To HGW XX/7, with gratitude

Only seldom do we see a movie where we 'ooh' and 'aah' at the end and walk out of the movie hall pleased. And only once in a blue moon come those movies which leaves you mesmerized; no words can express the feeling you experience - exhilaration? happiness? bliss? I don't know!

The last time a movie's climactic scene left me in such a state was probably 'The Prestige' and the last such book was 'Vamshavrikhsa'. Yesterday, it was the outstanding movie 'The Lives of Others' (German:Das Leben der Anderen, starring Ulrich Mühe and Martina Gedeck) that left me failing for words.

The setting is in the Cold War days of totalitarian East Germany (GDR). The scene begins in 1984 (I thought this was a fantastic tribute to George Orwell's novel 1984!). Without revealing too much about the nitty gritty details, the plot revolves around the surveillence in GDR, how no one, not even the elite and trusted were spared. The Stasi (secret police) captain in charge of the covert surveillence of the pro-party writer Georg Dreyman (codenamed Lazlo) is Gerd Wiesler(played by the brilliant Ulrich Mühe). A pivotal role is played by Dreyman's girlfriend Crista-Maria Sieland (codenamed CMS played by Martina Gedeck of 'Mostly Martha' fame).

The loyal Stasi officer, in the course of the surveilance, experiences a complete change in his belief in the state. He understands that there is a devious motive behind the spying rather than 'state security' as announced. He becomes disillusioned in his nature of work, the The change in his character is one of the best parts of the movie.

I thought the movie was ending with the death of a principal character. No. It continues. Then I thought it was going to end at the Fall of the Berlin Wall. An ending here would have made it a great movie. But it is what continues after this that elevates this movie to a new level. The last few minutes of the movie are fascinating and truly marvelous! This is what is a truly rewarding movie watching experience according to me.


There are innumerable other small things that make this movie what it is. The surveillance equipment is all genuine - from collectors who have preserved it as it was. Ulrich Mühe himself was a subject of spying in the GDR. He recounts that he found out only later about his friends and colleagues who were spying on him. In fact, my belief that great movies can still win the Oscar has been revived since this movie won it in 2006 in the Foreign Film category. We can stop sending entries from India if they have to compete at this level!


Oh...and the title of this post is one of the most beautiful things about this movie. To understand its significance, watch the movie. I just can't praise it enough.

Bollywood Padmashris

We are probably the only country that showers our citizens with awards - for nothing actually. The awards are bestowed for a variety of reasons - based on recommendations, caste reservations, regional and linguistic quotas, etc but only occasionally on merit or service rendered.

In the latest incident, we have decided to honour 2 film actors, and a non-entity businessman while neglecting sportsmen who really made India proud at the Olympics. Now what are the criteria for selecting these candidates? Is it just recommendation by some influential panelist or a "family-friend MP" or the media lobby that fetches you these awards? Whatever it is, these people have desecrated the high honor of the award. By accepting such awards, those who deservedly got it will have their names written on the same roster as these celebrities. As Bannanje Govindacharya who received this award this year said,

"I had not expected the award nor desired it. I got it accidentally.... I will carry on my work as usual".

Unless such people object to these committees saying that they do not want to spoil their stellar reputation by adding their names to the same list, this ridiculous hoopla will not end.

Latin mottos are nice! But why not Sanskrit?

Veritas, motto of a famous University. E pluribus unum, found on the coins of a country. Nulla tenaci invia est via, the motto of a car company. Forget the new world, even schools in Bangalore, India have latin mottos! A famous school in Bangalore has the motto on its coat of arms as Nec Dextrorsum Nec Sinistrorsum. I wonder how many in that institution have understood it!

There is something about Latin mottos. We are simply fascinated by them. Even countries where latin was never a spoken language use latin mottos on their coat of arms. Companies, educational institutions, governments, the list goes on. Can a motto in a common language of the land or the universal language be as interesting or as inspiring?

Several institutions in India have Sanskrit mottos! Most people have either never noticed them or do not care about them. In fact, these mottos as more suitable since they are apt and are taken from a context in our cultural heritage.

