Heart and Mind

Thoughts are to free. Trap them. Set them free once again.
The head rules. Hearts follow. Emotions run wild.

Hurts sometimes. But, what's done is done. Take solace in simple pleasures.
So far ahead down that path though.
Do-good, Do-bad. "For thy Country". For People. My people. Mine and yours.

Heart and mind. Yours is yours - mine is mine. My good is not yours. My bad is not yours. "Stop bad habits." "Speak good - not Evil" "Take god's name."

Your thoughts. Mine?

Let be. Subside. Desist.

Think. Let others think. Others are thoughts. In your mind. You've trapped them. Now set them free. As others will set you.

Let me think- Let that be your thought for me. And I will let you think.

battle

Always on the simmer. Imagined slights. Miscommuniations. Disproportionate responses. Distrust. Paranoia. Escalation. Conflagration. Hate.

Life is war. Everyday we wage fresh battle. Some days - you feel more cornered than others. On other days – you’re doing the cornering.

Some days - you just enjoy the sunshine. Birds in flight. Calm. Serene. Like everything around you - broken, sinking.

Does the end always look so pretty? If only it wouldn’t take a lifetime.

They tell you peace comes with waging no more wars. For the fighter, peace is in the middle of the battle. Imagined or real.

Tomorrow’s a fresh battle.

Smoking pot again (2)?

I like to think that we all question ourselves frequently, in one way or the other about what is enlightenment, really? I don’t have the answer to that question. And what’s more, I don’t even know if not having an answer is a good thing or a bad thing. Why? Because who the hell knows what’s good and what’s not for you?

But I do believe though that there are people who are truly enlightened. Some of them try to convey what it is that they see or not see. And some are just not too bothered about that and go on doing what they always do. I also get the feeling that several enlightened folks out there are people you would never know are enlightened. It would take one to know one, yes?!

But for the other folks out there like me who aren’t enlightened, it’s a constant struggle dealing with the issue of true enlightenment. I guess the analogy to me that sometimes befits the struggle is thus: It’s like you’re a child in this large house at the corner of a creepy street, far away from other homes. Your parents are fast asleep, in a room down the corridor. Suddenly you hear this noise in the pitch black of you room that’s coming from near the door. You feel like there’s something moving about the room. It starts to scare the hell out of you slowly but surely. So much so that you’re even afraid to shout out; and even if you try – not a peep comes out. What do you do then? Do you just pull the sheets over yourself, cover your ears and close your eyes – hoping that the noise just goes away? Or do you pull the sheets away, get up and investigate: turn the light on, or confront the noise you hear?

Discovering truth or even attaining enlightenment is sometimes like that. Sometimes you realize you are on this path where uncovering the truth could potentially lead to this thing called enlightenment at some unknown point on the journey (or some unknown final destination). But you also realize that uncovering the truth could spin everything you know around on its head. That potential outcome scares the hell out of you. You cannot imagine living your normal life anymore. Not when that big Elephant you’ve just uncovered has filled up the whole room that’s in your head and you can’t ignore it anymore.

Nah! Perhaps then it becomes easier to not uncover that dangerous truth. It’s far easier to live without knowing. Sure, life starts looking more farcical from that point of view. But perhaps the sad truth is that this is exactly what we asked for. This farcical life where truth and enlightenment are these higher pursuits we pay lip-service to, pretend to aspire for, read and write about, even deify the concept of truth and wisdom, and then force others on its path, and lie and kill to maintain and protect its imagined sanctity. Never once realizing it perhaps. Instead, what we’re really protecting and maintaining is the need to constantly keep the sheets over our heads. The fear of the unknown is far more bearable and less scary, than knowing the unknown. What we are protecting is our fear. Not truth, or wisdom, or the path to enlightenment or any of those things.

After all, what truth is worth protecting if it hasn’t been felt, understood, experienced or realized? Why must it be protected?

Maybe because the ultimate truth that’s too difficult to ever digest is that (Oh No!)"I’m a lie!"

Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi (2)

This is a continuation of my earlier piece on Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi.

It's good to know that this movie has a legion of followers. In case you haven't seen the movie, then take both Venky's and Sibin's advice (and of course, mine too) - do try and see this one.

