Abort, Retry, Ignore 2

The more things change, the more they remain the same. Considering the dormant state of this blog, this may be the question for the answer that given by Deep Thought!

Abort, Retry, Ignore?

Miniluv Redux

Some time back I had posted on the post-election protests in Iran. I did not realize how naive I was about Iran until a comment by Tazeen.  Looks like even my hopelessness was naive:

(source: Sam Roggeveen)

On hindsight, this should have been obvious. There are too many distractions on the internet. It is most compatible with arm-chair activism. Type a rant, and be done with your anger! It is that easy. It is equally fickle. You read one article and get all fired-up, but you can get equally fired-up for the opposite cause by reading another article. The medium is built for propaganda. And from the well known example of Google in China,we know that the medium is tightly controlled by the Big Brother. Fat chance we have, of beating the casino in this gamble!

MohAtma!

“We live, I regret to say, in an age of surfaces.”

So said Lady Bracknell. Atleast that was what Oscar Wilde made her say. And she was right. Right for her times. Wilde, I regret to say, needs to be revised! Conditions have deteriorated quite a lot since the days that Lady Bracknell was imagined in. We don’t even bother with the surfaces these days. We live, I regret to say, in an age of edges. I am only reducing the no:of dimensions by one as I need to account for the literary licenses of the next generation. The one after theirs, I am glad to say, is not my problem.

While the past generations judged a book by its cover, we do not bother to even glance the cover. Our judgement is solely a function of whether the author is in fashion, or not. Predictably enough, where the generations before us had Hemingway, we have the likes of Roy. Where they had Wilde, we have… NONE. No writer who can point out the inherent silliness of it all without sounding like a whiner. Even when some one makes an attempt, we condemn him for being politically incorrect, or brand them as publicity seekers. Most often we just ignore them. We have so many who make a living out of creating sensation that when some one actually rattles us with aim of making us question our beliefs, we are caught off-guard. Occasionally though, we get angry just because we can’t stand the person.

This whole thread, Bracknell, Wilde and Hemingway aside, is no where truer than it is in India. We don’t give an airborne-pollination about either history or historical figures. And we remain apathetic until an outsider pulls a smart-one on the figures that we would rather not care about. Just like those truck-loads of cows whose remains regularly head to the tanneries. We do not care about it, so long as it stays at the periphery of our thought.

The sad part of this pheonomena is that the only people who are truly hurt when an outsider intrudes on our beliefs are those who pride themselves of their knowledge. These are the only people who feel hurt at the apparent silliness/15-minute-mode of the outsiders. This, inspite of the fact that these very people know that they are not the target audience for these rattlers. Is it because of their condescending attitude towards their ignorant brethren? That the sheep might follow the wrong shepherd? The people that the writers want to rattle never get the hint. They look up to their indignant brothers and, predictably enough, take to the streets. When Rushdie wrote about the issues that he had with the religion that he grew up with, he was rewarded with fatwas. When he questioned the myths about the Father of the nation, a principle figure on whose legacy his entire career was based on, his target audience did not give a damn. And he ends up hurting a few people who feel that the greatest man in the near past be sacrosanct!

Raja Ram Mohan Roy died a good 20 years before Wilde was even born. Inspite of being virulently hostile towards the Hinduism as practised in those days, no record exists that tells us that he had to go underground to save his life. We generally tend to imagine that we are better than our ancestors. So one can not help but wonder, what if he lived in our times? Would he have been forced to go underground like Rushdie and Nasreen?

PS1: While I often complain that Wilde resorts to literary licence a bit too often, he is never far off the mark. More importantly, he seems to be of the “Shut up, and do your work” school.

PS2: My stance on idol worship & conversions is diammetrically opposite to that of Raja Ram Mohan Roy. But that does not take away any respect that he deserves for the reforms that he fought for.

Hanging on to the towel

You believe that you are entitled to possess/experience ‘X’. As with any belief, this may not necessarily logically (colloquially referred to as ethically) valid. You are offered ‘X’.

The question here is not about whether you would accept the offer. The question is, “Do you consider this to be an issue of just two choices, or is it more of a grayscale issue?” And, how much of an effect would this answer have on how far you go with the offer?

Words of wisdom:
Marvin

You live and learn. At any rate, you live.

Zaphod Beeblebrox

I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don’t know the answer.

sushupti

Consistency is one quality that we Indians are consistent about. Our apathy to our history is now a stuff of legend: that we had no clue that Aśoka existed until the Britishers told us so. While such lapses of memory might be incomprehensible to those outside the subcontinent, the explanation is trivial for those of us going through the daily drama. With a billion people every where, who has time for the long dead? But what about the living? While the Israelis are an example of bringing back a language from its grave, we are the example of the opposite. Forget Sanskrit, what about our present languages?

Obviously there is never a rant for nothing. Today’s rant has its origins from a link to an article by Chandrahas Choudhury. And yes, consistency. Once again, it’s a Westerner who is trying to shake our apathetic souls into action. To act before we forget our languages.

