Back to blogging

Being part of a Web 2.0 research group at my workplace really means that i should be blogging more…but i dont seem to have the drive or the incentive to do so…hmmm…yet another effort to restart.  

Its Plum Cake Time!

Tis the seasoon season to be jolly and all… Hope u fellas are having a good season this Winter.

Me and the roomies cut a plum cake at the stroke of midnight. One of them could only cut it but not partake in the actual consumption, since plum cakes are not eggless. He consoled himself by having an extra kachori.

No, thats not the plum cake we had. That is from some bakery in Greece. We had a smaller, less regal looking one. I always wondered why plum cakes are so expensive. In theory, they are supposed to have wine/rum in them but still. The bakery in our office campus had one on sale for 300 bucks. 300 bucks, for something like 500 gms. And then, they went and cut a couple into 12 teeny weeny pieces and charged 30 bucks for one. People still bought it.

Being the only two Christians in our team, me and John had the moral obligation to get cakes for the rest of the guys. Resisting immense pressure to get the 300 buck one, we got a couple of Mallu style ones from Madivala. The Mallu ones are not that rich and taste more like tea cakes. Plus, they are really sugary. Kerala also has the highest diabetes affliction rate in India. Go figure!

Anyway, have a fun and safe Christmas. A picture of a Yule log, just for the sake of it. I have never had a Yule log.

Love (2006)- The Beatles Review (Sorta)

Before delving into the subject of this post, first an aside…. Yes, I have failed and reneged on my initial promise to be more forthcoming with posts in my current avatar as a blogger. This post is dated a whole 7 months and 9 day after my previous rant. While blaming the pressures of work is the easy (and default) way out, more than that, I must confess to a distinct lack of interest(motivation?) in keeping this page alive. Why? Maybe because I am not the most natural of writers. Plus, the paucity of ideas stimulating enough to make me write the sort of paras you can see below. So, that’s it for my role as a two-penny intellectual. Atleast, for now.

So, starting now, more posts like the one you are going to read now. I dont expect (m)any comments, because it will be harder to flamebait with a music review.

I got my first Beatles tape when I was in 12th. It was the ‘Ones’ album, a compilation of No. 1 singles by the Beatles. Those were the days when I had long outgrown the Backstreet Boys et al, and was desperate for a proper musical education, at Dad’s expense. I was already well versed with U2, Pink Floyd and a smattering of others, atleast well enough to advance my cred as a ’serious’ music lover. The Beatles, however? Nah. They were clubbed with Elvis and the other old timers. Rock n roll, outdated, still powered by the misty eyed nostalgia of the baby boomer generation. Finally, just out of curiosity, I decided to set aside my prejudices and plunked down 18 dirhams of Dad’s hard earned money and brought home a pyschedelic looking cassette with a cover looking like it had been designed by my sister.

As with most compilations, this was also nothing more than a money minting scheme at best. For the sake of authenticity and the ‘warmth’ so often cited by LP apologists to pick holes with digital audio formats, the tracks werent remastered and most of them sounded, well, old. The early tracks like ‘Love Me Do’ and ‘I Want to Hold your Hand’ were fun but nothing more. No signs of much musical genius there sir. However, nearing the end of Side A, there was a perceptible change, in the songs, the lyrics and most importantly, the workmanship. ‘Something’, ‘Yesterday’, ‘Hey Jude’ and ‘Eleanor Rigby’ sounded remarkable, especially considering the fact that they were decades old and still managed to be fresh and familiar at the same time.

Why I dont like Rang De Basanti that much anymore

The title of this post implies that I once really liked RDB. Not far off the mark. I was impressed by the movie's vision, its technical excellence, its soundtrack and above all, the performances on show. I recommended it to one and all. Most of them concurred with my evaluation of the movie. The storyline implausabilities and other 'minor' issues were pushed on to the backburner. We all sang in one voice 'A once in a lifetime movie.'

A couple of months down the line, I am beginning to have second thoughts. Some of the doubts have crept in because of the current context. The hullaboo over reservations, the striking medicos, the lathi-charges. The Jessica Lall case. Everyone seemed to have the same opinion- on TV, in letters to the editor, via SMS. We are in need of an RDB moment. Somebody has to rise up and overthrow the system. This is the hour for revolution.

And I suddenly realized the biggest flaw with the movie. It is a movie. It was made for a purpose- to entertain and maybe in a smaller way, to make us pause and think. It is NOT a civics lesson. It is not a manual for social action. It is just a movie. With all the flaws a movie can have. Limited scope, emotional manipulation, idealization…Rang De Basanti checks in all those boxes and more.

