Fleeting Moments

Rimbaud

2011-12-04T10:15:00.000-08:00

I shall say – not a thing: I shall think – not a thing:
But an infinite love will swell in my soul,
And far off I shall go, a bohemian,
Through Nature – as happy, as if I had a girl.

Power of Vulnerability - Brene Brown

2011-11-15T10:00:00.000-08:00

Vulnerability is not weakness, nor is it optional. We can't opt out of the uncertainty, exposure, and emotional risks that are woven through our daily experiences. Like it or not, vulnerability is coming, and we have to decide if we’re going to open up to it or push it away. The only choice we really have is how we're going to respond to feeling vulnerable. And contrary to popular belief, our shields don't protect us. They simply keep us from being seen, heard, and known.

If there's anything I've learned over the past decade and experienced firsthand over the last year, it's this: Our willingness to own and engage with our vulnerability determines the depth of our courage and the clarity of our purpose. Even if letting ourselves be seen and opening ourselves up to judgment or disappointment feels terrifying, the alternatives are worse: Choosing to feel nothing -- numbing. Choosing to perfect, perform, and please our way out of vulnerability. Choosing rage, cruelty, or criticism. Choosing shame and blame. Like most of you reading this, I have some experience with all of these alternatives, and they all lead to same thing: disengagement and disconnection.

One of my favorite quotes is from theologian Howard Thurman. He writes, "Don’t ask what the world needs; ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is more people who have come alive."

Vulnerability is not easy, but it’s the surest sign that we’ve come alive.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html

Chanson d'automne

2011-10-30T05:07:00.000-07:00

The long sobs of
The violins
Of autumn
Lay waste my heart
With monotones
Of boredom.

- Paul Verlaine

Maslow

2011-09-29T02:13:00.000-07:00

I have always wondered why it was in the interest of politicians to keep the 99%, also known as dirty fucking hippies, poor? Because they are evil doesn't quite cut it for me.

And it stuck me... and maybe it is just too obvious and everybody else already knew it. But atleast I arrived to this party.

It is simply Maslow's hierarchy of human needs. Keep the unwashed masses worried about their survival and they have no interest in other higher needs like dignity and compassion. Right and wrong. All of this is 'misdirection'. So we don't care what they do. we are too busy running the rat race. keeping our eyes on the ball. Fill in your favourite cliche here.

OMG! I am so stupid to not see it before.

Bhagwati is not wrong

2011-08-23T16:34:00.000-07:00

Jagdish Bhagwati is incredibly credentialled. He is the Professor of Economics at Columbia. If I remember right, he was in contention for the Nobel prize a couple of years ago. So when he wrote 'The Outsourcing Bogeyman' , a lament that so few understand that everyone wins from outsourcing, I was more than a little bit shocked. I expected better from Prof. Bhagwati. That Republicans are pro-business and democrats pick on defenceless businesses by calling them names and demonizing them in the media is a narrative congealed in popular discourse (Cry me a river, won't you). Forget that the Clinton administration initiated a lot of the current outsourcing policies and the Obama administration has been steadfastly loyal to big money except for the occasional posturing.

Politics aside, I understand that there is no room for protectionism in the free market system. I understand that liberalizing trade with developing countries opens new markets to sell American wares. In turn the developing countries gain jobs because of their competitiveness (read cheap labour). The good professor is right. Everybody wins.

Except.

The trade surplus that America gains in this transaction goes to the wealthy banks and businesses while the jobs that are lost are from the middle class and the poor.

Yes, free market is free market. But what can be done about the jobless. What good does Prof. Bhagwati's assertion that everybody wins do to a family of four whose breadwinner has been laid off as his job has been shipped to India or China. What fault was it of his that he was born in the United States and not in India? He can't meet Michael Dell over cocktails at Davos and ask him for his job back, can he?

And Prof. Bhagwati, you want fallacy, I give you fallacy. The businesses that are outsourcing are not doing so only because it is uneconomic to maintain in the west (as you so delicately put it), they are doing it because they can boost their profits and give more to their shareholders. It is not the role of the business to care for anything other than their bottomline. I dig that. This is where the government can step in and play a role. Not as a force of protectionism but as the defender of its citizens' ability to pursue life, liberty and happiness. The government for instance, can say that while it cannot stop the businesses from outsourcing its operations, it can impose a tax on the profits that corporations make by reducing its operating cost. But since imposing a tax on corporations is equivalent to class warfare, killing your children and siding with devil, it is politically untenable, economically populist or not. A reasonable alternative is presented wherein no new taxes are imposed but merely the suspension of tax incentives given to businesses. Not all tax incentives, for I am no commie. Just the tax credit received for outsourcing; a Clinton-era initiative that encouraged businesses to outsource before it became the 'in-thing'. That is not the same as railing against evil corporations, is it? That doesn't make the world any less flat, does it? (Yo! Friedman, ever heard of Copernicus). Maybe that money can be used to, I don't know, re-train the unemployed, invest in infrastructure or create jobs that aren't outsource-able.

On a side note, Carly Fiorina got shellacked in the elections not because she was an evil person who outsourced jobs. She was not elected because her background as a businesswoman does not add any credibility to her as a person capable of protecting the interests of her constituents. That was the position that she was contesting for; a lobbyist for the common man in her state. HP has enough lobbyists, thank you very much. Who will speak for the voiceless if the members of Congress and Senate are also lobbyists for the interests of big business?

As hard as it maybe for you to believe Professor, I don't want to lynch businessmen. I want an equal contest between the aspirations of the poor and the needs of the business, even if the arena in which this bout takes place is the 'free market'. Is that too much to ask?

Alert Political rant ahead

2011-08-20T23:24:00.000-07:00

A friend shared this article by Kanchan Gupta on FB. I was totally going to applaud Mr. Gupta... if only he had said Soviet style a few more times, used the word 'Orwellian' in case we mistook Big Brother to be a vapid TV show and thrown in a nazi or brownshirt reference or two into the mix.

Obviously, I have a few issues with his punditry. Kanchan writes

Everybody knows that the route to a corruption-free India lies through radical reforms that will ensure minimum government, maximum governance

Isn't it like saying "Everybody knows that the secret to long life is healthy living". Maybe I have been missing insightful articles that he may have written in other places, but what exactly is his trillion dollar idea that will ensure minimum government and maximum governance. All of us wish nothing more than to have the biggest bang for buck. Pray do tell, Mr. Gupta. What does this radical reform that everyone knows about and doesn't fatten government look like? I am asking because if there is a bill or policy that would do it but is not being adopted because of lack of political will, political rookie that I am, I'd like to know what it is. Is there any country that has done these magical reforms that you talk about?

Kanchan helpfully hints

But that’s a tedious process which will also mark the end of entitlements

which begs the question: what entitlements? We have no working concept of social security. There is no unemployment insurance. There is hardly anything that you will call medicare. The only entitlements we have are PDS which gives subsidized rice, wheat and such and without which starvation would reach Somalia levels (FAO puts our undernourished at 21% which is about the same as it was 20 years ago) and government hospitals and primary health care system which is the closest thing to affordable access to medical facilities that more than a third of the country is ever going to see (according to World Bank, the number of people below poverty line is 455 million). Public education has worked miracles, bringing our literacy levels from humiliating to about average.

I am all ears... explain how private enterprise is going to make India a better place. I'd like to ask Kanchan what govt programs does he want to shrink. What programs does he want to axe? What entitlements are holding us back. I hope Kanchan is not suggesting that the best way to get rid of corruption in government, is to get rid of government. I mean, if we didn't have a police force at all, then we wouldn't have to bribe the constable in the street corner. If there was no Dept of motor vehicles, then we wouldn't have to bribe to get a licence. Some reports suggest that only 42% of PDS reaches target population. If we perhaps abolished PDS (and not replace it with something similar), then we'll control corruption?

That is not to say the Lokpal bill is the silver bullet that will change everything. That is not even to say that corruption is the only thing that stands between India and greatness. Yes, populism can be bad. It can be misguided. Look at the Teaparty. But does Kanchan not think that more transparency and a watchdog body has the potential to deter government officials from taking bribes? Isn't it worth trying?

Or put another way, is there a non-governmental player that could possibly act as an effective overseer of government?

As for the bilge about Checkpoint Charlie, the socialist official scowled as he checked his passport and didn't smile or say good morning because he wasn't paid for it. I wonder if on the way back to American sector of West Germany, did the freedom-loving capitalist official give him a coca-cola and a blowjob? Are we still selling copy by scaring the world of the red menace? I thought we hated them terrorists these days.

That's a spin

2011-07-28T16:58:00.000-07:00

According to this article in Rediff, Breivik was a Christian fundamentalist who wrote in his 1500 page manifesto that he was inspired by the Knights Templar, a 12th century armed Christian movement with a history of battles against the Muslims to save Europe. This should not be confused with the Hindutva ideology, writes an RSS member. RSS, for the uninitiated, is the armed Hindu movement with a history of battles against the Muslims to save India. Clearly, they are as different as day and night.

In related news, crows are white and milk is black.

By the way,

"killing innocents is reprehensible in strongest possible words. But the attempts to link it to Hindutva movement are also equally reprehensible"

He could have removed the word "equally" and still would have been an enormous douchebag.

And just to prove that Hindutva is not ideologically similar to the Norwegian, the first commenter, a Vishnu Sharma helpfully writes, Brevik's anger is understanable but his actions were premature.

Night and day, I say. Completely different.

Well! That's a spin that would bamboozle even Sachin.

Update: The author of the article led me to believe that sensationalist newspapers were trying to link Hindutva with Breivik based on passing references to the state of India. This is what Breivik actually wrote in his manifesto about the Hindutva movement

It is essential that the European and Indian resistance movements learn from each other and cooperate as much as possible. Our goals are more or less identical.

The PCCTS, Knights Templar support the Sanatana Dharma movements and Indian nationalists in general.

Don't mess with John Stuart Mill

2011-07-25T04:07:00.000-07:00

It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool or the pig are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their side of the question.

Unselfish v Selfish

2011-07-12T00:57:00.000-07:00

We humans are not selfish and all rules and laws made with the assumption that we are basically selfish should be done away with. This was the argument put forward by an article in the Harvard Business Review called 'The Unselfish Gene'. I am not adequately qualified nor did I pay sufficient notice to this article to competently critique it. But I always thought that 'Selfish gene' by Dawkins (and the title is a play on that) was very clear on one thing: He was not calling humans selfish. I mean, the whole idea of the book was that genes were selfish and they would do just about anything to promote their best interests even if said interests were not favourable to the human who possesses them. Human selfishness in so much as they are caused by the genes are eminently alterable. Altruism and generosity are cultivable traits.

Why then would some noted intellectual heavyweight declare that Dawkins was wrong and that we are unselfish?

Because context matters.

In Harvard Business Review, the unselfishness of humans as proven by study X, survey Y and thought experiment Z is irrefutable evidence that it is time to de-regulate the markets. Banks are good; Businesses are kind. We don't need the government telling us to curtail predatory lending or not increase charges on credit cards. We are UNSELFISH. Global financial crisis was caused by a few bad apples. We are all intrinsically good people and we can police ourselves. Don't burden us with rules and regulations.

Say it with me, "Financial regulations are so 80s"

An open letter to a Kollywood knight

2011-05-24T00:36:00.000-07:00

There is as much logic in your argument as in a typical Tamil movie. If you didn't get it, I meant, not that much.

Let's start at the beginning. My comment regarding the selection of national award for best actor was: Was it politics or was it well deserved? This was not an aspersion on the abilities of all Tamil born. Voting for Vijaykant not withstanding, I know not all of them are complete morons. One constantly hears that Tamil people in general and Tamil cinema in particular haven't got the recognition they deserve. If one were to accept the supposition that politics played a detrimental role in the national award chances of Tamil cinema greats in the past, is it unfair to question if the award was a consequence of a rigged selection process. Or is it political conniving only if we lose and well deserved when we win? Is it discrimination only when it favours somebody else? And is it unfair to ask that question given that the report also included this in the brackets - "son-in-law of Rajnikant". Are you claiming favoritism doesn't exist at all or merely that it doesn't exist in the national awards committee?

I need not repeat here the already debunked myth that we have suddenly learnt to make better movies in the past decade. The proportion of good films have remained pretty much constant, at around 3-4 films a year as you put it. There is nothing to indicate that we live in some golden era. And 4 films out of 100 is not defensible.

Oh, btw, questioning the productivity of Tamil cinema doesn't make me a stooge of Hollywood. Why would you even bring the productivity of Hollywood into the conversation? Tamil cinema's failings are its own. It is not caused by Hollywood. Bad cinema is bad cinema, no matter from where. Unless your argument is that no film industry can ever produce more than 4 good films a year, I am going to consider that a non sequitur. Also, Tamil cinema cannot aspire to use Hollywood as its business model. It is regional, with a limited language-specific audience. Try French or Korean film industry next time if you want to make a comparison.

And you didn't really mean that quality of work cannot be measured, right? Because last I checked there was Quality Assurance and Quality Control in almost all industries, where they use calculations, not always the brutal ones either, to define and quantify "goodness" and "acceptable standards". Why would you think the film industry is exempt from such measures? Have you checked Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic? They use numbers based on critics' ratings and reviews. And oh! it avoids subjective biases by using weighted factors. Is it infallible? No. But it sure separates the wheat from 'The last airbender'. Ironically, a bunch of people sat in a room together and decided that X was the best. I mean, if quality of work, this being an artform and all, cannot be determined, then what the hell were they doing giving out awards.

If you were to argue that it does not make business sense to make good movies, I'll totally accept your premise. One could perhaps even argue that productivity, in the context of Indian cinema, is not measured by the number of films of good quality (as assessed by an independent panel of experts or a national awards committee), but by a more desirable metric, *kaching* the box-office collections. But if you argue that "good" movies don't exist and that one is same as the other, then it is disingenuous, to say the least. Admit that a quality film culture is not going to happen because of business reasons. There is no market for meaningful cinema. Period. And you know what would change that; us. The film industry is a service provider and if the customer is satisfied, there is no need for them to improve. Why would they?

I mean if we stopped worshipping mediocrity, then perhaps, just maybe, they may feel compelled to make movies that don't leave you wishing to gouge your eyes out. Wishful thinking, perhaps. But the undeniable fact is that our best is not good enough. We could live in denial of it like we do with athletics and pretend to be content with what we have. Or we could stop the parochial chest-thumping and actually do something. No pressure.

Eliosy - Quartet

2011-05-15T15:39:00.000-07:00

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.

My email to an SBS producer who wanted to talk about the ADFA scandal

2011-04-13T16:30:00.000-07:00

I am happy for you to mail me. However, I am not sure if I can be of any assistance. You see, I do not belong to Defence. I am a civilian and was an international postgraduate student. And research students like me are quite cut off from the undergraduate students. Our interactions were limited (if any) to lab demonstrations and teaching assistance. We do not live on campus (unless pulling all-nighters in the lab counts).

