Salt where it bleeds

'Satyam' derives from the Sanskrit for truth, doesn't it?

Four years later

October 2012

Joe, plumber

"Mornin' sir, I'm here to fix that faucet you called about."
"No it's okay, I'm used to people looking at me all funny. You remember me from TV three years ago."
"Yep, my own show, 'Leaky bastard'. I flew all over the country solving people's problems, all far outside my own domain of expertise, faulty faucets."

A discussion with a friend
Me? Run for President? Saar, I pale in comparison to the red candidate.
*Yes, choke and splutter. I'm bad with homophones but glad I'm out of arm-swipe reach from you.

Bradley's sorrows
"Perhaps this time they'll vote like they said they would. I wish Obama'd try again. "


*Update - Nov 5, 2008: I've obviously reverse-psyched the zeitgeist to steer it back towards Obama. You and he are both welcome.

Seasoning

This winter's going to be a rough one. And I don't need weathernetwork's long-term forecasts to know. It's not yet November and I've had to bring out the big guns - woollen socks, mufflers, toques, etc. I leave home all wrapped up, looking very teddy like (more bear, less roosevelt) and with all the dexterity of a deaf bat... So I really have to ask: Why do we put up with winter?

There was this one year when I collected signatures to petition the weatherman for a milder winter. It didn't work. I shoulda got more signatures.

But winter's just part of the seasonality. Four seasons, each very different from the other, changes things up when you're bored of the view outside. It gives me a sense of the passage of time*. In Bangalore, when each day felt just like the one before or the one after, I had to rely on the newspapers to know how far into the year we were. Here, in Toronto, the colour (or the absence) of leaves helps me find my bearings.

And it makes us appreciate each season that much more, knowing it's going to be a good while before similar conditions visit us again. I suspect this is why sunburns happen. When the sun comes out, I feel like a grad student at an expensive AYCE, stuffing myself silly because it's going to be a while before I can afford the extravagance again.

The other plus about winter is that you can resort to the evergreen conversation fallback - "Man, some weather, eh?" - without it seeming wholly unintelligent.

In Bangalore though, this'd be a little silly *any* time of year - "Wow, it's crazy out there, again in the 27-32 range, eh?"

*Update - Nov 2, 2008 - I wrapped this one up prematurely. I meant to hold forth on the nature of time, and how, even within the context of its inevitable march (day-night and the seasons themselves, i.e. rotation and revolution), there's concepts that we as a species append to it.

Because of our mortality, we feel the need to divide time into past, present and future. We use the concept of a calendar, where though the days and months continue to recycle themselves, we can't extend that luxury to the year. And that's a good thing. Imagine if our hypothetical immortal selves had decided on a binary year calendar, one that reset itself when four seasons passed. The concept of history would get addled..Our schools might have had to do away with the subject entirely..and in some part then, the concept of memory..then, that of nostalgia..and so, a large part of emotion.

Rain today

Beautiful article at the link below on how america (or those who can afford it) pursues happiness at the cost of doing away with the opposite end of our emotional spectrum.

http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=tk1twsk466pmt0m7fj6py116kyc71fhv

The article talks about our obsession with eliminating melancholia, and finding happiness in every walk. Each life an individual shangrila. Not isolation, but happiness all around. We try to do away with sadness and pain, and so injure the muse. Happiness slowly becomes the norm and everything else is an aberration that needs treating. And so we have pills to make us happy.

*Like the author of the article, I'm not knocking the seriousness of clinical, manic depression. I'm just talking about the lighter variety.*

Happiness is a broad term though. There's that question "wouldst you dance in the rain or be free from pain?". Romantically, the answer's obvious. Practically, it's the latter. Not that the choice has been offered, but ideally, you should want to enjoy dancing even if you are in pain.

And finally, there's the danger of losing our definition of happiness if we constantly try to do away with the baseline reference of unhappiness. There are parts of this article I don't subscribe to but I'd like to project here - I hope our capitalist mentality helps us preserve the concept of 'degrees of happiness'. This'll help us come to peace with our stock (because we know it can always be worse).

This stillness against the race for happiness is another kind of tranquility, one that helps a new kind of happiness blossom.

*Update* - I realise I started this post by plugging that melancholia article, but the forecast called for sunshine today.

Culture club

In trying to decide whether I need an iPhone, I was confronted with several questions about my sense of identity that I thought I'd buried (the questions, not the sense of identity) when I emerged out of my teens.

The first had to do with why I wanted the iPhone. I'm still convinced it's only because my little Ericsson has caused me enough grief, and the frustration I've borne deserves a reward. Thing is though, by ascribing to the iPhone culture, I also join a club (no longer exclusive, given volume of iphone sales).

