Here we go again!

Its been a long time since my last post. But here is again!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfGlyjY5bJU

So a 4-second picture of the Golden Temple "hurt" sentiments.

1. I'm confused over why it is hurtful. Sure, it is out of context. It is also being portrayed as a rich guy's "summer house". I can understand why the connection of "rich man's summer house" and "place of worship" is not funny, but why is it offensive again? They didn't distort the picture, they didn't spoof it by actually showing Mitt Romney in his summer clothes partying at the Golden temple, none of that!

2. Honestly, how many people in the general American audience know the Golden Temple well enough to recognize it in 4 seconds? So if nobody knew, and it was in no way related to the religion, how was it insulting?

The online petition to protest this lists other incidents which if true, do classify as racist and derogatory. But why this one? Any clues?

Why must we thrust ourselves in seemingly petty issues and grab unnecessary attention? The net result is even more ridicule! Is this what we want?

Unscientific optimism?

When i read my earlier post, I think it fits even better with the theme of optimism: another trait that often eludes and confounds me!

Unscientific happiness?

I can imagine the rolling eyes of those readers who know me in person... :-). I can be the very personification of a cloudy day, so what could I possibly contribute on the subject of happiness? I have found myself related to and surrounded by people who seem to me as having crossed the boundary into being "inexplicably happy". Similar to how one of those cloudy days also brings welcome rain, I attempt to mysteriously provide smiles through my disdain of excessively happy people :-).

The basis of this post is an article that I received by email about scientific thinking. The scientist (by profession and occasionally by personality) that I am, I have decided to find an explanation for the above phenomenon in a scientific way. My conclusion thus far is summarized in the title.

In what would seem as an example of the above personification, my first hypothesis is that the biggest reason for happiness in this world is ignorance. I propose this hypothesis by contraposition: I abhor being ignorant. Attempting to stay true to my profession, it leads me to long quests of thoroughly unnecessary and self-fortifying information (much like 24-hour news channels) all of which lead to less-than-happy conclusions (also much like 24-hour news channels). Notice how "frustrated" always seems to be linked to artists and scientists, but never to those who are "happy-go-lucky"? What seems to make people happier as they age is that either they or their brain learn to ignore the same facts that made them miserable earlier!

My second hypothesis arises from the reasoning behind my first hypothesis. Another reason for why people seem happy is that they are unscientific. Time and again it has confounded me as to how the same people who spend their money, time and strength to look pretty, young and vivacious also fervently celebrate the day of the year that announces that they are not as young as they used to be! No scientist of any repute could live with such a contradiction! Subjectivity of interpretation, the very bane of scientific thought, seems to be the strange key to happiness

I have to admit testing these hypotheses was tricky: logically arguing how a happy subject was in fact ignorant or illogical tends to invalidate them as subjects for this experiment :-). On the other hand the same test sometimes fortified the second hypothesis: happy people readily admit they could be unscientific and even mysteriously seem to conclude that this precise trait makes them happy!

So my conclusion so far is that happiness is just unscientific. Interestingly, that conclusion makes me happier!

We rule!

The tale goes that once Ganesh and his brother Kartikeya were fighting about who was more intelligent and able. Their parents suggested a race that circled the world 7 times: the winner would be declared the more able one. Kartikeya at once started his journey, while Ganesh thoughtfully circled his parents 7 times claiming they were the world to him. Needless to say he was declared the winner. But I wonder, did Ganesh actually circle the world and leave his mark?It seems so, because his name keeps cropping up in the strangest of new places and contexts. Here is the latest example I chanced upon, supposedly imagining a clash between Ganesh and Hitler.

Now let me be the first one to declare that although I do not know the details of this play, I would readily raise my objection to depicting our Gods in all kinds of frivolity (bikinis, chappals, burgers, etc.): read a previous blog of mine. But the outrage aside, it also undoubtedly signifies our dominance in today's world--we rule!

Think about it. If we were to portray Hitler and WWII as a clash between the divine good and the mortal evil, which Godly character would seem most uncontroversial? One cannot take a character from Christianity, Judaism or Islam because proponents of all three were involved in the war and are still involved in its aftermath. So a commercial venture that borrowed from any would run the risk of failing because of partisanship. Enter Ganesh! Totally incontrovertible, yet the proclaimed God of no less than one-fifth of the planet, and to add, with physical features that surely create worldwide curiosity if not amusement!