If I may be so forward as to opine - while what happened to the girl was criminally wrong and that the situation could have been handled better by her superiors I'd say that the situation at ADFA is not unique compared to other tertiary institutions in Australia. Freshmen at all universities go pub-crawling and the barely-out of-teens do stupid things with their new-found freedom, including inappropriate sex. Not all stupid things are equally stupid though. I almost got married when I was 20; the guys in this particular case thought it would be cool to film a girl without her knowledge. Obviously they went completely overboard and were deplorable in their stupidity. They should be punished for it. Perhaps discharged from military if not serve actual jail time. It would remind them that actions have consequences. It would serve as a deterrent to future pranksters who forget where the line is.

However, I do not see it as a systemic failure of any institution even if that is the most prevalent and juiciest narrative. I hope you will not take it badly if I say that the media has milked this scandal for all it is worth (and more) and maybe it is time to do a special on something more relevant like Will and Kate's wedding.

Wrestling pigs

2011-03-27T20:05:00.000-07:00

You: Blah blah blah!!!! I am right!
Me: Sorry. That didn't sound logical. Could you explain?
You: You think one way; I think another way
Me: True. But it still doesn't make sense. Not all truths are equally true, you know
You: You are being impractical
Me: Sure, I am still in university. And yes I read books. Still, I don't think pragmatism changes anything in our blah! blah!
You: BLAH BLAH BLAH!!! YOU ARE WRONG!!!!!
Me: OK. Let's not argue. Forget about it. Let's just watch TV
You: I WON!!!! I WON!!! I AM A BRILLIANT THINKER WITH PROFOUND IDEAS THAT NO ONE IS ABLE TO CONTEST. [in a Stewie from Family Guy voice]I LOOK BRILLIANT, DON'T I? I DO! I DO!

Another class-A rant

2011-03-20T00:48:00.000-07:00

I was with a friend the other day and it was a little bit shocking to realise how far I have strayed from the pack. This friend is in the process of negotiating a marriage. It is sort of an arranged marriage - in that he found the profile on some matrimonial site and he initiated the process but his parents in India are proceeding with the meeting the girl and her family and arranging the whole thing. His parents, unsurprisingly, are not thrilled about this particular alliance as this was something that he initiated on his own. Plus, the girl belongs to a different community. My friend, though, was unimpressed with the alliances that his parents were bringing him for the past year and a half and thought to take a little more initiative rather than entrust all control to his parents. So far so good. This is how things work. Apparently.

But a peace treaty with the Taliban would be a more fruitful enterprise than negotiating two different families and the ancillary uncles and aunts and such to agree to a marriage. For one, his father needed convincing (coaxing, begging, threatening in turns) just to visit the girl's family. Shows how the arranged marriage is not all about doing what is best for the son, but a power-struggle. Then there is the sage advice, 'It may all seem great now but wait for a few years and there will be unanticipated problems". And any attempts at quelling this challenge, results in a shouting match - "You think you are smart and that we are all stupid!!! Listen to us. We have lived longer than you"

Obviously the problem here is that my friend cannot (more like, will not) ask his parents to sod off and marry this girl against their wishes. The whole idea of him SUBMITTING to them and agreeing to an arranged marriage would be completely defeated. He could put his foot down but be kind and gentle and get them to agree. But there will be, at best, a grumbling halfhearted agreement, waiting for the first signs of trouble to say, Told you so. He could let them have their way and not marry this girl but she is, in his words, "a hot chick". A price catch. But he is not shallow Hal... no!!!!! she is also humble. Hot and humble being the killer combo deal that he was looking for.... what more could a man want.

And there is the money. The girl's father lives and works in Muscat and was a man of the world, he will know what do, unlike the other alliances that fell through because the bride's parents were unwilling to give him a few lakhs. But no! he doesn't take dowry... no calling it a dowry is so 20th century. This is not dowry... this is just the girl's parents emptying their savings willingly to give to their daughter and son-in-law. It is not robbery if you are not wearing a ski mask and holding a gun, is it?

Perhaps, I am not making my point clearly. What I am trying to illustrate with the distasteful actions of my friend is that gender inequality survives in this day and age and while all 'male-chauvinism' may not be as crass and overt as my friends, we have institutionalised this disparity in remarkably subtle ways in marriage. This is why marriage, in my head is indistinguishable from slavery... sure, some white families treated their black slaves well, fed and clothed them and didn't let the dogs at them. But slavery it was. If marriage is slavery... and men are the white slave-owners, well! that would make my friend, the Grand dragon of the Klan. And just as many blacks accepted their fate as what they deserved, being savages and all, women, brainwashed into accepting their own inferiority, submit themselves to, even gleefully look forward to, this bondage. For the greater common good, I suppose.

Screw it, I am going to bed

Neela sayam veluthupochu dum dum dum... Raja vesham kalanju pochu dum dum dum

2011-03-08T02:39:00.000-08:00

There was once a jackal that while attempting to flee from a mob of stampeding humans, pursuing it for eating their prize chickens fell in to a vat of blue dye. The jackal managed to extricate itself and scarper to its forest home, where it received a strange and unexpected welcome, its animal neighbours having never witnessed such an exotic foreign creature before in their lives. Being quick-witted and all, the jackal claimed that it was a powerful alien creature sent to rule them all; to usher a new era, an age of hope and justice. The animals welcomed the idea of a new leader; they were suffering under a brutal and ruthless ruler for years now. Voila! the blue jackal was made the king of all jungle. Obviously it meant that it didn't have to sneak into farms and steal chickens anymore. The plight of the animals didn't improve much. But then, it didn't particularly deteriorate, so there wasn't much to complain.

And then it rained.

Neela sayam veluthupochu dum dum dum... Raja vesham kalanju pochu dum dum dum

"The blue dye has washed out dum dum dum... The King's mask has been torn apart dum dum dum"

Glenn Greenwald has more on this fable.

But I'll say this much : The greatest moral leader of our lifetime has been stripped (pun intended)

An argument against marriage

2011-01-09T14:28:00.000-08:00

"marriage" with it's elaborate rituals proposes to act as enforcer... a 6 ft. diameter Samoan bouncer who can beat the crap out of you if you put your toe out of the line. my argument is that while some people may need the threat of punishment to stay committed, those of us who don't, be allowed to have a relationship without the intrusive presence of the Samoan.

Conversation with a conservative about conservation

2010-12-27T14:07:00.000-08:00

The earth is huge and resilient and nothing that we do will break it. It is like pissing in the ocean. And if one believes the heretics, then the earth is like a few billion years old and will be around for a few million if not billion years. True.

So why bother with Environmental Conservation, you say.

It is not about the earth, stupid. You probably think thunder is Thor farting in the heavens.

The earth was here long before us humans arrived and will still be spinning around the sun after we are extinct (unless the Hadron collider sucks it to a blackhole). It is not about saving the earth; it is about saving our own puny asses. It is not about the cute panda bear that was in that Kung fu movie. It is all about you. Us. It is about our lunch and dinner; food production being tied to the climate. It is about the roof on top of our heads. It is the air we need, the water we thirst for. It is about our money, our children and our life. It is not about not ruining the earth, it is about not ruining our chances of existing in it.

Don't do it for the polar bear. You know what, I don't think they are cuddly either. Conservation is selfish self-interest, pure and simple

On a grey and miserable day in the ant-hill called Sydney, people cantering in and out of shops at Pitt Street, I wonder maybe, just maybe, who cares if we survive?

Spin that

2010-12-17T05:52:00.000-08:00

Watched a hatchet job on Assange on the Tele. They had ex-associates talk about how Assange was egoistic and how he had yelled at them. Replace the name Assange with the name of any political figure, media editor, school teacher, father, mother, brother, sister, pet dog, random people on the street and it would still sound about right. I mean who hasn't yelled at people. I was called a curry muncher not one hour ago by a drunken bogan with a southern cross tattoo. I don't think the bogan was devil-incarnate. If Assange raped someone in Sweden that is wrong and he is a rapist. If Assange yelled at someone for no fault of theirs, then he is a dick-head. That doesn't change the fact that the US government turned blind eye to civilian brutalities in Iraq. It doesn't change the fact that the government of Yemen has been actively hiding the American covert operations in their country .

The US government and by extension all its allies, including the Australian government and most media outlets are waging a propaganda war. Wikileaks discloses some misdeed of the government that it wished to keep a secret and the Government (it's an Orwellian concoction of all nation states that look up to their true master-state). And the government retaliates by calling Assange names. I haven't seen one instance where they have offered a valid rebuttal of anything that was leaked. So, the only card they can play is 'Demonize' and how they play it!!! Charles Prentiss would approve.

How to have your cake and eat it too? Saying "Wikileaks endangered lives by their indiscriminate dumping of classified information" and "The information they leaked is not important because they are not even new" in the same breath. Cognitive Dissonance... what is that?

We are screwed

2010-10-03T20:41:00.000-07:00

I have moments of optimism but they are a consequence of my almost naive romanticism. For the most part, I know that we are all royally screwed and that there is no hope. Hope... the drug that political junkies survive on... that maybe, just maybe, this time things will be different and this or that leader will usher in a new era and lead us to a better, more just world.

Bollocks.

The world is full of snake-oil salesmen. Every day I am reminded that the lunatics run the ward. Obama, for all his transformative rhetoric is no better than your run-of-the-mill politician. OK, he got some health care legislation through and he can talk in complete sentences. But his Human Rights record is more appalling than Bush. He has not closed Guantanamo as promised. He has not prosecuted the perpetrators of the torture regime. (There is still debate about whether waterboarding is torture or enhanced interrogation technique). He has not even set up an investigation commission let alone hold anyone accountable. At least Blair gets eggs thrown at him and called a war criminal even if he will never see the inside of The Hague. Cheney goes on Face the Nation and builds the case to bomb Iran. The Obama administration continues the Bush-era abuse of civil liberties in the name of war against terrorism (targeted assassination, anyone). The Nobel peace laureate has escalated the drone attacks in Pakistan. For those of you keeping count, that is 2 actual wars (Iraq and Afghanistan), two wars that won't be called wars (Pakistan and Yemen) and another war in Iran in the pipeline. Civilian deaths are transformed to faceless and uninteresting statistics; dots on a mountainous line. And America continues to undermine UN authority by refusing to acknowledge the findings of the UN High commissioner of Human Rights that Israel used inappropriate force against the Gaza flotilla (they were the only dissent vote). The report indicates that an American citizen was executed at point blank range and the US government doesn't blink an eyelid. Apparently, Israel can do no wrong even when they are demonstrably wrong.

The frustration is heightened by the double standards. Example, statements like "America has to stay in Iraq to prevent foreign influence" - said without any irony. Iranian officials are blacklisted and sanctions imposed on them for alleged involvement in arbitrary beatings, arrests and tortures but America must move forward not look backwards. Why, we are freedom loving people. This is what the founding fathers would have wanted.

My rant is not that things have turned to the worse (it has) but that there is no change. America has made a habit of not living up to the standards it expects of other countries and there hasn't been the slightest dent in this American exceptionalism since Obama took charge.

This bleak hopelessness is nowhere more prominent than in the lack of proverbial balls of the mainstream media. Rick Sanchez, a sort of bumbling idiot of a CNN anchor, got canned last week. Because of remarks he made about Jon Stewart on a radio interview. Sanchez is one of Jon's favourite Pinata, to pick on and make fun of. Especially as a counter-point to Glenn Beck and other clowns of Fox news. Kinda, the "Fox people are crazy; so are the CNN folks" schtik that Jon does for "objectivity". The piqued Sanchez calls Jon prejudiced and uninformed, with a limited worldview. The host suggests Stewart because he is from an oppressed minority, has at least some sense of what "the sting of prejudice" is like. Sanchez replies

Very powerless people… [snickers] He’s such a minority, I mean, you know [sarcastically]… Please, what are you kidding? … I’m telling you that everybody who runs CNN is a lot like Stewart, and a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart, and to imply that somehow they — the people in this country who are Jewish — are an oppressed minority? Yeah. [sarcastically]

Sanchez is fired for being anti-Semite. And I wonder what is anti-Semitic (or factually incorrect) in that observation. He is not denying the holocaust or wishing the death of jews. He does not support some cuckoo theory that Hamas is a Mossad operation or that 9-11 was orchestrated by Jews. He merely points to the fact that just because someone is Jewish doesn't automatically entail that they are being (or have been) oppressed. He does not say Jews run the media (which is stereotyping but in itself only marginally racist) but that Jews who work in the media cannot claim to be an oppressed minority owing to their religion and what happened to the Jews in the past. Neither did Helen Thomas support anti-semitism by indicating that Israel is occupying Palestine. Asking Jews to return to Germany does not mean returning to the gas chambers. It means that Jews are no longer under siege in Old Europe. Nor did Octavia Nasr, another CNN employee fired for frivolous reasons, support terrorist organisations. The list goes on.

I get political sensitivity. I really do but this is plain stupid. Is there any hope? Nope.

The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock - remix

2010-09-21T22:27:00.000-07:00

THE .DOC FILE OF J ALFRED PRUFROCK

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a laptop, put in sleep mode on a table
Let us go through certain half-deserted streets
The blinking-light retreats
Of restless nights in free-wifi cafes
And public libraries with internet
Streets that follow like messageboard argument
of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming blog post
Oh, do not ask, "What, yaoi?"
Let us go and post an entry.

In the room the players come and go
Talking of their scores on Halo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the Windows PC
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the Macintosh
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening
Lingered upon the trackpads in their case
Let fall upon its back the crumbs that fall to keyboards,
Slipped by the flashdrive, made a sudden leap
and seeing that it was a soft October night
Curled once about the mouse, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the desk,
Rubbing its back upon the Windows PC;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the icons that you meet;
There will be time to murder and respawn
And time for all the Chrome and Firefox
That drag and drop a website on your plate;
Time for .doc and time for .ppt
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred fanfics and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the players come and go
Talking of their scores on Halo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Is this wanky?" "Is this fair?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair
With a comment on the level of your player
[They will say: "How his server's lagging slow!"]
My morning cosplay, collar mounting firmly to the chin
My website rich and modest, but accessed by a simple login
[They will say: "But how his content's growing thin!"]
Do I dare
Disturb the interwebs?
In a minute there is time
For fanfictions and revisions which Google Docs may reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the RPs, archives, messageboards
I have measured out my life with usernames.
I know the voices dying with a 404
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the mods already, known them all --
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase
And when I am banhammered, sprawling on a pin,
When I am banned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the fragments of my browser cache?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the sites already, known them all —-
Sites that are Web two-oh, white and bare
[But on my cellphone, still given to fail!]
It is the javascript impress
That makes them so digress?
Sites that stretch out like a table, or word-wrap like a shawl
And should I then presume?
And how should I log in?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through archived files
And watched the dialup sequences that blink
No more from AOL in lonely Windows?

I should have been a line of ragged code,
Scuttling through the compiler, breaking apps.

