Showing posts with label General. Show all posts
Showing posts with label General. Show all posts

Sunday, October 04, 2015

Cold War Resurrected. Thanks for being the shit, Mr. Obama!

The US-Russia points of divergence continually keep surfacing to an odious extent and to the point of silliness that it is beyond people to react. People are really getting comfortably numb at this noisome vapidity and fulsome platitude of political muscle flexing.

Why on earth would Obama admin now try to undermine Russian efforts at countering IS when they also want to achieve the same end? Why is it acceptable to the US Govt only if every other nation who wants to fight terrorism follows their methodology and means? Is that not blatant and hypocritical politicisation? This casts a spectre of doubt on the genuineness of US' attempts to combat global terrorism. This is very analogous to how Congress keeps opposing anything BJP tries - the very same thing they would have resorted to or done. Or vice-versa.

Whom does this political posturing benefit? Is it that important to the suffering millions what underlying political agenda Russia has, when it wants to extend support to Syria in its bid to counter terrorism? When someone tries to waylay these attempts, does that not smack of insecurity? Issues with Iran and Al-Assad must be set aside for achieving a bigger goal, that is to ensure there are no more refugees. The magnitude of problem that Europe is going through, as well as those Syrians who do not want to migrate anywhere, leave alone to Europe or Turkey, is much simpler to handle if these two joined hands and brought all their allies together in one massive global umbrella. That would ensure peace for everyone who matters; no EU countries that cannot handle any more influx of population more than that they can handle, would be unhappy. These smaller countries with their own wobbly economies would not begrudge the refugees and probably welcome the miniscule that have till yet been forced upon them with forthcoming hands of brotherhood, because these small countries - mostly splinters of erstwhile united countries - know the pain of seeking refuge and migration. By joining hands with Russia, only because they started the raids first, the US would do Europe a world of good, and redeem itself as a gracious ally, in this war against militancy. It would be the same case, if US had started and Russia were to adopt the current US stance. That's what grace is, magnanimity of heart is, genuine global cooperation is.

What if the two powers came together on a mission with common goal against a common enemy and then sort out their skirmishes in private? And this coming from Mr. Obama proves that he is no better than his political forbears on either side of the national divide, that he too is a pawn of strong inner-national lobbies. This really is surprising given the notion that he is not going to run for another term, however much he probably wants to or would like to; when you go out into the sunset, why not set an example of having broken new paths, travel roads less travelled, blaze trails for others to follow! That, now, is the kind of example that beacons of wisdom do, to be remembered for eternity on the sands of time. Mr. Obama is not a man for all seasons or reasons. I am disappointed, because 8 years ago, he really looked set to do that, but now he doesn't mind being judged unworthy by history.

The only way, again, for the global powers to make Vlad Putin feel comfortable to give in in his other transgressions and perceived aggression within the vicinity of his immediate borders, ingressing into the splintered nations of erstwhile USSR, would be to show him what a largesse of accommodative political gesture can be, what the power of magnanimity can be, instead of behaving like Scrooge!

As the Bishop tells to Jean Valjean, "Sometimes one has to do much for the devil to do little to god." Amen.

Monday, July 20, 2015

From Now On...

From Now on... any posts I would try and publish on the blog space that would deal with my opinions or views or critique or analyes on novels, fiction, stories, non-fiction... writings in general can be accessed here.

See you around, until next post.

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Oh Captain, My Captain!

Teachers are a rare breed of people. Sounds cliche? Well... never mind! They are. If anyone has embraced the idea - leave the tag 'profession' - of themselves as a teacher, then they should go all out like a one-person T20 army: Should give a rousing start, sustain the interest in the middle, be willing to rotate strike for another, dedicated - even if yet not in a state on a given day (because people can have off days!) - colleague, slog it out towards the end, come back, bowl tight both at the power plays, in the middle overs (when the field of students begin to relax), and at the death, as well as keep wickets ! Preparation before class, energy and provocative transactions (provocative not in a noisy sense, but intellectual stimulation) through class, post-transaction inputs till the exam-day! For this to happen, they must constantly evolve, keep themselves in the learning loop by reading from far and wide, be able to connect their learning to their teaching, be open to accept knowledge. They must not whine to work citing mundane reasons or just be content to complete syllabus, have the authority to challenge wrong notions or ideas or understanding of another colleague aggressively, proactively, even if at times it hurts the other ONLY BECAUSE the other is a sloth to learn or egoistic to accept truths, and be humble to make corrections when another superior mind corrects them. BUT... only from another superior mind. How do we identify that? Well, intuitively a teacher would, even if dishonest enough to accept, identify another, superior mind. Unfortunately, we do not have such quality people. You see, why I call them a rare breed of people. They do not and must not necessarily come to work because that money is needed at home. For that, there are other more honourable, virtuous professions! They should not sulk to work. They should not project their minimal attempts at syllabus completion as work done. You are expected to do that. Going beyond that is your job. If one can't live up to these requirements, they must get out of the profession and let more willing minds to enter the arena. If one can't constantly be willing to challenge one's intellectual complacency, they must not become teachers. All other things do not matter. Unfortunately, today's education environment is full of incompetent people who are not willing to accept they do not know and do not want to learn and are happy to pose as teachers. Today's teaching profession to a major extent is only posturing. How can it stay divine? No wonder, students attend tuition. It is an absolute matter of shame to find out that one's students attend extra tuition. It means there is a fault line in our work. We are not going that extra length! I've been lucky to not have students of mine (not necessarily my school, but of those I have taught) go for outside tuitions. Thank you, God!

