Posts
Monday, November 20, 2006
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
what is faith?
for those who never miss sunday mass
and for those who live for turning their heads to THAT one direction five times a day
and even for those who celebrate a new festival every new day
faith tempers purpose and sustains love
faith also steels resolve and sharpens belief
and such is the chronicle of the continuing tragedy of the travesty of it all
what cost faith?
for those who never miss sunday mass
and for those who live for turning their heads to THAT one direction five times a day
and even for those who celebrate a new festival every new day
faith tempers purpose and sustains love
faith also steels resolve and sharpens belief
and such is the chronicle of the continuing tragedy of the travesty of it all
what cost faith?
Friday, October 27, 2006
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
i was just watching Walk the Line with Joquain Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon...being Johnny Cash and June Carter. at the beginning of the movie...johnny cash..ok...june...who?? i knew who Johnny Cash was but i had never heard of her (as a singer/songwriter) and least of all that they were married to each other. then again...why should i?
and i felt as i watched the movie that real story for all these famous people is not what they were good at but what they loved and who they loved or didnt...just like all the rest of us...
now am sure a lot of what was in the 'movie' was romanticized dramatized even commercialized but...
i realize the 'real' story could not be that different...that all men love their women in their own way
their hard ways and their tender ways and their vocal ways and their quiet ways
even in their indifferent ways
and i felt as i watched the movie that real story for all these famous people is not what they were good at but what they loved and who they loved or didnt...just like all the rest of us...
now am sure a lot of what was in the 'movie' was romanticized dramatized even commercialized but...
i realize the 'real' story could not be that different...that all men love their women in their own way
their hard ways and their tender ways and their vocal ways and their quiet ways
even in their indifferent ways
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Thursday, August 10, 2006
when did these responsibilities creep up on me? catching me unawares...a bit at a time...the lengthening of a sigh...the deepening of a shadow...
what are these weights around my neck...those two spots i can feel with my finger but which will not go away...
that hushed the fire and dimmed the laugh...a chuckle they call it?
but did they bring love too or did love carry them along, afraid of her own solitude? and did they bring the deep sleep too? and the heavy lids in the morning?
and meaning? i think they brought a meaning too, which scarpers away as i try to touch...maybe its just the tiredness...
what are these weights around my neck...those two spots i can feel with my finger but which will not go away...
that hushed the fire and dimmed the laugh...a chuckle they call it?
but did they bring love too or did love carry them along, afraid of her own solitude? and did they bring the deep sleep too? and the heavy lids in the morning?
and meaning? i think they brought a meaning too, which scarpers away as i try to touch...maybe its just the tiredness...
Saturday, June 24, 2006
this glorious game
this meeting of passions
a harbinger of hopes
an equaliser of nations
O glorious sport you!
5 billion people...that is 5,000,000,000 people, are watching this game as the best of them play for the big prize. if the sheer number is mindblowing, it does not begin to describe the magnitude of passion fueling it. for all of us in the subcontinent we could vouch for another sport in a similar vein, but cricket is played in only a few nations and is as passionate in fewer. And that remains true of most sports, particularly team sports.
yet football or soccer or fussball runs it own course. how many things on this planet have the power to stop wars and civil wars. to provide hope and happiness in spaces and times where sport and pleasure do not find, some would say deserve, the time of the day.
speaking for myself i love it without having to think why. but if i do have to, many coloured thoughts run around in my head. it is as if it reduces to a microcosm events from our collective histories, events that fired the hopes and imaginations of nations and people. let me give it a shot here;
for senegal playing and beating the defending champions...david beating goliath
for ghana playing and beating the czech republic...charge of the light brigade
for baggio shooting his penalty over in the '94 final...the fall of achilles
for pope being red carded in the US-Italy game...Indira Gandhi signing away 90,000 prisoners of war won in blood, for nothing, with a single stroke of her pen
for 1o men trinidad and tobago holding france to a goalless draw...horatio holding the bridge against the etruscan hordes
in its barest essence it removes birth and opportunity out of the men who play it. reduces the complexity of men to the fundamental purity of a child's joys. reduces it to how fast you run and how beautifully you dance with the ball.
