Partial Blindness

Things we take for ganted:

• The way your baby smiles at you when you look at him before leaving home
• The lovely overcast weather, drizzles …
• The lovely, haphazard, pickets outlining a large, yet unsullied, plot, and an imlee tree standing at the entrance like a guard
• Tree lined, pot-hole free road, punctuated by a garden here, a lawn there; somewhere a beautiful old stone quarter partially obscured by trees
• Little children, from not so privileged backgrounds jauntily walking to school, alone or in pairs, with no apparent care in the world

Things we cannot put out of our mind:

• A truck driver who won’t let you overtake all the while puffing greyish ugly smoke making you roll up your windows
• An erratic car driver here, bike driver there, who does something or the other to get on your nerves.

And then we blame the urban life …

Banal beauty seems to always lose to banal ugliness?

Blogs, Blog Camps, and a Thousand Words

[This is in continuation of a discussion that started on PuneTech, on Navin's Blog about BlogCamp Pune 2. Although I wasn't planning to attend the blog camp, I got sucked into the discussion, and then Dhananjay left a request for comment, of sorts]

I started typing a response and it became so long that I decided to make a blog-post out of it. This is what you’ll find here (don’t tell me I didn’t warn you):

1. Why I blog, and ruminations on blogging, reach, and value.
2. Thoughts on blogging cultures, and types of blog
3. Thoughts on blog camps

However, since it started in the context of Dhananjay’s comment/ruminations, I’ll treat this as a response, rather than a self-sufficient post.

FAQ on Facebook Vanity URLs

FAQ on Facebook Vanity URL

Q. WTF is it?
A. If you believe in the excitement surrounding it, it’s your passport to virtual fame, virtual identity, and virtual life. If you don’t believe in it, it’s a WTF.

Q. What is WTF?
A. Are you even literate?

Q. Should I get a FB vanity URL?
A. What can I say but, get a (virtual) life!

Q. What happens if I don’t get one?
A. I’m afraid, you should seriously consider suicide as an option. People have killed themselves for more unimportant things. Besides, the shame won’t let you live anyways. As well be proactive.

Q. I didn’t get one, and I don’t want to kill myself, what should I do?
A. Try grabbing a celebrity vanity (is that redundant?) url. Like facebook.com/britneyspears

Q. If I get a celebrity vanity url, how would people search me?
A. And why would they want to do that?

Q. I can’t seem to view profiles of people using their vanity urls? Why is that?
A. Because, the vanity is only in the url.

Q. Will I be more popular if I have a vanity url?
A. Not unless you grab one of those celebrity url (see above).

Q. Err. But how would that make me more popular?
A. If you have the intelligence to ask this question, why are you reading this FAQ?

Q. What if I want to remain anonymous, and still like a vanity url of my own?
A. Sorry. facebook.com/anonymous is already gone.

Q. Who got the url?
A. The real anonymous.

Q. Are you being mean because you didn’t get a vanity url that you wanted?
A. No. I’m originally mean.

Phew! (or quote of the year?)

Was listening to Cryptonomicon audiobook while commuting today, when I heard a quote that knocked me out:

“You should be a billionaire, Randy. Thank god you’re not.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Oh, because then you’d be a highly intelligent man who never has to make difficult choices—who never has to exert his mind. It is a state much worse than being a moron.”

And to think we all aspire to be in that state, precisely!

Judge-mental

Do cynics, I wonder, have horrible memories? Or do they remember too much? Do romantics (for the lack of a better word that I can contrast cynicism with — for naivety, although textbook antonym, doesn’t quite fit as an opposing worldview) have their organs of rationality compromised? Either by accident of birth, or life? Something I read sometime back has stuck with me, even though I know it’s just a half-truth, at best. We cannot learn to forget. It’s the hardest art to practice. Do romantics forget easily, and are cynics, on the other hand, doomed by exceptional abilities to remember (or lacking in the art of forgetting?).

But then, do cynics really remember well? Do they, for instance, remember having set bars too low, at some point in life, and having wished, just this, or just that. And although not miraculously, found their wishes come true. Do they remember raising the bar? And wishing again, and raising the bar again… till finally running out of luck?

Are cynics like the character in Honeymoon travels, played by Diya Mirza, who pray to God, or whoever, to grant their ‘one’ wish, one ‘last’ time, time and again? And by contrast, are romantics like a cat who cannot remember that  only the other day milk container had left behind a burnt lip?

Do we all record (in our long term memories — that blurred, hazy summation of our past that we walk around with) happy and painful moments with different fidelity? And does that set us apart as cynics or romantics? As optimists and pessimists? Do we remember other’s pasts as faithfully as we remember ours? Do we, when we judge other’s for their cynicism, or their open-mouthed acceptance of all that’s going around them (err, isn’t that naivety, that I discarded a while back), judge them with the same long term hazy world view — those same tinted glasses that are a result (mostly) of streams of accidents: happy or sad?

Sans those glasses, sans those recollections of past, however hazy, will we be absolutely fifty-fifty? Neither cynical, nor romantic? Neither optimist, nor pessimists? Neither happy, nor sad?

