Showing posts with label out of the blue. Show all posts
Showing posts with label out of the blue. Show all posts

Thursday, January 11, 2024

a murmuration of starlings

In his biography of David Foster Wallace, Every Love Story is a Ghost Story, DT Max writes that one of DFW's major preoccupations was with the unrelenting demand to perform in the Post-Modern age. That we are constantly looking at ourselves from others' eyes and the after a point the audience in the head refuses to leave forcing us to perform even when we're seemingly alone. As someone who has spent long hours interviewing myself in my head, I know that almost all narratives I create are for an audience. This thought came back to the foreground as I was listening to The Seen and the Unseen episode with the poet Ranjit Hoskote and Amit Varma asks him if he presupposes a reader for his poems during the act of writing. After which he reads out a poem based on Joseph Fasano's prompt on Twitter.

My name is virtue.

Today I feel like Performance Art,

    basking on the boulevard.

Sometimes I'm pretty,

    sometimes I'm grotesque,

        always I'm fake.

I ask the world,     

    How can I be me?

And the answer is

    Performance Art.

I was talking with Amma yesterday and when I said I now undertand the importance of hypocrisy for the functioning of society, she said I'd changed a lot compared to where I was 10 years ago. I agree with her; I would've been enraged if someone had told me that I was performing then, lecturing them about the importance of being authentic to oneself, but now I see it rather differently. Even if there is, deep within us, something essentially ourself, uncontaminated by the external world, beyond mimetic desires, is only that us and everything else not just fake but dangerous and distracting? Is that what the spiritualists claim atma to be? I spent a good part of my life, over a decade more or less, turning that question round and round in my head and didn't get anywhere close to an answer. If there indeed is a bedrock, I have not been able to reach it. Maybe it is 'Turtles all the way down'. I've stopped actively looking for it after reading Martijn Koning's Capital and Time because his explanation of the self-referentiality and 'strange loop'-y nature of money answered perfectly my questions around personality. Obviously, that book was the final straw and wouldn't have been convincing without the questions posed and answers sought across the decade. 

Thankfully, around the same time as I was reading the book, the unfailingly brilliant Rob Horning wrote a piece on social media asking the question, and I paraphrase, Why is it that we think that the first thought that pops into our head is the most authentic and everything else is either a compromise or corruption? Why is consideration, contemplation, deliberation, the decision to step back from expressing the first reaction not also part of ourselves? I can see Amma smiling as she reads this as this is exactly what she'd been trying to tell me for years. 

"Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist." -John Maynard Keynes

Maybe, infact, the first thought is an as-received, untreated remnant handed over by society, and the output after careful deliberation is more representative of your realer, deeper self- Kahnemanian System 1 and 2 framework?

While I understand this better now, my contention with Amma that not expressing not being the right response still holds. Over the years, I've grokked my way into the conviction that expression is not only important but fundamental to our relationship with the world. This is where the earlier aspect of performance ties in. Reading Anil Seth and Nicholas Humphrey and Daniel Dennett, among others, had brought the understanding that the our consciousness is not an insular entity (a problem DFW seems to have grappled with intensely and found respite in religious communion) but has to, and almost always does, interact with others', thereby evolving, transforming, and expanding. The eureka moment came on reading James Ley's astounding essay on SRB that, for starters, helped me get to the root of Sandeep Vanga's Animal better than any other piece I'd read but, more fruitfully, lead me to this quote from Mikhail Bakhtin's Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics-

An idea for Dostoevsky ‘is not a subjective individual-psychological formation … no, the idea is inter-individual and inter-subjective — the realm of its existence is not individual consciousness but dialogic communion between consciousnesses’. 

That finally brought this long-running chapter to a conclusion. That while we are incredibly bright and complex, and filled with information and emotions and insights and impressions individually, almost none of it makes sense outside the realm of human society and culture. We are a lot like honeybees, performing an elaborate dance not for ourselves but others. The cool part about being human is that sometimes it is for ourselves, or atleast the audience within. Yet, it would be foolish to pretend we can, or should, live away from all this mess; It is a mess only when we're not able to parse and compute- words that suggest both unhumanness and also something profoundly, proudly human. When we can, though, what glory and beauty, what grace.

If not anything else, this hypothesis definitely explains why I can't stick to writing notes with any regularity anywhere else but have continued blogging for, what, 15 years now!

Monday, January 30, 2023

the somewhat documented life

The unexamined life is not worth living; Maybe, but is the unlived life worth examining?

I remember reading this pithy line a long time ago. 

Is the undocumented life ever lived? That is the question confronting me now. Hours, days, weeks, months are slipping past, leaving no discernable mark, no decipherable clue. Ofcourse there are moments of levity, events attended, occasions celebrated, seemingly unsolvable irritations that eventually dissipate but the next day, the next week it's all a blur, afternoons that blend into each other, nights that disappear completely. The only way to reassure myself of their actuality are the material remnants- office emails, credit card bills, objects bought, notes made, and other people who confirm that whatever I think happened has indeed happened, we did it together. Ebert once wrote that one of the reasons people marry is to have a witness to their lives. That at the end of it there's someone we can look towards to placate ourselves that our life was real, that it wasn't all in our head.

When I sometimes flick through the archives of this blog, I feel surprised that I'd once felt or thought that way. It's not as dramatic as in films, I don't feel it was written by a stranger whom I don't recognise now. I don't think I've changed so much, don't think most people change as radically (atleast that's one of the ideas I wanted to share in థియరీ & ప్రాక్టీస్). The surprise is more pleasant, more subtle, that I once spent all that thought and time thinking about that particular thing- a film, a book, an amateur philosiphical consideration. And that I wrangled with something, something, in the stream of my feelings and thoughts, trying to pin it down, trying to both keep up with and simultaneously comment on whatever it was that was going on in the jugalbandi between my head and external reality. 

Writing is a physical process. It is as much an attempt to create a material artefact as sculpture. It is an attempt to hold the amorphous shapes in your head and before they disappear or distract you, to thrust them through this apparatus called words. It sounds like hunting in the dark. I suppose it is somewhat like that. To roam in the wilderness in the dark, hoping, praying to catch the wily, slippery beast, who's contours you don't know, and which'll disappear at the slightest noise. You can choose not to hunt though, to not put yourself through the wringer.

