Verbal Diarrhoea

The Last Pole

2011-08-31T23:21:00.012+05:30

I stood upon the ruins of what was once a city;

Warsaw is nothing more than a mere wisp of a memory now,

As it was not, ever since they had arrived.

I stared at what was once a home, that curiously belonged to me

As if such trifles mattered any more.

I stood upon the mounds of men,

Of what was once a living, breathing person and many, many more,

Now strewn away, frozen and stiff,

And yet still hauntingly alive,

Mocking the living, at the plight of life

I stood upon what was once a nation,

As lands yielded to the greedy tentacles of flames infernal, of their device

As farms of fire spread their seeds,

As rains of fire drowned the ominous sound of a thousand bees

Bees that spit fire, and belched hate

I stood upon his gaze,

The hatred, cold and hard

I stood upon what was once me,
A haunting memory,

As I mocked, at the plight of their lives...

The Beginning of the End

2011-08-23T15:49:00.003+05:30

Of all the people with whom I share no sliver of convergence in lines of thought, except perhaps for this one, and yet have a great deal of respect for the views and ideas they posses, it is Arundhati Roy who crowns the jewel. Her recent article on the fires raging about the nation, while not agreeable in whole for me, is most thought provoking. There is a great deal of hullabaloo going on currently in the country, largely concerning a certain gentleman, who refuses to eat, ironically, in a bid to have his cake and eat it too. But stripped of all the embellishments and moral festoons adorning a largely non-glamorous core issue that the nation faces every day, one sees only a social malaise, a disease, a parasite hacking and gnawing the gut of the nation from the inside, the parasite of corruption.

Corruption is quite a pervasive issue in the country, so disturbingly so, that the Indian public have taken it for granted as a way of life. No one bats an eyelid when the civil servant sits behind his desk scratching his ears and grinning sheepishly, no one would bother obtaining licences and permits the old fashioned way, we now have agents, people with backhand connections willing to do our dirty jobs for us, we have driving schools that confidently aver that the people needn't learn driving, since all it takes are a few smiling faces of Gandhi to get a blind man his driving licence, or a building permit, or a liquor licence, the list would go on. We have successfully corporatised even corruption. And yet, no one has registered disagreement regarding this issue before, and somehow, suddenly, there is a section of society, calling itself 'Team Anna' demanding that the Government cease its corrupt activities at once.

The problem is, while Anna Hazare's intentions are, to the best of my knowledge, most veritably honourable, he seems to be guilty of over-simplification of the problem, not unlike his self appointed mentor, Gandhi. Mohandas Gandhi saw a problem as he perceived, proposed solutions to that problem and presented it to the extant keepers of order and expected them to endorse the proposal in full, no conditions applied, the terms being non-negotiable. If the keepers of order, in this case the Indian Colonial Government, saw differences with him, he would coldly announce that they shall face the repercussions. Anna Hazare has been doing more or less the same thing, employing the very device Gandhi employed when he opened the Pandora's Box, the Kryptonite of any Liberal Government, Satyagraha. Satyagraha is a form of protest most effective against a nation that rules by law, not by decree, because it is a form of protest that can cause massive upheaval in the existing fabric of order, with little or no laws bent or broken. While Satyagraha might have worked against British Imperialism (the jury's still out on that one, though, as to who really won Indian independence, Gandhi, Hitler or the anti-imperialist labour government headed by Clement Atlee) in a manner that is broadly construed as favourable to the national interest, Anna Hazare's Satyagraha seems as hollow as Bush's War on Terror. One simply cannot protest against corruption, or propose a solution that involves the imposition of draconian laws and legislations that will severely punish perpetrators accused of corruption. That would just imply that one treats the symptom and hopes that the issue would eventually dissipate. Moreover, such a police state is against the principles of a nation with a liberal democratic tradition.

Like Satyagraha itself, corruption manifests itself as a problem only due to the sheer scale of its proliferation. Individually considered, most corruption cases are minor infractions of the law, and yet it is a colossal cork on the nation's progress due to the sheer number of people causing the minor infraction of the law. Now, increasing the severity of the punishment for corruption would imply that a person was punished severely because, though the infraction was minor, it shall be considered as a severe offence because a lot of people are doing it. Such a system of penal code is inconsistent the principle of a liberal democratic nation which believes in reasonable doubt, an a priori assumption of innocence, and most importantly, punishing a person for the severity of the crime that must be regarded in isolation with all other cases and treated as an independent case, because one cannot simply punish a person severely because other people, no matter how many, have committed a similar offence in the past. Using punishment as a deterrent is a practice unworthy of this day and age, when people question the legitimacy of capital punishment.

Moreover, let us assume that the Lokpal does not include provisions for a stricter code of criminal law germane to corruption in public office alone, for its jurisdiction ends there, and still we are left with an agency that covers every single government officer from the lowliest clerk to the PM. From where will the human resources for such a massive organisation come? It is only natural to assume that they shall be handpicked by law enforcement veterans beyond reproach, and that they shall pick candidates of similar credentials. If the Lokpal provides for an agency that big and pervasive, it means the existing governmental structure is so corrupt that it requires an external watchdog to curb government servants from giving in to their baser temptations under the table. If the existing governmental structure is that corrupt, it simply cannot have as many 'clean' civil servants as this new agency requires. If it did, existing law-enforcement agencies could do the job. Moreover, if an external agency is simply going to do the job of CBI with a bit more powers, why not give those same powers to the CBI? Wouldn't it save the taxpayer the billions that Anna Hazare is trying to save from corrupt politicians? Besides what is the guarantee that this agency shall remain clean? Glossing over the naive idealism of Anna Hazare, similar to Gandhi and Nehru in many respects who believed independence would solve all the problems faced by India, an agency that has almost limitless powers over the Government adding to the fact that it shall consist of appointed officials, fashionably christened as 'Members of Civil Society of Eminence', a euphemism for Hazare sycophants, as opposed to democratically elected members is tantamount to declaring democracy as the root of corruption, and that draconian laws and procedures that control every facet of government is the answer. If this is how India is going to deal with its problems, it is beyond rational plausibility that India can get anything done right, with short-sighted and self appointed political messiahs mouthing the words 'Dharna' and 'Hartal' on their lips for every problem.

Let us, for a moment, set Hazare aside, and examine corruption itself. Corruption at high office is a direct consequence of corruption at lower levels. If a traffic policeman takes fifty rupees to permit someone to park as they please and gets away with it, the office pushes the limit of unacceptability of corrupt practice a little higher, and so on till the likes of Kalmadi and Raja open the floodgates into their own coffers. The root of the problem is that power corrupts, and moreover, corruption results when rules exist not only to facilitate ease of administration, but as a façade of impenetrable red-tape. Let us take an example of a simple case of illegal parking. Illegal parking would not be a problem, if legal parking was not an inconvenience, for a greater section of society indulges in the infraction of the law for the sake of convenience more than anything else. So, someone, say, A, would park right next to a dejected sign despondently reading "NO PARKING" for the sake of nobody, in exchange for a little favour to the local policeman on traffic duty. If lawful parking facilities were provided, such as public parking garages at strategic locations, this problem could be minimised. Moreover, one must bear in mind that, after all, as criminologists have been saying for ages, absolute power corrupts. As I read on a blog by Amit Verma, if a hundred and fifty civil servants and peons could manage to delay and derail any project quite simply by a simple act of withholding a dozen signatures, the government baabu who is aware of this fact is bound to take advantage of it. And if the Lokpal bill gets through, it only means another bunch of bribes added to the existing long list, for a simple construction project or a business licence. When power corrupts, the answer simply cannot be creating another structure of near omnipotence, the efficacy of which only relies on a billion hopes and prayers that it shall stay clean for the foreseeable future, in other words, till the next general election, after which a certain Thambi Hazare will demand a LokLokPal bill and this would arguably go on.

Therefore, what Anna Hazare is doing, while it might generate a strong consciousness among the people against corruption, is something that is most definitely going about in the wrong way, because the Government alone is not guilty of corruption, but every single one of us is. The reason his movement garners so much support, is because it is a morally unequivocal issue, something that can mobilise the public with the help of rhetoric and exhortation. All it takes for one to join this movement is a misplaced sense of righteous anger, the cloak of patriotism and the idea of 'If you're not with us, you are against us'. Moreover, it provides for a mule, a scapegoat, wherein, the cause of corruption not the Indian society, but the Government. He has masterfully created a target for public anger, when, ironically, every single one of us is guilty of corruption, however minor, at some time or another. Blind patriotism never achieved anything apart from the security one derives in being a part of a large group. Patriotism is merely the façade of a scoundrel or the refuge of a coward. It is an emotion, and nothing has been done right in the heated moment of emotions running rampant through the veins of the nation. Corruption is a social issue; it is vastly more complex than the requirement of a simple yet stern watchdog whipping government servants into shape. Corruption is said to be eradicated only when a Lokpal Bill is rendered irrelevant. By creating one, we perpetuate the culture of corruption, and the culture of a police state side by side, to keep the public under check. But unlike what Arundhati Roy said, this bill is not just anti-poor, it is anti-everybody. So the next time someone asks one to join the rally alongside Anna Hazare, please note that they are asking one to participate in the dangerous erosion of democracy, India's only asset so far.

Alive

2011-08-21T01:18:00.004+05:30

Bring to peace the harrowed mind.

Set to rest the harried heart,

Become death, for all that come to be,

Must someday, come to cease.

Be the full stop, to all sentences.

Be the happily ever after of real life.

There may be nought beyond, I may never know,

But there was a lot before, or I wouldn’t be, I wouldn’t cease to be.

Be the escape, some crave, some yearn.

Give unto them, sweet release,

From temporal realms, the carnal prison;

Let escape the bounds of life,

Let fly free from one’s own clutches.

Let go.

Be the sweet release – of death

Be your soul, be its freedom,

For life is most at the end of its tether

Your heart palpitates, your breath stops,

Yet you are alive, for you are free.

Fly from this empty rock, the ground of life.

Soar above the empty cage.

Let pass, let see what is beyond,

Cross Styx, fall unto Hades’ arms

Upon his cold bosom.

Set free. Extinguish the flame.

For there may be clouds above, yet it is the sky.

The G6 of Literature

2011-07-16T07:53:00.000+05:30

In tune with my literary listings, I now plan to explore the other end of the spectrum, the best of them all, at least according to me. One might agree with me or not, if one doesn't I'll probably like you even more because I can have an interesting debate on the topic and also, "I'M RIGHT, YOU'RE WRONG, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH!!!"
So, here are a few authors who I think are one of the best at what they do best.

William Shakespeare: Although many a high school student has fervently wished upon this gentleman a great deal of ills, he remains the king of playwrights, for nearly half a millennium, a no mean feat. William Shakespeare had this uncanny knack of telling stories that had a bit of everything in it, and as far as documentation of thereof is concerned, he seems to be the first one to do so. His plays are beautifully crafted masterpieces, his characters as living and breathing as you and me. After all, who can forget Shylock or Hamlet or Lady Macbeth? He always portrayed society as it was, be it the vehemently anti-semitic Venice and it's bourgeois or the wavering illiterate masses of the Roman Republic. He was a master of human psychology; his characters responded to real situations like real people, with raw and fundamental emotions acting as their only impetus. It was this fundamental soup of human emotions that make his characters timeless. Anthony would have done the same thing if Caesar was assassinated in the 21st century. Lady Macbeth would have goaded her husband into such heinous crimes at any point in history because they responded to basic emotions that never change. His plots may be simple enough to be portrayed on a stage, but one must notice that complexity of his plots do not arise from grandiose settings or vast arrays of characters, but play out as intense battles inside every character of his. Apart from these, his language is probably the apogee of Early Modern English, his puns and metaphors ring in our ears to this day.
Charles Dickens: Another master storyteller, he weaves magic with his words. An astute observer, he brings to life his characters based on real-life experiences, whose realism gets poignantly reflected in his works. He was a brooding recluse, whose only effective channel of communication was his ink stained pen and coarse paper. Known for bringing to life cities and countries with mere adjectives, he is probably most famous for his smoggy London and the East End. His works reflect his sense of strong Christian morality, and in the process help bring about a keener understanding of the poor and downtrodden in an era where only the lofty aristocrats and wealthy industrialists occupied the popular imagination. There is beauty in every word of his, his stories crafted to perfection and the words flow as eloquently as the sound of a babbling brook. His characters, again, have endured the onslaught of time upon our imaginations, with Oliver Twist and Philip Pirrip tenaciously gripping a part of our hearts reserved for such masterful machinations.
Agatha Christie: She is the undisputed queen of crime. Her lovable Poirot is the grandfather I never had, clumsily endearing, but keen as flint. He is all I hold dear in a character, he is vain, but lovably so, he's a genius at what he does best and is simply adorable. Miss Marple, on the other hand is a quaint Englishwoman, a complete antithesis of Poirot's flamboyance. She is the stolid and respectable spinster with a mind sharper than her knitting needle. Both characters, with a host of others that come and go are a deep treatise on human nature. They are subtle, crafty and purely ingenious, nearly as much as their creator herself. Her plots are shrouded in thick mystery, opening up in slices invisible to the naked eye, until the end when one realises that the clues were pointing in a direction that was glaringly obvious in retrospect. Her books are the best source of dopamine induced highs.
PG Wodehouse: You can't say his name without giggling a little. He makes everything funny, so much so that when one reads his books, one must keep first aid handy enough lest one cracks one's ribs. Delightfully hilarious, his books transport the reader to an entirely different world; a world of corrosive aunts, bumbling uncles, crafty fiancées and the hapless protagonist who knows he's a bit of an ass but hopes you wouldn't mind. His world is a cosy retreat from the day-to-day drudgery, a freshly mown lawn with drops of softly scented dew shimmering on a spring morning in the midst of the desert of real life. His characters, though formulaic, are delightfully lovable, the most endearing caricature of human society yet. His plot twists and narrative leaves the reader gasping for air, before which the next line comes along with a funnier anecdote or simile. His language and writing style is an asset to English itself, trapping all his good humour and zest for life within a few pages. If one hasn't read Wodehouse, one hasn't led a happy life.
JRR Tolkien: The indubitable lord of fantasy, Tolkien has brought incalculable happiness to bespectacled nerds and dragon lovers across the world's basements. He is the father of imagination, weaving whole new worlds as complex and complete as our own with a mere stroke of his pen. The level of detail and authenticity he brings about in his narrative is simply mindboggling, the little poems he inserts in between, more than adorable. Even though his characters are idealised exaggerations, his work has the epic quality only found in mythical texts, a feat not easy to achieve. His plot is gripping and intense, the words that describe them being as heated and fiery as the bowels of Mordor. As I always say, a passage written in good English when read out loud makes my mouth water, brings a fullness to the tongue, and The Lord of the Rings makes me drool incessantly.
Mark Twain: As I have come to notice, he is the only American in this list. Mark Twain, unlike the others on this list, consciously made an effort to write for a simpler man. His books had no lofty pretensions, no flowery indulgences with the finer aspects of the language, just merely a narrative, a simple but colourful narrative, but with equally powerful characters. Who can forget Tom Sawyer or Aunt Polly? He captured the essence of the simple life in America, he brought about a shift in the paradigm, wherein literature now appealed to a poorer section of society, not because he pandered to their baser sensibilities, but was because here was an author who portrayed a world even they understood. His work had an innocence and a childlike quality about them that made them intensely lovable. They were a genuine expression of his interpretation of American society, a world of simple people, hard-working and upright.

Literary Plague

2011-07-15T16:33:00.002+05:30

There are books in which every page one reads, is a work of masterful art. Very few books fall into that category, and are rightfully called classics. They will live forever in our hearts; their characters shall always remain relevant in today’s world, no matter how old they are in their conception. A fewer authors can call their books their crowning achievements, feathers in their hats in a field where people frequently get reprimanded for inflicting such rot upon humanity. There are many authors in the latter; I’ll gladly name a few of them:

Chetan Bhagat: He and his semi-autobiographical ‘stories’ with a narrative so colourless and plain, reading it’ll remind you of a ten-year-old’s account of his or her weekend. Like many people who try ever so hard, we have a writer whose language is as half-baked as his plot and characters. If they were inspired from real life, he would’ve led a really one-dimensional life where all his acquaintances would’ve been caricatures of over-simplified stereotypes. I assume he operates under the presumption that his works must be accessible to the ‘common man’. Unfortunately, he seems to end up writing for the complete imbecile. Real works that make no flamboyant pretence are what are accessible to the common man. RK Narayan wrote for the common man, Chetan Baghat spews filth upon the sanctity of the written word.
Christopher Paolini: Classic plagiarism is what this gentleman, no, amateur adolescent, in every sense of the term, is capable of. I used to hate The Chronicles of Narnia, for it seemed a cheap bootleg of The Lord of the Rings, but no, a new kid’s in town, quite literally. Shamelessly lifting characters and plot elements from Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia, and even Harry Potter, this pseudo Norse myth styled disaster only succeeds in disappointing the poor reader. I lumbered through the first book because I opened it, woe is me, and I gave up on humanity when I saw the second book adorning a shelf in the local bookshop.
Sydney Sheldon: I know, quite controversial, but yes, in the most affirmative of tones, he’s the father of cheap, Hollywood styled banality in literature. Every story of his features an extremely good-looking, perfect-in-everyway protagonist who, for some reason, gets entangled in something big, and with every chapter, the crisis gets bigger and bigger until it all diffuses in the end making it the king of all anticlimaxes; and there’d be a meaningless love story thrown somewhere in between for the sake of it, while it wouldn’t make sense at all, in terms of its relevance to the plot. His books are well-written scripts for tasteless soap-operas, not works of literature. Hackneyed cliff-hangers and loud explosions must remain only in Michael Bay’s movies intended to kill the viewer, not in a book. “Mainstream Hollywood” is the bottom-line of all his books; while it fails to entertain as a movie, it does even more so, as a book.
Dan Brown: He is the master of the familiar. Five books into his career, every single one of his books is similar to its predecessor in more ways than one. I wonder how many people appreciate his books now, for they just contain different conspiracy theories, different locations, similar characters who only differ in their names, but the same story. The format in which the story unravels itself is also the same, something which is bound to test every reader’s patience. While old wine in a new bottle is desirable, his books are not. While he might be interested in sighting lofty castles that do not exist amidst the clouds, the rest of us are more earnest and have no patience for the modern Don Quixote, only not very lovable but equally dense. Frankly, no one gives a damn about how ugly people danced naked every full moon standing in buckets filled with sushi hundreds of years ago.
Stephanie Meyer: No words can describe the injustice she has wrought upon humanity by force-feeding her tosh about vampires making Bram Stoker puke in his grave. I’m sure Hell has a special place for the publisher who cleared this drivel for publication. Mere fodder for over-weight middle aged women too ugly to find a husband, this is not literature; it is an insidious crime to have written this load of baloney. The reason this series of books is so repulsive is ubiquitous, but I shall elucidate anyway. The central theme has a colourless and nondescript protagonist, a character any reader can identify oneself with because the character has no personality of her own. Added to this is a boy, so freakishly handsome in every way, one would think he has issues related to self-esteem for falling for our main character in the first place. Wait, that’s not enough, the final nail on the coffin was making this man a vampire. The tale then reaches new levels of absurdity when it panders to baser emotions of every black-sheep of literature, letting real readers bite dust. Twilight is not a vampire novel; it is a cheesy romantic story begging to be used as toilet paper, masquerading as a fantasy novel to trick the hapless reader into untold misery. If one calls oneself a twilight fan, one has either been paid huge amounts of money to say so, or one is a complete idiot.

