Unfinished Symphony

2011-09-30T19:30:00.001+05:30

Four years. I think this blog's time is past. I've moved.

mornings

2011-07-28T08:19:00.000+05:30

Early mornings are lovely, even in the midst of project submissions.

I have been tripping on some very limited music this past week. This morning, men with deep voices enamour me. Richard Hawley, husky-voiced, lilting English (mindful of mountains and the cold, somehow) and slightly country. I would recommend The Sea Calls and Tonight, The Streets Are Ours, to begin with. Mind you, his lyrics are simple, sometimes too simple.

Rome, deep-voiced, rhythmic, very definitely folk/country. I recommend Flowers from Exile and Swords to Rust-Heart to Dust, and thank V for them.

Half-sung Songs

2011-06-18T17:21:00.003+05:30

Guy Gavriel Kay, A Song for Arbonne: Blandly, I may tell you that it is an oft-told tale - of nations pitted against each other and bloody war, of earthly, human love and its many hatreds and pain. That would be unjust; Arbonne is much more than that. On a canvas of medieval almost-Provencal France, replete with vineyards, green-gold fields and sparkling rivers, GGK paints for us a masterful story of two lands ruled by different beliefs. Gorhaut is a land of hardy soldiers, anointed to the god Corannos and worshipping none other; it is prey to the designs of Galbert de Garsenc, its High Elder priest, who wishes to destroy all heretic lands in religious fervour. Arbonne, vine-filled valley dipped in sunshine, is that heretical land: woman-ruled, worshipping a goddess on par with Corannos, making much of music and of love. A Song for Arbonne is a celebration of Arbonne’s ways, of the liberated notions of womanhood existing alongside soldierly mastery, of the merry-making with music and love. It is also a story of war: of Gorhaut and Arbonne’s beliefs, of Talair and Miraval for the love of long-dead Aelis, of the many-layered hatreds and weaknesses of the Garsencs, of brute force and cruelty against what is right.

It is here that GGK exhibits his mastery: in his hands, the vastness of Arbonne is broken into intelligible and beautiful fragments. He fashions characters and themes by the multitude and weaves them into his story almost effortlessly. His descriptions leave one slaked of thirst: one wanders through Arbonne and Gorhaut, amidst the splendor and the horror, without difficulty. GGK also converges his themes of love and hatred, right and wrong, honour and treason, politics and individual lives well. Where he does strike a snag, however, is in the feeling.

I have no better word to explain this. GGK’s relationships in Arbonne are too contrived, artificial. Depth of thought and feeling is inserted through mere words, almost as an afterthought. No action, no involving emotional journeys bear evidence to either Blaise’s love of Gorhaut or of, say, Lisseut’s love for Arbonne. We have only their word, or their thought, that drills in this depth. Indeed, even loving relationships, such as Bertran and Aelis, or Blaise and Ariane de Carenzu are created out of thin air, with neither the past nor reason justifying their depth. I felt this most keenly in the scene in the inn at the Autumn Fair, where the joglar Ramir sings of love of Arbonne. Under a true master’s hand, this scene would have been the peak, the concretizing of the symbol that is Arbonne – a tool to capture the reader’s loyalties. Instead, one is left supporting Arbonne primarily because Gorhaut is not an option (they burn women at the stake, for god’s sake).

And it is here that I recall the magic that Tigana wove, pulling the reader in despite his possible misgivings, allaying and assuaging them, replacing them with new doubts, questions and judgments of each side of the battle. Tigana had one rooting for a character and his choices for clear reasons, for courage and valour, empathy, fealty and service. It may be that Arbonne has a different enemy to match. I rather think that Arbonne overreached a little: there are too many characters, too many themes inadequately created and addressed. In a story such as this, history matters. Reasons are instrumental to shaping the character and his (and our) involvement and sympathies. I do not curse Arbonne for this, though. But for this half-creation, Arbonne would have been an absolutely incredible read. Indeed, it still is. GGK has magic.

Reading

2011-06-15T20:20:00.055+05:30

Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance: I first read and fell in love with Murakami with Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. His larger-than-self prose, with its abstract, introspective philosophising appealed instantly. Here was a kindred spirit, who looked ceaselessly for meaning in everyday life. My love affair intensified with Kafka on the Shore. Its fantasy, its recognition and understanding of emotion and action shook and settled me like no other book in that tumultuous time, for it made sense of and left unanswered life-and-death questions. But like all my loves, Murakami waned rather suddenly, and I did not like South of the Border West of the Sun or Hard-boiled Wonderland and the Edge of the World; they were both too fantanstical and lead nowhere. With Dance Dance Dance, my love for Murakami has resurrected, albeit to lesser heights.

Dance Dance Dance is like Kafka; it leaves many questions unanswered. Instead of being miffed, I see a different purpose there now: some questions are unanswered because answers are not necessary. Life can be lived well even without them, and there will be no less beauty for their absence. It is important, though, to ask questions. To accept responsibility. To look for meaning. To sometimes stand at the edge of our existences and call unconsciously, hopelessly for the Sheep Man. And in the end, and always, to dance. Not in the face of grave, life-threatening difficulties; that is not when human beings give up, says Murakami. They give up in the face of everyday hopelessness, of relentless, changeless routine, of long, grey, unbending, stark roads. It is here we must learn to dance, to keep our feet moving lest we fall and give in to the illusion of helplessness. Murakami's project in Dance Dance Dance is precisely that - the gathering of a courage necessary to live our everyday lives, and to live them with grace and responsibility.

***

Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass: I have mixed feelings about this book. To be sure, The Subtle Knife was a let down after the concise and beautifully descriptive prose of Northern Lights. While The Amber Spyglass has something of Northern Lights' magic, it fails on a more important scale: it leaves major plot ends unanswered, and that, for a fantasy novel (if for no other), is an irredeemable folly. The good bits first: Pullman really knows how to create these half-children, they who grow up before their time, and rise beautifully to the challenge of adulthood (and more). Will and Lyra are all that; they have strength, courage and steadfastness. Pullman strikes a snag in two areas: internal logic of fantasy lands and of plot. By the former, I mean his logic for the creation and functioning of magical lands: that of the many worlds, and specifically, of Cittegazze, Lord Asriel's world and mulefa-land. One might go so far as to forgive this; after all, Pullman's creation is not as comprehensive as, say, Tolkien's. The latter shortcoming, however, is plainly unforgivable. To poke only a few holes: Whence came the witches' prophecy? What is the precise nature of the connection between love/coming of age and the sraf? What is the link between these particular children, their love and Dust? Without these, Pullman's world is sadly bereft of completeness.

My favourite parts of the book are these three: the parting of Lyra and Pantalaimon, telling the ghosts stories of the real-world, the blossoming of love between Will and Lyra. Pullman paints emotion well. In the world of the dead, Lyra's remembrance of everyday life - the simple pleasures of earth and stone and tree - becomes a catalyst for both the kindling of fierce hope in the ghosts and to draw out goodness from the harpies. Will and Lyra's first love is beautiful: their understanding and want, and the bitterness of parting. Pullman's love is defined by these: the glow and magic of a connection both emotional and physical, the necessity of priorities over togetherness, and the transformation that love makes possible. Love is not great, I remember reading somewhere, because of some inherent virtue; love makes us want to be and to do good, and that is its gift and its blessing. The Amber Spyglass is a good book, not a great one; it will not outlive Northern Lights, but bits of it will become good memories.

no longer home

2011-06-15T12:55:00.004+05:30

I am home. For the first time in a couple of years, I have had the time to wander the town, to reacquaint myself with it. And as expected of a returner, I find everything hopelessly changed. Cochin is no longer my city, nor Tripunithura my town. I wonder at it, at the change and at the nature of it, and my reaction to it all. For it is not merely physical; the change is in my relation to these things of my childhood.

There are physical changes, obviously. Ten, fifteen years ago, I knew everybody within a five mile radius of my house. Not only the people, knew all the animals, the trees (mango and tamarind especially, though we climbed all without discrimination), the earth (the dusty brown summer earth, the moist fragrant red monsoon earth, dark hard caked winter earth), the houses and their ponds. In their place, now there are palaces of concrete and monstrosities of glass and steel (forgive me, Howard Roark) - apartment buildings built or being built, shops, malls. People have settled here, and are still pouring in, whom I know nothing of. Those I walked and played and swam with are all gone, building their lives elsewhere, much like me.

More than this physical change, I feel it in the (for lack of an appropriate word) culture. The small town I grew up in was really a small town. Our connections began and ended within its boundaries. Any city that wasn't Cochin was the object of round-eyed contemplation, anything with its roots outside of its purview was strange and big. Not even that, really. All of that was outside our scope of contemplation; it neither touched nor affected our lives. Our only real connection to worlds outside was the people we knew, elder ones who had migrated, cousins and other relatives who came visiting. Perhaps that makes our lives narrow? Perhaps they were narrow, but that is not to say they were not happy. The happinesses and sadnesses we felt here were the same as I see in those other cities. Causes, factors, justifications - these differ, certainly, in scale and volume, but the essence is the same.

I can't say it any other way, but my town has become big. Too big for me to recognise, too big for the child in me to reconcile with.

I do recognise that these changes are necessary. Nor do I wish for my town to remain stagnant, as it was when I was ten. That would be presumptuous and unwise. Only this: that I no longer have roots here, and this is no longer my home but for my parents' presence. My friends, my school, the things I did when I was here - all of that is gone. A sadness there, certainly. But then again, my little town is in my head - glorified and romanticised beyond sorrow, and I can ask for nothing else.

law school

2011-06-12T14:22:00.000+05:30

Three years down, two to go.

And what a journey it is.

some blessed Hope

2011-05-28T03:40:00.001+05:30

I leant upon a coppice gate 

When Frost was spectre-grey, 

And Winter's dregs made desolate 

The weakening eye of day. 

The tangled bine-stems scored the sky 

Like strings of broken lyres, 

And all mankind that haunted nigh 

Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be 

The Century's corpse outleant, 

His crypt the cloudy canopy, 

The wind his death-lament. 

The ancient pulse of germ and birth 

Was shrunken hard and dry, 

And every spirit upon earth 

Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among 

The bleak twigs overhead 

In a full-hearted evensong 

Of joy illimited; 

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt and small, 

In blast-beruffled plume, 

Had chosen thus to fling his soul 

Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings 

Of such ecstatic sound 

Was written on terrestrial things 

Afar or nigh around, 

That I could think there trembled through 

His happy good-night air 

Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew 

And I was unaware.

(Thomas Hardy, The Darkling Thrush)

Tonight is given to poetry. For imagery, for the power of hope in a dying world, this is sheer delight.

poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth

2011-05-27T23:10:00.000+05:30

Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,

[ ] these rebel powers that thee array;

Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,

Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?

Why so large cost, having so short a lease,

Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?

Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,

Eat up thy charge? is this thy body's end?

Then soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss,

And let that pine to aggravate thy store;

Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;

Within be fed, without be rich no more:

So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men,

And Death once dead, there's no more dying then.

(Shakespeare, Sonnet CXLVI)

free hands, free hearts

2011-05-20T23:49:00.005+05:30

There is a rare and precious gift that some books possess: the ability to transcend limitations of print, locate the centre and crux of the human condition, and to carry its way powerfully into one's self. Vasily Grossman's Everything Flows [1] belongs to this class.