Does memory, then, is the only real culprit behind the sins of subjectivism? Will a memory-less judge be the most impartial, or the least judgmental (in a ironic twist of semantics)? And if so, why are we so obsessed with ‘precedence’ when it comes to judging? Isn’t real judging actually breaking a precedence, for isn’t precedence just an arbitrary social memory?

When we judge, do we just remember, or do we actually go beyond the memories? Beyond our limited notions of liberalism and conservatism? Isn’t liberalism, as we know it, just a different sort of social memory, even painfully constructed? And when, we stare each other at the crossroads — of liberalism and conservatism — do our memories fight, or do we? And, is there really a difference

Lost+Found?

Sometime I miss the simple cliques in life — cliques that are microcosms of the world, sans the complexity. It’s so easy to belong to cliques, and forget there is world outside. Sometimes I wonder why the proverbial koop mandook — the frog in the well — is so looked down upon. Is it the arrogance of those living in tad bigger wells? But, in the end, aren’t we all just that?

For thousands of years, humanity has lived believing their small jungle, their small town, their small region/state/nation, their small continent, their small world … is all that there is. And that’s just geography — or cosmology… it’s funny how, with the gnostic arrogance, the names of disciplines change.

Is it ignorance that we abhor in the koop mandook? Or is it is a twinge of jealousy at the state of the mind that is satisfied with limited knowledge? Or is it both? The answers are hard to come with authority, even within oneself.

But this isn’t about the answers. This isn’t even about the questions. The wonderful (in a highly contextual, highly subjective sense) world of a clique seems so complete while you believe in them — or rather in their completeness. Cliques, are completely connected, by definition — the mathematical definition that is. But then that completeness is artificial. It comes from excluding points, or points of views, thoughts, cultures, people, communities. With every inclusion, the complexity of a clique increases.

With inclusion we start missing lines. With complexity, completeness becomes the first casualty. Every inclusion is progressively more incomplete. Progressively more fragmentary.

Is there a going back? Isn’t every point, every line, every triangle, a clique? Every time, our world becomes too complex to comprehend, too incomplete to believe in anything … more cliques spring up, to fill up the voids of the incompleteness. But we know, that we need to forget the larger picture to believe in the smaller — even a selective amnesia will do. In art of forgetting, then, lies our redemption — even if momentary. For each redemption, is a new birth; a partial reincarnation.

I wonder, if in the obsession with knowledge, and remembering, we’ve forgotten that crucial art of forgetting? Or is it memory that keeps us from falling back into the deceiving safety of cliques? For the connecting lines often turn out to be dotted, broken ones, or just knots complete in their own right. And the knowledge that we’ve seen smaller picture cracking around us, probably gives us a hope that we could survive the chaos of the larger one. In the end, it’s uncertainty that’s knowledge, and certainty that’s an illusion. And the mind, drags the reluctant heart out of the longing for cliques. Till the next storm …

Stephen Fry is Following Me :O

So what do you do when you get an email like this:

Hi, asuph.

Stephen Fry (stephenfry) is now following your updates on Twitter.

….

Well what else, you panic! Then you remember another brit who gave the most insanely sane advice. Why, who else but the great DNA, and his advice: DON’T PANIC!

So yeah, you tell yourself, he’s just being courteous and following everyone who follows him. And there is probably a perl script somewhere which is doing that on his behalf, or a python script for that matter (after all, do such quasi-religious wars mean anything when Stephen Fry is following you?). And then, you start feeling a little less stressed. I mean surely he’s NEVER going to READ any of your tweets, and you can bloody well keep on being the ignorant fool that you are!

There… that feels good already. So Stephen, I know you’re not really following me. And thank God for that (although I, and probably you too, don’t believe in him).

Anyways, the point is, Stephen Fry is twittering. And you can follow him: here. And in all probability, he’ll follow you too. After all, he’s (or his perl/python script is) following me of all people!

And if you don’t know who Stephen Fry is (I see you googling… don’t think no one is  looking), well, I don’t know you either. Go eat a french fry. And go panic if you want. But don’t come near me. I’ll throw a paperweight at you.

Breaking the silence

This is your typical end of year blog. It is a web-ritual of sorts, and for someone who is just about starting to find some meaning in rituals, this might well be the lifeboat, or more likely, the proverbial tinka — that is the last (and useless on its own) hope of one who’s drowning.

Two Zero Zero Eight buzzed past me. I was hoping to become more serious about my writing, and more methodical. Going by the complete lack of method in the madness that my writing has been, the latter aim should have been a cakewalk — any method would have been an improvement! And yet, at the close of the year, I look back and am amazed to have missed that simplest of milestone. In fact doing worse. Apart from a few poems, a character sketch, and a few non-fiction pieces, which weren’t even well written, this has been the longest dry patch, since I started blogging (a good five years back).

Only the geniuses can thrive without method, if anyone can. And it’s no surprise that this dry patch has come at this time. But then, I like to think of the year as the year of osmosis. Yes, osmosis is vicarious, it’s non-productive. Yet, it nourishes, it makes the roots stronger, helps them grow deeper (no this is no shampoo ad). In ‘08, I absorbed a lot. Audio-books helped improving the score too — turning hours spent driving into reading hours (if one can call that reading).