Superpower for Dummies

2011-07-08T20:31:00.004+05:30

Power is the ability to make other entities do and say as one would want them to do and say. It has taken so many forms and has shifted hands so many times in history, that it is necessary to study the nature of power itself in a geo-political perspective for any nation harbouring ambitions of becoming a superpower.

A superpower is a nation with such overwhelming power, that it can impose it's will upon any part of the globe with the whole world as it's sphere of influence with a few rogue states labelled as pariah states by the international community for the crime of standing up to the reigning superpower. There have been many superpowers in the past, the Spanish Empire, The United Provinces of the Netherlands, Bourbon France, the mighty British Empire, USSR, the list can go on to include Rome, Mongol Empire, Ming China, etc. Ancient superpowers cannot be classified as superpowers per se, because although it's known world was it's dominion, it's power ended there. It did not have the capability to impose itself of a truly global scale until the modern era. The first superpower in it's true sense of the word was arguably the British Empire; it contested for control of all the seas and held a third of the land area under it's control, directly or otherwise and was the first empire upon which the sun truly and literally never set, while the same expression was used for the Spanish and French Empires merely as a exhortation.

However, there have been long periods in history where no single nation ruled supreme leading to a multipolar world. The inter-war period was one such political climate, where Britain, France, Germany, Russia, USA, Japan and Italy all had their own spheres of influence leading to devastating consequences. The Cold War world was bipolar with the NATO and Warsaw Pacts dominating diplomacy. Superpowers are formed under peculiar political circumstances where one nation held a distinct advantage. While all the history is fascinating in sorts, one must really wonder as to what makes a nation a superpower.

A superpower needs the following :

An unchallengeable military superiority: The Spanish Armada, The Royal Navy and now, the US navy are all examples of this unparalleled military hegemony. In fact, the US navy today is larger than the the next 13 largest navies combined while the Royal navy in it's heyday packed more firepower than the next two largest navies combined. A navy is the most valuable asset of any superpower. While armies can impose upon the land, a navy is the only force that can control distant parts of the world and keep distant lands under check. This was one of the reasons Russia desperately wanted a warm water port and fought the west for two centuries for at least one such port. This was the same reason Britain and the United States resolutely never let Russia expand southwards. If a nation wishes to project it's power across the globe in a sustainable manner, it needs a large military force, especially a gigantic navy.
A large treasury: After all, it is money that makes the world go round. A country that wishes to broaden its sphere of influence must have the financial resources to back the efforts. A large military needs a lot of money, a lot of money also brings financial leverage and economic clout over smaller nations. This was the precise reason the Spanish Empire imploded. Spain, a staunchly Catholic nation was adroitly against Shylocking, as it was derisively called, the practice of lending credit at an interest. Without easy credit, the economy got static with galleons full of gold and silver from the New World just sitting in Spain funding only costly wars and futile imperial ambitions. The Thirty Years' war was the spark that blew up the Empire's fortunes, with Bourbon France filling the void, albeit temporarily. It was another nation, surprisingly tiny, but ruthlessly mercantile, that eventually rose to the top: The Netherlands. Wherever there was money to be made, the Dutch were there. Their merchant fleet was the largest in the world, often called the Dutch golden age, with a vast military fleet to secure shipping routes. It became so prosperous that it shadowed much larger empires like Spain and France who made no guise of their antipathy towards this brutally money-minded tiny kingdom. Therefore, as history shows, money is the oil that keeps the wheels of nations moving, money is so important, that a tiny nation can weed it's way to the top with money alone, lots and lots of sweet money.
A sizeable population: It is not easy to get to the top, it takes a lot of hard work. What is even more difficult is staying there. The Netherlands did rise to the top, but the Dutch were promptly supplanted by a larger version of their nation, a nation equally ruthless in it's economic pursuits, equally mercantile, but larger, Great Britain. What made this even more ironic was that the British were the only ally the Dutch had with an ounce of teeth against enemies like leviathan empires united by a common religion and disdain towards this tiny nation of the Dutch, France and Spain. British ascent was not peaceful, but riddled with constant resentment of Dutch wealth and vice versa. The reason the British came out the winner was because of their sheer size in comparison to the Netherlands. The same can be said for the demise of British hegemony in the world. By 1890, The United States had overtaken Britain as the largest economy in the world, while Germany became the powerhouse of Europe, robbing Britain of its title of "The Workshop of the World". The reason this was achieved was not because of any other factor but size. The German Empire was the most populous state in Europe, after Russia, obviously, and the USA was simply huge. Both these countries ceaselessly performed as factories flooding the world markets while Britain took the back seat in industrial capacity and switched to a service based economy, the world's first post-industrial nation. European hegemony was further strained by the World Wars, two devastating conflicts from which Europe never recovered. However, even if Europe had remained peaceful, it's supremacy was not sustainable, solely because of the reason that there were much larger nations in the world that had simply not realised their potential. It was only a matter of time before they did, which meant that any European nation that held the reigns merely had a fleeting advantage over other nations, something bound to disappear in time. At this point, one might argue that Britain and France had vast empires and thus could industrialise their colonies. However, it must be noted that, imperialism, as a concept is not sustainable. The very fact that the British educated the colonial subjects in the Western school of thought proved to be their undoing. To rule over a set of people, one needs one of these things: authoritarian control, or popular goodwill. The British colonial government had neither, the French were even worse. The very fact that British colonial governance was praised for it's liberalism ( it must be noted that this liberalism is relative to other European powers of the time and must not be compared to current standards of human rights.) proved to unleash nationalist aspirations among the populace because the British did not assimilate the natives into their culture as the French tried to do, believing in the policy of non-interference, especially after 1857. The French, on the other hand tried so hard to assimilate native cultures that the indigenous people resisted the invasion of their culture. Ultimately, both the empires could not sustain themselves. But it must be noted that, unlike other empires that came crashing down, these empires merely faded away, quite gradually. The reason for that was, thankfully, ultimate admission of the fact that these empires were not sustainable. Therefore, for any nation to be sustainable as a superpower, it must have a sufficiently large population that identifies itself as one nation.
A vast area of fertile land: This one is obvious. Any nation needs a large land area to sustain a sizeable population. More specifically, it requires a large area of arable land with favourable climatic conditions. While agriculture can be the least profitable of all economic activities, it is still, by far the most important and this requires land, a lot of it. A large population needs large quantities of food. One can always import food grains, but to maintain a sustainable superpower status, one needs to produce as well as consume. To produce large amounts of food, one needs large areas of arable land. In fact, land is the only reason Russia became a great power in the first place. It has a moderately substantial population, but the reason for that is that it has unimaginable amounts of land. If one takes up nearly half of the largest continent in the world and more than half of another continent, there are bound to be some people in it. We call them Russians. Russia has vast tracts of extremely fertile land, rich natural resources and vast amounts of unpopulated land to spare. This was the reason that even though Russian industry in the 19th century was non-existent, Russia packed a considerable punch on the world stage, enough to alarm the then most industrialised and powerful nation in the world, Britain, to declare Russia as the nation most likely to challenge British supremacy, even though Russia hardly had a navy, spawning the Great Game of the 19th century. Industrialisation of Russia only rapidly catapulted it to the status of a superpower. Despite the demise of Feudalism, land still plays an important part in the prosperity of any nation. Lack of land is the reason Japan does not reign supreme despite an exceptionally industrious population, which while pushing Japan to the status of the second largest economy, a title it held for forty years, could not do much to further Japanese economic power than what it is today. Therefore, a superpower requires vast swathes of fertile land, a favourable climate and abundant natural resources.
Popular mindset and ruthless expansionism: No empire can be built through peaceful means. Any change in established political order can only be achieved by forced upheaval of the existing order. As controversial as that sounds, it is sadly true. One cannot name a single superpower that emerged in history after long periods of peace. The Spanish Empire ruthlessly exterminated the native Indian populace, The Netherlands emerged after the Thirty years war and the Eighty years war. The British Empire emerged as a nascent colonial power after the Seven years war, it's hegemony sealed after the Napoleonic wars. Germany was born after the Franco-Prussian war. The United States emerged after the Second World War. Wars make and break nations. Wars are triggered by expansionism. Today, however, expansionism has evolved from the idea of political control to economic influence. Still, a nation has to ceaselessly try and expand it's economic horizons. If a nation wants to be superpower, it has to start behaving like one. Diplomacy is like a poker game, one loses the game if they play it badly even if one has an unbeatable hand. Any nation that has become superpower at some point started getting incorrigibly assertive. For example, even though Britain reigned supreme uncontested on all seas, the United States boldly declared in 1920 that it shall endeavour to build a navy second to none. The boldness of this averment was compounded by the fact that Britain was an ally of the USA, not an enemy. Thirty years later, a wish came true. The US navy surpassed the Royal Navy as the most powerful navy in the world. If the USA had decided that it mustn't expand it's navy at the cost of British goodwill, the scenario would've been extremely different. Apart from this assertive confidence, a nation requires a population that is productive and ingenious. The reason the industrial revolution first took place in Britain and no where else was because of a strong Protestant work ethic compounded by a benevolent social institution welcome to change. The reason Soviet Russia collapsed was because it's society was becoming stagnant after half a century of political repression, reflecting on economic stagnation. For any nation to be a superpower, it needs a dynamic populace welcome to change and an innovative workforce willing to try new things.
Liberty and Democracy: Finally, any nation aspiring to be a superpower must have a liberal government institution in place. Tight repression and strict regulation stifles innovation, the heart of any superpower. To maintain the popular dynamic and ingenuity, one needs a liberal government granting certain fundamental rights to it's citizens, and independent and impartial judiciary and an firm and insurmountable democratic tradition. The reason Britain outgrew it's continental neighbours was because of it's benevolent rule. The reason Soviet Russia collapsed even after having all the ingredients for a superpower was because of an authoritarian regime that stifled it's populace. The reason the USA lived on and will do so for the foreseeable future is because of democracy.

Although many nations have ruled the world, each nation that supplanted the existing superpower brought something new to the table. Till Spain came along, empires were restricted to individual regions. Spain broke that shackle to build an empire that stretched across the New World, It brought the concept of naval supremacy into the equation. Any superpower had to have a great navy. The Netherlands later brought trade into the equation, which meant that any nation now vying for the superpower status had to control world trade. Britain brought industrialisation which meant that superpowers now had to be industrialised nations with supreme control over world trade with an insurmountable navy. The United States brought size into consideration which meant that any superpower must have all that Britain had, in addition to a vast population making up a huge economy at home. The next superpower must have all that the USA possessed with something new to offer. It could be India, it could be China, it could be a united Europe, only time can tell.

To be

2011-07-02T10:59:00.001+05:30

Befallen on the widen'd flat,
Was the servil sodden rat,
But on the saem did shoote out we,
The roote of our own miserie.
But why were we on this ground put?
With the vulgar bandicoote
If he were not but so as I
If he were not as eye for eye
For this rat doth so plague us free
As doth question burning me
As who I are and so dost he
And why we all so came to be
He may not be as sundry
As methinketh as doth I
Natheless virtue pricketh me
For so dost thee and so dost he
I cannot but compaer so
Humour of mine and all his four
Whithout sembling, holt and heath
Of courages mine and in his sheath
We drew our courses bothe the twain
We drew our virtue on slate plain
Mine with noble chivalrie
His with base debaucherie,
Twixt bothe lay the bold ensigne
Of one's own granden designe
I could choose and so could he
Of what beast or knight one woulden be
T'is not discerned beyond the erth
Of what natures are or of its birthe
For now I am and so is he
Midst Nature's cosmic symphonie

Religion

2011-05-25T20:52:00.001+05:30

In tune with all the other ruminations of my mind, the next concept I decided to tackle happened to be religion. Unlike my previous treatise on the topic written in a frenzy of indignation and outrage, this time, I have tried to be as cold, dispassionate and detached as possible. Personally, I do not believe in anything, for I believe that I am not qualified to judge how the universe might function. But it does not stop anyone from scientifically dissecting and studying the concept of religion and its metamorphosis to organised religion and universal liberalism in some cases.

Fundamentally, what is religion?
It is a set of beliefs and theories on how the universe as the promulgators of the tenets saw it works and functions. It need not be true, it need not be false, but the interest or the need for this concept is more sociological and ideological. It is more of a set of rules than a system of unravelling the mysteries of the universe, although the latter is a significant part of religion. It's chief concern lay with the society than with the heavens.

Man is a social being. Therefore, in order to live among other such beings, each with objectives and aspirations as self-serving and diverse as one's own, a protocol has to be stipulated. The protocol goes by various names and forms from the Ten Commandments, Shariah, Dharma, Tao, etc depending on the region. Judeo-Christian cultures have the Ten Commandments, Islamic culture has the Sharia, Hindu, Buddhist and Jain cultures have Dharma, and so on.

If one looks at all these scriptures, one would notice striking similarities between them, indicating an underlying symmetry, the sociological need to arrive at very similar sets of rules across diverse cultures and beliefs. This means that the fundamental sociological needs of every human being is the same, regardless of the culture, race of geography. They are:

The need for respect: Human beings crave for the respect and approval of their peers. It is an evolutionary trait to make us want to be agreeable to others, so that we remain a social species. No matter what anybody says regarding how they live life for themselves, and how they are not influenced by what the neighbours will say, they will always do, for we are hard-wired that way.
The need for survival: This need is not restricted to us alone. Every organism does the most in its power to stay alive.
The need for comfort and pleasure: We constantly strive to make life easier for ourselves, it is also an evolutionary trait, perhaps trying to make us work towards the betterment of our own lives to give us a better chance of survival.

To broadly cater to the above needs, humans have constantly tried many strategies in the past. We were hunters and gatherers, we then invented the techniques of agriculture to make life easier for us, so on and so forth. But these needs frequently intrude upon the same of another, demanding a resolution of this issue in order to maintain man as a social animal. This is the first necessity of religion; to identify boundaries on the pursuit of one's needs in order to extract maximum benefit for maximum number of people in an ideal case, or in a more practical case, to extract the benefit as equivalent to one's position in the society's pecking order, for it was rarely egalitarian.

It's next concern was to enforce these boundaries, in a form as agreeable to the followers of this set of boundaries on one's personal liberties. This is very similar to managing a bunch of people with the carrot and stick approach. The stick is the limit on one's liberties, the carrot is the fulfilment of need 1: the need for respect. A person who acts unrestrained and has a seeming disregard for another's needs suffers from diminished respect and approval from the society than another who binds himself by these norms.

This now established, these rules have successfully infringed upon personal freedoms for the sake of the greater good. Now, there is another need to be addressed; something not discussed as of yet. It is not a necessity like the above three, but still is important to keep people from getting restive and frustrated. Man is an intelligent being, at least when compared to other species that share the planet. With such a large brain, man was occupied by the need to survive, escape predators and devise hunting strategies when he was a nomadic hunter or gatherer. As time progressed, man got less busy and got more free time in his hands, letting his intelligent and curious mind wander into pondering the questions of life and its purpose.

Once again, it was religion's responsibility to answer these questions and man tried to explain all phenomena he observed satisfactorily with the resources and knowledge at his disposal at that point of time, with his imagination filling the gaps. Religion also became the bridge that connected us to nature, gave a seeming purpose to existence and provided us with answers that satiated our appetite for knowledge. This is religion in its crudest form; it lays out rules for peaceful co-existence among the society as the formulators who defined its confines saw it, it provides answers to questions that emerged from the long periods of inactivity brought about by a settled lifestyle and it tries and maintains order among the group of people with whom the formulators of the same identified.

As one can see, religion can be purely attributed to addressing a sociological need to maintain order in a society of individuals with interests and aims as diverse as themselves. This was probably why government and religion were barely discernible in most cultures till around a hundred years ago, they both more or less had the same function. This was the sole reason, apart from man's egregious odiousness, that religion transformed itself into organised religion.