This play does not seem like a philanthropic act. It is a commercial venture. What does it say about Hindus if an Australian company thinks making a play around a Hindu God will actually earn them considerable revenue? Unless thrown together by Indians to cater to an Indian crowd (in which case all criticism seems either premature or moot) their market is Australian in nature. If they think Ganesh can pull audiences (especially in the context of Hitler) that is remarkable. This to me marks the reach and power of Hinduism. We don't even have to persuade, brainwash, threaten and train people specifically to spread the goodwill of our religion. The report says the play is "brimming with humour". I assume in good faith that humor does not translate into the belittling and deprecating kind. But I struggle to think of another religious personality who is simultaneously divine, accessible enough to be humorous and inviting laughter without the threat of consequence! Who says God has to be this feared boss that we spend our whole lives simply placating and hoping we don't anger?

In the above play, I don't see how they can belittle Ganesh. If it happens, Hitler has to be the one doing it. I think they won't risk portraying Hitler in any kind of positive, winning light.

A frank opinion to end this post: as understandable and justifiable is the public outrage at belittling our Gods is, in the end it satisfies the very purpose of the belittlement: controversy. Insulting and belittling is a symptom of great insecurity. It is when one feels the need to oppose or criticize but does not have any rational arguments to do it. If truly there were one powerful God and all others were impostors, why on earth or in heaven's name would the all-powerful God let the impostors exist and flourish, if he did not think the pluralism is worth preserving? So the next time you see Hindu Gods show up in unexpected places and contexts, try to swallow that outrage and exult in the new-found popularity of our Gods. Can China honestly even compete with us in this?

(These) Times (In) India

I remember a time when my father used to encourage me to read snippets from the Times of India to improve my English. Now that I'm a father, I intend to do the same thing but apparently to improve English through negation. Here is an example of journalism that is at best careless and at worst....well "non-journalistic".

Even though I would regard my current grasp of English as reasonably good, how did I get here? A good command of any language requires going beyond the school textbooks. Much to my parents' disappointment I never was an avid reader of books without pictures. However as a kid I partially made up for that impediment with voracious reading of newspapers. My mother tells me it started with making me underline specific letters in a clipping, followed by reading and explaining headlines and later in life, writing newspaper clipping to improve my handwriting. Those newspaper clippings helped me more in spelling, grammar and creative writing than probably anything else. As a Maharashtrian whose grasp of Marathi leaves a lot to be desired, four years of Maharashtra Times while studying in Mumbai did wonders! For a kid like me who does not catch the reading fever, what hope is there today of such avenues? (If the errors in the above news item weren't obvious, they are twofold: (1) the headline and the first paragraph span an entire generation (2) The portion of the news item that is actually relevant to the headline is almost as long as the headline.)

Is the above case a symptom of mere carelessness in typing, or a more serious case of not caring about quality? This is not the only instance by any means: the above example bears sad testimony to the decline of one of the most respected English dailies in India. I also happen to belong to the "X->Y" generation, i.e. transiting from the X to the Y generation. As a professor, this is what I get in an email from a student: "Professor, can i cum to ur office at 3?". Call me cynical, but the previous generations that saved money by curbing words in a telegram were better off than the SMS generation. It is disturbing to see how callously students respond to concerns that their emails, letters and even resumes have typographical and grammatical errors. And (gulp!), all this despite having spell-checkers!

While I often become self-righteous about current times, since when did language become "accommodating and democratic"? What's next: maybe 2+2=5 will get you partial credit because more people remember the song than mathematics?

Of blame games and abstractions

Enough words and electrons have been wasted in the digital world about the current Anna Hazare movement in India, so I won't add to it. But the arguments offered in the whole debate are ....interesting. Let me offer some symptoms:

1.

Arundhati Roy's article in the Hindu: "...(Anna Hazare has said) Nothing about the farmer's suicides in his neighbourhood, or about Operation Green Hunt further away. Nothing about Singur, Nandigram, Lalgarh, nothing about Posco, about farmer's agitations or the blight of SEZs. He doesn't seem to have a view about the Government's plans to deploy the Indian Army in the forests of Central India...."

2.

The insinuation that since Anna Hazare was himself held guilty for maladministration he is not entitled to lead such an agitation.

3. A rediff article on Anna Hazare and reservation: " ...Dalit, Adivasi and religious minorities are curious to know why Anna Hazare and his followers did not care to go on a fast when heinous atrocities were committed against their people ...", "...When the joint drafting committee for the Lokpal was formed and five members from 'civil society' were nominated for this purpose, not a single one of them was found to be from among the Dalits, Adivasis or religious minorities! ..."

(I'm tempted to add here that the existing categories of reservation far exceed the number 5)

If I interpret them correctly, the suggestion is that a person is qualified to demand action on corruption only if he/she is found to be squeaky-clean in absolutely all spheres of his/her life, and only if he/she also and with equal force demand solutions simultaneously to many or all of our other problems.