Friday, November 25, 2011

For a nation obsessed with cricket!

Or should it read "To a Nation obsessed with cricket"!. No... that would sound like a Tribute post.

Or, given the magnanimity of the situation - Sachin missing his 100th  100! - which is an even worse a tragedy to this country than the loss of Kishen to Maoists or lives of 1000s of people that get lost in Didiland due to train derailments (who anyway die in this country one way or other or would anyway die sooner or later!)  - or should I say, given the gravity of the situation? it may sound like the opening phrases of an Epitaph! Or should it read, "Against the backdrop of a nation where cricket is more fundamental to this nation..." or even better! Where a Sachin's century at Wankhede or Brabourne is more fundamental to some (who are more fundamentally Mumbaikars than Yorkshire men are more Yorkshire than the Terriers, Pugs and Pollicles) than if it came at Kotla or at Kolkata... who cares if India follows on or wipes the lead!

Btw, prayers were aplenty both in the ground as well as on tweets, sms', fb wall posts (where the country these days communicate more than in real time) that India PROBABLY MUST FOLLOW ON because SACHIN GETS ANOTHER GO AT 100TH 100! Gods Zounds and Odd and Ends! We have inexplicably and irredeemably morphed into this self-obsessed Frankeinsteins (or is it Chitti now?) who are bothered more about personal achievements and self-interests that take primacy to bigger pictures! You get the picture? There is a whole album behind this!

We have essentially come to accept the culture of coercion, exhortation and do or die philosophy! Survive or sink? And what of the meek inheriting the earth? And what of the adages that celebrate the beauty of god's creation where the best and the worst co-exist and goodness gets its validity from the existence of badness! To put things in perspective... we have lost our perspective as well as perspicacity! We are just about data, facts, statistics, cups, victories, woes, failures, suicides... This is the India FDIs are made of!

There was a time when the west came here for other things! They don't need to come here anymore because we have become one! Anyway... coming  back to where we started.... Kohli is from Delhi, playing for Bangalore and India... Ashwin is from Chennai playing for India and they are still playing to save the invaluable follow-on millions of cricket watchers pray should happen so Sachin shall score his century in Mumbai! And I just now even heard a few shouts (INDEEEEYAAAA... INDIA!) Anyway... sanity has been restored after a moment of cliched deafening silence that followed the heartbreak that Sachin's out at 94 gave! I mean... these guys are not only after runs, but are playing in a way Test Cricket is known to be played. Leaving the right balls out, pricing their wicket than the streaky 4 that can take us through the nervous 90s! You price your wicket... that's what happens when you play for your nation, to save your nation!

Oh, but what about the million voices that say, "we've anyway already won the series 2-0, who cares!" Is it alright to have won the series 2-1 at the end of the series? People from the culture of win or die, answer, please!

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Digging into my favourites....