O beautiful game you!
this meeting of passions
a harbinger of hopes
an equaliser of nations
O glorious sport you!
5 billion people...that is 5,000,000,000 people, are watching this game as the best of them play for the big prize. if the sheer number is mindblowing, it does not begin to describe the magnitude of passion fueling it. for all of us in the subcontinent we could vouch for another sport in a similar vein, but cricket is played in only a few nations and is as passionate in fewer. And that remains true of most sports, particularly team sports.
yet football or soccer or fussball runs it own course. how many things on this planet have the power to stop wars and civil wars. to provide hope and happiness in spaces and times where sport and pleasure do not find, some would say deserve, the time of the day.
speaking for myself i love it without having to think why. but if i do have to, many coloured thoughts run around in my head. it is as if it reduces to a microcosm events from our collective histories, events that fired the hopes and imaginations of nations and people. let me give it a shot here;
for senegal playing and beating the defending champions...david beating goliath
for ghana playing and beating the czech republic...charge of the light brigade
for baggio shooting his penalty over in the '94 final...the fall of achilles
for pope being red carded in the US-Italy game...Indira Gandhi signing away 90,000 prisoners of war won in blood, for nothing, with a single stroke of her pen
for 1o men trinidad and tobago holding france to a goalless draw...horatio holding the bridge against the etruscan hordes
in its barest essence it removes birth and opportunity out of the men who play it. reduces the complexity of men to the fundamental purity of a child's joys. reduces it to how fast you run and how beautifully you dance with the ball.
O beautiful game you!
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Sunday, June 11, 2006
Thursday, June 01, 2006
I 287 on May 30
six lanes of vitality,
or two rivers joined at the hip?
one red
one white
a vast emptiness above
a vast emptiness yonder
a vast emptiness within
or two rivers joined at the hip?
one red
one white
a vast emptiness above
a vast emptiness yonder
a vast emptiness within
Sunday, May 28, 2006
i read somewhere that the average American has a vocabulary of 5000 words...he or she can happily go through life with that repertoire without being challenged by a need to find a new word to describe something.
i find that scary.
i know much fewer than 5000 words in my native language (which is odiya) and whenever i go home i realize how limited that is when i want to communicate with people outside my social circle.
i find that terrifying. compound that a thousand times over, a million times over with the fact that i am no different from the greater majority of people similar to me and well...
why am i petrified of this fact? its not like i or the others i think are similar to me want for a method or language to communicate. we usually know languages over and above the ones our great grandparents knew and if ever we lack for description in any language, we throw in one or two in to reinforce, reiterate and basically get our point through.
i am terrified for what i am losing in translation. translation of the hopes, fears and memories of generations before me to the ones after me. translation of the sights, smells and noises that were and that are. translations of the labour performed by nondescript heroes, forgotten and unsung, even unrecognised as anything but ordinary, in building today's generations and the dreams of tomorrow's children.
my thought, my actions, my dreams are different from my father's and my mother's. but surely there is something i can carry over, surely there is something that they did to make me who i am, the words i say, the things i do, and the things i do not say or do. for better or for worse, that surely is a great part of who i am and something i can and will treasure like the chingudi bhajaa my mother cooks for me.
why language? because when a child comes into this world, the first time he takes his place among us as a person is when he calls out 'ma' or 'baba' or 'bhai' or 'dei'. it therefore is the stepping stone and ultimately a window to who we are. i say 'mummy' when i usually call out to my mother and there are times when i say 'ma' instead when i'm talking about her in odiya to someone just because 'mummy' sounds irreconcilably alien and if i were to say that, i am subconciously aware that the intimacy of that conversation will be irrevocably lost. a sudden alienation born.