The first suggestion is Utopian. Great individuals don't reveal themselves in premonitions. The flagbearer of Indian great men, Mahatma Gandhi, was hardly known to the common peasantry in India until he moved back from SA (i.e. until he was over 40). Sitting in anticipation of that one divinely endowed person to take birth and solve our ills is a fruitless exercise, and hence such a demand smacks of nothing but procrastination. Since the basis of the current movement is pervasive corruption, I think it would be a good first step to concede that the person(s) eventually instrumental in mitigating it would have some dirt on their clothes. We cannot be so impossibly purist about this when we are so hopelessly accommodating about which worthless politician gets our vote. It sounds like a plot of an 80s potboiler where actors alone were enough to identify who the good and bad guys would be, so sharp was their distinction in the movie plot.

I find the second suggestion precariously rope-walking between specious and ludicrous. Let alone India, there was not, is not and will never be a country that suffers from only one problem. Suggesting that the fight against one ill assumes legitimacy only if accompanied by simultaneous and equal fights against all others is tantamount to admitting that no progress can ever be made. Such suggestions coming from learned social activists is even more disheartening. It falls flat in a very simple way: neither Ms. Roy nor the social activist have ever voiced their opinion as passionately about corruption, so they must not be serious about Adivasis or Dalits either. Such statements are made to refute claims of the movement being pan-Indian. Even Mahatma Gandhi will not pass such a stringent test, because if one considers geography about 30% of the Indian land was governed by princes during his time (who at best were indifferent to the freedom struggle), and if one considers population the set of people opposed to him then constitute two entire countries today.

Nothing good will come out of one passionate activist opposing another passionate activist over issues that have little to do with issues, more with personality. Do I trust Ms. Roy or Anna Hazare? Not necessarily. But does corruption cease to be an issue because other issues exist? A fight against corruption cannot be put down solely because someone who you disagree with happens to support it. Gauge the issue on merit, not on the words or background of the supporter.

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Then there is the second argument, represented by pieces like these. I call them the "academic mirror-show-ers". They exist not only in political commentary, but every aspect of life! The opinion of choice here is that the solution for every ill is "a systematic framework, a general awareness, a common resolve by everybody, a collective moral upliftment" and the likes. If anybody talks about a problem with "the system", show them a mirror to prove that the system is after all our own reflection and thus we need to improve, possibly before wanting to change the system. All noble aims, but when voiced during a movement like this, misconstrued as "maintaining status quo". Nobody can dispute that such changes will indeed eradicate all our problems. But the fact that it hasn't happened yet could perhaps mean that it is well-intended but impractical. So are there only two alternatives: status-quo or complete transformation?

=========

No movement is complete without the call to the memories of our ancient leaders, freedom fighters, etc. and associating with them. At what point do we stop limiting our memory of history to only the fighters and leaders while forgetting our past mistakes? History not only teaches us what to do, but also what not to do. Its high time we elevated our past leaders beyond the status of "keywords" and actually solve something without resorting to the "crab" mentality.

Harry Potter 7.2: the review

Saw the last of the Harry Potter movie series two days ago. I would summarize it as "(Small) Hits and (Big) Misses".

HP 7.2 is a Harry Potter movie made mostly for Harry Potter loyalists (a reasonably sound strategy since that is a big big club!). The movie has a sense of inevitability around it. Everybody knows Voldemort is going to die and Harry Potter is going to emerge victorious. Everybody also knows the path to his death: the Horcruxes. Since the books are so wildly successful, the movie makers didn't really have a lot of suspense to reveal in the movie. While that is true for all HP movies, it is especially true for this one because everybody knows the end of all good vs. evil stories.

First, the hits. The CG effects in the movie are pretty good. I must say they are much more inspired from the Mummy movies than previous HP movies (the bad guys don't just die, they literally disintegrate). A few significant parts of the last book were well depicted in this movie, most notably Snape's memory and the Room of Requirement parts.

The biggest disappointment of this movie is the complete lack of closure. One of the biggest strengths of the HP series is how the author has managed to weave together the most innocuous of occurrences and give everything significance, that are finally revealed in the last two books. The last book obviously has some big ones, that the movie sadly ignores or merely glosses over. The biggest disappointment by far (spoiler alert!) is the killing of Voldemort. After 6.5 books of hardships, killings and torture, the bad guy is finally supposed to die. Lots of lovable characters have been killed in the process. The book offers a modicum of redemption for those alive by killing Voldemort in full view of all the survivors. Harry reveals at least some secrets before killing Voldemort for everybody to comprehend. Nobody including Harry knows whether he will succeed until about 2 paragraphs before he does, because it is all conjecture and hearsay for him. Unfortunately the movie decides to make the climax a personal and very short duel between the two, with nobody around. Harry tells nobody anything afterward, and nobody seems even a little bit eager to know either. Harry gets no redemption from revealing to Voldemort part of what he knows about him. Nagini's killing is simply a "oh here's a sword that magically appeared, there's a snake, let me put 2+2 together" rather than a "passing the torch on" moment that the book depicts. The biggest whopper of a revelation, the story of Severus Snape, is left for only Harry to appreciate. The book scripts a rather boring death of one of its most sadistic characters (Bellatrix Lestrange) by pitting her against the unlikeliest of rivals. Instead of spicing up this part, the movie only enhances its mundaneness. The rise and fall of each character that fits into the whole saga was portrayed quite reasonably by earlier movies, and this movie just makes the end too obvious for anyone to actually watch and enjoy. Its like watching the 4th or 5th sequel to Jaws: just going through the motions of showing a story the movie already assumes everybody in the audience is well-versed with.

