also because it is a way to avoid and put a check on the kind of failures that a banking system or other systems (governments included) would run into. In a true capitalist system, transparency would provide the opportunity to monitor and control large financial systems.

After working for financial companies for a significant part of my life, I do feel there is a sheer lack of transparency. The transparency is really hard to embrace, because the business model of the banks itself is based on opaqueness. The "proprietary models" and "sensitive data" are actually just shields to profits. If people do not demand the information that is used for determining policies applicable to themselves, there is no possible way for people to take control of what is desirable for them.

Mere complaints through art and insincere political allegations to developing economies (like China) wouldn't really reverse the trend of increasing lack of control over corporates. It is not surprising that our political leaders, with so much control in their hands easily manufacture the political consent to go on war for purposes that have nothing to do with the wishes and interests of the people.

The world certainly seems to be better than when in the Cold War era and so I think the policy response would be more than protectionism. Also Internet and Information can really provide a cheap way to access information, unlike ever before. What is still needed is a sincere effort in the direction instead of visceral allegations against unknown enemies.

At borders

2009-10-11T21:51:00.000-07:00

At borders today, a book called "Death of Conservatism" caught my attention and due to tiny size of the book, I ended up reading it all up at the table itself ( it was under the "thought-provoking" category). I don't like to be a promoter for any book-store, but I do think that I am more likely to find my book at borders than at Barnes and Nobles. That they have better coffee (Dean&Deluca) than the latter (Starbucks) strengthens this prejudice further.

About half-way through reading the book, I realized that the author is one of the editors of New York Review of Books, a fact that was affirmed by the well-researched essays of the book. The writings of McCarthy, Burnham, Schlesinger and Disraeli were recollected in the book and were used to evaluate the movement conservatism.
New York Review of books is very left leaning, and sometimes it even bothers me by its extreme support for Obama. But that apart, the writings from the journal or such books, form a very informative read. This book, for example pointed out the contradictions and shallowness of last few years of conservatism - its blind support to failed policies.

One interesting perspective the book presented, and the one that I am increasingly inclined to believe in is that the current conservatism is incapable of being constructive. What it represents today through the likes of Limbaugh and Palin is the destruction of institutions that we have in the society. The way this movement proceeded in the past few years or claims to proceed further, is by vandalizing our democratic establishments and destroying our values that they themselves claim to defend.

As the book pointed, a new era always marks the end of a previous one. The end of conservatism and the new "Hope" could be another chapter in American history, a history that is full of self re-invention and re-evaluation.

http://www.amazon.com/Death-Conservatism-Sam-Tanenhaus/dp/1400068843

World was never flat

2009-09-27T17:26:00.000-07:00

I get somewhat amused every time I hear people talking about world becoming flatter and people shunning the boundaries that separate them. The more I think about that, the more dubious the evidences appear.

The world certainly seems to be better than at the Cold War. During those times, our media was so biased that we would hear extreme opposite coverage of the same incidents when reported by West and East blocks. The Gulf war or even the post-911 war-mongering was probably not nearly as bad as how things were during Cold war. The sentiments against each other were so deep that the most intellectual pursuits failed to overcome them. On one hand, the Eastern block had scientists commanded by the dictator of proletariat while on the other scientific communities were shying away giving Nobel prizes to intellectuals from the East. At one point, the peace Nobel prizes seemed to be a prerogative of previous US

Cold War is over, but the institutional propaganda and our conscious ignorance are still a part of our lives. My last few observations have been the about the way East is covered in the West (I am clearly more likely to observe them than most of others).

The fact that we get filtered information about the world in US is very well established. One thought that I wanted elaborate was how media has successfully been able to engineer into most of our minds that India is a rising power, and that to a large extent, outsourcing is responsible for it.
presidents.

Both of these claims are inaccurate. That India is rising as a competitor to West, is itself a myth. A country with such extreme poverty and malnutrition clearly doesn’t have enough resources and institutions to sustain its own people. Poverty is not an unfortunate side-effect of growth in India. Poverty in India is incomparably widespread and a part of life. The little progress and growth that account for 8% GDP growth rate, is largely due to foreign investments in India and is limited into Western establishments localized into metropolitan areas.

But that is not to suggest that India by itself is incapable of doing much. Of course, the investments in India are not out of charity. They are market holdings in an economy capable of clear growth. But that is not what we learn from our media.We are made to believe that most of India is coming out of poverty because of American intervention - a combination of foreign aid and monetary investment. India's growth is indeed tied to the growth of US, but the relationship is not out of charity or a cold-war era agreement. It is largely due to the way world is changing.

The impact of the kind of fear built against imaginary monsters like India and China are long lasting and extremely susceptible to political manipulation. One example is how Americans are made to fear about Iran’s possession of nuclear power; the American media chose not to mention the pact between India and America, which was not liked by the most of European countries as it gave undue advantage to India despite it’s refusal to sign the test-ban treaty. People are made to fear the outsourcing (something that apparently jeopardizes American interests but is widely accepted in the corporate world) and the nuclear proliferation (in India’s case it was favored by the corporate America) at the same time, yet it is institutions in the US itself that are are responsible for these developments in the East. Media doesn't offer any transparency in those matters. It offers us contradictory yet comfortable truths that we want to believe in.

baghmati

2009-05-11T14:09:00.000-07:00

My memories of baghmati river are that of fearful and hefty seasonal river as seen from a bridge in Bihar. In that trip to far east of india, bihar seemed a place deep into wilderness. Like in that scene of the movie Gandhi, I saw people taking their train rides on the top of the train. The pricing of tickets, the slip of schedules of those trains were too distant ideas for the people who rode those trains. Baghmati was an image of that fearful wilderness.

In that same trip, we had met an old couple, who were traveling for free in the first class compartment. The old man had a privilege, of having been a freedom fighter against the British. Later in my life, I would recall how strange it sounded to have fought against the british to be rewarded with what british had left. It sounded preposterous for once, but if you traveled with that old man, who seemed unmoved with the scorching heat or the wilderness and chaos that bothered me, you would realize how modest was a free ticket as a reward to his spirits.

His wife told me that baghmati changes its course every year and causes a lot of havoc that way. It could more formally be considered as a seasonal flood. But the woman talked about baghmati with a sense of comfort and acceptance of the floods. She might not have known science but she knew that if flooding stops the regular alluvialization of the lands would stop and we would all starve anyways. It was that acceptance of natural calamities that still amazes me.

It is unique and somewhat distinctive of the Eastern culture. This photograph just seemed to have put all of that in perspective.

hv world affairs council

2009-02-21T00:29:00.001-08:00

I was listening to Haviland smith earlier today. By the time his talk was over, I had started building hopes for a better foreign policy. The talk didn't demonstrate his great oratory abilities nor did it have any rhetoric or ideology that he was vouching for.

Haviland's was merely an introspection into the foreign policy of US in the past 8 years. He was neither like those liberals who think we should do nothing but charity in rest of the world, nor like the republicans he constantly called horribly incorrect. At one time he called the Islamic society as repressive and inherently different from the Western democracies. He was thinking of a solution along those lines.

He said something that I had been dying to listen to from someone more mature than me -that language is important. He condemned the use of words like war-against-terror or rogue-nations. Avoiding such jingoism in language would only help a foreign policy.

He questioned the assertion, both of media and administration that Muslims essentially hate the West. He actually said that Arabs have hardly ever expressed much hatred for America ; them being the core of Islamic world.

Paris on street view!!

2009-01-21T15:08:00.001-08:00

I am rejoiced to discover Paris on street view... think I am going to roam around a little bit.

Click here!

gmail's intelligent text parsing

2009-01-19T22:31:00.000-08:00

Some really smart and impressive text-parsing going on at gmail.
Here is what I typed to a friend :

I was off Monday and had a relaxed long weekend ... but usually that means a lot of work on Tuesday :( I was thinking may be we should get together after you are back from your trip .. I could still make it to the movie tomorrow - but it might get somewhat late (6:30 at best) - wasn't sure if that would work for you.

Google automatically interprets this text and asks me if I still want to mark Tuesday, 6:30 pm on my calendar as the following event:

movie but it might get...
Tue Jan 20, 2009 6:30pm

That is the best title I could have thought about this (probable) event myself.

easy to dance ...

2008-12-12T11:12:00.000-08:00

It is easier to be happy. It is easier to just dance and hang out than it is to do anything else. It is easier to just dance and then talk about how it felt. It is easier to talk about strength and guidance that took you to dance, because that is what matters to everyone. There is no loneliness and depression for the dancer, because he already resides in everyone.

It is easier, to let the surroundings inspire and drive you so that you don't have time to think how to respond. You don’t need the alcohol to lose control. You don't have to pretend because you either embraced it or rejected it. You don’t even know what pretense really means. You don't worry about what to say because there are enough things around you that make you talk.

Then you are not afraid of being defeated in the game, because you have your move and there is nothing to worry about. When there are no games to lose, the team spirit develops by itself. You could look back and think what a hypocrite you’ve become now that you don’t know who pretends and pretends what. None of that matters any more.

You become more desirable, you are sexier. You are social and you know what people want. You are just one of them, and yet you are best of them all. You are rich and you are attractive. You are what you once longed to have become. You are what you were once so envious of.

But I wish it was that easy to dance.

money in new york

2008-12-11T23:41:00.000-08:00

Despite having had a small town, third-world background I think I have unconsciously so, got acclimatized to the city-life. Slowly I see that it is more than just acclimatization that has happened over this decade that I spent in the city. I see things differently now, very different from how I would have when I first moved here.

A thing about the big city that bothered me a great deal when I was a kid was the comfort with which city folks set money to be the most important goal in their lives, or judge everything on grounds of money. I used to think that dreaming of big money is really a lot about being superficial.

Looking back I think it could have been because of having been brought up in a culture where I was not encouraged to aspire. I was made to choose one amongst the few jobs that were offered to me. Success was achieved by adaptability, not through working to make one's dreams come true.

I still feel sometimes that I wasn't encouraged enough to be doing what I absolutely loved to do. Through years of subjugation and colonial exploitation, it was actually discouraged in my circles if someone broke free of norms and started anything with a fresh perspective. When I came to the city, I couldn't help but notice that people were not doing anything halfheartedly. If you were into something then it is so because you absolutely love it or at least convinced yourself that you do. Nobody chases money as such. Everyone is doing what they absolutely love to do. Money is only a measure of how good oneself is. It was surprising to see that dreaming to make money in the city is not at all about being superficial. It was actually quite the opposite.

It was difficult for me to choose what I wanted to do. At the point where I was I felt that I hadn't have enough opportunities or didn't feel confidence about myself to take charge of things - mostly because of personality and partly because of the background. Those two factors might not have been completely unrelated. But with time, I had chosen a way and was willing to make sacrifices for choosing what I loved to do.

I remember having loved analysis a lot. When I talked about things they were abstract things - things that most people were not ready to grasp. People didn't like that. I still loved it. A human being rooted in his history and ready to understand his aspirations. I felt a sense of bliss in being that way. I swayed from being a conservative to being a liberal and sometimes a moderate, but all this while I think I maintained a sense of honest curiosity, something that I was made to develop by training in science.

An education in science does give you quite a bit of money, but not a whole lot. No matter how good you are at something you have to be entrepreneurial after one point. I don't seem to have the opportunity, but if I am positive, I might grab an opportunity if I see one. But being extremely analytical makes you a cynic and somewhat of a pessimist, mostly because you can't connect with many people.

I love this energy and vigor of the city, but because of my very nature I can't lie to people that I don't like making so much money. That usually hinders the process of adaptation to the city life and I think that is where I am at this point.

thoughts before bed...

2008-12-10T22:08:00.000-08:00

The only thing that I am absolutely sure in life is that I have liked and continue liking to be confused. I love getting into dilemmas. If the life of my lonely self bound within the walls of my desolate apartment in south west Virginia once began appearing somewhat dark, then with this new life in the big city my self tries to seek silence in the sea of people that it is submerged in. I had chosen to move, scared of my diminishing self, to give it a chance to rediscover itself. But now the more it feels lost in the labyrinthine city, the less meaningful it finds things to be. Would it be darker than before?

It could just be that I get bored with things after a while. Jaded and dazed I seek more connection among people. I could not ever don superficiality, so now I think that pretending to be something else could transform me fundamentally. I still seek to fulfill the absolute desires that I feel. The more I wish to become a part of my surroundings (possibly with a bit of pretense) the better I want to understand these basic desires. But since I like being confused and I still feel the pretense, I also start rejecting the desires that I perceive to be alien, those that are either invented by me or perceived to be imposed on me by others. I seek to define myself with things that I like and by rejecting what I don't like.

The dilemma is because I have rejected lot of what I don't approve and I think if I ever have tried to embrace what is outside of what I understand. I have rejected people because of my preconceived notions about them and I have refrained from getting closer to people in fear of imminent failures. What is this self really trying to achieve. What is its true character that it should live. Kierkegaard may have the answer but he is very obvious, in that he rejects the problem itself. Denying the problem hardly ever solves it.

I think following passions is the right thing to do, but passions are rooted in the environment. If I write music, how can it be not about what normal people like? If I write, how can I reject populism of art? How can I enjoy anything if I seek more than enjoyment from what I do? Absolute passions don't exist. But are there no passions to be followed then? I hate being existential, but is thinking this itself the passion of being?

I continue to be confused because life means nothing without a passion and passion itself diffuses the self into nothingness.

The solution could be along these lines - I just need to be with people much as I like to think. The equivalence of those two conditions bridges all the gaps in between. We don't need to think that we need to think, much the way we don't need to think that we need to be with people. If that be the case, passions roll out and self restructures itself. The dream of silence can be met only if all desires meet fulfillment and the likelihood of both is equally and dismally minimal.

A friendly Map

2008-11-25T08:11:00.000-08:00

I have been working on this idea that I haven't found enough devlopers for. The development is thus quite slow and of course, I haven't been able to get any investments either.

