To one who asks me what is love

I have phrases and whole pages memorized,

but nothing can be told of love.

You must wait until you and I

are living together.

In the conversation we'll have 

then...be patient...then.

- Rumi

Tribalism

If a modern Republican President started raising taxes, disarming nuclear weapons, disbanding regiments, legalising gay marriage and introducing universal healthcare the Republican base would desert him in droves. They might actually burn him in effigy.

Whereas a Democrat President can continue black-sites, embrace drone warfare and expand the war on terror to multiple countries, kill an American citizen without due process, invade the airspace of an ally and assassinate an unarmed man instead of arresting him, give the banks a free pass, actively silence whistleblowers, deport illegal immigrants, block sane drug laws, not close Guantanamo, essentially  be as dodgily right wing as he wants and "liberals" will not only vote for him but ecstatically endorse him.

And these "liberals" will look down their nose at the bible-thumping conservatives and call them IRRATIONAL and TRIBALISTIC.

Because Sarah Palin. Michelle Bachmann. That's why.

Shut up

Imagine all the people

Is the looming fiscal cliff giving you nightmares? I have a simple proposal for taxing the rich in the US. Forget the Buffet rule. Don't propose increasing the rate for the uber-wealthy and be called class warrior. Btw, not for nothing but ending tax cuts is not the same as increasing tax rates. Tax cuts were by definition a temporary respite from taxing that was possible due to Clinton-era budget surpluses (and because of the remarkable mythical power of tax cuts to stimulate the economy). And given the budget situation now, it is only natural to say that the tax cuts are no longer affordable.

My proposal is this: add a 3% war surcharge on income over 500k. The nation is waging one official war and countless unofficial ones. Ok, let's just call it one effing big global war on terror. This war is, as one would be led to believe, is a righteous one, worth fighting. The poor are sending their sons and daughters and paying for the war with blood, the rich can pay for the war with a small fraction of their wealth. None of the 3% will be used for anything other than Department of Defense, Veterans affairs, Veterans health and paying down the deficit (only that part of  that is caused by the unfunded wars). Supporting the troops will no longer be about lip-service. Let's call it Best America Freedom-loving patriotic surcharge in wartime to support the troops American Apple Pie Founding fathers If you vote against it you are a puppy-killing terrorist Act (BAFLPSWSTAAAFFIYVAIYAAPKT ACT) of 2013 (The acronym needs some work).

There is bipartisan agreement that war is good and national defence is sacred. So clearly no one except peace-loving hippies can have any problems with a war-time tax and we all know that these peaceniks have no jobs, they just sit in their mother's basements in their pyjamas, smoking pot. With this surcharge, there will be guaranteed no military cuts, no slashing of Pentagon budget. The neo-conservatives can stop complaining that it is the weakest navy since 1914. The Republicans can add amendments that no money will be spent on death panels or FEMA camps or UN helicopters or whatever it is they are afraid of these days. The Democrats can concede that the money from the 3% surcharge will not be put in the same bucket as the big government basket along with Medicare, Medicaid and Social security. The 1% can continue to feel patriotic and can go on Sunday morning shows and write Editorials about how they are so American and chant USA! USA! if that will make them feel better.  Everybody wins. There isn't a draft lottery for the rich to dodge, there aren't bread lines, there isn't shortage of caviar. So the war-time surcharge is the only thing that brings it home to people that America is a nation at war. This 3% surcharge is strictly temporary; only until the war is over... in other words, forever.

I know I am a dreamer, but maybe this will act as a small incentive to stop waging endless wars around the world.

Lack of Foundation

I happened to re-read the Foundation trilogy by Isaac Asimov... bcoz... well! I didn't need a reason to. I just did. And I realised this time around that Asimov wasn't really a forward thinker and had an almost breathtaking lack of imagination.

The galactic empire is a few hundred thousand years old. You'd expect some things to change from 1940s America. For one, there is no talk of woman scientists that are in any powerful positions in the Foundation.

Hari Seldon, the founder of Psychohistory is a dude, the first mayor of Terminus is a dude, his trusted deputy, a dude, the priests of the nuclear religion they spread is a dude. Mallow, the first trader-prince is a dude, his nemesis in the mayor's office is a dude, there is an ambitious general who is a dude, the rebel trader sent to stop him is a dude, there is a smart emperor who stops him, also a dude. The mutant Mule is a dude, Ebling Mis, the foundation psychologist is a dude, there is a democrat captain, a dude.