Written between 1955 and 1963, Everything Flows is Grossman's second and final condemnation of the Stalinist era, and a raw, powerful, poignant telling of the Soviet story. It tells of Ivan Grigoryevich, freshly released from the gulags into a world that free of Stalin and yet full of him. The book follows Grigoryevich's search for his innocent, happy, idealistic past, and his reconciliation, serene and unbitter, with the indelible changes of Stalinism. His meeting with Anna Sergeyevna, his landlady and lover, is a pivotal point of the book, and here, Grossman lays the ground for three momentous beliefs: Freedom, love, morality.

For Grossman, the simplicity of this truth is overpowering: Life is freedom. He (and it truly seems as though it is him speaking; he slips often into first person, and addresses the reader directly) sees the Soviet era as an inexorable move towards the triumph of non-freedom. From the birth of Lenin - nay, from the beginning of Russia - the foundation of the Russian state has been, to Grossman, the merciless shackling and mocking of freedom [2]. The atrocities of the Soviet state are brutal executions of freedom: the freedom to choose what to sow, what to wear and speak, where to go, who to associate with.

For both Grossman and Grigoryevich, no progress of humanity is permissible or possible in the absence of freedom. "There is", he says, "no end for the sake of which it is permissible to sacrifice human freedom" [3]. Freedom alone makes progress possible, [4] and it is untouched at its core by every chain and shackle [5]. Freedom is life, and life freedom. And for Grossman, the history of Russia is the history of slavery - the slavery of the masses. The ideals of Marxism that Lenin adopted and purportedly understood - the proletariat, a state for the people - was defeated by the ideal of non-freedom stamped onto the Russian psyche. Lenin destroyed the old order, and history paved the way for and chose Stalin - Stalin, who both feared and hated freedom, and therefore sought to vanish it from Russian soils and souls.

The stories of Ivan Grigoryevich and others at the labour camps in far Siberia are tributes to this. The collective farms that refused citizens the right to choose what to sow, the internal passports that dismissed their freedom of movement, literary and scholarly purges and indoctrination that mocked their freedom of thought, labour camps and mass executions that spurned their right to life - all were affronts against freedom that rested in the centre of their selves.

Through the eyes of a young mother, put away in camp for failing to denounce her husband, Grossman describes the destruction of hope. He paints hope as an irrational light - it keeps one alive and going, for the hope of a better tomorrow - and cruelly crushes it out with the hunger, forced labour and penury of the camps. For Grigoryevich, hope in the invincibility of freedom is the only thing that keeps him alive, and for his cell neighbour, hope lies murdered against a universal law that conserves and preserves violence.

The account of the Terror Famine of 1932-33 is Grossman's greatest contribution to Everything Flows. In it, Grossman bares his ideas of love, freedom and morality - and I have read nothing more raw and powerful than the simplicity of his language here. For Grossman, Anna Sergeyevna's narrative of the Terror Famine to Ivan Grigoryevich is the greatest gift of love. It is what has deeply touched her, changed her for ever, and shaped her views of the Stalinist state. In sharing the pain and the horror and the moral culpability, she gives to Grigoryevich her greatest burden, and places in him the ultimate trust of understanding [6]. Through the Famine, and the story of the four Informers, Grossman portrays the different faces of morality: one forced by the need for self-preservation, one blindly following the master, one gladly denouncing for self-gain, one indifferent to consequences. There is no moral judgment here, no good, nor bad, only a question as to the foundations for all these. All roads must lead to freedom.

____

[1] Grossman was born into a Jewish family in Ukraine in 1905. After the German invasion of 1941, when his mother died (he writes elsewhere that he was unable to persuade his mother to flee Ukraine, as he did), he moved to Russia and became a war correspondent for the army newspaper Red Star. Grossman's descriptions of Nazi death camps and massacres of Jews ("The Hell of Treblinka") were used as testimony at the Nuremberg trials. His condemnation of antisemitism in Russia and public dissidence would have earned him an arrest and a harsh term at the gulags, had not Stalin died.

For a Just Cause, and its sequel Life and Fate are Grossman's accounts of the Stalinist era, and reflect his changes in perspective. Unlike the former, Life and Fate is an explosive and sharply critical account of Stalin's regime, and for this reason, suffered at the hands of the KGB before finally being published to wide acclaim. Everything Flows is his final novel, and is possibly unfinished.

[2] And that is all that Grossman compares Leninism and Stalinism (and Russian history) against: freedom. It is a heady and mindblowing comparison, for Grossman paints freedom as a simple and fundamental - the fundamental - core of the human condition, and then demonstrates how Stalin massacred it.

[3] Not merely this; Grossman's pleas for the cause of freedom are as many and emphatic as they are brief. In a pivotal passage on the value and inherence of freedom, he says, "The history of humanity is the history of human freedom. The growth of human potentiality is expressed, above all, in the growth of freedom."

[4] "Progress, in essence, is the progress of human freedom. What is life, indeed, if not freedom? The evolution of life is the evolution of freedom."

[5] "Freedom is not, as Engels claimed, the 'recognition of necessity'. Freedom is the direct opposite of necessity; freedom is necessity overcome."

[6] Grigoryevich does the same; he wishes for his lover to return, so that he may share with her "the burden, and the clarity, of his understanding. This was the consolation for his grief. This was his love."

i do believe in faeries

2011-05-11T22:12:00.002+05:30

Indefatigable has always been one of my favourite words. There is such a lot of quiet spunk in it. A certain amount of "I'll show you, world!", but not only that. Add to that a pinch of humour, a dose of healthy self-doubt, passion for an ideal, the urge to give, infinite depths of hope and a head always held high (metaphorically, of course). A certain quiet, comfortable sort of peace with oneself.

I remember discovering this word so beautifully clearly. It's a fond memory. I had been introduced to the series of my childhood, Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery, and I was on a quest to discover Montgomery herself. Anne is a simple enough storyline: an orphan child, sensitive, starved for love. Adopted accidentally, permitted to stay. A stormy, endearing growing up. One could not help but love Anne; she was too human to be only a book-girl. She had her share of faults - anger, judgment, prejudice. But she knew the art of self-awareness, the rare ability to admit to fault and the importance of ideals. Her world was all that was fanciful and utopian, but also (or perhaps for that very reason*) strongly moral and guided by self-prescribed values. Montgomery, whom the biographer described as an 'indefatigable' scribbler, had poured much of herself into Anne.

Montgomery grew up without playmates, with dour grandparents, with only books for companions and cherished friends, with no prospect of college-learning. She taught school, cared for her aging and ill grandparents until they no longer had the need, and moved, without much choice, into a humdrum existence. Throughout, she scribbled. Day in and day out, on good and bad days, through a harrowing war, through her newborn's death, when her love became futile, when growing up friendless. For her, writing was both strength and a release. A rich, giving, contained self pouring itself out through ink and pen.

She defined 'indefatigable' for me. Ever since then, I have looked at that word wherever it turns up and been reminded of that plucky spirit, scribbling away determinedly through rain and sun. In return, it has given me the ability to see, recognise and worship the illimitable human spirit, and the autonomy that lies at the foundation of human life. It has taught me to respect human spirit (though I fear I forget 'tween-times, and have to be reminded continually) and to seek it everywhere. It has shown me - fleetingly, tantalisingly - the value of a life lived with an indomitable sense of spirit, of the refusal to give up, the aspiration towards the highest ideals and of the treachery that is compromise.

In moments of exceptional clarity and gratitude, I am convinced that integrity - the pinnacle of all human values - comes from such steadfastness. A necessary, if not sufficient, condition. An unvanquishable, unassailable spirit.

____

* I was sent this delightful quote from Charles de Lint's The Onion Girl: "People who've never read fairy tales, the professor said, have a harder time coping in life than the ones who have. They don't have access to all the lessons that can be learnt from the journeys through dark woods and the kindness of strangers treated strangely, the knowledge that can be gained from the company and example of Donkeyskins and cats wearing boots and steadfast tin soldiers. I'm not talking about in-your-face lessons, but more subtle ones. The kind that seep up from your subconscious and give you moral and human structures for your life. The kind that teach you how to prevail, and trust. And maybe even love."

Let's never be too old or too wise to believe in faeries, Anne says. May we never - to believe in, or learn from, them.

Quote

2011-05-10T17:12:00.005+05:30

"Whereas in earlier ages, religion led to a degree of fatalism, contemporary understanding pulls paradoxically towards an acceptance of risk but away from a tolerance of results when they occur."

Reading for academic assignments has its perks. Every once in a while (rather frequent whiles), one comes across gems such as these. This is, by the way, from an article by David Bergman on corporate criminal responsibility, in Reconstructing Criminal Law, edited by Lacey, Wells and Quick. The rest of the article is quite routine, but this stood out.

Choosing Our Lives

2011-05-08T11:19:00.002+05:30

How should one live one's life?

Broadly, two ways: your way or by another's direction. If you're a fatalist, this post is not for you. If you condemn or pity yourself as a product of your circumstances, this is not for you, either. I, for one, believe in human autonomy. An inevitable corollary of that is the freedom of choice, and thus, the power to shape your life, exactly the way you want it.

I. The Autonomy of Choice
The idea of human autonomy, as Kant[1] proposed it, is that one creates one's own (moral) laws. In sum it is simply this: "[the inherent value of the world, the summum bonum, is freedom] in accordance with a will which is not necessitated to action." This is, then, Kant's emphasis on autonomy as the ability to choose whether or not to act (and with the help of human reason, which is a corollary of autonomy, to choose how to act.

The basis for this insistence on the fundamentality of human autonomy rests in the Kantian idea of the noumenal self[2], which, unlike the phenomenal self, is unaffected by and is independent of (or transcends) external influences or natural events. The noumenal self is to be understood in relation to the phenomenal self. The latter is a product of nature - it is bound by the a priori laws of space and time,[3] and is a product, to a great extent, of deterministic laws.[4] To put it simply: the phenomenal self is all those parts of us (the body, mind and intellect, says Indian philosophy) that are affected by external influences or circumstances.[5] Kant believes that noumenal self is independent of all these and transcends them.

Well, all of that is too complex for this post, and I don't understand them fully myself. The quibbles of language will further complicate the ideas. To explain simply: imagine yourself (Person X, the noumenal self) looking through a telescope. The telescope is your phenomenal self: it's going to be affected by adjustment, focus, the quality of lens, etc.; the sort of focus and accurate imagery it gives you will depend on all those. You (Person X), on the other hand, are independent of all those, and you have the power to adjust the telescope because of this independence. Kant (and incidentally, Indian philosophy), attributes the basis for human autonomy and free will to this independence/transcendence.

So then, one is autonomous. But what does that mean for us, really? That we have the ability to choose whether or not to act. This is not only at the physical level of action ('I'm going to throw this stone' or 'I won't write this exam'), but also at a deeper mental/emotional/intellectual level. It means that we have the ability to choose what we accept and reject of the external influences bearing down upon us.

For example, you and I may each have a different work ethic, and different academic opinions about the same thing. The choice to condemn myself (or yourself) as inferior or superior (which is permitting an external influence to define yourself) is mine and mine (or yours) alone. To take another example, I can say: "The entire world thinks I am a horrible person, and I feel unhappy about that and I am tired of it." The choice here whether or not to internalise the world's opinion into oneself. I can or can not choose to internalise these, and therefore, choose whether or not to let the world's opinion affect me (the self). Similarly with ideas ('I think he's an idiot, and I have nothing to learn from him' or 'Everyone's got something sensible to say' - as Bernard Shaw said, pebbles of truth everywhere).