So why write? Or more generally, why document via blogposts, instagram photos, vacation stories we share at the slightest pretext, our highs and, only slightly less freqeuntly, our lows? Yes, we want to leave something behind when we're gone, we want to be remembered, we want to feel like we've lived good, eventful lives before we die. It seems to me that a large chunk of that desire is just ego massaging. There's also that aspect of celebrating our common humanity, connecting with others when we share. Then there are those among us who feel that documenting and confronting are ways of improving ourselves, to 'become a better version of myself tomorrow'. Beyond all this, I see another reason. 

It is a spiritual practice. It feels awkward using the word especially since the bend I took away from all that a couple of years ago. Yet, I have no other way of describing it. Writing, conscious writing (usually blogging) and not drifting along with whatever comes to mind while journaling, for me is a process of genuine discovery. It is possibly the most conscious activity I do. When everything else ebbs away and it is me with whatever it is that is taking up the most space in my head. It is easily the best high I've ever had because I'm both in control but also willing to be guided, goaded into unventured territory. Yes, it is like hunting- to be purposeful and patient, walking in with the barest clue of what I might confront and come out with at the end, and also to be thrilled to the core at the prospect of toil and a well-earned reward.

It is, in the best sense of the phrase, a labour of love. There are ofcourse many days, when I haven't written anything for months, when I wish writing was easier, or that I post something just because its been really long. I'm sure there are days when I gave into that temptation but I think those days, thankfully, are fewer. Days like today, when this post, for whatever its worth, came out of nowhere almost compensate for those frustrations. The world becomes beautiful and the heart flutters in the breeze. In a TED talk I heard a long time ago, Elizabeth Gilbert talks of a poet who would get the whiff of a poem while working in the fields and her ears would perk up with excitement. Before long the poem would thunder towards her like an incoming train and she'd run as fast she could to grab hold of a paper and pencil to jot it down. On some days, stories like those sound like banal platitudes. 

Fortunately, today is not one of those days.

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

abstraction of the tactile

About a fortnight ago, I discovered this beautiful essay in a wonderful book called Curious. In the essay, Georges Perec talks about the infraordinary ( objects that are the opposite of extraordinary: the everyday, the common, the mundane ) which I thought was not just profound, but also beautifully articulated. A part of that credit must go the translator, those thankless artists to who we owe a large part of our artistic pleasures, and I felt right at home in Perec's sensibilities. Here was a writer who was telling us that as much as the bizarre and the surreal help us look at our lives through different spectrums, if we only paid a little attention to what was in right front of us, the world contained multitudes of intellectual, sensual, emotional and spiritual pleasures. This feeling was accentuated when I went to the mechanic to get my bike repaired, and as he removed layer after layer of the bike, I was stunned by the secrets it held and to which I hadn't given the slightest thought to despite spending hours on it. Though it could also be argued that the world has grown way too complex for one man to truly understand all of it, like demonstrated skillfully in this essay and this talk, I couldn't help but feel a pang of nostalgia for the time when regular guys, fathers and uncles, could more or less repair everything that had to be in their houses and offices.

Talking of nostalgia for mostly imaginary worlds re-created from books and films, Meheranna's fantastic posts articulate the feeling I have about escaping to a simpler world ( in my case, Hyderabad in late 80s and early 90s ). Wishful thinking, a part of my brain tells me; You will never be able to re-create lost worlds, like ( I've been told ) Proust discovered. But I don't want to re-create them as much as preserve them somewhere deep inside, where I will be able to visit them in moments of pronounced loneliness. Coming to think of it, isn't everything just wishful thinking. Like some of us are dreaming of recreating the past, aren't many trying to create a future devoid of the 'problems' of the past. Aren't we trying to 'learn' from our 'mistakes' and create more 'efficient' systems? Aren't we all trying to find and adapt to patterns all the time? If there is indeed Nirvana/ Enlightenment/ Realization, isn't it either finding the biggest pattern of them all ( the Grand Unified Theory ) or admitting that everything is random/ coincidental ( Quantum Mechanics )? Or am I just being foolhardy because I'm trying to fit the unknown future into already existing patterns. The upcoming Black Swan event might not just show that all swans are not black but that the birds we've been assuming are swans, aren't swans at all. And no, this isn't about language fallacy.

This brings me to the idea of following patterns in the creation of art too. What is avant-garde for one generation, either dies off as fad or gets subsumed into another school of thought or creates another school of thought i.e., it becomes a part of a pattern. As an example, when you pick up a screenwriting manual, what you see, at the core of the narrative is either the vindication of the underdog, or the enlightenment of the ignorant. We like those stories, either because we grew up in a culture that celebrates them or something deeply human in us responds to it. Similarly, all stories more of less follow structures of parallelism or symbolism or some of the other Pudovkin's montage techniques. We like leitmotifs because it brings the comfort of similarity. And we like symbolism because pure randomness is not only frightening, but also too complex for us to hold on to the narrative strands. People have tried other things, as we always do, and Beckett's Waiting for Godot or Camus' The Stranger come to mind, but ironically, they too created patterns for randomness and indifference. We don't seem to care if the universe is indeed beyond our grasp as long as we're able to grasp atleast that idea. Nothingness, like the reason for suffering or the quest for knowledge, becomes harder to understand the more we grope around it.

To paraphrase Taleb, the modest man is, in reality, the most arrogant because he thinks he knows better than to come off as arrogant. It's a funny universe, where both claiming you know or accepting that you don't will only prove you wrong. In such a world, the only thing we can do is question our teaspoons.

Sunday, February 9, 2014

yet another list

Life's been going past me in a rush. Its almost been four months since I came to Chennai and as much as I've experienced urban angst, constantly wondering what I'm doing in this multitude of humanity, I'm also having a lot of fun. Apart from the film festival, I have been to a few Carnatic music concerts, and though by no measure have I completely understood or experienced them, it was certainly humbling to know that people who are as knowledgeable and passionate about the art form continue to practice and encourage it. On the other hand, The Hindu Lit Fest and it's sister event, the documentary fest, were incredibly enjoyable experiences. I saw documentaries on MT Vasudevan Nair and UR Ananthamurthy and for someone who's always shown interest in Western literature and treated Indian literature with certain skepticism, it was truly an eye-opening experience. The kind of topics they deal with, their narrative styles and their relentless pursuit towards truth and perfection both humbled me and also piqued up my interest in looking back at Indian Literature, especially Telugu literature, with new eyes.