I'm averse to joining clubs for the sake of joining them. The problem is that this non-club joining mentality (sure, call it non-conformity) drops me right into another club.

The other trouble, again cutting to my pith, has to do with this pressure to be an early adopter - whether of technology, ideas, lifestyle or anything in between. (Have you read Fassbinder? NO?? Oh, but you must! He's the Goethe of our times!..No, he hasn't published yet, but here's the address of his blog).

That I've considered the iPhone only just now reveals I haven't given in to this culture. But the pressure's been there.

And it only gets worse. By the time (if ever) I end up owning an iPhone, it's going to be on its way out. And not just technology-wise. I won't draw a parallel to fashion because that monster 180s on itself all the time. But I'd be like the guy that's just bought a Hummer. I'd draw sneers of reproval even if the instrument worked well for me.

Eventually, after I come to grips with being an early adopter, I'd have to evolve into an early discarder. It's that fine line between "I want one because everyone else has one" and "Everbody has one, I need something else".

I think you know how I'm going to wrap up this post.

My crappy Ericsson lives to fight another day.

Lean to the right

I'm convinced there's beauty in asymmetry too. It gives me a hint of something unnatural that went before, or that there's layers and nuances within.

In numbers - a portrait of something solitary, the third person in a crowd of three and so on.

In a face - a scar, a lazy eye.

In music - a 7th chord, the one baton a conductor uses, the third tenor, shikar taal.

In food - I can't think of how asymmetry applies here. Perhaps in how sashimi doesn't need to be washed down with a salad. Here, I'm thinking asymmetry in nutritional content. Or maybe I'm just hungry.

My life-hacker/zen habits

Here are some lessons I've learnt well. Some of these have come as benefits-on-the-side with my advancing years, others from the burnt-finger chronicles of my biography, and the rest from that holiest oracle of all, the last word in fountainheads, Bollywood.

1. Remember that there are always atleast three cameras on you, one of them capturing every detail in slo-mo. As true in the corporate world as on a cricket field and as in the final confrontation with Mogambo. You never know who's watching, and to what detail they're interested in your performance. When under pressure, he who resists the nose-picking shall move up. Helps to know where the cameras are though.

2. The movie isn't worth making if the hero hasn't struggled. If you're down but fighting the odds, you'll come back up. That's most of what Bollywood's about. If you're up, realise that there's a new trend of sequels. You going down real soon. There's a discussion in here, waiting to be trashed out, about what's up and what's down. Gives me another post.

3. Don't sweat the small stuff. Instead, invest time finding the right person that will. If I had to learn real estate to buy a condo, do my CA exam before filing my taxes, get a many-hued belt in an obscure martial art form before I could leap tall buildings in my next movie, I'd really never get anything done. Instead, I figure my time's better spent if I can locate portly doubles to do all of these things for me. Task delegation is key. My responsibility is finding the right person to delegate to. Of course, the accountability remains mine too.

The arranged Lavalife

Lavalife, eHarmony, entrenous, ........, shaadi, bharatmatrimony

The spectrum above is distilled below:

Lavalife.com introduces arranged marriages to the west

shaadi.com introduces an online dating service to the east

How have newspapers survived?

For the wired crowd, newspapers are a bit of a novelty. Unmanageable sheafs of paper delivering news that's a day old at best. Like tv, the news too is sometimes just a break between advertisements. So when pitted against the instantaneousness of the net, how has the daily goliath survived?

Against

• News is almost always a day old, if not more, save some of the stop-press items
• You don't get to choose the news in the paper. You can choose the sections you want to read though
• With its 40 odd pages, each the length of a dinner jacket, the paper's unwieldy at best
• Environment hazard

For

• There's an editor
• You don't get to choose the news in the paper. For some of us, if we did, the breadth of our awareness would be narrow
• Tradition and routine. We're comfortable with news being a day old. It's the optimum amount of time that we're okay with, knowing that reporters aren't relaying hearsay and that they've had a chance to confirm stuff they're reporting on. Editors have given it the thumbs up after a careful review
• To pack tiffin

To me, it seems like 'For' wins the day. At this time.

The bigger question is how much longer can the tradition of newspapers hold fort against all the other forces? In an article in the New Yorker, Eric Alterman says "newspaper companies are losing advertisers, readers, market value, and, in some cases, their sense of mission at a pace that would have been barely imaginable just four years ago."

The reasons are many, and chiefly to do with competition from the net. Editors on the net are savvy about the audience they want, and with a decent editor at the helm, loyal readership is easy to build. Content-specific blogs, where the writer is often the editor, do quite well for themselves. The new information junkie sets up rss feeds from her favourite blogs and is wired for the day.

