The Dilbert Principle - Scott Adams

Parts of the book were good. They made me laugh. But parts were boring. This was for my morning light reading in the cab.
I have noted two passages from the book here.

Good advertising can make people buy your product even if it sucks. That’s important, because it takes the pressure of you to make good products. A dollar spent on brainwashing is more cost-effective than a dollar spent on product improvement.

Obviously there’s a minimum quality that every product has to achieve. It should be able to withstand the shipping process without becoming unrecognizable. But after the minimums are achieved, its advertising that makes the big difference.

A good advertising campaign is engineered to fit a precise audience. In particular, there is a huge distinction between what message works for men and what message works for women.

Males are predictable creatures. That makes it easy to craft a marketing message that appeals to them. All successful advertising campaigns that target en include one of these two messages.

1.This will help you get dates with bikini models.
2.This product will save you time and money, which you’ll need if you want to date bikini models.

Compared to simple minded brutish men, women are much more intricate and complex. Your advertising message must appeal to women’s greater range of intellectual interests and aesthetic preferences. Specifically, your message has to say this:

1.If you buy this product, you’ll be a bikini model.

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You can make your product look special by disguising the true costs and then claiming its more economical than the alternatives.
Some good techniques for disguising the true cost of your product include:

1.Link payments to exotic interest rates such as the Zambian Floating Q Bond.
2.Offer discount plans so confusing that even Nostradamus would throw up his hands and say, “I donno. You tell me.”
3.Give coupons that are redeemable for prizes through an impossible inconvenient process that combines the worst elements of scavenger hunts, tax preparation and recycling.
4.Compare your lowest cost plan with the competitor’s highest cost plan
5.Offer lease options to people who are bad at math
6.Assess gigantic penalties for customers who miss payments. Once in a year, forget to mail the customer a bill
7.Offer steep discounts for initial payments, followed by obscene price increases. Make it difficult for customers to wiggle out after they are caught in your web.
8.Sell the product without any of the features that could make it useful for example computers without keyboards and RAM.

Best Short Stories Of India - Phyllis Atkinson, RE Enthoven, Krishnaswami Aiyangar

This was a book I picked up in Select Bookstore.

The book might be of academic interest to certain people. But to me, it was an unending repetition of very ordinary stories. They are grouped under categories Southern India, Bengal, Manipur, Salsette, Central Provinces, Santali, Hindustani, Telugus, Telugu Vaishnavas, Dakshina Desa. The stories of Southern India were the best of them all.

Parts from the introduction by Rao Bahadur Dr. S Krishnaswami Aiyangar is what I will mention here. For it describes the difficult involved in tracing the origin of folk lore and tradition to a particular race, country or civilization. Interested deeply as I am in history, I wish to record this.

“This collection helps you form an idea of the character of these stories.
A general reading of these would give the impression of a community of thought and feeling common to the whole of India, notwithstanding the multitudinous character of language, religion and all that goes to constitute what is called in a general comprehensive term ‘culture’ or ‘civilization’.
The stories from different regions are alike with characteristic differences.
The similarities and differences have each, a tale to tell.

The collection serves as a common framework of Indian tales.
It would serve a larger purpose when studied in comparison with folktales of other people all the world over.
One important line of research that this opens, the late Sir Richard Temple has drawn attention to in his foreword to the Katha Sarit Sagara. Speaking of the tales incorporated in the Sagara, he has the following. “The Aryans came across at least one race, the Dravidians, equal to themselves in mental capacity, and across many others whose minds they could more or less easily dominate. Neither the Dravidians nor the others were of their form of civilisation and tradition, but they all mingled with them in some degree or other, at any rate to the extent of social contact, generally as master and servant.”

Speaking of the evolution of fairy tales so far as they are comprised in the Katha Sarit Sagara, the same learned observer describes them as “fundamentally Aryan, with accretions from every race with which the Aryans had come in close contact for, say 3000 years by Somadeva’s time. These races were Dravidians, “Kolarians” or “aborigines”, and people across the Northern and Eastern frontiers – all very different in origin from the Aryans.
They all carried their religions, folk tales and folklore with term, and cannot but have infected the indigenous corresponding nations of the Aryans of India with alien ideas and folk-tales.”