I wasn't really intending to do this. But, my daughter set it off. In my previous post I had confessed to going moist-eyed - to put it mildly - after watching Taare Zameen Par. This post has been prompted by hearing that wonderful voice of Shankar Mahadevan in the title song. While the world is going ga-ga over Shaan's Bum Bum Bole, I think the title song takes the cake. So soulful. I guess it has to do with the movie itself. Very soulful. And I have met or spoken to hundreds literally now. Not one has not confessed to unabashedly going "lump-in-the-throat" to "cried-on-every-frame" at some level or other. While I was on that, I mulled over the other "made me moist-eyed" movies. And surprise surprise... some among them were teacher related movies. It has nothing to do with the fact that I am one. But take a look at the list of my favs in that genre: Dead Poets Society must rate on the top of the heap; i.e. until Taare came along! Then the movie of Poitier's based on Brathwaite's apocryphal (to me) novel - To Sir With Love. What a masterpiece creation that novel is! The movie was in my opinion so true to original. Of course, alongside ranks its Bollywood kin Sir featuring Naseeruddin Shah. I remember the day vividly - it was not too often I went for Hindi movies then. But this was one of them. Back in the 80s? I remember seeing it in VeeCumCee Emerald that used to be part of the proud edifice called Safire Complex - never mind the "what later became sleaze joint" popular VeeCumCee (which later virtually became the We Cum, See! joint for quickies and prostitution!) Blue Diamond. There have been several fantastic english movies that have boarded the Blue Diamond bus. But... when you hit the bottom, it gets really bottomer.... Anyway, before I get nostalgic and start contemplating a hubristic eulogy to Safire Complex on which stands weed growth and rubble on Mount Road now, let me cut it off! But...
The following are my education or children related favs: Taare Zameen Par, Dead Poets' Society, To Sir With Love, Sir (surprisingly Kamal's remake "Nammavar" doesn't kick me at all!), the Promethean Pink Floyd video Another Brick in the Wall and lastly but not in that order, Pearl Jam's JEREMY!
Now while we are on movie trip, let me also put down my Top Ten Tamil Comedies. I am not meme-ing anyone on this or anything else. But you can respond with your own Top-10s! Welcome. Here goes:
1) Kaadhalikka Neramillai
2) Ninaivil Nindraval
3) Anbee Vaa
4) Uttaravindri Ulle Vaa
5) Ullaththai Alli Thaa
6) Michael Madana Kamaraajan
7) Singaaravelan
8) Magaraasan & Kaadhalaa Kadhalaa
9) Pancha Thantiram
10) Thenali
I guess I do some kind of compensatory justice to my not including Nammavar in my list earlier. 5 (6) out of 10 (11) in the list you would see are Kamal movies. Well, goes without saying, with his sense of timing and eye for comic nuances, obviously Kamal comedies are off the rack better than anyone else's this side of Sridhar's movies. I am sure, top of 7 out of 10 people's all time tamil comedy list would contain #1 - Kaadalikka Neramillai. Of course there are other movies of yore which are so special for their comic moments - Thiruvilayaadal, Ooty Varai Uravu, several Chandrababu and Nagesh as well as NSK movies, Thillaana Mohanaambal... even the much later Ramarajan's Karagaatakaaran (inspired obviously and modelled on Thillaaana - similar to Sangamam. Three other movies I would like to add to my list, if I had a Top-12 would be Sabaash Meena, Kalyaanam Panniyum Brahmachari & Sabaabathi (bringing up the Baker's Dozen). One may also mention stuff like Aan Paavam and Nethi Adi by Pandiya Rajan and Indru Poi Naalai Vaa by Bhagyaraaj, but they wouldn't somehow get into my Top-10 for reasons I can't explain!
Anyway... so much for Tamil movie nostalgia. I shall stop here. The rest is laughter!

Sunday, June 03, 2007

Doubts re-surface...

Hello... anyone out there? Hey-loooooo.... anyone who can clarify this Dalit identity issue about which one of my recent posts talk???

In the meanwhile, there have been two occurences that further muddle my search.

1) I saw a footage in one of the 24-hour News Channel showing a mass conversion of 2000 Dalits to Buddhism in Mumbai
2) In today's The Hindu, there is a news item about how the Dalits are planning to protest by forcing their way into the Draupadi Amman Temple near Salem, to which they have been denied entry by the caste Hindus for the past years.
My researches on the web haven't yielded the result I seek. Could someone out there clarify my confusion. Who is a Dalit? Or what constitutes a Dalit Identity?
Thanks and much obliged.

This summer thus far...

It has been a very interesting summer, away from the heat outside, from the hurly burly of rehearsal-driven theatrical existence... full of reading, writing, introspection, watching movies, analysing books, movies, energising and stimulating discussions with friends who read the type of works I read! And... of Gandhi.

I discovered one Mr. Gandhi, also known as Mahathmaji and the Father of the Nation! How? Why?

How come, and now suddenly? would be a more appropriate question. I'll tell you how.

In recent times, my re-introduction to Gandhi came in the form of my working with Gowri Ramnarayan during the Rural Phantasy production, about which I had written elsewhere in about two posts, within this blogspace.

Re-introduction, because, at some point or other, all of us go through Gandhi either through English or History text syllabus. But then, how many of us really take Gandhi at that point of our lives except as someone who can get us 2 or 5 or 10 marks to some question we answer in some examination. Of course, forget the fact that we are on day to day finger (our) to face (his) terms with him through currency coins and notes!