And the messageboard, the website, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep...tired...or it malingers
Returning 404, here in front of me.
Should I, after iPhone apps and prices,
Have the strength to force AT&T to crisis?
But though I have wept and emailed, wept and played,
Though I have seen my avatar brought in upon a platter,
I am no hacker -- and here's no great matter;
I have seen the screen of my laptop flicker,
And I have seen the eternal bluescreen hold my eye, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the games, social media, the blogs,
Among the twitters, among some talk of IRC logs,
Would it have been worth while
To have bitten off the fandom with a smile,
To have squeezed the internet into a ball
To roll it toward some ass on Yahoo Questions
To say, "I am Babbage, come from the dead,
Come back to ban you all, I shall ban you all" --
If one, sending a textmessage, autocorrected
Should say: "That is not what I typed at all.
That is not it. LOL."

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would have been worth while
After the LOLcats and the macros and the youtube clips,
After the spambots, after the blog space, after LiveJournal trailing on the floor --
And Digg, and so much more? --
It is impossible to type just what I mean!
But as if a new .avi threw the nerves in patterns on the screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, texting or throwing back Red Bull,
And turning towards the PC, should say,
"That is not what I typed at all.
That is not it. OH LOL."

No! I am not Lovelace,
nor was meant to be,
Am on some messageboard, one that will do
To send things viral, start a meme or two,
Edit the wiki, no doubt an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Pwning, sometimes, but anonymous,
Filled with citations, all a bit obtuse;
These edits, indeed, almost ridiculous --
Can you not work Google?

I grow old... I grow old...
I shall add some links to my blog roll.

Shall I change my default pic? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall play some World of Warcraft, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the servers singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen cats talking in capslock on the web,
All up in ur fridge, eatin' ur food
When my laptop lights the darkness white and black.

We have lingered in the tubes of internet,
By URLS wreathed with info, loaded-down
Till cellphones ringing wake us, and we drown.

Politics - Comedy

2010-09-20T23:53:00.000-07:00

They are strange bedfellows; politics and comedy. Comedy and comedians can embody the true manifestation of our freedom of speech. Take George Carlin and the seven words for instance. When media outlets like New York Times and MSNBC have begun to act as propaganda tools of the powerful, who do we have but the comedians. To me, nowhere has this fact been demonstrated better than Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Jon was voted the most trusted newsman recently and if anything, it is a telling repudiation of 'real' journalists. His Daily Show has won the Emmy eight years in row. They have not taken this role willingly. The white noise of demagoguery, fear-mongering and name-calling that has taken over our TV sets have forced these comedians to take up serious issues. (I am reminded of the tongue-whipping that Jon gave Tucker Carlson on what used to be Crossfire. He said that he was perfectly happy to go back and make fart jokes all day if the 'real' journalists would just do their jobs.)

There were two interviews in the last week that highlighted the seriousness with which Jon carries his role as 'not just a comedian'. First the interview with former British Primeminister (and Bush lapdog) Tony Blair. I don't watch a lot of TV but I doubt if someone asked Blair, "Are we confronting something with a sledgehammer when we need a scalpel?" or "Didn't we create the problem which we want to solve now?" (namely the presence of Al Qaeda in Iraq). And I don't know what others heard but Blair was totally unconvincing in his justification for the war in Iraq or the drum-beating that has already begun to bomb Iran. Jon asks about the disingenuous "...conflating Sept. 11 and the religious extremism and the war to overthrow a secular dictator" and it was like a Frost-Nixon moment for me.

And as if to prove that this was no flash in a pan, Jon follows it up with another brilliant interview, this time of former President, Bill Clinton. To be fair, Clinton stole the show and one wonders how Americans could vote for the bumbling, 'most of our imports come from other countries' Bush. His grasp of Economic minutiae and his ability to communicate are unsurpassed. Policy Wonk Clinton details his ideas and Jon sits back and lets him. At one point he asks, "Why don't I ever hear that from anybody but you?". Seriously, Hall-of-fame stuff.

Last week, Jon and the satirist Colbert (pronounced koʊlˈbɛər) announced that they were going to organise a rally (2 competing rallies, actually) in Washington D.C. This could well be a turning point. It appears that they will move from being passive commentators to political activists. Notwithstanding the success or failure of this endeavour, it is clearly a sad state of affairs when the world needs a Stew Beef to step up. May the Force be with them.

Update: There are no Gods among men. Clinton for all his brilliance is still responsible for much of the present economic mess. The de-regulation regime started during his tenure. Geithner and Bernanke and Greenspan were part of his legacy. DADT and DoMA were his too (though it was supposed to be an improvement on existing law).

Similarly, Jon Stewart has his own failings. In his efforts to appear non-ideological, an objective centrist, he often employs false equivalencies. "The right is calling Obama 'Hitler'. The left is calling Bush 'A war criminal'. Stop bickering, you crazy people on both left and right," is not exactly objective. Glenn Greenwald has more to say and he says it better than I could. Over to you, Glenn.

It ain't easy being brown

2010-09-15T23:30:00.000-07:00

I was listening to Mozart. Symphony No. 40 in G-Minor. An old lady walks in to the shop and goes I didn't expect you to be listening to this. I have to admit that I was a little surprised at this remark. I mean, what did it mean when she said that?

a) Is it because I am young (compared to her) and youngsters don't listen to classical music anymore?
b) Is it because that a service station is an unlikely place to hear Mozart?
Or
c) Is it because I am brown and darkies should be listening to more appropriate ethnic music?

I thought I was capable of picking up nuances in speech but this one plain threw me. I sure didn't take offense and I am not all that thin-skinned (even if I am dark-skinned) . One way or the other I don't care but I did want to ask.

Fingernails; Nostrils; Shoelaces by Charles Bukowski

2010-08-23T23:40:00.000-07:00

The gas line is leaking, the bird is gone from the
cage, the skyline is dotted with vultures;
...
I walked miles through the city and recognized
nothing as a giant claw ate at my
stomach while the inside of my head felt
airy as if I was about to go
mad.
it's not so much that nothing means
anything but more that it keeps meaning
nothing,
there's no release, just gurus and self-
appointed gods and hucksters.
the more people say, the less there is
to say.
even the best books are dry sawdust.

Overheard

2010-08-08T17:50:00.000-07:00

Whoever said "Democracy is the worst form of government except for all other forms of government" must have had to spend half an hour with the common man. Elections are here and friends would have me convinced that, ofcourse, the will of the people is always right. Vox populi vox dei. Here's a question for you to ponder about: Are people genuinely stupid or do they get treated stupid? Put another way, is the electorate at all capable of making an informed choice? I remain unconvinced as there is always some awe-inducing "stupid" on display. Case in point, a fellow at my school believes that since Julia is unmarried and doesn't have kids, she must be anti-family. I am not making this shit up. "She doesn't have a family, how can she be good for people with families" was his logic (er... if you can call it that). Add the fact that she doesn't believe in God... you can't trust her. She is not primeminister material. She is E-V-I-L. Tony on the other hand campaigns with his wife and daughter. Tony- good. Julia- bad. Head-Desk-Bang-Bang

Things hidden

2010-07-20T17:49:00.000-07:00

From all I did and all I said
let no one try to find out who I was.
An obstacle was there that changed the pattern
of my actions and the manner of my life.
An obstacle was often there
to stop me when I’d begin to speak.
From my most unnoticed actions,
my most veiled writing—
from these alone will I be understood.
But maybe it isn’t worth so much concern,
so much effort to discover who I really am.
Later, in a more perfect society,
someone else made just like me
is certain to appear and act freely.

- Cavafy

Sirote chaque jour ta tasse de neant

2010-06-26T16:25:00.000-07:00

This is a beautiful cafe/patisserie that I stumbled upon in the most unexpected of places. The door opened invitingly to cough out a woman with a child in her arms, a sublimely satisfied expression on her face, and the aroma of freshly brewed coffee and a scent that was hard to place but was of something delicious, perhaps with almonds in it (and surreptitiously sweet) wafted, like a hooked finger, alluring like a woman's hidden bosom. Perhaps it was the name, but I heard a melody, played on a bansuri flute. It was a simple melody, with three notes recurring endlessly. Sa-ni-saa. Sa-ni-saa. Sa-ni-saa. Jasmine climbers shielded the cruel world, of sportscars and discounted brand apparel, from barging into this tranquil universe. My universe, where there was me and my cup and none. And I sipped from my cup of nothingness.

Raavan - a review

2010-06-20T18:27:00.000-07:00

The title of the new Indian film, 'Raavan' that hit the cinemas this week, refers to the ten-headed demon king of India's epic tale Ramayan.The film by director Mani Ratnam, who gave us such classics as Roja (1992), Bombay (1995) and Kannathil Muthamittal- A peck on the cheek (2002) boasts of a stellar cast with Aishwarya Rai Bachchan as Ragini, a classical dancer, Vikram as her ruthless policeman husband 'Dev' and her real-life hubby Abhishek Bachchan as dreaded tribal outlaw 'Beera'. Former Miss World Aishwarya is a household name in the west as brand ambassador of Bollywood, mainly for her roles in blockbuster films 'Devdas' and 'Bride and prejudice' and partly as a regular at the red carpet in Cannes. She has been on Oprah and David Letterman and she and Abhishek are also the de-facto Brangelina of Bollywood and that adds to the hype and expectation surrounding the film.

The movie is purportedly a modern re-telling of the Ramayan. A 'righteous' cop's wife is abducted by a 'monstrous' tribal and the hostage is forced to confront her worldview of the dichotomy of good and evil. Kind of like a Harry Potter film from the perspective of Lord Voldemort, where he-who-must-not-be-named is not so bad after all and infact has great abiding interest in the french impressionists and loves puppies. Fascinating premise with great adaptive potential. And there are moments where it almost lives up to it but on the whole the movie fails in exploring the nuances of a moral struggle of the protagonists. The result: a warm if mentally unstable villain who mercilessly murders scores for a 'good cause', a self-appointed Robin Hood of sorts, and a cold severe hero hellbent on revenge, who gets none of our sympathy. And caught in this struggle is the kidnapped heroine, who is torn between her love, nay, devotion to her husband and belief in his moral rectitude and her grudging admiration, even love for her abductor. A Stockholm Syndrome on Ecstasy.

That is not to say that the film is bad to look at. The mountains, the waterfalls and the forests are captured brilliantly and the dizzying camera work of cinematographers, Santosh Sivan and Manikandan is perhaps the highlight of the movie. The stunts are skillfully choreographed and the final battle in the bridge is breathtaking. The music by Academy award winner AR Rahman is lively and the musical interludes entertaining. Performances by Govinda, as drunkard forest guard 'Sanjeevani' and Priyamani as the outlaw's sister Jamuna are impressive. The much touted on-screen chemistry of Ash-Abhi is impalpable and national award winner Vikram is squandered. It is the predictable screenplay and lacklustre direction, Mani Ratnam's strongsuits in the past, that fails this venture. It is hard to not wonder if the movie falls into the trap of being too beautiful; it's picture postcard setting not indicative of a savage forest and a beauty pageant female lead whose screeches and facial contortions cause more pain and suffering in the audience than what she allegedly endures. It is a thoroughly unengaging tale with hammy acting and oversimplified storyline. Surely we can do better. Epic. Fail.

An old tale

2010-06-13T18:33:00.000-07:00

A wise businessman and his son embarked on a long journey of commercial intent. It wasn't a particularly prosperous time but whatever it is that they were selling, perfumes or precious stones, spices or silk, was quite in demand in this strange foriegnland and they made a fortune. Satisfied that the journey had been fruitful and that money had been made, the duo mounted their horses and set forth to return home. The journey was long and the path perilous. So, as dusk approached, they decided to spend the night in a public inn and continue their plod home the morning after. The inn was rowdy with drunkards and whores and the businessman was afraid for his hard-earned wealth. Father and son took turns to guard their bags of gold coins from scheming thieves and greedy eyes.

Before the sun rose and the men woke from their drink-addled stupor, the businessman and his son saddled up and departed. They had hardly crossed the borders of the town when the businessman realised that there was one bag of gold missing. The son, a lad of fifteen, it appeared had, in his sleepless daze, forgotten it. The businessman was angry but anger much like money should be used judiciously and he was in no mood to splurge it on his naif son. Rushed they back to the inn with the fond hope that there might still be something to salvage. And what did they find but their bag, where they left it, undisturbed. The son was joyous that his bungle had cost no damage but an hours delay in their sojourn home. The businessman, however, was most disturbed. Such fortuity did not bode well. He turned to his son and bid him to go home with half the gold and not to turn back. Puzzled but obedient, the son returned.

Years went by and no news of the businessman was ever heard. The son became a wealthy businessman, amassing great wealth and reputation, married well, bore children and lived a princely life. He was kind and generous to his friends and neighbours and respectful and caring to his mother who was, as women tend to be, adamant that her husband was alive and declined to wear the garb of a widow. Many efforts, all vain, later the son had resigned to the idea that his dear father had vanished without a trace.

You can imagine the shock when one day to their very gilded door returned the lost businessman. The years had not been kind to him and he appeared starved and beggarly. His son embraced him with tears. His resolute wife nursed him. Meat and exotic fruits were served in silver platters and much wine was filled in golden goblets. Servants materialised to attend to his every need. His daughter-in-law drew him a scented bath and his grandchildren prepared a bed for him. When he was sufficiently revived, the son hesitantly broached the topic of the mystery of his absence.

The businessman recounted his tale. When they had found the unmolested bag of gold, a great fear had troubled him. They had had the angel of fortune smiling upon them for too long. Weather had been genial through their difficult journey and they had not encountered bandit nor bureaucrat. Their wares had found welcome buyers. They had forgotten a bounty at a public inn and returned to find it unstolen. It could only mean that misfortune and misery wasn't far away. The businessman decided then to shield his family from it. He would tempt misfortune away. He had sent his son home and journeyed in the opposite direction, praying that he had lured fate his way. And he had been right. Disaster stuck soon. He was robbed. But the robbers had spared his life though they had no reason to. He realised that there was still some good luck left in him and destiny wouldn't be satisfied until it had completely broken him. He proceeded, farther and farther away from his family. He gambled what meagre possessions he had but kept winning just enough to be not completely broke. He was captured and sold as a slave but his slave-owner freed him and gave him some money and a mule. Much later, he was cheated of it and reduced to poverty but kind people fed him and gave him a shelter. Through all the hardships there was still some grace and he persevered in his quest for rock bottom.

And then it came to pass. He was living on the streets of a big city, a homeless beggar. A youngster stole his bag of rags. Surely it was some prank or a dare. Nevertheless, here was a beggar with everything that he could call his own in a a soiled bag and though it be worthless, he had been robbed of it for mere amusement. He had laughed and laughed until he wept with joy. Crowds milled around him to see the insane mendicant. But he was free. He had won the tussle against fate. It was thus that he immediately ventured on his travel home and reached the abode of his family, that had stayed unscathed by adversity.