Venky has put up some really good pictures/posters of the movie on his webpage. And Sibin has a wonderfully informative dedication to the movie on his blog, a piece that's a perfect read once you've seen the movie, that will make you reminisce (and provide insight) on the pivotal and subtle scenes in the movie, as well as, the socio-political context which provides the setting for the movie.

And really if you still want an additional incentive to see this movie, then do I have to tell you that Chitrangda Singh is truly HOT?! Check her out in what could well be one of her very few appearances on the silver screen.

Smoking pot again?

To achieve that perfect balance. Conflicts usually seem to be directed towards altering the balance, the status-quo towards one side or the other. A do-or-die situation for those waging the conflict on either side. The warriors rush headlong into battle, believing in only the resolution of the situation to their satisfaction. And at some point, for these warriors, the lines separating their beliefs, desires and ambitions get blurred. And when one side wins, it’s unclear as to whether the cost at which the resolution was earned was worth waging the battle in the first place.

Given this innate blurring and confusion that disallows us from achieving any lasting clarity, it would be foolhardy for us to confuse the warriors waging conflicts with believers of a particular cause. It’s clear that the warriors desire conflict resolution in their favour. But is it clear that they all desire the conflict resolution in their favour for the same reasons? Perhaps conflicts in the physical space are all results of the inability to resolve them in our own mental arenas. And the implicit, even sub-conscious desire, to see those mental conflicts resolved in a more tangible, physical space. Perhaps a space containing another human being. Perhaps several of them. Heck – all of them in my case!

Underneath that cloud of muddled thought which dooms us to muddled paths through life, one could perhaps discover the clarity of purpose. Some would claim to you that they’ve already achieved it. I would tell you to indulge those people as my kindergarten and primary teachers indulged me by listening to my increasingly fantastic (and with generous application of embellishments) stories and accounts of things that took place in my little life until then. It’s not like they’re all lying consciously. They’ve probably convinced themselves that they’re speaking the truth. But conviction should most definitely not be confused with truth.

If conviction is not necessarily truth, then is clarity the same as truth? Perhaps. But clarity is a personal realization. Clarity is truth if truth is also a personal realization. For that to be possible, an all encompassing truth that is above our individual realizations must not really exist then. But who knows that for sure? And on that basis, even truth is unclear. Perhaps our situation is truly analogous to the poem about the six blind men who are trying to feel their way around an elephant, and each of them ends up mentally modeling the elephant based on the part they’ve touched and felt but never seen. That truth is then only a personal realization.

But when that realization is blurred with conviction, it becomes an individual reality. And when that reality is further pondered upon and it then becomes apparent that it is not to our liking, then that conviction is used to transform that reality by means of a conflict. In that context, if there really exists an all-encompassing truth such as the elephant of which we are only privy to a miniscule part, which we cannot even see and therefore struggle to define, then it is no longer valid to compare it to the elephant as an analogy. Instead, it’s now more like a Swiss-knife. It still has many parts. But each part is a separate instrument. And we all use a different instrument to achieve our goals through conflict resolution. The truth or parts of it then become our weapons of choice. You could call it “Applied Truth”, if you will. Some probably label those instruments (not the Swiss-knife itself) as god. Still others call it the way, or the common good, or redemption. They then proceed to use these instruments or parts of the same Knife to resolve mutual conflicts with each other.

"Die motherf$%&er!"

Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi

(Picture courtesy: Eros Entertainment)

"Hazaaron khwaishein aisi
ki har khwaish pe dum nikle
Bahut nikle mere armaan
lekin phir bhi kam nikle"

- Mirza Ghalib

In an earlier post about Amitabh Bachchan, who is perhaps an institution in Indian cinema, I had complained about his penchant to star in remakes of popular Hollywood movies, despite his apparent distaste for the label Bollywood widely used to refer to commercial Hindi cinema.

While it's true that "Bollywood" largely churns out remakes, and it is also true that essentially producers, directors and scriptwriters generally spend time browsing DVD's of old classics and new hits from around the world (mostly Hollywood) to be "inspired" from, there is also this trend in Indian Cinema to increasingly move away from the norm and come up with unique products. The last few years, I have seen a fairly good amount of "experimental" and non-formulaic cinema from India that leads me to believe that there's a lot of great talent out there. In particular, "Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi" directed by Sudhir Mishra ("Is Raat Ki Subah Nahin") and starring: Kay Kay Menon, Chitrangda Singh and Shiney Ahuja, made a significant impact on me because of its sheer quality and execution.