The Hindu Lit Fest also happened to be a delightful 2 days, with Gulzar saab's rendition of his poetry being the cherry on the cheesecake. I have never been a fan of writers reading out their work to an audience but having listened to him, orating with the flair of a thespian his poem Budiya Re, I will always be indebted to him for the tear-inducing experience. Furthermore, listening to William Dalrymple sweep the auditorium with his erudition and his capacity to make history come alive made me wonder how much more children would love History if teachers were as passionate. And Pablo Bartholomew's photo-essayesque talk about the Bhopal Gas Tragedy was so enchanting in its imagery and so heartfelt in its compassion, that he received a standing ovation at the end of the talk. It was a great experience being a part of an event where people cared about the work of the artists, which was abundantly clear by the questions they asked, and I felt good being a part of something where the speakers, despite their staggering achievements, treated the audience with respect.


Budhiya Re (Old Woman)

Budhiya Re, Tere saath to maine
Jeene ki har shah baanTi hai

Dana-Pani, KapaDa-latta, Neende.n aur Jagaraate saare
Aulaado.n ke janane se basane ta,k aur bichhaDanae tak
Umra ka har hissa baanTa hai

tere saath judaai baanTi, rooth, sulah, tanhaai bhi
saari kaarastaaniya.n baanTi, jhooth bhi, sach bhi

Mere dard sahe hai.n tune
Teri saari peeDe.n mere poro.n se hokar gujari hai.n

Saath jiye hai.n,
saath mare.n
ye kaise mumkin ho sakataa hai

dono.n me se ek ko ik din,
dooje ko shamshaan pe chhod ke
Tanha waapas lauTana hoga

Budhiya re!


Also, I have been having art related conversations with people like Murali Rajan and Veturi Sarma, and talks about Artificial Intelligence and Neural Networks with Deepu mama. And like I mentioned, thanks to those two legendary Indian writers, I started reading the Ramanas ( Mullapudi and Sri ). I had loved Midhunam the movie a lot but never got around to reading the story until a few days ago. Brilliant. Although for me Sri Ramana's best story is by far Bangaru Murugu which I read frequently. The first time I finished reading it, my hands were trembling and my heart was filled with love and gratitude. And whenever I read it out for other people, a process I enjoy a lot, the smiles stuck to their faces tell me how lucky all of us are to be amongst such great literature. I also started reading Kinige Patrika and it's great especially for beginners like me who want to get into reading Telugu.

Talking of Midhunam, I put it fourth in the list of favourite films for The Hindu My Five.  To visit the regal The Hindu office in Chennai and to see my name printed in the newspaper I highly love and admire were surreal experiences. And by the way, the assignment I mentioned in one of my previous posts went bust. But I'm working on two new things, and since they are midway through anyway, I am pretty confident they're going to see the light of the day. I am also reading Sophie's World, which despite the irritatingly adolescent language, looks like a good guide to starting out with Western Philosophy, and Prem Panicker's Bhimsen which is recommended for those of us who can't currently afford MT Vasudevan Nair's highly acclaimed Randamoozham. I haven't seen any films worth recommending though Spike Jonze's her is an interesting, if mildly trippy, watch and I'm still chipping away on the superhuman Woody Allen repository. And as of music, listening to Saptapadhi songs in loop. Veturi and KV, meeku saashtangam.

Of late, every one of my posts is seeming like a have-done/to-do list of sorts and I'm sorry for it. The thing is I don't have a laptop with me so despite writing pretty regularly, I haven't been posting things up as regularly as I'd like to. [ The above statement is assuming people actually care about this blog being updated. ] That's all for now. And oh, hang on, my friend Vinod is now a part of That's Life. He is a brilliant street photographer, I'm a huge fan of his work and I hope someday he becomes as great as his idol Henri Cartier-Bresson who's pictures overawe me.

Till next time,
happy exploring.

Monday, July 8, 2013

entertaining ourselves to death

Facebook has turned into a really nice analogy to talk about the society. It is probably the nearest we have to look at our world objectively. This post is more or less a continuation to my previous post and I might be touching a lot of subjects I spoke about yesterday. One thing that I have to thank Facebook for teaching me is our need for validation. We want people to like our pictures, we want to tell them what we've gone through, we want to rant out in public ( a blog is just another tool ), we want them to think that our lives are more special than we think they are because we want witnesses. Anonymity scares us. So does futility. When things don't go well, we want to be reminded how special we are and how we are just going through a phase. That is probably why we go through our albums, our posts every now and then. To remind us that we've lived. How else can we prove ourselves that we didn't just pop into the world. Friends, relationships, anniversaries, convocations, events are all what we leave so that when we look back, void will not confront us. Amnesia can be a boon but it turns into a nightmare because then we won't have a proof to commemorate our lives. Honestly, what do we have if not the solace of memory alone. And lest we forget a few things about ourselves, we create relationships and use them as custodians to our lives. I find Sadhus to be extremely courageous people, if not for anything else, just for accepting the triviality of our lives and for moving on without a fuss.

It's idiotic to take ourselves seriously. We laugh at the problems that confronted us 5 years ago. What troubles us so much right now, would be inconsequential the next morning if only we are confronted with a bigger problem. We are so fickle minded in our treatment of problems that we don't deserve to be confronted by the truly puzzling ones. I might be fuming at my girlfriend right now but if only she'd appear here with that beaming smile, the anger would evaporate. And what, I won't even remember that I was supposed to be angry. It's pathetic. What we want to be is entertained. We are so restless that we want to fill our minds with things, the good if available and the bad if not. Entertainment is the prerogative. The brilliant thing about getting entertained is that we don't care about anything. We are so engrossed in it that nothing else seems to matter; a movie seems so real and so worthwhile as long as we have conceded our sense of disbelief. Which is not essentially a bad thing but I would rather live than spend a lifetime in movie theatres. A pursuit for money is a form of entertainment; it creates an illusion of movement. So, is the pursuit for approval or even the pursuit for knowledge. To hell, even the pursuit for happiness is just a need for occupation. Why do I have to achieve anything? What is wrong with just sitting back and waiting for life to happen.