Sir Richard points out that this opens a new line for research. ‘Whence did the various non Aryan tales and ideas come? It is not an easy line to follow, as the period is so late and the whole matter by that time already had become so complicated. Suppose a custom or tale is non-Aryan Indian – i.e. Dravidian or Kolarian – or father Indian (Mon, Shan, Tibeto Burman) by origin: by Somadeva’s date it had plenty of time to be assimilated and take on an Aryan form.” This points to one difficulty in any research undertaken along this line. But what follows indicates in clear terms the danger to which this research is liable unless it is pursued with very great care and circumspection. Referring to a custom or an idea, he has the following, which deserves to be noted very carefully. “suppose, it to date back before the Aryan irruption into India – its existence in principle now or at some ancient date in Western Asia or Europe would not prove that it arose either in India or in Europe or Western Asia. Suppose research to show a tale or idea to be of general occurrence in India, Asia, Europe, Africa, and even in America and the pacific islands; recent works show so much and so ancient communication all the world over as to make one very careful in asserting origin. Suppose we find a story in Siam, in Indonesia, in Persia, in Europe, in South Africa, as well as in India; it might well have gone thence out of India or gone through or even round India in either direction. To show how this kind of thing can happen I printed in 1901 a tale told in the Nicobars in Nicobarese form to a European officer who was a Dane by nationality, Mr. A. de Roepstorff, which turned out to be a Norse tale he had himself told the people some years before. Wherever then, a civilization or a people travels, there go also folklore and custom…
The whole question is very difficult. Even if we trace a tale or an idea to the Jatakas, to the earliest part of the Mahabharata or the Ramayana, to the oldest Puranas, to the Brahmanas, to the very Vedas themselves – that does not make it Indian or Aryan in origin.

What then is the use of research in a subject like this, which is so illusive? In cases where a common origin could be proved satisfactorily, it would indicate the direction that early migration took. If independent origins have to be conceded they would still throw light upon the growth of the human mind in the earlier stages of civilisation. Whether the material collected be put to use for purposes of research or no, there is the inherent interest in the stories themselves and the pleasure that one derives from reading these popular tales as light literature.”

Next Destination

They were all exasperated with me.
Stopping a moving car every now and then, at every bend, uphill, downhill, foothill and hilltop to take a picture; of the same old hill, of trees (as if trees are uncommon and deserving of such attention).
It’s getting late. For them.
They need to reach the next town quickly to have some coffee. They need 4 cups of coffee a day. So what if they are travelling? And its coffee time now.

They are getting late. You should reach the destination in time, well before its lunch time, before breakfast time, before it gets dark... in fact just reach as soon as possible.
Why?
What do you mean why?
Because it’s our destination. Simply because it’s the destination.
Let’s first reach there. On our way back you can stop to take pictures.

On our way back….
You never know. There may not be so much light available. It may be cloudy. Who knows what will happen on our way back?

I, much to the anguish and consternation of all others, get down to photograph the brambles. Did you notice those red flowers all over the thorny shrub and no leaves at all?
I will never see it in Bangalore.
Then the coffee fruit on bushes; not this bush, that one - for their arrangement is special, they look like pearls on a string.
The house on that hillock that looks really old; a few decades if not hundreds.
A patch of grass below, that’s turned yellow and gold.
Monkeys - they give perspective to your picture.
Have you never seen monkeys before?
There are 25 of them huddled together in a ball. I have never seen them like that before. A ball of monkeys.
Yet another monkey on the parapet that had closed it's eyes, probably taking afternoon nap, looking like a meditating monkey.

That bull dozer.
Now that one you see in the city every day!
But this one is different. The ones in the city blend so harmoniously with their surroundings. And this one; the contrast is striking.
It will change the face of the hill forever. This must be a historic moment for the hill.