That - the decision of whether or not to permit an external influence to define/change/affect us - is the first step. The second step is the hardest that we shall ever be forced to make[6], but it also, in some sense, the most liberating. Step Two is responsibility for one's thoughts and actions - and therefore, responsibility for the consequences of those choices.

______

[1] I choose him for two reasons: first, because he is one of the only people I've sought to read extensively on autonomy, and secondly, because he appeals to me. More the former, of course.

[2] Noumenal self is one that is unaffected by any a priori laws; it is beyond all this. In some sense, the idea of God fits this, only Kant is speaking of the human self. Indian philosophy's idea of Brahman (or the Absolute or Ultimate Consciousness or Truth) is similar to this. Noumenon refers, in the Kantian sense, to the thing-in-itself.

[3] See Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, specifically the Transcendental Aesthetic, where he discusses the most controversial of his theories: the idea that human beings cannot understand anything in itself, but only appearances (moulded by practical postulates of space and time).

[4] He means that one cannot understand anything one sees without the crutches of space and time. We understand an event in relation to its position in time and space. It happened now because caused it. For example, 'I am unhappy now because my grandmother died yesterday.'
There is an intrinsic link to the idea of cause-effect in this determinism. If you cannot control the cause (the weather), you cannot control the effect (the tsunami). This is different when we look at internal workings of ourselves, I believe. The question there is not whether or not I can control the causes (those may be in the past, and thus out of our control). The question is merely this: can I exert some measure of control over my response to this external stimuli now? Or am I inevitably, helplessly bound by its effects?

[5] 'I stole a loaf of bread because my family is dying of hunger.' Here, 'I' am affected by these external event: relationship and identification with the same (family), starvation and fear of death, lack of resources. Kant says that one cannot give moral judgment (right and wrong) in such cases. Remember Amartya Sen's illustration of three children and the flute in The Idea of Justice?

[6] And I do mean forced, you know. It's an inevitable corollary of the first step. We shall see what happens when we refuse to accept this step, too.

Rant

2011-05-06T19:12:00.001+05:30

The world is moving too fast. No, I don't mean how fast the technology is growing, or the new fast-paced world and living, or this increasing tendency towards immediate fulfilment of wishes. I mean simply that time is going just too fast.

For example, Titanic released fifteen years ago. Fifteen. Man, that makes me feel so old. Lion King was sixteen years ago, and I watched that in the theatre. My cousin, who was crawling on the ground looking for pebbles to chew when I'd begun school all starry-eyed, is now contemplating a career in experimental physics.

It doesn't end there, either. Does it ever occur to you that a day (all twenty four hours of it) ends way too quickly? You don't even realise it's gone, and it is, and before you know it, another day is over, and then another, and then another. Three years of law school have gone by this way.

Now, this rapid passing of days is all okay, but only if we think we've utilised that time efficiently and effectively. And that's where I strike a snag, generally. Time is just not my slave: more like a fairy slyly dancing just out of reach, giggling and taunting and stepping clear of grasp all the time. I was once told that time is like a candle burning in the midst of a terrific seastorm (relevance being that it could go out at any point), and therefore, underscoring the paramount importance of managing all that precious time. You know, all that jazz about living each day as if it were your last. For example, you don't want to spend your last day... sleeping, do you? You should be climbing the Seven Peaks, or making a movie, or traipsing an unknown forest path (and fighting those bears while you're at it), or cracking a secret enemy code, or locating extraterrestrial intelligence, or talking to your dog, or settling on a comfortable chair with a book you've never read. Learning something new. Always that, and nothing else.

Bugger boredom. And laziness. And all that (ejusdem generis).

soul meets body*

2011-05-05T18:29:00.000+05:30

For you, mansion, are my abode,
Though only for a while.
And if I not build your doors and windows,

Then who shall build for me?

* Death Cab for Cutie (Plans)

the world goes round and round

2011-05-03T20:23:00.005+05:30

Recall how the most appropriate things come to you when you need but least expect them? There's really no believable, sensible explanation for these things, but I like to think it's us remembering old lessons learnt, and picking up the reins again.

I came across an old piece I'd written over two years ago, and I find it astoundingly reflective of my life now. Fascinating how history repeats itself - no, comes back around in spirals* (because after all, one never steps into the same moment** twice) - not only the events, but oneself. This process of inevitable flux, of personal change, is as beautiful and fulfilling as it is painful. The pain soon goes away, though. Yipee.

One wonders, then, at one's ability - nay, irrepressible tendency - to permit oneself the luxury of the same (or similar) experiences, over and over and over again. Old wine in infinite new bottles. One finds it painfully difficult to break conditioning, learn from experiences, and actively seek new ones. Laziness? Perhaps. Routine? Almost certainly. Fear? Absolutely. Days, months, years may go by, but the mind will insist on keeping certain things alive (emotions are a great hand at this), and refuse to learn from experience (getting burnt by a candle flame: standard example). Some call it foolishness; some incorrigible optimism (what if you don't get burnt this time?!).

One is conditioned to human living: fears, hopes, despair (incidentally, Michael Drayton's poem To Despair, part of Idea, is great), vulnerabilities, dependencies are all part of the human condition. One finds it impossible to wean oneself from these, not only because one perceives them as natural, but the effort required is immense. Who would not desire an easy life?

I love how incomplete and muddled this post is. First drafts always reflect half-formed ideas.

---

* I believe this was Vico's theory. I haven't verified this. SEP will have something, I'm sure.

** River, moment. What's in a word?

On religious faith

2011-04-28T15:41:00.000+05:30

"This happened in October of 1944, in the one moment in which I lucidly perceived the imminence of death. Naked and compressed among my naked companions with my personal index card in hand, I was waiting to file past the ‘commission’ that with one glance would decide whether I should immediately go into the gas chamber or was instead strong enough to go on working. For one instant I felt the need to ask for help and asylum; then despite my anguish, equanimity prevailed: you do not change the rules of the game at the end of the match, nor when you are losing. A prayer under these conditions would have been not only absurd (what rights could I claim? and from whom?) but blasphemous, obscene, laden with the greatest impiety of which a non-believer is capable. I rejected the temptation: I knew that otherwise, were I to survive, I would have to be ashamed of it."

- Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved.

Eternal gratitude to Gauphus for this.

Rothko

2011-04-20T22:37:00.002+05:30

There is a time and place for all art, and there is no artist like Mark Rothko.

I spent a week in London recently, and it came as much a surprise to me that amongst all the places we went to, all the art, music and bohemian revelry we indulged in, Rothko is my clearest and most cherished memory.

I have never liked modern art before. I have found it difficult to understand: a blotch of the artist's randomness, lack of thought-and-message, and aesthetically unappealing. I had never seen real art before, either, and so I reckoned without the power of the actual canvas. I suppose that is why I love Tate Modern best of all the London haunts: we come to love those that so completely alter our perspectives on things we never expected to understand or appreciate.

In Tate Modern, I caught a glimpse of what modern art means to me. There were stories everywhere - and art to me is the telling of a story. Not a narrative, but the expression of a feeling or an instinct, rather than clearly formed, flawlessly executed ideas. For that reason, for the freedom and method of their brush, for the simplicity of their stories, I have found Impressionists and Expressionists dearer and more beautiful than classical painters. But modern art is a different cup of tea altogether.

I found this most beautiful about many works in Tate: the suggestion of a story, the intimate relationship (though enchantingly hidden) with people and the diversity of forms of expression. There is something for everyone (though that may be true of all forms of art) - and you are at liberty to become powerfully a part of the creation, a part of the story.

Tate Modern houses eight of the Seagram paintings of Rothko. The moment you enter the room, what strikes you is the gloom: the paintings are all large and dark, painted by Rothko towards the end of his life, when he was suffering from continual bouts of depression and a great amount of unhappiness. They are all blacks, maroons, deep reds and greys. And in the corner, on the far left, is a painting - my painting, my Rothko. It is lighter than most: a background of a dark white or light lavender, and an inner rectangular splash-border of red (a gentler red than most). I know I stood in front of it for over an hour, almost in tears, foregoing the many rooms at the gallery.

What does one see in a painting? What did I see in Rothko? I believe there is one formula that is inescapable for any viewer, any reader, any listener: you will see and hear what you most desperately look for at any given point in time; you will receive what you ask for. In my Rothko, in that room filled with despairing blacks and unforgiving maroons, I saw hope. The faint, heartening glimmer of hope in that red-on-lavender (I still don't know what it's called. I doubt it will make any difference; Rothko was no great shakes at naming his works) in a way I have not seen hope for a long, long time. I saw hope in the midst of enduring, drowning despair, and that is more beautiful than sunrise on a clouded day. I saw hope as I had not seen in Revolutionary Road (the film frightened me with its depiction of despair); the hope of a man who has suffered much, felt anguish and hopelessness, seen the end and no bends in the road, and when all else have given up in despair.

What strength and endurance there must have been in Rothko to give that to his viewer.

Summer Rain

2011-04-19T17:25:00.003+05:30

Growing up in Kerala, my friends and I had an inborn affinity for rain. Come monsoon, come unexpected, we'd always glory in the smell of deep red earth and green, wet leaves after a bout of rain. I am no different in Bangalore. I yearn for rain most days with a hope that belies summer sunshine.

Living on a relatively green campus, I've come to cherish rains, especially summer rains. Not just because they cool the earth and settle the ever-increasing dust, but because they are unexpected, akin to hope - manna to a hungry soul, water to a parched desert-wanderer.

This year, we have had a dry, dusty, hot summer, until now. The days have been sweltering, the nights unbearably hot and impossible to pass without fans in the plural. But now, all that is past. Unexpectedly, delightfully, we have had a rain - and what a rain it is! A cyclone in a low pressure belt couldn't have produced better rain, and for a few moments, hidden safely in the cocoon of our rooms, we thought it truly was a cyclone.

It swirls around trees and sways and shakes them like a man would a puppet. It swooshes and spins around and under eaves, balconies and umbrellas like a banshee wailing and flying in the wind. One can almost see a white line of wind through the sleet of rain, and if you wanted to walk about in it, you'd think it was hail; it's so sharp!

I love watching the trees dance haphazardly in the rain. There is some inhuman frenzy of gladness in it. When this is over - and I can hear it yet, beating down on my windows; distant rolls of thunder promising unceasing rain - there will be a small debris of fallen leaves, perhaps a tree or two ripped apart, a few chilblains and fevers and many muddy shoes. But there will also be a clean world, green and wet and dancing heart-glad - and would you not give anything for that?!

Schopenhauer

2011-04-11T15:56:00.002+05:30

"The vanity of existence is revealed in the whole form existence assumes: in the infiniteness of time and space contrasted with the finiteness of the individual in both; in the fleeting present as the sole form in which actuality exists; in the contingency and relativity of all things; in continual becoming without being; in continual desire without satisfaction; in the continual frustration of striving of which life consists."

Faith is...

2010-11-16T01:05:00.000+05:30

...to hope for things which are not seen, but which are true.

A Season 3 episode of The Mentalist has made me think of faith. The episode speaks of a 'temple' where blind faith in the teaching and the teacher is advocated. Predictably, those in power are corrupt and take advantage of the 'flock'.