i always wanted to learn french because i thought it was a beautiful language. closer to home, i always found bengali langurously sweet. my own language, odiya, i never learnt to read or write because of a stubborn (one quality i showed very early signs of) resistance to any 'learning' over and above i had to do in school. as i grew up, i had english, hindi and sanskrit to take care of, particularly hindi which single handedly massacred my exam score averages through many an academic season. all the odiya i knew, i knew from talking to (and getting a talking to from) my parents and siblings and a long time later in college from conversing with friends. so in essence my knowledge of odiya remained very functional - never beautiful, and i think the biggest reason why in my urges to learn new languages, my own language never figured, ever.
as the subliminal battle goes on between the urge to be synchronously similar in cosmopolitan correctness, and the need to be uniquely identifiable - all i know in my heart is that when a language dies, inevitably a people are lost. i want to learn my mother tongue. i want to know odiya like and as an oriya.
i find that scary.
i know much fewer than 5000 words in my native language (which is odiya) and whenever i go home i realize how limited that is when i want to communicate with people outside my social circle.
i find that terrifying. compound that a thousand times over, a million times over with the fact that i am no different from the greater majority of people similar to me and well...
why am i petrified of this fact? its not like i or the others i think are similar to me want for a method or language to communicate. we usually know languages over and above the ones our great grandparents knew and if ever we lack for description in any language, we throw in one or two in to reinforce, reiterate and basically get our point through.
i am terrified for what i am losing in translation. translation of the hopes, fears and memories of generations before me to the ones after me. translation of the sights, smells and noises that were and that are. translations of the labour performed by nondescript heroes, forgotten and unsung, even unrecognised as anything but ordinary, in building today's generations and the dreams of tomorrow's children.
my thought, my actions, my dreams are different from my father's and my mother's. but surely there is something i can carry over, surely there is something that they did to make me who i am, the words i say, the things i do, and the things i do not say or do. for better or for worse, that surely is a great part of who i am and something i can and will treasure like the chingudi bhajaa my mother cooks for me.
why language? because when a child comes into this world, the first time he takes his place among us as a person is when he calls out 'ma' or 'baba' or 'bhai' or 'dei'. it therefore is the stepping stone and ultimately a window to who we are. i say 'mummy' when i usually call out to my mother and there are times when i say 'ma' instead when i'm talking about her in odiya to someone just because 'mummy' sounds irreconcilably alien and if i were to say that, i am subconciously aware that the intimacy of that conversation will be irrevocably lost. a sudden alienation born.
i always wanted to learn french because i thought it was a beautiful language. closer to home, i always found bengali langurously sweet. my own language, odiya, i never learnt to read or write because of a stubborn (one quality i showed very early signs of) resistance to any 'learning' over and above i had to do in school. as i grew up, i had english, hindi and sanskrit to take care of, particularly hindi which single handedly massacred my exam score averages through many an academic season. all the odiya i knew, i knew from talking to (and getting a talking to from) my parents and siblings and a long time later in college from conversing with friends. so in essence my knowledge of odiya remained very functional - never beautiful, and i think the biggest reason why in my urges to learn new languages, my own language never figured, ever.
as the subliminal battle goes on between the urge to be synchronously similar in cosmopolitan correctness, and the need to be uniquely identifiable - all i know in my heart is that when a language dies, inevitably a people are lost. i want to learn my mother tongue. i want to know odiya like and as an oriya.
Saturday, May 27, 2006
the fury of natural order spurned
It defies logic and all good reason to equate "progressiveness" with choosing 'right by birth' over true individual merit. In their infinite wisdom, the politicos of our nation ('visionary politicians' are a near-extinct species in India) want to use the cart as a plough instead of creating a plough. How in the world can anyone justify a legalised 'eye for an eye' (outside of some of our socially challenged neighbours in the middle east), if the case being made out is that of providing a historically oppressed section of the society a legal claim to an opportunity when it has no linkage to natural right of merit because the 'oppressor' section has had it good so far? Thats like handing the progeny of holocaust survivors a ticket to germany, a gun and a license to kill descendants of members of the Nazi Party of Germany because the latter institutionalized and industrialized the genocide of the former at some point of time in history. Too farfetched a comparison? maybe...surely not a farfetched analogy...