And they lived happily ever after.

Anguish - Rimbaud

2010-06-08T16:27:00.000-07:00

Is it possible that She will have me forgiven for ambitions continually crushed,--

that an affluent end will make up for the ages of indigence,--

that a day of success will lull us to sleep on the shame of our fatal incompetence?

(O palms! diamond!-- Love! strength!-- higher than all joys and all fame!--

in any case, everywhere-- demon, god,-- Youth of this being: myself!)

That the accidents of scientific wonders and the movements of social brotherhood

will be cherished as the progressive restitution of our original freedom?...

But the Vampire who makes us behave, orders us to enjoy ourselves

with what she leaves us, or in other words to be more amusing.

Rolled in our wounds through the wearing air and the sea;

in torments through the silence of the murderous waters and air;

in tortures that laugh in the terrible surge of their silence.

Stupidity?

2010-05-28T18:43:00.000-07:00

"You know what my morbid fear is," she asked, quite out of the blue.

Sure, I was taken aback but I kept an inscrutable face as best as I could.

"Waking up one morning and realising that I am not as smart as I was when I went to bed. What if I became stupid? Could I live with it?"

I didn't know how to react to it. What should I say? What could I? I was burthened with a deep dark part of her self and I was honoured to be privy to it. But, why me? I was silent lest my feeble attempt at a response would, in her eyes, make me undeserved of this revelation.

"Is that a paradox?," I said, after a moment that stretched the length of my arm when my arm was the length of the street. "I mean, if you woke up one morning stupid, would you even care to be intelligent? Do you see what I am trying to say? The fear of the stupid is only for the intelligent. When you are stupid, you are content in your stupidity. Or put another way, wouldn't you be so stupid that you don't realise what it is to be intelligent, much less that you went to bed as one?"

"Ok! You win the prize for saying the most number of 'stupids' in one breath," she said. The moment had passed with the suddenness of a blown candle.

That was incredibly stupid of me.

A chance encounter

2010-05-13T22:27:00.000-07:00

What fortuity brought us together
under the lighthouse
erect phallus
throwing beacons of light
to straying ships
It is said that stars are potent
that the distant planets have
an influence
It was Mars that brought me to you
True. A little brass tablet on the beach
extolling the many features of the star
A hand rose from the red soil
and steered us
pawns
cattle
ever so slowly
towards our destiny
un-separate
The howling gale coursed
from the frozen shores of the antarctic
fine dust rose like a fragrance
and waves left their footprints on sand
And you sang, my nightingale
through little white earphones
Angels descended
to dance on the rim of my coffee cup
Neruda travelled through the pages
to read his words to us
(and in your voice became you)
And so did Eliot
and Bukowski
Poets milled the room to please you
stealing verses from one another
and failing in their feeble effort
to describe you
to capture in words that which cannot be
Time vanished
Objects disappeared
Everything ceased
There was you
and me
as one.

I am

2010-04-28T20:12:00.000-07:00

Did you think I too will
Spend my days in
search of meagre food,
Tell petty and pointless tales,
wallow in heartbroken agony,
cause by my various acts,
distress and woe to my fellows,
Turn senile with grey hair,
And fall as fodder to the
relentless march of time
As yet another faceless man?

A tip of the hat to A spark of fire for the original translation of Bharathi's poem Thedi Choru Nithanthinru which I have slightly modified

Quick tale: Prayer

2010-04-16T21:52:00.000-07:00

This may be a totally made up story but I heard this one from a remarkably untrustworthy old man.

A group of Jewish prisoners woke up one wintry morning in a Nazi concentration camp near Auschwitz. One of them, a wizened old man with a silver moustache sang a short prayer much to the mute bewilderment of his cell mates. You see, the gas chambers were built and working and a not unfriendly German guard had whispered to them not many hours earlier that today was going to be their turn. The news was met to the most part with total and complete resignation. A few cried silently. No one slept through the night. Not even the little children. And dawn had arrived in the east. The old man sang his prayer and nobody joined him in it. A man from Kiodzko, who until then was one of the silent-weeping could bear it no more and he fumed at the hymn-singing old man. "Why do you pray now? We have been forsaken by men and God and we stare at the gates of our coming death. Why do you pray now?," he screamed.

"I was thanking God," he was told.

"What could you possibly be thankful for? Do you not get it that we are about to die a pointless death? Are you blind to the cruelty of man to his fellow men? And innocent children? There is nothing to be thankful for"

To this entirely reasonable rant, the old man replied, "I thank God because it could have been worse."

To the quizzical looks and the arching eyebrows, he said "I could be them"

So, how was your weekend?

2010-03-27T21:42:00.000-07:00

1. I had to jump hoops (the bureaucratic kind) but it finally happened. I am now the proud possessor of a Motorcycle Riders Licence
2. Poetry is alive and well and lives at The Front in Canberra
3. Rev at Bar32 has music that is (by conservative estimates) gazillion times better than other clubs around the city
4. I love the Beatles. I do. Hey Jude is stuck in my ear
5. It is easier to dance with a girl than it is alone.
6. Ali Baba Kebabs taste better at 3 AM
7. Drinking $10-bottle red wine from a local winery off a plastic glass, sitting on a haystack while eating a wafer thin slice of woodfired pizza made from organic vegetables grown in a little vegie patch in a garden and a gypsy jazz band plays a song about the soup kitchen lady is what a bohemian heaven would (or should) be.
8. Great beauty exists around us. If we blink less, we can catch more of it. Probably.
9. Paul, if the unintended byproduct of your singledom is a weekend like this...

Professions of infinite love

2010-03-10T15:27:00.000-08:00

Now that I have consummated my relationship with Infinite Jest, and what a rollercoaster it has been, I figured I could return to my single-dom, bookwise. Little did I realise that there was no going back. There is no life without it. IJ will be mine forever. The last month, you drove me mad, madder than I usually am, but you took me to heights of pleasure that I never thought possible from prose. I say this with no shame: I love you Infinite Jest. And will always.

TunTunThun TunTunThun (rpt)

2010-02-13T23:30:00.000-08:00

I don't know why but I have been having this irresistible urge to talk to you. I tried calling you a few times and either got a busy tone or you didn't pick up. Your caller tune is haunting. Nice choice. Nevermind.

It is raining and I am sitting next to the window looking out. Erik Satie is playing on the computer. Gymnopedies. Lent et douloureux. There is a leak in the roof and it painfully drips in to a bucket in the kitchen. Drip.Silence. Anticipation. Desperation. Drip. And repeated over and over and over again. The curtain billows in the steady rhythm of one asleep. And it rains. Like music.

I went to a concert last night. And the trumpeter joked about the time he was dangling 90 feet above the stage playing the trumpet.

John Keats is dead. John Keats is dead.

I have few things to say... I just wanted to talk. I wonder if you did pick up, what I would have said. Perhaps about Philip Glass. You should listen to him. Maybe not Metamorphosis but definitely Passages. I think they will... how should I put it... appeal to your sensibilities.

Did you know there is a Canberra Jung society. But there is no Freud society. Wouldn't it be funny if they were like rival gangs. and they TP the other's office at midnight and call each other names?

Obama, that pussyfoot is coming to Canberra next month. I should attend a public rally or something. I will hold out a poster that says, 'Will make you a honorary citizen if you say Giddy Up'. Or maybe say a 'Dingo took my baby'.

Sisyphus was cursed by the Gods to roll a huge stone up a steep hill and every time he almost reached the peak, the stone would roll down.

Kurt Cobain sings Where did you sleep last night.He scream... In the pines, in the pines, where the sun don't ever shines, I shiver the whole night through.

Did you know it is not about a cheating wife? It is an old country song about...

I don't know if you are still painting/ if you still read, but if you do see Piet Mondrian's art. I wouldn't be so presumptuous as to ask you to read a particular book, seeing as I myself haven't been reading much. I am reading a book called INFINITE JEST and...

Bright star.

The other day I cooked a mean Chettinad Chicken. Marinated in spiced yoghurt for like a day.

The secondhand bookshops are a treasure-trove and I am a bounty hunter.

I am going to buy a motorcycle. a Cruiser. a big heavy one. powerful. and thud thud thud around.

there is this tv series called The West Wing. you should watch it. what is it about? it is political.you are not into politics. it has funny moments. like when donna says she has penmanship. yeah right. not hahaha funny.

Masterpieces from Paris is in the national gallery. they are screening lust for life today. i don't know if i should go

i admit to it. at times, when the moon is low on the horizon and looks like a beachball just over the hills, i miss you.

Maslow has written a book called towards psychology of being. he grows in stature.

moon sets sun rises sun sets moon rises

never mind never mind never mind

Betrayal, this is not// Poetry, perhaps

2010-02-07T16:03:00.000-08:00

I am no Judas

Nor am I treachorous Brutus

I do not seek you for an enemy

And not because you are my friend

I have my nemesis in me

rusty armoured and pale blue cloaked

and have no need for another

I am involved in a daily deathly struggle

with life and nothingness

I court love and pain and death

And weep for Keats and Eliot

I care not for your delusions,

your amorous aspirations

Really, I care one whit

As much as you'd like to believe

I am not the one between

you and your happiness

I stand between me and mine

Adventures of the Cancer-denier

2010-01-28T18:52:00.000-08:00

Joe W. sat in the hospital lobby in a plastic molded chair watching Whoopi Goldberg's animated mute face along with other women of the View. Two year old copies of House and Garden and some celebrity gossip rag that broke the Brangelina news lay uncared in a corner.The doctor called him in eventually. Joe had been to his GP with a recurring bout of abdominal pain and his GP had prescribed this and that and then when the pain hadn't subsided referred him to the hospital and the 'specialists' had gone to work on him and done a battery of tests including blood, urine and something else that was like X-ray but not X-ray and a biopsy with a needle the size of a baby's arm. Today was the day for the results of all those needless needles.

The doctor, an Asian-kind of guy, though with a flawless Bostonian accent, ushered him to his office and with a sombre expression that must have taken years of practice in front of mirrors informed him that the diagnosis wasn't good and he was sorry but the results indicate pancreatic cancer but there was hope and the three-year survival rate wasn't too bad and new treatments are being developed all the time. He looked at the doctor with an expression that was rather unfamiliar in that room. It wasn't denial, puzzlement, disbelief, shock, sorrow, anger, courage, hope, desire, despair or any of the emotions that one would normally associate with a death sentence. It was contempt, and a strange kind of contempt it was. He said, 'Why should I believe you?' and the doctor mistaking it for shock said in an empathising voice of one who has seen too much pain and suffering to not be moved by it, that he was afraid that it was so and the results were very conclusive. That is when he raged, 'How do you know that it is cancer? If you don't know what is causing the stomach pain, do you just call it cancer?'.

'Sir! I am an experienced oncologist and I studied Medicine at John Hopkins and specialised in pancreatic cancer at Harvard. Your liver function tests revealed possible cancer but it was inconclusive. This is your pancreas as seen by our CT-scanners and as you can see this is a textbook case. It shows a clear tumor of 10mm and we have results from the biopsy, that was the procedure with the big needle, that has confirmed that it is not a benign mass and that it is in fact cancerous pancreatic tissue. I am terribly sorry but you are young and otherwise healthy and there are a number of options to fight cancer'.

'I don't want to fight cancer because I don't think this is cancer. Why should I believe that this is cancer or that it is deadly? Just because you are a specialist and you went to Harvard and you say so? I don't think so. And I am not coming back to you quacks'

'Sir! I understand that this comes as a shock to you and that you are in denial but here, you can see this book, this is an authoritative text by Howard Reber and if you see the CT-scan image on the book and your CT-scan image, they are very similar, almost identical. And please you have to keep coming to the hospital for treatment and we should decide on the future course of action that is best for you'

'Who are you to tell me what is best for my future? You are just a scientist. Just because you went to medical school and studied for eight or ten years, doesn't make you king of the world. And so is this Howard guy, a scientist. I trust no one'

'Pancreatic cancer is well researched and well documented. If you'd rather have a second opinion, I urge you to go to another hospital and I am sure that they would confirm for you what I have just said'

'You are all a cabal; the other hospital guys and you. You all want to fleece us by scaring us with tall tales about "cancer", saying You will die if you don't listen to us. Let me tell you what I think - You just want to control people. That is all there is to it. It is about control and money '

'I can assure you that is not the case'

'Then riddle me that - the more people you diagnose with "cancer" the more money you get from government. How is it not in your interest to spread the "cancer lie". Tell me'

'We get more grants from the government because with enough money and support we can cure cancer or at least make it manageable. For the common good'

'Common good, my ass. I have seen scientists. I know all about the politics of science. Do you think I don't know about pharma companies and insurance giants that make billions and billions. And I know about all the doctors who get sued for malpractice. You want money and power. You want people to stop smoking and drinking and having a good time because you nerds couldn't get laid'

'Sir! I beg with you. We can argue from now to eternity if science and scientists are perfect and recount all the mistakes we have done but you have pancreatic cancer and if we don't treat you, you'll die within a year'

'Cancer is just an elaborate conspiracy by scientists to steal money from the taxpayer. That is all there is to it. Kind of like Global warming. The whole climate change myth is a liberal plot by tree-huggers and lesbians to take away our Hummers. I'll have no more of it. Goodbye to you and may you burn in hell'

'Ah! well! He got away, this smart man. So, which other gullible, totally unskeptic tool can I diagnose with cancer. I am down on this month's quota'

Hope/Frustration

2010-01-19T17:59:00.001-08:00

The law of large numbers suggest that one of these days I should get something right

How do I begin to explain myself

2009-12-17T22:07:00.000-08:00

I think of all the things that would make it alright; this past that we want to recreate, of mango sorbets and french toasts and I can't think of any. There is nothing that you or I could say or do to change what has happened. I mourn the loss of this past as you do too. I seek to reach you that we may mourn together. I pick up the phone to call you. The first four digits, I am sure I want to talk to you. Doubt begins in digit five. What should I say, I ask. By sixth digit I ask Who am I calling? This person who exists or another who existed. Seventh and eighth goes by with nostalgia. I am burdened with memories. Happy memories. Of the moon and starry nights. Of poetry and potatoes. Of the unbearable lightness of being and becoming. Their oppressive weight pushes me from my phone, that portal to you, and reach out for fresh air. I go for a walk and the trees and the birds assure me that the winter is past. It begins to rain. Not a shower as much as a drizzle. Just enough to wet me. Water trickles down me. I return home fresh and renewed. The phone is in the corner and its beckoning doesn't reach me. A month shall pass before I turn towards her again. And she lures me. Her viper-voice. I reach to touch. To pick her up. Cradle her in my arms and coo in her ears. A week goes by before I get the courage. I resist, she lures. I touch, she stirs. And we play our game again. I begin to dial the numbers and the viper-voice changes tone and is telling me I need to break the time-space continuum to make my call. Good luck with that. I checked the journals; we are not there yet. Maybe in a decade. So I drop the phone and walk again. and the trees and birds assure me that winter is behind us. Memories fade. Like the stain of mango pulp on my favourite white shirt. Slowly slowly with each wash. And it is good that it melts for what good is the stain. I cannot taste it. Not anymore. Its bitter sweetness exists only in my head. I think of all the things that could make it alright, this past that we want to recreate, of mango sorbets and french toasts and I can't think of any. There is nothing that you or I could say or do to change what has happened. I mourn the loss of this past as you do too. But even in grief, we cannot mourn together. We are far. We are far. I do not seek to reach you anymore. I simply love.