Echoes of many an exposé of such religious scams come to mind. The Catholic priests' paedophilia, brothel-monasteries, money-mongering saints - they're all quite... normal, so to speak. What makes me wonder, though, is the gravity with which we regard these scams - over other kinds. It seems that a betrayal of faith is greater than a Satyam-Maytas, or a political trade, or a havala; if all of these are of immense gravity, that is so people people's trust in them was betrayed.

I am aware that I am speaking of two things here: faith and trust. I am beginning with the assumption that faith (in something) is a necessary ingredient of trust. And in that vein, I have two things to talk about: the nature of faith, and the uses to which we put it.

Kant, one of the first (in my opinion) to actually bridge that unbridgeable gap between logic and the beautifully, heartbreakingly vulnerable human need for hope ("Hope, like love, needs constant nourishment to survive"), spoke of practical postulates. These were essentially unprovable, because no universal, concrete proof could be provided for them; religion/God or faith were his perfect examples. To Kant, unlike Descartes, God did not exist beyond proof of doubt. Descartes sought to ram it down our throats that if God were conceivable, He existed. The infallibility of human thought was his first false assmption. To Kant, however, the existence of God was necessitated by human need; it was not logical, scientific or mathematical certainty, and in the face of need, certainty had no place. Extrapolate that to any kind of faith (if you are an atheist or Agnostic) and one sees what Kant meant.

All religions, all faiths, all -isms exist to fill this practical gap. We all believe because we need to, though we may fill them differently. At the basest, most ignorant, surface level, we may disregard the need for this faith (and it is my assumption here that every one of us needs to create some meaning out of life, even when we find solace in the idea that life has no meaning) and spend lifetimes lost and anxious, with faith in ephemeral pleasures. We may have an inkling of this need, but no faith in ourselves, and so turn to a form of religion that advocates no autonomy (The Mentalist's blind faith is an example). Or we may, like Ayn Rand and yet not like her, seek faith in man's glory and achievement, and find faith in an egoistic form of ourselves. Or like Vedanta or Buddhism, we may seek that faith in a 'higher, more enlightened' Self. Whichever way we choose, that gap needs filling. The greater autonomy we allow ourselves to fill that gap - the greater choice and greater honesty (and knowledge is necessary for such honesty) to choose with - the greater respect we give to ourselves. Or so Kant says.

The uses to which we put faith. Varied, and as with all variety - both good and frightening. The best example I can think of right now is of religion, from Season 6 of The West Wing. Senator Vinick (a surprisingly and fabulously moderate Republican), when repeatedly questioned about his church-going activities, talks of what it means to have a separation between Church and State - and that is absolutely true, I think.

"I don't see how we can have a separation of church and state in this government if you have to pass a religious test to get in this government. And I want to warn everyone in the press and all the voters out there if you demand expressions of religious faith from politicians, you are just begging to be lied to. They won't all lie to you but a lot of them will. And it will be the easiest lie they ever had to tell to get your votes."

When Christopher Hitchens accuses religion of being the cause of war, bloodshed and much unhappiness, he's not wrong, nor extreme. In the war for supremacy among faiths, we have sacrificed high ground and important things. Vague as that may sound, I am talking about the losing battle we fight against power, achievement and money. Faith in itself is a good thing - we need it and we can put it to good use. But to pick it up as a tool, violating Kant's Second Formulation, and to wield it for ulterior purposes (and here I stand for inherence and deontology over utilitarianism): that is when we lose our rights to good, beneficial faith. Praying won't bring that back.

TWW Week

2010-10-19T03:08:00.001+05:30

This has been one hell of a week. What do I remember best about it? Three things: the law (read: long, painful - and I am masochistic - hours dedicated to figuring out the law when no country seems to have done the same), The Fountainhead (that's for another day; I'm still reading... intermittently), and The West Wing [hereinafter, "TWW"].

When work is done for the day and you know you must sleep because tomorrow is going to be another long haul, you don't generally sleep. Instead, you prop yourself up on the bed, pick that red, sexy portable hard drive (and pray, even if you're an agnostic, that your elitist laptop drops a pick-up line) and drift away into West Wing land. And if there was a God, I'd thank her/him/it for TWW without spite and without disagreement; it has gotto be the best show ever created. Never mind that Sorkin was a junkie; never mind that real politics is never like its portrayed - for sheer wit, biting dialogue, character building, laughter, hope, idealism and unadulterated fun, TWW beats all.

Today, I could spend a little while cribbing about how the fourth season doesn't have as much wit and pace as the first three - but that would be uncharitable. It's kept up steady, unchanging rhythm and brilliance for 71 episodes (the specials, people, the specials) and I'm just going to forgive the troughs. In the sine wave that is television drama, there's got to be some of those, after all. For now, I'm just going to remember the best moments.

Like this one:

Toby: Have them send us two panda bears.
Mandy: China is not inclined to give us gifts right now.
Toby: Then get us two regular bears. A bucket of black paint, a bucket of white paint, bam-bam. Next case.

How can you not like the man? Wait. Erase that. How can you not worship that snarky wit and flawless delivery?

Pwn

2010-10-13T00:26:00.000+05:30

Everyone who has spoken to me in the past couple of days will have heard me say this multiple times, but: College is deserted. There is pretty near no one around (I've counted three people), and it would be an understatement to say this is rather unusual. I'm used to this place as a madding crowd; a sea of people; pandora's box of chatter; a noisy, gossipy, overpopulated campus. And now it's empty.

It is funny, exhilarating and incredible: I am the only person in the library right now. I kid you not. The only person. Really. Three floors and never-ending racks of books (I can pile up two hundred and you can't stop me), two lovely staircases (and a banister to slide down, and no frowns), rows and rows of cubicles to choose from and a great expanse of unplanned space - ALL MINE. All mine. I could stand here and read out loud, declaim poetry on solitude and time and life and death, play music so loudly it will echo; I can dance and sing and deem the whole world mine, because it is. It's an absolutely mad feeling. I love it.

This is a new one for me; a post of this kind - a momentary idea, badly phrased, incompletely expressed, but just scribbled down in the spur of the moment. So what?

THE WORLD IS ALL MINE.

what's the big deal about technology?

2010-10-12T10:57:00.000+05:30

In the early days of the motorcycle trip, Pirsig describes John and Sylvia as the 'hiding' kind of people - they need technology; their lives are made desirably and necessarily comfortable by it. But they cannot and do not try to understand technology, because all forms of it is alien to them - from a water tap to a motorcycle to a computer chip. Now, Pirsig doesn't understand how it is possible for people to be like that, but it is.

Here I am, toiling over trying to understand encryption and hosting and legal jurisdiction over ISPs, ICPs and other telecom providers, and I would be perfectly happy not knowing. So long as I can listen to my music, and download (albeit with a pirate's patch over mine eyes) my movies/TV shows and books, why does it matter how, where and why the hosting is done?

Actually, it does matter, and Napster, Blackberry, Limewire, Yahoo! and tons of others would tell you that. It does matter, because our rights to free speech, privacy, autonomy, access to and freedom to impart information are all affected directly. Only... complicated, y'know?

Rant done.

Friendship

2010-08-05T20:54:00.001+05:30

Because we change; people change; distances lengthen and shorten outside our control. Still:

Snotty nose, weepy
eyes, swollen cheeks, a red face.
I still love you.

room enough for a mountain lion and me

2010-02-22T10:30:00.000+05:30

Killing comes easy.

That's what the lions in Cameroon would say, I suppose. To protect the dead and to provide for the living, now, that is a difficult task. I'm sure the Cameroon thieves would agree.

So my question is: who do we protect and preserve over others?

It is as I heard Mr Seervai quote Hegel in a discussion: The greatest moral dilemmas are not between right and wrong; they are between right and right.

For it seems to me highly deplorable to have conservationists say that they're worried about the lives of lions, because hungry villagers are stealing their kills. Don't get me wrong; I'm all for animal protection and conservation, but I'm also for eradication of poverty and hunger, so that the world can see at least one less starving child or mother, and one less man who kills himself working (and not because they die).

I'm not saying prioritize man over the lions either; they're both integral to Earth, and they both have equal rights over Earth - the lions more so, perhaps, because man has exploited their lands as well. But the solution can't only be to lament the impending death of lions, surely? The specialization of labour doesn't need to make one indifferent to other, equally pressing, problems, does it? And these definitely aren't issues of different degrees of importance.

Africa is still the world's sympathy lab. And we're experimenting.

***

I suppose it makes me a hypocrite, for I speak, but do nothing.

Murdoch

2010-02-01T14:36:00.000+05:30

Originally written as a Facebook note. But blog feels abandoned, so.

***

Not Iris; that's for another day. Today, the focus of my attention is Alexi Murdoch, who, apart from looking remarkably like one of my seniors (that, I stubbornly maintain), also makes very... nice music. Now, that's what I'd generally relegate to the corner as a harmless, inexpressive adjective, but it fits Murdoch. There's nothing singularly spectacular about his music; unlike glowing flowers on a sunlit field, he's a bit like ivy that grows on a green wall and sticks on.

I was first introduced to Murdoch through "Orange Sky", which is part of The O.C. soundtrack (and as an aside, the soundtrack seems the only good thing about The O.C., apart, of course, from the hot cast). Orange Sky is probably best described as a calming song. And that brings me to what's most distinctive about Murdoch.

He isn't everybody's cup of tea, no. If you're somebody who enjoys being knocked out of their chairs while listening to a song, or insist on experimentation or diversity within an album, Murdoch isn't really for you. But if you, like me, revel in being soothed and calmed by music, then he might be your kind of guy.

Murdoch's music is characterised by his (more minimalist than not) acoustic guitar, muted piano, and soothing, sometimes husky and always soft, vocals and lyrics and a slow, cocooning tempo. The faint, unexpected (or perhaps not. He is Scottish, after all.) Celtic touches are a welcome addition to the guitar and piano ("Blue Mind", "Crinan Wood"), and contribute to the atmosphere Murdoch creates - that of an autumnal or summer wood with leaves falling softly all around, and the wind breezing gently by. Beside the folk influence, Murdoch is typically country; his guitar is more at home on a whitewashed verandah on a wickerwork chair than on a stage surrounded by 40000 people.

Murdoch's best accomplishment lies, I think, in keeping to a very narrow kind of music - the soft, soothing kind - and yet escaping the monotony of the genre. The majority of his originals are different by nuances, at least in that they evoke different emotions in one, and use the instruments well.

If you're feeling blue, or low, or the sky around you is all black and grey, or if you'd like to be sung to sleep, then try Murdoch. He may not fill your headphones or mind with wizardry or distortion, but he may help you empathise, or stop rushing by and pay attention, or lullaby you to peaceful, calming slumber.

Recommendations:
From Four Songs EP (2002): "Orange Sky", "Song for You", "Blue Mind"
From Time Without Consequence (2006): "All My Days", "Wait"
From Towards the Sun EP (2009): "Crinan Wood", "Slow Revolution", "Towards the Sun"

new year

2010-01-01T00:24:00.000+05:30

So we've heralded in another new year, and it feels just as it did last year, only we're all hopefully older and wiser and happier.

Yukon ho! :)

***

For last year's words belong to last year's language,
And next year's words await another voice.
- T.S. Eliot, "Quartet No. 4: Little Gidding"

interim

2009-12-20T21:07:00.000+05:30

You may think I've abandoned my poor, lonely blog. But no, I haven't; not yet.