I have been for a while now (if 5 months count as for a while!) working on this new and as yet unpublished playscript by Chennai playwright Mohan Narayanan. Among several other things the play deals with Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Appropriately, this is the 150 year of India's First War of Independence (about which a lot of furore has been raised in the media), 100th year since Gandhi's acquaintance with Thoreau's Civil Disobediance (that great tract that changed the course of American struggle against the British, like ours), which was to forever change him from his UK-educated lawyership to the Ahimsavad that he later became, and the 60th year of our Independence.

As part of the on-going work, I have been doing quite a bit of research. First, I saw Attenborough's film Gandhi, with an open, first-time eye. It is quite a difficult task to see something again as if it were the first time. But this film this time was really different. I saw it three times again and again, not because I wanted to understand as part of the research. But the sheer magnetism of the script drew me again and again. I do not remember remembering through the watch that I was here to research, look for something, rewind, etc etc. And then, I listened to a lot of those Bhajans and songs of MS that Gandhi was supposed to have paid audience. Well, what can be said of MS. She is... MS! Of course, this doesn't deter me from my daily quota of MLV and MDR. Somehow, those are my favourites. Probably because of the very different type of voices they have (in spirit and tape, if not in real-time anymore). And... am currently reading R.K.Narayan's Waiting for Mahatma. It certainly is a different experience among all the other RKNs.

I have read a dozen RKNs or probably more. I always get carried away by the simple charm of those Malgudi descriptions and the realistic characters. Waiting for Mahatma is more. I have a few pages left and am going to face a huge void after am done with it. Alongside, there are other books I try and read on a few pages a day basis so that monotony doesn't set in or one book doesn't affect me totally. Some may argue that it may take away the totality of reading experience. It somehow doesn't and hasn't till now. Each book is a living thing of its own and brings a different encounter experience of its own as much as each person we meet. Anyway, the first two parts of the book have been very moving in their earthiness. Although the book is dominated by Sriram the protagonist, the on and off presence of Bharathi is so 'hitting'. She really brings about the Gandhian in one. The work begins with Gandhi's arrival in Malgudi and by the end of the first part, as he leaves we begin to wonder how will the book sustain, there are several more pages to go. Like Caesar's absence in Julius Caesar beyond almost the mid-way point of the book, so is Gandhi's. His phantom lingers. Let me tell you when I finish. It is a good read.

In the while, I do not know whether it is by pattern or accident or design, whatever material I seem to touch, it seems to involve Gandhi. Could anyone explain this phenomenon? I started doing a bit of reading upon the Boston Tea Party, for a little presentation coming up on the eve of July 4, lo and behold! I end up reading about the Salt March. Actually, there is a lot of similarity and difference between the Dandi March and the Boston Tea Party that's quite interesting to note. This is not the first time it has happened to me, this phenomenon. Still...

I can sense some little changes coming over me (no no... I don't and won't own a charka!) in the process. May be it is for good. I leave it to time to throw light.

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Requiem for the year that would soon 'was' be!

In the beginning was January...