Where is the outrage?

2009-11-19T22:08:00.000-08:00

I kid you not, this is a real advertisement on television:

Open to a beautiful young woman looking longingly at her marriage photograph as she dusts an immaculate room. Cut to a charming young man running through a corridor carrying what appears to be a huge canvas. Back to the woman whose mobile rings. She picks up the mobile and wordlessly goes to the window to open her curtain. And lo behold! on the opposite building is the charming young man holding a canvas with a heart shaped rose petal artwork and waving madly and he had given similar canvases with bold letters on them, to people in different apartments to read M-A-R-R-Y M-E A-G-A-I-N. The girl moved by this romantic gesture, blushes. End advertisement.

The ad was for Pond's Age miracle cream.

Here is this guy who dumped his woman because she looked old and wrinkly and now that she has used Pond's age miracle cream and gotten all young and beautiful, he wants to marry her again. And she blushed.

Excuse me, I have to throw up.

Mini samosas

2009-11-13T20:57:00.000-08:00

Opportunities are like mini samosas, if you don't grab them when the tray does the first round, there probably won't be any left for you.

Pragmatism?

2009-11-05T03:22:00.000-08:00

He called himself a pragmatist. That is, he believed "What if the Emergency stole your civil liberties, the trains ran on time!"

Shocked, one asked, "How could you possibly say that? Would you say, What if you have cancer and chemotherapy has caused your hair to fall, at least you don't have to spend money on an haircut". No, that wouldn't do. "What if your car got stolen, at least you didn't have to wait in line at DMV to pay for registration"

Not at all. He is just being practical, you know.

What if a million people die of hunger, at least the population reduces

Avatar

2009-10-06T16:07:00.001-07:00

My avatar didn't load up in Farmville. I was a faceless, bodyless shape that plowed and planted and harvested.

Pig on a spit fire

2009-09-27T19:21:00.000-07:00

You are dead to me. I have killed you from my memory and washed the blood-stained floors with saline water. I cordoned off the area with a 'Crime Scene - Do not cross' barrier tape. I sprayed liberal amounts of room-freshener to remove any lingering fragrance. (I chose Lavender because I am afraid Jasmine and Rose will resurrect you). And sanitised. Sanity. Sanitise. Sanity. Sanitise. Was it really over? Could that be it?

There was nothing left to do but return home and shower. I turned on the shower and tepid water trickled down my chin washing away tears. The water got warmer and warmer until you raised from the steam. Like a ghost but alive. Sure, I was startled, but why was I happy that you were not completely dead? I did not know why you were alive and in my shower. How could you have crossed the cordon? It said 'Do not cross'. Surely you are not allowed to disobey such explicit directives. You looked at me from your perch atop the curtains and smiled. And I smiled back. The last drop of the shower saw you vanish. I do not know if through the drain or through the window. I do not search you. I changed and went to work.

I filled my days with this and that. Honestly, I couldn't say with what but the days were filled and what did I care. And you did not return for days, sometimes weeks. But you always came. The other day from inside the oven. I am no longer surprised when you spring from the CD player when it plays Chopin's Nocturne in C Sharp Minor. Tin ta tin ta tin tin. Or that time when you emerged out of the bucket of popcorn at the movies. In fact, sometimes I know of your coming before you come. My friends are spooked when I tell them of your presence. They pity me, their pity like the excess oil in Eggplant Masala. Horrible, unhealthy and tasty. They recommend exorcism and take me to dinners and drinks. I do not want to be dispossessed but I am too polite to decline them. I go along but I know that it is futile. I don't want to be free of my demons, just in control of them. Not too much control. An illusion of control would do. I rue sharing your emergence with my friends. It should have been our secret. I have learnt/am learning to hide well. Emergence-submergence.

Of late I notice that your features aren't that well defined. Like a blurry picture. A despectacled vision. Unfocussed. Your eyes and that sharp nose. And the lips. You are losing it. The other day, you were irrecognisable. Just dark hair cascading to your shoulders. I wouldn't have known it was you. After all, there are other dark haired phantoms for me. But curiously enough you carried a name board. A nameboard with your name calligraphied Lucida style hung around your neck. I was terrified. I am terrified. What if all I have remaining of you is the nameboard? Maybe the dinners and drinks do work. I lock myself in my room and block the world. I don't want your ghost haunting me but it sure is nice to know that your trace is there. A preserved footprint in a vast and sifting desert. I invoke you. I want to refind refine your memory. I play the songs that resurrect you. Ah! music. Moonlight sonata and SPB singing of the raindrops that fell on him in Dvijavanthi raagam. Still, you do not come and I am beginning to panic. I bake cheesecakes and chocolate muffins but you are not enticed. I go mad looking for you. I look for you in dark haired maidens, the living ones. I imagine that when they smile it is your smile that they smile. That somehow you have slipped under their face. An echo of an echo remains, I think. Or maybe it is my fevered mind that creates this phantom echo. It is fading. You are fading. I go mad slowly, like a pig on the spit fire, roasting ever so slowly. It will glow golden before turning black. I go mad looking for you. I go mad looking for you.

Woody Allen says

2009-09-15T23:55:00.000-07:00

In my next life I want to live my life backwards. You start out dead and get that out of the way.

Then you wake up in an old people's home feeling better every day. You get kicked out for being too healthy, go collect your pension, and then when you start work, you get a gold watch and a party on your first day.

You work for 40 years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You party, drink alcohol, and are generally promiscuous, then you are ready for high school. You then go to primary school, you become a kid, you play. You have no responsibilities, you become a baby
until you are born.

And then you spend your last 9 months floating in luxurious spa like conditions with central heating and room service on tap, larger quarters every day and then Voila! You finish off as an orgasm!

I rest my case.

Who am I?

2009-08-01T20:35:00.000-07:00


No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous --
Almost, at times, the Fool.

Sacred?

2009-07-29T18:38:00.000-07:00

I got into a debate with a muslim friend about Satanic Verses, who while not supporting the fatwa felt that it was a reasonable position to hold that Rushdie should never have written the book if it would hurt the religious feelings of millions of followers of Islam. There is the freedom of expression and how it is the bedrock of democracy. There is the freedom from religious oppression angle to it. But that is not the reason why I consider it shouldn't be banned or why it is one of my favourites. I think it is an extraordinary book. A masterpiece. I have had similar arguments about M.F. Hussein. Even moderates who are not incited to a frenzy, advice that he shouldn't paint something if it'd be controversial. Nevermind that very few people understand modern art (and those who do have no problems). And of course there are also hacks, who will do something just because it is controversial.

I understand it is a complicated issue. I swear to God, that everytime I hear a Glenn Beck or O' Reilly speak, I wish they didn't have the rights to pollute the airwaves with garbage. Or that time Ben Stein promoted Intelligent Design in a documentary (if you could call it that with a straight face) and asked scientists if they stopped beating their wives (Roger Ebert has a scathing article about the movie). I am stumped when people say that they should be allowed to call global warming a myth or evolution, "just a theory" because they have the fundamental rights to free speech (But thats for another post).

It is tempting and oftentimes easy to just ban things. Call them protecting minority rights or preventing the promotion of violence through hateful speech. I often ask the question, "Where do we draw the line?".

And clearly, I am not qualified to give an answer.

As I was browsing through the internet for some info about the whole affair and watched an hour long BBC documentary, I also came across an essay by Rushdie himself, aptly named, Is nothing sacred?. Read and enjoy.

As for me, I am perfectly happy to take the position - nothing is sacred. Nothing.

377

2009-07-03T02:41:00.000-07:00

I embrace the scores of Indian men and women who have, by the Delhi court ruling overturning IPC 377, been deemed no longer criminals. Besides the fact that it is a regressive, archaic and discriminatory law, I wonder how one would (or did) even enforce such a law. Did the cops break into bedrooms in the middle of the night? (I recall a scene in 'The West Wing' where Sam Seaborn is bemused by the news that a town in Alabama wants to abolish all laws but the ten commandments. He wonders how one would enforce, say, coveting thy neighbours wife)

I admit there was a time when I was... homophobe is too strong a word, and implies active hate/disgust... confused. I just didn't get it. When I was share-house hunting in Canberra, I turned down a place because one of the guys was gay. I have educated myself in GLBT issues since. A certain lack of awareness does breed prejudice. I have friends who have opened my eyes to theories of sexuality, to not looking at homosexuality as deviance, to the fundamental principles of tolerance and human rights. (Max - I dedicate this post to you)

We are all threatened by the unknown, distrustful of the different.
No more.

I guess it is a far way to go to be truly free of social stigma. We need to banish discrimination from our hearts but banishing legalised gay-bashing is a good beginning.

To more victories

Iran

2009-06-24T17:17:00.000-07:00

Neruda wrote in his 'I am explaining a few things'

And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings

and

Jackals that the jackals would despise,
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate!

and the final lines that, to me epitomises what Harold Pinter called "powerful visceral description of the bombing of civilians"

Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
The blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
In the streets!

I have nothing to add.

Addiction

2009-05-15T01:30:00.000-07:00

What could have happened
to the world in 20 minutes.
A lot.
News junkie is still a junkie

Paranoid?

2009-05-02T22:10:00.000-07:00

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
Sometimes it is not just me
People ARE out to get me.

Joyce - Chamber Music

2009-04-30T18:17:00.000-07:00

XXII

Of that so sweet imprisonment
My soul, dearest, is fain —
Soft arms that woo me to relent
And woo me to detain.
Ah, could they ever hold me there
Gladly were I a prisoner!

Dearest, through interwoven arms
By love made tremulous,
That night allures me where alarms
Nowise may trouble us;
But lseep to dreamier sleep be wed
Where soul with soul lies prisoned.

Tongue-tied

2009-04-02T19:31:00.000-07:00

Observation: I am an uninteresting person. I have nothing to say. Nothing.
Seinfeldian inference: Talk about how there is nothing to talk about

Perpetual doormat

2009-03-21T07:10:00.000-07:00

I need to grow a backbone

one of these days

Wisdom

2009-03-05T16:27:00.000-08:00

Sex is like money. The more you have it, the more likely you are to get more. The corollary is just as true. The less you have it, the less likely you are of getting any.

Blue poles

2009-02-22T16:38:00.000-08:00

Bourgeois, he thought. The paintings were so bourgeois. Horse races, ballet dancers and nudes in their toilette. Not really avant-garde today. Was it ever? And the crowd was lapping it up. Young couples on their date. Holding hands and nodding knowledgeably at brush stroke or colour or whatever it is that impressed people. Old men and women. Retired. Bored. (And the coffee at the members lounge, well! that was something)

A little girl in the middle. Divine. Unselfconscious of these staring morons. He fought the urge to cover her in a white blanket away from their polluting gaze. She shouldn't be here. He wobbled out. Need some air. What suppressed and suffocated him in this well-aired gallery? What was this scent?

Outside foyer. Pretty girl at the ticket counter. Small talk. And there it was in front of his eyes. A National Gallery flyer. Grey black blue orange. Jackson Pollock. It can't be true. They couldn't possibly have a Jackson Pollock here. Is this... is this Jackson Pollock displayed here?, he asked. She didn't know. This was her summer job. Art wasn't her thing. She hoped to be in real-estate someday. But she was courteous enough to tell him to check with one of the security people. They do the rounds, you see, and they may know what is where. If at all.

He ran in as much as one can run within a gallery. Bespectacled lady disapproved. The first security guard in sight, he begged him, please tell me if there is a Jackson Pollock on display.

Jackson who? Never heard of him. But that painting in the flyer, it is down the hall and to your left.

Down the hall and to his left...

Blue poles

Past?

2009-01-29T00:27:00.000-08:00

I am amused at how little of my own past I remember as things that happened to me. I recall them as something I watched... maybe a movie that I watched in a dingy AC-less, bat-smelling cinema hall with a whiny speaker.

It does lend a certain objectivity to see my life with. It is not MY life... it is that guy in the screen's.

Mute

2009-01-14T20:29:00.000-08:00

No love can survive muteness

Everyday we learn something new

2008-12-28T16:56:00.000-08:00

Question: When in a relationship is it right to say this to a girl?

I am an addict. I get an intellectual boner everytime someone challenges me with an insightful argument or a troubling paradox and the perverse pleasure I derive from finding an answer is truly orgasmic (and to extend the sex-talk, while the answer is the pinnacle of pleasure, I wouldn't trade it for the act of searching).

Answer: Never. Apparently.

Desert Palms

2008-11-25T23:04:00.000-08:00

I know you were never mine to begin with. Not that you are something to possess. (Maybe that was the problem). Anyway, I know you weren't mine (and I yours). Yet, I feel like I am losing you. Water running through my fingers.

Perhaps, if you were beyond becoming another's, above all possessing, an ideal that one only aspired to reach (as I thought you were), then my self-esteem wouldn't have taken such a hit.

Drip. Drip.

Desert Palms.

Dry Arid Lifeless.

I sat and I thought what has already been thought

2008-11-21T23:14:00.000-08:00

How do I know anything? Can anything be known?

I take it as a given that I exist. That is my starting point. The world exists in relation to my own existence. That is the world is what I see and percieve it as. It follows then, that without sensory information there is no world. Having defined my existence and its relation to the existence of the world - without me there is no world, I proceed to question the existence of God. Since my primary assertion is of my own existence, nothing exists before me and nothing exists after me. And god if he does exists, then exists outside my own existence since he is supposed to be always there.

If, on the other hand, we question our very existence, and proceed to say that questions need not make sense or have answers, we are basically saying that nothing can be said with any certainty and this does not lead to a better understanding of anything. Basically it is not saying that nothing matters (meaning is what we ascribe, so things need not matter), which is an acceptable position to take, but that nothing exists.

What is the proof that I am not living in the Matrix?

Stance

2008-11-07T20:43:00.000-08:00

I have given it a thought and this is where I stand on the following issues.

I
support gay marriages
oppose the death sentence
believe abortion is a personal choice
disagree with the notion that economic inequality is a necessary evil
consider the separation of religion and state vitally important
denounce war
believe climate change is real as is evolution
reject the relation between truthfulness of an idea and the desirability of said idea
embrace the idea that it is better to have one's eyes open to the squalor around than to close one's mind and live in the Matrix
and
I definitely definitely love Jon Stewart's Daily show.

What does that make me?

Am I right or am I right?