To start with my school Vijaya High School's motto, it says 'na hi jnaanena sadrusham pavitram'. Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita (Ch 4, shloka 38), nothing is as pure as knowledge. What an apt motto for a school!

The motto of the Republic of India is 'Satyameva Jayate', which means Truth Alone Triumphs. Whether truth is currently triumphing is altogether a different issue!

The signature lines of the Indian armed forces are also very beautiful.

The Indian Navy's motto is 'shaM no varunah' which means May the Lord of the Oceans be auspicious unto us. Isn't that the prayer that one wants to say if one lives on the water all the time!?! The INS Mysore's line says 'Na Bhibheti Kadaachana' meaning 'Always Fearless'.

The Indian Air Force's motto is Nabha Sparsham Deeptam, (taken from the Gita) which translates as 'Touch the Sky with Glory'.

Different regiments and combat units in the Indian Army have different mottos. Most of them are so beautiful to hear and I have even heard the War Cry of a couple of them. It really does inspire the soldiers at testing times.

Rajputana Rifles - Veer Bhogya Vasundhara (The brave shall reap the earth)
Madras Regiment - Swadharme Nidhanam Shreyah (It is a glory to die doing one’s duty)
More here.

Several Indian Corporate institutions also have tailored their mottos from our Sanskrit heritage.

LIC - 'yogakshemam vahaamyaham', meaning 'I provide what they lack, and I preserve what they already possess'. This is a beautiful line from the Gita (ch 9, Shloka 22). Can you get a more beautiful saying, if you have to write it yourself? Just exactly what the LIC would want to use!

Doordarshan - Satyam Shivam Sundaram

Akashvani - Bahujana Hitaaya, Bahujana Sukhaaya’ (Welfare for All and Happiness for All)

UGC - Jnaana vijnanaanam vimuktaye (knowledge is that which liberates).


In fact, Nepal has one of my most favourite lines from Ramayana as its motto! The official motto of Nepal is 'Janani janmabhoomishcha swargaadapi gareeyasi'. Mother and motherland are greater than heaven. The context of this shloka is also beautiful. When Lord Rama defeated Ravana and installed Vibhishana as the ruler of Lanka, Lakshmana asks Rama to stay back for more time in the beautiful city. Lord Rama replies:

api swarnamayee lankaa na me lakshmana rochate
janaanee janmabhoomishcha swargaadapi gareeyasi

(Lakshmana, even though lanka is filled with gold and so beautiful, it does not entice me. Mother and motherland are greater than heaven.)

The Brave New World of hiking.

(With due respects to Aldous Huxley).

Some photos of my recent trip to the Grand Canyon. Some figures:
1400 miles of driving.
3 days.
14+ miles of hiking up and down the canyon in a day.

But numbers don't do any justice to the experience.

If you are wondering why there is no writeup, I need some more time to compose my feelings.

(Click on the slideshow to open up larger images in Google Picasaweb.)

Winter's almost over!

Winter is behind us. Spring is in the air. Can summer be far behind? (Due respects to P. B. Shelley). A new year is about to start. Ugadi is on April 7th. Time to leave behind the sorrows and tensions and reflect on more joyous occasions. (In other words, time to remove my pessimistic cap!).

(Photo taken in front of my apartment)

Reading (Non)Fiction

Reading fiction is like eating bananas. But reading non-fiction is like eating a jackfruit. I say this because of I am presently struggling to read a couple of books. I say struggling both in the time-limitation sense and that of difficulty in making progress through the pages without losing the finer points of the narrative.

I have never heard anyone saying that they wanted to go home from a busy workday, curl up by the fireplace and continue reading a nonfiction book such as 'An Essay Concerning Human Understanding' by John Locke or 'Walden' by Thoreau. (I know we could all benefit from reading such tomes instead of the Sidney Sheldons or the latest issues of Filmfare magazine. Walden is a magnificent diary on the experiments on simple living by the author.) So what is it that makes it so tough for people to pick up a nonfiction book when an easy fiction work is lying around, waiting to be read?