Organised Religion is probably the reason for everything that is wrong with our world, from terrorism, the crusades, the holocaust (it was not so much as religious as racial, nevertheless), I could possibly go on. One could name any problem on a large scale, not something like one failing in mathematics, and possibly trace it to religious intolerance. So, how did something devised to maintain peace become something of a cause with which one can justify killing thousands of people? For this, one must compare our society with a pack of wolves, or a pride of lions, or hyenas, or any social animal.

Elephants, for example, have the matriarch at the helm, with other females following her to any end. This was a system devised by the mind of elephants, who also had similar needs like our own. It was probably noticed that males tend to often get rowdy and uncontrollable when they went into their teens, while females remained sensible and docile. Therefore, they had to go. Males were kicked out, to rot in the open grasslands, while the females had the wisdom of the matriarch to guide them. Males, when kicked out, formed their own bachelor herds, which is a different story. This is a female-dominated society unlike our own, where the women called the shots. However, it must be noted that this system of obeisance to the matriarch is restricted to the herd. Another female of another herd would munch grass disrespectfully and pass water in front of our matriarch with impunity if it came to it. That female would have her own matriarch, whom she reveres above all else, and would be offended if somebody did that to her.

Similarly, we are also like a pack of wolves or a herd of elephants, who have respect for a common entity that maintains order within the clan, restricted to the clan. Formulators of their religion concerned themselves primarily with furthering the cause of their own clan alone, not humanity in general. So, there must also be a clause in every religion that calls for loyalty to that religion, as a clan could identify itself then only by religion, nationalism is a relatively new concept. Added to loyalty alone, there must be a mechanism that ensures that the clan is defended from other such clans, either through hard influence (invasion) or soft influence (conversion). So, came the concept for fighting for one's religion in order to defend it. The defence of religion is a vague grey topic, open to interpretation, and hence even though Christians, during the crusades, invaded the Holy Land that was thousands of miles from Rome, they were not attacking Islam, but defending Christianity. We, however, need this "one of us, one of them" mentality if we are to survive, or we would have just dissolved into another clan, which typically in olden days involved enslavement and or or ethnic cleansing. So, religion had to have teeth to defend itself and its followers, the defence being subjective owing to practical considerations. Although anachronistic, this trait of religion has existed tenaciously throughout history, and while the world would be a much better place without it, the world would not be a good place without religion itself, for all the reasons mentioned above.

I assume, therefore I am

2011-05-18T02:42:00.001+05:30

These were the thoughts that were running through my head the other day, when it was noticed that I had way too much free time in my hands. "Who am I? What do I perceive? How do I know what I perceive is consistent with the truth? What if there is no truth? What if esse est percipi? What if to be is to be Perceived?"

I shall endeavour to answer these questions within the bounds of reasonable assumption. First of all, there are two classes of schools of thought as far as philosophy is concerned: Rationalism and Empiricism.

Rationalism is that branch of philosophy that takes a set of logical statements broadly proven to be true, or at least assumed as such by stuffy windbags who think they know everything, and takes them in conjunction with each other in order to build compound logical statements that would be true if the fundamental statements were true. In effect, one could build up the most complex set of arguments and prove them as true or false as the case may be, if one knew the right set of logical statements proven to be true, in other words, the first principles. A pure Rationalist who frequently gets ahead of his or herself would argue that any truth, however complex can be arrived with a few statements that may be inherently true, like "The Sun Rises in the East".

Empiricism, on the other hand, is slightly pragmatic; it considers only statements that have already been proved true, and makes no attempt to further or extrapolate the proved argument to prove another one, for it was not experimentally proved. In English, a Rationalist proposes, an Empiricist disposes, the Rationalist then attempts to demonstrate against his or her will, and if successful, the Empiricist accepts or rejects.

As one can clearly see, the two schools of thought are at odds with each other. A Rationalist is today's Theoretical Physicist, the Empiricist the Particle Physicist, and each views the other with utter disdain. But one thing that both the schools of thought have missed is the fundamental assumption, the most fundamental one. I refer to the one where we innately assume that what we have proved is absolute.

For example, to prove that the Earth is round, Magellan circumnavigated the globe. This was based on the assumption that Magellan really did so and that he was not pulling a fast one on the Portuguese public. If one were to prove that he indeed circumnavigated the globe, he has merely proved that one of the projections of our planet is a closed geometric figure. In order to prove that it is a sphere, one must prove that every projection of our planet is a circle. Magellan had considered only one plane, presumable along the equator, and has merely proved that it was a closed figure, not a circle. It might just as easlily have been an ellipse or a hexagon about the plane of the equator along which he sailed. So it would only be reasonable ( as defined by philosophers ) to reject Magellan's proof of demonstration as a rigorous empiricist. But how about all the later evidence? How may one process the satellite imagery of our planet in innumerable perspectives? We accept this visual proof of our planet's roundness as valid because we can see one of the projections of our planet as a circle. This in conjunction with other photographs taken from different points of reference leads us to the conclusion that since the projection of our planet at different points of reference taken at random is a circle, it must be a sphere. But a purist empiricist would argue that one has only proved that various projections of our planet are circular, but one has failed to prove that it is circular from every possible point of reference and therefore the proof is not valid. So, considering the apparent foolishness and the head-up-his-arse-ness of the empiricist, one simply cannot produce infinite number of photographs to convince him. Instead, we ask him to assume uniformity, that is, we ask him to apply the rule of induction, the rule of extrapolation that says since the projection of the earth at the given point of reference is a circle, the projection from a point that is infinitesimally close to the given point would still be a circle. Therefore, from every point, the projection of the earth to every plane is a circle, and therefore, it is a sphere. This now moves into the realm of rationalism, which can satisfactorily prove that the given logical statement is true based on the truth value of a more simple logical statement, which in this case is empirical evidence.

The statement, however can also be approached in a purely rational way, without any empirical evidence.
The first logical statements are:

The universe obeys all laws of physics and mathematics consistently.
The earth is made of matter.
The earth exists in the universe.
Matter experiences the force of gravitation.
The law of gravitation is true and accurate.
An attractive force pulls matter closest to the point of origin of the force as possible.
The sphere is the only solid curve as solution to the collection of all points that are of no greater distance, with respect to another point, than a fixed arbitrary value.
All the above statements are true.

So, these statements taken in conjunction with each other would suggest that the earth would experience the force of gravitation as it is made of matter and exists in a universe that obeys all laws of physics and mathematics. This force of gravitation, as suggested by the law of gravitation, is an attractive force, and therefore, tends to pull matter to points closest to itself possible. As suggested by the law of gravitation, the point of origin of the force of gravitation is the centre of mass of the object in question, the earth. As the centre of mass of the earth exerts the force of gravity on all other points on the earth, it tends to get as close to the centre of mass of the earth. This would mean that there is a great tendency for points of the earth to get as close to the centre as possible, and therefore, as dictated by statement 7, it would be a sphere.
QED.

Thus, one can prove that the earth is spherical without any satellite imagery, but it would be foolish to assume that this proof is absolute. The empiricist who looked at the rationalist explaining the proof to him would have had a contemptuous countenance as he could provide the rationalist with countless examples of meteors and asteroids that are of any shape but spherical even though all statements collected by the rationalist as first principles were true, his reasoning sound. The only explanation is, he must have overlooked some statements he must have included in his proof, for example: The force of friction and cohesion binds all points in a solid to a degree of freedom so minute, that it forbids the points to move as close to the centre of gravity of the solid as would otherwise be possible.
This would mean that even though all these were true, some other phenomenon occurred that let the earth violate the above statement overlooked by our rationalist and let the points move around freely. While the theory is that the earth melted into a liquid due to the heat of friction, other such objects were less fortunate, with solidity trapping them in hideous shapelessness. This now seems satisfactory, there is also empirical evidence to buttress the claim, there is visual proof of magma underneath the earth's surface and everyone is happy.

However, there are inherent flaws in both the above reasons that simply escape one's attention. These are what one says one takes for granted. First of all, to debunk the impossible to prove empirical proof, even if one were to, by some magical feat that demystifies infinity and transcends it, produce infinite photographs of the earth from every possible point of view, I would not be seeing those photographs as they were, but I would only see it as I perceive. There is simply no way of telling whether what I see is a faithful reproduction of what is, or anything exists at all beyond what I perceive. If the former were true, I would see only what I wanted to see, or some unseen force, within or without, wanted me to see. So I might just as easily see them as circular projections of the earth as another empiricist sees triangular projections of the earth. So, my proof is rendered in-absolute, and completely dependent on the observer. The latter on the other hand, would mean I could see whatever I want, it simply doesn't exist, a mere hallucination on a scale that is grander than anyone ever imagined possible. In either case, the proof becomes observer dependent robbing them of the absoluteness required to prove a fact. Therefore, by proving something empirically, one simply gets over this inconvenience by ignoring it or assuming the credibility of one's senses.

The above reasoning in itself is not empirical, it is the extrapolation of existent ideas to arrive at a contradiction. Thus, it is a rational explanation and no one has produced infinite photographs of the earth. But if I were to somehow prove that a rational proof can be discredited in the same way, it would mean that the above proof of indeterminability in itself has been rendered null and void. This, however, does not mean that empirical evidence can now be justified, as it is not so simple a universe to assume that the negative of a negative is a positive, but is an indeterminate state, assumed in most cases to be positive through induction and extrapolation with the assumption of uniformity of the universe. As in the school of Hegelianism, an idea can be comprehended by robbing oneself of it; the second part of the An-sich: Anderssien: An-und-für-sich series that mean in itself: out of itself: in and for itself. Hegelianism argues that any development of any idea is a triadic process; the first is the idea itself, the second, the opposite or sublation of the idea in the pursuit of its greater significance and the final re-institution of the idea in a more refined and agreeable form. So, in this triadic process, I would only be in the second stage of Anderssien if I disproved and therefore robbed myself of the ability to prove rationally. The third stage would be to outline a rational proof disproving the rational proof leading to another indeterminate state.

The proof is as follows:
We have taken a set of eight statements generally construed as true by general judgement and have built up more complex ideas based on them ultimately arriving at the fact that the earth is round. If, however, by some unaccounted factor, one of the basic ideas were to be discovered false, the entire supposition comes crashing down. The theorem of Rationalism is, "If any idea or phenomenon can be proved as logically sound and consistent by rational arguments, it is logically sound and consistent."
To prove the above theorem, the following statements are taken as first principles:

The idea or phenomenon to be proved can be proved rationally
The capability to rationally prove the idea or phenomenon is within our intellectual confines.
The theorem itself.

Now, if I were to disprove any of the above statements, the whole school of rationalism comes down precipitately. Let us take the first statement; it is straightforward, it is merely an assumption that the idea can be proved rationally. There is no way one can prove it unless they use the proof of contradiction. Assuming that any statement cannot be proved rationally would imply that it cannot happen as one considers the fundamental principles of physics and mathematics to predict the phenomenon or idea. If the idea cannot be proved, it therefore cannot happen. Even this proof has an underlying assumption, which if disproved can crash the argument. The assumption is that the fundamental principles of physics and mathematics are absolute and of immutable veracity. If we can somehow prove that a phenomenon not predicted by these principles can occur, we have successfully disproved the contradiction, thereby disproving statement 1 of the set of first principles. For example, existent physics and mathematics could not predict the uncertainty in the position and momentum of a particle with sufficient accuracy and therefore have been incorporated into physics as an inherent limitation of the observer and the system which, in the absence of the observer, is in an indeterminate intermediate state, just as the Schrodinger's cat. For a brief instant, just after the observation of the limitation of existing physics and the redress of that limitation, mathematics collapsed, rationalism failed and had to be propped back up again with this work around correction introduced into physics. This suggests that the platform we hold for absolute truth in itself is not immutable, but changes with time, as new phenomena are unravelled. The observer does not lead, but lags the system, with a varying set point that accounts for errors produced in the previous iteration. This would mean that any argument can be proved rationally by playing with the most fundamental axioms of physics. Therefore, it is impossible to disprove the first statement.
Moving on to the second one, one can never prove the statement. If we do not have the capability to prove the statement, we will not have the capability to disprove the statement, and the statement will stay in an indeterminate state, glossed over by an assumption that we can prove the phenomenon under question, and see where it goes from there. The third statement leads to ad infinitum and therefore has been left alone. Ergo, it is impossible to prove rationally that a rational proof is valid for any idea or phenomenon. If I cannot prove the credibility of my tools, I cannot use them. If I cannot use them, I cannot prove the fact that I cannot prove the credibility of my tools. We have now entered a state of mutual contradiction that can only be allayed by an assumption on one side to keep the wheels moving. The assumption is that rationalism is valid and therefore applicable.

This, however is not the absolute standard for reason, there can never be an absolute standard. If there can never be an absolute standard, there can be no reason, only a set of conditions, as in, if this were true, that is true. Therefore, I merely assume that this is true, accept it as my most fundamental principle and build ideas from there. But there is no way to tell if it is true, for there is no such thing as the truth.

Good Riddance (Time of your Life)

2011-05-14T23:39:00.000+05:30

There are times in every man's life, when he has to shrug it off and call it life. I have done precisely that when it comes to the last four years of my life. We've had our ups and downs, I've had my downs and downs, I've sworn at a couple of teachers quite liberally and have basically made my transition from a fat douche to a slightly less fat douche in the years I have spent on the dusty streets of NIT Trichy. From marathon AOE matches to bad movies to escape the power cuts that last through the entire day, it has been one bumpy ride from the blinking idiot in first year who bunked his first class in the college out of ignorance (ask Gokul, he was a part of this charade) to the blinking idiot who bunked all later classes out of apathy (ask anyone in my department). In this twisted journey, I have met more convoluted characters (read TB, Adharsh) than out of a Quentin Tarantino movie (read HK); some of you interesting (you), others mindbogglingly dull (everyone else), on the whole, it was a nice sample set of humanity in general that greeted my eye when I first walked into the walls of Agate hoping it would have a western toilet. All things said and done, it was a defining journey into adulthood, our own four year long barmitzvah that one needs to remember for the rest of one's life, for I'm sure that forty years down the line, if I'm still alive ( chances are, at this rate, I won't be, so you're invited to the funeral, by the way; bring champagne ) and whenever someone mentions the word Tsunami, there would always be a little part in me that would jump and turn around hoping it was someone from college trying to call me.
Not for the last time,
Tsfu

Catch 42

2011-01-14T09:56:00.003+05:30

Curiosity is a wonderful thing. It is what that makes us get over our fear of the unknown and explore new horizons. But clearly, it is not a good evolutionary trait to possess. A curious organism is a dead organism. But with it, we've erased Terra Incognita from our maps, we've conquered the planet. Now we're consumed by an obsession. An obsession to know the nature of this universe. In the process, we have clinically alienated ourselves from the universe, which is good scientific progress, as no physicist should be a part of the experiment he's conducting, or a part of the system she studies. But what we've failed to note is that, we're inextricably woven into this universe; chances are, it wouldn't exist without us, one of the principal prongs of the Anthropic principle. An observer is as important as the system itself and detaching oneself can never be the answer. But the universe cannot be studied if we consider ourself a part of it. We must be the dispensable onlooker on the grand scheme of things, if there is any, in order to comprehend its complexities and intricacies. Would we modify our universe by understanding it? Is our universe getting progressively more complicated the more we understand it? This leaves us between a rock and a hard place. We've never dwelt upon the idea that the universe can never be comprehended, we have always assumed, at times in an insufferably cavalier fashion, that our intellect and faculties allow such a comprehension. It could be our arrogance and vanity, the answer to other equally deep questions that we just trudge along with particle accelerators, each bigger than the last, in the hope of seeing a miniature big bang, assuming it was a significant event in the first place. But the question remains, that if the universe can be understood, can one be a part of it and still hope to do so? If not, who can understand the universe, or how can we do so bypassing this stumbling block of being confined to the universe? There is no way we can study the dynamics of a system if we are bound by it. Therefore, there is no way we can fully understand how and why our universe works, unless we know what lies beyond its ends. Suppose we were to assume that we cannot comprehend our world, it doesn't seem implausible at all; after all, there are many millions of other organisms that cannot, it would be vain of us to assume we alone can. But if we alone could, we as a species would be an evolutionary singularity, an exception. As all exceptions go, we would have been eliminated by the force of natural selection. It would seem that we are well on our way into doing so. Our intellect has grown at the cost of other more 'important' abilities, and any predator would have had a field day on early human herds. Moreover, our brain is the biggest guzzler of energy in our body. It uses up nearly half of what we consume, and while such an arrangement has been declared wholly wasteful by other animals, humans have somehow, dispensed with other abilities like night vision, smell, claws and teeth to pursue a line of adaptation as improbable as remarkable. Stripped of our brain, we're a pink blob of food as ready to eat as apples and would put up as much of a fight. An organism that requires tremendous amounts of energy everyday to tend to a body that in its prime is still as helpless as the day it was born cannot be said to be the fittest. How we were not killed then, is an oddity. But, as evidence suggests, we have survived, and are one of the most dominant species on earth, a force of nature to reckon with. But it can also be, that our intellect is in itself our own undoing. We have existed on this planet for around a hundred thousand years, hardly any appreciable time interval to judge the success of a species which usually stay on the planet for millions of years before nature writes them off as a bad job. Therefore, the answer for the question of whether humans are here to stay can be answered probably after nine hundred thousand years, which seems improbable because we are already on our way to killing ourselves. The chances are, the next mass extinction will be caused by us which is happening as we speak by the way, and we shall go with it. The reason one ponders of humans as a species is because one needs to understand the nature of the observer before any experiment can be conducted. If the observer is limited by the system, it is not a very good observer as our definition of reason goes. If we are not a good observer, it is highly possible that we cannot understand the universe, or if we could, the universe is out to kill us before we do. Both ways, it's not a cheerful thought. The man who said curiosity kills the cat is a wise man indeed.