This way you can go on taking pictures. Is there an end? It’s difficult for him to drive. To stop now and then. How selfish you can be!
Take one picture of the lake, two of the temple, a few at the rose garden, one of the sunset. That should be enough.

And after a few hours, it’s time to return.
So why waste time, looking at the same thing again and again?

It’s not the same. We had passed by this spot in the afternoon. When it was sunny and white. It’s dawn now. Foggy. Misty. Blue. And only a small patch below is glistening yellow with the sun. It’s not the same thing. Try to understand.

We have to reach home in time for lunch and afternoon nap, and evening tea. We have to reach before it gets dark.
Because now home is the next destination.

Thus they went on. Most of them measuring life by the destinations visited and not by the journey itself.
As if the countless moments in between amounted to nothing.
And the only one who enjoyed the journey was thought abnormal.

So it is with their life.
That’s how they measure it. Not by the journey itself but by the destinations visited.
10 standard, then 12, Engineering Degree, then software job, America, then marriage, own house, car, then children.

The one who is simply happy, to be breathing, to be living, eating, singing, reading, writing, talking, joking, taking pictures, occasionally passing a few destinations now and then has no success to boast of.

Like me.

Yercaud - Day 1 - The Journey

5th Feb 2011

I, brother, mom and dad left Bangalore early in bro’s car to Yercaud. We drove some, had breakfast at A Kamath restaurant and then drove more.
What beautiful roads! As we entered Tamil Nad, they only better.
Some views presented kilometer long stretches of continuous road ahead and were worth photographing.

These toll gates make a lot of money. They collect 20, 30 or 60 rupees at each gate and there were some 10 of these gates on our way.

I slept some and read Somerset Maugham’s Cakes & Ale alternately until the uphill climb began.
And then I was ready with my camera, clicking away to the annoyance of my whole family.

Monkeys!

We found them all along the climb. Comfortably ensconced on the parapet, on the branch of a tree, on the road, gaping at passing cars, hoping for those inside to throw them some food. We had to slow down sometimes for fear one of them might dart across the road suddenly.
On our way down, 2 days later, early in the morning, we saw some 50 monkeys huddled together closely in one big ball. Before I could take a picture, our car had passed them. What a rare sight it was!

There are 20 hair pin bends. And at each bend you see a marking of the count on a rock or the parapet by the road.

Bamboo is one of the photogenic trees on my list. The others being coconut, Devdar and the Pine.
This one was lovely. What with sunlight falling on the leaves and turning them golden green, special effects and all!

Mountains in layers.

Can’t help thinking about Kedarnath where we saw 6 or 7 of them one behind the other.

And the coffee estates made me think of Coorg.

That’s the thing about Nature. The same mountains, the same rivers, but you cannot have enough of them.

And we reached Hotel Tamil Nadu. Our room cost 1000 rupees a day and there was hot water available all the time. It’s right next to the lake. Recommend it.

Our balcony ‘pretended’ to look out to the lake. I mean there was a lot of weedy ground under the balcony, after that a street and then the lake.

Since it was very sunny, everyone rested in the room for the noon.
After some resting, I set out alone, ambling about, hoping to find some work for my camera.
I bought a hat for myself (my second hat after the first one in Goa), and a cap for my dad.
I was surprised to see pine in the vicinity. I thought they were to be found only in the northern mountains.

I had to position myself and my camera strategically so I could picture this part of the hillside and leave out the debris around it.

We had lunch in hotel Malar (a ‘pure veg’ hotel – my father was very particular).
We had south Indian meals and ‘Vatthal Kozhumbu’ was very good.

After lunch we went for a short drive when I took more pictures which will follow…

Out of Thin Air

Jan 9, 2011, Sunday, 12:45 PM
Out of Thin Air, 50 mins
By Shabani Hassanwalia and Samreen Farooqui


‘Las Del, Las Del’, you can hear a voice as if a push cart vendor were shouting his wares.
And on the screen are pictures of a place that seem very familiar.