If I were to summarize all the flaws of the movie in one sentence, it would go something like this. It fuels the middle-class Indian fantasy that the only problem with India is corruption. I saw this line in an Outlook article some time back, and i have lifted it verbatim because it is true. The pilot dies in a defective MiG. The MiG is defective because the parts were substandard. Corrupt (very rich) middlemen bought the defective parts on behalf of the corrupt minister. The widowed and now sonless mother and the friends decide to protest. They are brutally lathi-charged because the minister and his cohorts doesnt want them to rock the applecart, and cut off the cash supply. Somehow inspired by the pre-independence revolutionaries, the friends come to believe that the system is the new Raj. They bump off the minister. The idealist son commits patricide in the interest of the nation. Finally, the 5 heroes take over a radio station at gunpoint to peacefully surrender and spread their message. Of course, the Raj wouldnt have this, so the Black Cats are send in to finsh them off brutally. At the end, the youngsters of the nation decide that the time to get up off their butts and change the system has arrived. The credits roll.

It is a powerful movie. The storyline is tight, excusing for the unreality of it all. Of a large group which went to see it, only one person (my senior at work) seemed to dislike it.

Corruption is a problem in India, as it is in most parts of the world. But so is social injustice, poverty, and racism. The reservation issue is not just about corruption. Do not extrapolate from the movie to form the following hypothesis. Corrupt ministers need to remain in power to make more money. For this, they have to cater to the votebank. So they come up with the new reservation idea. The votebank is dumb. They ll buy the idiotic plan. We are enlightened enough to recognize the true 'facts' of this devious scheme. So we ll protest, for the common good. Which in this case means cutting off medical services and blocking the right of movement. Of course, this will have no effect. In an eerie coincidence with the movie, some students got lathicharged and waterhosed (unlike the movie though, they were breaking the law.) Finally, somebody is going to have to rise up and finish these guys, once and for all.

I do not affirm the reservation policy as it now stands. The lathicharge and suchlike needs to be condemned in the strongest way possible. But the reservation issue is also about social issues we still havent figured out how to tackle (more views on all that in a later post.) The media havent played this up much and most of you havent noticed it, but there are protests by students from the same colleges on the other side of the divide. These are mostly SC/ST/OBC students, who, if the popular theory is correct, have already cornered most of the seats in colleges. Thus, their protests should be atleast as big as the ones we see now,but somehow it isnt. Strange.

To brush off that which is clearly visible, with the big broomstick of corruption is dangerous. There is still a large populace in India who are not as 'lucky' as we are in many aspects. I am honest enough to admit that my education and my current status is largely a result of my being born in the right house. And that goes for my so called merit too.

RDB should not be a reference point for this debate. It is a well made movie. Nothing more. It is at best, misguided in its vision of subverting the democratic process for anarchy, and at worst, socially irresponsible (unlike Mani Ratnam's flawed but still infinitely more workable Yuva.)

That does not impede RDB's cinematic merits. I ll still see it on DVD because it is a genuine specimen of the craft. But I am not throwing out my Social Sciences textbook just yet.

Reverse Outsourcing

Outsourcing is not just a one way street…Wired reports on how Bollywood is aggressively recruiting foreigners of all kinds and from all places…as long as they are ghora…and not just for the tourist/potsmoking/kissing/item dance scenes. Read more here.

The poetry of breaking up

Break ups are bad. Ask anyone who's been through one. It does not have to be true only for those in love. Sometimes, the worst ones are those in which the friends you thought would always be by your side suddenly decide that its not worth it. All of a sudden, the calls stop. The constant meetings are a distant memory. Ultimately, the face that you knew by heart, every line and wrinkle,dissolves in a blur and you are left clutching at straws.

Recently, while going through a friend's blog, i found this. All of it true, and thankfully, there is a happy ending. But my reasons for writing this piece are different. As much as you dislike the all too human tragedies inherent in breakups, you cannot deny that it makes for some fine art. Many of my favorite songs, poems, even books revolve around it. I am sure all of you can think of a nice breakup song off the top of your head.