But here is the idea anyways. When you visit a new city (for purely tourist purposes) you have little idea of where your favorite places can be. Of course, it takes time to find out what your favorites are. But what if a friend could tell you where you should go, a friend who has known you for years and understands what kind of places you would be really interested in. If you are an art-lover like me, the friend would've told you about the museums and ongoing exhibition in the city, or may be a journey to the house of a famous architect outside the city followed by relaxing in a neighborhood bar where mostly artists hang out.

Well the idea is to have a website do that for you. networking websites like facebook, orkut already know a lot about you. They know what kind of a person are you and what kind of people you would share your interests with. Even if they don't a little survey can tell a lot about your personality, objectively.

I came up with a clustering algorithm, in order to organize people in different categories. There are no rankings of parameters in the whole algorithms. Everything is based on the distance from individuals. In other words, the algorithm doesn't try to calculate how much you like something but instead it only purports how far are you from a museum lover or a party animal (a distance metric based on the feature vector in the clustering).

One the algorithm discovers your personality - it suggests you what places you should go, fetches schedules from the museum sites and tells you what train to take. If the trains are not running, it tells you what other means you can take. It calculates fare as much as you can and adjusts the costs that you have already given to you. It even takes the weather forecasts and asks you not to go to the park when its raining... and a lot more.

Tell me which real friend would do that much for you..

The opposing argument is one that favors uncertainty. Of course, there is fun in serendipity. Nothing takes away the joy of discovering things that you hadn't planned. But i mean, you can't plan for accidental discoveries and that doesn't make planning worthless.

Hay Bale

2008-11-09T12:29:00.001-08:00

Hay Bale
Originally uploaded by rachel sian

Izaura

2008-11-08T19:58:00.001-08:00

A woman that sings in João Gilberto's sounds - Izaura - sounds like someone striking a glass gently. If I close my eyes I can see her wavy hairs, deep dark eyes, thin lips, a beatifully carved nose all that.. from just the very deep soothing voice. Wonder how the song tells all that to me.

I hate just photographs...

2008-11-04T18:07:00.000-08:00

I just realised I hate photography, and I hate it so bad now. I don't see the point taking photographs of things happening around me. I hate photographs that say nothing and have no point. Except for being a journalist or being a peeping Tom, I don't see any reason for being a photographer.

If you're taking photographs of your family, kids or a marriage, you shouldn't consider yourself a photographer ever. That's yet another social responsibility that you're undertaking that you might get some appreciation for. How does that make you an artist? or your event photography a work of art. If it does, then I hate art too.

English in Hindi and vice versa...

2008-11-02T16:37:00.001-08:00

Well, as the riches of India (when it was not poor, that is) went into the pockets of East India company's entrepreneurial officers, a lot of native words slipped into the language of the rulers as well. They were so many that some people took the effort to compile a dictionary out of it (reportedly with ~2000 words) and called it Hobson-Jobson (an English word now, that derives from hai hussain!hai hussain- sort of a crying that shia muslims in the subcontinent performed during Muharram). This dictionary dates back somewhere in 19th century, during when india was still pretty much a discovery for Europe.

Of course, hindustani wasn't the only contributor with words like Hopper (appam) and pariah (from Tamil) getting into the Brit. English.

Feel free to browse the dictionary:

http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/hobsonjobson/

As for the English-isms of Hindi, a plenty of words have same roots despite the two languages not having exchanged directly. Take an example of the words bind / bandhan, sharkara-shakkar/sugar or sarp/serpent. The words have same IE roots. Apart from those, some words from Urdu might bear semitic roots that eventually show up in English (other than "imports" like coffee, jasmine, syrup[shorba]).

All that said, here is something I want to say about the non-Englishness of Hindi. Urdu/Hindi speakers are somewhat less friendly to Anglicizaton but that is really not be the reason why they still continue to use words like 'Ruus' (Russia), BartanI (Britain), Yunan (greece) or turq (Turkey) whether in common parlance or in writing.

Bengali and Eastern Hindi

2008-10-29T22:27:00.000-07:00

Inspired by Language Log (and at times, being disappointed with its content too) I have started to log my own observations in South Asian languages.

My first observation is a simple one. I remember from my times in Varanasi, that the local dialects used "man karna" a lot. man kare to kar lo, man nahin kar rahaa. I was listening to an excerpt from Sunil Gangopadhyaya's ShreshTha galpa. I found that the same phrase is used a lot in Bangla too. The dialects in Bihar are quite similar to Bangla, but I wasn't aware that effects are reflected into far as Varanasi. The haven't heard this phrase being used in most of the khadi boli dialects and frankly not very frequently in literature either.

Urdu speakers hardly seem to use this phrase. I might theorize that man is not suited to Islamic metaphysics, but that is merely a speculation even though man is a Sanskrit word and has not much in common with Persian counterparts either.

Of course, usually one would find the official Hindi using an excessive lot of loan words from Bengali. In the excerpt itself, words like 'vastutaH','vyApAr','jal','nadi teere' that I hear in spoken bangla a lot, are reserved for official Hindi and are never used by Hindi speakers in their regular language (spoken Hindi would be replete with Urdu equivalents instead).

sanskrit dictionary

2008-10-27T22:37:00.000-07:00

A great project. Finally we have a sanskrit dictionary that is really usable.

http://spokensanskrit.de/

A list of other interesting projects:

http://www.sanskrit-lexicon.uni-koeln.de/
http://sanskritdocuments.org/doc_z_misc_subhaashita/

A track of BBC's language

2008-10-27T17:01:00.000-07:00

I really have no hopes from Fox News, CNN and such as far as the just use of language goes. The American media openly admits that they want to use connotative terms more than denotative ones, because it is indeed their utmost responsibility to engineer a thought (and not letting the readers cultivate one).

A time when I was checking CNN website extremely regularly (probably every two minutes, for a 6 hrs) was when the shooting at Virginia Tech had happened. I had graduated from there only an year ago and I was concerned and dismayed not just because I still had friends studying there. 2 hrs after the shoot out happened, the news agencies had started checking the background of the student. The headlines of all major newspapers were reporting the details of Cho, the student responsible for the massacre. It was unveiled in a matter of minutes by CNN that, " The killer came from Korea at ten".

The news item was up only for a few minutes, obviously because of its political incorrectness. But it was enough for me to infer how deeply aberrant our media correspondents really are. Saying that "the killer is an immigrant from Korea" is a lot different from saying "the killer came from Korea" even though the facts are exactly the same. The latter is akin to suggesting that Cho was a killer when he was 10. Him coming from Korea implies that the killers are more likely to come from Korea.

Of course most people don't take it that far. But such subliminal manipulation does work most of the time (e.g. in engineering a sense of xenophobia in this case). However this happens to be a very poor example, the reason why the item was removed almost immediately.

American media is full of such connotations in their reporting. Most of the times people won't realize that they are being fed the us-vs-them ideology while they are casually reading the newspapers. My own friends have gone from mid-conservative to extreme right just by choosing to be more informed about the world events. It is not hard to find an American who thinks that everyone except some European countries hates America.

The propaganda machines once employed in South American and other satellite countries are now so mainstream that it is hard to be unprejudiced about almost anything. I myself have admittedly started to have a skewed view of the Muslim world, after being fed years and years of negative stereotyping.

I had assumed for a long time that the news in Britain and other European countries would be able to survive this extreme right scheme. But unfortunately that isn't the case for BBC.

BBC has repeatedly followed the same tactics as major American media over time. I would've thought that this, apart from usual sarcasm was reserved only for the third world countries, but it surely isn't the case, after I started taking a closer look at the coverage of war and economy at BBC. ( For an example on the third-world country, if BBC finds some villagers in the most backward parts of Bihar, India performing a witchhunt, the headlines might be - Indian witch-hunt being curbed by the govt ) . I would try to log more real examples by editing this post, but here are a few recent ones :

"Passenger's arm sucked down French train toilet"

-Mind you, it is the french train toilet, not the train toilet in France ( but the british have a good sense of humor of course)

Two Britons found guilty of having sex on a Dubai beach

- The britons were guilty of breaking the law, not of having sex.

The preference of word "downturn" over "recession" is actually official for BBC. That might I say, is only the tip of the iceberg.

Updated (on Nov 01,2008 ):
--
BBC just came up with an item that is very close to the example that I had provided:

Pakistan "child wedding" halted
--
Food body says 'avoid Irish pork'
--

Ancient Persians 'gassed Romans' - As the report says it were the roman soldiers that were gassed.

Indian Owl Problem. Apparently Indians like to sacrifice owls for their "black-magic" rituals. I hadn't known about it and still don't know anyone would would do something like that, but according to BBC that is something widely popular in India. Rather funny to see this 16th century style smearing of Indian "pagan" practices.

Mishra's travel to Hong-Kong - why aren't there enough writers in HK

2008-10-25T23:05:00.000-07:00

Mishra finds the answer to be very simple - (In HK)"economic benefit is the core value for all decision-making, and development is the sole ideology." There isn't quite as much inspiration for any artistic pursuit.

Well Mishra certainly is good at defending his well-maintained position on the improper economic growth in Asia. He manages to get his stance through in all of his writings - that the recent development of Asia is not linked to its culture. It really is a sort of clash between its past and the present - the reason why, as he articulates, the recent development of East isn't quite as fulfilling as the era of enlightenment had been to Europe. Thus he finds the paradigm of emerging-superpower(s) to be fundamentally flawed. Sometime he has asserted that the results of this neo-richness can be far more undesirable than a bit of discontent arising out of hedonistic pursuits i.e. when the reconstruction proves to be detrimental to the civilization either through undermining of human rights or with forced continuation of decayed systems.

Except the way he puts these points I do share these views with him. I only wish I had the energy, flair and time as Mishra's to explain that to more people. Here on nytimes travel mag, he talks about the neo-richness of Hong-Kong. He explains how HK has surpassed New York but still longs to produce a writer of international fame.

The Money Pit

He is convinced that,

"a society of such material plenitude would eventually foster spiritual longings that could not be appeased by the mere accumulation of goods — a historical lesson that may be useful to remember as Hong Kong hurtles, as apparently heedlessly as ever, toward the future. "

Red!!!

2008-10-25T20:58:00.001-07:00

Red!!!
Originally uploaded by Roshans Album

A great shot. I wonder where this is.

It is hard to find buildings like these. I wish people were being more creative at least when building their own houses. Urban architecture seems getting lost into vapid materialism one bolstered with Home-Depot products and Ikea furniture.

I tend to think that modern architecture tries to please everyone a bit too much and thus like most others who do that comes up with things that are bland and possibly characterless. It could be that it is guided too much by science in its attempt to project a realism that is rationally justified and has minimal attributes.

I don't see anything wrong with minimalism but if people were just a bit more creative and just preserved the idea of building a house and not just buying or acquiring it, the houses would have become more beautiful by themselves. Beauty lies in beholders eyes after all.

Who knows we probably would have escaped the current financial crisis had the idea of a house as a place to live and not to gamble had prevailed.

random bit about Hippocrates I read on BBC

2008-10-25T20:19:00.000-07:00

Apollo, the god of healing, fell in love with a human, Coronis. In his absence, Apollo sent a white crow to look after her. When the crow informed Apollo that Coronis loved another man, Apollo's rage turned the crow black.

To avenge her brother, Apollo's sister shot Coronis with an arrow and, as she lay dying, Coronis told Apollo that she was bearing his child. Although Apollo could not save Coronis, he rescued the unborn child, Asclepius. Hygieia, the goddess of health, and Panacea, the goddess of cures, are the daughters of Asclepius.

According to legend, Hippocrates was a descendent of one of Asclepius' sons.

I find it very interesting that a lot of words in our modern languages are based on names of goddesses. Fortuna bears the roots of the word fortune while the word panacea is unchanged both in meaning and form.

In my own native tongue (Sanskritic Hindi) this tendency is much more prevalent possibly due to absence of Christianity or late arrival of monotheism in the area. As I was telling a friend a few days back the word for power is actually name of a goddess and is of feminine gender. Male acquire power by worshipping the goddess. Shakti, the goddess, is power itself, that incarnates herself in every woman.

But that is only one observation I have made from the above note on Greek paganist roots to modern medicine. I would follow up with other notes later...

Thomism by Russell

2008-10-22T21:17:00.003-07:00

According to St. Thomas the soul is not transmitted with the semen, but is created afresh with each man. There is, it is true, a difficulty: when a man is born out of wedlock, this seems to make God an accomplice in adultery. This objection, however, is only specious. There is a grave objection which troubled St. Augustine, and that is as to the transmission of original sin. It is the soul that sins, and if the soul is not transmitted, but created afresh, how can it inherit the sin of Adam? This is not discussed by St. Thomas.

- Bertrand Russell

My love for languages

2008-08-23T23:08:00.000-07:00

The thoughts are organized with metaphors. We could metaphorize everything but we draw boundaries around some to form units that can be used generically enough over our other observations. That is how words get formed. There are prefixes, suffixes and prepositions that we use to play with these. Our constructs are logical but our mind transcends them. Languages evolve by letting themselves challenged by the human mind. The language tries to bound all thought and the thoughts keep expanding the language.

A stale and dead language is where people have stopped thinking in; the thriving language is where people are thinking new ideas in.

Languages to me is an imprint of a society - a sink and exigesis of all the thoughts put in to the former by the latter. Lanuage of an era is a snapshot in time of the society. Knowing the language is like reading the blue-print of a society.

Brahman Varanasi

2008-08-23T20:29:00.001-07:00

Brahman Varanasi
Oiginally uploaded by shawshots

One of the most captivating portraits I have come across on the internet browsing the photos of the ghats of Ganga.

Journey to past

2008-08-17T13:22:00.000-07:00

A land that I hadn't known about - amidst the remains of an ancient civilization - a civilization that still continues to exist but has lost all connection with its past. It retains these remains in the false hope of a kind of revival. But it all never made any sense to anyone. People in this land keep doing their rituals the way they once did in their heydays. But in this time neither the glory nor the faith exists.