I'm beginning to believe in the notion of sitting under a tree and doing nothing. Just being. All these emotions of Happiness, Jealousy, Elation, Craving, Misery etc. are emotions we create to fill our heads, to create that sense of living. What if there is a person out there who spends his life watching movies, reading books, talking to people, listening to music just so that he can keep himself occupied. He needs to keep running because he is so scared that others will pass him if he doesn't. It keeps him from boredom but doesn't it create an unnecessary fear he has to live with all his life. What if he gradually slows down until he stops to ask himself where he is running and why. For all he knows, people would still be running and he'd be left behind. But what if he's always run in a circle, will he still be behind others? Haven't Yogis coined a stunning word for that circle- Samsara. What a word, I don't know if it's the sound or the psychological effect of knowing what it means that creates such a powerful emotion within me, but it somehow brings into perspective the whole idea of life. How helpful is happiness if it is just a better movie than misery. It's much more fun, true, but it's still as virtual as misery. Come to think of it, why should we even be in pursuit of truth, or enlightenment? Like Anand Gandhi so evocatively says, why do we have to believe that enlightenment is the highest ideal; Just because Buddha told us? What if Buddha himself stopped midway? And like someone once asked Sadhguru, even if you get enlightened, how do you actually know that you are actually there?

If anything the mind creates is an illusion, so must be all that I've been talking about. Even if the mind, as an individual entity exists, how can it have the power to look at itself? I'm in a very precarious position. If I consider all that I've said to be true, then what I'm saying is false. And if all I'm saying is false, how can it lead to be truth? How can we know we're trapped if all that we've ever known is the place we are trapped in? Am I even looking for answers or like I mentioned before, looking for adulation or entertainment? Maybe I'm just jealous that others are achieving so much in their lives that I feel a need to fill this all up, to prove them that I'm working on much more important issues. And if living is a exercise in futility, isn't enlightenment then too? 

Saturday, April 13, 2013

On editing films and writing bad reviews

Editing Rooney Bowling Fans Association was crazy fun. Yes, it was tedious because I had to sit down for about 6 hours to make a 4 and a half minute video, but the pay-off was huge. Most importantly, I fell in love with it, the song serendipitously syncing perfectly with the visuals. And the text on screen doing things I didn't consciously choose to make happen. Yes, the uploaded video seemed of a really low quality, but despite that it was a juicy, fast-paced video. See, despite not wanting to come off as conceited, I can't help but rave about it. I well and truly fell in love with it. It also helped that I learned quite a bit of Magix Movie Edit Pro 2013 Premium and it seems hell lot of a easier software to work with than Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 with which I had worked during the making of Based on a True Story. Talking about Based on a True Story, I sat down and finished half the subtitles for the film. Took quite a bit of time but felt good revisiting the movie. I'm pretty sure Spanish and Iranian film aficiando's will not stumble upon and be disappointed with the lack of subtitles but I wanted to make up for the bad re-recording. A lot of people complained that they couldn't hear anything at all in a few places and I thought it'd be cool to have subtitles for my first movie. So, working on it. Should upload it on Youtube by tomorrow.



I've been working on a couple of screenplays, a sequel to Based on a True Story, a one minute Black and White short with Ankith and another serious, intense drama/thriller where I want Kaushik to play the lead. Things are looking bleak in terms of implementation but I'm getting the screenplays ready. Maybe it'll work out, maybe it won't with them, but I want to be ready with my screenplays. Also, thanks to Vasishta, I got in contact with the founder of a website called CityMirrors.com. We spoke for a long time and I liked his vision, what he was trying to do with the website. So, I told him I'd love to write about films for the website and he seemed to like my blog too. So, I went down to watch the remake of Delhi Belly called Crazy today and published the review. Sravani said that it was a really bad review because it reeked of indifference and I spent more time talking about Delhi Belly than Crazy, which seems to me, now in hindsight, to be true. I tried covering up by saying that the film was so mediocre that it couldn't inspire me into writing well, for which she retorted, truly again, that anybody could write well about a good film. The reason people turn to critics and reviewers is because they can write well about both good and bad films, thereby letting the audience know why something is good and something else isn't. Couldn't refute with that. Reminded me of what Rajeev Masand once said about critics. He said that all critics, to begin with, are good writers and they use their skills to write about the thing they are most passionate about, books, music or films. I don't remember if it was Masand or Raja Sen. It was in this interview. Check it out. Great one.

That's it for now really. Also, I forgot, we had been planning to do a review of a new release every Friday and revisit a foreign film, a modern classic, every Wednesday. I'm really excited about doing it. Just a catch that I have no idea how I'm to find tickets every Friday for the release of the week. That's about it then.

Later.

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Bringing back the crazy abandon

Every moment I'm living, I'm breathing, every action I perform, I want it to be a deliberate effort. I don't want to sleepwalk through life anymore. I want to be spent, exhausted, exulted every night before I fall into a deep slumber. I want to fall into a deep slumber, been ages since I've slept as wistfully as I want to. Thanks to The James Franco Project. Thoroughly inspiring to know that a man is capable of such high levels of metabolism. I think its an amazing feeling. Knowing that you've given life the best you could've and then tucking into sleep at the end of the day. Enough dreaming, talking, fantasizing. I want to throw myself with crazy abandon at whatever life offers me. Waiting for the right springboard to take the leap is keeping me rooted to Earth. I have to make do with whatever is being thrown at me. There's so much I want to do. I have no clue what I've been waiting for all along. Cribbing, crying, complaining, hoping for somebody else to pull me out of the muck. If I don't work all day at work and get fucked up the next day, its my fault. And I'm gonna have to get scorned for it. The equation's pretty simple. There's so-fucking-much to do and what am I even doing. Its all romantic dreaming. Holy shit. Run, strum, write, stroke, climb, code, yell, laugh, fall, jump. What am I waiting for? I promised right here that I'd post a piece of fiction every month. I haven't started yet on this month's quota but I'm going to post it. Sure will. Life's like a long line of dominoes. You push the right ones and the right things are going to fall. One wrong push and before you know it, you have an unwanted heap that'll take some work to clear off. Its easier pushing dominoes that is easier cleaning up the mess. But what all you get, depends on what you push. Karma. That's really about it then.
Peace.