Two men drag a horse, a boy and a girl, all life size toys, up a hill. The next frame shows them standing on the edge of the hill and pushing the toys down. They fall in slow motion,
Horse, girl and boy, into blue green waters of a river in the valley below.
This looks familiar too.

There are Buddhist prayer flags and prayer wheels with rugged mountains in the background.

This is becoming more and more familiar.

Oh! Ladakh!
That’s why!

Twice, not once but twice I visited Ladakh. And I did not know there was a film industry there!
The very thought of a film industry in Ladakh makes you smile.

Stories of small town innocent folks following the glitter of the cities are always funny, cute and endearing.

Who would ever imagine that Ladakh had a film industry?
And who would imagine that a Buddhist Lama was acting and dancing in one of these films?

Yes. The people who make these films are taxi drivers, restaurant workers, shop keepers and lamas. The ordinary people. And they do everything. There are no defined roles.
One particular fellow was director, choreographer, dancer and actor. Almost all of them were many things at once. How all of us in the auditorium laughed!

10 music videos and 6 digital films release in Leh every year.
The frame shows people crowding outside a door. It opens, it is dark inside and several feet rush to get inside, pushing each other.

Their latest release is a Las-Del, meaning Karmic Connection. This is their most expensive film. It cost 15 lakhs.
On an average, a Ladakhi film costs 5 lakhs.


Zulfikar Ali, a taxi driver and employee of public works department, known as Zulzul, also as Munna (after Munnabhai MBBS) is a villain.
‘what can I do, I have a face like that’ he says.
If I play hero, no one likes it. If I play a murderous fellow carrying a Kalashnikov, then people like me.

In Sholay style, Zulfikar says, “Door jab Bachha rota hai to ma kehti hai ‘beta soja warna Zulzul ayega” and laughs.

“There are seasons – one love story became a hit. Then everyone started making love stories. And then a tragic film became a hit. All started making tragic films. We made an action film. But it was a flop”, says another insider of the industry.
“Don’t know why, but these Ladakhis like tragedy a lot. They watch these films and cry and cry…”

Norzum is an actress, dancer and choreographer. She is shown dancing for the Hindi title song from the film ‘Khushi’. It is more of folk dance and does not really have anything of Bollywood in it.
“Whom do you like more? Madhuri Dixit or Norzum?” when you ask a local, “Norzum”, comes the reply.

The heroine, giggling most of the time, says she puts a lot of passion into her work. Sometimes she really starts crying as she is acting. Otherwise, she puts glycerine and cries and cries.
“Aasoon ata hai to rote hain, warna glycerine lagake rote hai”.

“Garhwali films and films made in Himachal are inspired by Ladakhi films. Even their songs are copied from us” says this guy. “These Garhwali films are imperfect – “maang tika hata hua hota hai to hero scene mein gana gate hue aake theek karta hai (if there are faux pas, the actors make corrections as part of the scene ). We don’t do such things. We are perfect.”

“We want to preserve Ladakhi culture. This is fast changing.”
Very true.
In just 1 year, between 2 consecutive visits, how much had changed.

The director of a film is a Buddhist Lama and he wants to cast Hrithik Roshan in one of his films.
He wants his grandfather’s permission for becoming full time director, because it was his grandfather who wanted him to be a lama.
“Unse poochoonga. Who agnya de to karoonga”, says he with a smile.

Bose-Einstein Condensate and State of Samadhi

Matter and energy are inter convertible.
Matter is present in various energy states that are temperature-dependent. The higher the temperature, the greater the energy.
Water boils when it is heated to higher temperatures.
This increases the disorder in the molecules as they are energised.
This is entropy.
It represents the excitability and chaos of the molecules that constitute matter.

Satyendra Bose proposed to Einstein that if matter was cooled to very low temperatures —to Absolute Kelvin or minus 273 degrees — then its entropy should decrease and matter should come down to a zero-energy state.
This was proved later on.
This zero-energy state is now known in physics as the Bose-Einstein condensate.
This state of matter is also called a super atom as the entire mass behaves as if it were a single atom.
It loses all its characteristics of shape, charge and polarisation.
It probably reverts to a shapeless, attributeless phenomenon in a de-evolution, reverting to just the potential to manifest as anything.