I was made to walk through these lands and I had fallen in love with its history. The history was fascinating but there was nothing in the present that I could have embraced. It is true that I did absorb a lot from its present with all the time I spent there. But I also knew that there was nothing that would have come out of this love affair with an ancient probably non-existent city. I knew that it would only lead me to perdition and misery if I kept myself connected to the place. There was nothing in this place that I wanted myself to associate with.

Still, on that day, a revelation told me that my future is limited (if not determined) by my past in the city. I can't run away from all what I had learned having lived in this abandoned city. I can influence others and be influenced by them, but there is that part of me which is totally owned by my past, that which would always be untouched by anything.

My father led this trip to the place that I had never known, the place that holds the key to my future. I want to know about that place much as I want to know about the limits of my own world and my ambitions. My dad started the trip from a familiar place - near a ghat where I was asked to wait for some preparations to happen just like I used to be in the days of my childhood. The hustle-bustle of the city was never pleasant to me but I had learned to sense a kind of music arising out of it. I had actually started missing it from all these years I had been away from this world of antiquity.

The next stage of the trip is hard to remember - I was sitting on the back-set of a two-wheeled vehicle - could've been the scooter that my dad used to have. The surroundings seemed bizarre and didn't appear very clear the way my dad was driving this green vehicle. After some time the surroundings started sounding familiar - may be my mind wasn't able to recollect things so fast. But it all sounded familiar now, like it all was known to me, like I was destined to be on this ride. But I still didn't know where I was heading to even though surroundings were all very familiar now - the old temple, the pan-shop, the binding services store, the drawing emporium, the book store, the muslim school, another temple. It all was coming back to me.

The last few miles of this ride were to be more bizarre. There was a steep hill, the one like Kamakhya in Gauhati except that there are no tantrics here. There is no much noise here which makes me believe that there are no sacrifices being done here. My dad still thinks looking at animals being killed is not good for me or anyone. If there were to be sacrifices in this place I wouldn't have been taken here. There is a steep slope and it only becomes steeper as we go further. At some point I wonder if we are still approachable with gravity. But my mind is not occupied by the centripetal and frictional forces right now, I am just thinking about the outcome of this journey.

We are in a tunnel of some kind and I have completely lost the sense of direction. I feel weightless and I wonder if I am still limited by the space or the time. I still long for the past, the city even though nothing would've existed if there was no space or time. My dad has not shut down the vehicle and its probably in the neutral gear with its engine still on. That usually means I don't have a lot of time to spend here. I gaze at the walls of the tunnel. I now think its a cave because tunnels are not made of stone any more. I think this must be the end of the tunnel even though I don't see it. This place is so lit up after all. I can now see something written on the wall. It takes time to get used to light when you've been in darkness so long.

There was my future inscribed for me, an result from astrology that was lost when I was young. My knowledge of sanskrit and math made me understand that the earlier calculations were all wrong but there was one pundit who had got it right, one who didn't live too long to communicate my future to anyone. It was through some mystical experience that my dad told me that I only I could've uncoded my future. And now I could find it written here in the classic script as if it has been there forever, undiscovered by any one. I can say for sure that it is for me because it spells my mom's and my dad's name right; it mentions the place and time of my birth to reasonable accuracy. It mentions the positions of nakshatras very descriptively. I now realize how fortunate I have been, to have known what millions before me had aspired to know. I came here to know my limits and I have all the answers now. My cynicism would die out like once all hopes died for me. I would die peacefully in an unconscious state. There might be much pain inside of me, but I would never be conscious to feel it. It is hard to say everything that I feel at this point. But it is strange indeed that I am so happy to know about my death. It is much stranger that I feel more optimistic after having known my limits.

for lack of words...

2008-08-15T17:45:00.000-07:00

It is possibly due to the job at the bank that I don’t feel the need to write my blog any more. When I look back I sometimes wonder if something had happened to all my frustrations and discontent which would get diffused into my blog through some incoherent writing. Over time I have even wondered if I introspect any more at all.

No more is that thrust which would push down words into a post despite the lack of any structure or verity in the thoughts. No more is that overload of ideas in my mind that would desperately and inaccurately translate into language only to be thrown vehemently over the page.

It probably happens with everyone at some point in their life. I am not sure if I would call this composure of some kind and it would be unjust to consider this lack of activity some kind of lethargy either. I like to think, despite all my doubts that this is a resolution of a kind. But that can be said for any mental state that I am in or have been in.

But I like this new state which believes in activity more than reflection; one that values utility more than rhetoric. Words are hardly needed any more. The fewer they are the more valuable they get.

San Jose

2008-07-12T19:12:00.001-07:00

San Jose
Originally uploaded by anuragr

The half-moon beach in San Jose is the first beach I have been to which is misty all through the year. It felt very different partly because of the amazement that it is to get to a beach with green water and dusky sand after driving for hours between clouds and mountains.

VIEWPOINT - Waiting for Rains !

2008-07-12T19:06:00.001-07:00

VIEWPOINT - Waiting for Rains !
Originally uploaded by ezee as hell

A sort of convergence of clouds and the green - eventuality or hope.

A shot from the 30 Rock

2008-06-22T13:30:00.001-07:00

That's right. This is an office.

2008-05-25T12:00:00.000-07:00

Summer in New York is great as usual, but I still miss the snow (My apartment in the pic).

Newcastle cast

2008-05-25T11:56:00.000-07:00

The whole star cast of NewCastle at Tribeca film festival.

to nothingness and back...

2008-04-27T10:42:00.000-07:00

The only form of existentialism that I have gathered is probably due to the sense of disconnection I have felt. It reasserts itself when I watch Bergman or read Camus. It arises due to the disconnection from my own surroundings - this perceived meaninglessnes of all relationships feelings and passions.

When you have been disconnected for so long then your newer connections happen to be mere make-beliefs - making up a consciously chosen or sometimes a conceived reality. You get involved in people, their activities and lives even though you realize at all times that they all mean nothing. A certain goal or a certain requirement (not necessarily yours) was what drove you there and it would have no significance after the fulfillment (not necessarily yours). What then is anything for? With no love, passion and emotions what really separates life from death.

Kierkegaard says that we judge others' emotions with rationality but don't want others to do that for our emotions. Its not just selfishness it is the inherent paradox in rationalization of human needs. If everything is just needs and fulfillments, where is the space for emotions?

My short encounter with Christianity does try to achieve an answer. I think that if God (despite the vagueness and ambiguity that is associated with it) is not believed to be the prime motivator of everything one tends to lose the belief that we are capable of changing anything in this world. Everything becomes deterministic - past determines the present and the present determines the future. Everything is need and fulfillment - the emotions become a matter belief - one like that in God Himself. One's connection with God in all its innocence is a strong force that maintains the essential adherence to the dynamics of this world (whatsoever little we may understand of it). With belief in God, we believe in ourselves and tend to feel the control over this world. It might all indeed be fake but it is what works for most people. For the most part, believing in God is only as incorrect as believing in oneself.

However this is far I can get with existentialism. Existentialists (those that I have known) tend to deny rationality yet continue to harness what rationality provides. There lies a hypocrisy. But so would be the case with those who deny emotionality on one hand (in all their actions) and then just assert "God" on a superficial level - just by saying the "words" but not really believing in any of sense of them. Giving a name to the problem is never a solution. Saying that "God" governs everything doesn't free us from the responsibility of understanding the order of this universe. There is a hypocrisy in considering knowledge as solely determinable by rationality but still having beliefs or asserting a spiritual power.

Any belief that we hold has to be seen in actions as well. Thus our actions and institutions should reflect what we believe. There are problems, in leaving beliefs as the residue of ratiocination.

For me rationalization could be inadequate but it definitely isn't unnecessary. We need rationality to understand things however we do need to understand what we believe or admit that we do believe. Our institutions need to give way to our beliefs for their own sake. Rationality is essential for our understanding and it probably is the only medium we can trust upon (it would be paradoxical to say it isn't so). Yet we do need to acknowledge our beliefs and prejudices that we choose to live with. It is not "wrong" to have a perspective, I think; but to admit the perspective is as "right" as we can be.

Personality shifts

2008-02-13T17:29:00.001-08:00

I re-took a stupid personality test that I had taken two years back and I found out that I am not extremely schizoid any more. I am rather OK now, except that I have become mildly paranoid, which is OK because that is what I want to be.

It probably implies that I am not the angry and sad guy that I used to be just about two years back.

with inadvertence ...

2008-02-13T16:30:00.000-08:00

Somehow over last few years without making any conscious attempts I have been able to tell if any word has germanic roots or not. It is not a hard thing to do, if you are a linguist / etymologist; but for what I am, an "enthusiast" at most, it should be considered no less than an achievement since its done so inadvertently.

In retrospect I started working on my English vocabulary about 4 years back, when I felt my vocabulary was too limited and its only use had been to translate my thoughts from my native language - Hindi. I took a more sophisticated way towards improving my vocabulary, not because the crude way of memorizing the words painfully was too easy for me, but rather because contrarily it was impossible for me to remember word-meanings ever since my childhood days.

Since memorizing dictionary meanings was neither feasible nor interesting for me, I took the rather long way. I just took the OED and traced the whole history of a new word. I could then understand that when someone makes vitriolic remarks, s/he is actually just reusing the medieval sense of throwing vitriol. Obviously vitriol is sparingly used in modern English, but the word 'vitriolic' is quite common and when used could be considered a sign of your command on English language.

I rather naively, observed that almost all sophisticated words (esp those "power" words from law, politics and economics) in English had to have latin roots. Romans didn't just have better armies than Germanic tribes, I thought - they also had a more organized language. Latin grammar easily would have prevailed all over Europe. For English, however this was an uninformed speculated generilization. English was transformed more because of the French invasion (Norman conquest of England in 1066 by Duke William II and the subsequent replacement of the Anglo-Saxon rule). Anglo-Norman and Anglo-Saxon languages then combined to become what was later to be known as Middle-English. A lot of English words thus show roots in French.

I was excited to observe that all English words ending in -ive were directly (or rather shamelessly, I thought) borrowed from French words. Old French positif, affirmatif were brought into English (and modern French) as positive and affirmative respectively, for example. This was just one of the many observations that I made by myself.

All this was enough to make me feel deeply interested in the French language. While learning French I realized that the old French mostly used the corresponding Latin words almost unchanged. An improved French vocabulary eventually enriched my knowledge-bank of Latin roots too as a result.

This wasn't over yet. My interactions with a few other enthusiasts on an online community whetted my appetite for Indo-European etymology. I was thrilled to observe that so many of Sanskrit words (Sanskrit: mother of most South Asian languages) shared roots with Latin words. With later studies in Latin grammar, I discovered that the grammatical similarities in Latin and Sanskrit were even more conspicuous. This was inexplicable for me. I thought that Tower-of-Babel could be the only possible answer to such striking and profound similarities.

Then this crazy idea came to my mind - to see if there could a sanskrit way of speaking latin- and hence speaking English too. After researching a little bit, I realized that it isn't just possible. The way words are formed, they follow a certain path in history. There are metaphorical and allegorical remarks that go into formation and popularization of a word. I might choose a parallel in another language, but that doesn't necessarily reject or isolate the history of the word in the source language. That explains why I always felt uncomfortable with certain words in Hindi that were translated from English (some Biblical words especially) but didn't make any sense in the native language. They were just transplants of unknown origin and always failed to make the same impact as the original English word.

Smithsonian

2008-02-10T22:44:00.000-08:00

Who knew that Kongorikishi (Aka nio) was the one to protect Buddha while the latter's visit to India. Who even knew that Buddha would have to be "protected" in his own birthplace - the place that he first preached at. It took me a visit to this museum at the Smithsonian to realize all that. There is this beautiful tall statue of Kongorikishi and his brother, who ruled the two kingdoms in Japan, and helped Buddha in spreading his message.

After taking a look at this fabulous collection of Asian arts in the Smithsonian institution, I visited other museums in the area. All of these museums are free to public. Looking at these museums you can easily tell that they still don’t run out of funds at all.

I took special note of Thomas Wilmer Dewing, a nineteenth century artist who has some naturalist expressions of the female. It was quite interesting to see Algernon Charles Swinburne advocating the oil paintings of James Mcneill Whistler which promoted a euphoric stance in philosophy - aestheticism.

“Frida Kahlo” painted by Alfredo Arrequin was captivating. After looking at some of these great paintings by John Alexander, I would start to consider him one of the greatest painters of our times. His allegory of double life has been used in a lot of paintings (the most simply depicted in his work – the man of two lives) (http://johnalexanderstudio.com/main/prev/106?page=4 )

Jasper Francis Crospey was the land scape artist for the day. The other most interesting landscape artists was Robert Duncanson. Angel by Abbott Handerson Thayer appeared to be the most accurate depiction of an angel to me so far.

The real size piano by Thomas Wilmer Dewing is enchantingly beautiful. So are his other paintings. The landscape by Albert Bierstadt was a surrealistically pleasant depiction of nature’s beauty. One cannot expect this kind of a reality except in fairy tales.

Latest visit at MoMA

2007-12-18T21:43:00.000-08:00

This was my second trip to MoMA. It is definitely the best of art museums I have been to. It is classy, appealing and very accessible. This is the first time I got to use my corporate membership (thanks to my job at JPMorgan) so there is some excitement that comes from that.

Anyways, the special tour this time was that of Latin American artists. I discoverd Leon Ferrari whose most drawing seemed to be with some drooping lines and what I might say - blobs. Technically they are called drip drawings. Then there was Gego - Gertrude Goldschmidt - who played around with distorted geometrical patterns. Interestingly some later works of Leon Ferrari appeared to have mixed theses blobs and geometrical patterns. Mira Schendel and Helio Oiticica despite their abundance at MoMA, didn't interest me much.

The Photography tour was especially interesting, because of my recent interest in it. I discovered George Bernard who has this style of introducing some kind of noise (an unsettling effct, rather) in some of his photographs. I thought that was very distinct. Of course, Ansel Adams had those really great shots of geysers being shown at MoMA (old faithful geyser). I saw some shots of these abandoned buildings by Paul strand which are probably the best of the lot. I am not into portrait-photography so much but Josef Koudelka had some of the greatest portraits I have seen. Probably because he uses background to convey some character as well.