Though, I thought, material evidence might be necessary to substantiate my claim. :)

Prince (un)Charming

2009-12-20T21:06:00.001+05:30

Disclaimer: It's true. Ask R.

***

It's sunset; there is nothing more satisfying on such harmless evenings than sitting on the bench outside the hostel - chin in hand, feet propped up, head dipped into that flavoured book of the moment. And that is just what I'm doing.

I can hear a persistent sort of rustling in the grass nearby, and I wonder if it's the ghost of that poor murdered snake than R was talking about the other day. But it's only a frog, come out for the cool, rain-threatened day. Faint spots of dark green on scattered on his icky back: a Greek god (of the Frog kind) couldn't have been handsomer.

So I'm charmed. He's hopping, and a couple of insects (mosquitoes, I think, and am reminded irresistibly of the Harappan civilization) are suddenly nowhere to be seen. Hop, and he's closer to the bench.

His expression is familiar. I'm reminded of that boy who, only last week, sent a friend a pained look that said, "Head over heels, I am. How can you not know?!" and walked away with no further injunctions. Hm. The ways of the human mind, I say. Complicated.

But I doubt Froggers' look is meant for me. Differences in species and all, y'know; I've read somewhere (Scientific American) that members of one species find it extremely difficult to find members of another attractive; quite the mystery, don't you think? Froggers has hopped over to some two feet away, and is still sending lustful looks my way. Hm.

But really, holding yourself up on rickety legs like a clown on stilts is really the last straw! Just... creepy. *shiver* I mean, what frog walks on his feet while simultaneously casting lecherous looks at female members of a different species? What frog, I implore you; tell me if you know!

I've started to inch towards the other end of the bench, but Froggers is indefatigable. One foot at a time (wobble wobble), one look at a time, and advancing all the time. Three inches away, and he stops, and stares for one whole minute. Now terrified of frog-poison and of witches in disguise, I'm thankful to notice his expression change from lust to a profoundly baleful glare. One more minute of fierce glaring, and then he turns.

Sigh.

Linear distance between Froggers and me increases interminably (relief relief), but I am still watching. The sun's moved down over the trees, and a speck of that orange light hits Hopper. And there's a flash of gold. Second, third and fourth looks, and there're still flashes of gold.

Hm. I wonder. Did I just pass on by the Frog Prince?

royal scream

2009-10-30T10:20:00.002+05:30

This one gives Munch a run for his money. :D

Source: The Guardian

The Royal Mail strikes.

ew.

2009-10-30T10:11:00.001+05:30

Read this.

Disturbing that there's nothing about what the girl herself says; there's only her family's word for it that "she's happy". And I find it ew that he wants to have children with her.

Okay, I'll allow for freedom of choice and autonomy and all of that, but... ew.

Perhaps we should think of an upper age limit for marriage, too.

Random

2009-10-29T22:45:00.001+05:30

It's a bug we all have. We want to know details about the private lives of others, especially celebrities, or people we admire or look up to, or those we hate and wish ill for. Those details help solidify our ideas about them, whoever "they" are, and aid understanding and love, or ill feeling and anger.*

Last trimester, Nicola Lacey's book did just that for me. Hart was no longer just one another genius in a madding crowd who had formulated a brilliant and path-breaking way to understand the philosophy of law; he was human. And it was easier, having read Lacey, to forgive the flaws and holes in Hart's theory of law, because after all, he was as human as the rest of us, and had his failings and brilliance. Lacey draws extensively from Hart's diaries, and there is much that is endearing in Hart's frank and candid - and sometimes wistful and wishful, at other times angry and confused - version of his life, the ideas and the people populating it.

And the Obamas too: they're very human, if you know what I mean. It's a fairytale marriage (but not a fairytale living it), going by this article. I'm tempted, through sheer Cassandra-ness, to believe there must be red herrings. But I won't. No, I won't.

*Illustrative, not exhaustive. :)

Coming Home

2009-10-29T16:12:00.001+05:30

Coming home is always a sort of an adventure. First, there's the mad hurry where you realise five minutes before leaving that you haven't packed half the things you should have, and the consequent chase to the station (with ~~said~~ travel-companion near tears*), and the weather. Oh! the weather!

Bangalore is a beautiful city that way, much like Kerala (though it is nothing like it, except in terms of the unending number of Mallus roaming the streets and populating the shops). It rains unexpectedly; it gets cold effortlessly; the skies darken and the clouds race across rapidly. On clear, cloudless nights, the moon is a joy to watch from the Library bridge or the basketball court or the terraces, and on clouded days, the dark grey silhouettes bewitch. And when it rains, it doesn't pour, but chills and pitter-patters deliciously.

Delicious pitter-patter it was, yesterday. And so it was that the way to the station, and the view from the train - both were of fresh green leaves and newly re-born trees, with a cool, gracious breeze of rain-washed, earthy scent and of raindrops dancing on puddles and small lakes.

And the journey itself. Haven't you noticed how coming home is like an opportunity to step back and update the records? To keep track of changes and causes, of mistakes and lessons learnt, and best of all, a new set of days to be all alone (unless you want company) and get reacquainted with everything you knew and don't know, or forgot.

It's sometimes a pain - the travel and the lugging bags and remembering tickets, but...

Happy holidays. :)

*I exaggerate, as usual. :)

Deepavali

2009-10-17T21:37:00.001+05:30

It's Deepavali.

I used to be told that there were two ways of celebrating Deepavali. One was the conventional way, with family and friends, sweets and a feast, new clothes and crackers. This was routine every year, and Amma used to make the most incredibly tasty sweets and pass them around to stuffed mouths and greedy hands. Much before dawn, my sister and I would be wildly shaken awake, dragged to the temple and made to stand in the midst of the lights and chants and dressed-up women. And once that ritual was done, we'd race to join the kids in the neighbourhood, with pencil sparklers and catherine wheels and those pyramid sparkles. I remember our most glorious moments were when the umbrellas (ghostly pink and green and white) came floating down from the rockets we'd painstakingly lit and prodded upwards.

Then the day would pass like any other, though added bonuses of the best sort of food and payasam, and there would be Lakshmi Puja.

I learnt of the other way when I met S-ji. That way was/is intensely personal, and here, the symbolism and the hidden significance take the limelight, and ritual and crackers recede into the dim background. This is that significance that Wiki tries to condense into half a page, and something I have heard almost all my life with a strange and half-undeserving feeling.

Sitting around him on certain earmarked days, we would hear of how Deepavali is one of those days set apart in the Hindu calendar to remind man that material pursuits are shrouded in unreality and ephemerality, and that the Real was right here, way deep inside, and we were all looking in the wrong places. All one needed to do to realise this was rake away all that trash one called thoughts, for they blinded and blocked the truly important. Deepavali, with its Lakshmi Puja (for she is the Goddess of Wealth, and not merely material wealth), was an invocation to that inner light, and a festival to set aside material pursuits and start the spiritual journey.

I'm not sure I understood what he strove to make us understand, but then, perhaps that is secondary for the purposes of this post. All I'm required to know for now is, Deepavali is a festival of lights, and the lights are to be lit within and without.

Happy Deepavali. May you find your light.

freedom's just another word*

2009-10-15T20:52:00.000+05:30

I have no words to write.
I have nothing to talk about.
I have no one to talk to.
I have nothing to learn.
I have no beauty to see.
I have nothing to take away.
I have nowhere to stay.
I have no one to help.
I have nowhere to be.
I have nothing to lose.

So every day, I sing.
And wish for everything.

*Janis Joplin: "Me and Bobby McGee"

i hear the water lapping...

2009-10-02T12:49:00.000+05:30

I want to write poetry. Now. But my mind isn't amenable, and my brain won't listen unless the Mind Pathway is open and uncluttered.

So I read.

***

The Lake Isle of Innisfree
~ Yeats

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evenings full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear the lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

***

Yeats puts into verse what we feel and think, but can't translate. Or perhaps it's the other way around. Either way, they click: his verse and our thought.

Lake Isle is a contained little poem (like most others of his), and it brims to the neck with a deep want to find a place of one's own: that one place where everything is as it should be, and everything is as one wants. And there is no disturbance, either of the Mind or of people or of the world, and peace is everywhere because there is nothing to destroy it. This isn't hard-won, desperately-saved peace, but it comes "dropping slowly", beautifully, quietly, of a dew-misted morning and stays contentedly, for there isn't anything to shoo it away. It is like... a serene, azure lake, unspoiled by ripples or waves.

I don't think our Innisfree is east of Lough Gill. It's right here, deep inside. Finding it, though, is a different matter. Though it occurs to me now: we wouldn't value our Innisfree as much if there were no pavements of drab, grey stone.

Random

2009-10-02T11:52:00.000+05:30

I must confess: I do not understand the vagaries of the human mind.

It's amazing how you know when you should stop doing something and start studying, or stop obsessing about chocolate and move on to jalebis, or stop staring at the screen and start typing, but... don't. The human mind must be masochist, really. What else would warrant and justify obsession, blues (and greys) and non-activity?

I suppose sometimes, the difference is that you must stop wanting something and start working on it. Or something else. Else you'll just stay where you are - just another rusted cog in that big rusty wheel. And rust isn't a nice thing to have or be.

Hm.

Remember

2009-09-22T16:24:00.000+05:30

"Yet if you should forget me for a while

And afterwards remember, do not grieve:

For if the darkness and corruption leave

A vestige of the thoughts that I once had,

Better by far you should forget and smile

Than that you should remember and be sad."

~ Christina Rosetti, "Remember"

unexplained

2009-09-03T22:37:00.001+05:30

Love is give and take

says all the world in good faith;

but I have my doubts.

thou shall not steal... what?

2009-08-28T23:15:00.007+05:30

Reader, you have been warned; take care -
There are spoilers you must beware.

Dekalog, siedem (1990)
Dir: Krzysztof Kieslowski

Dekalog 7 is Kieslowski's exploration of the Seventh Commandment, "Thou shall not steal". Majka, the plain, overlooked daughter of an exacting and imperious mother, attempts to kidnap her sister and run away to Canada with her. It's a believable story and a touching one, because Ewa is a controlling and insensitive mother, and Majka feels thoroughly left out while Ania, the little one, gets all the attention and the love. That it pulls the hearstrings isn't excuse enough, though, for kidnapping to be right or justifiable. You cannot steal, and that is that.

But what is stealing, really? Taking away something that does not belong to one with the intention of never returning it? How would we decide what is ours? If, for instance, Ania were Majka's child instead of her sister and she attempted to run away with her, would that be stealing? Can Ewa steal Majka's right to motherhood? Can you steal something that is yours?

That last question is the one that the film primarily deals with. The ending seems to suggest that you can, and that you will be punished for it. For Majka is discovered and runs away on her own, and Ania is returned to Ewa and her husband Stefan. The act of stealing, the film seems to suggest, is contingent not on the stolen object, but on the mind that steals. If one feels one is stealing, despite excuses and justifications to the contrary, then perhaps it is stealing. The intention is the telltale factor; not legally, but morally.