Where are all the women? At home cooking dinner?  There is a foundation chick who kills the mule bcoz of feelings, there is her precocious grand-daughter who reads romance novels and decides to go on an adventure (ok she is 16) and a blonde mistress. I mean the strongest woman character in the 3 books is a dumb blonde character who thankfully is part of the Second Foundation. Even giving the benefit of doubt to the time period and the target audience, something is really amiss when you don't have an empress (Queen Victoria anyone), a woman soldier, a woman scientist, a woman trader or religious leader or pilot. The man is writing fiction about intergalactic trade treaties and he can't write of a strong and powerful woman because that would be too outlandish. Come on!

A quick tale - A broken dream factory

"We have conquered the earth. Now it is time for the moon and the stars beyond," Director Shankar said to his assembled team of writers and assistant directors as they sat in the plush beachside resort in Maldives. The warm and pleasant sun wasn't the only thing that he was basking on; the success of his last film about a killer robot had surpassed all his other movies put together. "It is time to begin the next project and the only thing we know about this new movie we are going to make is that it will cost more than the previous one," he said amid drunken cheering. "I have a new Hollywood cameraman and special effects team ready to sign the papers. Charu here has agreed to write the chase sequences and they are going to be bigger and better than last time". More cheering. "We have had a week-long holiday and I am sure everybody is completely relaxed, ready and eager to begin work now. I want each one of you to pitch me an idea in three days. No idea is taboo. As long as it spells big commercial success, anything is fine."

That was three days ago. 

The meetings were scheduled in increasing order of experience; the young and wet behind ears were called in first. Any second now, Karthi, the most senior of Assistant directors would be called in. Karthi was nervous. The usual brainstorming sessions were easy enough to handle; you let the eager-to-please young kids come up with ideas and you suggest a tweak there, a twist here and bingo! you have got yourself a script and a good day's work is done. But this one-on-one scared him. This was blatant 'What have you got to offer' challenge. Fifteen years he had been an assistant and he was afraid that he would get passed over. Three days and countless hours scouring through every movie on the pay-per-demand list later he was no closer to coming with anything. There was one sequence from Inception that he was counting on ; a shot of earth folded on itself and the hero running up and down defying gravity. But rumour has it that one of the juniors had already pitched it earlier in the day. Now, he truly had nothing.

Time was closing in.

The door opened and he was signaled in. It was all over.

Time did cartwheels and an hour later, Karthi walked out with his beaming boss. He had pulled out a golden-egg laying rabbit out of the hat. It was a fucking miracle.

He had started with what he thought of the director, hoping that flattery would get him through this ordeal. And then lightning struck. The motherlode. He remembered how Shankar had started the previous meeting with conquering the stars and decided to roll with it. The movie will involve astronuats, exploring space. Not in a dream sequence, dance routine kind of way, but for real. Throw in a few technical terms; rocket, resistor, transistor, satellite and  jackpot! People saw him as the modern director, a risk-taker who used latest technology and scientific terms in his films that people would otherwise not ever encounter. This will be a first by an Indian film-maker. Not just some alien comes to earth in a flying saucer story. But real space exploration. Half the movie happens in the moon or in Mars. 

With each sentence, he could sense Shankar's eyes glaze over in gleeful anticipation. 

"There is one sequence that I can actually see in my mind's eye," said Karthi, "Villain and his goondas chasing the heroine through the sand dunes of the Mars, to rape her of course, their each step a leap due to the Mars' gravity, a tiny earth in the dark background and the hero with a jet pack flying through a volcanic eruption, are there volcanoes there, who cares, to save the heroine. Her oxygen tank runs out and the hero gives her lip kiss to keep her alive. Would make a dramatic scene, wouldn't it?" 

He had thought that Karthi had dried out. How wrong was he! Seniority and experience did count for something. Shankar realised what a massive hit this was going to be. His success formula involved  2 parts larger-than-life hero, 2 parts patriotism, 1 part technology, 1 part set design, 2 parts sentiment, 1 part "I get the struggles of middle class" down-to-earthness,and 5 parts unfettered extravagance. This had all the ingredients, ticked all the boxes. He was already thinking ahead; he can get Thotta Tharani to erect huge sets, the size of stadiums.  Planting the Indian flag in the Moon or Mars or whatever, was sure to create goosebumps. It has to be Mars, so we can say we have overtaken the Americans and the Chinese and the Russians. In the backstory of the hero, and a flashback in second half was his trademark style, he can show him as coming from a poor family, his mother holding a candle for him all through the night for him to study for his engineering entrance exam. The hero can say, "I didn't have money to buy a new shirt and now I am wearing space suit". Ignite youngsters' dreams. He can claim how he was doing a great service to the country by making this movie. Ah! he could borrow from Abdul Kalam's biography for the backstory. If he could get Abdul Kalam to say he liked the film, he could sell in B and C centres for an extra crore or two. And he can name-drop Kubrick, Asimov in interviews for the city people. If Vivek didn't get too preachy, he can do a nice comedy track. Maybe stick to Santhanam. he seems to be the flavour of the year. And Vairamuthu will have a field day with planetary references - 'Chevvay, Buthan, Ulagam unna suthuthu'. Sure there was work to be done; there was still songs and fights to conceptualise. But there will be a climactic battle scene with a thousand extras in alien costumes. Kind of like Avatar without cgi. The publicity wrote itself. Oh! the joy of being a director.