If logic defies us, then at least we can borrow on the foresight of leaders who wrought our constitution. If Ambedkar (and surely few would qualify as better or more deserved champions of social justice), in the chaotic new-gained freedom era, had the wisdom to suggest that 'reservations' are a short cut to social justice and bound to be harmful to the society on the whole in the long run, then surely he had something in mind!
Votebank politicians cannot see that of course. Blinded by a hunger for 'satta' since that is the only way they can redeem their existence having realised a long time ago that 'statemanship' is difficult to spell let alone be attained, these leaders of hyperbole and rhetoric want the easiest way to power which comes by the way of arthimetic majorities of the votebanks. They have even borrowed (original thought does not behove them) the term 'affirmative action' from the US example of voluntary action to social equality for all. If our self-styled social champions had bothered to look closer, they would perhaps understood (that not being a strong point of theirs) that the essence of 'affirmative action' was in disregarding the biases that are generated by class, colour and creed, and most certainly not a free meal ticket for some sections of the society. The pseodu-socialists in Congress, having not gained any wisdom whatsoever in their near-failure pseudo-socialist experiments, now want to try a different way to the doom they had just managed to avoid in the late 80s. Working with the desi Socialists/marxists (could that match have been made in heaven?) they want to create a new caste structure, that of the reserved and the general, caste having worked for the privileged sections in our country for more than five millenia- what could be any better path to power? That it has to come from people who lay claim to socialism and marxism, the movement of 'equal men', is surely the unkindest cut..
Its very simple, the guy (rich or poor, lower, middle or upper caste) who does not find a place for his merit in the natural order of things would move to somewhere he can. Get ready India for the 2nd wave of 'brain drain'.
Our Motto - We love to keep our country poor - in social & economic development and in the quality of people we have lead and build our nation!
an eye for an eye would leave the world blind. do not know about the rest of the world but it would surely blind our nation and that is a just fate for having allowed ourselves to being led by the visionary impaired...
If logic defies us, then at least we can borrow on the foresight of leaders who wrought our constitution. If Ambedkar (and surely few would qualify as better or more deserved champions of social justice), in the chaotic new-gained freedom era, had the wisdom to suggest that 'reservations' are a short cut to social justice and bound to be harmful to the society on the whole in the long run, then surely he had something in mind!
Votebank politicians cannot see that of course. Blinded by a hunger for 'satta' since that is the only way they can redeem their existence having realised a long time ago that 'statemanship' is difficult to spell let alone be attained, these leaders of hyperbole and rhetoric want the easiest way to power which comes by the way of arthimetic majorities of the votebanks. They have even borrowed (original thought does not behove them) the term 'affirmative action' from the US example of voluntary action to social equality for all. If our self-styled social champions had bothered to look closer, they would perhaps understood (that not being a strong point of theirs) that the essence of 'affirmative action' was in disregarding the biases that are generated by class, colour and creed, and most certainly not a free meal ticket for some sections of the society. The pseodu-socialists in Congress, having not gained any wisdom whatsoever in their near-failure pseudo-socialist experiments, now want to try a different way to the doom they had just managed to avoid in the late 80s. Working with the desi Socialists/marxists (could that match have been made in heaven?) they want to create a new caste structure, that of the reserved and the general, caste having worked for the privileged sections in our country for more than five millenia- what could be any better path to power? That it has to come from people who lay claim to socialism and marxism, the movement of 'equal men', is surely the unkindest cut..
Its very simple, the guy (rich or poor, lower, middle or upper caste) who does not find a place for his merit in the natural order of things would move to somewhere he can. Get ready India for the 2nd wave of 'brain drain'.
Our Motto - We love to keep our country poor - in social & economic development and in the quality of people we have lead and build our nation!
an eye for an eye would leave the world blind. do not know about the rest of the world but it would surely blind our nation and that is a just fate for having allowed ourselves to being led by the visionary impaired...