The brilliance of the film is not in the conclusion it draws (for it draws none that is concrete; what is above is mine), but in the exploration of the factors that surround that one tiny act of stealing. What must you keep in mind while 'stealing', and specifically, while stealing a child? Is Majka's torment at her lost opportunity for motherhood (for Ania refuses to call her Mummy) sufficient justification? Does Ewa's being an unyielding and unforgiving mother mitigate the wrong? Is it wrong at all for Majka to take her child away from a setting where she, as the rightful mother, is not allowed to make the decisions for and about her child?

The torment that they face is written beautifully in the actors' faces: Majka, as the cheated girl-mother, the worried and possessive Ewa, the kindly but ineffectual Stefan, the confused Wojteck (Ania's biological father) and the innocent Ania, who does not understand the undercurrents but feels them. Action and retribution don't interest Kieslowski; the reasons for action and degrees of right or wrong do. For him, it seemed to me, the context had to be clear.

Stealing had to be evaluated based on the context it took place in. There are instances when Majka is reprimanded for kidnapping Ania, not because it is wrong, but because it will do no good for the child - that the child's needs must be placed before Majka's while evaluating that act. I think, here, Kieslowski questions the nature of love as well. If Majka loved Ania as much as she claims she does, should she have stolen her? Must love place the needs of the beloved before that of the lover, or is it all right for the emotion to be selfish, controlled by one's own need and desire?

The film ends, I think, on a non-judgmental note. Right or wrong it may be to steal, even if what is taken by you is your own. Right or wrong it may be to refuse to yield, believing in what is good for others. Right or wrong it may be to demand from life what you think should have been yours. What is unchanging in everything is human nature; its existence and functioning from and through supreme selfishness and need (in this case, for Majka's lost motherhood), even in love. Man is limited and controlled by the selfishness and the needs he entertains, for it dictates all action, and brings all kinds of happiness and suffering to him.

Monsoon Haiku

2009-08-26T23:40:00.015+05:30

Wild ducks veer off course;

leaves fall; trees crash - our worlds tossed

around like rag dolls.

***

Drip, drop; flip, flop; splash!

White salwar, you've turned mud-brown.

Don't let Amma see!

***

Dirty old gutter

overflows; you don't walk, you

float, and so do cars.

She has been writing.

love is lost in translation

2009-08-25T12:05:00.000+05:30

I was watching Lost in Translation for the third time yesterday. There is so much to the film that every time, I discover new thoughts that strike me about it.

The first time I watched it, I was struck by a little amount of contempt I felt towards Johansson's character; how she seems to defeatedly accept everything that comes by and doesn't participate in or steer her life. But that passed; there was no judgment made because, sometimes, our lives seem bigger than we are, and we feel we have no control or ability to control or the need for it.

The scond time I watched it, it was just a simple, multilayered, beautiful, gentle ode to loneliness and companionship, inspiration and boredom, maturity and the process of maturing, and to the environment and the person. It was also when I decided that, visually, the sequence of when Johansson's character visit Kyoto and the shrine was my favourite.

This time, what struck me was the "foolish" and unguardedly happy smiles on both their faces at the end, on the busy street in Tokyo, when they hug and kiss. So it's love. I'm not classifying the emotin because I don't think it can be; I don't think you can put love in a drawer and friendship in another and different kinds of love in separate drawers. The way I attempt to understand it, the emotion is the same, everywhere; it is preoccupation with somebody other than yourself, in such a way as to desire happiness or comfort or love for them, even at the cost of your own, and not expect anything in return.*

In that last scene, there was a bit of this reflected, I think. At that particular moment, they were both - perfectly - happy. Only that one moment, maybe, but then, that was because at the end of that moment, their minds started filling up again; details of lives as they were prior to the moment.

I think that one moment shows what love is meant to be - it's in the present; it's happy; it recognizes no obstacles. But it has to exist with all the other moments, and that is when things get complicated. We stuff so much into love - duty, responsibility, expectation, ideas about existing lives like career, money, security - that we forget what it is and make it into some monster of a messed-up rangoli.

Maybe, if we were to let love rule the world - as it is; no introductions or interpolations - everything would be all right.

All you need is love?

***

*It differs because it's directed to different people, and we expect different things from them.

Moo-fee

2009-08-23T17:40:00.000+05:30

No spoilers, I promise.

Three films in the past twelve hours. *nods*

1. The Prestige (2006; dir. Christopher Nolan)
Cast: Hugh Jackman (*drool*), Christian Bale (*melt*), Michael Caine

The good things: It's fast-paced, engaging (I didn't glance at the clock even once, and few films do that to me), slick. The script flows smoothly, in non-linear narrative. The characters are played well, though they're possibly not explored very well. But whatever flesh is there is exposed very well.

One gets a good idea of what the characters are working towards: their fears, obsessions, the lengths they will go to keep their secrets and the perfection to their art. It is also a telling piece on competition and what it does to people, and also, I felt, an exploration of morality and the nature of it.

There are so many themes explored in the film that none are explored thoroughly: questions of professional dedication, competitiveness, sacrifice, the reason for doing something and of revenge. The film tells one of what these two stage magicians, whose lives it is chronicling, believe and act upon. What it does not do, is preach.

There is no outright distinction or final conclusion about what's right and wrong. All one knows is what Angier and Borden do, and why they do it. Perhaps their actions are justified; perhaps not. Perhaps the price they paid was too high and Angier and Borden were just plain foolish, but that's for one to decide. Moral and ethical right and wrong is not the film's preaching; it's just telling a story, and a darn good one, too.

Added bonus: one gets to see Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale in drool-able, melt-able roles that can leave one up high in the air and clouds. :)

***

Okay, maybe slight spoiler. But I've warned you.

2. Before Sunrise (1995; dir. Richard Linklater)
Cast: Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy
This has to be one of the sweetest love stories I've ever seen on screen. To be honest, there's not much to it: two people meet on a train to Vienna, decide to get off together on an impulse and spend the evening together roaming the city and talking (they talk a lot) and falling in love.

So what makes it all that special? Because it's refreshing, and I'll tell you why.

Before Sunrise is a film that you can watch and actually think, "Hm. This could happen; Vienna or no Vienna." There's something about it that's real and magical, and most of it is just conversation. There are no cliched romantic moments and hand-holdings and sexual tensions, and if there are any, they seem uncontrived, natural and in the flow of the narrative, which so rarely happens.

Jesse and Celine are just two normal people who meet, talk, talk, and talk some more, walk, and realise they feel a connection with each other. What it did for me was to highlight how diverse and easy conversation can be, and how tonic, too. And hope, too, because the two are just like you and me on a street in Cochin or Bangalore or Brisbane or Singapore, and it could happen to us too. :)

PS - Btw, Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 100% positive rating (thanks, Verun!) and it's considered one of the best romantic films of the indie genre. :)

***

More spoilers, sorry.

3. Before Sunset (2004; dir. Richard Linklater)
Cast: Same, same.
Okay, so things don't always work out the way you'd want them to, but then, there's always hope, ne? Because people don't really change; not the core, anyway. So if you're an optimistic person, you should still be hoping, and if you're a pessimist or a cynic, you never had much to begin with.

Shock 1: It's nine years down the line, and Jesse and Celine are not together.
Shock 2: Jesse is married to someone else, and has a kid.

He's also just written a bestseller about that night with Celine in Vienna, and accidentally-on-purpose just met her in Paris. The sequel is like a window back into their lives, and here's why this film is so lovable.

They've changed, the two lead characters. And the change is what you might expect of someone ten years down the line - mature, a little less madly optimistic, wisened by the experiences of "life". But in essence, they're still the same. There're periods of dejected realism, and those of mad, soaring optimism; like on an impulsive, unplanned for trip to... somewhere. Hope is an underlying theme all through both films, and so is change, and the desire for fulfilment and understanding.

Hawke and Delpy do a wonderful job of making the characters more or less open books in both films, and I loved watching them to figure out what each was thinking and feeling. They make the movie run, obviously, and do it so well you're not feeling bored at the end of an hour and twenty minutes.

***

Watch.

Milk

2009-08-22T20:10:00.006+05:30

Opinion - this one, too.

Milk was my movie of the day, and, as expected, I am moved by it. However.

***

There are films that draw one in so deeply that one feels part of it - the life, the Movement, the love. Finding Neverland was one of those, despite the liberal exaggeration of fact imbedded deep in the narrative.* Milk, however, is not.

Individually, the performances of the actors are wonderful. Penn as Milk, Franco as Scott Smith, Hirsch as Cleve Jones, and the other men and woman at the Castro - they're all good. They all infuse life into those skins that one has to make friends with and empathise with, for they're the ones that got the Gay Rights Movement going in 'Frisco in the '70s.

One also gets an idea of what the scene was for Gay Rights; a crude vantage, but still one. Enough, at least, to sympathise with either side of the cause, and to wonder at the conservatism of society in the 20th century. Enough, also, to make one's blood boil and long for a reason to fight (and there is enough reason now).

Where Milk fails is in making the connection between the man and his allies, and the scene. Milk speaks of the Movement as the candidate, and not him, but that's not the impression one gets upon watching the film. To be fair, it is purportedly a biopic and so perhaps that is justifiable, but it is also one that tries to give us an idea of the LGBT scene in the US during the '70s, and the film forgets that a little. The result is a film that focuses intermittently on the Movement and its developments, and on Milk and his life.

The problem with this is not just that it makes Milk an inadequate film; it makes it an inadequate biopic, and biopic is what it is. One understands the ideals that Milk stands for, but less about the man and his personal reasons for being so prominent a part of the Gay Movement.

Milk talks to us of what he did, but not of what he was and became. There isn't enough character exploration; one is never sharply touched by either a flaw or a virtue. That, I think, is one the biggest flaws Milk has.

But I'm human enough and silly enough to have tears in my eyes at the idealism the film projects on to Milk, and feel that that redeems the film for all its flaws. :)

* Go here.

Kafka. Not Franz.

2009-08-22T11:25:00.011+05:30

No spoilers; just opinion.

I finished reading Kafka on the Shore last night. It was a long read; a very long one.

Whenever I read Murakami (and this is only the second time), I get the impression that his books are larger than what's between the covers. It is as though Kafka were a metaphor for something else, which is itself a metaphor.

There are so many aspects of Kafka I want to talk about, but I don't think I can classify them into little boxes so that reading and understanding will be easy. I'll try, anyway.

***

Murakami makes a marked distinction between two kinds of knowledge: one that is acquired through reading and learning and reflection, such as that of Oshima or Kafka Tamura, and one acquired through silent acceptance and absorption, such as that of Nakata and Miss Saeki. There is a distinction there, too, in the way each deals with that knowledge (and knowledge is not the same as wisdom; wisdom is in translation of knowledge into action).

Oshima's or Kafka's knowledge is in retrospection, as is most knowledge we all acquire - we learn through reflection and introspection, and for that, the event needs to have passed us. But Nakata's is quite different - his is what I'd perhaps, very loosely, classify as knowledge through faith - there is no questioning there, or hurry, or impatient need to understand; just quiet acceptance. The Alchemist talks of this kind of learning too.

The distinction isn't merely in the way knowledge is acquired, I think; it's reflected in the kind of life one leads, and the suffering one takes upon oneself. With the first sort, there is always that awareness of individual choice, and in Kafka, it is both the cause of intense suffering and of redemption (to put it crudely). The second sort leads, and leads, and then it is over (cruder, I know).

***

There is a part in Kafka where Murakami references Hegel, and says that the self is not merely aware of the object as an external thing, but that through the relating that it (the self) does to the object,* it is able to understand its self better and more deeply.