Everybody wins. Him more than others. But everybody wins.

Ezra Pound - On types of writers

When you start searching for ‘pure elements’ in literature you will find that literature has been created by the following classes of persons:

1. Inventors: Men who found a new process, or whose extant work gives us the first known example of a process.
2. The masters: Men who combined a number of such processes, and who used them as well as or better than the inventors.
3. The diluters: Men who came after the first two kinds of writer, and couldn’t do the job quite as well.
4. Good writers without salient qualities: Men who are fortunate enough to be born when the literature of a given country is in good working order, or when some particular branch of writing is ‘healthy’. For example, men who wrote sonnets in Dante’s time, men who wrote short lyrics in Shakespeare’s time or for several decades thereafter, or who wrote French novels and stories after Flaubert had shown them how.
5. Writers of belles-lettres: That is, men who didn’t really invent anything, but who specialized in some particular part of writing, who couldn’t be considered as ‘great men’ or as authors who were trying to give a complete presentation of life, or of their epoch.
6. The starters of crazes

Until the reader knows the first two categories he will never be able ‘to see the wood for the trees’. He may know what he ‘likes’. He may be a ‘compleat book-lover’, with a large library of beautifully printed books, bound in the most luxurious bindings, but he will never be able to sort out what he knows to estimate the value of one book in relation to others, and he will be more confused and even less able to make up his mind about a book where a new author is ‘breaking with convention’ than to form an opinion about a book eighty or a hundred years old. He will never understand why a specialist is annoyed with him for trotting out a second- or third-hand opinion about the merits of his favourite bad writer.

Orwellian

    All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage - torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians - which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by 'our' side. . . . The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.

The Newsroom - The show so far

There is no denying that Sorkin is a talented screenwriter. I am a big fan of The West Wing and there are moments in that show that is pure genius. So, obviously the expectations are high from 'The Newsroom'. And man! does it fail.

For starters, the newsroom in this show is anything but cutting edge; they have not even dipped their toe outside the mainstream. This is not the Jed Bartlet administration. They have not questioned authority except pile up on Tea Partiers. Don't get me wrong- the Tea Party and Koch brothers and Rick Santorum are all deserving of skewering but my point is that Will McAvoy is doing nothing different from the real news programs of Rachel Maddow or Olbermann. This is not some pie-in-the-sky idea of a great news network going where no one dares go. If Sorkin had shown one character, just one character, question if the Obama administration was right in invading the airspace of a sovereign nation (and an ally) or to ask why an unarmed terrorist was shot and not captured alive, I'd have had more respect for the show. The show waves the flag as hard as the ones it mocks. At least the chest-thumping sycophants at Fox are honest.

And the personal dramas happening in the show are distracting at best and pathetic at worst. But I'll let that one slide.

And I have another bone to pick with Sorkin; his consistent and continued scorn for bloggers. Be it Josh Lyman in The West Wing complaining about "Nurse Ratched" of the internet or Danny Tripp complaining about the pajama people in Studio60. And now Will.  I don't know how much of his characters are stand-ins for his own views but one would presume that they are. Sure, there are terrible comments on the net and there are trolls and people who can't spell, but to bundle all the internet people as basement dwellers who eat cheetos and type ill-informed opinions is a true failure of the imagination. Are there no staff writers under 30? Is there no one capable of convincing Sorkin that the internet is not a big bad thing out to get him? Granted that nobody likes criticism but did the internet hurt poor Sorkin's booboo? Why this kolaveri?

Quixotic

Remember that there are two kinds of beauty: one of the soul and the other of the body. That of the soul displays its radiance in intelligence, in chastity, in good conduct, in generosity, and in good breeding, and all these qualities may exist in an ugly man. And when we focus our attention upon that beauty, not upon the physical, love generally arises with great violence and intensity. I am well aware that I am not handsome, but I also know that I am not deformed, and it is enough for a man of worth not to be a monster for him to be dearly loved, provided he has those spiritual endowments I have spoken of.” 
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote Part 1 Of 2

Grey souls

“Rien n'est tout noir, ni tout blanc, c'est le gris qui gangne. Les hommes et leurs âmes, c'est pareil... T'es une âme grise, joliment grise, comme nous tous..."