2008-10-15T18:14:00.000-07:00

Can a wrong right a wrong?

To Care or not to

2008-09-29T00:55:00.000-07:00

For someone who doesn't care, I care way too much.

Schrodinger's cat

2008-09-17T01:10:00.000-07:00

Open the box.
Let's see if the cat is alive.
If he is,
let us beat him to death.
You and I.

Knowing

2008-08-24T20:42:00.000-07:00

I know. I know that I shall never again meet anything or anybody who will inspire me with passion. You know, it's quite a job starting to love somebody. You have to have energy, generosity, blindness. There is even a moment, in the very beginning, when you have to jump across a precipice: if you think about it you don't do it. I know I'll never jump again...

....
But I probably will.

Is that resilience? Or plain stupidity?

2008-08-18T16:40:00.000-07:00

Naked silence

Enemy

2008-08-12T16:25:00.000-07:00

Fear is not my worst enemy; hope is.

Theory of plasticity

2008-07-25T22:14:00.000-07:00

Plastic plants make me sad
I wonder why
I sit and I ponder
I wonder because what else is there to do

The reason, I think, is constancy
It's life is bare, devoid of change
Maybe.
Or maybe it is choice that it lacks.

Maybe it is because it cannot
soak in the sun, or shiver
in the cold dewy winter mornings
Or wither and die

Something about its choicelessness
tingles my melancholic bone. Maybe.
But then, rain makes me happy and
has it any choice about its falling.

Have I written this one before?

2008-07-20T01:48:00.000-07:00

I seem to be in a lot of déjà vu moments
Think there may be something wrong with the Matrix.

Godard-speak

2008-07-07T18:27:00.000-07:00

When we talked,
...........................I talked about me,
.........................................................you talked about you,
..............................................................................................when
we should have talked about
...........................................each other.

Everything and Nothing

2008-06-13T23:02:00.000-07:00

There was no one in him; behind his face (which even through the bad paintings of those times resembles no other) and his words, which were copious, fantastic and stormy, there was only a bit of coldness, a dream dreamt by no one. At first he thought that all people were like him, but the astonishment of a friend to whom he had begun to speak of this emptiness showed him his error and made him feel always that an individual should not differ in outward appearance. Once he thought that in books he would find a cure for his ill and thus he learned the small Latin and less Greek a contemporary would speak of; later he considered that what he sought might well be found in an elemental rite of humanity, and let himself be initiated by Anne Hathaway one long June afternoon. At the age of twenty-odd years he went to London. Instinctively he had already become proficient in the habit of simulating that he was someone, so that others would not discover his condition as no one; in London he found the profession to which he was predestined, that of the actor, who on a stage plays at being another before a gathering of people who play at taking him for that other person. His histrionic tasks brought him a singular satisfaction, perhaps the first he had ever known; but once the last verse had been acclaimed and the last dead man withdrawn from the stage, the hated flavor of unreality returned to him. He ceased to be Ferrex or Tamerlane and became no one again. Thus hounded, he took to imagining other heroes and other tragic fables. And so, while his flesh fulfilled its destiny as flesh in the taverns and brothels of London, the soul that inhabited him was Caesar, who disregards the augur's admonition, and Juliet, who abhors the lark, and Macbeth, who converses on the plain with the witches who are also Fates. No one has ever been so many men as this man, who like the Egyptian Proteus could exhaust all the guises of reality. At times he would leave a confession hidden away in some corner of his work, certain that it would not be deciphered; Richard affirms that in his person he plays the part of many and Iago claims with curious words "I am not what I am." The fundamental identity of existing, dreaming and acting inspired famous passages of his.

For twenty years he persisted in that controlled hallucination, but one morning he was suddenly gripped by the tedium and the terror of being so many kings who die by the sword and so many suffering lovers who converge, diverge and melodiously expire. That very day he arranged to sell his theater. Within a week he had returned to his native village, where he recovered the trees and rivers of his childhood and did not relate them to the others his muse had celebrated, illustrious with mythological allusions and Latin terms. He had to be someone; he was a retired impresario who had made his fortune and concerned himself with loans, lawsuits and petty usury. It was in this character that he dictated the arid will and testament known to us, from which he deliberately excluded all traces of pathos or literature. His friends from London would visit his retreat and for them he would take up again his role as poet.

History adds that before or after dying he found himself in the presence of God and told Him: "I who have been so many men in vain want to be one and myself." The voice of the Lord answered from a whirlwind: "Neither am I anyone; I have dreamt the world as you dreamt your work, my Shakespeare, and among the forms in my dream are you, who like myself are many and no one."

-from Jorge Luis Borges' Labyrinths

What's cooking?

2008-06-05T20:44:00.000-07:00

It is always an enriching experience seeing an Engineer cook. What makes one an Engineer is a different thing. Not everyone with a piece of paper that says they graduated with a Bachelors in Engineering qualifies to be called an Engineer. They are atmost engineers. Well! I am talking of this breed of 'engineer superiori' a.k.a. Engineers whose lives and the air they breathe reek of engineering. I have the misfortune of having surrounded my life with engineers and Engineers (and very few of the other endangered species).

I meant to talk of an enriching experience, so forgive me my circumlocution. It all began when I was at this friend's place, and believe me when I say he is a rank exhibit of Engineers. With a capital E.

My friend offered to cook for me to showcase his cooking skills. Apparently, he wanted to convince me that he was ready to get married. I usually enjoy cooking and would have offered to help but seeing how much it meant to him, I let him cook and satisfied myself with the role of the observer.

What struck me the most immediately was the preciseness of his cooking. If the recommended ratio of rice and water was 1:2, it was "1:2". Water was measured to an accuracy of plus/minus 5ml. Allowances would have been given to the hardness or softness of the water but for want of reliable data about the variation of quantity of water to the hardness of water (imagine an excel chart with hardness on the x-axis and quantity of water on y-axis with coloured dots throughout). It was better to be on the conservative side and use the standard specifications. 'City of cooking' might be used as a proxy for the hardness value but day-to-day variation of water quality were unaccounted for.

Another important factor affecting the ratio is the quality of rice. Recent literature survey points out, there is a dearth of measures, qualitative or quantitative for the quality of rice as related to water required to cook it. Region-specific and brand-specific measures are at best ad-hoc alternates. At this point, no other factors were known to affect the ratio in a significant manner. These are ascribed for future research work.

Next, he was emboldened by the unqualified success of the 'Rice experiments' to try out a Gulab Jamun mix. And I think it was around this time that it stopped being funny and became sad.

The readiness of sugar syrup was measured by the viscosity of the aforementioned syrup. Loose definitions of "as thick as oil" are severely frowned upon. There are oils belonging to a wide spectrum of viscosities and the precise nature of the oil is paramount to preparing required consistency. Cook for five minutes meant... wait for it... yeah! you guessed it right, cook for 300 seconds. When time reached 290, his hand was in position, on the knob to avoid any time lag. Similarly instructions on the packet require that the dough be fried at 165 degrees. Since there were no reliable temperature measuring devices in the kitchen (since, after about 80 degrees, hand was not a reliable device and returned only a totally inadequate "unbearably hot" response), a small quanity of dough was dropped into the frying pan. If it became golden brown, it meant that the oil was ready. However, maintaining the heat at this precise temperature poses a problem. Keeping the stove ON would, obviously increase the temperature but it is believed that the loss function due to the transfer of energy to the dough would compensate for it. The exact setting of the stove knob has to be determined empirically, depending on the diameter of the dough balls and the number of balls simultaneously fried.

At the end of the day however, I have to admit, the food was delicious.

To all Engineers... you make life livable.

Death is the road to awe...bah!

2008-05-30T10:07:00.000-07:00

I am a new man today. I died yesterday. Or is it more appropriate to say that I was killed. The knife went right through me. She was gentle. I felt no pain. I am a new man today. Death as an act of creation. I dodder towards tomorrow. I am fine but for the dead man on my shoulder. Rigor mortis has set and his vice like grip on my neck is getting oppressive. I am fine. Really.

New look

2008-05-24T20:24:00.000-07:00

I am Alone under the Starry Night, old and decrepit. Must learn to play the guitar. Then I can be an Old man playing the guitar, alone under the starry night.

Philosophy of End

2008-05-19T03:55:00.000-07:00

All good things come to an end
All bad things come to an end
All things come to an end.

Statutory Warning

2008-05-13T20:21:00.000-07:00

Nobody is allowed to pity me but myself

Void Love

2008-05-05T02:44:00.000-07:00

There are unspeakably many voids that I have not meditated upon. What does this mean? What would we do? How does it change everything? Are we ready? Will we ever be? The emptiness is of no consequence. Several things have not been thought about, several things are not known. For what can knowledge achieve but label, define, theorize and describe. Immersed in this regression, apparently not that uncommon among Homo sapiens, I unbuild everything that I painstakingly built. I imagine and I fear. I imagine and I fear. Can all my life amount to nothing? Had it come from nothing? Many nothings that can stand atop the head of a pin. I wonder. I wonder because I see nothing but the here and the now. No past nor future exists. Just me, you and that which I feel. This pain where my heart once was.

It did not seem wrong or even insidious. But how would I know. It was never thought of. It just is.

Love.

p.s. Many words in this aren't mine. I found them here and there and strung them together. But the emotion is mine. Only the emotion is.

Quick Tale: Multiverse

2008-04-20T23:17:00.000-07:00

She and I lived in separate universes now. She was blissfully married and I was happily single (or was it the other way around). Our universes grew apart after the Big Bang of her marriage. We were kind of an item until then. And we hadn't met since. We were continents apart too and there just wasn't a chance. I have slept several nights wondering how it would be when we met next (nights were when the two universes seemed closest). How and when. I didn't have long, cosmically speaking, to find out.

She is in my arms and I love the way her head fits into my chest. Her ears concentrate on the sound of my heart like a caveman would listen to the ground for approaching danger. Love Love. Love Love.

They belong together, these disparate universes. Surely their separateness is an illusion. They stare at voids where eyes should be and turn away for good measure. We share an awkward smile that reads unstated understanding. We belong together and yet we touch each other and walk to our own quantum universes. It cannot be. The laws of physics cannot take it. Will not allow it. No. Certainly not. That will be the end of everything. We belong together, in our parallel universes.

S' mobile

2008-04-17T09:39:00.000-07:00

My battery got fucked
The sex, apparently was electrifying.

Barathi

2008-04-10T01:16:00.000-07:00

"Paartha idathil ellam unnai polave paavai theriyadhu dhi"
I hate Barathi for writing that. He stole it from me.

A lone wolf

2008-04-06T08:06:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I feel totally alone, like there is no one in this world. When that happens, I react very strongly to it and act like I don't need anyone, thereby distancing people who do care and who actually are 'there' for me, which not so surprisingly ends up reinforcing my initial feeling of being alone.

Evasion

2008-03-27T20:20:00.000-07:00

Thinking is man's only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which all of you practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one's consciousness, the refusal to think - not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment-on the unstated premise that a thing will not exist if only you refuse to identify it, that A will not be A so long as you do not pronounce the verdict "It is." Non-thinking is an act of annihilation, a wish to negate existence, an attempt to wipe out reality. But existence; reality is not to be wiped out, it will merely wipe out the wiper. By refusing to say "It is," you are refusing to say "I am." By suspending your judgment, you are negating your person. When a man declares: "Who am I to know?" he is declaring: "Who am I to live?"

(I think Ayn Rand wrote that. Found it on the net and am thinking about it. I am a certified Evader and this is like a slap on my face. Hoping to find a valid counter argument. This is going to be a slap-fest)

A scary bedtime story

2008-03-15T06:40:00.000-07:00

My cousin has a son. He is three years old, give or take a month. He is a sweet kid. A little hyper but children these days are like that. Must be the sugar. I was sixteen before I ever stayed up till 10. A rare occurrence that happens on the eve of exams. Otherwise I was an early to bed, early to rise kind of child. Anyway, this three year old nephew of mine couldn't be made to sleep before 11. Typically, it involves my cousin asking, cajoling, pleading, begging and then shouting, yelling and finally making it up with a bedtime story. The bedtime story she told her son (did I tell you he is three) was this:

You know what happened today? There were several motorbikes parked outside my office. And you know there are lines within which one must park their vehicle. But today, many bikes were parked haphazardly. And then the police came. They came with a big tow truck. And they towed
away all the bikes that weren't parked properly. One of my friends' bike was towed too. And the policeman said that he had to come to the station to pick it up. So everyone whose bikes were towed away went to the police station.

At the police station, the big policeman asked these people for their licence and Registration papers. He asked all TamilNadu registered vehicle owners to wait a little longer. And you know the friend I was telling you about, his vehicle had a TN plate. So he was made to wait and then the policeman made him show his hands and bet him with a big stick. He made him say that he would park properly henceforth. And he bet him again. It was painful and my friend started to cry. The policeman bet him till his hands bled. Only then did he let him take the bike home. So, will you park your bike properly?

The rendition ofcourse, was interspersed by threats of the policeman coming to pick up kids who refused to sleep. I swear to you I am not making this up.

What does this tale tell us? What moral lessons does the kid learn from it apart from one has to park their motorbikes in the allotted area? Perhaps, we learn that we must change our plates when we move states. (And we wonder why people are prejudiced!!??)

Granted that not every bedtime story has to have a moral or something. But what happened to the good old Snow White and the seven dwarves? Or the Tortoise and Hare or the Crow and the clever fox?

The real question however is... what are we doing to our children?

Quick tale: Slim Pickings

2008-02-10T01:54:00.000-08:00

I was heading out and would have left the library but for the strange request from a thin reed like boy. I overheard him asking the librarian to suggest a book and the librarian reeled out a few titles that he ought to check. The boy seemed unconvinced and went on to leaf through random titles. I felt compelled to help the boy find an appropriate book.

I approached him and offered to help. 'What kind of books have you read? What do you enjoy? I'll suggest something similar'

'I read David Copperfield and I want something like that. How about Tale of two cities? Do you think it is deep. I want to read a deep book because one is supposed to read deep books. David Copperfield was deep. I learnt a lot from it. I want something like that,' he breathlessly spoke.

'Tale of two cities is a fantastic book. And I am sure you will love it. You should read Oliver Twist too'

'What is Shakespeare?'

'Shakespeare was a British dramatist...'

'No no, I know that. I meant how is he? Is he good?'

'Yes, he is considered by many as one of the greatest writers'

'What does he write?'

'Well! He has written a wide variety of books, ranging from comedies to tragedies. Have you heard of The Twelfth Night?'

My sales pitch on Shakespeare had clearly no effect and my customer was walking away. So a change of strategy was called for.

'How about Indian authors? Have you read R.K. Narayan? He is wonderful'

'Yeah!' he replied unenthusiastically, 'I have read him. English teacher, Financial Expert. It made me sleep. I want something more... I don't know'

'You should read Waiting for the Mahatma. It is one of my favourites'

The boy obviously didn't think much of my taste. 'Hmmm. But the book is so old.' It was an old copy, dusty hardcover and brown paper. It was evident that the boy was looking for a book that not only was a good read but would appear to be one.