That seems to me to be an underlying theme in the entire book. Every event, every memory, every little action; all of it serve to give each character a deeper understanding of his or her self. Each memory, event and action does not merely guide that, but is also the product of the self of the present. And the self-of-the-present is the product of the self-of-the-past that was moulded by event, memory and action. Time has no meaning, because the selves converge and diverge constantly, and yet, time guides the change.**

It is, in a way, about conscious change and the choices one makes, and also about how much choice one can have in a decision, and how much is foreordained, if at all.

For Murakami, there is only one journey, or at least, that is how it seems to me. The journey is not forward, because time has no meaning in his world; it's inside, to the deepest core of the self.

* "I" am the content of the relation, but "I" am also the one that does the relating.

** That feels faffy, but I can't fathom out how to articulate it better.

Bawring

2009-08-22T01:03:00.006+05:30

I'm home, and I'm bored. Before you ask; no, one is not a natural corollary of the other, though there is a very high degree of correlation there. But we've all been told countlessly; correlation is not causation.

Now the crux of the issue: why am I bored?

(At this point, I'm beyond caring about whether you care or not, you know. This is no democracy. You're here; this is my land; you're interested in what I'm interested in. Period.)

Now that's clear: I'm bored because I have nothing to do. To be more precise, I am not doing anything that I would like to or feel useful doing, and do not at all feel like doing what I would feel useful doing, and hence, I'm bored. It's a circular definition, you see.

As we're done with the major question, we'll go to effects: what does boredom do to people (me; I'm all you need to care about)?

When one is bored, one starts to... feel sluggish. Like a big pickled slug on a dirty table that nobody cares to clean up; a dead slug that doesn't want to move or dance or talk or think or sing. And then one detests movement of all kinds, especially of the brain centre, which would facilitate thinking.

If it's good kind of boredom, then one might take note of the joy of slipping one's hand into heaped grain, like in Amelie. But if it isn't, then all mental faculties slow down liiiiikeee theeeeeess aaaaand one feeeeeelss aas thoughhh one'ss a browkenn graamophoonne recorrrdddd.

And then one gets addicted to brainless films and magazines and staring into the void thinking of nothing, and then becomes a pickled slug/caterpillar oneself.

It's not a good life - a slug's - I tell you. Rather unexciting. Self-perpetuating boredom, so to speak. Don't become one. *nods*

Mind

2009-08-07T15:19:00.002+05:30

Jack of no trade, nor

master of one; stubborn child

cannot but wander.

Blues

2009-08-05T20:41:00.003+05:30

It's a cynical day today.

So cynical I can't even write.

Valuing Price

2009-07-29T03:52:00.000+05:30

Situation:
You are in a boat that is slowly and determinedly sinking. There are too many people on board, and the shore is quite a long way off. Two people on board are gravely injured, and are losing a lot of blood. It's almost certain that they'll both die before the boat reaches the shore, if at all it does.

What would you do? Throw the injured men into the sea and save the rest of the passengers, or would you not? Would it make a difference if the dying men were owners of the boat and the other passengers murderers and thieves?

***

The dinner table today was a heated discussion on this issue. As we figured, there are two ways one can deal with this. One is the "moral" way, to value life over all else, and value life equally. Meaning, of course, that no man will be dumped into the sea and left for dead.
The other way is what a certain little person called the "pragmatic" solution. In the interests of the saving lives of the majority, throw the dying men out. Twenty men saved and two men dead is better than twenty-two men dead, when there really was no need for them to die.

As I see it, this dichotomy of views stems from the fact that we look at this from different standpoints.

The moral solution stems from an individual moral standpoint, wherein I would value no life lesser than mine, and therefore, arrogate to right to myself that allows for the abandoning of the two dying men.

The pragmatic solution is what another classmate of mine would call the "selfish" way, because all altruism is, ultimately, selfish. In the interests of propagation, preservation of the human race, or simply, the preservation of society as we see it - built, I suppose, on a set of columns that we like to believe is inherently moral (what is moral, anyway?) - or even more simply, the individual desire to live, the pragmatic solution seems justified.

The question here is: does the pragmatic solution automatically place a price on the value of human life (and is that justified/acceptable), or is the value of individual human life economically and socially incalculable?

***

An observation made today:
The Delhi High Court, in a 1983 judgement, seems to favour the pragmatic solution over the "moral". The reason they state is simply this: that if a law kills one and saves a hundred lives, it is in greater social interest and is therefore a just, fair and right law. Inevitable, perhaps?

My question still stands.

Medieval Torture

2009-07-22T08:05:00.000+05:30

You might be a Harry Potter fan. You might be jumping up and down in the air because the new HBP movie is out and you can't wait to watch it. If you are, don't be offended and don't throw heavy objects at me. All I'm saying is: are you sure you've got your priorities right? Should you, I ask in earnest, be putting your loyalty to some imaginary boy (who's quite ordinary and temperamental, come to think of it) over your commitment to good cinema and literature? Should you, should you??

You might be in a mood to root me out from any tiny corner of the world and dip me in scalding hot water now. Or the iron maiden. But wait. Listen, at least, to what I have to tell you about HBP the Movie.

*desperate silence for five minutes*

I've been trying to think of good things to say, but the only thing I can think of is: Draco Malfoy. Tom Felton is deliciously drool-over-able, and boy, is he the only person worth watching in the movie! The others are all more puppet-like than they can possibly be in real life - so much so I'm actually wondering if David Yates thought puppets would be a cheaper bet.

Now I'll tell you what's wrong with the movie. You'd expect a screenplay to be flowy, and we all know it's possible for books to be made into decent films (Lord of the Rings, anyone?!), but this one beats all. Every time I watch a Harry movie, I think, "This is the worst Steve Kloves could do, ever!" and he proves me wrong every time. Every single time.

And that's only one thing that's wrong about it. You might be one of those people who like romantic comedies, or period romances, action thrillers, gripping dramas, or fantasy worlds - but on all of those counts, HBP fails. Please, if you have any loyalty to good cinema, chuck your ticket in the bin and go bury yourself in a Tolkien.

i go to the hills when my heart is lonely*

2009-06-30T11:05:00.012+05:30

We're none of us godmen, and so we all have our havens - our places of solace and calm and comfort in times of trouble and broken dreams. One of the best descriptions of a safe place I've read was in Jeanette Ray's book, Eat Cake, which the Reader's Digest collection threw into my bookshelf. The protagonist in it imagines herself to be deep inside a cake whenever she is lost, helpless, harassed and the rest of the menagerie; inside a deep, soft, breathing, comforting cake - she preferred a lemon and chiffon cake, but the chocolate and banana cake is my favourite to blanketed in.

As far as real (not in the Vedantic sense of the term, no) places go, I suppose we all have those places where we feel at home - safe, taken care of - like engulfed within a warm, encompassing, comforting hug. Mine is my room. Every time I come home, for the first three hours or so, I stay closeted in my room, acclimatising to the change, both in me and my parents, and to the place itself, and reflecting on it. If this precious ritual is broken, I end up a stark, raving lunatic for the rest of the week, and my parents are never pleased to make loony-me's acquaintance.

Then there is an old, wise, grandfatherly house about 20 km from home. It was the birthplace of Shankaracharya, and there are remnants of the bygone times in that house still - in the wood, the pillars, the lit oil-lamps, the smiles. There, one can be completely alone in the silence; unlike in a huge empty auditorium where one might feel a perverse desire to yell long and loud, there is only a want to go as softly and tip-toed-ly as one can, here. There are trees, old as my great-grandfather would have been, standing stick-straight on the grounds and spreading shadow, and rubber tree plantations that offer hiding places, and paddy and pineapple farms that delight.

There is also an old, rich, temple-city on a little hill, up in Andhra Pradesh, that offers the same solace, if one were to go at a time of the year where there's more breathing space than people. There is a garden there - large, but not very well looked after, and two enormous banyan trees growing intertwined, and they are always talking to you and gesturing with their thick leafy arms towards a blue, cirrus-y sky. There are sculptures in the garden that are not the work of masters, chipped and broken in places, almost hidden by undergrowth and shrubs, but they all have their stories to tell. There is silence there too, and it speaks a language all its own.

My home city is another haven - one can get lost in the milling crowds, and anonymity in familiarity is always the balm of Gilead for a lonely soul.

Mountains too offer the sort of solitude that cures all ailments of a diseased mind, and even freshen it up for a new plunge into the world of fleeting worries and happinesses (college, for instance). When I read Ruskin Bond's description of the mountains, I can't help but love them as he loves them, and give myself, heart and soul, to dreams of spruced and deodared and wild-flowered slopes. I have sat at the feet of men who've told me they spend months in solitude in the Himalayas. In fact, I have heard all hermits say they would retire into the Himalayas if they were to have the chance.

There must be a reason all hermits retire to the Himalayas. Even godmen need solitude, I s'pose, when all's said and done.

*The Sound of Music

Just Joking

2009-06-21T15:25:00.001+05:30

Are we all anarchists waiting for a reason to unleash our madnesses upon the world?

So ignoring the fact that that sentence is weirdly framed, I'll tell you now that no one I've ever asked (including Dad, who wouldn't hurt a fly) has ever denied a perverse, sneaking desire to throw a lighted matchstick into a coach carrying petrol, despite (or because of) skull-and-bones and "Highly Inflammable!!!" stamped in gloriously huge letters all over it. Or not wanted to throw some form of explosive into a milling crowd, just to break it up. Or hurl a Fat Man (or something slightly less destructive, actually) into the Parliament when one of those juvenile walk-out sessions are in order.

Or to crash a car into a tree at 180 mph, or imagine a roller-coaster coming off the rails when it's at the summit, or think of a giant wheel come screwed and roll along the road wreaking havoc. We all like some disorder, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics and punk/death metal music are proof enough.

I think Emma Thompson, of the puckered eyes, sharp mouth and crisp accent, put it beautifully in Stranger Than Fiction.

"Everybody thinks about jumping off a building."

Stories

2009-06-16T09:07:00.004+05:30

I was reading an old, old set of Amar Chitra Katha-s yesterday, and encountered a set of Jaina stories. They are all to do with how desire is the root of all unhappiness, and how money and the avarice destroys one.

There was also the story of Chandragupta II Vikramaditya, apparently the story of a great and noble king. After the History course we did in college, that seems unlikely. :)

And there is also the representation of legends and myths from the Puranas and the Bhagavatam as real events of the past, and now I think of the different methods of representing the past, historical and ahistorical, a la Ashis Nandy.

Now I wonder what I read of them when I was four, for I definitely remember reading them, but not the lessons.

Perhaps we must reread all our childhood stories again, if only to glean new lessons from them.

that rotten g-word

2009-06-12T09:09:00.001+05:30

Is what a trashy Marcia Willet novel called it, and an equally trashy Sophie Kinsella one as well. What tosh, I thought.

Apparently not. It's a debilitating thing, guilt. Keeps alive the past, shuts out the future, clouds the present. And the only way to obliterate it is to either let go, or rearrange the past.

Oh well.

Exams

2009-06-09T03:14:00.003+05:30

And if you still cannot understand
That precious is studying beforehand,
A price so great you'll have to pay -
You'll look like a zombie on a decaying day.

if you find it, share it with the rest of us*

2009-06-07T11:45:00.012+05:30

So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another
Only a look and a voice; then darkness again and silence.