Philippe Claudel, Grey Souls

Stiglitz

 ... perceptions of race, caste, and gender identities can have significant effects on productivity. In a brilliant set of experiments in India, low- and high-caste children were asked to solve puzzles, with monetary rewards for success. When they were asked to do so anonymously, there was no caste difference in performance. But when the low caste and high caste were in a mixed group where the low-caste individuals were known to be low caste (they knew it, and they knew that others knew it), low-caste performance was much lower than that of the high caste. The experiment highlighted the importance of social perceptions: low-caste individuals somehow absorbed into their own reality the belief that lower-caste individuals were inferior—but only so in the presence of those who held that belief.

Source: Joseph Stiglitz on Salon.com 

Wittgenstein

A photograph is a frozen moment, outside time. It is ‘a probability’, not ‘all probabilities’, what one sees in the blink of an eye. But if you keep your eyes open you will see things move and change, nature as a dynamic event, and it is this constant changing that creates fuzziness on one hand but clarity on the other, because if you only glimpse then you exclude all other aspects, you have no greater clarity, you are blinkered. 
Source

Musings on solar power

I think I was reading Ramachandra Guha or someone when it struck me that of the many possible ways of doing things, two were the Gandhian way or the Nehruvian way. Gandhian way was bottom-up approach. The focus is on villages and communities. Small changes, small projects but several of them. Nehru on the other hand had a very top-down approach. Big vision... dams, hydroelectric power plants, public sector industry that built huge things. He genuinely believed that massive investment in grand infrastructure projects were the way to govern India and bring her into modernity. The problem of course was that while cities and urban centres enjoyed the fruits of these mega-projects, it didn't reach a substantial proportion of the population. One Bhakra Nangal

project could have funded a million smaller projects which collectively could have been more effective. Or so was the argument. It is a complex system and I don't know enough to tilt one way or the other. I suppose both had their pros and cons.

But what I do see, in the modern context is the repetition of similar dilemma. Take power for instance, India has a massive supply-demand gap. An increasing number of her citizens are able to afford electrical gadgets like airconditioners and refrigerators. Even in a state like Tamilnadu which used to be energy surplus, the demand has grown exponentially that there are now compulsory power cuts. The semi-urban and rural areas have scheduled load shedding between  6 and 8 hours and unscheduled power cuts of another 2 or 3 hours a day. Even in Chennai, there are 2 hours of compulsory power cuts everyday.

This is the problem.

Now, we could either go all Nehru and invest in a multimillion dollar coal plant or billion dollar nuclear plant. (I am confused if Nuclear power is good... so we won't go into it). There are several problems. One, it'd take a long time for these projects to start producing power. And two, demand may grow even further that the gap will still exist when the new plant comes into use. There is a separate problem of pollution and availability of fuels (for coal and diesel plants) and waste disposal (for nuclear plants). There is also an investment issue... we just can't afford it. Or if we did spend most of our money in power plants, there is less to go around for other equally important issues (like water, food and education).

So, what would Gandhi do?

I suppose that he would recommend that small communities become self-sufficient. which means not relying on the national grid for power. We know that while centralised electrical generation has its advantages of scale, electrical distribution causes major losses. What if communities can generate their own power or at least a major part of their power requirements locally? They'd become independent. Technology exists in renewable energy like solar and wind which can provide substantial power for small communities. Instead of thinking of massive power plants that will supply an entire state, we look to hundreds of smaller scale projects that will work for each town and village. Imagine, solar plants in each village supplying electricity to its residents. I understand that solar power cannot fully replace existing power plants, but they can narrow the gap between
supply and demand and use clean renewable technology doing it.
For me it is not about the technology. I think research is ongoing and remarkable advances are imminent. it is about reducing the time gap between invention of technology and adoption of it. We have seen with mobile phones that adoption of technology can be rapid. In less than 10 years, mobile phones have become ubiquitous. It has penetrated markets unimaginable a decade ago. So technology can, when it reaches a tipping point, be adopted rapidly over large populations. And this accelerated adoption also accelerates innovation and growth in the field. A future in which instead of each town and village, each house generates most of its own electricity needs may not be too far away. 


There you have it... incomplete thought. 

On caste system

Had a discussion with a friend about caste system in India and she was trying to convince me that the caste system was not meant to be an hierarchy and it was an organizational principle without value judgement. According to her, as soon as one stopped believing that people are born into a caste, the caste system almost entirely redeems itself. The idea of the caste system, she said, and it's original fluidity makes understanding life much easier. 