On the top floor, the Painters garden (Etchings by Lycian Freud) has some really interesting impressionism-style paintings. Garden in winter exhibits a b&w dense and noisy painting style.

In retrospect, Jackson Pollock has similar characteristics to that of Leon Ferrari but he is a painter , of course and uses color (oil paint) more freely that Leon Ferrari can (him being a publishing artist).

Among some of the striking images were those Jean Dubuffet which had this metallic touch to. Soul of the underground looks like made from cast iron residues, actually. Other than those, there are some fine mesh drawings with pencil by Seurat that are full of grandeur despite their simple means.

Vasil Kandinsky and Martin Puryer were two other new artists I hadn't paid more attention to before.

For a cup of coffee...

2007-12-18T21:22:00.000-08:00

It was the first time I have felt so uncomfortable in the new york streets that are always brimming with people. I tried walking to my gym last Saturday and it took me 10 minutes to cross just two blocks. For five minutes I was just standing amidst people with everyone around me probably as desperate as myself, to be just moving forward to their way. But of course, there were people with their kids showing them all the fanfare that holidays bring on the fifth avenue.

This is the picture of the most crowded Starbucks I have ever seen. Except in New york, people go to Starbucks to relax. I remember those fine evenings at school that I spent working on my math problems or writing assignments. The starbucks at new york fail to bring back any of those memories.

Mile sur mera tumhara

2007-11-25T20:55:00.001-08:00

Mile sur mera tumharaa, Thoo sur bane hamaraa....
sur kee nadhiyaan har disha se behkee saagar mein milee.
Baadalon ka roop leiker bharse halke halke...
Mile sur mera tumharaa.. thoo...
sur bane hamaara..
Mile sur mera tumhara...
Chaain taraj tahin nyay taraj ek but baniye saayen taraj
Tera sur mile mere sur de naal milke bane ek nava surtaal
Mile sur mera tumharaa....tho sur bane hamaara..
Mohnja sur tohi desa pyara mile jadein
geet ashaanjo madhur tarano bane tadein
Sur ka dariya bahte saagar me mile
badlaan da roop leike barasan holle haule

Isaindhal namm iruvarin suramum namadhakum..
Dhisai veru aanalum aazi ser aarugal Mugilai mazaiyai pozivadu pol isai ...
Namm isssaiiii....
Thik thakida thathikakidA....thaka thimi thaka junu
Nanna dhwanige ninna dhwani-ya, seridante namma dhwaniya..
Naa swaramu nee swaramu sangammamai, mana swaram ga avatarinchey
Ninde swaramum ningalude swaramum otthucheiyum Namudeya swaramai....
Tomaar shoor moder shoor srishti koroor koi ekshoor[2]...
Sriishti karoon woi katha
Toma mora swarer milan srishti kare chalbochatano
male sur jo taro maro, bane aapno sur niralo
majhya tumchya julta tara madhur suranchya barasti dhara
Sur ki nadiya har disha se behke saagar mein mile...
Baadlo ka roop leke barse halke halke..
Oh...Mile sur mera tumhara tho....sur bane hamara...
Mile Sur mera tumhara
tho sur bane hamara
tho sur bane hamara
tho sur bane hamara

on a thought train...

2007-08-29T20:46:00.000-07:00

I think thought trains are really interesting things. Some day we should be able to capture our thoughts in a mathematical langauge. I think with increased influence of logic on language, it would immensely help such analyses. We would be closer to understand our language in a way that it maps to the mental images that it attempts to represent.

Once we have a reasonably accurate representation of the sequence of our thoughts, we can define the macroscopic properties that would signify an overall idea, a belief or even a certain philosophy. I have conducted some experiments, and I think the only care that needs to be taken is in the interpretation of results. Any claim on results needs to be logically specified as well. This might be tricky, because the observations themselves are seldom logically defined. That is one thing we need to improve with our language(s).

Why religion won't really matter

2007-06-28T20:49:00.001-07:00

Most of what we consider the global terrorism is associated with Islamic activity. It wouldn't be inhuman or unjust to think that Islamic violence is a problem. Even if we don't want to admit that for whatever reasons there are good reasons to think that there are enough that are acting against Islamic fundamentalist probably in more violent ways.

Given that, I don't really see the point why we come back to this discussion of whose religion is more peaceful than the other. The problem is way beyond that discussion now.

As far as history goes, forced conversions all over the world had a lot of bloodshed involved. The reason I mention it is because it was about bloodshed and greed for power, and not glory and salvation. When you are in a war, why would you let your religion weaken you. Even the respected Hindu Brahmin parshuram (who you think won't eat meat) is believed to have cleared all Kshatriyas (warriors) from this earth not once but twice (a puranic story). So, there goes our hero of this religion of peace and harmony. One could go on talking about the goddesses of retribution and destruction but that is hardly the point I am trying to make.

As for Islam, you all are aware that there is an official procedure that Islamic forces followed moving Eastwards (on directions from God the Almighty Himself). Give the tribe a dawa (show them the glory of God, with the kind of fanfare that missionaries do these days) and if they don't accept Islam, fight them till they all die (rape women if you like, but that was strictly optional). There were hundreds of tribes (small ones) that were erased out of memory because they refused to accept Islam - this is no propaganda but known history, which no Islamic historian would deny.

The point is that there are heroes with swords and guns you can honor, no matter which religion you are. Thus, if Hindus in India are peaceful and Muslims aren't then its not because of their respective religions but because of the way they have responded to changing times.

Modern day Hinduism doesn't really mean a lot, its about selecting your heroes freely and comfortably; aspiring to make a lot of money (worshipping it rather). Needless to say, this has gone down very well with the changing times. Religion means a lot more to devout Muslims, or devout Catholics. So the problem really is that of social conditions, and social choices rather than of religious texts.

Why can't we thus, refrain from discussing religion when talking about terrorism? What is really the point in showing what part of religious texts encourage people to kill infidels, when we know that those who commit crimes don't need religious scriptures to perpetrate the crimes anyways?

One possible reason that I think is presented hereforth. If I were a historian (like I thought I would become once) it would have been real important to me to find out how religious texts influence a society. I could have too, derived pleasure from conjecturing that certain modern day practices are mere repititions of some ancient historic event. I could have for example, liked to consider that Muslim women are veiled only because Mohd. once doubted his younger wives, or that Hindu oppression of low-caste shudras is actually some sort of racial strife.

It is fun to do so but I am afraid it is of no more use than in coffee table conversations. The point (deriving a from a bit from cultural anthropolgy rather than history) is that the way a society reacts to, remembers or sometimes creates its history is a statement of its own consciousness. It is erroneous to reverse this argument (If I am allowed to be a bit more scientific, it is a chaotic system because people influence other people and yet get influenced by others).

Religious texts too, esp because of their historic nature in Abrahmic religions, should be seen as statements of a society's consciousness (and like I said, not in a strictly irreversible and opposite way). That is to say, it is the people who assign weight to their texts and not just the other way. For example, Bible won't mean a lot to many Westerners, so wouldn't grih-sutras to most Hindus, but Al-koran does mean a lot to many of the Muslims.

In defence of the scriptures, Abrahmic religious texts refer to the times of Egyptian decline (fall of an evil empire), the great exodus of Jewish people (discovering new arenas), their returning home, the fall of Constantine (another one)and the re-establishment of religion and faith (the primal utopia). The respective societies more or less do think in these terms, despite all the apparent problems that exist in these texts. Bible could be used to justify slavery and Islam could be, to justify rape and murder; still, neither of them can be formulated as reasons for such crimes, even from a totally rational, if not ethical, perspective.

The power of hybrids

2007-05-30T20:51:00.001-07:00

A new trend has picked up in cinema. Gone are the times when a movie would take up a Sherlock holmes project and solve the murder mystery with its super-cold actors enacting malcontented characters. The two movies that I can name from the top of my head are Ne dis a la personne, and des liben der anderen. Both these movies are essentially thrillers and have a prolong and deep suspense involved. Still the way stories unwind in these movies has a deep dramatic influence. The drama element is so significant at points that while you are in the movie, you wonder it its really a thriller you are watching.

In Ne dis a la personne, the protagonist is a suspect who has been charged of the murder of his own wife. In discovering who actually killed his wife, he unveils the characters of so many people around himself and his wife, discovers his own love for his wife and exhibits his own vulnerabilities. He unravels the stories of his life in this search for the real murderer of his wife.

The other movie, des liben der anderen is a much more powerful movie. It should be a pure espionage movie with national security guards and innocent victims in the socialistic East Germany. However, again, the movie becomes more about the love between two artists, their own love for their art, the overall appeal of art to humanity and the very values of humanity that even spies are not inert to. This is probably the best directed movie I have seen in the year so far.

I completely understand that there is nothing new in this idea, and such movies have been made in the past. But its just the gush of these movies which made me think of this as a somewhat of a new formula for popular cinema.

On RSS

2007-03-28T20:36:00.000-07:00

The bete noire

Despite having grown up listening to all the bad publicity RSS have recieved I think an organization of such a wide following and reach cannot be ridiculed away as a group of hatemongering lunatics.

What RSS arose from is introspection ofHindu society fueled with a Europestyle nationalism. It is a failed movement indeed, because of incompatibility with the powers at center (Indira Gandhi in particular), yet at the same time it bears in itself the roots of two major political parties in India.

Ideal Scapegoats

In a culture of vasudhaivkuTumbam it is ironic indeed that RSS and more violent organizations continue to exist. It could be attributed to the unrest in Hindu minds. Muslims become the ideal scapegoats in the Hindu revival because

1. Hatred is indeed the favorite vehicle of political agenda.

Given the conditions of a developing country spreading hatred is far more feasible than educating masses or imparting scientific temper. This is how our minds seem to work. There are indeed psychological roots to finding scapegoats (so one could argue that Muslims are important to right-wing in India the way homosexuals are to right-wing in US or immigrants are to the right-wing in Europe).

As most would agree every politician fiddles with it. If your country is on verge of disintegration you could declare an emergency, massacre all the ones in opposition and go on war with the closest foe to make people forget about it all (70sIndia). Also, wasn’t the movement for social equality in TN fueled with hatred towards Brahmins?

2. The Muslim allegiance to Hindu India has been debatable.

It is easy to bring Muslim adherence to the nation into doubt, far easier than it is for other non-Hindu communities like Sikhs, Parsis, non-caste Hindus/tribes or Christians.

The Inherent Problem

Islam doesn't respect pagan practices of the natives of any place, be it Arab, Persia or India. So you cannot expect Muslims to be very assimilating with idol worshipers. A true Muslim or a true Christian is always supposed to inform the pagans of their false beliefs and motivate them towards the truth of one Supreme Being.

Pagan roots are implicit

That being said even in the so called Islamic countries thediscussions of culture and philosophy rely on interplays between local pagan traditions (which is where pride in one's tribe, nationality etc. emanate from) and the institutions of Islam (code of law, religious ethics). Pagan roots of traditions and culture present a compromise with true Islam, the latter being so abstract that one cannot really lay down all-inclusive doctrines. So is the ase with Christianity in theWest. But since a complete Islamization of India didn't occur you don't find such dialectics in the Islam of South Asia. Muslims never felt the necessity to debate their religion with the natives of the region. Indian Christianity, on the other hand, has done a better job in naturalization and thus has been far more successful. The marriage of paganism and Christianity has been celebrated to an extent that cannot be elaborated in this post.

Incompatibility of Indian paganism

It is not unislamic for instance to praise one’s tribe or clan ifyou are an Arab. If you are a South Asian however, praising your culture might sound unislamic. Even if it is Turkey or Iran, the lands of Islamized nations have been roamed by mystics who had limited interest in Koranic disciplines and those who dared even to oppose the Islamic institutions. Most celebrated poets in the Islamic world were mystics; some of them declared themselves to be pagans, and remained popular despite strong discouragement by Islamic clerics. Prophet himself was known to have discouraged poetry. But all is acceptable in Islamic countries. Wherever Islam is main-stream, it is immersed into the culture of local people.

But it is not quite true for India. There are lower sections of society who haven’t received much from the higher sections of Muslims. The divide is not just economic between uunchijaat (high-caste muslims) and ajlaf jaat (lowcaste Muslims). High-caste Muslims consider themselves to be closer to Arabs racially as well as culturally. The Muslims from lower sections (julahas, ansaris) are looked down upon not just because of economic reasons but because of their associations with native tribes and Hindu culture (a notion somewhat similar to Rice Christians in West). So, although Islam has a different flavor in every region (culturally Bangladeshi Muslims are as different from Pakistani Muslims, as are Bengalis from Punjabis) there is what one may consider the Arab-centricity of Islam in high-class South Asian Muslims.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise therefore, if institutions like Deobandi tabligh declare expression of pride in India as a nation to be un-islamic, or if singing the pagan song of vandematram becomes officially against the command of God. It is ironic indeed that as an essential part of their regional theater, Ramayana could be read and enjoyed by Indonesian Muslims, but it would never be brought out of the “pagan literature” epithet in South Asia itself.

The point, still, is that if Islam was main-stream in India the same things could have taken a different path. In Arabia for example,a lot of songs praising pagan-gods that were popular amongst people were preserved with only removal of references to Ozza or Allat (the Arab pagan gods) and placement of addresses to Allah instead. Such accommodation didn’t happen in India because Islam was never her primary religion, and she doesn't have a history like Arabs or Persians where in she had the opportunity to have used Islam to strengthen and uniform the South Asian culture. Islam took a very different path in India, due to various reasons, as I would further elaborate.

Historical roots to the problem

The reason that the integration of Islam in India didn't happen as it did in the rest of the Islamic world is that Islam couldn't dominate completely in India. It definitely transformed the culture of North India, and brought into existence what we consider the Hindustani culture today, by having ever lasting influences on language, literature and architecture. Still Islam in India having spread into lower sections primarily due to Sufi saints could not annihilate the culture of lower sections completely. Everyone except Aurangzeb who ruled India, knew that it would be hard to convert Hindus en masse even after massacring Brahmins, defeating or appeasing rajputs, razing down temples and defaming local gods(a technique that worked really well everywhere else). More importantly, by the time Islamic conquest of India got completed, there were problems in Baghdad (the seat of Caliphate) and India couldn’t be further Islamized.