and at the end... December of course! I don't want to stand on the Night of Dec 31 and write a Janus-faced post. That's too passé. So I jump the gun.
Of course I am sad that Michael Schumacher, Martina Navratilova, Andre Agassi all retired and Shane has Warned he would soon. But there are other things, on the more personal front that I am not so happy about! I just tried counting the amount of work I had put in Theatre as well as elsewhere. It shocks me to realise that I had done about 15 productions and events of various sorts in theatre in 2006 alone. It makes me happy, of course, to see that that involves a wide repertoire of what ranges from acting in other's production to figure in the scheme of other banners too! But 15??? That is worse than The Meaning of Life (which is 12 !!!)
So what am I proud of that I did in 2k6 that I would cherish in 2k7 and could possibly relish cherishing further than 2k7? Perhaps... Three@Twenty. When at a time other groups are thinking of figuring out what can be done to the future course of theatre in Chennai, I think we started doing something. It makes me happy to think that we were able to associate Masquerade (here I mean the folks who stood by Masquerade throughout the year, out of sheer conviction and commitment) with several new and first time playwrights. I am sure that spark of ignition would definitely make them look back and draw inspiration to write further works. Also, am glad that the year 2k6 was not solely a KK-walk at Masquerade, but others who took responsibilities in all walks of a production - through all the mainstream as well as Three@Twenty readings. And the planning is just about complete for 2k7.
I can tell you, it is going to be a very different year of presentations from Masquerade. If we don't end up redefining art or theatre in Chennai, we would be redefining ourselves. And I thank "small Medium @ Large" for that. It made us realise we are better off not doing those comedies. That I also feel is the current problem in theatre in Chennai. Every one seems to be convinced that comedy is the only way to go, if one wants to see better populated houses. Even when it is not one of thsoe western made to order box comedies, it still is a comic or light-hearted play. Why? I remember fondly Mitran's Anna Weiss and Bagyam's Senora Carrar among several other shows. Do we have to ham for our sausage and bread?
I wrote this little 600 word guest column in Simply Chennai recently. I had said some things that I accept are truths about the current trends in Chennai. But in retrospect, I realise why we are stagnating continually and are constantly unnecessarily soul-searching as to the Status Quo of Chennai Theatre. It is a syndrome that is part and parcel of contemporary liberalised India. Any thing that comes new to India... it takes a while to warm up. But once it catches up... it's like wild fire. No stopping, unless, having destroyed everything around itself, being left with itself, it consumes itself. Unfortunately, unlike the Phoenix, it never rises out of its own ashes. Take the case of Photocopying (or Xerox in familiar parlance), Electronic Data Processing, DTP, Colour Printouts, STD ISD PCOs, Pagers, Mobile phones... you see a saturation resulting from watering down of availability. I guess theatre is going through the same phase. By sheer unmoderated enthusiasm, we have watered down the quality of productions in Chennai. Every so-called actor as well as director is gotten greedy to perform, we have created a scenario of plentiness of performance that we hardly do what the classical musicians would call 'sadagam'. To quote Ranjani and Gayatri from their interview today in the Music Festival Supplement to The Hindu: Though we know the value of this festival, we are beginning to wonder if this kind of excess and performance orientation is the only way of preserving and nurturing our music. With so many concerts during the Season, how can any artiste do justice to every one of them? Similarly, if we perform so much, how can there be qualitative energy? I am surprised that even such a quality conscious person as Bala (for whose conceptions I have a high adoration!) has been too prolific in 2k6!
Also, I feel, instead of casting aspersions on the public's craving for entertainment as the public's craving for comedy on stage, if we start giving tighter and better narrative productions (that are not necessarily comedies), it would help us revision our audience for the years to come, vis-a-vis Theatre in Chennai. I am very convinced that all any entertainment-seeker wants is an entertainment that helps him/her forget the world he/she personally inhabits. The world on stage can be a familiar serious world, doesn't matter, but it has to be presented in such a manner without distracting the narration with unnecessary frills or comedy. So, for me, 2k7 is going to be all about evolving a definitive individual style of presentation and choice of scripts. Also to strive for tighter and well-honed productions than hamming comedies or going for numbers.
On the personal side - 2k6 was productive in its own way. I added quite a few new chapters to my Book of Life - how to gauge people better, who to keep distances and how to keep distances, how to not be politically correct at the risk of losing people, places, work, etc. Well, it does help to be honest and open even if one is branded as being rude or disparaging or whatever. And I managed to post little of my fiction than I have written. Only those I thought are absolutely read for public consumption has gone into Web-publication here. And I have met some nice and decent people both on the web/blogosphere as well as real-time. Hope their acquaintances blossom into something more worthy.
To end the post on the same note as it began, I would be sad to see several people retire after the 2k7 Cricket World Cup. But then, when it's time to go, one just has to go. Better to get out before fading ignominiously into a murky sunset.

Saturday, November 11, 2006

Ada-yaaaaru? Where is Aday-aru?

This one I wrote upon Karthik Ganesh's request for his Vivartha city-based tabloid that wants to "Be the Change!" You can access the original publication at www.vivartha.com

I have always maintained that the late Rajiv Gandhi was the greatest thing that happened to this country this side of the MISA-Emergency of the 70s. What was that side of MISA? Of course, our Independence. But for the late Rajiv Gandhi, India would probably have maintained the status quo in this global village of liberal economy and new consumerism. Whether it is good or bad, don’t ask me yet! And what has that got to do with this pretense of an Op-Ed in a tabloid that does not have a very wide reach as yet? Well, read on!

Somebody asked me what I was going to do for Madras Day. As a so-called responsible citizen who has been born and brought up in the city and lived virtually all my life here, and now that I am also a socially responsive theatre-activist who talks activism, I set about the deed. The first step was thinking. What was I thinking? What is it that we could give back to this city, irrespective of people who hate calling it Chennai or people who like to remember it as Madras? Therein lay my egg of Columbus.