I wonder if there is any historic text that proves the existence of an utopian no-judgement caste system or a time when one was not born into a caste. Even in Mahabharatha, Karna is repeatedly humiliated for his caste (son of a charioteer). Ekalavya is denied education bcoz he is a hunter. Drona is humiliated by Drupada. Even earlier, in the Ramayana period, Vishwamitra becomes Vishwamitra because of being humiliated by a mere brahman, Vashista. The number of instances where people are treated badly for their caste is astounding. The very fact that Vyasa and Valmiki are extolled for breaking the barriers of caste would suggest that it was not a routine affair and they were the exceptions to the norm. According to Manusmriti, the Sudras were forbidden to participate in the Brahmin rituals and were subjected to severe punishments whereas the Brahmins were exempted from any kind of reprimand for crimes. So I don't think there is a historic instance where a sudra was happy to be a sudra. Even the sudra kings invented lineages that converted their sub-caste into kshatriyas.


I disagree with this notion that the caste system was a good and necessary system that lost its way. But more importantly, was there ever this "fluidity in the system"?  It would appear that social mobility was a myth. It is like the modern myth of America as a class-less society where even the poorest person can pull himself by his bootstraps and become the richest man. Economists have repeatedly shown that there may be a few individuals in a generation who have broken through but for the most part your economic and social standing depends almost entirely on your parents status. If you are born poor, you die poor (and middle class remains middle class).

The caste system was not nor was it ever intended to be a mere classification of tendencies.  It was about racial/ethnic purity. And therefore marriage and reproduction of "genetically pure" offsprings were the most controlled. Being born into a caste was a feature, not a bug. Anthropologically even in cultures that did not have a rigid caste system they had proxy-systems that controlled reproduction and inheritance of property - restricted who could marry whom. Caste system, then is seen as an extension of tribalism. 


Of course, like Marx would say, all conflict is class based. that is, it was based on economic exploitation. It is always about power and money. And there was always an hierarchy in which there was a pecking order and someone at the bottom of the floor. Even before a formalized caste system was in existence there were rich and poor, exploiters and the exploited. Caste system just made it a lot easier for the rich to screw the poor.


I suspect that caste system as a no-judgement system that turned rigid is entirely an invention of modern upper caste folk who wanted to rationalise the existence of caste system. And why did they have to rationalise? Because according to these distinguished people, Hindu way of life and the Vedas were the bestest thing ever. And it could do no wrong. So the caste system was a splendid spectacular thing which was tarnished by some bad apples. Somehow, I very much doubt it.

INFJ

To my friends who are in disbelief when I tell them I am an introvert 

INFJs are deeply concerned about their relations with individuals as well as the state of humanity at large. They are, in fact, sometimes mistaken for extroverts because they appear so outgoing and are so genuinely interested in people -- a product of the Feeling function they most readily show to the world. On the contrary, INFJs are true introverts, who can only be emotionally intimate and fulfilled with a chosen few from among their long-term friends, family, or obvious "soul mates."

To autumn - I Remember You As You Were

I remember you as you were in the last autumn.
You were the grey beret and the still heart.
In your eyes the flames of the twilight fought on.
And the leaves fell in the water of your soul.

Clasping my arms like a climbing plant
the leaves garnered your voice, that was slow and at peace.
Bonfire of awe in which my thirst was burning.
Sweet blue hyacinth twisted over my soul.

I feel your eyes traveling, and the autumn is far off:
Grey beret, voice of a bird, heart like a house
Towards which my deep longings migrated
And my kisses fell, happy as embers.

Sky from a ship. Field from the hills:
Your memory is made of light, of smoke, of a still pond!
Beyond your eyes, farther on, the evenings were blazing.
Dry autumn leaves revolved in your soul.

-Neruda

Rumi says

If the foot of the trees were not tied to earth, they would be pursuing me

Occupy Everything

Tyranny is always better organized than freedom.

- Charles Peguy

Adieu to Bordeaux

Leaving Bordeaux for a while and before I say goodbye, a classic painting of Bordeaux's very own Andre Lhote

White sheet

There is nothing as beautiful

As that which does not exist.

Paul Valery

Mallarme

I wait, but do not know for what or why

Mallarme

Winter wonderland

First snow this winter in Bordeaux. I feel like a kid on Christmas morning. Me and Hobbes are going out for a snowball fight.

Why is Houellebecq an important voice

Because he can write this with a straight pen

“As a teenager, Michel believed that suffering conferred dignity on a person. Now he had to admit that he had been wrong. What conferred dignity on people was television. ”