The movie setting is the time period from the late 60's and through the early and mid-70's, which was a time of great turbulence in India, not just politically but also socially and culturally. Three individuals, played by the three leads, emerge from their college lives with differing ambitions and hopes and aspirations. The story traces their paths, sometimes intertwining through the mileu of their troubled times and their youth. It's a story that matches up idealism against opportunism, a story of all-consuming passion and unrequited love, a story of cynicism, and of broadsides against politics and political idealogies, with no prisoners taken. It is also unnervingly tragi-comic in some of the most heartrending situations. And in the end, the movie shows us that life at its core is just uncertainty and that anything can happen for no rhyme or reason.

The movie is highly multi-layered. At its core is the simple story of the three characters and what's basically a love-triangle that exists between them. At another level, it is about three different friends and the value systems they represent: a man who's rich, spoilt and perhaps fashionably idealistic and anti-establishment; a woman who's blindly in love with the the idealist perhaps attracted to the sheer magnetism of his pseudo-idealism; and
the third, a man in love with the woman, and also who's conflicted between idealism and reality, and decides to live life as a pragmatist and opportunist, ultimately cynical of mass movements and pseudo-idealism. At yet another level, is the commentary through these characters on the socio-political situation; in particular, the sarcasm through which the actions of Indira Gandhi before and during the Emergency is potrayed.

It's also very tough to pin down any moral lessons or a message that the movie is trying to promote. And I guess each person would probably extract something different out of the movie. But this engrossing, complex tale of the three main protagonists is, to me, by far the best Hindi movie I have seen in recent times. Perhaps ever.

Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi is by no means the only quality Indian cinema I have seen off late. There have been several other movies that have come out recently from India that I have found to be very entertaining and fulfilling. (No, I am not talking about the moodily shot but ultimately pretentious and melodramatic "Black"!) If it weren't for them, and good Independent English language movies, I'd be lost in my search for good cinema. Fortunately, good cinema does co-exist along with the crap regularly churned out by Bollywood, and even more so by the biggest crap-producer of them all - Hollywood.

For "Bollywood" (sorry Mr. Bachchan - very few of your recent movies belong to Indian Cinema category!), the lesson to remember before blindly aping Hollywood crapart is: Garbage In, Garbage Out!

Promises and Lies (2)

As I promised I would try to do so earlier, I tried to hold myself back this evening, and go easy on my buddies while we sipped the usual cuppa last evening. I am glad to report that I was moderately successful in my attempt. Also, I did apologize for those few instances when I couldn't restrain myself. I am trying to get better at this. So help a friend out here!

On another note, was it just me, or was there some uneasy silence at the table this evening? Heh! Heh!

Falling Idols?

This is not a piece about American Idol. It’s a piece on Indian idols (not the program on TV). Real-life Indian personalities that the Indian public seem to respect greatly for one or the other reason, that aren’t really living it up to much of anything these days.

But anyway, there’re a couple of famous folks out there that I am sorta disappointed with these days (there’s probably a psychological reason behind why I seem to be disappointed in others, especially when I am most disappointed in myself – but we’re not going into that today! We’re not – EVER! Ok, Denial is another one of the factors at play here – but let’s not get there too – EVER!) The next couple of pieces deal with them.

Fading Star

Let’s start with the Actor of the last Century (according to a BBC worldwide poll in 1999), Amitabh Bachchan. That he is an icon is an understatement. God! I know there were several people like me who worshipped him once. And several more who still do. But here’s the reason why I think that he’s a fallen idol. First up, some of his old movies when I saw them again, really sucked. It’s taken me years to accept that these movies sucked. Ok, some of the others now actually seem better than they were before. And his acting in those good movies is still superlative. Ok then, that reason for calling him a fallen idol isn’t justified, and my problem is not with his past. It’s with his current.

Bachchan says all the time that he hates the label “Bollywood” used to denote commercial Hindi cinema and anything that’s connected to it. According to him, this implies that commercial Hindi cinema is inferior or is in some way subordinate to Hollywood. He takes offense to that implication. He believes that commercial Hindi cinema is more prolific than Hollywood and has an identity of its own. And several other senior Indian cinema artistes feel that way too.