The simplest answer is that nonfiction reading requires an effort! You cannot really breeze through it as if you were waltzing through Jeffrey Archer's Kane and Abel. Skipping the meanings of a couple of words here and there will cause problems in later sections. You have to grasp meanings and explanations and apply them as you read to comprehend the insights the author is attempting to convey.

However, the joy of understanding and further contemplating the ideas after reading a serious nonfiction book cannot compare with the shallow thrill experienced after reading a, say, John Grisham courtroom drama. More often than not, after reading a fiction book, I am left with a feeling of emptiness, not what I am really taking away from this book. It is that momentary thrill and that 'aha' moment that we seek.

However, I am not belittling fiction. There can be works of fiction that are helpful in are that discuss social and cultural issues in the forms of stories so that the common man can identify with the scenarios, the problems and the solutions. (The first such works that come to my mind are S. L. Bhyrappa's novels).

But in the end, difficult as it may be to peel the jackfruit, it feels worth the effort after you taste the fruit! (^_^) (Maybe that's why jackfruits are seasonal like the nonfiction books!There is a glut or there is nothing.)


P.S:
The book I am currently reading is called Shri Krishna Pareekshanam by DVG. Many scholars and philosophers have written several volumes and expositions on the meanings and relevances of Krishna's sayings in the Gita and his actions in Mahabharata. However, there have been a lot of controversies in explaining the thievery of Krishna (which is a taboo topic to discuss, since it was God himself taking what belongs to him) or his involvement with the Gopika strees. This book is an examination into many such aspects. However, too many Samskrita verses and old-style Kannada poetry is a deterrent since I don't have a good dictionary at hand or someone to discuss these topics with.

Meet your meat

Meat eaters of the world, arise! Awake! And see where your daily meat comes from.

See this moving video by PETA; narration by Alec Baldwin.

I used to get into the argument of vegetarianism vs non-vegetarianism a long time ago but now completely excuse myself from such a debate. The reason is that you can never convince the other person to change, no matter what the reasoning (same goes with me too; they cannot convince me to change either). Those I know who have converted to vegetarianism have done so voluntarily without anyone's advice and out of their own realizations. One meat-eating arguer I've met gives this really lame excuse for not eating meat during an auspicious month in the Hindu calendar when he wants to be pure to pray to God! Isn't (s)he contradicting oneself by saying that they are impure for the rest of the 11 months by consuming meat?!?

Anyway, it is a lost cause arguing with meat-eaters. Or maybe my arguments are not sound/unbiased enough since I was born into a vegetarian family and have chosen to remain a vegetarian purely by choice.

Ask yourself. Do you still want to eat meat after seeing this?

To talk or not to talk, that is the question!

Henry David Thoreau said "We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate". Probably, the context in which he said this was to emphasize that materialistic riches and decadent existence were not required to lead a satisfactory life. It can be argued that this statement goes against the pursuit of science but that is irrelevant here. What is still relevant here is that "...have nothing important to communicate".

Mobile phones (or cell phones in USA) are a product of the tremendous technological achievement in Electronics and Communications. There is no denying that such a thing would have been laughed at had it been proposed about 40-50 years ago. But it is a reality and, with ultra-cheap silicon technology, has made a grand foray into third world consumers' pockets. No one would have imagined that a country like India, where the penetration of land lines was abysmal just 10 years ago, would see pani puri wallahs and road side workers wielding mobile phones.

With new technolgy and new lifestyles come new problems that people don't know how to handle. No one has ever been instructed about how to use these mobile phones in public. There are no set rules on etiquette or accepted norms of behaviour regarding them. So what is stopping people from hollering into their phones in a crowded bus or on the street? Nothing! People just do not care about neighbours being bothered or other people trying to concentrate on their work.


We have had mobile phones thrust upon us for almost no cost. So now, whether or not we have anything to talk, we cannot stop taking. Conversations can go aimlessly or discussing your most personal thoughts and feelings in front of total strangers who are made to put up with your agonies. More irritating are the boisterous types who think that the neighbours have nothing better to do than listen to your drivel; and they go on talking at the top of their voices to the utter consternation of everyone in the room.