There is a semi-bright spot though. Online newspapers, i.e. the websites of the major newspapers that carry a cross-section of articles from the days' papers, are a compromise. That a newspaper runs a corresponding website gives the paper a way to connect with the crowd that's drawing away. Sadly though, the revenue a site like this generates through ads and the like probably isn't enough to sustain the site, given the reduced profits from decreasing circulation and falling rates for the print ads. Coupled with the fact that the online newspaper still needs the same machinery (journalists, editorial staff, reuters contracts, etc) to back it up as the printed paper, it's a lose-lose situation.

From my younger days

"Thought for the day"

We used to have these back in school. Sometimes, I'd choose to take it literally, to let it be the sole thing that occupied my mindspace all day. I'd often be tempted to actually learn stuff that day, or to, yknow, talk to folks, but I'm sure wiser minds than mine had deemed the 'thought for the day' truly encompassing enough to sustain.

So, on the day, my credo could be: 'It is terrible to speak well and be wrong.' - Sophocles or 'Not failure, but low aim, is crime.' -J.R. Lowell

or some other such. And call it a genetic virasat, but I could always blank my slate save the thought for the day. Got into much trouble.

Dawn's best

I get my brightest ideas before it's bright out. That's right, every morning, just before sunrise, these epiphanous little movies play in my head. And they're actually really funny! Thing is though, that when you're asleep, the part of your brain that's responsible for storing minutiae, and storing them long enough that you can flip through them like notes later, is switched off.

I realised that I was letting many a riveting blog post slip by only because I'm always too sleepy to transcribe the stuff I see during those early hours. Last night though, I'd kept pen-paper handy, by a bedside table to beat the machine. And did I ever :) It's three in the afternoon now, and I have a whole page of notes here, albeit scrawled illegibly, but then, this is the stuff dreams are made of...wait back that up...my hyperbole just melded with reality..I'm feeling special now :-)

This post is written in real-time. I was pretty sure I had gold, so didn't bother constructing this post in my head first. Had I, I realise now it would've been a good idea.

Having made sense of my notes, I find I've written crap. I've learnt a little about myself today though. During the pre-sunrise hours, it isn't that I produce gold every morning, rather my threshold for what causes the chuckles drops like a blessed christian on GOD tv.

Maybe some other day.

The areas of my ineptitude

These are many, but the ones I chose for this top 5-er are those that frustrate me the most.

5. Sewing - At various points in time, my wardrobe's had perfectly nice shirts and trousers that've been rendered unwearable by a missing button or a come-undone hem. So I see the button lying there, the shirt pleading to be worn, and the thread/needle combination lying by the potpourri. Yet, I'm going to do nothing about it until I get to go home and have my mommy do the dirty.

4. Multitasking - I cannot talk to my significant other while trying to pretty up a presentation, nor can I pick out work clothes while listening to Anindo Chatterjee do an intricate rela.

The point is, these things need all the attention I can give them, with little (ability to pay attention) left over. In fact, when I chance upon somebody else multitasking their way through similarly involved activities, I'm left in awe. Can't do much else but admire.

3. Drawing - You'd be amazed at some of the replicas I can produce. Back in the day, my biology teacher gave me star*star*star when he saw my detailing of the cell structure. Without a dang picture or photo in front of me though, when what was needed was a little girl lost in thought, I've been known to produce a slug.

2. Dancing - I sprout appendages at the very thought. I'll have to forever say never.

1. Singing - I have my good days. The problem is that I have too many bad ones.

Media bashing

You get to see these clips of Rumsfeld - "I never said we know for sure where Iraq's WMDs were" and thanks to some really great archiving, the folks over at Jon Stewart's Daily show are able to pull up another, older clip of Donny boy saying "Yes, well they're north of xyz, south of abc, etc, Yeah, we've got good intelligence".

But what I'd REALLY like to see is taking this up another notch, so that the likes of Tony Snow, and heck, even Bush, when lying at Press conferences, can immediately be told off for their two-faced, no-good, double-dealing ways.

This doesn't need magic. If you're a half decent journalist, and you've got your questions mapped out right, you already know the line that Snow, Bush and their ilk are going to toe.What that means is if you make an accusation, they're going to deny it. If you ask them about how something they'd said earlier turned out to be untrue, they're going to deny having ever said such a thing. If you tell them you love their hair, they're going to say it wasn't their fault, they had to wear a helmet on the way over.

The point is, many of these press soundbytes are given at events/press conferences that are telecast live. All that the journalist needs to do is to dig up a video of the guy when he was asked the same question a few months earlier. The difference between this and Stewart's daily show is that the video needs to be ready PRIOR to the journalist's question being asked.