The book evangelist that I was, I was undeterred. 'I will find him a book that he approves,' I told myself.

'Why don't you read Jefferey Archer? It should be here somewhere. Ah! Here it is. You could read 'Shall we tell the president?' or a 'Not a penny more, not a penny less'. They are intelligent and thrilling. You will like them'

'But they are so big. I may never complete them'

Sigh! The book should look new, sound intelligent and be thin. And yes, not by an Indian.

'Why don't you start with a collection of Short stories then? Take this one.' I handed him a copy of 'To cut a long story short'. It wasn't too fat, it wasn't too thin. It was just right. And new. And there were so many colourful volumes of Archer in the rack. Archer was good. One can always feel proud about reading an Archer.

'Thanks. This looks like something I can read'. He beamed a thanks and I left.

I sit at home wondering if he borrowed the book and if he liked it.

Belief

2008-02-01T19:46:00.000-08:00

There is a celestial guardian angel looking after each one of us. All living beings reincarnate. Heaven and Hell are places you go to after death.

I could cry myself hoarse on this subject and it would make no difference. I know. I actually tried it. Had this discussion (we'll steer clear of the 'Argument' word) with a friend and he was fully convinced that all the above statements were true. Needless to say, I didn't. We were posing as rational beings and therefore the weapon we used was logic.

It is said in the Vedas that we reincarnate. Vedas are ancient. Vedas also tell us that they are divine revelations to seers and they are the truth. If Vedas are true, then we must reincarnate and since their truth is self-evident (because if it weren't true they wouldn't have written that it is true, right?), we must reincarnate. Aah! Beat that.

My friend's line of reasoning was that it was impossible to refute with any sort of evidence that the statements were indeed false. Therefore they must be true. Q.E.D.

I am reminded of the case of Bertrand Russell's Celestial teapot.

If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.

Giving enough credit to my friend, he understood that this may be a sticky wicket to bat on and changed the rules. We no longer parried in logic. His new argument was that it was a matter of faith. These ideas were beyond the grasp of logic or reason. In fact logic and reason are obstacles to the proper understanding of it. Translated loosely, heaven exists if you think it exists. Isn't it amazing that mere thinking of something can conjure it into existence?

I don't think my friend should be allowed to have it both ways. Either it was a matter of faith and he just believed it and I didn't. If he cannot articulate why he believes it, he should not expect me to articulate why I don't. Or believing such things were a matter of logic and we could both trade arguments for and against and arrive at an understanding.

The problem, my friend was kind to point out, was that by questioning I lose all chances of finding out. Why can't you just accept it, he asked me. His charge was that I was not open to both possibilites. I plead guilty. I will stick my neck out and say that though it is possible that there is someone up in the sky looking after me, that I will reincarnate after this lifetime and that I may be deep fried in a huge pan of oil for such blasphemy, I think they are improbable.

Lankan conflict

2008-01-25T21:00:00.000-08:00

“There is no easy way out of the spiralling morass of terror and brutality that confronts the world today” – Arundhati Roy

Every attempt to kill a terrorist, unfortunately involves accidentally killing hundreds of innocent bystanders as well. And for every hundred innocent people killed, there is a good chance that several future terrorists will be created. But one has to make sure that the right kind of innocent people are killed. Not the innocent innocent people from across the border. I mean, people would know about it then. Indians are good at math. They can count their fishermen. And who knows, India may develop a spine overnight and decide to intervene. Demand a ceasefire, impose sanctions or something. That can’t be allowed to happen, can it?

The Sri Lankan Navy has put in place an “underwater defence system” on their side of the border and they want the Indian Navy to warn Tamil Nadu fishermen not to stray in and get blown apart. How nice of them!

There is another not unimportant reason for the sea mines. For the Tamils on the Indian side of the Gulf of Mannar, there is definitely a sense of solidarity with the fighting Tamil separatists. But solidarity can only get you so far. This is a world ruled by its economics, not emotion. I think it is more as a business opportunity that the LTTE is appealing to the Indian mule. The supply lines through the mainland are strangled and the Tigers have to depend on the sea for rations. Rice, fuel, money, other essentials. Maybe even ammunition. So by installing sea mines, the Srilankan Navy was choking all life lines to the LTTE.

The only other alternate to the Tamils’ demand for complete statehood is the complete annihilation of the Tamils. A separate nation for Tamils is unpalatable for the Sinhalese and political suicide for anyone suggesting it. Not going to happen. Genocide of that scale is uneconomic. A PR exercise that SriLanka is ill-equipped to handle. Their national budget is perhaps less than the money Hillary spends on her presidential bid. Given the international watchdogs, human rights activists and scores of other people who have nothing better to do, not economic at all. But the LTTE is a different issue. The SriLankans can piggyback on the already well established propaganda of “Fight on terror”. LTTE is a terrorist organization and terrorism is bad. Nobody can object now. Nananaana. I mean, there are a lot of skeletons in that cupboard and the international community will not want to open it. With the LTTE, which has been the muscle behind the separatist movement, gone, there will be peace. Peace at any cost. What about the remaining Tamils you ask. Oh! Well… they can be non-entities. An inconvenience that they can live with.

The other side

2008-01-22T20:42:00.000-08:00

The Test series in Australia has been very newsworthy and so much has been said about it in both the news media and the web that I didn’t want to add on to the colossal amount of junk. But a chance conversation with a friend has prompted me to break my silence now, especially since the controversies have sort of cooled down and we have won at Perth. Of course that the friend had promised me that at worst it'll get me a couple of hate comments, but no one will "blacklist" me or googlebomb my site has helped.

I personally, enjoy the brand of cricket played in Australia and was disappointed with the way the media blew the Sydney test out of proportions and the hamhanded way that the BCCI (and need I add, the Indian media) handled the case.

I feel that there were several separate issues and since they happened at the same time, people put them all together. Bad umpiring (awful if it will make you feel better), racist remarks (it is a different debate if said remark was racist or not), chatty Aussies and jubilant-after-the-victory Australian players are all unconnected issues.

Before you all scream traitor, let me add that I do believe that the test should have been drawn and it was unfortunate that the Australians went home winners. Unfortunate not unfair.

We hear about behaviour unbecoming of a sportsman. That is definitely bad for the sport and I will not make the mistake of defending it. But the question here is if the behaviour of the Aussies broke the codes of the sportsmanship.

Clarke’s catch (which replays showed as grassed) could be a genuine mistake and Benson checking with Ponting before declaring the batsman out was only in accordance with the captain’s pact (and not because Ponting is the new fourth umpire who trumps all decisions taken by the other umpires as mail forwards seem to suggest). Again, I cannot stress enough about the debate on walking. In International cricket it is now standard practice for batsmen to not walk unless he feels personally obliged to do so. It is not disallowed. The same is true of excessive appealing or chatting on the field, even making remarks to disturb your cool.

The way I see it is that there is a region of allowed sportsmanship and a border separates it from 'unsportsmanship'. Australia gets its aggressive edge by playing closer to the border but always on the sporty side. Take soccer for instance(football in the rest of the world), Australia lacks the class of Brazil or France and there is a lot of pushing and shoving on the field but the players know just how much pushing is allowed without getting the referee’s whistle. Like any Optimisation text book would tell you, the optimal solution lies right on the border. It is quite strategic, if you look at it. (It is a different issue that India tries to ape the aggressive play of the Aussies and end up straying into the bad territory – Sreesanth being case in point).

Harbhajan is an excellent cricketer and I like him but the stance that the board and the team have to take is not blackmail but justice. The BCCI, as I understand had not given one statement saying that it believed Bhajji to be innocent and that he had not made a racist remark. There was nothing about having a fair trial. Nothing like we will accept the verdict if he is proven guilty. They simply went into overdrive and announced that the tour was in jeopardy if Bhajji was not cleared and the ban lifted. Cleared, not given a fair trial. (Kudos to ICC for showing some backbone)

Harbhajan may or may not have said the things that he is alleged to have said and even if he did he may not have meant it as a racist remark. There may be inadequate evidence. Or he may have said it under provocation. But that is not what we are bothered about. He is beyond reproach and pure and is the victim here. The Board will protect him at all costs. What nonsense!

Parallels drawn with Muralitharan are downright stupid. He was the victim of a hostile umpire and maybe even racial abuse but Harbhajan was not the quarry but the hunter. We, of the subcontinent do not hold the monopoly on racism. And the abuse case on Hogg, is clearly a sign of “But he did it too” that I will not buy from kids in my block let alone professional cricketers.

In trying hard to not look at this controversy as an Indian cricket fan, I may have strayed to the other side. My post is perhaps not objective and readers need not remind me that the Australian media itself criticized its cricketers. All I am trying to remind my faithful readership is that neither the Indian media nor the cricket-lover has been even remotely objective and they could do so much better. For the love of the game.

If there was a God?

2008-01-16T20:04:00.000-08:00

An important question has resurfaced since the passing of my neighbour (refer previous post). Put simply, the question is, ‘If there was a God, how do you explain such a death?’ The question begs some elaboration.

Death in itself is inevitable. It is just as natural as birth and essential for the balance of things. So, a similar question with regard to, say my 85-year-old grandfather who died of old age may not be pertinent. To a certain extent, even heart attacks and cancers are explained off as an outcome of our lifestyle: the food we eat, the kind of work we do, pollution, stress, etc. But how does one explain a death at a New Years party?

Shockingly, one of my friends held the view that it was a punishment (by God?) for abandoning our cultural values. But we’ll not digress.

Let us examine the facts: Anand was in hospital for a week and discounting all conspiracy theories, was under the best medical care possible. His family spared no prayers for his recovery. A few well-wishers in the apartments organized special prayers each day: chanting Vishnu sahasranamam and arranging for special offerings in the temple.

My point here, I rush to clarify, is not to belittle the goodwill shown by everyone. It is in fact, my very point that all these prayers were sincere and the goodwill genuine.

Our assumption (or if you are uneasy with that word, faith) is that there is a benevolent Almighty God who listens to our prayers and if our prayers are sincere (reasonable and not selfish) he grants them.

So why did he not recover? Their prayers, I am sure were (unambiguously) for a speedy recovery. The normal explanations of ‘Your prayers weren’t fervent enough’ or ‘Your faith wasn’t strong enough’ are hollow and inadequate.

There is a trump card up His sleeve and I have received them a few times in my time. For instance, the girl I was fervently hoping to marry got married to someone else. Or the college transfer I was counting on was denied. I was told that it was all for the good. God had a special plan for us that we do not know and cannot know (but it is all good baby). Our disappointment is based on an ignorance of what is in store for us.

Tell that to Anand’s parents. Try that ‘It was for the good’ argument on his sister. Whose good are we talking about here? What could possibly be a good outcome for his bereaved family? Oh no! there is a different card for young deaths. That is called, ‘Those He holds dear, He calls them back soon’. Who signed up for that, not Anand?

There is another card that infuriates me more. That is the Karma card. Maybe he was a nice bloke in this life but what about his previous lives. (More on Karma soon)

Brings the oft repeated doubt… if God is benevolent, then he is not omnipotent or he would have intervened (I wish I could and if I could I would but…) or he is omnipotent but not truly benevolent, choosing his intervention based on a rigid set of conditions (oops! Sorry but you were 5 short of the critical number of prayers required to qualify) or simply His whims (Nothing too weighty before coffee please. Not a morning person).

So, my question is very simple. Is there an explanation? A reason or higher purpose for this wasteful death. I cannot find one justification that passes muster. If the right answer exists, I do not know it. However, if my question was to be framed as ‘Is there a God?’ (a God who willfully participates in the daily running of the universe and fiddles with the fates of humans), my answer seems evident.

New Year

2008-01-09T05:35:00.000-08:00

2008 hasn’t begun well. Not well at all. The Chennai Savera accident and the Marriot Mumbai incident are not my idea of ushering in the new year. For the uninitiated, here is what happened:

Chapter One: Hotel Savera, Chennai

It is not midnight yet and the real celebrations have barely begun. College-goers and software professionals have only just got to the dance floor to shake a leg. The dance floor is a wooden stage atop the swimming pool. Don’t ask me who’s idea it was but it sounded like fun. Fun until the stage collapsed and the hundred odd partyers fell into the pool. The hotel staff are unprepared for the emergency and despite their best efforts rescue operation takes far too long. One person is dead, several are injured and two are in critical condition. The two in critical condition are dead now, after I began writing this post. One of them, Anand, is my neighbour. A lad of 20. (I share my grief with his family and other mourners but this is the time for choler. Sorrow can wait)

Chapter Two: Marriot, Mumbai

Same time, similar celebrations and the countdown is over. Two girls are molested by a mob of 70-80 men. Their escorts are manhandled.

Chapter Three: Afterwards

The day after, the National Newspaper (as it claims to be) does not print the name of the hotel in their miniscule news article. Why, I wonder. Tamil dailies and some radio channels are insensitive enough to suggest that the partygoers deserved it. Partying to welcome the New Year with alcohol and music is against our cultural ethos. It is an evil wrought on society by westernization and high-paying software jobs. Therefore, these people; these delinquents brought it upon themselves. Paid a fortune for it in the bargain. The way to avoid getting injured in party accidents is to not attend parties. The same way that the way to avoid road accidents is to not use the roads. Staying home (preferably in front of the tele) is the assured way to a long life. (And what a life that would be)

Is there an increase in safety awareness and emergency preparedness? Who wants that! The ones who died, died because they went to a party. Were drunk. And dancing. This is a lesson to all youngsters. Stop partying. Stay home.

When will we stop blaming the victims? The other chapter hasn’t a better ending. Columns are written on how if women dressed provocatively and went clubbing, drank alcohol, one can’t help being molested by a horde of pea-brained men. They invited it upon themselves. How can 80 men be wrong? It was the woman's fault. Or, maybe it is not her fault but the way to stop such incidents is for women to not put themselves in such situations.

The same song, a slightly modified version is played here. This is not right according to our most noble and ancient Indian culture and is precisely the reason why bad things happen. Ladies, stop partying. Stay home. And be properly dressed. Head to toe is a good start. A couple of extra layers wouldn’t hurt.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Like at first sight

2007-12-15T19:43:00.000-08:00

I nose dove in like. Yup! This one is for real. Haaahaaa

I did not know anything about her, all I had was a smile and eyes that were full of joy. It could have simply been that she had come well prepared to this exam. Yes, it happened in the examination hall. She was a final year Computer Science student and was sitting for, oh! it doesn't matter, does it? Anyway, I was the invigilator in her hall. Oh! Come on! Don't look so scandalous. I know what you are thinking. I am a teacher and she was a student and you think it is wrong. Hey! We haven't even come to the stage of the story where it is appropriate to be shocked.