But then, let’s look at some of the more recent movies of Mr. Bachchan; like Kaante, Sarkar, Family, Ek Ajnabee, etc. In most cases, these movies have been either directly lifted (copied) or are largely adapted from Hollywood movies. If he continues to agree to act in cinema that’s largely “inspired” from foreign cinema, especially Hollywood, then how the hell does he think that commercial Indian cinema is going to ever shake off that “ollywood” tag? Beats me!

And if he isn’t starring in remakes or copies, he’s acting in crap pseudo cinema of the Chopra’s and Johar’s (Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham, Mohobattein, etc.) Occasionally he gets to prove his acting chops in less commercial movies with original themes such as Virrudh, etc. But then these are so few and far between. If he’s doing so many “inspired” roles, what are the lesser actors and actresses to do? When’re you going to start to practice as you preach?

Let’s put it this way Mr. Bachchan. You sure must be getting a lot of scripts and must be sitting on a good pile of money to be able to effect a change. I agree that people are writing scripts for you that they’ve never ever done for an aging stalwart in Indian commercial cinema, and that’s a big change from the past. But you’ve got to put your foot down when it comes to remakes. An occasional “Aks” or “Viruddh” do not wash away the plethora of remakes and copies that you have starred in. The glory days of Don, Sholay, Deewar, Trishul, Agneepath, etc. may not necessarily be over.

Broken Bat

What’s even more influential than commercial Indian cinema? Indian cricket and the national cricket team. Given the flow and ebb of the tides of change in the team, there has been one silent constant in all that cricket jazz, and that’s the one man perhaps even greater than Mr. Bachchan in the manner in which he has carried the hopes and aspirations of millions for almost two decades, and that’s Sachin Tendulkar.

Again, his contribution to cricket is immense. But when contributions start to resemble mere statistics, then something’s changed – either in our perception, or in the quality of the performance itself. The fact is that Sachin has been plagued by bad luck, like Karna from the Indian mythological epic Mahabharat. Karna was a great warrior in the epic, second to none, but events in his life, several not of his making, doomed him and his skills to fail him when he needed them the most. Sachin’s career has been kinda like that too. Some of his performances have been nothing short of astounding. But still, in many of the greatest Indian victories since he’s started playing for India, very few have cast him in extraordinary match-winning performances. In most of these great victories he’s been a failure. It’s usually the others who have put their hands up and taken the team over the finish line. And then there’s the long list of “oh-so-close” games he’s performed superbly in. But somehow, he failed to convert those to wins after taking the team to the edge of victory. Perhaps it’s those several almost-wins, those “could have, should have” moments that breaks Indian cricket’s collective heart.

It’s not like Sachin doesn’t try. He’s still a great bat (not of the blind, flying type) – just look at that his record. But that’s just not enough. He needs to start carrying the team over the finish line, especially on those occasions when we need him the most. And evidently, his current approach of playing with caution is not proving to be very successful! My friend Pranav mentioned to me the example of another great batsman Aravinda De Silva, of Sri Lanka, who in the twilight of his career started to play like he belonged to another planet. He was virtually indestructible. And he played with that reckless abandon that made Viv Richards arguably the best ever player of the game. That puts paid to the idea that batsmen slow down when they get older. Not great ones! Why isn’t Sachin emulating Aravinda? With more and more players around now who can share the responsibility and hopes, he should try playing with that reckless abandon, be the wild-card who plays for the joy of the game and for the simple joy of entertaining millions, even billions. Kinda like the Sachin of 16-17 when he started playing. Not with the fear of failure. But with the lust for victory.

What’s stopping you Sachin? Your endorsements? Your carefully constructed image? Don’t you want the label “the best” attached to your name once again?



Update: (April, 2007)
For Sachin a lot seems to be happening quite in a hurry. Although some people could claim that they'd already spotted it all from a mile away. But you could never be sure. Because some of us hoped things would turn out different.

Anyway, with the World Cup 2007 debacle now having firmly set itself onto the minds of Indian cricket fans, Sachin has serious rethinking ahead of him - if he hasn't started already. The more he denies himself that re-thinking of his priorities, of his physical limitations brought about by years of batting long hours and weilding heavy bats, and of his innumerable endorsements and committments the more cricket fans will be doing that for him. And it's always best to do your own thinking.

Get me the barf bag

“No really. I understand what you’re saying. But it’s just that – by forcing it down my throat, you’re making me gag and vomit my guts out on your clean, pressed clothes.”