The human brain is an aggregate of nearly 100 billion neurons.
Thoughts that constantly crowd our minds are the sum total of simultaneous activity of different neurons.
There is chaos in our waking state.
The thoughts translate into various biological changes mediated by the hormonal apparatus at the pituitary interfacing system.
The complex interconnections that abound in the nervous system ensure that even a small impulse rapidly spreads.

Some individuals have innate higher entropy levels and so find it harder to concentrate.
They are ‘distracted’ easily.
They have fleeting thoughts and are very restless.
The sensory organs serve as an important pathway to increase the entropy as they stimulate various neuronal circuits adding to the entropy.
Therefore, closing the eyes helps in the process of concentration.

Continuous stimulation of the neural networks happens in the waking state.
Hence sleep is necessary for minimizing these constant excitatory inputs.
Sleep deprivation leads to fatigue of the neural networks.

When you concentrate, there is a resultant decrease in the disorder of the neural system. As concentration increases, the tendency of the mind to waver and scatter decreases.
The mind is more sharply focused.
So when we concentrate, we are increasing the synchronicity of a specific group of neurons and silencing unrelated neuronal activity.

In scientific parlance, concentration decreases the entropy of the neuronal apparatus.
Just as the entropy of matter drops to near-zero levels when we approach Absolute Kelvin, similarly, the neuronal disorder keeps waning as we concentrate.
The neuronal firing decreases in amplitude as well as frequency. So would the propagation across various networks.


In the waking state, when you consciously attempt to decrease the entropy of the nervous system, it is referred to as meditation.
As the entropy of the neurons keeps decreasing, a state of calmness is perceived.
As this progresses further, the neurons start becoming synchronous.
That is, they neither modulate nor amplify any incoming signal.
They just resonate in harmony.
As this orchestra gets more in sync, you experience varying states of bliss and happiness.
Till what is presumably the final state of zero entropy, where all 100 billion neurons function in total unified quantum coherence.

The Bose-Einstein condensate equivalent of the neuronal system is what may be termed as Samadhi.

Article by Deepak Ranade, a consultant neurosurgeon.

Maya Bazar

Jan 9 2011, Sunday, 11:30 AM
Short Film – Maya Bazar, 1 hour by KM Madhusudhanan

The opening frame shows an artist painting his face. For too long.
The subsequent scene shows people in costumes on stage enacting what appears to be a mythological story. The dialogues are not audible but soon you know it does not matter. The theme of the film is not the play but a theatre company.

“This is film on Surabhi, a 120 year old travelling theatre company from Andhra Pradesh. The film also explores the traces of Parsi theatre, silent cinema from the Phalke era and the paintings of Ravi Verma in the design of the theatre company’s sets and costumes.”

While there is enough information available on the net on Surabhi, I shall pen facts that I learnt from the film.

Surabhi is a travelling theatre company that enacts stories from the inexhaustible reservoir of Indian mythology.
All of them belong to one family. These two put together make them unprecedented.
All tricks are their own and have never failed even once.

Although it was common for men to play the roles of women, this troupe had women among them.
In some of their performances the collection was 3-5 rupees, and expense to put up the show was 500 rupees.
Even if there is just one person in the audience, they perform. They have never dismantled the set without performing.
They use cheap make up since they need loads of it to dab on their faces and all over their body.
It is harmful for their skin - it eats into their skin – but they cannot afford other paints/make up as they need a whole lot of it.
Once, a pregnant woman played the role of a pregnant woman on stage. She went into labour on stage and gave birth to a baby girl.

While the subject of the film is a very interesting one, the film itself is slow moving, boring and does not do justice to the people whose story it is attempting to narrate.
Firstly, the film does not develop into a story but presents facts. It is too slow moving. Some of the frames showing people applying make-up last too long.

Most importantly, the film does not talk about the difficulties the troupe faced, how it overcame them, moments when they thought it was almost over, crises, victory stories, awards and recognitions....these omissions make the film rather bland.