Little Red Riding Hood

2010-12-09T00:09:00.001+05:30

Alice sat quietly, as her mother laboured away in the kitchen. What she was up to, she couldn't tell, but she had been hacking and ploughing through mounds of dough in an effort to make muffins, something her grandmother hated anyway.

Her grandmother never liked anything in the first place, she was not a nice woman. All she did, was groan about imaginary pains and the decadence of her family. She cared for no one; rolled in heaps of money and wouldn't spare a penny to an ailing lamb. Understandably, she lived alone in a stately estate, void of anything human save a pitiful maid who, for hitherto undiscovered reasons, tolerated her general misanthropy and lumbered on, suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, after her husband chose not to be.

He hadn't left without leaving behind his son, equally spiteful in every way. He chose to marry, against the guesses of many, and chose a wasted woman, who listened to anyone with a vial full of heroin and a hypodermic syringe. The reason for this unlikely twain to come to be baffled many, the closest anyone ever came was that he genuinely loved the woman. She had a valuable quality; she knew what she wanted, and would do anything to get it. All he had to do, was dangle a needle in front of her and she'd do the rest.

Their by-product was a little girl, perfectly ordinary girl in every way; she was not exceedingly beautiful, but would still fit in an open-casket. This was the girl who'd witnessed many things in her life. Drunken women came home every night and any questions from her mother were answered with daggers and cigarette burns. They would fight for hours, as strangers leered on, expressions suggesting sheer indifference.

Last night turned out to be entirely different; as her father clutched the railings up the creaky staircase, a drunken blonde on his side reeking of dried vomit and cigarettes, his wife was preparing dinner. As the little girl peered out of her room, a meat-cleaver fell on her father's neck, as he swore and spouted obscenities. It was a dance of discord, a drunken man and a stoned woman have lousy reflexes. With half his head spliced, he waved a dagger at the screaming company he brought and rammed the glinting blade into her palate.

Alice clutched her doll, terrified of the blood, as she watched the final blow from her mother that hacked his head off his shoulders, the expression of cold fury frozen in his face.

Job done, she collapsed in the living room; she was spent. Alice shut her door tight and prayed for something to happen. She spent the night under the bed shivering with fright, praying for something to happen, desperately waited for someone to wake her up, tell her it was all a dream. She felt faint in the closed surroundings. Panting for breath between sobs, she rested her head on her shoulders and closed her eyes...

The next morning greeted her mother in a frenzy of activity. She cleaned the entire house for the first time since they moved in, the dried blood on the walls were scrubbed clean and two huge bags stood in a corner attracting flies. She flung them into the incinerator and proceeded to make muffins for her grandmother.

"What happened last night?" enquired the curious little girl.

"Nothing. Nothing happened. Why do you ask?" her mother was quite flustered to discover that her acts had a witness she hadn't realised, "Your father's gone out, he'll be back any minute. Muffins?" she pointed at a batch of freshly baked muffins with blood-soaked mittens.

Alice helped herself to one. Whatever had happened last night, it was not pleasant. The house seemed to know something, it smelt different, it felt emptier, cleaner. She desperately tried to strain her memory, but all she could recollect was a faint cry and a lot of red.

"I think I had a nightmare last night." she remarked to her mother.

"How come? I didn't hear you scream. You always shout out when you had a nightmare. It's probably nothing. I-it's probably all in your head, you know, you do have a wild imagination..."

Her mother smiled weakly. Any other person would've seen through her shaky fingers, blood-soaked apron, and a flustered demeanour, but nine year old girls cannot see through such intricacies of human nature. She did sense something she couldn't put her finger on, though, but repressed memories are difficult to discern in a tender mind.

"Honey, could you get these muffins to granny? She's really sick and needs your help."

"Okay, will you come with me? I'm scared of Mr. Lupus. He keeps staring at me whenever I go out."

"But Mommy has things to do, sweetie, I really can't come with you. I wish I could. Mr. Lupus is a nice man, he drove the monster under Susan's bed away. He can't harm you, will you go? Please? I know you're brave."

Alice nodded, defeated; she wanted to be a brave girl. She took the basket of muffins, pulled over a red cardigan, her favourite, and walked out to face the chill autumn air.

As she walked about the park, Mr. Lupus, her neighbour, seemed to be reading the paper on his front garden. She started humming a tune she vaguely remembered to cheer her spirits, and proceeded about the park at the edge of the village. Mr. Lupus was reading the paper here as well, she didn't understand why he wanted to read the paper wherever she went. Taking a detour, now sweaty and nervous, she missed a left and ran as fast as she could. She didn't know how long she ran, until she faced a desolate street. Leaves were heaped on the middle of the road, no one was in sight except for Mr. Lupus, reading his paper by a bench below an apple tree.

By now, Alice had begun to panic, she screamed at him, while he just moved into the shadows as a car wound its way, crunching leaves in its wake. It stopped just short of the kerb, and the headlights seemed like a pair of patient eyes, observant and ready. By now, Alice decided it was best to get away and ran as fast as she could into the woods. This would turn out to be a bad idea, as she discovered about a half an hour later. She had a feeling she was going in circles, every leaf looked familiar, every footstep in front of her seemed like hers. Finally, someone came up to her.

"You seem lost. What do you want, my dear girl?" a kind, almost too kind a voice enquired.

He was tall, at least that was what Alice thought, auburn hair lay rustled on his head, with grey eyes that seemed out of place in a person whose voice was so warm, so understanding in a way she couldn't explain.

This what what she wanted, she couldn't bear it anymore, she immediately hugged him and cried. She cried like she never did before, she cried till she couldn't breathe, she cried till her eyes were so swollen, she couldn't see where he was taking her. She didn't have the strength in her to resist anymore, she let him guide her into the silver sedan that she saw pull over earlier. She climbed in; Lupus showed no signs of existence. Relieved, she closed her eyes, not caring where they took her, as long as it was home. He took the basket of muffins she was supposed to give her grandmother and kept it aside. Not knowing what was going on, she yearned for an answer, but was too terrified to move, let alone question his actions.

The car pulled over to familiar surroundings, it was a stately manor, Alice had no clue why they stopped at her grandmother's place. He asked her to get down, and took her in.

Alice wondered why her grandmother sent these men to pick her up. As she walked in, she knew her grandmother was not involved in this in anyway, she had no clue as to what was going on.

How she came to the conclusion, she didn't know, it was just a feeling. She did know, when she saw her body being wrapped up in a bag, Lupus wrapping her up. She let out a sharp gasp when she realised her grandmother was dead and froze. She didn't know what to do. Lupus had killed her grandmother.

"Hello, Alice. You know me, I know you. This is Hunter, by the way."

The man with the grey eyes nodded at her.

"What did you do to grandma?" she trembled, sobbing.

"Oh nothing, she's sleeping." Lupus smiled as he picked up the phone to call Alice's mother.

"You see, Alice, I lost my job, both of us, Hunter and I did, as a matter of fact, a few months ago. Grown ups don't have parents looking after them, you see, and they need money to buy things.You are going to spend sometime with us, till your mother helps us out. We're not going to harm you in anyway, don't look at me like that. I promise I'll return you to your mother as soon as she helps us."

The phone kept ringing in Alice's home. Meanwhile, Hunter picked up the basket and looked inside. There were a batch or two of muffins inside, with a note on top. He opened it.

Dear Gertrude,

Your son is dead. I think I killed him, and I don't think I can live with that.

I hope you take good care of Alice, Goodbye.

Yours regretfully,

Dianne

He swore out loud, and pointed a gun to Alice's head. Lupus didn't know what was going on till Hunter thrust the letter into his hands and Alice watched his expression chance from bewilderment to cold fury. A gunshot pierced through the large living room at the exact same moment it did in Alice's little flat, as a woman fell to the floor as a gun flew from her hand across the room.

Triumph en' Cheval

2010-10-02T13:02:00.017+05:30

Whanne gnarly groves and knotted Weald

Stoode grene and callow 'cross the feld,

Whanne raging river and brawling brooke

Crept and crawled through every nooke,

Times were black, the skies were grea

Sōls that naught, was ever gay.

For a fær maiden had borne

A heart broken, another torne;

Split asunder, slit in twain,

'Twixt two knights of valour magne.

We battled on, I and he,

Death in life had come to be;

We did spar through day and night,

Sabre pierced with all its might.

Arms were clashed and armour crashed,

Steeds crippled and sore skin gashed.

"Death to thee!" did I crie,

As we stepped, eye to eye.

Like Chaucer's verse I wanton trie,

In owen grese, to make him frie.

Steed caught steed and steele met steele,

Lances snapt and plates did keele.

I thrust his left on my vile blaed,

As my own arm was unmaed.

The crimson tiff went on on foote,

The blaed, my knee was firmly put.

Till the worthy foe was smote,

Knife was hacked and gyred abote.

There he lay, skewered and hewn,

Half myself away I'd strewn.

The rest in me revelled with pride,

Of bloody venge for my dear bride.

I had won, with chivalrie,

My own pyrrhic victorie;

Bled and spent, I shut my eye,

Nevermore'd I open, aye.

A Dream come True

2010-07-09T22:38:00.006+05:30

'Twas a grey Saturday, clouds looming low over the sombre city of Madras, (I don't care what the old fart who simply refuses to die thinks, it'll always be good ol' Madras to me) and it was decided that it was time we saw another movie. We got a bunch of equally jobless oafs to accompany us, and Satyam Cinemas got itself filled with die-hard Nolan fans who gripped their popcorn bags tight to hold on to their little anchors of reality, their own mass produced mouth-watering totems, as the iconic Warner Brothers shield wobbled into corporeality. Inception is an epic movie, the much awaited event of the year when Christopher Nolan, the genius of our time, unleashed the latest behemoth that steamrolled into the box-office, taking the world by storm, pushing through the sky high expectations that weighed upon his shoulders. As an undeclared work on science fiction, unlike others in its genre, it refuses to explain the science, focusing on the fiction instead, leaving the physics of his wonderful world to our imagination, something that his Prestige set the stage for earlier. Nolan has a standard cast, good actors are a gem too few, and Leonardo DiCaprio wormed his way into this elite club of silverscreen heavy-weights through a flawless performance in his role of an architect of dreams, the "extractor" of intelligence, devoted husband, loving father, and a curious analyst of the mind who burrows into the deepest crevices in the human psyche. He is tasked upon the inception of an idea in another's mind, I simply won't reveal more, a tricky and dangerous journey into a mind willing to defend itself at all levels of invasion. As dreams build on, the complex storyline unseen since Memento grips you by the neck and plunges you into a world where anything is possible, from the streets of Paris folding unto itself, to dead wives sabotaging your every move.. The scale is huge, the budget limitless, and cast impeccable and Nolan; all your ingredients for the perfect movie. Watch it, or God kills a puppy everyday you don't.

Ars Archerica

2010-06-25T22:23:00.003+05:30

September is the month in which Festember is held. Ignoring the oh-not-so-clever portmanteau and all the snide comments that surface, I'd prefer concentrating on Festember's gallant efforts at equipping our students with state of the art technology and pseudosciences and holding mundane workshops for said purpose. The two workshops that stand out this year are the archery and hypnotism workshops, but not the alchemy workshop which was planned initially, as the world-renown alchemist Nicholas Flamel was not available on that date due to the fact that he went kaput five hundred years ago when he foolishly drank copper sulphate solution mixed with rat poison thinking it was the elixir of life. Apparently he was spotted hanging upside down from a streetlamp, stark naked, singing " Found a Peanut" at the top of his voice, a few minutes before he snuffed it. Bereft of the alchemy workshop they had planned, they resorted to the next weird sounding word in the dictionary, Archery; the word Astrology was consciously ignored as it was mistaken to be Astronomy, a real science which apparently is frowned upon. Unlike hypnotism, people have actually witnessed the effects of an arrow jutting out of a loon's spleen and hence I have a soft corner for this tried and tested, albeit completely pointless art. The poor lambs failed to realise Archery wasn't fictitious. Therefore, on behalf of the clowns from the archery workshop that is to be conducted in lieu of better things to do this Festember, I would like to brush you up with some tips on how to shoot people in the most inappropriate of places in hours of dire need for said target's scarcity. The first step in shooting projectiles into mid-air is the acquisition of a target. A target can be anything from a dartboard to the dire rear of the sore-headed loser with a sense of smug superiority, strutting about you getting under your skin. It can also be the poor unfortunate chap at a distance doing nothing to annoy you but you want to shoot him anyway. So, with the target set, our next move is to equip ourselves with a shooting instrument. It can range from snipers and crossbows to blunt pencils and maliciously shaped stones. We cover all these tools and the techniques and how to use them and inflict the maximum damage with special emphasis on day to day objects like the crossbow.

• Choose your target with utmost wisdom. Remember, your ammunition is limited but the number of people you'd like to shoot is not. Therefore, discrimination is required to prioritise your targets from the most annoying to the least.
• With target sighted, your next task is to position yourself in the most prudent of poses. One would not like to lose the element of surprise. An arrow coming out of nowhere is our desired result, while propping yourself up on a bow larger than you and jumping around making an ass out of yourself is not. Remember not to look too obviously stupid with any weapon mentioned previously.
• If your weapon of choice is the notorious cross-bow, do not forget that you're wielding one of the coolest objects ever invented and using one without the characteristic evil grin will yield undesirable results. For best efficiency, smiling like the devil will help, on grounds of intimidating your enemy and rendering him helpless in the face of such evil and maniacal laughter.
• Get yourself an arrow, preferably not very sharp, to make sure the target experiences hilarious disfigurement. Why do a clean job while you can bludgeon his bones spilling pools of blood all over? So, with such an arrow acquired, position it on the cross bow and pull back until you hear the wood creaking uncomfortably under the stress. Do not pull too much as that would render the weapon useless even though, it is extremely satisfying to break something with your own bare hands.
• Now release the tension, and no, we do not mean going to the loo, stop sniggering at smutty toilet humour, and observe as the arrow darts forward lodging itself onto the target's posterior. Watch how the target writhes in agony trying to relieve his colon of the arrow. The aforementioned maniacal laughter would be prudent at this point.
• To improve upon the outlined technique, dress up in green tights, wear a funny nancy looking hat with a feather on top and speak with a comic sounding Shakespearean accent. Not only will this make you look cool, it'll also give you an excuse to steal your target's wallet and enjoy yourself at the food stall, calling it stealing from the rich and feeding the poor (yourself).
• Try the usual apple on the target's head routine. This will improve concentration as you will be faced by heavy distractions in the form of brightly coloured apples trying to catch your eye as you try to shoot the target's desired organ. Moreover, an apple next to a bleeding person is sure to keep doctors away ensuring said target's slow painful death in the absence of medical assistance.
• Remember, improvisation is the key, so try using poisoned arrows for enhanced malice, or one could even use longbows if one so much feels inclined to do so. They have brilliant range and ideal for shooting that poor unfortunate chap at a distance who did nothing to annoy you but you want to shoot him anyway.

P.S: Do not try this at home. Doing so will seriously hamper your prospects of mastering long distance shooting. Try it where you have free access to vast open spaces and plenty of morons to practise with.

P.P.S: The title Ars Archerica was inspired from Ars Poetica, a moderately, nay, extremely hypocritical treatise in verse by a certain Archibald MacLeish, written when he got sloshed after his girlfriend left him saying he was not manly enough for her. I just thought I'd mention his name and credit to keep those damn copyright harpies at bay.
-Tsfu

Great Expectations

2010-06-19T22:12:00.003+05:30

I recently read a book, a good book, finally. Dickens can never disappoint, as it turns out, and as far as I'm concerned, he's the finest novelist of all time, in terms of plot, style, character and structure, and so many parameters that judge a good book. Although, he tended to be very autobiographical, he never failed to deliver, and he was at his best when he penned down The Great Expectations, a literary masterpiece that flows out of the pages and into your mind, woven into it the entire fabric of Victorian society, with all its hypocrisy and sham, to expose the vulnerable underbelly of the most industrious empire of its time. Dickens has always been keenly critical of his society, something that made him very unsociable, but also a piquant genius who saw through the veil of the Victorian elite. He brings out the human in every character of his, who are real people, with real emotions. The plot revolves around Philip Pirrip, or Pip, who, as a child, loses his parents and is brought up by Joe, his elder brother, and his odious wife, who, for all her bitterness, actually loves her family with all her heart. Orphaned at a very young age, he yearns for a sense of identity, characteristic of Dickens' own reflective and introspective proclivity. With a bit of Dickens himself and a lot others of note in him, Pip begins his journey as an apprentice in the workshop of his brother, a blacksmith, a job he despises. At the age of seven, he is interrupted rather rudely in the middle of his ruminations in front of his parents' graves, by a coarse convict, bound by shackles but seemingly not by the norms of civility. Pip is scared into stealing food, leaving a scarred sense of lingering guilt in the child's mind. He is constantly worked to conformity by his sister-in-law, and a noxious uncle, a Mr.Pumblechook, and his sense of guilt stems only from the fact that he stole some food, an act of wrongdoing by Pumblechook's standards, while Dickens consciously umbrages the act of giving food to a hungry man, in social criticism of the values held by Victorian society that chooses to overlook acts of charity in favour of idealistic forthrightness. This little act of forced charity sees Pip's life turned upside down, with the burden of Great Expectations on his shoulders, a cold, lifeless and yet stunningly beautiful Estella, and her disturbed guardian, Miss Havisham, who invites Pip as a boy to humour Estella, leading him to form a close bond with them, and later believing her to be the cause of his fortunes, well or ill. Plot stretches into the bowels of London from Dartmoor, a conspiracy to smuggle a convict out of Great Britain is also thrown in, and finally crashes with a twist only Dickens can pull off. It is a milieu of emotions, stark realism and social critique in Pip's quest of maturity when he finally understands who really matter in his life, and the evanescence of good fortunes are not to be ridden along, when he climbs up the social ladder leaving loved ones behind. Even when Pip takes Joe's gratuitous affections for granted, even when Estella cruelly breaks Pip's heart, even when Miss Havisham heartlessly manipulates Pip's desires holding a grudge as old as herself, they remain very sympathetic, with their vulnerabilities and passions, deep character and most of all, a very human side being the impetus for all their actions. On the whole, the book is a very deep treatise of human nature, a podium portraying Dickens' genius, and a literary machination that preserves the very essence of Victorian society that funnily takes place, actually, in the Georgian era. Great Expectations is a living fossil, that brings puffy shirts and pantaloons, and with it, the whole smoggy dank and derelict London, with its snooty elite and parallel indigence back to life.