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
what is it about these worlds where space and time are irrelevant
and the emotions are raw, and in primary colours
where the earth, if its earth, stretches as far as you want it to
and not held within the limitedness of reality
where the heroes are heroes indeed
and where the darkest villains inspire awe; the flawed, admiration
all, that appeals to the heart and heart alone
and imagination, if freed from the mind
may such worlds live again
and again
[to the men and women, beasts and creatures, heroes and arch villains that inhabit the worlds of tolkien and his ilk]
and the emotions are raw, and in primary colours
where the earth, if its earth, stretches as far as you want it to
and not held within the limitedness of reality
where the heroes are heroes indeed
and where the darkest villains inspire awe; the flawed, admiration
all, that appeals to the heart and heart alone
and imagination, if freed from the mind
may such worlds live again
and again
[to the men and women, beasts and creatures, heroes and arch villains that inhabit the worlds of tolkien and his ilk]
Friday, May 05, 2006
motive
i sat down to write this something about motive and then it became a little foggy but i hope it comes back as i go clickety clack...
i'm a fan of legal shows on TV like Law & Order...Court TV...i like John Grisham...you get the drift. and the one thing i really appreciate is how the Assistant District Attorney always asks...ok...you got the evidence, but you still got to give me the motive...
and its interesting because i grew up on hindi cinema and zee & sony tv shows where you were guilty if the evidence was unimpeachable...or close enough...all right! at least admissible...
i say its interesting not because jurisprudence (i love this word by the way) seems more complete and more logical...'guilty beyond doubt' seems more right this way, but because its so much more vital i would think in the little wrongs and mistakes that happen on the mondays and tuesdays and the rest of the everydays...
a wrong and a mistake...one sparks off misgivings, the other sympathy...empathy. but how much of a difference does really exist between the two ? i could run over someone (touchwood!) round a blind corner someday or i could take a howitzer and fire it at some despicable politician i know from about six feet away (its funny how politicians are a really handy metaphor for just about every sleazy bad thing you want to describe)...the point is in both cases the 'victim' is probably grievously injured or (heaven help!) dead (in at least one of the cases i would fire the howitzer again) AND if you roll the whole thing back in ultra slow motion flashback with the action and resultant reaction, tell me what is it that you will find different? nothing! nothing observable to the naked eye that is, but most of us also instinctively realize that there IS a difference between an 'accident' and 'premeditated harm'...
that was the preamble. my point or the point of what i was thinking before i lost it for a while back there is that in the everyday mistakes and wrongs that we do and have done to us, 'motive' is so supremely important in all the ways it affects us. no one will sentence me to do time in ultra security because i told a lie or because i betrayed someone's trust but the knowledge of why i did what i did will decide whether i keep or lose that someone's trust. Genuine mistakes, and mind you most of us have a primeval atavistic instinct for what is genuine and what is not, may find forgiveness in time. However, deliberate 'motivated' wrongs seldom dispel the pall of mistrust and wronged indignance through life (the american penal description of it as opposed to the indian penal one)
which is also why in my mind it is really really important to understand why someone does that to you in the times that you are at the receiving end. how many mistakes are strewn across the history of our own lives which we carried with us as wrongs? how many times we have rebuffed genuine attempts to explain because we stood overwhelmed with the 'evidence' we could SEE or HEAR? if these were 'small' incidents, then sometimes...sometimes we would forget and even possibly forgive but even then things are never the same again.
my last thought on 'motive' is its weave with 'context'. the relativity of time..culture..geography, even the secure wrap of different childhoods creates so many different planes of 'context' that motives acquire very different hues...
is that getting back to sqaure one? i do not know...but maybe if i or you just pause a moment to ponder this before we judge an action next time then we are already doing better...aren't we?
i'm a fan of legal shows on TV like Law & Order...Court TV...i like John Grisham...you get the drift. and the one thing i really appreciate is how the Assistant District Attorney always asks...ok...you got the evidence, but you still got to give me the motive...