I am a big fan of Bob Dylan. Apart from writing some great tunes (Knockin' On Heavens Door, Blowin In The Wind, Like A Rolling Stone etc etc), he is also a damn fine poet. Many critics consider him to be one of the best poets, all included, of the latter 20th century. I do not consider myself well versed enough in poetry to comment on that opinion. When it comes to poetry, i am just a plebian. Not for me, the wizardry of an Elliot or Keats(though there are exceptions.) The beautiful simplicity of a Blake, Frost or Wordsworth will do for me, thank you. Dylan's work falls right into the latter class.

Dylan burst into the limelight in the mid 60's during a time of great upheaval in the US, civil and political. Vietnam, Martin Luther King, the civil rights movement, a lot was happening in those years. Dylan sang songs of rebellion and protest. He sang against racism, for equal rights, against the war and everything else in between. He was anointed as a prophet by his fans, a tag he didnt take to at all. Hence, you ll find little or no love/breaking up songs in his early repertoire.

Inevitably, things settled down. Dylan aged, his fiery youth a thing of the past. He mellowed, replacing some of the anger with a melancholy perspective of life itself. The subjects of his songs became personal. He was no longer at odds with the world. He started looking more and more inwards, at the frailities of himself and others.

Dylan's later work contains some searing pieces of breakup poetry (is that a new term??.) I ll save those for another day. When I read that piece i referred to earlier, and thought about breakups in general, one lyric came into focus. This is Shooting Star, taken off his Oh Mercy album.

Seen a shooting star tonight
And I thought of you.
You were trying to break into another world
A world I never knew.
I always kind of wondered
If you ever made it through.
Seen a shooting star tonight
And I thought of you.

Seen a shooting star tonight
And I thought of me.
If I was still the same
If I ever became what you wanted me to be
Did I miss the mark or
Over-step the line
That only you could see?
Seen a shooting star tonight
And I thought of me.

Seen a shooting star tonight
Slip Away.
Tomorrow will be another day.
Guess it's too late to say the things to you
That you needed to hear me say.
Seen a shooting star tonight
Slip away.

This is a simple poem, so simple that you'd think that you could write it. But like Frost and Blake, its charm lies in the idea behind the lines, not the words themselves. I love the way he has used the shooting star, something so fleeting, so quick, burning out in a daze of light and fire, as a metaphor. Not just to illustrate one idea, but three (the different stanzas.)

You might not need to read any further. Just let the words float in your head. But i am proceeding to write down what i understood and took from those words. You might differ. You are free to.

Obviously, the first stanza refers to the other person. I believe the person who initiated the break up. In every break up, one person believes he/she is doing the right thing, for the common good. There are better things to aspire to, for which the relationship is a hindrance. Like a shooting star zipping across the sky, that person is going to 'another world'. Did he/she make it?….you ll never know.

One person is left broken. Everything he/she did was relative to the Other. The Other was the inspiration , the reference, the benchmark, everything that he/she looked up to. Now, the Other no longer exists. Time is now a flux. You wonder if you have changed since then, if you have changed in ways she/he would have liked you to. Or did you lose your orbit and 'miss the mark, overstepped the line', the line only the Other could see….you ll never know.

Ultimately, the blame doesnt rest on one individual. Both parties are culpable in differing ways. In the end, you have to take your share. You waited for too long to say and do the things which mattered…It is too late now. The time has passed, the moment has lapsed…a moment you could see clearly, bright as the burning embers of that shooting star…now faded and out of sight. It has 'slipped away' and you wake up to tomorrow, so different from today, another day'. Would things have been different if you hadnt looked the other way?…you ll never know.

Is there someone in your life you need to talk to? Give a ring? Maybe just a smile perhaps….Do it. Dont wait…for him/her to do it first. Dont let your ego come in the way. Grasp this moment, before it too slips away.

Have a nice, safe weekend.

The Elections and All That

Another round of state elections have officially ended today, providing yet another glimpse of the inner workings of our 'great' democracy. You can read all the synopsis on any news site….or switch on one of the numerous TV channels to hear one of those droning analysts who get plucked out of the ether whenever the polls come around.

Now most of you know that I am a Mallu (for those who dont, now you do.) Kerala politics particularly intrigue me. You see, democracy is meant to be a volatile exercise, where nothing can be predicted with sure certainity. Sure, in this age of opinion polls, exit polls, and other such statistical shenanigans, we can presume to know the winner. And mostly they hold true…except when they completely turn out to be wrong as in the last general elections, when all those pollsters got egg on their faces and spent two months trying to explain why they were wrong.