Opium to Lithium: Epic Fail

2010-06-16T11:49:00.006+05:30

Afghanistan is a pitiful place. It is the Kurukshetra where miffed world powers play the game of suicide checkers. Be it the good ol' US of A, or the Rumbling Russian bear, Afghanistan has been a worthy quagmire for all superpowers, present and past, if in doubt, wiki the First Anglo-Afghan War. For many years, this landlocked swamp of a desert (please note the oxymoron) has lived in abject penury, the economy buoyed by the sales of opium and the rigid tenets of pseudo-Islam, which abhors and eschews all necessities of life, leading to a country that has nothing and is seemingly happy about it, for if I suffer through my whole life, ploughing across miles for a drop of water, bleed through the nose for a square meal throughout my sorry existence, I shall be rewarded by Allah with seventy two virgins in heaven. It's morbidly funny, really, to see a country that's knee deep in the manure they created for themselves, woken up everyday with a suicide blast, only to spend the rest of the day fervently hoping for the virgins; and to make through the day without losing a limb. History has not been kind either, mainly due to its strategic location, leading to its status as a buffer state between the Russian and the British empires, which really means, if any country has a problem, they say, "Alright! You and me! Afghanistan! Now!". Their main export has been opium, for nothing else grows there, and their second largest export is prime battleground real estate. Recently, however, Americans have discovered $1trillion buried under the countless landmines and children's limbs in the form of mineral deposits. If this saves the Afghans from misery, it'll be another middle-east success story, to the likes of Dubai and Saudi Arabia. But lets face it, minerals are not oil; who's heard of the mineral wars, at least their previous export had the honour of world powers fighting over it (see Opium Wars). Most of the metals are recycled, and we're reducing the amount mined every year, unlike oil, which keeps skyrocketing by the minute. Even if minerals could save the swamp of a nation from its impending doom, Afghanistan, at this point boasts of more Western troops stationed in it than its population. With a ghost of sovereignty and economic freedom, there's little the Afghan government can do make money out of it. BP has recently said, quite emphatically, the it stands for Beyond Petroleum, and not British Petroleum, as everyone else thought, and minerals could be the next pie BP sticks its dirty fingers into. If the East India Company of the twenty first century decides to enter Afghanistan, even Uncle Sam could do little to stop that, they've only now realised what BP can do when crossed, with the oil spill and all. In the era of aggressive globalisation, the penniless miner who lost his left hand in the blast that killed no one stands no chance against capital leviathans of the West, he has more to gain by kissing the numerous landmines that dot the derelict landscape. If the mineral deposits could save this little nation, pigs can fly and horse feathers can be used as quills.

Holmes v2.0

2010-06-03T18:07:00.006+05:30

I don't know what's wrong with me, but I hardly ever have the patience to sit through an entire film alone. I need company to watch movies, or I just quit and do something else, like watching TV shows, which are shorter than two hours. I don't know, it's just me; but the real thing I wanted to say was, I actually got around to watching Sherlock Holmes, the movie that came out in 2009, only now. Yes, only now, for all the fans out there who can't live without movies, I haven't even watched Avatar yet, (gasp now, you scum-bags) so it's something you can't live with, but I can, because I'm way cooler and I have a life. Anyway, enough with the abrasive abuse,
(Hyde: just one more, please,please,please,please, pleeeez!
Dr.Jekyll: Fine, just one more, after that, you need to pack up and leave.
Hyde: Sod off! cool, I'm done now)
I just wanted to pen down my experiences, like the dear diligent Watson, who meticulously documented every twitch and tick on Holmes' face. Sherlock Holmes is, as far as I'm concerned, the second best detective in the world, the first being, quite obviously, M. Hercule Poirot, nest ces pas? Poirot is not as serious as Holmes, he's a jolly bumbling chap who is like Jacques Clouseau, but uses order and method, a dear phrase of his, in catching the criminal. He's like a lovable grandfather who's funny not by his own design, and is a delight to have around. Holmes, on the other hand, is a more intense character, someone with an obvious astuteness about him, he's to be admired from afar, up close, only Watson could tolerate his OCD. Both are vain, and lovably so, but Holmes' vanity is more intimidating than endearing. Poirot, on the other hand, is more than sociable, just quirky, and his remarks are taken generally in good humour, till the end, where the criminal is outed rather dramatically by Poirot, and that is when the killer realises that this funny old man meant what he said. My impression of Holmes stems solely from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's works, not the ensuing fan-fiction, I have no respect for people who try to fill his shoes. The latest movie, however, seems to have crossed the line between Holmes and Poirot, Holmes is far more amusing, and Watson far cleverer than Sir Arthur's character. It was frequently quoted, by Directors of the West End theatres, "If there was a mop bucket on the crime scene, Watson's leg would be in it, and if he spots a clue by serendipity, all Watson would do was to blow his nose in it, and move along."
Watson, of Guy Ritchie's craft is infinitely more resourceful, I guess a century and a half of kithship with Holmes has finally rubbed off on him. Jude Law, by far, is the cleverest Watson of them all, their relationship being more balanced in friendship, than just a dewy eyed simpleton who's easily amazed by a cocaine addict's sorcery. It is quite enjoyable to watch two men, of camparable intellect, each displaying expertise in different branches of crime solving: forensics and medicine. Holmes here is more emotionally dependent on Watson than ever and Watson cheerfully let's Holmes manipulate him even though he knows what's going on, it was like watching a Victorian movie of House. A grisly,gruff brazen man who, for all his rationality, like a perfectly cooked christmas turkey: crusty on the outside, but soft on the inside, leans on a more emotionally stable man for pegs, who inexplicably supports this seeming parasite. Closer inspection reveals Watson needs Holmes as much as the other way round. Watson is a compulsive supporter as Holmes is a supportee. Watson needs someone waiting back at home who needs his care and support. Conan Doyle cleverly made him a doctor precisely for this reason and Guy Ritchie capitalised on this fact to create a more believable Watson, a man who is more of a deserving sidekick who does more than just make Holmes seem more of a wizard than he actually is. Instead of accentuating Holmes' intellect by using a dud of a Watson, like Conan Doyle did in his later works, Guy Ritchie created a man who made the duo look good, rather than just Holmes. Batman and Robin took a backseat in an equally Gothic Victorian London, more like Gotham city, than New York could ever be, the city DC comics actually modelled Gotham City after. Their on-screen presence was the best thing in the movie, but the story could have been more Holmes-ish. It was larger than life, more like a Victorian Bond movie. Guy Ritchie brought Victorian England to life, the only person to do so previously was Dickens, but Ritchie had the aid of images, while Dickens only had imagery, still, Ritchie is not as great as Dickens, but did a splendid job. As far as the plot was concerned, it was, quite frankly more James Bond than Sherlock Holmes, but the characters were most human, where they, especially Holmes and the specious Irene Adler, expose their vulnerability alongside their prowess, making them more realistic. As good as it was as a stand alone movie, it was not a Sherlock Holmes, it really wasn't.

Le Dernier Point de Vente

2010-05-26T00:48:00.007+05:30

As Festember's round the corner, oh wait, it's not, it's more than three months away, but still, that wouldn't stop us from frantically whipping up some publicity, we hope that it wouldn't be the failure we fear it would. As one of the pioneers of the freedom of expression as outlined in the Bill of Rights that I am, I fear some, ahem-hem, changes have been made to my voice as it fled towards the public ear. Yes, censorship has cropped its ugly head up, yet again, on our very own backyards (I don't mean my arse, its purely metaphorical). But in the noble cause for my words to reach the plebeian mind, I have posted what I have to say, as it were, no alterations whatsoever, except for the fact that, for the sake of sheer spite, they have been spruced up to inflame and blaspheme more than they did previously. It runs thus:
"As the more perceptive of you would’ve probably realised by now, the running theme for this Festember is…(drumroll) Western (Tada!). Well, in keeping with the tone of this theme, one might pursue many activities this Festember that provides satisfaction to oneself as well as pain to others (just like a good western Samaritan would like it).

* Dressing like cowboys help a lot, with the ladies crooning over you, as well as all the gay men. (courtesy, broke-back mountain, or bare-back, I’m not sure) It also provides room for entrance with a bang, well literally, a gunshot, or horse back, as it gallops its way through the dusty tracks of NITT. Walking into a saloon, with all cowboy apparatus, is an added bonus, and gives ideal opportunities to start a bar fight and kick some serious butt.

* I hear there’s going to be a bull-riding (just riding, not riding, you pervert!) workshop, or not, but still, what’s better than fighting every cow you see, which, by the way, is a lllot of them in the campus, and is a good idea to get some practice and prove that you’re not a yellow-livered sissy, which, the ladies love. (I apologise for constantly using italics whenever I want, It's just that I like doing somethings again, and again, and again, which, again, the ladies love.)

* As you’re probably aware, Festember is quite heavy on one’s pocket. While it was insightfully outlined in the Recession Blues article, the Western theme enables a couple of more innovative strategies for scrounging off the richer folk. As Chutzpah (I know, the name sucks, but you can only take a horse to the pond) so beautifully put it, intimidation helps, a lot. Dressing up as a cowboy helps even more. A pistol up against the back of someone’s head is bound to get you free something. The rugged bad boy image only enhances the malice and achieves said effect faster.

P.S. We, the content team, apologise for coming up with meaningless, hackneyed, desultory lists of utter pointlessness. As you, see, there’s only so much creativity in the world, and most of it is in other people. So, if you have any ideas or suggestions, or any constructive criticism to put forward, screw you, do it on your own blog, we might not be creative, but we still are snooty.

P.P.S Please come this Festember, we're lonely. (Courtesy, fellow writer)"

Ha! That'll teach you to stifle free speech...

Pride cometh before a Fall

2010-05-07T15:05:00.007+05:30

After serious thought and consideration, I have to say this: the US is not exactly the ideal ally for a nation to have. After the little Japanese 'incident', no self respecting nation should actually bother meeting more than half way with the United States. When I say that, I say it with their most celebrated ally in mind, the United Kingdom. God knows what the British politicians see in their American counterparts. With the Japanese Prime Minister famously retreating with a long face, many fractures in the American sphere of influence bubble up to the surface. For starters, when they call themselves a peerless superpower, they're partly true; it is the only nation with no true friends. The only reason their allies put up with the conceit of American insular pig-headedness is because their arrogance is not baseless. They hold severe leverage against their allies and anyone caught rocking the boat face stern consequences. It is classic carrot and stick diplomacy, worse; it is practised on one's own allies. For all the world cares, they might as well send a gunboat into Japanese waters to coerce them into submission. Such hard-lined diplomacy, while it may seem 'cool' to employ, has disastrous consequences in the long run. Let's face it, American influence is rapidly waning with a rising China and a unified Europe, and the sun is bound to set on Pax Americana; and when it does, the USA will immediately find itself facing something ten times as humiliating as the Suez Crisis, something that still brings nightmares to the British policy-makers.
For those not in the know, the USA has not always been a superpower or this interfering in the past. There was another nation, something much smaller, but much more powerful when it comes to getting its way, and it was Britain. The British Empire, at its height, was the largest empire the world has ever seen, the closest our planet ever got to a single world government. Sprawling across all seven continents, it encompassed a quarter of the world's land area and a third of the world's population. The sun, literally, never set on the British Empire, it had possessions on all of the longitudes, meaning it was day, constantly, at some part of the Empire, or the other. Its navy was larger than the next two most powerful navies combined, and it ruled the seas, unchallenged, and was the global policeman for more than two centuries. Established as the most formidable colonial power by the turn of the eighteenth century, after the Spanish War of Succession, it continued to rule the world till 1945, from whence our hero of the story, the United States took over.
Why I'm delivering this eulogy for a dead superpower is that, the US can learn from its mistakes. The funny part is, the British Empire made almost no mistakes in its heyday. It chose the right alliances, made the right enemies, it never bit off more than what it could chew. Even then, it collapsed and collapse it did, rapidly. It decolonised rapidly, something it did more than willingly, for, as it turns out, in some twisted kind of way, the Disraeli school of thought was right all along, something which they themselves didn't believe, as they thought Empire was purely for profit and power projection, the flimsy reason given to civilise the world was just an eyewash, and they knew it, at least they thought they did. But by the fifties, the colonies were proving to be too burdensome to carry, and was discovered it had always been so as it got more out of free trade with the Americas than the crown colonies of Africa, India being the only exception. This meant, they could get on the high horse, and at the same time, unload some of the weight on their shoulders. Getting back to the point, even during the peak of hegemony, Britain never resorted to such outright bullying, even on its worst enemies. It relied more on its soft power, economic clout and vast currency reserves to get its way about. In fact, many allies resented the fact that Britain wasn't belligerent enough, especially during the run up of events during the First World War. If she had been more willing to fight, Germany would have thought twice before openly supporting Austria in its case against the Slavic nations, and things wouldn't have steamrolled into a state of total war. What I'm trying to convey here is that, there's much wisdom in most of what Britain did in its tenure as superpower and America would do well to emulate its parent.
The reason Britain never exactly faded into oblivion, and still holds considerable influence on the international chess-board can be attributed to the fact that it never rubbed in the fact that it could annihilate the entire continent if it wanted to, when it could. It never doled away ultimatums like free food to nations, nor did it wait with bombs on its doorstep whenever things didn't go smoothly. They appreciated the power held through negotiation. Even today, many British veterans in Afghanistan constantly brood over the fact that their American counterparts are completely alien to the concept of dialogue. It's like an adolescent with superpowers, only too eager to show it off. It was quaintly amusing when it was a new superpower, but now it is maddening to see such vulgar display of military might, overkill in most situations and used only to intimidate other nations into compliance. If we thought George Bush's incessant war-mongering was annoying, his successor's efforts at peace-mongering are even more irksome. At least Bush was only a thorn in the flesh of fundamentalists and tyrannical despots; Obama seems to be cosying up to them, annoying old allies in the process. Actually his policy of complete back flip on one's friends began even before he assumed office, with a foolish statement entailing how he considered Britain no different than America's numerous other allies and the relationship they possessed was nothing special. Whatever the stance's relation to reality, saying it was most tactless of the would be American President. I don’t know what he hoped to achieve by that statement, but I gather it was an effort on his part to look the exact opposite of Bush, anti-Bush, if you will. But he must understand that one can't please everyone simultaneously all the time, a grave mistake politicians make very frequently.
As to the little Japanese goof up, America could've been more considerate, open to their views and respectful towards their sentiments. But what they ended up doing was consulting the menu for Obama's dinner (apparently salmonella and caviar are more important in diplomacy than listening to one's ally) while the Prime Minister presented his case on the American military base in Japan, and further went to the extent of calling him 'loopy', a statement made worse by the fact that the Japanese didn't really understand how offensive the word was, and nations in these situations quickly assume the worst (In this case, however, I can't see it getting any worse). After lobbying for a one to one with the President for more than a week, a brusque twenty minute session with a man not even looking at your face when you talk is not what he'd have had in mind. Nevertheless, what's done being done; the Foreign Ministry didn't even take the trouble of entering into damage control mode, leaving the Japanese quite cool with the Americans. Another instance of such callous insensitivity was when the First Family paid a state visit to Buckingham Palace and Mrs. Obama not observing protocol by hugging the Queen, something her own husband is not supposed to do on a state affair. The Prime Minister gifted him a pen-stand, carved out of the wood from HMS Gannet, a ship that served anti-slavery operations off the coast of Africa, a very thoughtful gift, one might say, while the President returned the gesture with a collection of Star-Trek CDs, unplayable anywhere except in American players. As inappropriate as a state gift that was, the least he could do was to make sure it wasn't completely useless.
Anyway, not that a nation can be judged for distributing Star-Trek DVDs, I'm sure there are better ways to make one's allies know that they mean something to them. Even half a century ago, the way it handled the Suez crisis was most dishonourable, considering the fact that Churchill could've easily done the same to the US during the Korean War, Britain held considerable Dollar reserves at that time and flooding all its possessions would've collapsed the Dollar; and showed Eisenhower's deep Anglophobic tendencies. Its invasion of Grenada was even more disgraceful, something the entire UN condemned as a flagrant breach of international law. The same holds for the 2003 Iraq invasion, at least it had one ally to support its claim in that case. All I'm saying is that, the USA need not bow down to any 'inferior' power, but the least it can do is to not demand the sovereignty of their allies. It won't stay up there for long, and its current policies will make sure that when it falls, it will fall hard.