It’s in the audio-book format that I rekindled my love for non-fiction. Here are some good non-fiction books that I read (or listened to) this year:

• Guns, Germs and Steel (Jared Diamond)
• Last Chance to See (Douglas Adams)
• Salmon of Doubt (Douglas Adams) — still reading
• Life on Air (David Attenborough)
• Omnivore’s Dilemma (Michael Pollan)
• In Defense of Food (Michael Pollan)
• The World is Flat (Thomas Friedman) — still reading
• The Tipping Point (Michael Gladwell)

Then I decided to try my hand on fiction in audio-book format. I picked up The World According to Garp, which incidentally I was reading as a book too. While driving, I would listen to the audio-book, and otherwise, I read it. It was an interesting experience. And Although I still vouch for the reading, especially for fiction, I must confess that my reservations about the (audio-book) medium were unfounded.

As for the other fiction works that I read this year, it was all the old-style reading. Here is the list (not exactly exhaustive, but covers almost all the good ones, I believe):

• South of the Border, West of the Sun (Murakami Haruki)
• The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini) — okay
• Pather Dabi (Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay)
• Ravan and Eddie (Kiran Nagarkar) — okay
• House for Mr. Biswas (V. S. Naipaul)
• Such a Long Journey (Rohinton Mistry)
• Mysterious Flame of Queen Loanna (Umberto Eco)
• The Island of the Day Before (Umberto Eco) — still reading
• Ficciones (Jorge Luis Borges)
• The Sea of Poppies (Amitav Ghosh)
• Dubliners (James Joyce)

And then there were tons of movies. Phew. Vicarious living is good

The Excess of Error

For almost a week now, I’ve been enduring (along with all of you) the absolutely sensationalist coverage of the Mumbai terror strikes, in Indian television media. As if that’s not enough, I keep on finding American takes on it.

It’s amazing, how single minded the US perception of the problem is. First of all, the only reason they’re bothered (as I wrote here), is that it upsets their war plans against Afghanistan… oops, was it against terror? Yeah right. I keep on forgetting.

Another gem:

Look at the finality of the vision — look at how it starts with a declaration, not of a possibility, but a certainty.

No matter, Islamist terrorists have been bleeding India for years now, before Zardari, hell even before Mushy. Before Afgan war, before 9/11… “Undermine rapproachment” is the explanation of it all? Really?

How about this then? The Al-Qaeda wanted to undermine Iraq’s modernist government, and that’s why they attacked US? And US “fell” into their trap? Sounds so much believable, no?

Instead of rallying behind Singh’s government, the BJP has instead called for its resignation and accused Singh of being soft on terror. These tactics may well backfire, but based on the BJP’s history of populist, anti-Muslim rhetoric, we should be concerned about its return to power.

Yes, BJP’s behavior is disgusting, given its timing. But for all it’s anti-Muslim rhetoric, Mushy was given recognition and grand welcome in BJP’s regime. I can understand some third-rate Pakistani newspaper making such blanketly idiotic statements, but sadly, the mainstream US perception seems so colored by its (short term) political interests.

Cranking up the pressure on Pakistan may fit the public mood in India — and it may be smart politics for Singh and his ruling Congress Party — but it is folly as policy.

This, when there is zero International pressure on Pakistan to clean up its act (what act? you ask)? What options does India have? To wait for American war with Afganistan to end, by when Pakistan will be able to concentrate more on co-operating with India? That, I guess would not be a folly?

Who benefits in Pakistan when tensions with India rise? Precisely the anti-democratic hardliners in the military and intelligence services, and the Islamic hardliners who are their sometime allies, that India should want to see marginalized.

Well India have been wanting to see them marginalized for fifty years now. Or sixty? Well we’ve lost count. Why will it suddenly happen in the near future? Given the short-sighted foreign policy that US has specialized in, in the past, and present? This myth of a Pakistan that is suddenly going to transform into a democratic state, and marginalize its rouge elements (including ISI and army!), is the figment of western imagination.

As one South Asia analyst told Reuters, “The forces that are threatening the West, the forces that are threatening the civilian democracy in Pakistan and the forces who are acting against India are all interlinked to each other.”

What an insightful comment! Only the tense is the problem. And that tense betrays a lot: yes. They “have been” interlinked, all this while. Only now, post 9/11, there is even an accpetance of that.

If you can’t help us, leave us alone with our follies.

More drivel

When you start looking, you find gems everywhere:

Internationally, this event will further aggravate Indian-Pakistani relations, making it harder for the incoming Obama Administration to effect a rapprochement between the two countries, necessary for progress in Afghanistan, where the two subcontinental states are engaged in a proxy struggle that goes on behind the immediate conflict between the United States and al-Qaeda.

Yes, there it is for you in plain and simple words: internationally, this matters, because without it, United States will have problem fighting Al-Qaeda. Thanks guys. Keep the insightful analysis coming.

It’s no surprise that islamic terrorism thrives in the world. They can keep blastic the hell out of different places, based on changing dynamics of International power games.