The result was a miscellany of half-converted Muslims in India. It is only in South Asia for example, that caste is of importance even among devout Muslims, a concept that, technically speaking, is more anti-islamic than pride in nationality. There is indeed a confusion among Muslims of South Asia which has been of far more serious consequences.

Pakistani equivalence

One can’t really view the problem with complete isolation of Pakistan-a country that tried to perpetuate the disconnection of South Asian Muslims from nativeculture. Although (in my personal opinion) Pakistan started with better national establishments than India. It was completely Islamic, yet liberal enough for a democratic setup at its birth. Pakistan could indeed have been a place where local culture might have sought expression in Islam, just according to what Iqbal dreamt of. But it did not materialize. Pakistan is a country where most of the native people (Pakhtuns, Punjabis, Balochis, Sindhis) live under the make-believe that their ancestors were Arabs and feel proud about it. Pakistani Muslims express the same problem when saying that Islam is not adopted completely among its people. The reason behind such a national feeling is only that they have problems in completely denying their roots in native history. This feeling facilitates the disrespect towards native traditions and culture, or in other words, all what exists in the country they live in with the half-converts doesnt find expression in the Islam that everyone is supposed to follow. Fundamentalist Islam is the only choice that an average Muslim is left with, thus not giving way to free discussions of culture.

As a culture that struggles to find it roots, Pakistani Muslims are always directed to India, something that they not only fail to understand but were created as an opposition to. This is a disconnection similar to that of Muslims in India, where they fail to be proud of their history and culture (and hence of pagan practices of dances to goddesses, sanskrit linguistics or architecture of ancient temples) without compromising with the duties of Islam.

Potential Solutions

It won’t be an overstatement to say that no one since Akbar has attempted to correct this disconnection. In those times, he established a kingdom that respected both the religions, and thus forged a culture where both the religions could co-exist, debate, exchange ideas and flourish. He did connect Hindu culture with Islam, and facilitated the Hindustani identity.

Beginning of the colonial times, British were new rulers and had to let the people appointed by them, have all the power. In the famous trial of Badshah Zafar they had discovered that posing Muslims as the reason behind India’s paradise lost is the best way to dissolve Mughal national identity. For centuries, the Hindu educated elite were told that Muslims have plundered the glorious country that India was, molding the orientalist perspective in Indian elite that still persists. Congress has actually facilitated it while RSS might only be reutilizing this fabrication.

Fallacies of appeasement

Perpetuating the British style appeasement would not solve the dilemma of Indian Islam. If it could have, then unrest should have decreased among Indian Muslims. On the contrary, Muslim identity is even more so unconnected with the new globalized India, where religious adherences are even harder to maintain.

The only solution I think is the facilitation of the debate of culture and religion among Muslims, which no-one remotely seems to be attempting. The liberals whose actualgoalis to shun all religions, use the same old colonial ways of appeasing one religion against the other for near sighted political needs. Disconnection with local culture, along with the disjunct of tradition and modernity in the globalization era, Indian Muslims are left to choose only the fundamentalist way.

Misunderstandings with right-wing

I don’t agree with what RSS propagates about Islam. But there is much more weight and justification to much of what they have suggested as a solution, than the British style appeasement that liberals or Congress want to perpetuate. I dont consider it militarily fundamentalist for example, if Savarkar says that Hinduism is a culture and not a religion. Something that liberals reject as extreme fundamentalism is the moderate admittance that you could be a Hindu Muslim, or a Hindu Christian, which sometimes seems to be all what RSS demands. Using religion for political gains against India is what colonial powers had perpetrated for centuries (both in instances of Islam and Christianity), and if somebody tries to correct that by taking religion out of such colonial pursuits, he automatically becomes a fundamentalist in the eyes of our educated elite.

Many a times RSS have appealed Muslims to follow the Parsis. Parsis do follow their religion which is quite different from that of Hindus, but their traditions are immersed in Hindu traditions instead, and they don’t consider themselves to be living in a jahilia of Hindu gods. In propagating “hindutva” as cultural nationalism, the central core of Islam was not under attack by RSS; even the most rabid of Hindu fundamentalists only expect a South Asian Muslim to be as connected to India as the average Sunni Muslim is to Arab, or a Shiaite Muslim is to Iran. Although some Muslims could accept that, it is not acceptable to liberals somehow.

A minimalist approach

Instead of approaching to a solution much of what liberals have done in India has aggravated the problems by polarizing the two factions. To create more confusion we have things as preposterous as imposition of Urdu (a language of poetry) as the Islamic language all over India, something that most Islamic intellectuals would have problems with. To give an example of the ridiculousness of such policies, in a call for applications to extra Urdu teachers introduced in schools of UP solely for the appeasement of Muslims, Mulayam Singh was
puzzled to have found more than 70% of applicants to be Hindus.

Conclusion

So even if one doesn't agree with the view of Islam that is presented by the sangh, there is no better alternative towards assimilation of Islamists. It becomes indeed then, about choosing a better poison. Rather than appeasement of Muslims or leftist endorsements of conversions to Christianity, most Hindus
tend to support organizations with hatred for Muslims, the good old enemies of the paradise lost.

Further Reading

http://www.saag.org/papers6/paper569.html

In a church at New York

2007-03-25T21:10:00.000-07:00

This is the first time I went to a church in New York, thanks to Annie and her friend Lindsay. This church is different primarily because it is right in the heart of manhattan, at 50th street and Broadway and is called Times Square Church.

The church used to be a theater before it was converted to a church or in other words, the part of the theater started being used as a church. The theater was grand and must have been hosting great plays and events in its heydays. It seemed like with cinema and TV, on one hand where the interest has moved away from theaters, a lot of theatrics has also got into religion at the same time.

The service was actually fun. I had only seen such acting skills on Christian TV before now. This would have been my first time in the church of corporate America where business people congregate to handle their work pressure and seek solution to their tension-related problems. They make themselves believe in themselves, by doing what they want and then relate everything that they don't want to the devil so that they can overcome it in a righteous way.

The people were warm and fun. The singers were very well-trained and this being the international church, the music was soul with the tinge of international miscellany. People were dancing and waving in the prayer and seemed very excited after the service while they shook hands with each other saying 'God bless you'.

The realism aspect of the prayers was rather mind blowing because we actually prayed for the 'modern' nation of Israel in hope that our daily lives would be better if we pray for Israel and the Jewish people- the chosen ones. Political support to Israel is necessary for our personal battle against the devil, a battle that we need to win if heaven is what we seek.

In the sermon what appeared most interesting and somewhat intriguing to me was that the Western world with all its riches is slowly getting away from the spiritual motives of human life. The western individual is actually fighting a tougher battle to survive in terms of spirituality. Still, the prayers were least about realizing any spiritual motives of our lives. Instead it was all about overcoming the devil, that master of the materialistic world.

We follow our destinies in the materialistic world and with materialistic means ; the spirituality thus only lies in our motives and that is only where it exists. It has no materialistic presence and no materialistic significance except in heaven which we are not sure if it exists and can only believe in but not truly discover until we die.

Till then, we need not do anything materialistic to improve our lives. Spiritual is our intent and spiritual would be our reward. Since spiritual rewards don't have a Gold equivalent, in the end we'd always be contented being the spiritual winners but materialistic losers.

Lord! help me not become so depressed next time I come to thee...

Tell Nobody

2007-03-11T18:07:00.000-07:00

I don't consider myself a big fan of thriller and suspense. I usually find their plots to be too much artificial to be realistic. If somehow I don't then my disinterest rests upon its mundaneness. It is very rarely that a thriller movie interests me. Thriller novels? I wish I had that kind of patience...

I liked the movie 'Ne le dis a personne' that I watched today in the IFC center at 4th St. This was part of the rendezvous with french cinema (cheesy?) going on in New York. This movie struck me especially because of its superb star-cast. It is hard for a movie with Jean Rocheforte and Andre Dussolier to be uninteresting in any way. It was the same casting director as that of Monsieur Ibrahim afterall.

This movie was a great thriller I’ve watched in a long time. Based on a novel with the same name suspense was built up somewhat slowly but the script wasn’t sloppy at all till the end. There were some scenes exhibiting great cinematography while acting was consistently well by everyone.

I don’t want to spoil the thriller for anyone, so please just watch the movie. 

Flandres

2007-03-04T18:57:00.001-08:00

Came to know about Bruno Dumont in the 'Rendezvous with French cinema' organized in the Lincoln Center at New York. I am not aware of the current developments in French cinema, but this movie didn't seem to be an exceptional one. I didn't find the director to exceptionally good either that I would expect any better movies from him.

Like a typical on-stage conversation in performing arts, there were some questions and answers exchanged about the way director works, how much and what importance does he give to the script and so on - probably because of the abundance of budding movie-makers in the screening.

There is nothing much substantial in the movie that I could compare to the great movies I have watched in the past. There is thus very little I would recollect from the movie. Still one of the scenes would stay in memory for an interesting follow up. There is this scene in the movie which I didn't completely understand while watching it, where the woman raises up on her heels and the camera focuses on her from above. When Bruno was asked to explain this a little further, he mentioned that it is only the woman who is living within her body unlike the others in the movie. When rising up on her heels, she feels the whole exterior world in a resonating manner.

An interesting question that thus followed from one of the female audiences that why doesn't she herself feel anything like what Bruno said while watching the movie. Bruno's simple answer was that it is because he is a male, and she is a female. There are differences in the way we look at the universe and he completely admits that.

The memorable experience from this visit would be the Lincoln Center itself. This was one experience that I can connect really well to the screening of Rituporno's movies in Chowdiah memorial hall at Bangalore, India. Even though Bangalore never felt like New York, this was an experience similar in many ways. I walk into the building brimming with chitchats in a language I don't fully understand (Bangla/French). There is a strange unfamiliarity in the air which is somehow soothing because it serves as an escape from the world that surrounds it. I guess that is how it would be for any immigrant if he enters into such tents erected by other immigrants; those who don't belong here and have a world of their own that no outsider is welcome to, still they continue to share the inescapable common ground that belongs to everyone and yet it is no one's.

Chalte-chalte (... adieu )

2007-02-06T17:26:00.000-08:00

This should one of the last important posts on this blog (the posts have not been important to anyone else except me. and the only reader just got a bit disinterested in this blog.) I am planning to start a blog somewhere else, also because I don't like blogger so much.

I am not much of a web programmer, and never took pleasure from beautifying and arranging web-templates into my website. I am doing this for more organization, and probably to come up with a better way of writing.

Like anyone good at writing, I intend to be creative in this new form. However, the new experiment that I am trying is to endlessly deconstruct the writings so as to seek logical coherence in the writing. Being creative would thus be in spite of it, and not because of it. I think I would have to repeatedly re-edit any post until it reaches a logical closure. The creativity part would only be as a logical definition in such posts. How far I can go doing this, is what the experiment is about.

It would indeed be more like writing a program or writing music than writing down your ideas. I would later think of creating these posts in a high-level format so that it can machine-expanded into English or any other natural language. But that is a far fetched goal, esp when I have a difficult one to achieve first.

All that being said, this blog would remain to be the epicenter of all my frustrations, personal grudges against people, organizations and the rest of human civilization. It might only become a designated place for all that, is what I am somewhat afraid of. Like I said in one of the previous posts, this blog already has a lot of bad karma, and ducca associated with it. I would try undoing that through the next posts that I am planning.

Bergman

2006-12-04T09:56:00.000-08:00

There is an old story of how the cathedral of Chartres was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. Then thousands of people came from all points of the compass, like a giant procession of ants, and together they began to rebuild the cathedral on its old site. They worked until the building was completed — master builders, artists, labourers, clowns, noblemen, priests, burghers. But they all remained anonymous, and no one knows to this day who built the cathedral of Chartres.

Regardless of my own beliefs and my own doubts, which are unimportant in this connection, it is my opinion that art lost its basic creative drive the moment it was separated from worship. It severed an umbilical cord and now lives its own sterile life, generating and degenerating itself. In former days the artist remained unknown and his work was to the glory of God. He lived and died without being more or less important than other artisans; 'eternal values,' 'immortality' and 'masterpiece' were terms not applicable in his case. The ability to create was a gift. In such a world flourished invulnerable assurance and natural humility. Today the individual has become the highest form and the greatest bane of artistic creation.

The smallest wound or pain of the ego is examined under a microscope as if it were of eternal importance. The artist considers his isolation, his subjectivity, his individualism almost holy. Thus we finally gather in one large pen, where we stand and bleat about our loneliness without listening to each other and without realizing that we are smothering each other to death. The individualists stare into each other's eyes and yet deny the existence of each other.
We walk in circles, so limited by our own anxieties that we can no longer distinguish between true and false, between the gangster's whim and the purest ideal. Thus if I am asked what I would like the general purpose of my films to be, I would reply that I want to be one of the artists in the cathedral on the great plain. I want to make a dragon's head, an angel, a devil — or perhaps a saint — out of stone. It does not matter which; it is the sense of satisfaction that counts.
Regardless of whether I believe or not, whether I am a Christian or not, I would play my part in the collective building of the cathedral.

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I want very much to tell, to talk about, the wholeness inside every human being. It's a strange thing that every human being has a sort of dignity or wholeness in him, and out of that develops relationships to other human beings, tensions, misunderstandings, tenderness, coming in contact, touching and being touched, the cutting off of a contact and what happens then.

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When film is not a document, it is dream. That is why Tarkovsky is the greatest of them all. He moves with such naturalness in the room of dreams. He doesn't explain. What should he explain anyhow? He is a spectator, capable of staging his visions in the most unwieldy but, in a way, the most willing of media. All my life I have hammered on the doors of the rooms in which he moves so naturally. Only a few times have I managed to creep inside. Most of my conscious efforts have ended in embarrassing failure...