42

2010-03-07T19:53:00.003+05:30

Religion is quite a belligerent field, from the irrationally attention-mongering moral police of the Hindu extremists to the anti-western jihadists waging a crusade against modern civilisation. Throughout history, it has been the single most cause, and effect, in some of the cases, of brutal and utterly inhuman driver of mass destruction. From the mediaeval crusades against the Arabs, the Inquisition, witch-hunts till the holocaust and even today's religious fundamentalism, religion has made a very deep impact on human society. No other cause has had so many to die for, no other cause killed so many, and I'm sure no other cause has motivated man to do this much for this long. But what I don't understand is, is it all worth it? What do you stand to gain by killing someone who doesn't believe in the same God as you do? Why do we have this insufferable urge to make people believe that we are right, no matter how assailable we sound?
These questions don't really have an answer apart from the fact that man is a self-important, self-righteous, egregious brute who can't stand the thought that he, mind you, not she, but he, is not the centre of the universe, not the apple of God's eye, not the reason the universe itself was created, no matter how resoundingly rational, reasonable and indisputable the proof for such a proposition sounds. He is charged by his God, it is completely irrelevant whether such an entity exists or not, to cleanse the world of people who don't deprecate themselves in an attempt to please the Holy Lord who shall grant boons and reward only those who grovel under His feet and immolate themselves everyday in the name of virtuous living only sustained by a promise of eternal bliss in the distant future while the rest are condemned to eternal damnation through fire and brimstone in the deep flaming bowels of hell even though He loves us all unconditionally.
As I sit and contrive that particular ridiculously long sentence, I marvel at the inconsistency of organised religion, the scriptures that urge you to sacrifice yourself for the greater good, so that you may be the martyr of an obscure cause palpated only by more obscure catechisms lost in translation and misinterpretation for thousands of years. Metaphorical expressions are pettily quoted out of context, in most cases, literally, that end up with almost no water-tight vindication, the one answer given is He can do anything and a view that such an idea is controvertible is utterly blasphemous. Why is there such rigidity? Why can't we even think about the possibility that we might be wrong about how the universe works? After all, we were more wrong in issues much smaller in scale in the past, there is no reason why human intelligence should be infallible in this case alone. There surely must exist a reason more that just your rock solid conviction that you're right and he's wrong, before you kill somebody because he follows a different faith.
Is having a concrete view on religion that really necessary to win the approval of God, if he really exists? We have no way of knowing whether He exists or not, we have no way of knowing even if He cares about what we do, even if He exists, and here we are, fighting over His favour, snivelling under his Feet, killing millions over a mere argument over how our universe actually works. Should we really pray to Him and His scriptures to win his approval? What would happen if we don't? Will He get angry because you don't fawn over Him? If He really is that petty, He doesn't deserve all the attention, if He's as magnanimous as the scriptures quote, He doesn't want all the attention. Either way, organised religion is futile, it is inconsequential whether you have a religious view or not. Even if it is not so, how qualified are we to make an assessment? How does every Tom, Dick and Harry have a religious view, something that explains how the world works, when only few hundred years back the very same people were burning other people alive on the stake for suggesting, "Hey, how would it be if the Earth were not flat, but actually spherical?", with more proof for asserting the claim than all proof that all religions can muster up to back their claim.
So the next time someone asks me what my religious views are, I shall ask them what they feel about Bosonic String Theory and whether they really believe that a tachyon exists or not. So perhaps, if everyone believed, really, really believed, that it does, may be, just may be the universe might unravel and reveal all it's twenty six dimensions to those who do, I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I shall acknowledge the power of belief over the truth when that happens. Till, then, no one is entitled to an opinion over how the universe works for we're no less ignorant than any munch-happy cow that ruminates in my college over life, the universe and everything and the significance of the number 42, among other things, while at the same time, complacently sitting about, strategically blocking my way through the shortest route to my class. One can opine only when they have the faintest idea, while we try to figure that out, try not to kill anyone on your way to eternal bliss.

Idiots of Us All

2010-01-24T23:19:00.005+05:30

I don't know about other third world refugee camps, but Trichy does not have good cinema halls. I discovered this fact a few weeks ago, when pestilential friends of mine beleaguered me into acquiescence to a ridiculous suggestion involving an air-tight claustrophobic nightmare that called itself a cinema hall and 3 Idiots, making me board a rickety bus that galloped its way across the obstruction course that connected our campus in the middle of nowhere to the ghetto of Tiruchirapalli. Ignoring the dull tipsiness that blanketed our heads, we got down the bus in front of a dilapidated pile of rubble made to resemble a building. Now that we reached the cinema hall, we arrived at the conclusion that we had little left to do other than walking in and try giving the much hyped adaptation of the stale soup of literature that Chetan Bhagat spewed into the society in the form of the written word a shot. I had the misfortune of sitting through the movie 3 Idiots, with all it's ballyhoo, lock, stock and barrel. The film, contrary to my initial expectations, was terrible, it really was. Every film is spawned by a central theme, an idea it tries to convey. In this film, it was the oppressively pungent atmosphere of an engineering college, amusingly christened, the Imperial College of Engineering. Not a very bad central idea, quite a good one and will make a brilliant movie, if only it was executed properly. It was this execution, unfortunately, that made this movie so intolerably abysmal. For starters, it was a heinous idealisation of an engineering college, with the stereotypical absent-minded professor who is also, incidentally, a ruthless jerk, running the place. Ironically, he was the only lovable character in a world of over-acting self-righteous pin heads the movie seems to be a part of. The other characters were just around to nod their heads to the all perfect Aamir Khan, who has it all figured that education is all about getting drunk and marking territory in teachers' houses, feline style, and if the professor gets angry because a drunken idiot is passing water in his hallway, he's a tyrant. Besides such fallacies and moral inconsistencies, the film has little to offer apart from Aamir Khan ranting on about why he's right and everyone else is wrong. The humour, something I've heard is rib-tickling, is actually stale, recycled and let's face it, it's simply not funny if you know the punchline even before it is crassly delivered by first-rate actors who for some unseen reason chose to parody themselves instead. The acting was a celebration of mediocrity; an unfortunate turn of events because even after a star studded cast and a sky high budget, wooden expressions on Aamir Khan's face is not the expected outcome. All he ever did was act like he was on dope, with a floating far away expression on his face, something to make Orlando Bloom proud. Most of the scenes were awfully artificial, it was almost like the director got his actors sloshed, let the cameras roll and simply hoped for the best. The script was shoddy, unplanned and plot twists included in the last minute for convenience were jarringly apparent. The ending was as far-fetched as Bollywood could make it and it was insulting to the viewer's intelligence that those scenes were actually intended to be taken seriously. At the end of the day, the film was unfinished, half-baked and incomplete, it was an idea that would have been more appealing if left an idea. Frankly, aall was not vell.

Art

2010-01-03T22:28:00.001+05:30

I was pondering the other day, what exactly is art? Is it the depiction, in any chosen medium, of any moment? An idea? Perhaps it is the act of palpating whatever the artist was inspired from? We will never have a concrete idea of what exactly art is. It is a hydra, whose nine heads grow into nine more heads every time one head is cut off. It is constant, it is ever changing, it evolves with the human mind, it is tangible because it is abstract. It is the most incomprehensible achievement of mankind, where a world of energy is put into something completely unnecessary, at least from an evolutionary point of view. It is not needed for survival, yet how did it become what it is today? It has grown with mankind, it has personalities of it's own; personalities shaped and chiselled by minds, millions of them, into what pleases something so mundane and physical as the senses we possess. Be it the subtle notes of Lacrimosa that melts a stone to tears or the magnetic attraction of the Mona Lisa, virtually nothing, in it's basest form, and somehow fascinates the human imagination into seeing a woman smile; just a very normal day-to-day affair, a mere smile, and it has captured millions of eyes, hearts and most importantly, the enigmatic fascination and attraction of brilliant minds. We try to make sense of the world around us. We can't live without this marvellous trait, so necessary for survival, that we have it hard-wired into our brains. This is simply the only way in which we can see our surroundings; we need the world to make sense, we want order, a pattern we can relate to, a pattern that we need to find, or invent, the case is purely subjective, and applaud ourselves for looking at things that never possibly are. We crave the satisfaction of understanding or recognising something as familiar; we bask in the happiness of the known, one of the prime reasons for this particular habit of the human race. So, a mere sheet of canvas with organic pigment dabbed on it strategically finds itself ogled at by thousands who never seem to get enough of it because it resembles something we know, something like a woman smile, a scenery of lush wilderness, a sight that invokes feelings of tranquility in us. This is art. It can never be explained in a sentence. The more we try to define this, the more abstract it gets. It is an institution that relies solely on how one can look at things. It is the only aspect if the human mind where everyone is right, everyone is wrong. It encompasses everyting our mind can conjure, a fully formed kinesthetic in one's own head to the most intangible swirl of colours that show nothing and yet make you feel the subject inside you rather than show. We have made art grow with us, from the simple cave drawings to today's impressionist abstractism, art matured under the nurturing care of the human mind. It blossomed, grew into a butterfly but never cocooned, it was always on the upper trend, purely because we call it upper trend. Art has no direction, no depictions of the woolly mammoth in the caves of Europe are bested by the Last Supper, considered the pinnacle of refined, "civilised" renaissance art. We call ourselves as most evolved, we call an oddly shaped rock aesthetic; we are, because the world is, which in turn is because we are. Similarly art is, because we are, we are because world is, art is because world is and we are because art is. Art can never exist on it's own, it needs us, we need art, as it is the only medium of interaction with our environment. But then, it is only in our head that we communicate with our universe. Objectively, the universe is nothing but fragments of a one-time explosion, we, nothing but a mere accident. But through the lenses of art, we see a different world, a world that nurtures us, cherishes our existence, where we matter, where we are not just insignificant clots of space junk stuck in a moderate planet. This is because we see ourselves that way. This is the way we create art, that is the way we are created. We adore ourselves, we need art to adore ourselves, we adoreart. We are art.

The Lost Book

2010-01-02T21:10:00.001+05:30

I inflicted a certain book by a certain author upon yours truly. Said book was The Lost Symbol by the lost Dan Brown. I understand completely that he has done lots of research before writing a piece of fiction as fit to hold water as Labsman Filter Paper TM, whose review is under serious consideration and may feature in consequent posts, but frankly, I'd be more delighted reading those research papers as they were, rather than reading it with a bunch of colourless characters appended as footnotes, shamelessly parading themselves openly inviting Mexican-born Hollywood directors to make a flimsier movie out of it. The book pans out to a five hundred odd pages, every chapter ending with cliched cliff-hangers that made no sense, much like the science that backed his research. The plot revolves around the unrealistic Robert Langdon, a Harvard symbologist who's perfect in everyway, thank you very much. He's a stud, with eidetic memory, a perfect physique, a deep rich voice and is also (Drum roll), a professor(Tada! Applause). Give him a pair of wings and X-Ray vision and voila, Superman's second cousin stepped out of his closet and is out to save the world from evil villains trying to take over the world with the help of a pyramid and objects of similar consequence. The other characters are equally idealised, and I've noticed this with every single book of his, there's always a female, single, eligible and voluptuous, (did I mention superhumanly qualified in their respective fields?) and always around Langdon, dewy and wide-eyed, as he lectures her on abstract symbols and answering questions no one asked. The plot in itself is tiringly predictable, with Langdon and his trusted femme-fatale side-kick running from the security agency of whichever country they step on, an old trusted friend of Langdon thrown in to answer a bunch of more questions and also briefly provide sanctuary for these fugitives even though the charges against them make no sense. The whole running from the government routine, I trust, is a cheap ploy to make the story seem racy and fast-paced. It was interesting in the first book, little so in the second, and downright annoying now. One can't hope to come up with a new novel by just changing the locations and the names of the bad guys. The only change between his previous works involving Langdon and this one is that there's no insane plot twist at the end that would make you go rolling your eyes saying, "Not again". Anyway, Brown delves in the world of the Freemasons, a deeply secretive and childish little club that no one cares about, other than deluded conspiracy theorists who love glorifying small tunneling mammals to mountains. The book also dabbles with Noetic science, as mainstream as alchemy and astrology, among other things. It also talks about providing concrete answers to the most fundamental of questions that have plagued humanity since he started walking upright, ending the book providing vague metaphorical references and rhetoric, something we already know.(Hello? 42 is more definite an answer to life, the universe and everything). I don't blame him for not knowing the ultimate truth, but the least he can do is not jump around claiming to know everything.(By the way, if the secret answer is coded so well that only the best and the brightest can decipher, how did Dan Brown do it?). In the end, The Lost Symbol is just literary evangelism trying earnestly to portray religion as a scientific method, fooling no one whose I.Q is greater than that of a dying jellyfish. On the whole, it's just another hollywood style suspense thriller manufactured by people whose only talent is cheap showmanship aimed at wooing the obese, gullible Joe American.

Annual Melancholy

2009-12-31T16:14:00.003+05:30

Ah.. Another year just whooshes out of our hands, as we gear up to face the heat of another one, hopefully not as forgettable(purely subjective) as this one. Being the much celebrated fan of desultory lists that I am, I propose to lay down a certain set of events that have shaped my attitude on life, the universe and everything, whipping me up as a more concrete and credible cynic than I was previously. Let's begin, at the beginning.

* The most unmemorable New year's eve honked my nose and poked me in the eye on 31's December 2008. After politely severing myself from the tripe of a new year's party that the clods in my block of flats put together, with as much courtesy as I could feign, I braced myself to face the fateful evening with literally nothing to do. Being the heart and soul of any party that I am (to be read in a scathingly sarcastic tone), this predicament made me take a sharp breath in and snort at the possibility of not being tormented by dunces who prance around with a full bladder, claiming that's their move, and keep asking me why I don't smile often or laugh at their lifeless punchlines at the end of inane drivel they call jokes. Anyway, even though I was away from such high-spirited magical pony-riding clotheads, my spirits did little to lift itself as I morosely gazed out to Chennai's lifeless skyline from my terrace.

* As I convinced myself that the next semester would be better than the previous, my tactics of self-delusion were shattered as a certain gentleman(name not divulged for obvious reasons;actually if you're in my department, you'll know anyway) strutted into our classroom. Apart from staying married to a 70's style projector and pointing fingers at it strategically to impede ideal viewing, he(or she? in tone with said teacher's anonymity, the gender has been marginally obscured, if you're smart, you'll figure it out, if not, you'll figure it out anyway) did nothing to lift our spirits. His classes were ideal for solving crossword puzzles, something I would regret doing a few months later, June, to be precise, and general birdwatching from the vantage point my seat in class offered. The classes were more or less the reason I began to love life as much as I do now (this too, to be read in a scathingly sarcastic tone)

* As that term ended, I promised myself that the ensuing summer would be most idyllic and uneventful. Well, you want one, but you get another. I was coerced into a project at IIT, and shuttling between here and there was a most harrowing experience. Not because, the commute was long, not because we had to work, but because it was like rubbing in the fact that I could have got into this place if only I studied harder. Moreover, I hated to be reminded of the fact that how a campus can be if it's located at the right place. With spotted deer grazing on one side and huge trees dotting the landscape, it was a stark contrast to my campus with dusty heatwaves, prickly semi-arid flora and a unique assortment of blood-thirsty cattle. As much as cows are revered in Hinduism and held in high regard, as far as I'm concerned, cows reek. They are on the top of my list of pests to be exterminated when I take over the world followed by the afore-mentioned professor and a couple more, just for kicks. It wasn't all bad either. Trips to IIT spawned a great deal of ingenious ideas like sniping sitting on an elephant in IIT, and many more. Acquaintance with a professor who wasn't mid-bogglingly dense was an added perk, a rare phenomenon on this side of the world. This made me realise you don't get what you want, hell, you never do. Life stinks.

* A new term, a new hostel, a new room, the same old idiots. This was the running tagline of the new term. My room number being 42 did little to lift my spirits, the hostel building grimly reminded us all of Auschwitz. Barely in the campus, I unscrupulously skived off classes for apparently no reason at all, was at home more than I was in the college. With the swine-flu scares and what-not, it turned out to be quite eventful, as teachers mercilessly appended an endless list of 'a's against my name in the attendance register. As the term drew to a close, I was frequently spotted hitting myself in the head for my past indulgences, dreading the inevitable. Anyway, at the end of the day, the inevitable never happened(irony noted). Moral of the story: My actions have no consequences, I'm that unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

* After pestering my parents for nearly a year, I finally got myself a laptop that wouldn't fry itself trying to add two and two. Noting that my previous laptop was an elaborate contraption involving a glorified calculator and a broken typewriter, it was a giant leap forward. But I still found reason to be unhappy, the reason being, laptop: too little, too late. With hardly a week to spare before my exams, a laptop was the first thing on my list of artifacts designed to wreck my grades. With a great deal of abstinence, I denied myself the temporal pleasures of gaming by stripping my laptop completely of all things worthwhile having. Bereft of entertainment and biting my fingers off for want of a better job to do, I truly appreciated the meaning of the phrase, 'A slip between the cup and the lip'.

Finally, as this year draws to a close, I again find myself with nothing to do, the same old terrace, same old skyline. The same old apes in my block have organised another celebration of mediocrity, cheap street music and second rate events to please no one.

P.S: If I have missed anymore depressing events, feel free to remind me in the comments section as we celebrate another year in the era of utter pointlessness.