Monday, November 28, 2011

Khule da Rabb

I am in love with Zeb & Haniya. What a stunning album Chup! is. There's nothing like music. That's a ridiculously cliched statement to make but I'm too tired now to elaborate. I think it was Martel who wrote to Stephen Harper once about Nietzsche, cliches and how it ruined his writing and thinking prowess. A cliche is a shortcut people take to escape and like all good shortcuts, it just isn't good enough.

I'm somebody who preaches selfishness. I'd rather not talk about myself. I don't feel comfortable doing it. But then if a man is selfish, in the truest sense of the word, he will be the greatest man on earth. No, I'm not paraphrasing Madam Rand. I don't want to get into lengthy, directionless discussions about the improbable character of Howard Roark. If a man is truly selfish and respects his ego more than anyone else's, he understands how important ego is. Not just his, anybody else's too. And that will have him respect somebody else's ego, opinion, life and love. I don't really know if this makes any sense at all but the fog is beginning to clear now. A man who does not respect himself, is not confident and cannot look up to his ego is loud, bitter, vexatious and plain cruel. Respecting somebody is the beginning of a sustaining relationship.

I can't write anymore. Later.

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Of leaves and Plato

Today, after a long time, I lived the wonderful sensation of reading a prose so powerful that I felt maybe this is the reason I'm still alive. Let me paraphrase Bradbury here who said, Art does not stop battles or feed the hungry. It does not solve our problems but then it doesn't have to. Because art gives us a reason to live on despite all that. That piece in case was Will Durant's preface to his second edition of The Story of Philosophy on which I quite accidentally lay my hands. I am yet to read the book but I recommend the prologue heavily to anyone who's ever felt his hands quiver when reading a paragraph so powerful that time ceases to exist and space contorts itself into nothing but those words.

If you've ever noticed a huge tree at the roadside and were jobless enough to think about it, you'll see that the leaves at the top bask in the glory of sun and rain but also suffer from the excess of breeze and the glare of the burning afternoon sun. Similarly, the leaves at the bottom are secure in that way but are the first ones to give in when some bystander decides to cure his itching hands by pulling out the leaves and the twigs. The leaves in the middle, those lucky folks, do not get a bidding of both extremes but what existence is life when one weren't to experience Rain and Sun or feel the miraculous touch of human fingers. Think about it.

There is nothing in the World worse than a bad teacher.

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

I have no clue what this is about

True, like it is said, a man toils all day just to be able to eat his food, sleep securely and give his family all that they ask of him. That is the reason a man, or a woman for that matter, wakes up everyday early, prepares breakfast for the kids, cleans the house, gulps down coffee without noticing the taste, gets ready in a hurry, looks into the mirror not to look cherish the existence of oneself but to ensure that nothing is out of place, hurries to the bus stop, stands in an overcrowded bus stuck in traffic jams, and walks hurriedly into the office he hates. All through the journey, the man does not notice the world around him, nothing either beautiful or morose, but his thoughts linger on the need of his kids, in his will to fulfill their every need. And the teenage kids stay out all night, cuss their parents, hate being home and yell for not being pampered enough. The man hates his job but feels insecure about losing it, the woman denies herself every little whim to ensure that the kids get the best of everything and they take the family out to a restaurant where the self-proclaimed 'grown-up kids' mutter all the way home for not letting them go out with friends.

And to argue that a man works for his food and shelter. In fact, fear is what drives all these people, the fear of sleeping hungry, of being homeless, of being proclaimed as bad parents and the fear of rejection from the children. Of being turned away and down by the society, friends, falling down from the higher pedestal. These are all important factors, true, but the most unrealized factor that creates a happy man is the feeling of importance, of self-respect. A man works, truly works, not because of all these but because he wants to be able to earn his food, to be worth the soil that he's eaten and the earth he's sleeping on. It is a feeling of extreme confidence and security when a man realizes that he's earned his place to live here, to borrow this piece of land until it is time for him to leave. When people say hard earned money stays long, they don't mean money figuratively. What they mean is that the ability to earn money has been learnt, that means a man who's tasted the sweetness of his sweated out, hard earned food, knows that nothing can beat it. And if you think people who do not know how hard it is to earn, waste money, then the people who've earned money, those who really deserve it, would throw it away much easily. If, the clause here, the man understands that he's not earned money but the ability to earn it. Its actually magical, because when one knows how to get something, he can conjure it up whenever he needs it. That will not be the driving force of his life anymore. It would just be a commodity. Its like people would not have wanted money if it didn't buy them anything. Money here is not the prize. It is what money can buy. But for wizards here, it is what money cannot buy that is more important.

Money is just a metaphor for self-respect. And that is probably why people are so insecure nowadays because there's a lot of easy money and that is what exactly self-respect is turning into, a cheap commodity. I once read a story about an old man who never ate until he had worked that day so as to earn his food. Money is not worth anything. Its those things that money affects, unconsciously, that are really worth it. Earning money is an art. Just because you ain't pursuing now doesn't mean you wouldn't know how to do it later. But until you do it everyday, you wouldn't have created anything that only you could have created. Money is work that you would procrastinate unless you had an incentive. That is why it is important to earn it because then you would be going out of your way, expanding further, opening newer horizons, becoming more complete. Playing the same delivery over and over again will take you nowhere. Not test your grey cells. And that in turn would lead to your slumped self-esteem. You want to earn the food you eat, wake up and earn it. Because food is not what is important here, living a new moment every moment is.

Saturday, June 18, 2011

I can't stop writing

If you've ever seen a man at work, totally focused, oblivious to every other world apart from his own, you've seen an artist. A week ago Deekshith and I had a long discussion about artists, art and if art is but sheer inspiration or just a god given gift. We argued to and fro for a bit and ended convinced that craft can be learnt, it can be bettered but art is beyond imitation, beyond learning, beyond emulation. It cannot be craved for, all that can be done is wait for it. But there is something which can be done meanwhile. The path for the art to show itself can be bettered. And this is what in the middle of the talk that we were really surprised to learn. That though nothing can be done to create the finest piece of art, sheer human will to make it finer and finer can be bettered through the craft. I don't know how I sound like talking all this but when you are sitting on the footpath at 3.15 in the morning, drinking tea and talking about Marquez, Rushdie and Ashok you realize somewhere deep within that you too are capable of producing art of the highest order, of stunning people with sheer expression and that if you wake up everyday and no matter what write, someday you will be writing your own One Hundred Years of Solitude without even realising it.