In my defence, though I am a teacher and she a student, she wasn't MY student. Hell! She wasn't even in the same college. Yes, this was in a college where I had been appointed as an external invigilator. So, as you can clearly see, she wasn't my student and I had no scruples holding me back.

Holding me back from what, you ask me. I had fallen in like at first sight. Don't roll your eyes. I didn't say, LOVE at first sight. I simply liked the way she held herself and thought that this was a person I could be comfortable around. You know, it is quite natural to like or dislike a person based purely on first impressions. Of course, first impressions can be misleading but how can you know that unless you had a chance to make second and third impressions.

That, therefore was the plan. I wanted to ask her out for coffee. Don't laugh at me. I know it is an alien concept here but a coffee date is safe and simple. I mean, it takes up less energy, time and money. And there is ample time for conversation and an hour with a person should give you enough data to decide if you wanted to invest on another date. I should admit, though, I didn't know how she would react.

The bigger problem was how was I going to ask her? And perhaps more importantly, when? Surely, even if I gathered enough guts to ask her and knew the words to do that, I couldn't ask her in the middle of an examination if she would come out with me.

I thought of a cunning plan. Yes! you are right. I had too much time to kill. Three hours of doing nothing but walk around a 25x20 feet room.

Logistically, I would have very little time after the exam to make my move, if I had any. A minute at the most. And there would be people around; other students. And logically, there was always the off-chance that she would slap me or start crying or get her classmates to kick my butt. Make that most probably.

Don't get impatient. I am coming to my cunning plan. I decided that asking her out is an elaborate process and since I did not have time for that now, I should create time for it later. Obviously, I couldn't meet her again (remember it is not my college) without being obvious that I am interested in her. So my cunning plan was... wait for it... to give her... are you ready for it: a note.

Stop laughing. It is not funny.

Maybe it is. A little.

But that is not all. The note wouldn't be something lame like, 'I like you', or 'You are so beautiful' or even 'Will you have coffee with me?'. The note will have my blog address. That's right! This very blog.

Laugh all you want but hear me out, will ya?

The idea was to not get slapped. I mean not put her or myself in an embarrassing situation. Nobody could blame me for asking her to check a website. They might think I was desperate for some readership but that wouldn't be so bad. I could do with more readers.

OK! She got the note. She thinks it is a weird request. She wonders if I am crazy. What next, you ask me.

The plan was to get her curious enough to check out my blog. There I could put up a post asking her out for coffee. If she was interested, anonymous commenting is enabled, she could leave me a message. Or mail me at the email id in my profile. And yes, it would also help her form an opinion of the kind of person I am.

What! You think she wouldn't want to go out with me after reading what I put up on my blogs. You don't know that. Lots of people think I am adorable. Anyway, I think it is only fair that she knows what to expect of me. She needs to be prepared if she was going to accept.

What if she wasn't interested? Simple. She wouldn't leave a message. Or worst case... leave a crappy one, calling me all sort of names. Well! I am the moderator of my blog, right? I could just delete it and nobody needs to know.

Either way, I couldn't lose. The plan was perfect.

Is the suspense killing you? Are you dying to know if I did ask her? I am not going to tell you.

What do you think? Did I or didn't I?

Coming into light

2007-12-01T04:20:00.000-08:00

I woke up disoriented, not knowing where I was or what I had been doing before. I wasn't even sure if I had been sleeping. All I remember was being aware of the darkness that surrounded me. There must be a switch, I thought and I will turn on the light. Then there will be some illumination and I will know what place this is. I can find out everything. If only I could find the light switch.

I felt my way through the walls, bumping into pieces of furniture; a chair here, a bed there. I felt a mirror (that could have been a picture frame) and a picture frame (which could well have been a mirror). The room was large and I was getting impatient. Where is the damn switch? Why can't I find it? My knee was badly bruised and I was a little afraid too. What if I don't find the switch? And then I heard a voice.

It was a woman's voice. I knew the voice just as well as I knew that I was alone in the room. I knew because when I hear voices, they are always of this woman. And she said to me, "Open your fucking eyes, asshole. The room is lit"

Kitsch

2007-11-26T03:34:00.000-08:00

There are many surprises in this world. Every time I turn around a corner, surprise stares me in the face. Sometimes, it is sneering. NO, make that often. I don't mind. Not so much, that I have gotten used to it. Surprises no longer surprise me.

Like the other day, I was browsing through comments on Rediff (which is the next best thing after FRIENDS to cure mild depression), and someone had written that Satyajit Ray was a traitor.

Oh why! I wondered, he is the only Indian to be awarded an Oscar, surely in a country where international success or any remote connection to it is lauded and worshipped, he ought to receive more respect than that. What treason could he have committed? I read on. Do you know why Satyajit Ray is a traitor? Because he depicted poverty in India. That abject thing that does not exist anywhere in India. He is a unpatriotic because he marketed India's poverty to the west. Won awards and recognition because that is what the west wants to see of us.

Now,take a director of the Johar ilk. Well! You know he is patriotic because he depicts true Indian values and traditions. Doesn't he make us all proud? My chest is so swollen with pride, it is going to burst any second now.

All along, I described the movies of the Johar kind (lets be kind to him as these movies predate him and call it the Bollywood masala) as shit, bullshit, horseshit, manure and crap. It has just dawned on me that they are not shit. If anything they are the exact opposite of it; the negation of shit. Kitsch, if you please.

I am reminded of Milan Kundera's definition of Kitsch in the The Unbearable Lightness of Being as “the absolute denial of shit”. Kitsch, he wrote, excludes from view everything that humans find difficult to come to terms with, offering instead a sanitised view of the world.

What the writer of that article was trying to say was that Ray's vision was against their ideal of India and therefore unacceptable. Ray, despite gaining eminence overseas is not worthy of being our hero. It has nothing to do with ciematic sensibilites or style.

Why does it surprise me or ought to? We, in India (maybe it is an universal phenemenon) are so thirsty for heroes to put up on pedestals that I expected Ray to be on one. A national hero. A role-model for filmmakers of the new generation.

Perhaps it is only fitting that he is not on one. (And perhaps... he is not on this pedestal, only to be put up on a different one)

Overheard

2007-10-30T22:08:00.000-07:00

"I was so late today, I was fervently hoping that I hadn't missed the bus", the man panted to a halt. He hadn't missed the bus or his friend.

"No! You are alright. I think we have a couple of minutes before the bus arrives. What happened to you? You are the early bird. You should have been here before me."

"Don't get me started. Worst morning ever. I am surprised I didn't get run over by a cement truck. You got some water with you. I am..."

"Knackered with all the running you have been doing? Here! Drink some. Delayed at breakfast? Did the waiter serve you yesterday's remains or what?"

"Like that would be something new! The guy upstairs hung himself from the ceiling"

"Alright! That IS something new. Don't see someone commit suicide all the time. What happened to this friend?"

"Hey! He is no friend, OK? He just lives upstairs. I don't know what happened to him. Maybe love failure. Hung himself with the clothesline yesterday. No one realised anything was wrong until this morning when the lady who comes to clean the room knocked on his door and hearing no response decided to peep in through the window and saw him dangling from the roof"

"Then, what happened?"

"You think I am telling you a bedtime story? What else? She screamed her bloody lungs out and we had to break open the door and pull him down. As if that wasn't enough we had to call the police and an ambulance. Too much trouble for a monday morning"

"Who was this guy? Was he that tall fat one with french beard? Whatshisname... Thanikachalam or Arunachalam or something?"

"Oh no! Not that guy. Wish it was him, that arrogant prick. But if he was it would have taken us another hour to get him down from the ceiling. Or the rope would have sundered. This guy is the bald one. I don't think you have seen him"

"What an adventure man! My life, it is so boring. Nothing spicy ever happens"

"Yeah! I wouldn't mind it so much if it wasn't for the mobile phone I forgot to take in all this hullabaloo. What a terrible inconvenience!"

I'm Explaining a Few Things

2007-09-29T10:37:00.000-07:00

You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs?
and the poppy-petalled metaphysics?
and the rain repeatedly spattering
its words and drilling them full
of apertures and birds?
I'll tell you all the news.

I lived in a suburb,
a suburb of Madrid, with bells,
and clocks, and trees.

From there you could look out
over Castille's dry face:
a leather ocean.
My house was called
the house of flowers, because in every cranny
geraniums burst: it was
a good-looking house
with its dogs and children.
Remember, Raul?
Eh, Rafel? Federico, do you remember
from under the ground
my balconies on which
the light of June drowned flowers in your mouth?
Brother, my brother!
Everything
loud with big voices, the salt of merchandises,
pile-ups of palpitating bread,
the stalls of my suburb of Arguelles with its statue
like a drained inkwell in a swirl of hake:
oil flowed into spoons,
a deep baying
of feet and hands swelled in the streets,
metres, litres, the sharp
measure of life,
stacked-up fish,
the texture of roofs with a cold sun in which
the weather vane falters,
the fine, frenzied ivory of potatoes,
wave on wave of tomatoes rolling down the sea.

And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings --
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children's blood.

Jackals that the jackals would despise,
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate!

Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives!

Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain :
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers,
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes,
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull's eye of your hearts.

And you'll ask: why doesn't his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land?

Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
The blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
In the streets!

Pablo Neruda

Purpose

2007-09-15T09:37:00.000-07:00

I have been blue for a while now and that I have some time to ponder doesn’t seem to help. It actually has exacerbated it.

I asked a dear friend of mine, what he thought was the purpose of life. He looked at me like you would look at a particularly disgusting spider. Why do you wonder, he asked and I told him that since we are alive, I figured the primary question would be about its purpose. Then he told me that that was philosophy and that as engineers we need not bother about it. There are others who sit and think and write about such inane things. It was not up to us to do so.

I persisted. Being a devoutly religious person, he said that according to the scriptures, the purpose of our life is to do good, acquire ‘punya’, pray to God and hope to be liberated from the repeated cycles of birth and death.

That must be it, I thought. But then… The purpose of existence is to cease existing. We live so as to not live. Is that not a paradox?

Be that as it may, if my purpose in life is liberation, any action that takes me towards this goal is ‘good’ action and any action that isn’t, is ‘bad’. It may not necessarily take me away from the goal, but it is not taking me towards it. And these actions are to be avoided. Discouraged. Right? So how is studying engineering, or building a house or getting married helping me achieve the ‘goal’?

Obviously, I am such an idiot that simple truths skip my mind.

Duh! One needs to be at a stage of spiritual maturation where one has realized that all world is maya and then and only then would he or she renounce all worldly things and start working towards moksha. Not before that.

Oh! Spiritual maturation. That did skip my mind.

So, ok! What is our purpose now?

That’s the best part, he said. Since you and I are not in “the” spiritual zone, we don’t have to worry about purpose at all. We can do whatever we want. We’ll simply have to be good people and that’s it.

And what is being good people?

It is simple. You have to be gentle, courteous, generous, honest and just (Duh! Duh!). You should not harm others. And society has evolved some dos and don’ts and if one follows it and does whatever is acceptable to everyone, you will find yourself in the good people list.

Wokie! That was awesome man! You really opened my eyes. One last thing: What was the purpose for this birth? Don’t I have to think about it at all?

Haven’t you learnt anything? (sigh) You don’t have to think about purpose. That is the job for a later you. For now, there is no purpose. But if you insist on having one, we could say that we live this life, so we may leave a better world for the next generation.

For the next generation, uh?

Yes! One must work hard with diligence, get over 90% in the board exams, get into a good college, study well, get good grades, get placed (preferably by campus interview) and earn decent money. If you do all this well and get settled, you will get married to a good person. Then you will be happy and will have kids. And then you put those kids in reputed schools, take them to tennis and swimming, make sure they get over 90% in their boards and then get admission for them in a good university and pray for them to get placed on campus and once they are settled, find them a good husband or wife and wait for them to have children. Once you hold your grandchild in your arm once, you are so blissful that, it is as if your purpose is fulfilled. Then, you live out your life in peace and die. That is it.

That was so eloquent, I can’t help but be impressed. Of course I don’t think we are leaving a better world to our next generation. Look at the environment. We have screwed it up beyond repair and have a lifestyle that is clearly unsustainable. So I am not sure if we are leaving a better world.

Surely, that is not us. It was our forefathers. We are not responsible for what has happened to the environment. Anyway, I am sure our future generations will develop new technologies to make everything alright. It is not our problem. Why do you fret over it unnecessarily? You wanna catch a movie?

Paradox of life

2007-09-01T09:27:00.000-07:00

A bit beyond perception's reach
I sometimes believe I see
that Life is two locked boxes, each
containing the other's key.
-- Philosophical grook

Wisdom

2007-08-31T09:19:00.000-07:00

They found my wisdom
prone

My father wondered
if it was because
I read in my bed

A friend asked
if it was because
of what I read
(and as it follows
what I followed)

The dentist said
it is horizontal
And it shouldn't be
Called it impaction
It must be extracted
he said with a smile
or was the smile my imagination

Operated upon
Uhoh! I thought.
But then,
who needs wisdom anyway?

The road not taken

2007-08-10T08:17:00.000-07:00

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I stood there in the middle
Unable to take either.

Fleeting Moments

Rimbaud

Power of Vulnerability - Brene Brown

Chanson d'automne

Maslow

Bhagwati is not wrong

***Alert*** Political rant ahead

That's a spin

Don't mess with John Stuart Mill

Unselfish v Selfish

An open letter to a Kollywood knight

Eliosy - Quartet

My email to an SBS producer who wanted to talk about the ADFA scandal

Wrestling pigs

Another class-A rant

Neela sayam veluthupochu dum dum dum... Raja vesham kalanju pochu dum dum dum

An argument against marriage

Conversation with a conservative about conservation

Spin that

We are screwed

The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock - remix

Politics - Comedy

It ain't easy being brown

Fingernails; Nostrils; Shoelaces by Charles Bukowski

Overheard

Things hidden

Sirote chaque jour ta tasse de neant

Raavan - a review

An old tale

Anguish - Rimbaud

Stupidity?

A chance encounter

I am

Quick tale: Prayer

So, how was your weekend?

Professions of infinite love

TunTunThun TunTunThun (rpt)

Betrayal, this is not// Poetry, perhaps

Adventures of the Cancer-denier

Hope/Frustration

How do I begin to explain myself

Where is the outrage?

Mini samosas

Pragmatism?

Avatar

Pig on a spit fire

Woody Allen says

Who am I?

Sacred?

377

Iran

Addiction

Paranoid?

Joyce - Chamber Music

Tongue-tied

Perpetual doormat

Wisdom

Blue poles

Past?

Mute

Everyday we learn something new

Desert Palms

I sat and I thought what has already been thought

Stance

Am I right or am I right?

To Care or not to

Schrodinger's cat

Knowing

Enemy

Theory of plasticity

Have I written this one before?

Godard-speak

Everything and Nothing

What's cooking?

Death is the road to awe...bah!

New look

Philosophy of End

Statutory Warning

Void Love

Quick Tale: Multiverse

Alert Political rant ahead