A Planet's Plea

2009-12-02T11:42:00.006+05:30

I don't know why I'm thinking so much these days, I think it's got to do with all the free time, you know, with this being holidays and all. Anyway, what has been plaguing my mind is the incessant talk about climate change. I know there are many heated emotions involved when it comes to being eco-friendly and all that, but I wanted to say this anyway. What do we know about global-warming? What do we know about weather patterns? How can we decide the cause of climate change when there are close to a million variables involved? We have no way of making sure why our planet is getting warmer. All we do know is that the earth is never stable. It is always changing. The whole universe is a giant cosmic symphony in dynamic equilibrium. There is no reason for the earth to be otherwise. We've had ice ages, four of therm huge, in the past, we've also had intensely warm periods in between. Antarctica was a lush temperate haven once, it was still close to the poles then. Why is it a frozen desert today? We've had mass extinctions, nearly ninety five percent of all species disappeared at the end of the Permian era. It was the worst mass extinction till date, and there is no reason why another one shouldn't happen. Whatever happens, unless the sun dies, or perhaps even then, life will go on. It is resilient. It can adapt, it can evolve. It never stays the same. We've been in this grand scheme of things for a mere wink of a few thousand years. How can we know the sheer magnitude of this ever-mutating planet of ours? We might be in the middle of a mass extinction ourselves, we might survive, we might not. Most probably we will survive, advancing sea levels are the least of our problems. The maximum we lose is a chunk of land creating space shortages throughout. We perhaps might not have vast open spaces, but we'll still survive in a dense closely packed society that's busy and crowded to the point of choking. We already live in such an environment, and we call it the triumph of civilisation, a metropolis. Large cities symbolise everything that will remain under such an event. We already are fascinated by busy roads and glittering skylines, we'd hardly know the difference. It would just seem like a leap in the rate of urbanisation. One might ask, what about agriculture, we'd need vast open spaces for agriculture, I'll tell you, you underestimate human ingenuity. The Japanese are already farming on their roofs, we could do the same. The Japanese economic miracle will be repeated in every country. If you look at it from that angle, it is not all that apocalyptic after all. But then, we have no idea how the earth reacts to the smallest of changes that appear seemingly insignificant. The outcomes have not always been good though. Let me go back to the most favourite example of paleontologists worldwide to show how bad things can go. First, a large meteorite crashed onto Siberian flat lands. This would no doubt kill most life in that region and some around a large radius through pyroplastic fumes and some more in the nuclear winter that follows. This would be one of the day to day mass extinctions like the infamous K-T extinction that killed terrestrial and aquatic dinosaurs. Things would have normalised in a few years or so, with a lacuna of life left behind filled almost immediately with new forms of life. But things didn't end there, Siberia happened to be a weakness in the earth's crust and the meteorite made it a lava trap. One would have seen vast curtains of fire shooting out for nearly as far as the eye can see. Something like Mordor in the LOTR films. Things would have heated up unimaginably at ground zero, obviously, and it would have been a hell in full swing for life in and around Siberia. Besides being instantaneously fried, evaporated, cooked and burnt at the same time, the plumes of dust would have cooled the earth drastically killing off cold-blooded creatures everywhere except near the equator and a radius of tolerant temperatures around Siberia itself. This nuclear winter lasted a tad longer than a normal meteorite crash and because of the volcanic traps, tonnes of carbon-di-oxide were pumped into the atmosphere. By the end of the nuclear winter that followed, which was after a few decades from the impact itself, nearly three percent of the earth's atmosphere was carbon-di-oxide. This would raise global temperatures by five to six degrees celsius. This is almost fatal for every living thing, but not nearly enough to kill almost every form of life. But it was enough to warm up the seas. The oceans then were a minefield of frozen methane, anaerobic life-forms rules the deep seas. The methane was almost instantaneously frozen due to the depth and vast quantities of this toxic gas lay frozen underneath. As the waters warmed up, these glaciers began to thaw, releasing tonnes of methane into the atmosphere. Methane as we know is twice as effective at green housing radiation as carbon-di-oxide is, and this raised temperatures even further, the last nail in life's coffin, temperatures shot up to nearly seventy degrees celsius in some parts of the planet. One now understands the domino effect that brought a huge cataclysm that almost wiped out life from the planet. But there's nothing we can do about it. If the whole planet burns, we can we go? It is indeed an unsettling thought, but we need to accept the fact that things like these happen all the time. There have been dozens of mass extinctions in the past and the one that might be happening now is no exception. It need never be a result of human activity. We know that only 0.035% of the atmosphere is CO2, and of late. it has risen to about 0.04%. This change is hardly enough to change global temperatures gathering from what we know. But there are plenty of other factors involved. The tilt in the axis is proposed to be the reason for the ice ages and the warmer periods. We can never really find out. The Suns orbit also plays a part, but we don't know what part. It is all really hazy as to why our temperatures are rising, if at all they are, and they need to rise uniformly. Many countries like Iceland have actually cooled. Greenland's melting, So is Western Antarctica, but Eastern Antarctican ice shelves are actually thickening. So global warming is not global in it's literal sense. Even the rate at which it rises shows no discernible pattern, some regions heating up faster than others. This is not characteristic of the greenhouse effect. Winds distribute CO2 concentrations more or less equally on a macroscopic scale and yet changes are visible even over broad vast regions. What we take are small scale readings and average them out but what we really need is a temperature gradient. Even if we establish that the earth is, on a broad scale, warming up, we don't know how much of it is human activity. We have previously tried to rectify changes in the environment, things have only ended in disaster. For example, take the Masai Mara in Southern Africa. Elephant and rhino preservation centres were established. Elephants thrived, rhinos did not. Why? Because both the species were kept in such close proximity that they started competing with each other for resources, elephants were successful, rhinos were not. Moreover, indigenous elephant populations were nearly wiped out due to hunting and local clashes before the park was established, and elephants from other parts of Africa were let loose, most of them young ones of more or less the same age. Elephant society is complex, very comparable to ours, and we did not understand this fact. This made these young elephants grow without a firm check from the other big elephants, which were all killed for ivory, and these adolescents grew into aggressive, bullying males that harassed females and other animals. One of these other animals was the rhino. These animals systematically hunted down the rhinos, reducing their populations even further. This problem was resolved later by importing gigantic tuskers, the old experienced ones, that would act as a stopper to these boisterous out of control adolescents. This problem, however, was resolved so late that rhino conservation is an optimist's dream today. What would have been a normal extiction was just accelerated by human intervention. Who knows, the rhinos might have bounced back if we hadn't intervened. We think preservation is maintaining status quo. We feel that cordoning off lands will stop them from dying out. What we fail to realise is that species disappear all the time, only to be replaced by new ones. We need to understand something before we declare it's broken and try to fix it. I'm saying all this because we shouldn't jump to conclusions about our planet. It is complex, dynamic and chaotic. What we do today will have huge consequences tomorrow. I read something about covering glaciers with a mirror-like material to reflect the sun's rays. I'm very earnest when I say, please don't do anything like it, it'll most probably end in disaster. We have no way of knowing what might happen to a planet that reflects most of the heat back into space. The stakes are very high this time, our survival is questioned, and the best thing to do is let the earth do it's job. Only nature can do it's job the best. Let the world run like it always has, let us bother, like every other life form, about changing ourselves to fit into our surroundings. The other way round only brings about catastrophe. If left to itself, we at least have a chance of survival. It's the only planet we've got, please don't mess with it. It'll spell doom if we don't know what we're doing and nine times out of ten, we don't. Leave the planet alone.

Mein Kampf in reading Mein Kampf

2009-11-27T12:39:00.009+05:30

No matter how much people reel and gag when you say you haven't read any of the classics, just keep in mind, classics are books everyone appreciates, but no one reads. I realised that when I tried reading what the most celebrated mass murderer of all time called his autobiography. Let me be frank, it was a tad more interesting than trying to see wallpaper dry. He goes on and on about things he hates like the communists, Jews, the Austrians, Jews, the Poles, Jews, the French, Jews, etc. Much as I admire his strong will of character in hating entire communities to the point of saying we'd be better off with millions dead, there must be a rational reason behind such animosity. His chapters about the commies, as they're affectionately called in the West, are slightly short of shockingly abusive. Not that I'm particularly fond of communism, in fact, I'm as hard lined against that system as any next door chap, I have my reasons for hating communism, them being, to the best of my knowledge, pretty rational. But what Hitler does here is that he completely demonises communism, calls it a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world, and glorifies them as manipulative megalomaniacs when they're just deluded simpletons who believe what they're doing is good for the society. He provides no concrete reason as to why communism wouldn't work, he never tackled the problem scientifically, pointing out the flaws in that form of society, but merely used the strongest words in the German vocabulary to mention how base communism is, and so elaborately does he punch in negative adjectives, that it pans out at least a dozen chapters in his, well, let's call it a book. His fractiously dogmatic views over anything even remotely non-German is quite tiresome, his irrationality over idealising things into pure good and quintessentially evil is even more trying. He's even more prejudiced when it comes to the Jews. Much as they, as I would understand, would provoke jealousy in the poorer masses owing to their success in finance and banking, it is no reason to kill them off. It sounds ridiculous when he says, kill the Jews, and create employment. By that logic, anyone could shoot all poor people to eliminate poverty. Slum clearances in the third world would be a breeze. All one has to do is set fire to one. It clearly is not a practical solution to handle the great depression. Not that the other countries handled it well either, Russia was immune to everything external due to its closed doors policy, USA was the worst affected, Britain and France, together, had half the world under their direct control to offload their debts onto. The colonies were the worst affected, but who'd know the difference if there's a drought in the Sahara? All I'm saying is that electing a hard-right mentally disturbed radical with an out-rightly professed controversial racial policy was the stupidest thing the Germans ever did, after signing the treaty of Versailles. His policy of employment for men alone is even more laughable. His reason for the Great Depression was that women are given lower salaries than men for equal work, which made large companies prefer women over men for employment thereby reducing the average income of the economy. This, he says, can be avoided by denying the woman's right to work. The concept of equal wages for equal work didn't enter the darkest corners of his scary mind. One couldn't blame his time for his views; the concept of gender equality was very much in vogue in the other western nations in the twenties. His foreign policy was the only acceptable idea of his, something that Germany should have done in 1900. Challenging the then superpower was something that Hitler believed as foolish and he sounds most earnest and sensible when he says one shouldn't overtly oppose the hegemony of a country that rules the world, but ally oneself with it. It was a good idea, Germany would have played the role Japan and near the thirties USA played. Such a Germany would never have irked the British and the French Empire, it would never have united the two most powerful countries in the world in an alliance against a country that is barely a century old. If only Bismarck thought the same way, we'd never have the world wars and well, who knows, we'd be living in a completely different world. His policy of British appeasement, we do know it was mutual, in the early thirties and at the same time driving a wedge between Britain and France was a masterstroke when it comes to stragteic diplomacy. He managed to stall a war, though with a lot of effort and foolish patience from other world leaders, that was unavoidable for nearly ten years. As much as these achievements may be, he was not and will never be regarded in the future as an able and diplomatic ruler and statesman. However efficient he may be at the art of war, peacetime government is played by different rules, and he would be clearly inept at handling a peaceful Germany that is split asunder and defenceless against heavyweights like Britain and France and at the same time battling the biggest economic crisis known to man that originated from the other side of the pond without a single colony to push deficits onto. I firmly believe, to this day, he'd be better off in the German army as a mere General or a Lieutenant than in a podium spreading dangerous ideas onto the impressionable. That way, Germany would have gained a valuable soldier and the world would have done without the horrors of holocaust. People with such extreme views are very dangerous and should never be given power. Throughout history, extremism and chauvinism of any kind has lead to nothing but bloodshed, one could quote numerous examples right from the christian crusades to the modern jihad. The funnier part is, I read the English translation, written by an Englishman, and therefore, you can expect France to take the flak for Germany's errant militaristic expansionism. According to that gentleman, France was the reason Germany felt so insulted and threatened after the First World War; France sought the independence of Catholic Rhineland and Bavaria to form a Catholic block from France to Austria dismembering Germany to counter British influence in Europe, as if European politics of the twentieth century was dictated by religion. As absurd as that notion sounds, it also reflects on the British view of events before the war.
I know I don't have to prove that his methods were flawed, it's just that it really astounds me as to just around half a century ago, people didn't know it was wrong to kill six million Jews just because they were all over the place. Trust me, as an Indian, I know how it is when people are all over the place. Anyway,the book was rather long and the narrative anaesthetic, but it is the most illuminating book from that period. It is one of the most informative books I've read. He provides a glimpse of the inter-war period like no one else; the first person view of a man-made international calamity is the best window one can look into for unadulterated information. It is not a book you read to while away time. Bottom-line, it's as descriptive as a history textbook but quite sadly, only just as interesting.

Three Little Pigs and many, many more

2009-08-14T17:05:00.007+05:30

Actually, I've hardly been in Trichy since this term's started. I arrived a few days late, skived of a few more days two weeks later, and the same week, relief was brought about by a rather unexpected source of retribution on humanity. Yes, the pig has struck again, this time, with a vengeance. After starting rumours about suspected cases in college, my friend and I, I wouldn't divulge his name for security reasons, but you can read what he's got to say here, successfully started a wildfire, which successively took a more tangible form after every tree it consumed in its wake. Initially, we gave an anonymous Joe the dreaded swine flu, hoping the details would whip itself into shape, and funnily enough, we received the same rumour back again, only that our little anonymous friend now had a name, a year and his hostel mentioned. This had, sort of, exceeded our expectations, with wicked smiles of glee and lines from Shakespeare (the one about mischief being afoot and taking the course it wilts blah blah) being quoted every time someone mentioned the disease. So, panic spread, and one by one, everyone cleared the asylum, leaving the place to gather dust for the weekend. Classes got cancelled in waves of mass paranoia, with professors advising us to stay put in our rooms, words were hardly heeded to and we started sashaying about the campus celebrating the new found freedom, with frequent toasts to the lovable pig, our little sheep in wolf's clothing. However we later took a more serious stance and took off that evening, welcoming an extended weekend, a gift from the Swine God. Chennai greeted us with more paranoid losers, many wearing green underwear across their faces to protect themselves from God knows what (it'll get you anyway if it wants to, underpants or no underpants, by the way, get a life...); a meagre source of comic relief in these hard times. Anyway, I headed home with high hopes on my weekend, only to be crushed by the sensationalist harpies fluttering about in the halls of mass media, with over the top coverage and expressions of pretend seriousness on the anchors' botox stuffed faces. I know have been exiled indoors, but on the bright side, I'm at least home, away from the Sahara of college life, where clean rooms, cleaner bathrooms and a steaming cup of tea await me.

On Car-jacking, among other things...

2009-07-06T18:07:00.006+05:30

There have been sightings of a huge bighead and a peaky stick figure with a weird thingy protruding from behind his right ear bumbling along on the roads of IIT Madras today after a long time. We were finally back to work again on our sorry excuse for a project for the week. After averaging barely two or three days a week schedule, it seemed to us all that the project was well in its way down the drain, especially after being lauded for the enthusiasm we showed (or not) by our either nice and naive or sensible and sarcastic professor. His comments did spark a new fervour in our otherwise sludgy and stagnated efforts. We entered into prolonged debates and discussions telling each other why it could not be done that way and why it was a roundabout waste of time. Moreover, we also did delve into the depths of our minds to tell whether our professor meant his compliments or not, a topic still on the table on grounds of a lack of conclusive evidence towards either possibility. Well, after weeks of ardent procrastination and a firm lack of interest, we had come to the conclusion that we had to do something about our project and that the moment was ripe to take the next step. It was at this juncture that we actually got around to doing something. After futile flounces in the steaming bowels of Richie Street, we finally bought a programmer that simply refused to work. Ever since, my project at IIT has been inching forwards showing vague signs of bleak progress. It was time my ever so close acquaintance and I put our heads together and came up with a list of things to do before we leave for our shantytown in Trichy. We did come up with a most elegant to-do list ranging from very novel and ingenious ideas like sniping from atop the elephant at Gajendra Circle to downright suicidal schemes like beleaguering our professor for a treat at Le Royal Meridian. More ludicrous ideas like finishing the project also came to mind, but was promptly rejected after deep hindsight. We did come up with a heavily orchestrated plan of novel car-jacking. Being more compact physically, my diminutive partner would distract the unsuspecting driver with neat tricks involving the common thumb detachment illusion, whilst I, more physically endowed, would wrest the car from the victim’s control. My partner, then, would feign protest and accidentally on purpose hit the accelerator and we zoom effortlessly to our desired location. Another attempt at tomfoolery involved poking our unpleasant noses into a documentary shot within the campus for a hitherto unknown reason. We would casually walk past the camera doing the cleverest of things like ballet dancing, acting drunk or slightly more subtle acts involving a foolish smile and a pretend maturity level of a two year old. Even digestive distress was on the agenda. Anyway, a thorough thesis on the subject will be put up after more meetings with my colleague and co-non-worker Pramod Emjay (kindly ask him what Emjay means if you’d love to see the imp go ballistic)

Flab, Food and NITT

2009-07-02T17:37:00.003+05:30

As most of you who know me are aware, I’m chubby……. Okay really chubby… Fine, I can power New York City for a day if I start working out. So people around me thought something had to be done. After much nagging, wailing and gnashing of teeth, it was decided that our refrigerator is to be emptied of all things edible and replaced with stuff they feed sick antelopes in poorly maintained zoos. So, even I’ve been wondering, trying to rationalise the fact, breaking my head over how I ended up here in the first place. I’ve arrived at two main conclusions, the reasons for such a predicament. First of all, one must understand the laws of thermodynamics. Energy is conserved. And I’ve been conserving mine for the past nineteen years. As my high school teacher so prudently put it, “I think twice before lifting a finger”. Second of all, one must appreciate the importance of quality over quantity. Eat less, eat rich, that’s what I do. Even if it is a diminutive dessert, nothing short of extra sweet, extra creamy chocolate mousse (drool, drool...). Lunch would be just a single butter grilled sandwich but with mayonnaise dip seasoned with oregano and finely chopped mushrooms, for a dash of taste, coupled with some chips. So volume wise, it might not be much, but honestly, quality sits on the summit on this one. We buy so much cheese at home, on my recommendations, of course, that if we stopped right now, parts of Europe would enter a steeper recession. It’s a nice feeling you get when you know you’re propping an entire trade bloc’s economy up. Anyway, a monumental, apocalyptic, calamity has befallen yours truly; an ugly head in the shape of an empty fridge has shown up, infesting my household like a treacherous parasite. This catastrophic monstrosity of extreme proportions, popularly known as a diet, a will imposed upon me, was quite unflattering, frankly. Anyway, life must go on and therefore I still actively pursue my interests, for the most part, masterly indolence, chocolate mousse or not. As a result, I’ve managed to put on a few more pounds, partly because I deposit myself on a chair in front of my computer and more so because I’m at home. It’s kind of a jinx, really. Stay at home, I inflate ever so gradually, but surely, steadily. In fact, I’d genuinely like to find the reason behind such an irrational location dependent metabolism. As I went scouring for answers, the answer dawned upon me. While at home, I eat food, well, at least I’ve been brought up to believe as such, I eat nothing of that kind at college. We’re fed with the cheap quality fodder while the alfalfa goes to the numerous bovine friends that occupy our lands ever so smugly. Seriously, they have more freedom than we do. The onerous cows have become so much a part of our lives that you’ll get used to seeing the wretched beasts ambling along our corridors with trails of proof that they took the road not taken. Anyway, north would be north again, when I step into college for at least another week or two of living off my fat reserves, which ought to whip me back to some degree of respectable shape.