Its funny ain't it. How much of stuff you know but never follow. Somebody tells me running everyday is good, meditating is, you know stuff like that. You believe in it but are far too lazed out to follow it. Sucks. This wouldn't help it in anyway too but that line in Following still rings in my ears. Wanting to be a writer and being one are two totally different things. Last week I read somewhere by some filmmaker where he said to all aspiring filmmakers that the film's already there, in your head. All that has to be done with it is transport it from the theater in your head to the screen out there. That is all it takes. Boy, that's right ain't it. The art's all right there, completed. All you need to do is learn the craft to exhibit it to the rest of the world. There was this talk by Elizabeth Gilbert where she said you might not be able to produce the greatest order of art everyday but then the least you can do is wake up everyday and stubbornly sit at your desk despite your mind opposing the idea with sheer vehemence. I'm watching Golconda High School right now, and in spite of detesting it the first time around, I have to admit it really is an interesting watch because it makes some really good comments on the kind of society we live in. That apart, it reminded me of the kind of art sporting moments are. The kind of work that goes into the sheer beauty of Lara's square cut or Tendulkar's stunning stunning straight drive. The sound of it, the timing, the curve of the bat's path, the steadiness of the batsman, the sheer pleasure of existence when one is looking at that. Bliss. The kind of background work that goes into the making of instant nirvana. Watching a Cobain or a Bundy perform, oggling over their virtuosity wishing you were them is all fair but then I once read that Van Halen skipped parties and sleep to keep playing.

I've written about this over and over and over again. Because writing all this is much easier than writing fiction, which is what I want to do anyway. It is hard work, writing draft after draft hoping the finished product will be all that you ever wanted it to be. Its pathetic, I know. Maybe I should go out there and get a life instead of telling people how to get one. This ain't taking me nowhere but I'm writing this because this moment I want to write this. This is nowhere close to what I wanted it to be at the beginning but then I'm done for now. I love the end of the film, the two kids batting together, two really contrasting creatures, the chemistry's worked out superbly well. And despite me being in eternal love with sport, any sport, though predominantly tennis and football, I have to admit this. There is nothing like cricket. The sheer idea of the game in which, as somebody put it, a lot of discrete moments eventually add up to something so consequential. It lacks the free flow, the instant inventiveness of football and the gladiator-contest like feel of tennis but then life isn't like that. It's mundane, boring, tough work where there is gray all around which is punctuated by occassional brightness of the white. Maybe every sport is like that but I'm far too much of a bloody Indian to find anything that has my heart erupt in joy than Laxman's glance. Oh! boy, the old worldly elegance.

This is growing much longer than I expected it to be but I really want to continue writing. Watched Bala Vaadu Veedu yesterday and boy, is it brilliant. I now understand I why loved it. It does not assume anything, does not take anything for granted, does not dramatize life, does not attempt putting life into life. It just let's life be itself, lets it unfurl it at it's own pace. That has been Bala's masterstroke. There's a line in Arya 2 which roughly translates into, It doesn't take a lifetime for love to be born; all it takes is one moment. That is what instant gratification is all about, that is what is art all about. Its the one moment, fair, but then why doesn't nobody give a shit about all those years which have led the way for this moment to happen. Maybe this is not time waiting for answers. This is the time to write the questions on the wall, sit next to it and get back to work. When it is time for them to be answered, they will be answered. Boy, do I want to get back to work. Doing what you are supposed to when you are supposed to, like Thomas Huxley says will lead you into being what you have to be. There is this amazing scene in Bala Vaadu Veedu where the camera fades in on a gloomy evening, at a river where there is this huge tree at the bank of it and the camera pans up to reveal this fat man hanging by the neck. I so fell in love with that shot, the sheer melancholy of it.

Okay, its time for me to leave now and I leave with that cinematic pose of Chacha with his cycle, looking through us, standing below the streetlight; and Deekshith will second that.
Watch Elizabeth Gilbert's talk.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

You ride hard, you fall hard

I fucked up and I fucked up super bad. Right now, I have almost virtually lost both my jobs at hand, messed with a tour I so wanted to take, flunked and am so dumbed down that I can't write code for nothing. Yes, I am back to the phase I was once but this doesn't seem so bad.

Whenever I fall, I fall hard because I live hard. And when fall I do, I know this sounds like shit, I feel free; free because I have a goal now and no distractions. Because this is when I'm free from all obligation and forced to think. Like Proust said, "I have only lived when I have suffered." I have fallen again and this time I'm super disappointed because I lost a chance to live in the Sunderbans for five weeks. Posting this will not take me anywhere. Yes, I've brooded for a day and a half and the cause of my resurgence this time is the Principle of least action I just read about. It's instinctive and graceful. This is what art can do to you. I'm basically broke but here I am, virtually unconquerable because this time I know I'm going to work my ass off, courtesy It's not about the Bike.

Whenever I fall, I'm reminded of Steve Jobs' Stanford commencement speech where he says you will realise only later how precious any fall is. Well, this time around, it sure is going to be precious. I know I've said this a lot of time, but the bounce never actually happened. But this time, it will. I know I've said this a lot of times too but honestly, you don't have to trust what I'm saying now. Let me prove you.

Thank you very much.

Friday, May 6, 2011

aankhein teri, kitni haseen

I so fuckin hate growing up. It' like they show in the films. You are over her, you are happy, you're trying to move forward, to create something in life, and then suddenly she calls one day and you are head over heels for her. Btw, fuck, I can't believe I used an idiom. One old song, one half-remembered object, one similar scene in the movie and that is all the catalyst it takes to successfully carry you back to all those days of glory.

Talking about how we should move on, should dust ourselves, learn and shit is all fine, as long as you don't have to apply it. You're trying to move away from the history but like in a Rushdie or a Marquez story, you find yourself wanting to live in those days and eventually you live in history. Will it take me anywhere, No. Will it keep me happy, Yes and No. It hurts like crazy but maybe that is what this is all about.