Unfortunately, most of us are too obsessed about the perceived insults/denigrations that we almost never listen to what we are being told. In this case, we have been failing to realize that these academicians are interested in our literature, a lot more than we are. It’s insulting, probably. But it definitely is stupid on our part to get angry that they are misinterpreting our literature without having read that literature ourselves. Does it really matter if their interpretations do not agree with our sensibilities, us who do not even bother reading our own literature before forming our prejudices of what our literature is about? For the past couple of centuries we Indians have been gradually compromising on our own past for our survival. Till the generation before us, there were acceptable excuses. What about us? What about the generations immediately following us? Are we going to put a stop to this slide away from our our identity? Do we have it in us to say, “Thus far, and no further”?

Fry, Stephen Bheja

“Insane. That’s what Stephen Fry is!”

If there is any one thought that descends on me as heavily as anything that usually depresses anyone with it’s weight, it is the above exclamation of surrender every time I read anything written by Stephen Fry. It’s not just that he writes in a manner not very much unlike the way water flows, sliding along the path of the shortest, damned-well fastest, descent — it is possible to imagine someone born with a command over language that Fry has — thankfully it is much more than that. Reading his articles sets us off on a line of thought, and all of a sudden there comes a line that stops us blind: facing the realization that Fry had anticipated the lines of thought that the reader is drawing in his mind while reading the article that he, Fry, was writing whenever he was writing that article.

Before you ask “Why?”, the cause for this panegyric was this article by Fry on Wilde & Chekhov, where he explains and demonstrates what it is that make artists like Wilde & Chekhov:

…

A paradox is that it seems harder to penetrate one’s own mind, participate in one’s own experience and discover one’s own feelings than those of another.

… …

Everything we know may be wrong, but art helps us believe that…

Everything we feel is right.

But, how do we know what we feel? Is that why we need art? Midway through the same article, he explains the wilderness that is Wilde

Because Wilde was an artist he saw the artist in everyone. He believed that Christ was an artist and that Satan was an artist. He believes that you and I are artists too.

About Fry, he may be rightest; about me, he may be wrongest!

Kashmir

Every once in a while, The Hindu shows us why it’s a class apart

Pakistan invokes the ‘K’ word

Special CorrespondentNew Delhi: Pakistan on Tuesday responded to India’s call for the United Nations to act against the Jamat-ud-Dawah and other organisations linked to the Mumbai terrorist attacks by saying it would ban the outfit if asked by the U.N. to do so. But it also added the diplomatic equivalent of a non-sequitur by invoking the ‘K’ word and calling for terrorism’s “root causes” to be addressed.

Speaking at a special session on terrorism of the Security Council, Pakistan’s U.N. ambassador began by saying he was “deeply troubled” by what had happened in Mumbai. “The best outcome of the tragedy,” he said a few seconds later, “would be the resolution of the issue of Kashmir.”

Exercising its right of reply, the Indian delegation responded by stressing the important issue was that terrorist groups had used Pakistani territory to launch attacks against India. “That country must take real action against those groups, instead of bringing up extraneous issues,” an Indian diplomat told the Council.

All we now need is for some one to state what is obviously the subcontinent version of the Godwin’s law

“As any discussion between India and Pakistan approaches a state requiring concrete action, the probability of either side raising the Kashmir issue approaches one.”

Led Zeppelin, I think, puts it best

PS: For full fundaes on The Hindu, read Aadisht

Shinkansen

If I’ve to choose one image to represent the 20th century, this might be it:

Shinkansen, with Mt Fuji in the background

The first time that I came across the name Shinkansen, I thought it was some place…

moha

From an episode of House,

Dr. Cameron: I fell in love with my husband’s best friend. Near the end I was at the hospital every day and Joe would come by after work, and go for walks, and trying to talk each other through it. We just clung to each other.

Dr. Wilson: My wife wasn’t dying, she wasn’t even sick – everything was fine. I met someone who made me feel funny. Good. And I didn’t wanna let that feeling go. What happened to you? How can anyone go through that alone. You can’t control your emotions.

Dr. Cameron: No, just your actions.

Dr. Wilson: You didn’t do it, did you. You didn’t sleep with him?

Dr. Cameron: I couldn’t have lived with myself.

Dr. Wilson: You’d be surprised what you can live with.

And this from Dostoevsky,

In most cases, people, even the most vicious, are much more naive and simple-minded than we assume them to be. And this is true of ourselves too.

Between our capacity for self-delusion and our persistence in clinging onto those delusions, which is worse? Or, am I asking the wrong question?

Ayas

Aggressive Atheism –> Fanatic Proselytism

Aggressive Feminism –> Polygamist Societies

Aggressive Liberalism —–> Totalitarian Regimes

Aggressive Alpha-male determined societies –> Stone-Age

Irony, that’s one natural resource that we will never run out of!