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My basic view of things is — not to have any basic view of things. From having been exceedingly dogmatic, my views on life have gradually dissolved. They don't exist any longer... I've a strong impression that our world is about to go under. Our political systems are deeply compromised and have no further uses. Our social behavior patterns — interior and exterior — have proved a fiasco. The tragic thing is, we neither can nor want to, nor have the strength to alter course. It's too late for revolutions, and deep down inside ourselves we no longer even believe in their positive effects. Just around the corner an insect world is waiting for us — and one day it's going to roll in over our ultra-individualized existence. Otherwise I'm a respectable social democrat.

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To the fanatical believer physical and spiritual suffering is beside the point, compared with salvation. That is why, to him, everything happening around him is irrelevant, a mirror-image, a mere will-o'-the-wisp. ... I can really never get shot of them, the fanatics. Whether they appear as religious fanatics or vegetarian fanatics makes no odds. They're catastrophic people. These types whose whole cast of mind as it were looks beyond mere human beings toward some unknown goal. The terrible thing is the great power they often wield over their fellow human beings. Apart from the fact that I believe they suffer like the very devil, I've no sympathy for them.

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People think there's a solution... If everything is distributed in the proper quarters, put into the right pigeonholes, everything will be fine. But I'm not so sure. ... Nothing, absolutely nothing at all has emerged out of all these ideas of faith and scepticism, all these convulsions, these puffings and blowings. For many of my fellow human beings on the other hand, I'm aware that these problems still exist — and exist as a terrible reality. I hope this generation will be the last to live under the scourge of religious anxiety.

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I throw a spear into the darkness. That is intuition. Then I must send an army into the darkness to find the spear. That is intellect.

Ju Dou

2006-12-02T16:38:00.000-08:00

Ju dou wasn't that great, but it belongs to the genre that Yimou experimented with in late 80s and 90s- tales of feudal china. It was good, but not as good as huozhe (to live) or raising-the-red-lantern. yimou is completely different in these movies, and his cinematography is the best in all of eastern cinema I have known.

The difference between raising the red lantern and flying-daggers would be 10 times more than that between Spielberg's Schindler's list and 'jurassic park-the lost world'. You can't always compare two such movies from the same director, not in such case of Yimou by any means.

Apparently Ju dou was banned in Chine because it was considered to have shown the lead female character rebelling against the male authority.

Must watch

2006-11-28T15:47:00.000-08:00

This are the movies I have rated 5/5 on netflix, and I think, they all must be watched by anyone who ever loved movies :

(reverse alphabetical order)-

Yojimbo
X2: X-Men United
Wild Strawberries
White
The Virgin Spring
Umrao Jaan
Trainspotting: Collector's Edition
Trainspotting
To Live
Throne of Blood
The Three Stooges: Curly Classics
A Story of Floating Weeds
Star Wars: Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
Star Wars: Episode V: Empire Strikes Back
The Silence of the Lambs
The Shining
The Shawshank Redemption: Special Edition
The Seventh Seal
Seven Samurai
Schindler's List
Scarface
Run Lola Run
Rosemary's Baby
Roger Dodger
A River Runs Through It
Ridicule
Requiem for a Dream
The Red Violin
Red
Reality Bites
Rashomon
Raise the Red Lantern
Pulp Fiction
Psycho
The Pianist
Pi: Faith in Chaos
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
My Big Fat Greek Wedding
Mughal-E-Azam
Moulin Rouge
Moulin Rouge
Memento
The Matrix
LOTR: The Two Towers: Extended Ed.
LOTR: Return of the King: Extended Ed.
LOTR: Fellowship of the Ring: Extended Ed.
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring
Jules and Jim
Human Nature
The Hours
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Good Will Hunting
Gol Maal
The Godfather, Part II
The Godfather
Girl, Interrupted
Ghost in the Shell
Full Metal Jacket
Forrest Gump
Fight Club
Fargo
Eyes Wide Shut
The Exorcist: Restored Version
The Exorcist
The English Patient
Driving Miss Daisy
Downfall
Donnie Darko: Director's Cut
Donnie Darko
Dial M for Murder
City of God
Cinema Paradiso: Director's Cut
Central Station
The Bridges of Madison County
Boys Don't Cry
Blue
The Big Lebowski
The Bicycle Thief
Ben-Hur: Collector's Edition
Ben-Hur
Bawarchi
Battleship Potemkin
Babette's Feast
Au Revoir Les Enfants
Andrei Rublev
Anand
Amores Perros
American Beauty
Almost Famous
All About My Mother
Adaptation
The 400 Blows

Random findings

2006-11-28T01:31:00.001-08:00

-The only question of morality that everything else can be boiled down to is whether sluts can be ideal moms. (id=133)
-Could you really understand idiotism? (id=132)
-Art is reconstruction, and merely that (id=131)
-No men without honor and no women without beauty (id=130)
-Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat (id=129)
-Dictionaries are usually an attempt to compile all the epistemological prejudices (id=128)
-I don't see so much difference between science and art; You should say shit that would stand the test of time (id=127)
-The difference between knowing music and listening to pop music, is same as that between loving/longing-for-love and being irresponsibly promiscuous (id=126)
-I am a nice guy, I wish I could talk to myself (id=125)
-Cheating in an exam, is of course like sleeping with your neighbor's wife (now, my friend told me that; not sure how so).(id=124)
-Philosophy shouldn't know commitment (id=123)
-pricks like to get popular and thus, the converse stays true (id=122)
-I agree that it must be hard for prostitutes to be self-centric(id=121)

Songs

2006-11-27T13:06:00.001-08:00

What folk music is... is based on myths and the Bible and plague and famine and all kinds of things like that which are nothing but mystery and you can see it in all the songs….All these songs about roses growing out of people’s brains and lovers who are really geese and swans that turn into angels…and seven years of this and eight years of that and it’s all really something that nobody can touch....(the songs) are not going to die.

- Bob Dylan.

Through a glass Darkly

2006-11-12T02:11:00.000-08:00

Bergman says it too. Believing in God is same as believing in love. If you can believe in love, you could rather believe in God as well. If by some rational explanation, God has to be completely ruled out, then by a similar reasoning there should be no reason for love either. A world without belief in God could be as dreadful to some as would be the world without any love, trust or friendship.

At the end of the movie, David asks his son, to stay calm and tells him that "God exists, because we all love Karin... Love is God! " We don't have anything to define our existence and so we have to pick up something and hold it to our heart. Whenever our holdings are gone, we pick something else up and hold that to ourselves. That is how we define ourselves - "Everything would be alright. Just keep faith in something".

I don't think anyone else can present existentialism better than the way Bergman does. He repeatedly makes me think that cinema is the best, most true, and most efficient form of art known to humanity.

Again, like in many other Bergman movies, I might not have understood all the connotations in the movie, including the title - Through a glass darkly, which is from a Biblical verse. In many of the dialogs there could be (and I am sure there were) allusions to Bible and some other writings, like a few by Dostoyevsky. Unfortunately, I am not too much aware of the literature that Bergman was expecting his viewers to be building the thoughts upon.

Nevertheless, the movie was terrific. It went boring for a while, especially the part after when the fact of protagonist's illness was known. But in around 20 minutes, the story picked up again and climaxed magnificently.

The performance by the protagonist was excellent. I don't know if anyone else could have done such a job. Harriet Anderson (Karin, in movie) suits very well to the character. Gunnar Bjornstrand played his role of the detached writer just perfectly.

The climax is magnificent, it rolls the whole movie into a few dialogs. All the chaos of the movie- Karin's pain, Minus's troubled juvenility and David's disconnection from it all, everything seems to survive just through faith - for faith is indeed such a powerful thing - the central theme of Bergman's movies.

Urdu Unicode definition file

2006-11-03T09:12:00.000-08:00

Here is the Unicode keyboard definition for Urdu that I created to suite my intuition. I am sure this would be helpful for any Urdu/Hindi speaker who wants to write in Nastaliq. I would later write a key to help those who want to create a document in Nastaliq even if they don't know how to read nastaliq. Even better, I could write an ITRANS-> unicode converter at some point.

For now, just

i) download this file
ii) load the ukb file into Unipad or any other unicode text editor you may be using ( You can download Unipad from here)

and start using the keyboard.

اگلی پوسٹ تک کےلِیے الورہ

(good bye Until next post)

-created by entering the text "aglI posT tk kE lieY alvdO" in Unipad.

Patrice Leconte

2006-11-02T00:00:00.000-08:00

Patrice Leconte is one of those typical intellectuals who know how to show off their exceptional ability in the their profession. On one hand, we see this gentleman who is very well aware of his status as a movie-director, and on the other hand, he could portray himself as being doubtful about his own career by saying that he didn't want to be classified as the classicism director.

Nevertheless, his movies, classicism or not, have been one of the best I would've ever seen. My first Leconte movie was Le Mari de la coiffeuse, and it blew me away. It was one of the moments, that told me how appealing to emotions, cinema could possibly become. L'homme du train was not as exceptional, but it told a truth with a fatalistic perspective, that Leconte seems to like a lot.

Then I watched these two classicist movies - le veuve de st pierre and ridicule. It is almost a time-travel into the early modern France, watching his movies.

Unforgettable

2006-11-01T09:17:00.000-08:00

Marcellus Wallus- his hilarious note in Pulp Fiction -

I think you are gonna find, when this shit is over... I think you're gonna find yourself one smilin' mo**#@f***#@. The thing is Butch, right now, you've got ability. But painful as it may be, ability don't last. And your days are just about over. Now that's a hard mo**#@f***ing ' fact of life. But it's a fact of life your ass is gonna hafta get realistic about. See this business is filled to the brim with unrealistic mo**#@f***#@s. mo**#@f***#@s who thought their ass would age like wine. If you mean it turns to vinegar, it does. If you mean it gets better with age, it don't. Besides Butch, how many fights you think you got left in you anyway? Two? Boxers don't have an "old timer's pension." You came close, but you never made it, and if you were gonna make it, you woulda' made it before now.

The night of the fight, you may feel a slight sting. That's pride f***#g with you. f*** pride. Pride only hurts, it never helps.

Thanks again ...

2006-10-30T12:03:00.000-08:00

Finally we have this feature in Firefox, that we envied Konqueror for. I so much liked the spell checker in konqueror that I actually started thinking of running Konqueror on windows machines here.

I procrastinated enough to see these guys at Mozilla having implemented it in the release 2.0 . The word Konqueror doesn't exist in the default dictionary, of course...

Melancholy

2006-10-20T07:48:00.000-07:00

Its not that I don't have sweet memories of Diwali from my childhood. Nor is it that I have lesser knowledge/adherence to Indian tradition(s). Au contraire, it is only because of my irrevocable adherence that I couldn't connect to the people around me who celebrate(d) Diwali.

Now, I don't celebrate Diwali anymore, nor do I think I would in the near future. When you can't relate to the people that celebrated Diwali, you don't really celebrate your Diwali with them; niether do they know nor would they possibly understand what Diwali means to you- is there any point, then, in just saying you do enjoy their celebrations while you don't?

I won't.

Happy Diwali? why not? to you!

Bravo Google!

2006-10-18T11:46:00.000-07:00

When Nader Mekdachi, for example, the singer of Padam, blows “are beautiful for you” of his raucous and enveloping voice, one hears at the same time the rail of sighing which fails in front of an overflowing beauty, and all the weight of the irony that there is towards this beautiful girl who is only surface, all connery that there is to be degraded for her just because “are beautiful for you”…
Then “be beautiful for you”? It is nice, “are beautiful for you”! They is soft, it is simple, in certain circumstances that makes you beat the heart like a horse with the gallop, and then it is also performatif - “be beautiful for you”, that makes you become beautiful, of a blow, with as much of effectiveness than a magic formula or the method Weight Watchers.
But then why, when some say “are beautiful”, is for you this thus if degrading? How does they so low arrive at the sussurer, of a so lascif tone, to slip on the syllables of an air if heard, to brood you of a so sticky eye by saying “be beautiful for you” that a frozen shiver traverses you the spinal column, and that what was to be a compliment becomes a disgrace, a stain which makes you hasten the step by curving the shoulders?

Ha ha ! No! this is not my horrible English expression. This is just Google trying to translate this page. I don't think that any french guy would have ever spoken so horrible an English.

A little something about myself

2006-10-03T22:27:00.000-07:00

(If this stuff goes onto a resumé it would be the best one not to ever land up with a job)

I like to think that I am a person simple enough, not needing a whole buncha preferences for describing myself. I just feel better trying to define my essence, than listing out what I have donned from this world. I don't do that intentionally, must be beacause one of the instincts I carry.

Given my obsession with simplicity, I hate to modify problems to make them fit a made-up solution, in general. I think my world would've been a better place to live, if search for simple and justified solutions was the approach to problems, instead of marketing of complicated systems that I see so much around. My affinity for simple rules causes denial of artificial values and concepts. I really never want to voice or emphasize my group identity; I hate to feel like I am made for the institutions rather than them being made for me.

Right now, I am liking being a loner, in love with the solitude around me. I don't make friends myself. All the friends I got, I like to maintain and am (usually) ready to do anything for them. I don't really choose my friends, I don't think I can either. I am not a fatalist, but I do think like Schophenhauer in that regard.

But not even two atoms are alike, so I don't expect everyone to become like me or give up their natural tendencies for sake of integrity at conscience. I am an idealist, I think that my self-restraint or my conscience are as much a biological reality as are my animal instincts; To some people, I am a hypocrite, to most, I am just being myself.

Even when I am playing my guitar, I try to linger between noise and melody, in a mood to discover the order that creates 'music'. Not too surprisingly, I find primitive instruments-arts-writings to be simply very appealing too.

My approach to anything undiscovered stays simple: deconstruct, analyse, try to find out 'essential' rules, that give order and the very meaning that I observed; I simply love nature, art, music and maths.

Sacrifice

2006-10-03T22:12:00.000-07:00

Watched this movie by Tarkovsky, called Sacrifice. I have this movie in Swedish, with English subtitles; I have kinda gotten accustomed to the Swedish movies watching so much of Bergman.