What of eternity then, and permanence,
Of happiness and a bliss in every action?

*Grant Lee Buffalo: Happiness
(from Mighty Joe Moon)

Lone Shoes on Dance Floors

2009-05-31T23:01:00.004+05:30

Disclaimer: Quote overheard in a conversation yelled across space and time. In college, really.

***

"Some ****ing Cinderella left a shoe on the dance floor. I tripped over it and fell. Damnation."

That poor Prince Charming!

If only he had not been drunk, and noticed that single shoe (not just to curse its presence on the dance floor), he might have found his Cinderella. Not a complete certainty, no, but it could still have happened.

Wait, though. Aren't we making an assumption here that Charming would actually have wanted to meet his Cinderella? Maybe he'd already found his Cinderella, and this shoe was one of those freak accidents along the way that make your nose bleed and gross out your Cinderella. Or maybe Charming's Cinderella was the wrong Cinderella and this was the universe's way of telling him he had the wrong one and should keep looking. It's also possible that it was this owner-of-the-shoe-Cinderella's way of sending out a signal to her Prince Charming (a different one), and this one just got in the way.

Maybe this was Bachelor Prince Charming, a charming cynic who didn't believe in fairy tales and had no time to spend on Cinderellas and glass shoes (four inch heels notwithstanding) except to cuss its audacity to lie so brazenly and inconsiderately on the dance floor. Or maybe he was the Henpecked Prince Charming, who had grown up and long since forgone his belief in fairy tales and true love.

Or it may not have been Cinderella at all. It could have been Snow White, deciding she didn't particularly like the way she had to bite into insidiously poisoned apples and wait around for her guy to show up. Or Rapunzel, who liked bobbed hair, high heels and partying better than imprisonment in tall towers. Or that daughter of a weaver who didn't want to meet Rumplestiltskin. Perhaps we're just attributing personalities to her; it could be that she was just another cynic, and her shoe recalcitrant.

It may just have had a devious plan to trip someone over; after all, it can't be fun being staccatoed in tune with Punjabi songs for hours on end. It could have been miserably lost, and just in Charming's way. Or maybe, just maybe, the shoe realised that this Cinderella and this Prince Charming (cynicism and indifference notwithstanding) were meant to meet and be, and decided now was better than later or never.

Come to think of it, it's just one shoe, and a million possible reasons surrounding the mystery of its lone presence on the dance floor.

Sugar, Spice and Everything Nice: Did You Say?

2009-05-30T22:42:00.004+05:30

Put man in a cage
And he'll show you claws that you
never knew he had.

(Yes, still in haiku mood. Though what I should be in is exam-study-mood.)

Elections are such nasty things.

Naivete or not, I can't help thinking that there is a nice, non-nasty way of doing these things. Surely we can all exist without pointing out flaws in other people (that may or may not exist) in hateful terms?

Maybe you'll say I should wake up to the real world. Well, I'll tell you now: Alarms will wake me when I'm needed, and I'll butt in and butt out asap.

Rain

2009-05-17T20:50:00.002+05:30

It is raining.

It is that time of the year when all the rain-fairies are out, and they light up the darkening trees and lend to those funny, rotund globules of rain glitters and shines and happiness. Us, too, if only we were to listen closely enough.

***

I was reading this blog today, and this is the result.

Rain

Drops of water fall
jewels from infinity
mortal once on earth.

Learning

2009-05-15T07:41:00.005+05:30

Once upon a time, long, long ago, this little one in a small class of very inspiring people heard someone say: "Change is the only changeless law." And: "Everything passes away."

The little one didn't quite recognise those deep pearls of wisdom. Now, that is one milestone of learning.

The next one is coming to terms with the first one.

Trees by the Library

2009-05-13T23:47:00.005+05:30

Leaf, little green leaf,

Shot with silver light:

When you dance with the wind,

you dazzle my eyes.

You droop in the rain,

but do you ever cry?!

I can't but delight, drenched,

in your rustling glee.

With every prayer, I ask

That I be born a tree

To have you adorn

My brown, scarred body.

Reality

2009-05-11T20:46:00.004+05:30

Did you hear of the deer who thought she was going to die because all the grass in the world was wilting?

She lived in a painting.

Glass Half Full

2009-05-10T00:47:00.002+05:30

"Congratulations! You are now an ant!"

Wait. O_O

Have I been promoted to a class of diligent, industrious living things, or is this a belittling demotion on the cycle of rebirth?!

***

PS - Yes, I know cycles/circles can't have hierarchies, but well... Who says we're talking logic here?

Mundane Tasks

2009-05-06T13:22:00.008+05:30

Oh inspiration, dear inspiration, wth are you?!
Why'd you leave?!
With you, I was a pink-and-green cloud flying high
in the sky
Now you've flown,
And I feel alone, all alone:
A lonely printing press in a dark corner;
it churns out words by the thousand,
conceived with hope, but they're damned:
Never read but marked, frowned upon...

And I'm just here sitting, typing out words
just one in a colony of duds.

Shadow-play

2009-05-04T00:35:00.001+05:30

There it is again! That shadow. Oh, you intriguing, intriguing shadow! Whose art thou?!

***

It's summer in --, and what a summer! The locals tell us it's never been this hot, and that the rains used to be far more frequent.

But today is one of those glorious anomalies - rain and a cool breeze. And a moonlit night too. I am walking around the building, and making cloud-babies out of those amorphous Legos. I've seen a dragon (all Chinese and red and gold, I'd like to believe), sugar candy puffs, hearts with wings, Chucky (*shudder*), powder puffs, a kelpie, a milk carton with feet like in a video I've seen long ago (I forget which song, but I remember he meets a girl milk carton and goes to heaven, halo and all)...

A brief interlude with the music in my ears and coffee, and I'm almost home. I look up, and the clouds-babies have all been shooed to bed, and the stars are out partying, and a freckled half-moon. It's impossible to ignore their frolic; I'm an ardent fan. I'm staring quite unabashedly, and lo! there's a shadow over the moon!

I'm tempted, conditioned as we all are, to dismiss it as a chopper out on a joyride, but it moved too quickly for that. I use the old technique of watching, but not quite looking for, and there it is again! It's slender, like a cross; both vertical and horizontal, and gone before I can focus on it. Like a speckle: there, but not quite.

Maybe it was an insect flying in front of my eyes, and by some weird law of science, it felt as if it were far away. It's a plausible explanation. Or maybe it was an asteroid speeding.

But I've decided it was a witch - out, perhaps, because she's happy about the weather, and wants to make the best of it, like all of us. Or she could be the boogeyman to the cloud-babies. Maybe there's a coven tonight, but wait, aren't they on full moon nights?! She could be out on a secret mission, spying for the Queen of her Clan. Or on a secret rendezvous with a lover who's not a wizard. Or maybe it's just her shadow, out while she's brewing her secret potions in the dark of night, just to get away for a while from work. Or maybe, just maybe, she engineered the weather. I'm glad she did, if she did.

So what if it's only a half-moon night? Even witches must have their breathing space.

Summer

2009-04-29T16:30:00.001+05:30

This seems to be the season for remembrance.

Gulmohars are blooming; those bright, alive, orange bursts of colour are a sight for sore eyes. They remind me, and others here, of how we used to invent vampire nails and fangs out of the gulmohar petals and run madly around the house announcing the descent of Countess Dracula (No, that wasn't me! I was Pirate Snaggletooth. Rawr.) in red cloaks fashioned of Amma's saris.

And then there were mangoes. This, back home, is that glorious season when all mango trees (and every house in the neighbourhood had at least one) erupt into fruits and perfumy blooms. Daily schedules were invariably characterised by forays into neighbours' orchards, armed with stones and conspicuous long sticks, and down would come some two dozen mangoes. The next few seconds would be spent in frantically gathering the mangoes and rushing out, almost always chased by irate 'ungles' and their 'aalsashian' Tommys. And breakfast, lunch and dinner always, always had mangoes - mangakoottaan, mango pickles, manga pachadi, fruit salad... You name it; we had it. Dad's favourite summer refrain was: "There is always space for one more mango."

There were always sudden, unexpected showers too, as though Earth herself felt too hot to not want some cooling off. Always towards the end of the day, and always on the hottest days, we were caught unawares in raggedy outfits while out on on ruffianly cycling trips. The rain always cheered us up extra, and made us living horrors for Amma to deal with.

***

This is very much a nostalgic post. I really do miss those days. Not because "they will never be back again", but because those great, comforting grandfathers of trees are gone now. There're huge buildings of yuppies looking to move to the suburbs now - the orchards and the traditional ponds are long gone. And so, it seems, are the rains. They're never predictably unexpected anymore. They just come and go, like postmen on the street, leaving traces of their presence, but never coming in.

Those are the things that aren't going to come back - those trees and the open field and the green, unchoked rain and the smell of the wet, red earth.

I mourn their passing. And laugh about the fun we had then.

Indian

2009-04-21T23:25:00.003+05:30

Questions are everywhere, even on harmless bus rides.

I was on a bus back to Bangalore, and had the good fortune (or otherwise) of having a chatty neighbour. She was elucidating at length about the vagaries and the various vices of Bangalore auto drivers, and at some point, made a statement that I find disturbing.

She said, "Most of my friends were foreign nationals, and there were a couple of people from North-East, but I was the only one who looked Indian."

Oh yes, we could argue that the people from the North-East look distinctively Chinese or Nepalese or whatever. But what I wonder is: Suddenly we have a distinct facial characteristic; some of us "look Indian" while others don't?

What is this idea of "Indian" that we have built in our heads? How come, for someone as normal as you and me, the Indians in the North-East just aren't Indian enough? How is it that such a thought is so deeply ingrained in us that we never realise the import of what's been said?

So who is Indian, now? What are the criteria to be? Religion, income, class, caste, region? Who is to decide all of this?

What is it that we have to do, or be, or not do to be Indian?

Believing

2009-04-20T00:22:00.001+05:30

Tup. Ttup. Tttup.

There is a woodpecker outside my window. I cannot see it, but its conversation with the birch breaks into my stuporous consciousness like a bomb into silence.

I can't see the birch now. My worktable isn't near the window. It used to be, looking out from that tiny perch onto a world exploding with colour and form.

That was the issue, of course. There is that part of the brain, which has heard it all from them, that tells me all of it - this splash of colour, this multitude of form - is... what is the word? Wrong. No... That's not it.

Unreal. Yeah. That's the word. All of this is unreal, they say. All that is tangible, all that I can see, taste, touch, smell and hear - everything unreal. It doesn't matter that I can see it; I must believe. Thinking is dangerous, you know.

And that is why my table was moved from the window, of course. If I were to see so much colour, I would have trouble believing what I am told. To believe that so much beauty is an illusion, that all of it is like ghosts in the netherworld, would be sacrilege, blasphemy... and well nigh impossible. The wall helps. It's stark white, and rectangular.

There are moments, naturally, when I wonder if this premise of unreality isn't too farfetched. But then, they wouldn't lie to me, would they? They said it's all for Truth - and what would one not give for Truth?

I'm still trying to find it, of course. It is a difficult path - it needs me to forget that I know so much, needs me to be blind to so much. But it'll be worth it, you know, in the end. Truth = happiness and everything you've ever wanted, they said - and how can it not be?

Meanwhile, I believe in what I am told.

The world is full of colour, but my wall is bare.