and its interesting because i grew up on hindi cinema and zee & sony tv shows where you were guilty if the evidence was unimpeachable...or close enough...all right! at least admissible...
i say its interesting not because jurisprudence (i love this word by the way) seems more complete and more logical...'guilty beyond doubt' seems more right this way, but because its so much more vital i would think in the little wrongs and mistakes that happen on the mondays and tuesdays and the rest of the everydays...
a wrong and a mistake...one sparks off misgivings, the other sympathy...empathy. but how much of a difference does really exist between the two ? i could run over someone (touchwood!) round a blind corner someday or i could take a howitzer and fire it at some despicable politician i know from about six feet away (its funny how politicians are a really handy metaphor for just about every sleazy bad thing you want to describe)...the point is in both cases the 'victim' is probably grievously injured or (heaven help!) dead (in at least one of the cases i would fire the howitzer again) AND if you roll the whole thing back in ultra slow motion flashback with the action and resultant reaction, tell me what is it that you will find different? nothing! nothing observable to the naked eye that is, but most of us also instinctively realize that there IS a difference between an 'accident' and 'premeditated harm'...
that was the preamble. my point or the point of what i was thinking before i lost it for a while back there is that in the everyday mistakes and wrongs that we do and have done to us, 'motive' is so supremely important in all the ways it affects us. no one will sentence me to do time in ultra security because i told a lie or because i betrayed someone's trust but the knowledge of why i did what i did will decide whether i keep or lose that someone's trust. Genuine mistakes, and mind you most of us have a primeval atavistic instinct for what is genuine and what is not, may find forgiveness in time. However, deliberate 'motivated' wrongs seldom dispel the pall of mistrust and wronged indignance through life (the american penal description of it as opposed to the indian penal one)
which is also why in my mind it is really really important to understand why someone does that to you in the times that you are at the receiving end. how many mistakes are strewn across the history of our own lives which we carried with us as wrongs? how many times we have rebuffed genuine attempts to explain because we stood overwhelmed with the 'evidence' we could SEE or HEAR? if these were 'small' incidents, then sometimes...sometimes we would forget and even possibly forgive but even then things are never the same again.
my last thought on 'motive' is its weave with 'context'. the relativity of time..culture..geography, even the secure wrap of different childhoods creates so many different planes of 'context' that motives acquire very different hues...
is that getting back to sqaure one? i do not know...but maybe if i or you just pause a moment to ponder this before we judge an action next time then we are already doing better...aren't we?
Saturday, April 29, 2006
addendum to previous post.
i think now i may have been a tad hasty in my thought that humankind has been upending nature's logic (and therefore playing the Big Joke on her) of the selection of her worst in ruling the rest of her creation, by not doing the same in his or her 'civilized societies'.
what was i thinking? i mean i write this...i click on 'publish post'...go to my daily news and boom! reality wakes me up...i read names like Arjun..Laloo..Mulayam..Jaya..and you know, like my memory comes back to me at warp speed...
mera bharat is truly mahaan...only we this particular people have realized nature's purpose is to ultimately self-distruct at some point in time (i mean creation sort of wrote its own ticket when she placed all her bets on humankind like a twelve year old in the Vegas strip)...and what better way to flatter than imitate...
my fellow indians...brothers..sisters...family...friends...bosses...would-be subordinates...could-have-been girlfriends...only wife...it was a pleasure knowing you (or wanting to know, for some of you)...
i think now i may have been a tad hasty in my thought that humankind has been upending nature's logic (and therefore playing the Big Joke on her) of the selection of her worst in ruling the rest of her creation, by not doing the same in his or her 'civilized societies'.
what was i thinking? i mean i write this...i click on 'publish post'...go to my daily news and boom! reality wakes me up...i read names like Arjun..Laloo..Mulayam..Jaya..and you know, like my memory comes back to me at warp speed...
mera bharat is truly mahaan...only we this particular people have realized nature's purpose is to ultimately self-distruct at some point in time (i mean creation sort of wrote its own ticket when she placed all her bets on humankind like a twelve year old in the Vegas strip)...and what better way to flatter than imitate...