A line from a play I once did (in 1995, I think) called Romulus the Great came to my mind hard and clear. It goes thus: “[sic] Rome has become old; it has become an old hag; it has become a den of thieves and murderers…” And Rome is not very far from Madras either. It is time we gave a face-lift and physical makeover to this 269-year-old hag. So what is the solution? First change Madras to Chennai (that happened in 1995, right?). Then… wait for the world to realize that Dilli, Mumbai and Kolkata are bursting at their seams in their own ways and let’s move South! And then? Declare Madras as legacy and heritage, clarion Chennai as IT Park, package our heritage and call it Brand Madras. And have the first settlement day at Fort St. George that day in 1637 as Madras Day!!

Rajiv Gandhi’s liberalization of the economy, Narasimha Rao’s freewheeling of commerce and Manmohan Singh’s globalization of the nation… A congressional aggression. It has led to cities going turbo on becoming metro so much so that heterosexuals have become metrosexuals, men have become unisexed and women have become psychologically androgynised. Gyms are thriving, boutiques are flourishing, coffee pubs and other sort of bars are nourishing (of course, themselves). Only the Adyar River is languishing. There’s no point even talking of River Cooum or Buckingham Canal.

A trivia: Do you know Madraspatnam of yore used to have three rivers called River Cooum, Buckingham Canal and Adyar Estuary that we also had our triveni-sangam? Alas… Pondicherry can package its water, Kovai can package its Siruvani, but we?

There is this little joke among the Brits and the Americans who lived on either side of the Atlantic. They fondly call it the Pond and themselves as people on both sides of the pond. The First world – I am reminded of Arundati Roy, who points to how ‘the rich are always called the First’ – has risen so vertically that the vast ocean that separated these land masses has started resembling a little pond from those heights.

Chennai is no stranger to this phenomenon. We are losing ground; soil and earth hook line and sinker. And the rainwater has nowhere to go because the Pride of Madras, Adyar River has been serenaded into slush… thanks to the land-lubbing greed of the Realty. And the sea has grown sick of coming back inland even on Full Moon these days, what is left of the River has gone bone-dry on days when it is not slushy. Since the birds don’t come anymore to their habitat on the estuary, buffaloes find natural haven! Do ye hear? We have shut the Cooum totally and now are slowly killing Adyar water-space as well!

Shocking but true! Adyar has become a virtual pond. I had the shock of my life the other day when I saw a herd of buffaloes wading through the Adyar slush towards the stagnant heap of plastics, bottles, covers and god knows what or who else is rotting inside for the last few months. Of course, I am used to the sight of rich people coming in their SUVs and parking it for a few seconds to quickly dump their plastic bags full of garbage into the river, but buffaloes soldiering into the slush of what used to be Adyar River!!! That is the pit of Brand Madras-isation!

I cringe at the possibility of having to cross the Adyar Bridge each day at least thrice and empathize with all those who wear duppatta-balaclava to keep their nostrils from the stench that emanates as you pass by towards the Greenways Road signal. And whose fault is it? Chennai today stands at the edge of a total implosion that we really don’t need any tsunami or earthquake on the Richter of 7 or other natural calamities. We are killing ourselves by hoarding ourselves more and more into our vertical slums. There was a time I used to travel on the ECR and be able to see the sea crystal clear, occasionally impeded by those tall conifers that peppered the sands un-humanised (pardon my painful coinage!). And today? Lines from Yeats’ poem flash across my memory: “The center cannot hold, things fall apart…”. Let’s stop this space-mania and contribute our bit towards creation of little green spaces in the city.

It is a very laudable effort that the previous state government started utilizing wasted spaces in the middle of the trafficked city to create little parks. It is very appreciable that the present government did not think otherwise and continues with those efforts. Let us create soil and earth where we can instead of concretizing and mortaring what is left of the city. Instead of squabbling over to drink Pepsi or not because of pesticides (which anyway comes from the groundwater they use to make these beverages), let us look at the cost we are paying to embrace globalization. We are not only embracing the entrepreneurship of the First World in a hurry to get short-term material benefits, but are also killing our body-clock by working to American and British and Australian time shifts. Let’s get back to our own country and city and in the process restore normalcy of life for both the flora and fauna as well as for us.

Revolutions lead to a change of life, with pain. Evolution is gentle, slow but not painful. Let us learn to take things slow. Let us live by the needs of our local than the requirements of the global. Let us do things one by one, for everything starts at 1 (for it is better to add the zero at the end than at the beginning) and 1 is an individual.

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Postman Nevermore Knocks Twice.... - HEY MY 50TH POST

"Poetry is all that is worth remembering in life," said William Hazlitt.