I'm so fucking all of my 21 years. And there's enough shit happened in life that any old song, and more often than not I have a memory to show for and a time to be lost in. I so feel like the wounded protagonists in the Art-house cinema. Sad, that heroes in art house cinema have more than their share of negative shades. I want to get this all out of me, but do I? Shit like this and I have more than a decent chance of being the Indian Maupassant. Well, I outdid myself in immodesty there but still, you get the point.

I can't afford to lose all that I've built up for the one women without knowing if I actually love her. I'm still confused as I was, as irresponsible, and have added a few more negative shades up my repository. And I have the undying compliment of "never-grow-up". But despite all this, I hear that voice and I'd jump of the Eiffel Tower and still come back for her. Ok, let's call this the end.

That was totally out of nowhere. With loads of ideas up my sleeve waiting to be written, I get back to this. Maybe I'm like this because I'm half asleep, or because I'm a chauvinistic pig, or because I'm going to anyway think drastically different sometime soon or maybe because I really love her. But all of that is me.

Friday, March 25, 2011

the corridor of uncertainty

It's funny how a lot of people contemplate when they've just got respite from a long day of work and I on the other hand look back and think when I'm in super hurry. Maybe because I'm far too lazed out all day to be doing anything worthwhile.

What have I done to deserve this?

The kind of love, respect and forgiveness I receive is something which honestly, I shouldn't be getting. It's like the batsman's nicked the ball and umpire is certain that he hasn't. What does the batsman do, thank his good karma and stay back or does he say, despite what my previous deeds have been, this time around I'll make a mistake if I stick around and walks away. Is life about every moment for itself or is it a tab of everything you've ever done? Despite me proving people that I'm an asshole over and over again(most of it unintentional though) I have family and friends who're ready to forgive and give me an another chance. Who tell me, "dude you're destined to play a big innings and bad decisions are a part and parcel of the game". What should I do? Should I keep my ego first and walk away or do I bow down to my team who've always backed me and say, I've been lucky, let me be careful the next time around.

I know it's an over used cliched statement but life indeed is a lot like cricket. It's a funny game life is. Nobility vs pragmatism. Ego vs loyalty. And despite my earlier firm belief, it really is a team sport. Like a lot of my recent posts, this seems to be muddled, incomprehensible. If it is, then it reflects the state of my mind. I haven't be able to read, to concentrate, to write, to work on anything. Purpose and meaning have been lost in the paced out craze of everyday-ness. Maybe this is what journeys, no matter how small do to you. They force you to set your priorities right. And I hope I do justice to all of them. I wouldn't call it payback but it's the least I can do to everyone in my life, all of whom have believed in the goodness in me.

Friday, October 15, 2010

ఈ మనవ ప్రస్థానం

I've been thinking about this since I started watching Prasthanam today morning. I'm done with the movie, and having just masturbated, I sit down to write.

There are basically two types of art; and for that matter, artists. The first type of art is the one where every scene, every stroke, every note plays a part in the end result. Every moment takes us to that converging point. The artist in that case knows what he has to show and how he's set to doing it. A prime example for that kind of work would be books like Shantaram, like The Alchemist, where the author knows what all has happened and is trying to place everything in a pattern. Prasthanam is one such movie. Katta knows precisely what he is doing, and so(but for unnecessary songs and a romantic angle to it) every shot, sequence and the background score help us reach the pinnacle, the crescendo. On the other hand, there is another variety of artists. People who themselves don't know what they are trying to tell us, who, exactly like us, are trying to find a pattern to the art. And that would be something like The Catcher in the Rye, The Bicycle Days, like Gogol. And so, there is no converging point but a panorama of life.

For the artists belonging to the first set, cinema, or a book, or an instrument is a medium, that's it. Like a saw, a tractor, a wheel. All the medium drives is the idea. And depending upon what their idea is, they choose the suitable medium. On the other hand, for the other people, it is more about the characters, than the story. The plot, unlike in the previous case, is unimportant. The characters are more intriguing, their actions more interesting than the destination. There is no better way between the two. Its just that, in the first case, the artist has already undertaken the journey and is narrating everything looking back. So, what you necessarily get is a an experience, a philosophy. And in the other case, the author is still painting his strokes. He's still trying to find out why the colours act in the way they do. He is still undertaking that journey.

I'd like to believe that I belong to the second group. Right now, as I write this, I guess I have a vague idea of what I'm trying to achieve but what necessarily pushes me is the urge to write, the need to know. Its funny that yesterday I read about Godel's Incompleteness Theorem and Meta-Mathematics and today I talk about Meta-Art, if what I'm writing could be honoured with such a comparision. That was basically what I'd been thinking all day. The relationship between the Whats, Whys and Hows of writing, or for that matter any art.

I believe, either before or while undertaking a piece of art, the artist should ask himself these three questions: What am I trying to achieve? How should I go about doing it? and Why should I be doing it only what way. If the artist has all those questions answered and sets down to work, then he's like a Mathematician, in pursuit of the proof, because he already knows the end. And if the artist answers those questions while working on them, then that work of art becomes Meta-art. And in this case, he doesn't know what he's trying to achieve but works on knowing it. Its like writing a book on why you're writing. I guess I'm still high on the Hofstadter article on Godel and so all this but before I sat down, I don't think I was trying to achieve this. I don't know what it was, but this sure doesn't seem like that.

I was talking to Thatha over lunch today and we got into this discussion between various languages because he was watching a Tamil serial. I once read an article about the different natures of languages, how people are defined by the languages they use and all that and he didn't seem pretty convinced with that theory. What that article basically said was languages are reflections of the people who use it and vice versa. I believe, Telugu give me more poetic liberties than English does. Its like saying I have more space to express my ideas. Like this phrase, karige kalama; tacky I know but I can't think of anything else. Anyway, if the English alternative for that would be passing time or literally melting time. Stinks doesn't it. But in Telugu, its exactly what I want to. Infact, our imagination is confined to our languages. A lot of us think in terms of a language, Telugu, English, Maths. And that gives us a boundary, a periphery. Infact, right now, when I was searching for an example, I couldn't get beyond this because that's the limit of what I can express in words. But I believe I'm yet to rise to that stage where I can think and process in terms of colours or musical notes. For me, thinking in music, talking to myself in terms of high and low notes would be it, the peak. Because then the spectrum would be huge. If its English, I have 26 alphabet, their various legal combinations called words and their legal combinations called sentences. With Telugu, it might be the cube of it. But if its colours, I can atleast imagine 256 colours, so their combinations would be a huge number. And if it's musical notes, then there are millions of ways in which I can think, feel and express.