my fellow indians...brothers..sisters...family...friends...bosses...would-be subordinates...could-have-been girlfriends...only wife...it was a pleasure knowing you (or wanting to know, for some of you)...
we create...inspite of ourselves...maybe its written into the genetic code of creation (no pun intended)
but someone tell me how is it that the most wasteful parasitic cross purposed bit of creation...humankind that is, is the one creation decided to make top dog?
to top it wouldn't the same idea be an antithesis to the way we, humankind built and defined 'civilized society'? the idea of the wasteful parasitic cross purposed among us to rule over us...?
creation played a joke on the rest of what she created and humankind played one on her...the emperor is dead! long live the emperor!
but someone tell me how is it that the most wasteful parasitic cross purposed bit of creation...humankind that is, is the one creation decided to make top dog?
to top it wouldn't the same idea be an antithesis to the way we, humankind built and defined 'civilized society'? the idea of the wasteful parasitic cross purposed among us to rule over us...?
creation played a joke on the rest of what she created and humankind played one on her...the emperor is dead! long live the emperor!
i saw this movie...rang de basanti. i liked it. do not ask why because i cannot tell...maybe it was the sum which i thought was greater than the parts...
i've heard and discussed and arged and fought about the begninning and the end, the pre-interval and the post-interval and what is right and what is wrong, and what is correct and what is not...
i do not care because for once i hear in the 'mainstream', the 'masala movie of the 'masses' the echo of how i would say...i will not go quietly into the night...
now i do not say we have never had bollowood movies like this before but they were either not mainstream but pseudo documentarial serious dramatic expressions on community or region specific issues featuring serious dramatic actors and crafted by serious dramatic film makers OR, were unidimensional juvenile masala movies with native rambos and larger than life phoolanesque clones...
the sum of my feelings come from taking an issue that is alive and real and playing characters i can identify with around it, characters who are forceful and not doing what they are doing because they are like sunday school choirboys but because the fates play them sqaurely against this whole big issue they might have known of earlier but had nothing to do with...
and faced with it they do not cower from the 'system' as generations of similar movies taught us to do but say... hell am going to something about it...hell someone (the villain) is going to get away with something like that...
point is not what they did...that is not what i thought the movie was trying to say...point is that such 'villains' exist and exist in droves...and that i'll do something about it...i'll not go quietly into the night...
i've heard and discussed and arged and fought about the begninning and the end, the pre-interval and the post-interval and what is right and what is wrong, and what is correct and what is not...
i do not care because for once i hear in the 'mainstream', the 'masala movie of the 'masses' the echo of how i would say...i will not go quietly into the night...
now i do not say we have never had bollowood movies like this before but they were either not mainstream but pseudo documentarial serious dramatic expressions on community or region specific issues featuring serious dramatic actors and crafted by serious dramatic film makers OR, were unidimensional juvenile masala movies with native rambos and larger than life phoolanesque clones...
the sum of my feelings come from taking an issue that is alive and real and playing characters i can identify with around it, characters who are forceful and not doing what they are doing because they are like sunday school choirboys but because the fates play them sqaurely against this whole big issue they might have known of earlier but had nothing to do with...
and faced with it they do not cower from the 'system' as generations of similar movies taught us to do but say... hell am going to something about it...hell someone (the villain) is going to get away with something like that...
point is not what they did...that is not what i thought the movie was trying to say...point is that such 'villains' exist and exist in droves...and that i'll do something about it...i'll not go quietly into the night...
Friday, April 28, 2006
i'm anachronistic...i knew that. i also live in several shades of emotions. primarily the color red and then some times in blue and yellow. my thoughts when they form are crisp most times than not, like they are embossed in my mind. but when i try putting them down they are almost embarrassingly laborius...the curse of the averagely gifted i suppose. and i'll start to nail down in writing so many times the thoughts that flit across, and then not do that because i cannot find the words! i can almost see my thoughts but i cannot write them because i cannot say them. and so i'll argue on because i can see and smell the purpose of my thought but i cannot convince because i cannot paint them for you...ah the curse of the averagely gifted...