This even happens in friends' circles where the idiots cannot go a little distance away to speak into their phones. They sit right next to you and talk into the stupid device for hours. You are made to listen to one half of a meaningless conversation while doing nothing. Can you not make a decision whether to take a call or not? If you must, can you not learn to keep your conversation short or tell the caller that you will get back to them later?

There has even been a lot of research done on the topic and why people find mobile phones annoying. You can see simple reasons in this work "Why are Mobile Phones Annoying?" published in the Journal of Behaviour and Information Technology. [Monk, et al]. Coming back to Thoreau's quote, we lived all these years without a cellphone. Life was normal and people found a payphone if they had something urgent to talk to someone outside of their homes or offices. Now suddenly with a phone in their hands, people cannot stop talking to each other over a cellphone. It definitely is a bane rather than a boon to have a cellphone.


References:
[Monk, et. al] - Andrew Monk, Jenni Carroll, Sarah Parker, and Mark Blythe: "Why are Mobile Phones Annoying?" Behaviour and Information Technology, vol. 23, no. 1, 2004, pp. 33-41.

Recommended reading:

1. Cell phone etiquette : 10 dos and don't s
2. The Ten Commandments of cell phone etiquette

On Bookshelves and Reading Habits

I have always believed that bookshelves add an indescribable charm to any room. As soon as I see a bookshelf in someone's room, my eyes start scanning the book collection. I am attracted to the collection of their books, the condition in which they are maintained, the kind of bookshelf, etc. I cant but help notice if the books have been cared for or not. Also, I try to gauge the personality of the collector by seeing his/her collection of books.

I adore bookshelves as much as I love books. It is always a pleasure to see a well designed tastefully organized bookshelf. As Pradeep Sebastian eloquently puts it in his Endpaper column in the Hindu Literary Review, he ponders over deep vs slim shelves, pigeon-hole shelves, whether libraries should use those ghastly slotted angle shelves and a host of other dilemma a book collector has to face.

Mark Twain once famously said "The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them". In essence, I think books are as essential as food, air and water (I was about to say wireless internet but refrained myself!). So, prejudiced as I am, I somehow cannot believe that some people can live their entire lives without reading any good books. The USA which is the largest publisher of books in the world is now 'endangered in reading habits' according to CNN. It wasn't for nothing that B. F. Skinner said "We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading".


Now why am I endlessly droning on two different topics - books and bookshelves? There is a connection. Recently I chanced upon the website of Strand Books which, believe it or not, sells books by the foot! Now have you ever heard of such a thing? I had heard a few years ago of buying dresses by the kilogram(!) but selling books by the foot is the height of it all! My first thought was what sort of an idiot would go to a bookstore and say 'Hey, I want about 4 feet of books to fill up my bookshelf'!!!! Then after seeing this site it became apparent that people who build beautiful houses and are rolling in money with no time to read want to have a bookshelf in the study or in the living room. It would test their patience to go out and buy books that they could read. So they buy artistically bound or gilded books with golden coloured spines, golden lettering with leather covers and weird sounding titles. I am seriously not against beautifully bound books but buying them only to decorate your living space is ... um... really crazy.

This website even announces on its page that "A home without books is like a room without windows" and the offerings vary from $300 per foot for Victorian era books, $250 per foot for art books and so on. I really do not understand why people have to portray this false sense of literacy. Or it is that they just want brand new books to go with that shade of wallpaper and mahogany!?!? As someone said, "The worth of a book is to be measured by what you can carry away from it". how can you explain that to these people!?!?

Check out the webpage. It really is fun to see what all you can sell if you can convince gullible rich foolish customers. People with lots of money are really crazy. And I don't have lots of money :-)

Guddada Bhootha - Title Song

Those of us who used to love the tele-serials of the early 90s in Kannada could not have missed Guddada Bhootha! The tune was haunting, the storyline suspenseful and I still remember the ending which was superb! In fact, it was also the serial that made actor Prakash Rai. It is a different story that this talented actor found greener pastures in Tamil and Telugu film industries.

I had been searching for the title song of that serial since ages and recently found it in Ravishankar's website in Multiply.com. I have uploaded it in my website with all the other Kannada Serial songs for your downloading convenience. Or simply, you can listen to it in the flash audio player embedded in this post.