42

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

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

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

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.