I don't know how much the current generation of teens and youth out there remembers, poetry or not. After all, this is an age of Memory Chips and 100+ giga inexpensive hard-drives. So save as much as you can. Even dedicated drives for downloaded DivX movies. Ek Dum!

When I was a kid, there used to be this scheme run by the government to encourage savings at a young age, called Sanchayika, whereby your schools used to run a sort of Savings Bank and each child could credit to his/her account even 5 paisa - each day or whenever possible. And we were proud owners of pass books. When I quit school, from 7th std until 10th, I had saved 32 rupees painstakingly over 4 years and to receive it as hard cash!!! Rs. 32/- in 1981. How much is it worth now?

Well now, am not talking of that savings.

Save to Memory. The watch word of the day.

And thus computer does make Hoarders and Packrats of us all!

So, everything is available on the World Wide Web. There is no need to write notes, buy bazaar guides, burn midnight oil at the 11th hour. Visit one of the many essay and guide sites dot com and search and save.

In absolute contrast to the Nazi burning of the books where the watch word was "Search and Destroy", now we are witness to the age of Search and Save. In either case, we spare the world of paper. Thus Nazis and We are both contributive in our own ways to Save Trees, Conserve Ecology and all that jazz!

As an extension, we spend more and more time on the WWW. As a natural extension we start living out our lives in front of the Computer more than in real-time. Leaving aside the fact that we now consume more hydel energy instead of Bagasse, communication, exchange of messages, emails, opinion sharing all happen in this P2P world of give and take. I am going out there one of these days and go on a Friends of IPO (IPO Bachao Andolan) a-la Medha Patkar. May be I'll go on fast and get Saif 'Cyrus' Khan to endorse and probably have his movie banned at our own Q IS DEAD MOVIES!

I read the other day that postmen who used to go door to door to deliver post and parcels, of late have also started carrying stamps, money order forms et al so that now they are mobile post offices of the minidor sort. Yes, now that courier deliverers have taken over going door to door to deliver posts and packets and parcels, IPO-men have to move on. IPO ya BPO - ay, there's the rub! So anyway, these poor souls have no raison d'etre anymore. Even worse, no one writes to the postmen anymore. And the Postman Doesn't Even Knock Once.

Blame it all on the blog!

I must be getting past that age when I can't consider myself eligible anymore to be in the youth age-group. The newspapers who write about theatre in Chennai have done away with the youth tag on me. There are real youths (I mean 18 and 19) getting into theatre. My early theatre days was like the English cricket team of about until 5 years back. The average age of a theatre youth would be mid-20s. Chennai Theatre scenario isn't so anymore, it resembles the youth world of American tennis (15s and 16s), although the English Cricket team seems to be cruising on the mid-20s aver-age mode as ever (else how do you account for Shaun Udal!). So, forget me. Move on to real youth.

The youth seems to have its own ways, as it always have been through the ages. Except, we are entering or have already entered an absolutely new hi-fi age where high infidelity and low fidelity rates in relationships are the norms. But we are not talking that either. We are talking about the habits of keeping unearthly hours.

I normally fuzz out at 11.45 the latest in the night. Times were I used to crawl home at 2.20 and 3.10 am on my Titan Dial with an array of smells in my breath, enough to make the Fragnipanis and Baldinis of the world go dizzy with envy. Not any more. I cop out at 11.45 PERIOD

And the next morning I get up early (which is about 6ish) to check my mails (lest there are heavy downloads on my mail, since I belong to the primitive civilisation of Dial-up users) and surf the net for info I seek for any writing projects of mine. And what do I find? The comments to posts on some of the blogs I visit as well as the posts themselves bear the stamp of Interstate 1.00 am-ish to 3.00 am-ish. I got piqued and asked couple of my young gen acquaintances in theatre.

Well, apparently around 2.00 am is the time of maximum DivX Downloads since the broadband is relatively faster then. So while a six-hour download starts its life, the surfers all commune at the bloggers park and start posting and commenting.

It's Darkness in the Junge, Listen to the Night!

Wow! Who would have thought that a country that two decades back was pronounced as backward and developing and conservative as it went to sleep by 9 pm to wake up and start its day at 4.30 am to the sounds of cows named Radha and Lakshmi swinging their heads as they chaffed at the fresh grass, would today go to sleep at 4 and 5 am!! Who would have thought that a country divided by the plates that unite Vindhyas underground would get together in the night. After all this is the country that got its Freedom at Midnight!!!