For somebody who has never read the books, the movie may make some sense but only as a traditional brainless action movie. The essence of "action with a deep, complete story" is missed in such an experience. The mystery of why Harry Potter repeatedly survives so many assassination attempts that the last book explains (a bit implausibly) is replaced by "enough of the bad guy, this time the same duel with the same red-and-green light is going to inexplicably and fatally backfire" in the movie. And no curse names this time: the duel resembles that in the Ramayana, with the viewers only wowing the visual effects and not hearing the curse names that the books have familiarized so much. (And for those who have not read the book, there is significance attached to the actual curses used in the final duel).

This movie also takes the most liberties with changing the story line than what I remember from the others. Most of the deviations make sense in the movie, and in any case what the movie omits is much more sinful rather than what the movie changes. I was hoping the movie does deviate from the book in the end by publicly revealing more about Voldemort, but the movie went the completely opposite way.

And why is this movie called "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2"? The Deathly Hallows are almost absent in reel time and significance in this movie! The conversation between Dumbledore and HP while "in death" is critical to the title of the movie and to many mysteries, and once again, comes off as two characters mouthing off the keywords from the book chapter to merely preserve continuity.

Thus, the movie disappoints. By reading the books, I have irreparably lost the point of view of the unread movie goer and thus may be harsher than most. However I must reveal that it was the first four movies that finally compelled me to read the books. For a movie series that carried such power, the end was dull.

Every movie that owes its origins to a book is either an ode to the author, tries to effectively depict visually what the book says, or extends the book a bit by using visuals to accomplish what writing could not. The point of making a movie from a book is effective and emphatic storytelling mostly through execution and cinematography, because the script is already out there for everybody to read. There is near unanimity that when it comes to good books, the movies always fall short. This is true about the HP series as well, but the books begged for movie remakes because of their rich visual content. While others in the series omitted nuances from the story in the interest of time and still managed to be self-complete, this last one takes far too much liberty. Neither will it satisfy a Harry Potter fan, not will it "convert" a watcher into a reader like earlier ones did for me.

By the way, for those who have not read the books and/or have not seen the movies, here is my rating on them:

1. Harry Potter and the Sorceror's stone

Book: B

Movie: B

Tip: If you think HP is childish (like I did), don't start from this one as it is likely to enforce that belief.

2. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Book: B

Movie: A

Tip: No other book seems so "retrospectively significant".

3. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Book: Reading...

Movie: B

Tip: Since I haven't read this one, I'm very eager to see how the book is. The story of this book seems the best fit for a movie adaptation, and I'm not convinced yet such a concept can be captured more effectively in writing.

4. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Book: A

Movie: A

Tip: This movie converted me to a reader.

5. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Book: C

Movie: C

Tip: This book and the movie is too slow and not meaty enough.

6. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

Book: A

Movie: D

Tip: The most disappointing of all the movies (the last one comes a close second). The depressing movie replaced the sentiment of the story from a fact-finding thriller to a melancholy inevitability of the end of one of its central characters. The last book is virtually "un-understandable" without this one, so critical is its content to the saga. The movie alas, can be skipped.

7. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Book: A

Movie: B, C

The best argument yet for...

Here is a statement that will go down in the annals of history as...well you decide:

"If any vegans came over for dinner, I could whip them up a salad, then explain my philosophy on being a carnivore: If God had not intended for us to eat animals, how come He made them out of meat?"

Hmmm.......here are three choices to guess who said this:

1. An English professor explaining the subtleties of the English language.

2. A sincere 8-year old kid trying to understand from mommy what a "vegan" is.

3. A hopeful for the post of the US President

My choices pretty much gave it away didn't they: the answer is 3. This irrefutable logic comes from the brain of none other than Sarah Palin. I am beginning to think the animals that she hunts may be dying of shame rather than mortal wounds.

I've deleted about three drafts of my rebuttal...but I cannot think of an appropriate one that would sound honest but not derogatory. I think the statement is so absurd that you actually need to think hard to come up with an appropriate response!