P.S. For effective slimming solutions, visit NITT, Tanjore Main Road,
National Highway 67,Tiruchirappalli - 620015,Tamil Nadu, India.
Lose 15lbs in a week or get your money back. **

**Conditions Applied.

Me, Myself and My Holiday

2009-05-13T11:43:00.011+05:30

I got out to visit a sunny afternoon, with the sun setting the place ablaze and with the sweltering heat oppressing the inhabitants, the people walking about were not amused. The humidity didn't help either. With tempers and temperatures running high, the not so cheerful crowd went about their business with the usual enthusiasm of a malnourished cow, a pretty common sight on the country's roads considering the excellent belief that cattle can run amok, with no masters, a jewel in the spirit of India's crown. Apart from the fact that the state we stay in has two governments alternating every four years, with each progressively worse than the other and their valuable contributions when it comes to general deterioration of imaginary infrastructure are for sure not worth mentioning, we also have issues to occupy our minds like general disregard for traffic rules and further indifference for all property public. So, digressing from there with much difficulty, I wanted to say that I finally came home(For those not in the know, I'm from Chennai, previously Madras, which is an urban misfortune in South India), transported from one blast furnace to another, greeting the gush of white hot wind on my face. Every year, academic institutions, at least for now, have the last shred of humanity left that makes them feel that it is too inhuman to torture the students in the peak of summer. So I have two months of pure inactivity ahead of me, something to celebrate, the only oasis in the desert of college life. My itinerary (Thank you, Arun Ram) includes eat, sleep, eat, sleep and a few creature comforts like eating and sleeping all day long. Apart from my packed schedule for the day, I also have tonnes of stuff to catch up on. Parental pressure made yours truly apply for a project, hoping I wouldn't get any, and God's way of answering my prayers was doing the exact opposite of what I wanted him to do. Sure enough, I got a project, something I wouldn't have done even if I approached myself for a project, because my academic records are sure as hell not worth mentioning in the hall of fame. As unlikely as that event was, I now need to potter around at IIT madras, which I'm told is a real college unlike mine, as NITT was actually started off as a parody of government-run schools. Funnily enough, no one got the joke, the place actually got pretty famous and here I am, ranting about the inside story to anyone who cares to listen. Anyway, my schedule of much deserved lolling around has been cut short by a month and I wouldn't say I'm exactly happy about it. Apart from that, these few months will turn out to be as uneventful as possible, much to my taste, or at least I'll make sure it is. You would understand if you were as big a sloth as I am. So, as I was saying, the project might have been a blip in the flawless landscape of my dream holiday, but I'd like to see the glass half full and say I have one and a half months to kill. My tropical adventure at home would generally begin with my finger casually flicking my air-conditioner on, doing the same to my PC, and typing inane claptrap flitting around across my head, playing some games, not the racy action type, but the laid back strategy games that take hours or even days to finish, and general indolence on my couch in front the TV flicking through channels pointlessly. Now that you have the general picture, Do the same thing for the next ninety or so days, slow down time till it inches away letting you savour and revel in every moment that makes you do nothing and you have Me, Myself and My Holiday.

Induced Insomnia

2009-02-26T20:34:00.025+05:30

It was around eleven at night and the bus was getting uncomfortably jumpy as the driver wound his way through the quagmire we called a road. Things seemed pretty usual when the queer chap in front of me pushed his seat back so low he could see right into my nostrils. Being cooped up in what passed of as a seat with hardly any leg space was the least of my problems, and all hope failed when the idiot box, (courtesy GB Shaw) turned itself on for a nighmarishly long session of offensive, pungent performances of action and drama with extreme tomfoolery for comic relief that was a commercial flick a.k.a masala movie. Life has one of the most curious ways of shoving dirt on your face, and obeying this rule, it happened to be a Vijay film. Now, I have no idea what the name of the film was(it doesn't matter anyway, I mean they're all the same in the first place), but I do know that it was one of the worst three hours of my life. Let me put it this way, I would prefer being hit on the nose by a speeding truck than watch this catastrophe of a film any day. Since the luxurious extravagance of choice wasn't on the table for me to take, I had to endure, and I have this nice habit of mine. When I'm in a pickle, I start to go along for the ride. That was mistake number two, mistake number one being born into a world with commercial flicks in it. So, I could have just dozed off in an uncomfortable stupor, but no, I had to see the film, such were the vagaries of the human mind, it can be betrayingly suicidal. It was the protagonist's introduction, a really agonising entrance of a remotely humanoid primate into the scene with a schizophrenic mob crying his disappointingly common name out loud. He then got around to beat bunch of no good thugs, who though armed to the teeth, saw fit to just prance around the hero in a menacing yet comical fashion. The hero, on the other hand, just armed with his bare fists, flies around defying all laws of physics our scientists painstakingly discovered and pieced together. He punches thin air surrounding our menacing thugs and yet they magically get hurt and fly backwards with an expression that reminds you of something unpleasant stuck beneath your nose. Once he was done beating them up, it was time for some song and dance, with over the top visuals of the hero doing nothing but shake his leg to intolerably painful noise dubbed music. He now has another bunch of schizophrenic morons surrounding him, this time, they don't jump around threateningly, but adopt a more monkey see monkey do approach, doing exactly what the hero does, only twice as hilariously. By now, the hero finished his dance sequence and a hideously unattractive woman, ugly as sin, her clothing or lack of thereof showing extreme penury, walks in with all eyes upon her. She happens, contradictory to our first impressions, to be an extremely rich man's spoilt daughter whose profession is conveniently and sufficiently arbitrary. All we know is that he also has political connections, which would come in handy in hiring more goondas to beat the hero up later in the film. She's then offended by a passerby for looking at her for longer than usual in a funny way. The hero comes to her rescue and beats the poor bloke up for the crime of seeing that repulsive woman. Seeing this act of chivalry, she inexplicably falls in love with him and they get transported to exotic locations where they dance and make a fool of themselves. This moroseness, while standalone would be a shining beacon for mediaeval torture, wasn't quite enough apparently and the director feels the audience haven't got the taste of real pain yet, and another character, completely unrelated to the non-existent plot pops up unleashing horror in the name of humour. The music didn't help either and then, suddenly, as proof that goodness still exists in the world, everything stops, including the bus, in a derelict location with cheap restaurants and shabby stalls playing worse music. The bus waited there for a good fifteen minutes, the passengers all got recharged to see the next half of the film. By then, the road got even worse, at any point of time, only one of the wheels on our bus touched the ground, the rest were precariously swaying in mid-air, groping for something solid to grip on to. Joe-Onlooker would have been pretty amused seeing a bus gallop, if only he sat inside the damn thing, he would know the agony of rattling bones and bad cinema. With not so smooth drops and sky high G-forces acting on the body, I began to feel nauseated, not wholly independent of the hero's dressing sense for the song sequences. I mean, who wouldn't feel queasy after seeing the hero in green trousers and purple shades? By then, the wonders of sleep overwhelmed me and I gradually closed my sore eyes for a much needed snooze. But thing's never are so simple in life and we don't always have a happily ever after. We then hit a traffic jam, a fact that I knew because of the buss' uncomfortable stillness and the putrid smell of half burnt diesel. We waited for another hour in this hellhole, apparently the stretch of road was being mended, something that's been going on for quite sometime now (God knows when it'll be done) and slowly we start inching forwards. The passengers started losing patience by then, and I started losing faith in all that was good in the world. Finally we came out of the jam and I started feeling drowsy again. Even before I could close my eyes, the bus came to a screeching halt. We all had to get down, we had arrived in Chennai, and I did that without an ounce of sleep. With eyes all puffy and red, a sleep deprived version of me got down, furious and irritable, to face an all new day.

The Foxed Crow

2008-11-23T15:01:00.015+05:30

Bent double, wrinkled and frail,
Sat a dear old woman.
Humming old tunes to herself,
She lighted up the oven.

She then started frying wadas
As the oil began to pop.
Nearby stood a gnarled up tree
With a hungry crow on top.

Down swooped the hungry crow,
Picked up the crispy food,
Up and up he flew away
With wada both fresh and good.

He found himself a kingly spot
A place both warm and cool,
He picked his ill-earned trophy up,
His beak all reeked with drool.

Yellow, crispy and golden brown,
Like a glorious tropical sunset,
The wada, so juicy and so round,
Tasted ever so perfect.

He then saw a bushy tail,
A fox was he weary of,
Greedy things or so he thought
They deserved to be told off.

The crow gave him a defiant glance,
But then fox all starving,
Saw, instead, the golden feast
Succulent and inviting.

"Oh how I wish I find such food,
Oh how my tummy growls",
So thought the fox with a hungry eye
And then began to prowl.

"My Dear Crow, my bosom friend,
Don't you see me so?
So thin and weak and frail and pained
Please help me my lovely crow"

"Off with you, you lousy fool,
Can't you see it's mine?
I stole it all so fair and square,
Thou shalt eat that's thine"

"You mistook me my dearest crow,
I crave not for your food,
Please just tell me where to find
Wadas so tasty and good"

"No, never, you servile fox
I shall not enlighten
For it is of an old lady's craft
Not meant for creatures rotten"

"Rotten am I?" the fox thought,
"A lesson shall I teach,
For all your sharp and forked up tongue,
Humility is what I preach"

"All I need now is a plan,
A crow I'll have to tame,
And bring his ever proud beak down,
And smear his face with shame"

He sought up to the haughty bird,
With his mind all sly,
He said it in his most glib voice,
Through his teeth he lied.

"I'm not angry, nor offended,
Even though you speak,
For so lovely is thy voice
Like water flowing bleak"

"Bah! Humbug!" said the heartless crow,
"I shall never cave,
For flattery so naked and glib,
It sickens me you knave!"

"There again, you tell me off,
But then, I do not mind,
For, to hear a voice so clear and deep,
Your harsh words just seem too kind"

"You're gifted with the way of words,
You speak like poets of yore,
But for flattery so naked and glib,
I shalt bow no more"

"Oh, but, how winsome you sound,
heavenly and surreal,
Like the Spirits of Gods unbound,
Misty and ethereal.

Your fame shall spread so far and wide,
Odes shall they compose,
That tells the tale of a stout young bird,
With the voice of the reddest rose"

This was too much for the bird,
He could no longer weather,
He caved in, fell into his trap,
Hook, line and sinker.

"Do you really think so my friend?
Is your good claim true?"
"Of course it is, my comely mate,
Voices like yours are few"

"I'm flatterred, my dear bosom pal,
I ever so truly am,
I'd love to pay for your kind words,
with whatever I can"

"Oh no, Oh no, My generous friend,
I do yearn for nothing,
But to hear this divine voice,
Just a song to sing"

He then delivered in his best tone,
Mozart and Beethoven wept,
So did the fox, but had no choice,
And so off he appeared swept.

An off-pitched crow shattered the calm,
Hairs did stand on end,
He cooed and cawed and carried on,
Till the sins in hell all cringed.

As he reached the highest note,
Down fell his meal,
Gravity, the mother of cruelty,
pulled it down with zeal.

"Alas, Alas my two faced friend,
A lesson did I teach,
How can any of a sane mind,
Appreciate that screech?"

"Thou foul, sly, conniving knave
How could you lie so?
You've wounded me, four-legged devil,
Have you no heart, no soul?"

"I do, I do, my dearest fool,
I have all that you don't,
Can't you help a fellow being?
Or is it that you won't?"

And so he took the bird's prized food,
He did feast upon it all right,
The crow, a hurt and sorrowed pride,
cursed the fox with spite.

The Room

2008-10-09T13:58:00.004+05:30

Rudely woken up, I found myself in a dingy room filled with about sixty people. Fellow beings being tormented by the same people for the same reasons I was. Trapped in this kind of an environment, humans are adapted to switch to survival mode, in this case, trying to go through it with least of a lasting impact. The mind shuts itself down; it desperately tries not to store memories of pain. The strain kills us, as we try to make sense of what is being tossed around in an effort to make us grasp intangible abstractions, which in the end, we realise, has nothing to do with helping us go through with it and that is the point when it finally dawns upon us that it is in vain that we try to fight it. But then, fight we do, for the mind is trained that way. There stood a gentleman who was, apparently, the reason we were in this situation. If words could kill, we were dying, every moment we spent in that room was agony. The man, in some twisted frame of mind, seemed to enjoy it, savouring the moments, preserving them, cherishing them, a sadist. He did it for a living. He tried to drive home a point, establish his superiority in the field. The battle was fought on for some more time, a few minutes seemed like eons to us and our perseverance and endurance finally payed off. Some of us were better warriors in this war against tyranny, and they lead us on to collide with the very man answerable to our predicament. This exposes his vulnerability, so much so that he almost caves in, giving in to us, bleeding his weaknesses out. The wheel of time turns round, the slaves become the masters of the battle, victory is near. But then, that doesn’t continue for long, there is a schedule to keep, it becomes someone else’s turn to eat us alive, from the inside, our enemy changed by the greatest nemesis of all, time. By how much ever the wheel turned, it goes back to square one. We, once again, become the underdogs, when someone else does what he did, for you see, one class was over, it is something else now and we’re yet to figure it out.

Greed

2008-10-09T12:03:00.008+05:30

Amidst the woods, in the heart of the forests, lived an oak tree. So majestic was he, tall and fair, he grew straight into the sky. Kissing the clouds, he stood, by the river, with branches gracefully spreading out, a haven for all forms of life. He harboured more than just birds; frogs, squirrels, lizards, possums and various insects to name a few. He was a living house, for many, benignly sheltering them, with love and tender care. The creatures too, were as grateful as ever, living in the shadows of the great tree. He provided them with fruit, succulent and delectable, leaves ever juicy and green, crevices to lay eggs and raise their young. It was a harmonious existence, a beautiful symbiosis of many life-forms, a delicate balance, a fragile ecosystem. Then came another creature, for nothing more than a creature was he, with a lust for power, a slave of greed himself, wielding an axe sharper than his intellect, he set to work. One tree after another, he decimated the forest, all of the great tree's friends murdered, many lives squashed. He set about, systematically clearing the woods of all forms of life. He then turned his head towards our tree. He looked at it with awe, but with hardly any reverence, for, for him, life was just a mere resource that could be exploited at will. His avarice drooling out through his teeth, he grinned with glee, his eyes gleaming, his axe shining. He, with all his might, brought his weapon down on the hard wood, leaving a deep gash, bright and wet on the tree's root. Another blow came, making the cut deeper. He repeatedly struck the wound, as the great tree screamed and wept silently. More blows were showered, as squirrels ran for their lives, as their benevolent benefactor came crumbling down. The birds took flight, their nests fell, eggs shattered and the chicks abandoned as they,in all helplessness, cried for mercy. The tree writhed in agony as his majesty, his grace and all that he stood for came crashing down. He fell like all great kings, fell gracefully, like a martyr. His leaves touched the ground, with a resounding thud, sending shock waves of grief across what was left of the forest as the few trees spared wept. He was dragged unceremoniously across the forest floor, the last symbol of life in the woods enslaved by mad-men. Driven by river currents, the tree rafted afloat, bearing the very man who brought him down, the last symbol of graciousness he could provide. Taken to another of men, he was cut, torn apart and sliced, the spite of men feeding the giant tools of great malice, as the steel cut through the wood that once stood bearing life and made it into lifeless logs as a mirror of the slayer himself, cold and lifeless as man. With this wood, the men made many things, huge vessels carrying thousands of other men. An Armada floated across the sea, fed by the murder of trees only to aid murder of fellow men. Huge fleets of ships, fully sailed, floated across firing other ships. One by one, the ships were battered down, dead trees killed, again. The woods drowned carrying the men with them, as other men rejoiced their demise. This insanity went on for a while, ships lost, lives wrecked. The wood that once belonged to our beloved oak, fell to the bottom of the sea, only to be now colonised by fish, corals, and crabs. Life always thrived on his account, life always cherished him. On the other hand, men that lay dead were floating, untouched and rotting. No shark, no fish, no animal found his flesh tasteful, for he was steeped in avarice and lust. No one loved him, for he loved none. No one cared for him, for he cared for none. No one grieved his death, for he grieved for none. None ever will, for he slayed his own kin, for gain. This is what happens of men, a race that craves power, governed by a will to dominate. Nevertheless, another tree grew in our oak's place, another man killed it, another war ensued, another thousands perished, in men's greed.