And then there is Call Centre! So what's so unique about Call Centre life anymore. I scoff at all these yuppie Call Centre folks when these days they come and strut about their night life. I hear you Chetan, we are in sync. The whole nation is anyway awake and that is a whole new world, brave or not. We have started working and communicating and now even conversing to Western Time Zones.

What happened to the good old real-time meetings among friends and common-interest groups? What happened to all those days of arguments and debates and exchange of ideas and trading of opinions and formation of hypotheses over coffees and pakoras at Debate and Poetry and Literary Clubs? Everything happens on-line.

Coffee is Passe and Latte is In!

Even neighbours seem to communicate either through phones or emails. I mean, the traditional description of a neighbour is a person who lives next door. And even if Indians don't anymore live in wall-sharing street-houses, we all live in neighbouring flats. How can two neighbours who share the same floor of the same block of the same apartment complex not open the door in real-time and walk across to each other's interior to say something?

This incident happened to my brother, am not joking. My brother had gone to his headhunter at Bangalore to attend his overseas interview calls as he was poaching for a job to get back to US after a couple of year's break. Obvious, it was a call center. And he was attending interviews. According to records and some sidewinding done by his B'lore companpy, he was supposed to be attending an interview call from Nebraska or wherever. They do it regular if you didn't know. That's how Indian placement guys operate. You give them a CV they forward another to their headhunting clients... further doctored needless to say. In the first place, most of the job-seekers themselves partially doctor their CVs to reflect the latest in CSHARPs or DOTNETS or whatever, and show the most recent employment as until the other day even if they were not employed until the other decade!

So, coming back... suddenly the guy at the other end, apparently his prospective employer, interviewing him gets a bit fishy and decides to probe. Actually you're sitting in India right? Haaarrummmph! Well... things kind of work out! The thing in my brother's favour was that at least he was not putting up accent or disproving he's Indian who used to be Murugan or whatever turned Mark or whatever! And then he happens to adjourn to a near-by eating joint! Wonder of wonders... he runs into someone with whom he starts chatting to while time away... and that guy narrates the story of how he was sitting in a Bangalore Call Centre and happened to interview a guy who's supposed to be in Nebby or someplace... No joking, this happened a bit recently! So... we've reached a stage in the drainpipe where two guys sit in the same Indian town and behave like both are in another western country and interviewing each other! I SALUTE THE CONTEMPORARY FIBRE OPTIC INDIAN PREDICAMENT! What shall I say?!? That was just an example what we are leading ourselves into.

The cutting edge age of bytes mega and giga

We are witnessing - and some out there are being part as well of - a generation that has become unable to structure their thoughts seriously enough that they have started speaking in monosyllabic "Hey" or bi-syllabic "Howdy" (now that comes from Frontier Westerns originally) or "Hey You" or even better "Sup?" or "Wussup dude" irrespective of the gender of the addressee or addressant or whatever s/he is! And we have become inept in communicating spontaneously not because of our lack of language tool, but because we are losing touch with reality. We need to constantly update ourselves about what's up in the world of current affairs or movies or music or books only because the next time we visit any blog we need to be able to participate and leave comments so as not to make a total turd of ourselves. Who cares? No one even knows whether you visited or not. As the used to say in the Frontier West days... "If you don't leave yore corral, yore hoss don't leave no trail, sabe?" But we have also become info-exhibitionists that we feel impelled to impress others with our knowledge that was probably acquired as a result of nethunting for info on Wiki or Rottentomatoes or NYT or Salon.com or wherever just a couple of minutes back after reading other's comments. And so the bangwagon of insecure generation rolls on!

Was it Robert Frost who said, "Poetry is what gets lost in translation"? If that, and as a natural extension this current gen is Poetry as it is getting lost in translation from real-time to blog-time, then am I witnessing Poetry in Motion? With too much of verbal diarrhea, it is probably a bit too loose motion. And they now even have a new terminology based on blogging that should anytime get into the dictionary.

BLOGGER CANDIDATE. That's how TIME described a certain IRAQ War veteran who returned home and was spurred by a politician friend of his to run for the Democrats in the election. The candidate spoke about all things that never would mean anything in realtime to the voters. And he got outdone by a traditional Senator candidate from the same county because he knew the reality. That's what it is. Blogger Candidate. Too much of attitude and too little REAL info. How much of info that is being exchanged on the blog really is useful? "Well, it gets people to know each other better... these little little exchange of opinions". So what're you going to do? Is this a sort of about to be married candidates prospecting each other? Beat it!

Arre... wah wah... new to Blogging? Welcome to Blog World (or like I leave as my housewarming comment, W2BW).