New age therapies, old-age religions, and pyramid business schemes, all sound the same when they’re portrayed as the next best thing to chocolate (itself a debatable topic). For instance, in the computer science world, it’s the new “open-source is best” movement that has me gagging (apart from “iPods are the best”). Again, I have no problems with open-source (or iPods). Being a PhD student myself, and slightly liberal in my beliefs, I tend to believe that knowledge should be freely shared and used by people. But then there are little factors such as; compensation, incentive to innovate more and, of course, accountability, that are businees realities and define individuality in commercial terms. On all these counts open-source doesn’t quite deliver (at least, not just yet). And thats why people still develop and buy proprietary solutions.

Fred Brooks (UNC-Chapel Hill), a great computer science and software engineering pioneer, once said (and wrote a whole damn book about it) regarding software engineering, that there’s “No Silver Bullet”, i.e. there really isn’t a single methodology or paradigm out there that can be considered the end-all solution for everything. Different solutions work in different situations. It doesn’t mean we stop trying to find that “Silver Bullet”. I can see several situations that open source would be perfect. But I can also see several others where they won't, and instead could be potentially disastrous. It’s a nice concept, but its not The Silver Bullet. Not even close.

It’s all fine and dandy to use pseudo-imaginative PowerPoint presentations to present visions of the future. But true visionaries concerned about transforming the world for the global “good” aren’t selling books, software, or feel-good philosophy to you. If they’re pimping something, surely they must have a vested interest in it themselves. At least the smart ones probably do. It makes perfect business sense to convince people (customers and foot soldiers alike) of the need to buy their product. The newly converted foot soldiers and die-hard customers (sometimes they’re the same people) probably realize much later on in life that they were used by the smart, manipulative people up at the top to forward their personal agendas, who then cut and ran when the going got rough.

My limited understanding of marketing and sales is that before you sell something, you need to first find out if there really is a market out there, and if there isn’t, then you’ve got to invest in creating a need for your product. You just have to be skeptical when you’re about to pay a price (whatever it may be) for something new.

Besides, who decides what’s good for you and what’s not? You? Your ancestors? The government? Private business? Priests, temples, religious zealots, new age gurus? Who? Take your pick. Meanwhile, bring that barf-bag along with you when you’re coming round my door to convert me to something new.

Promises and lies

It was sometime in November last year ('05) I think. Venue: Cup-A-Joe, Time: 6.30 p.m. (or thereabouts). I was seated along with the usual suspects; DC, Sibin, Salil, SK, and others who kept joining in and leaving, while we stayed put discussing the events of the day/week/month/year/decade/century... you get the picture (that's right - slackers of the world unite!!). Topics usually range from anything to anything. There's not too much thats sacred. And more often than not, we focus the it's-your-turn-to-be-made-fun-of spotlight on one another.

I admit I was one of those reveling in giving the others a hard time. Not that I am necessarily too incisive, witty, sarcastic, or any of those things that make people interesting. But then, hey, you've got to give me points for trying. Trouble is (besides not being good at it), I don't really know when to stop. And of course, the gutter-bred language thats part of my normal vocalbulary usually doesn't help tone my attempted satire down too much.

Well, the long and short of that evening in November from my perspective, was that I publicly announced that I would go easy on people, especially my friends, not just including those who I met up for coffee with. And I say this with pride, that I did go easy on people for the most part.

Trouble with going easy though was that, as Sibin pointed out, nothing had changed too much after this new-found compassion that I exhibited. The one thing that did change was that I ended up apologizing a lot more after every sarcastic comment that I made. But in my defense, I couldn't really have gone cold turkey all of a sudden. I tried my best to phase it out. And I think for that one month or so, I did my karma a world of good. I started to feel that I was getting in to the pages of the good books of the Big Guy up in the Sky. Ah! The sweet smell of goodness. Sniff! Sniff! Man, I was starting to smell real good! (Yeah! Who need's Axe?!)

And then I went on this trip to Mumbai, come December. The trip that would be very eventful for me (got married and all that you see!). After my return, it was business as usual. All vows of going easy were forgotten. I guess the lease ended last year. Time to renew the terms. I don't really know for how long though. Perhaps, I could start with one complete day. And if that gets too stressful, then one little evening at Cup-A-Joe.

I apologize in advance guys.