Journalist then asks question. Snow goes "Ermm..No, no, I never said anything of the sort. The media always distorts facts". BAM - Journalist whips out her new iVideoplayathingy in front of the TV cameras! Yeah, I'd like to see THAT.

Cut-paste raja

I've been religiously blogging the last few days, caring little for the audience. I haven't figured out how I might install a widget to tell me if there are folks that actually visit here, but that's partly because I haven't felt the need.

Sopher, Phil O. had said something about a tree falling in the forest, and no-one being around to hear it. I figure mine not to ask, rather to just plug away at the blog. The blog can be the tree. I'm sure the tree was aware it fell.

I haven't even begun to mix metaphors, and am already worried about having a falling blog on my hands.

What know I

Here's a summary of the Hodgmanesque areas of my expertise:

1. Indian cricket - Stats, present and past. Venues across the country. Politics. U-19s to watch out for. A lucid understanding of the technique, fallacies and strengths of each of our batsmen and bowlers. The basics of bowling quick. Strategies to win the next two world cups. Note that I'm no longer sentimental about how the team does. Our prolonged mediocrity at this game, one we're all so invested in, has finally made me lose heart.

2. Hindi films - I'm fact-filled, but also emotionally attached to bollywood. I think these movies are a great way to raise your kids. You instill all the necessary values in 3 hour bursts. It's no longer an indefinite parenting responsibility. Just deposit impressionable kids at a Yash Raj (actually more B.R. Chopra or Barjatya) movie, and you'll have them touching your feet for years to come. There are always exceptions, be it movies or the kids themselves.

3. Indian writing in English - I connect well to a select few authors. Some of these folks, I've read inside out. While the field is vast, if you were to ask me about Malgudi, I'd do a decent job.

4. Photonics - Am unusually interested in the field. Particularly lasers. Yknow, to blow stuff up and all. But no, seriously, I'm a laser and semi-conductor enthusiast. I'm not sure why. Also, it's a cause I support..Every second, a gazillion photons give up their ghosts. How much longer will we look the other way?

5. Elegant math/logic puzzles - I lie. This is not an area of my expertise. It's only an area of interest.

6. Mainstream Hollywood - I've had some time on my hands. I know some stuff about the post 1990 era.

7. Comics [serious stuff this] - Asterix, Tintin, Calvin & Hobbes, Dilbert. Mastermind level on a good day.

8. Fashion - ok, no.

9. Project Management - You might want to take a look at my work blog. I've only just started on the blog, but I've put in a fair number of hours dissecting the field, straddling its dual nature of art somedays, science others.

10. ... in progress ...

Wingin' it

It's been said of me that I act before I think. And that I couldn't be bothered to actually do the thinking after.

That explains much. A recent survey I carried out showed that the junta here were not much impressed by my "Chicken World" anecdote.

Three chickens had only just flown the coop from a poultry farm. Two miles from the farm, as they lay down on a grassy knoll to reflect on their escapade, Pavneet, the bravest of the three, whistled a sad tune. Obalesh joined in on seconds and the third chicken, who didn't have a name, beatboxed.

Just then, it suddenly occurred to them that they were chickens, and it wasn't a very chickeny thing to a cappella the night away. They stopped. They decided they would be better off charting a course for the unknown that lay ahead.

At this point, Obalesh pointed out that nothing had changed, that they were still chickens and they didn't really have the brainpower for something like this.

The third chicken (one of those intense brooding types we see so often sitting on the far end of the cage, away from the feeder, ruminating on what could have been) decided to speak up. However, just as he was about to, he realised that he too was a chicken, and no chicken the world over had ever spoken. Thankfully, it didn't douse his plans much.

On a small sandy clearing in the knoll, the third chicken drew a map of the universe.

He then outlined a plan to take over this universe, overthrowing Bush and his cronies using ChickenFart TM, a secret weapon first developed by Google. It would infect humans that came in contact with any of the band of renegade chicken soldiers, the Nuggets.

* I can't reveal much more of the story. I'm hoping there'll be a movie. The screenplay is tentatively called Bird Flew.

Sunshine today

Trippy times

The undergrad career is careening to an end. Am bent back all the way over trying to land a job. But these are happy times. The weather's good. Yes, there's Sunshine Today, and perhaps some cricket in the offing... Or on the legging. :-) I kill myself.

I wish I knew where to get me some of those 'fast-twitch' muscles that these quicks have. Bowling at 140 is a distant dream, but what i wouldn't give.

The batting's going well, sweet spot and all. Solid defence, good ground shots, and all of that against some of the fastest pakis that be. Short ball will still do me in though.

Will update after I get a match in. Have to rally all the buggers. Stupid exams, nobody wants to come out and play.