The movie is typical Tarkovsky- excellent visuals with a deepening impact and We don’t expect anything less from Tarkovsky. The cinematography in his movies seems to exhibit much more the skill of a still photographer than that of a movie-maker. Right since when the movie starts, the stills are in the right place. Like any other of Tarkovsky's, stills speak a lot here, probably the most about the story. The serene lake, with little signs of human activity, have an overall gloomy effect, possibly due to the wrongs of the human intervention. The human acts never fit the nature in these depictions.

Nature has this mystic beauty which human beings at first seemed so fit (because this imagery is indeed so appealing) the part that Tarkovsky unveils to is usually very dark. Through the dark imagery, Tarkovsky highlights the failures of our civilization in surviving as a part of nature. To think of manipulating nature, appears to be an implicit and necessary anomaly through his movies.

My favorite pick among all his movies still continues to be the CTALKEP (Stalker). That movies was packed with everything that Tarkovsky has to offer us, with dialogues as pithy as they can get.

Sacrifice shows us this family that has a philosophizing and introspective member named Alexandro, who seems to voice what Tarkovsky himself could be thinking. The conversations with his family members depict the conflicts and dissents among Western culture. Alexandro is in search of truth; but at the same time, he rejects religion. The way things progress in the movie, after the outbreak of a war (whose particulars are not necessary, although this is supposed to be the third world war) the old man Alexandro falls back to religion, giving way to his emotions and beliefs over logical understanding, which would eventually result in irrational but unavoidable 'rituals'.

The essential conflict like always, is that of rationality and ritual. Fighting with himself, and lost in his dilemmas, Alexandro still fears God. He decides to sacrifice the kid in the family, and even performs the ritual union with the assumed witch (overcoming his rational self). In some mystic fashion, union with a woman, although apparently evil is always seen as a redemption, as a blessing-in-the-end. A comparison of the feminine and the mystic with Mother Mary is thus bound to occur.

Now here is a word on Cast, and hence of course, on women. But first off, Alexandro is done a splendid job. His dialogue delivery and expressions are impeccable. Women are not exceedingly beautiful, and they are not supposed to be. What they are made to appear in the movie are women of dinivity, with strong features that don't fit the norms of classic beauties. The whole effect is contributed by images of Russian saints (a very incompatible set of ideas with Communism). Russian religion and belief-system is an integral, probably central part of Tarkovsky’s cinema. This movie probably has been the best expression of that idea.

Like many of the art cinema, there is what I call the after-effect of this movie. You may not understand fully what was going while watching the movie. But after you’re done watched the movie (fully) and back-reference it to various themes in your mind, you seem to understand how great the movie was, and you even may want to watch it again so as to really confirm that you didn’t miss anything that could have helped connecting the dots better. Of course, if you have visuals of this deep an impact the whole experience is worth re-experiencing.

No other art can fix time except cinema; Time we have lived is settled in our soul in and the experience is placed within time. Present slips acquires material weight...

- Tarkovsky

How time is turned back is what he wants to imply through this movie.

Sometime, I would want to know what exactly went on with personal life of Tarkovsky, so that I may understand what eventually drove him to such a dismal rejection of the progress of mankind. As a person, Tarkovsky is like me and probably like Bergman, he has emotional recalls but not exact recollections of memory.

Virgin Spring

2006-10-03T15:46:00.000-07:00

Source: Wikimedia

It is rarely when a work like this surfaces in the world of cinema. Bergman's imagery is just amazing starred by the excellent performances especially the one by Ingari.

Most people I talked to about this movie, see it as one that inspired a similar hollywood movie. However, there is indeed much more to the story of Virgin Spring. Bergman's way of presenting existentialism, his depiction of conflicts between paganism and Christianity on which the movie is primarily based upon, is truly amazing.

The story of Virgin spring, is taken from an actual ballad about a spring that appeared on the spot where the virgin had died.

It only rarely that such dialectics of philosophy are expressed with so much clarity in cinema. That justice is ultimately His and that the mortals are bound to be sinful could not be explained in a better fashion.

Taking a note on cinematography, the cinema art seemed to have learned a lot from Kurosawa at the time this movie was made. In Rashomon, similar camera movements and characterization are used to exhibit the dilemmas and confusions of mankind. When human beings try to separate right from wrong and good from bad, it becomes hard to judge some everything. In both the movies, the classification of right and wrong doesn't seem to be always so sharply clear- Virgin Spring tells a very similar story only in a different culture, using different set of morals, ideas and values.

Bergman is one of those few directors who have mastered cinematography beyond what anyone can even dream of. In his own words, "cinematography is the only art that can present things as close to the ones in our dreams". This movie then, should be dreadful, yet a sublime and profound dream.

Since the very beginning of the movie, ingari worshiping a pagan god (Odin) is seen in pain - a very dark depiction of Ingari, indeed. Ingari seems to be possessed by the evil forces. A very significant part of the movie, thus, is about how intensely the evil takes her over. The end of the movie is when she seeks repentance.

Almost all of Bergman's movies are influenced by the Lutheran religion. Although he didn't practice religion as an adult, his childhood spent under stringent rules imposed by his parents (which he admits wasn't because of their malcontent or shortcomings as parents) ingrained religion in his way of thinking ; that in itself could be a very simple way to understand existentialism.

2006-09-11T12:17:00.000-07:00

Home in schaumburg

2006-09-11T12:15:00.000-07:00

Office in Schaumburg

Friday night thoughts...

2006-08-04T21:05:00.000-07:00

Friday night, and I am sitting here thinking about the way my friend makes friends so easily, and I thought it would be worthwhile to just analyze the situation - I am really a nerd :(.

Problem

I got 412 friends (lets say) - all of these people are going to have birthdays in one of the 365 days in an year. The question is what would the distribution be? Certainly its not going to be uniform.

-What governs the distribution?
-Does my criteria of making friends (i.e. my own personality) influence the distribution ? if yes, what would the dependence be like- by answering the question would you be able to predict the distribution of your friends' birthdays given your own personality?

Analysis

The first step should be simplification of the problem. Lets consider people in a small area, and localize our sample person (whose friends are to be analyzed) in the small area i.e. he is not moving out of this small town.

Its also assumed that all the people in this town are equal and have no prejudices towards each other (John Lennon would have liked that) - there are absolutely no classes in the society so that people can make friends with just about anyone they bump into.

Also there is absolutely no immigration into or emigration from the town. That should only help in making people stay equal.

The next thing we want to know would be the distribution of birth variable in the town. How are people born in the town? Are they born uniformly - certainly not? Still, this is something that can be determined through experiments. This should be a gaussian distribution with its parameters to be determined by the local conditions (e.g. the time around people usually marry in the culture of local town, the time around which copulation is preferred etc.). Once again, the assumption being that all people are equal, and copulate fairly randomly.

The underlying maths could be a bit more complicated. There is only a certain age group which contributes to the copulation. Old people and babies are not involved in copulation. The distribution of people of various age groups should therefore influence the rate of birth accordingly.

Assuming that we have a way of predicting the number of people of a certaing age in our town, we can assume that our sample person of age 'a' would make friends with people of age x where,

|x-a| < b => x - b < a < x+ b

here, b is the range of age in which the sample person would make friends. This means that the sample person (let call him A from now on) would reject someone's friendship if he/she is not in the range (this one is a real-life assumption folks!).

Next we need to analyse the way A is meeting up with the new people in the town. Where does A live? Is the town uniform? Well, assume that the town is uniform, or just consider the small part of the town where A would make friends. Given the activities of the town, we can determine the rate at which A meets people, to the level of getting introduced. The mathematical meaning of being introduced is to be knowing the contact no. of the person, i.e. the acquiring of ability to meet the person again without any external factor.

At this point we are at a position where we know how many young people (that satisfy the range criterion) A is going to meet in a period of time T. Lets the number of people A meets in the time T be Y, so that we can think of the number of R, which is the number of friends that would be accepted by A as friends from the people Y.

The model assumes the human beings to be independent entities and views their decisions as independent, although determined by the environmental factors that may involves human subjects too.

That is where the personality should come into play. This is where the things would really start getting complex. For simplification, we would assume that the A is really friendly - makes friends really easy and actually likes making more and more friends. This way, we just have to consider those unfortunate (Y-R) people who are really incompatible with A. The reasons why these (Y-R) people may exist for a friendly A could be:

i) They don't like A
ii) They don't like the activities that A does

Even in the equal society that we have assumed, people do different things and have different tastes. Still because the friendly person A is, they would matter the least because A is really accepting and welcoming to everything. The unfortunate (Y-R) could be those complicated not-the-A-type people who won't make friends with people who don't have a taste. Since we are still keeping the model simple, we would assume that such people don't even exist.

This is the happy society where everyone is ready to make friends with everyone, and people become friends just because they met and talked for a while. they even like to be like that forever.

The key observation is that lesser the restriction of friendship is, lesser the (Y-R) would be. Friendly A takes all of the Y in R.

Its worthwhile to work out the microscopy here, but what i would like to analyze the problem with macroscopic property (high-level).

(to be continued)

To keku

2006-07-27T14:32:00.000-07:00

Source: http://szablon.ownlog.com/antony/soulmate.JPG

We are all playing roles in life (no, screw shakespeare i ain't talking about that)- you the linux geek - the logical guy, and me the tormented sophist - the computer-and-math guy- no matter how much of physics I love, how much I like speeding cars, neither would I become a physicist, nor the Michael Schumaker. Future has to be built upon past- Roles do matter - I can say that roles supercede your own individuality - esp in the colonial kinda society that we were brought up in.

Frankly I don't give a shit if an engineer had emotions in the core of her heart and I missed her because I wasn't fishing engineers in first place. Here is the reason- her social surroundings - the peer pressure by the 'usual' working girls - expectations from her family - the kind of person one expects a software engineer to be etc., not to mention that 'kamane vaali ladki' tag which her parents would try to sell her off with. Surroundings are what mould a person. Would you agree with me there?

Besides, do you really think you are going to find that woman who would exactly understand you, do you not think there would be a compromise? Assuming that you find one, what I would say that if there is no compromise, not a little bit of friction, I think that relationship would be boring. What we like in women is that little bit of uncertainty - that enigma which they create by making us always trying to comprehend them. Where would all that be if you find a woman exactly like you- who watches exactly the same kind of movies you like, likes exactly the same food as you do? Variation is darwinistic explanation of natural selection, afterall.

In the case of this imagined arty-farty type, she has a reason to uphold art, something that I love the most. Art could be her raison d'etre (read it as her way of handling peer pressure and social status) and hence I would have something to love about her, at least superficially. She would have a motivation to pretend to be artsy- even if she really isn't artsy and I don't mind people pretending to be what I like about them - all women pretend and they would always pretend - and its foolish even to attempt to find out what women really want or what women would really like. Women themselves know least about it, they need tags to hang onto, tags to patch on their boyfriends to tell others why their boyfriend is great - a hunky look, a bike-riding body and lotsa money and some talent that no-one else has - unfortunately nobody can see beyond that. At least thats what my experience tells me.

Indian women are not looking for the soulmate - our culture doesn't even support romantic love so much that I would expect indian women to believe in something like that. So its most impractical to look for a soulmate through an arranged marriage. Your soulmate is in your imagination - and that is where she'd always be. Beauty is in the beholder's eye afterall - love someone who deserves your love (being practical) and expect love in return. That is what I think about it.

Comments welcome!

Need of culture

2006-07-20T12:31:00.000-07:00

The social conditions of the aborigines became considerably worse when they were not allowed to relate to their cultural background, as their memories were fragmented and no landmarks were left on the basis of which they could narrate.

http://axess.se/english/2006/05/theme_svensson.php

Junoon - almost a legend

2006-07-16T22:15:00.000-07:00

Not active so much any more, but Junoon was indeed a phase in the lives of all of us who grew up at the end of last millenium.

Their journey into music is quite amusing. The Junoon would have been just another college rock band, trying to impress the college chicks, imitating their favorites icons from 60s and 70s, going hippy, and just enjoying with the target crowd of college-going pakistanis. But it was only when they started experimenting with the sufi music that they could reach the masses, crossing the boundaries of countries and ethnicities. It was all due to Brian, may be, if he hadn't unified the other guys, the band would have never become the phenomenon that it eventually became.

The innovation into the music was nothing spectacular, at least in terms of the musical rhetorics. The sufi music is well established in South Asia, just the way Rock is in the whole of West. A band made of college goers who had the usual dreams of getting to become the next led zep or guns and roses, aimed to express the soul of Pakistani music with all what they had. This was not to be encouraged too much in the islamist country they hailed from. But still the music clicked. With the rhythms in the harmonics of tabla, the deep and polished voice of ali azmat, and the really impressive bass lines by Brian, the band was ready to hit a huge market otherwise dominated by cheap Indian music that should be appropriately considered devoid of any art at all.

It wasn't hard for Junoon to get popular in India. The reasons were simple. There is and never was any rock scene in India. All the rock bands localized among the elites of big cities, popular not even in all the colleges of the city they were in. Rock in India, like in most of South Asia, was never about anti-establishment and world peace, or about ideal of freedom of human soul. Rock in india is yet another commodity imported from West, which neo-rich people show off to serve their elitist snobbery.

The mind of youth seeks escape from the norms of the world, and it found its expression in Junoon. The Junoon had expressed something as traditional and mystified as sufi music with western means, something that symbolically represented what the minds of those in the colonies are always trying to accompolish.

I haven't been so much of an ardent fan of Junoon, even though it remains a fact that the only reason I took up the task of reading Nastaliq script was because I was having trouble looking up for some of the lyrics of their song, and was really disappointed at the way the available lyrics were transliterated into Roman script. Transliterations or translations really don't help too much when you wish to feel the spirit of a language or a country and its people. That was my personal infatuation with Junoon. Once I felt what they meant, I knew that nothing what they said could be limited by countries and religions.