But in May 2001, when the outgoing UDF government came to power, every Keralite knew that the LDF would win in 2006. Why? Because we believe in giving everyone a chance…one after the other. For the last three decades, we vote in one government and kick them out after 5 years. This would in most cases be considered idiotic and suicidal, especially with regard to the development and welfare of the state. Thats why all politicians harp about a stable mandate, political capital and so on.

I put this question forward to my grandfather during one of my vacations from college. What could possibly be the logic in such a pattern? Now, my grandfather, like many of his peers (retired and not engaged in any strenuous work), has become a full-blown and erudite political analyst. He is also a lifetime Congressman, being a Christian from central Kerala (dont ask why.) He hates the Marxists with a vengeance. His types are balanced out by those in 'Red' districts like Kannur, who think that Karunakaran and his ilk are an abomination unto our society. Of course, the Marxists and the Congress are bedfellows in neighbouring TN and at the Centre. That is another story.

There is a small percentage of swing voters in between these two camps. They ultimately make or break a government's fate at the hustings. And for 33 years, they choose to go with the other side. Dont read too much into the number of seats won by the LDF. The margins in almost all these seats are 1 to 2 percentage points.

So would Kerala be ideally served if a majority from this camp decided to take up with more certainity with one or the other front? Yes, I would have said. No, said my appachan, suprisingly. His logic was simple. By switching sides every 5 years, these people ensured that the policy of the government in power remained consistent with that of the previous one.

The big question is how…Simple enough. 5 years is too little a time to enact radical changes. You would then need to develop a political consensus across the spectrum if you were to. In Kerala, where every policy undergoes trial by media and by every Tom, Dick and Harry at the corner teashop, political consensus inevitably means acceptance by the majority of the people themselves. Once a policy has been so constructed by the previous government, a new government will risk hell and more if they scuttle it. Of course, they would have made a hue and cry about it while sitting in the Opposition. The Left were till now virulently anti-private education and supposedly, against IT development. The first private colleges were started in their previous tenure, as were the Technoparks in Trivandrum and Kochi. Now that they are back in power, expect a toning down of the rhetoric and more of the same.

This is not emotional politics. No one in Kerala worships their leaders. No manifesto promises free kilos of rice and colour TVs. This is cold blooded practicality. The government is always subservient to the will of the people. Ultimately, democracy works best when governments are guardians of the laity's decisions rather than the policy makers/executioners/benefactors all rolled into one. Maybe, just maybe, Kerala has developed an approximation of this model.

This is not perfect obviously. We might have developed faster had this paradigm been different and we allowed some strong handed leader to come to the fore. We could have rivalled Karnataka and TN as an IT powerhouse. But nobody is complaining about it that much. If they want these things to really happen, it will. Eventually..and the way they want it to happen.

Back home, grandpa is a bit sad about the UDF losing. It was inevitable and he saw it coming, but he's still sad. He is a sworn Congressman after all…and he cant stand the sight of Achuthanandan, the Marxist supremo. But he'll get over it. After all, there is 2011 to look forward to. Anybody wanna bet Rs 500 on the results of those elections..you know where to reach me.

Problems In IE

Yes, I know this page is somewhat broken in IE. So dont call me up again to tell me about it. I fiddled with the layout and the setup and guess what…..its still broken. Thats it guys…switch to Firefox as soon as you can. It is also a much better browser BTW.

Freaky Economics and Why most soccer players are born in Jan, Feb and March

Ever since reading that cult book called 'Freakonomics' which everyone and his dog seems to know about,I have been an ardent fan of Steven Levitt's peculiar brand of data analysis. (Not just me, as an aside, one of my female friends liked him so much that she said he'd make an ideal husband. When I pointed out that the guy is supposedly ultra frail, short and bespectacled ie massive geek, she said she didnt mind…go figure!)

Aside from being very intelligent, Levitt's writing also throws up the most non-intuitive but true facts you can imagine. Some of you Levittians might know that he also writes a column for the New York Times under the same title. Check out yet another fascinating Levitt hypothesis here, the implications of which could be really useful in the Indian context as well.

‘Saint’ Medha

With all the recent fuss about the Narmada dam and the 'sacrificial' antics of Medha Patkar and her celeb cohorts, the NBA is squarely in the public eye…and quite the darling of it too. It is anti-government, pro-poor and gives every armchair activist and TV channel a cause celebre.

Now that a bit of the dust from all the hype settles down, it may be time for some perspective view of Medha's and the NBA's real achievements- or lack of it. A good article in Outlook, very critical, nuanced and somehow impartial inspite of it. Check it out here.