I don't know where all this came from. I think and imagine most when I'm communicating. When there is a conversation. And here, its a conversation I'm having with myself. Pushing myself to the limit of my imagination, expression.

Well, that's about it. I'll re-read it and post it. Looks pretty long. Not bad for a 25 minute conversation. Oh! in the first place, I wanted to talk about Prasthanam. Loved watching it. Amazing dialogue and cinematography. A tighter second half, a prettier heroine and a better background score would've made it brilliant. But then, unless we have something to live upto, there is no point living.

Just remembered this when I was reading my previous post. Thatha said Amuktamalyada and Srinathuni Kasi Khandam have been understood only by those scholars at the top of the pyramid and I realised that their greatness didn't lie in the words the authors used. The meanings of words can be understood but what marks a truly great writer is that leap of imagination he takes to string two seemingly unrelated words to bring out precisely what he means and in the best possible of ways. A few people tend to overdo it, mind you there's no error syntactically but overdoing it kills the affect of it, but then immortal writers know just where to stop. And such a work for me would qualify to sit at the highest pedestal of all literature, Poetic Prose. Yes, I'm talking about Marquez.

Monday, August 23, 2010

The Roark factor

"Mama, we talk about democracy, total freedom and all that stuff. Then why can't someone do drugs as his wont, because at the end of the day, even if everyone does it, maybe the country's ruined but he wouldn't be doing nothing harmful.", Vivek says today when we were talking about the most happening drug case.

I've been thinking about it all day and when there was a power cut and I and Amma were talking about something else, I pose the same question to her and she responds, "Because if you have a stupid drunkard bozo walking across the road, imagine the number of vehicles which have to stop and what if he hurts someone or worse misbehaves with a lady." Ofcourse, she's right. We have to ensure that one person's freedom does not, at any cost, intervene into others'.

After this, I don't know how it all started off but for about the next 3 minutes or so, I became an extreme objectivist. I became Rand's mouthpiece. Of all the things I like about The Fountainhead, it is the way in which Rand has convinced us to turn our tables and made Altruism the villain. For that, hats off Rand. I ain't the only one who's been heavily influence by the demigod Roark. RGV and Anurag Kashyap have referenced it a lot of times and probably the most quoted book I've heard, by someone who stands out or stands up, is The Fountainhead. All that apart, what was I talking about to Amma. And why this piece.

The best I like about Objectivism, as created by Ayn Rand, is that concept of a man whose sole pursuit in life is personal happiness. That guy who doesn't give a shit about what his neighbour does, who knows he doesn't have to impress others and sleeps every night, a proud man. That is what I talked about. What the world would be like if everyone strove for individual perfection instead of telling the rest of the world what they should be doing to achieve happiness(paradoxical?), they not strive for fulfillment of their personal whims and fancies. Somebody would be irresponsible and dependent only when there was always somebody to tell him what to do or take care of him even if he didn't give a shit. The moment everybody stops giving a beggar alms, he'd have to earn it. All I'm saying is people who did whatever they wanted to gave more to the world than those who got accustomed to the ways of the world. And since no person would be born ready made to accept the world as it is, making compromises, all those people judged arrogant, selfish and unflinching, die happier than those who became good citizens, took the system in their stride and strove all their lives for pensions and retirement plans.

Apart from that, one more thing I spoke to Amma about was that at the core of human heart, nobody likes to be told. People, if left for themselves tend to be more 'law abiding citizens'(I hope that's the right term when referring to the kind of blokes any government wants) when there is no external force acting upon them, or alternatively, all their life's they become slaves. The problem with this democracy of ours is that it neither gives us total liberty nor is it like a China or a USSR where no matter who you were, you are just another citizen. Another one of those Common Men(portrayed so ruthlessly in the satires of Gogol) that you worked for the Government all your life and no matter how thin, you still were securely wrapped in that blanket called Safety. But that isn't my matter of concern right now. All I'm saying is, consider this situation. You are walking on a deserted road and there's a big stone in the middle of it. When you are walking past it, more often than not, your conscience nags you to pick it up lest somebody drives over it. But one, if somebody came and told you to pick it up, you'd get defensive and refuse to do it because nobody likes to be ordered. You do it to be a nice man, atleast because that act convinces your conscience. But if somebody asks you to, you'd ask why he himself wasn't doing it.(I've seen a lot in case of kids I teach. If a kid does something wrong, instead of telling her to correct it, if I tell the other person that what she did was right and ignore the first child, she'd want to correct her mistake). Now our whole system, the concept of a Government is like that person who tells you to do stuff. Police, Courts and other of all those innumerable departments are those people who make those restrictions. If we didn't have those, we'd be better citizens. Trust me. And two, you wouldn't do it if there were a lot of people walking up and down the road because you'd be scared that they'd think of you as a nutcase. So people who actually think about the world instead of themselves, are pretty much , the world.

But you'd say we need someone to set a common barrier for how much of a liberty you have in such a large democracy like ours. Sure. But that's the problem with things big and large and I'm gonna talk about all that soon. But for now, all I have to say is that if a child born is left unpolluted till he becomes a citizen, the world would be a much better place to live in.

Because even if there's always a Toohey to make a world a sadder, meeker, cowardly place there's also a Roark who stands for integrity, liberty and happiness. And for the Roark who inspired a lot of Roarks in this world, thank you Rand.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

expect nothing

The moment a relationship is based on need, its gone. It doesn't exist. I was looking at a Sadhguru speech last week and he in one of his discourses states this. I proved it to myself today when I was talking to Amma. That's not relevant here but what my point is, when you get into a relationship because you expect something in return or when you need what the other person gives you, you are giving away your freedom.

Any person should rely only on himself for anything he wants. Because, like I said, when you start expecting things and don't get them in return, you'll start bulding a vengeance. And form thereon starts the deterioration of any relation. If you can give something, do it. If you can't, don't expect anything in return.

'Coz when you don't expect anything, everything else is going to be great.