Sunday, April 23, 2006
the simplicity conundrum
My resolute faith in 'simplicity' stands on my arrived-at belief that 'simple' is the most stable state. It is stable because its obviously simple, and because its stable it is not likely to change for a very long time and will therefore remain simple...get it? Now if we leave that last bit aside, most sane and logical people will indeed agree that simple is usually good....right?
Which brings me to the real point of this particular note, the one I've been waiting to spring on all ye unsuspecting visitors who have ventured thus far...
WHY THEN CAN MOST PEOPLE NEVER ARRIVE AT A 'SIMPLE' ANSWER TO ISSUES/ CONCERNS/ PROBLEMS/ QUESTIONS IN MOST FORMS OF DISCUSSIONS?...?!
and here's what my two and half bits on this are...
Which brings me to the real point of this particular note, the one I've been waiting to spring on all ye unsuspecting visitors who have ventured thus far...
WHY THEN CAN MOST PEOPLE NEVER ARRIVE AT A 'SIMPLE' ANSWER TO ISSUES/ CONCERNS/ PROBLEMS/ QUESTIONS IN MOST FORMS OF DISCUSSIONS?...?!
and here's what my two and half bits on this are...
What in the very first place are we trying to bracket as 'simple'?
Let me take the example of a 'stent'...the kind doctors insert in heart attack patients [Disclaimer at this point: Apologies to all medicos and diehard 'ER' fans if I take certain descriptive liberties but i intent remaining true to the philosophy and purpose of the hallowed invention] to keep their arteries open and their blood flowing happily ever after. The idea is simple - prop up the arterial walls against sagging under the weight of all that cholestrol bequeathed by years of great tasting food. Its effective and its simple enough that most lay folks like yours truly can grasp the idea and visualise it too.
So the point is..is that a 'simple' idea? I think so! And I would like to believe that a lot of folks would think the same way...
NOW...this is a great idea...what was this in response to? Blocked arteries...of course! I said that so myself (dolt for asking)..but think about it...what does a 'blocked artery' mean to a medical innovator who's trying to understand (in the days before you had this thing called the stent) how does he save a man who's blood is barricaded from flowing (apart from going back in time and signing up to sit on that man's shoulder as his guardian angel for the rest of his natural born life)?
Look at the things he's staring at - he first needs to understand why the heart has a stroke...once he figures it out he needs to understand what is cholestrol and why does it pick the poor man's arteries to build its home...now once he's past THAT one comes the question of figuring out how to stop it from building (you know prevention and all that)...but what happens to all the guys (including the guy above who started this all) who've already had a stroke because of all that cholestrol thats already in there (thats not going anywhere without a fight!)?? so he now has to figure out how to make a man live and live without a portable life support system attached to him 24/7...
I've put forth just a few questions which are about as high level as the view from hubble telescope...the point being that just answering one of those questions would take several lifetimes of the very best of mankind's intellectual capital, and if they are lucky at that...
is THAT 'simple'? I for one do not think so...and so to cut all this short, getting to the 'simplest' solution is fine sport and all that...but my learning has been that the key really is the problem!
have I defined it? have i scoped it? am i approaching it logically? and from all the perspectives that i can and then borrow some from my betters?
I would rather have the problem 'complex' enough so that when I am done answering it, the solution (simple or otherwise) answers the present question and hopefully a good many of the ones ahead...
so there...
I would rather have the problem 'complex' enough so that when I am done answering it, the solution (simple or otherwise) answers the present question and hopefully a good many of the ones ahead...
so there...
[Standard Disclaimers - All factual deviations are mine alone and no responsibility is to be attributed to the educational institutions that let me pass through their doors. And, all references to the 'male' patient were strictly from a historical narrative perspective and do not purport to take potshots at or subvert any ideas of political correctness (and which female was ever going to be happy to figure as my model for a stroke patient anyways!!)]
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