Some dialogues from the golden era

2006-07-05T14:47:00.000-07:00

# Humko Mitha Sake Is Zamaane Mein Dum Nahin,Kyon Ki Zamaana Hum Se Hai , Hum Zamaane Se Nahin. - Raaj Kumar in Bulundi.

A slight variation.
Humko Mitha Sake In Machcharon Mein Dum Nahin,Hamaare Ghar Mein Machchar Hai , Magar Hum Ghar Par Nahin !!.

# Chinai Seth , Jinke Ghar Sheeshey Ke Hote Hain Woh Doosron Ke Ghar Pe Paththar Nahin Phenka Karte - Raaj Kumar in Bulundi.

# Jab Zameen Lage Phatne , Tho Prasad Lage Batne - Om Puri in Gupt.

# Prem Naam Hai Mera, Prem Chopra - Bobby

# Jali Ko Aag Kehte Hain
Bujhi Ko Raakh Kehte Hain
Jis Raakh Se Barood Banen
Use Vishwanath Kehte Hain - Shotgun Sinha in Vishwanath

# Main Aaj Bhi Phenke Huey Paise Nahin Uthaatha. - Big B in Deewar.

# Ilaaka Kutte Billiyon Ke Hua Karte Hain , Sher Jahan Bhi Jaata Hai Woh Khud Uska Ilaaka Ho Jaata Hai.- Dharmendra in Ilaaka.

# Kal Ek Aur Aadmi Hafta Dene Se Inkaar Karega.- Big B in Deewar

Woody Allen

2006-07-03T22:08:00.000-07:00

Probably its only because of my stay in the US, I have started liking Woody Allen way too much. His cinema might not have transcended boundaries of this country, to get the acclaim that some more profound directors have got. But his movies make so much sense here, mirroring the American life as beautifully as possible.

Now his movies are not like most Americans actually watch. His movies are those art-movies, the ones an average American would watch once every ten movies or so. Not quite unexpectedly, Woody Allen has been heavily influenced by European cinema instead. The characters in his movies, though carved out sharply in the script, are not so much of an imagined portrait of someone you hadn't seen yet. His characters are not exceedingly different from the ones in our daily lives either... and that is probably why neither does one have to have the taste of art-cinema, nor does anyone even need to relate some complex idealism to reality in order to comprehend Allen's existentialism.

The most profound of things could have been said with a sense of humor in his movies. The dialogues and the actions in the movie like you would expect, are just as natural as what you see in the people from everyday life.

I just finished watching melinda and melinda, and liked the movie. Its not really so much of a popular movie but I find it to be a powerful depiction of the Western life - the critical situations which individual desires bring you into, and the shimmering relationships that try to address them. The whole movie, like a good fiction, is so fluid and so gripping, that it becomes an emotional experience in itself. You can't avoid starting to ponder over your own life, while thinking about what you could possibly do to help melinda.

2006-06-21T11:28:00.000-07:00

Fact is, that you feel reinvigorated after meditation. Forgetting the whole world puts you in a better position inside the world. I don't really know how it happens.

I mean, weird shit happens all day, you can't really get messed up in that. Not at all if you don't want to.

update

2006-06-20T09:12:00.000-07:00

Since this is more of a private blog, I would just bookmark the event that I got a quant job offer, and therefore, would join it, if everything goes well.

Keeping the faith

2006-06-11T10:07:00.000-07:00

I got what I wanted... A few years back, I thought my life had come to an end, without me having control of anything that was going on with me. Now, I don't have any regrets. Thanks to my education in America, and thanks to all that happened to me in these years- I would be happy with what I deserve.

My life might have come to an end in some other sense though, if you consider those aspirations and ambitions to be the essence of life. I have no ambitions anymore, because I know I would achieve what I deserve. To some, this might be my pathetic state after numerous failures, but to me, this is my new life.

Bible Readings

2006-06-01T12:11:00.000-07:00

"nor scrip for the way, nor two coats, nor sandals, nor staff -- for the workman is worthy of his nourishment" - Matthew 10:10

Doubts:

"A disciple is not above the teacher, nor a servant above his lord;sufficient to the disciple that he may be as his teacher, and the servant as his lord; if the master of the house they did call Beelzeboul, how much more those of his household?" Matthew-10:24,25
-------------------------------

"It is proper for you, Kalamas [the people of Kesaputta], to doubt, to be uncertain; uncertainty has arisen in you about what is doubtful. Come, Kalamas. Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing; nor upon tradition; nor upon rumor; nor upon what is in a scripture; nor upon surmise; nor upon an axiom; nor upon specious reasoning; nor upon a bias towards a notion that has been pondered over; nor upon another's seeming ability; nor upon the consideration, 'The monk is our teacher.' Kalamas, when you yourselves know: 'These things are bad; these things are blameable; these things are censured by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to harm and ill, abandon them."

This was by Buddha, Kalama sutra

Ilhaam

2006-05-18T19:31:00.000-07:00

the desire to make things look pleasant is itself an escapism. Everything ought to be rather ordered, than to be naturally beautiful.

Apr 28

2006-04-28T15:01:00.000-07:00

Too sad that I didn't go to the birthday party. The plan of hanging out at cellar is in doldrums as well. I always mess up things in spite of having the option to prevent the mess-up.

I feel my present has always been a compromise with a possibly better future. My surroundings have always been an aberration of what I have dreamt them to be. Most of the times, everything around me seems to be like a dream went horribly wrong, all destined to have a painful climax in the end. I always try to make things better, to change the state of the things, to avoid that painful climax I think I can foresee, although not being sure if I try enough, and not being sure if I can really do by attempting that way either.

and hell! I am saying all this despite not having gotten drunk yet, niether do I have any plans this Friday, either. But I think I would jam with Prasun, and work on my previous compositions, learn something new from Prasun. Its not that great a plan, but somethings better than nothing.

I seem to be desperately liking my mediocre lifestyle now, neither dreaming to be too rich to acquire everything I want (thats gluttony) nor living like a bum (or a nerdy researcher) staying happy watching the time pass by...

Not a long day...

2006-04-27T16:03:00.000-07:00

The job search is still on. I don't know how to convince these guys that a scientist like me can still do a mundane job. I really don't know...

The course on networks is really crappy. I don't have to learn anything in that course, and all what i have done there, is to keep up the job of writing reports, getting the data from a simulation tool which is being abused by the kind of assignments given. Such assignments don't actually need a simulator like that, but still, my instructor wants me to use that. It kinda sucks, but then, its not the only thing that sucks here.

Got a crazy ass tool to convert my old f77 to f90, some angel might have written that tool in good ole 90s, so that I didn't have to waste more than a day on this 20,000 line-file which I thought I am going to handle manually. Some problems are still there, but I am at least 3 days ahead of schedule because of this tool. Sometimes I think I need to take a month off, and revisit my compiler design course, practising on coding up a simple stream editor myself. That would make me confident enough to write such tools by myself in a day. But then, if I really get a month, I would either be getting drunk in florida, or be camping in the National forests.

Also, this trip to Christiansburg always scares the hell out of me. I was asking Raghu how could any desis live in a place full of red-necks. He said, its not that hard to live with red-necks. "its not hard to live with anyone for you, I guess". That had nothing to do with his girlfriend, sitting in front of me, obviously.

Anyways, I gotta leave now. There are so many uncertainties in my life at this point, that even if somebody tells I am gonna die the next morning, I would just keep my finger crossed, my usual neural response, these days ...

Authority and monotheism

2006-04-26T10:47:00.000-07:00

I feel that belief in God or a supreme authority has been necessary in Western world. This comes from my contemplation over the state of judiciary in the US. While on one hand, I felt it is very powerful (which is good) on the other, I found that there is very little justification for their existence, that is presented by laws themselves.

Circumventing laws, overriding the very intent why laws were created, is so much rife everywhere. Laws and ethics are completely two different things. Laws can only reward and punish people; they really don't make sure that anything wrong does not happen, nor do they attempt to. Its left to people to think and introspect about their actions, the end goal being getting most rewards and least punishments. You don't have to obey laws to be good, nor is it ascertained that if you are good in your own way you are going to be rewarded - what matters is how you appear in the eyes of the supreme.

Its one thing to obey the laws and its another thing to think of not thinking of harming someone. So, the intent is seldom under check. You can harm anyone if you want, but still be righteous in the eyes of others if you could circumvent the law. You can even fool God by gifting and giving. Everywhere, your own conscience is never under check by the laws. Laws and ethics are completly disconnected, which is certainly not desirable.

As an example, even if you know that your organization is doing some wrong activity (which you feel is not ethical) you can't publish it or tell it to others, because you are bound by something like a non-disclosure agreement. Submitting to the authority becomes more important than your own conscience. Honesty is upgraded to an organizational level, and addressing to honesty at personal level becomes less important than the one at higher (organizational) level.

But this disconnection of law and ethics is a serious void! How is this filled? Why doesn't this system crumble? The answer is the belief in supreme. The act of submitting to authority in the hope that your conscience is right, is exactly what the concept of 'God' is. I think it was a trade-off between such a void and unstablities of a system with no central authority, which made West fall back to its Greek-roman culture, admitting a bit of paganism, and relieving a bit of seriousness about believing in God a very Christian way. Still authority or God is a very important concept in the Western world, something central to at least the judiciary I know about.

Submitting yourself to the universal authority, preferring duty over the desire, is something that Christianity has imparted to the Western culture. Hence the 'concept' of God is key to such systems. If the belief in God is relieved, people would take the liberty (quite literally) of connecting the ethics to laws themselves. Something of this sort did happen in the times of Renaissance, whence the ideals of freedom and liberty came from. Again, it won't have been possible without the Greek-roman influence.

Not surprisingly, the concept of a modern democracy is due to a thinker who was criticized for his atheistic perversions, who contention was that the order of this world is decentralized, inherent in the whole creation. The metaphysics of God is inside every mind, and hence we, as human being are able to make our own choices, unbound by our own conceptions of God.

Pessimism

2006-04-20T15:17:00.000-07:00

I have repeatedly come to the conclusion that optimism is about a little bit of ignorance- not necessitated not inevitable, but a consciously chosen one. If you were really sure that you are going to succeed there would have been no need of that feeling what one calls optimism.

I can see that knowing too much about everything gives birth to pessimism and that it is inevitable: The real underlying problem is that you never actually know everything completely. You can only claim or believe that you know everything. The point where you think you've known everything, or realise that you know too much about everything, you see every thing as deterministic, doomed. Your own conclusions bear a lot of certainty, only in your mind. That is where pessimism begins from. Knowing too much, I think is highly likely to lead one into pessimism.

I can see that in my personal life as well. The people around me knowing very little about history, politics, philosophy are the happiest one, brimming with energy, and very much optimistic about life. Since they don't know, they don't predict, nor do they expect failure. Keeping on trying in hope of success is what an optimist does. Once you choose to think about the metaphysics of success and failure, you are bound to become at least a bit pessimistic...

I could go on talking about it, but thats all for now...

In sad demise of Rajkumar...

2006-04-14T16:19:00.000-07:00

From what I have known of the city, this is expression of serious kannada nationalism. Outside of the north Indian 'make-believe', there is kannada pride all the way. These guys sing their own national anthem, bow to their own flag, and consider being an Indian wa...y after being a Kannadiga... and I must tell you, this story is about the most friendly of south indian states. You see the problems, because there is actually a lot of north indian (and well, tamilian) shi* in this city, which the docile, inocent kannadigas permitted to be dumped.

Now because of my own anti-establishment stances, I never had any problems with such a seclusion, but it remains a fact that niether do north indians (and thats not just cow-belt, but anything above karnataka) care to know anything about the local culture, nor do the south indians (kannadigas in this case) give up their clean-ness and purity related hang-ups in their dealings with north indians (=belief that any north indian is inherently corrupt and impure)

However, the two exceptions that I know:
1. Enjoyment of seclusion: Definitely, I am not talking about those who went to missionary schools and/or attended college with high-tutions. They don't know eff about this. In fact, because of americanization and the consequential disconnection of this city with the indian culture, the ignorance of local culture actually helps in getting americanized/anglicized. Its exactly because of being unwelcoming to local culture, that bangalore is more welcoming for the 'modern' Indians. You can live an excellent social life in this city without having to know anything except English, and its not just about college-life.

2. Claiming a connection: if a Mumbaikar seeks acceptance, he could claim a connection with the north karnataka (being the maratha land that it is) But apart from that, nobody else from north, gets into the kannadiga circles.
This is just a small city of the united india.

Last december I went to bangalore, found in the multiplex that the money you pay for watching a non-kannad movie is double of what you would pay if you were watching a kannada movie.

Hypocrisy can only grow to the limits of ridicuousness, might I say.

Anyways, my north indian ass is not so much worried about my northie brothers out there, becuase such violence is mostly in the labor class yet- so this fight is gonna be more like one between kannadigas and tamils.

I would just wait and watch...

some jnana

2006-03-25T12:40:00.000-08:00

Me, in the preaching mode to one friend of mine (esp after this buddha style haircut that I just got )

I realised much before that I actually don't love any woman as a person. Its only image of her in my mind that I love. There are a lot of women, who come close to it, in some or the other way. There are some who are closer in one way, but there are some other who could be closer in some other way....Funny though it sounds, I don't mean any sense of humor here...

With a person, in particular, it doesn't work.. love is actually a distant appreciation as far as a person is concerned. The moment you come closer, it starts becoming an agreement. Love is sentimentality, and a relationship is a much more mundane thing. Pure love can never build a relationship.

As far as moving on after a break-up is conerned, its easy to shift focus from a person, but not from the whole idea itself. You would always seek love - it fails with one person, you start begging to another. To run away from the need for love, would be something one could really aspire to do, to actually cure the problem.

I think if was confuicus who said something like this -" Not to think of you, is still, thinking of you... to think about not thinking about you, is probably something I would really want to do"

2006-03-22T23:06:00.000-08:00

Favorite vegetation

2006-03-19T22:34:00.000-08:00

Not so good on bass

2006-03-19T22:20:00.000-08:00

I'm a serious guitarist...

*Scratchpad*