A Brief History Of Time - Stephen Hawking

Before anything is said about this book, I think one must salute the man, Stephen Hawking, for his brilliance, his sheer interest in work, in spite of his medical condition. If miracles are possible, may the first one revive him!

The first time I attempted to read the book was when I was 19 or so. I found it fascinating but put the book down after the 2nd chapter or 3rd, for some reason.

The second time I attempted it was when I was over 21 I think. By then I had completed 3 years of studying physics as part of my B.Sc. syllabus. I enjoyed the book. I savoured it actually, as I understood (from my own intimacy with physics) exactly what the author was saying. I remember I reached the chapter about particles and antiparticles and I was turned off as there was less and less of ‘relativity’ there onwards and more of ‘quantum mechanics’, a subject I did not like much. You know, it deals with the very small, ‘3 into ten to the power of minus 23’ and all. Both – negative numbers and very small magnitudes – don’t capture your imagination.

Last year, I finally decided I would read this book whole and soul.
I picked up the book with a lot of anticipation; but alas, I had lost touch with physics by then; how memory betrays you!
This time, I had to make an effort to put the concepts into perspective; something that had been so effortless, a few years ago.

The first few chapters are most interesting. Understandable and awe inspiring. But the last few chapters were difficult.

The theory of relativity - All observes should measure the same speed of light no matter how fast they are moving. This simple idea has remarkable consequences…

You can only be more and more thrilled as the one theory leads to another and puts an end to the concept of absolute space and then absolute time!

I began to struggle with the chapter Black Holes Ain’t So Black. In this chapter, Hawking somewhat contradicts the concepts he introduced in the previous chapter. In the chapter on Black holes, he says black holes have infinite gravity and infinite density and therefore nothing, not even light can escape black holes and therefore they are completely black. This made perfect sense. But in the next chapter, he says, black holes actually or apparently emit radiation! And this radiation is emitted not from the black hole itself but from the empty space or region outside the event horizon of a black hole. There are particle-antiparticle pairs one of them falling into the black hole and the other falling away from it. Sounds very hypothetical – one of those adjustments we make to reality in order to justify our own preconception –sounded like that.

And then, in order to avoid singularity at the beginning of the universe, time is measured using imaginary numbers – the stuff I studied in complex mathematics in college –‘ i’ (lower case of the 9th English alphabet) denotes the imaginary number which is the square root of minus one.

The wave particle theory was palatable. Particles can be considered as waves and waves as particles. But in the last few chapters, a string theory is introduced. All matter particles in their elementary form are strings; strings with open ends or closed ends. This again sounded improbable and fictitious. At least difficult to come to terms with.

I love the Theory Of Relativity. Deals with the very large – interplanetary distances, huge astral bodies, 100 times the size of sun, millions of years and all. Very fascinating!
But I don’t like Quantum Mechanics that much. It’s not fascinating, the effects aren’t observable & it’s not easy 2 imagine. It doesn’t capture your imagination.

As I read about the anthropic principle, I realized it was a concept I had conceived years ago without being able to put in clear words.

The anthropic principle can be paraphrased as ‘we see the universe the way it is because we exist’. This addresses speculation about why there is life only on earth? And such others that suggest mystery or divine intervention.

The anthropic principle, in other words states that in a universe that is large or infinite in space and/or in time, the conditions necessary for the development of intelligent life will be met only in certain regions that are limited in space and time.
The intelligent beings in these regions should therefore not be surprised if they observe that their locality in the universe satisfies the conditions that are necessary for their existence.

It was common for people, to exclaim (especially when space exploration confirmed that there was no life on Mars, nor on Venus, nor Jupiter) that in this whole universe, life existed only on Earth! that oxygen was found only here! that our planet was at the perfect distance from Sun – any closer would have been too hot for us, and any farther, too cold! And then the right atmospheric pressure, the ozone layer to protect and so on… just how perfectly God had created everything for us!

And once or more, during one those of moments of epiphany, I had understood that “We are only the consequence of many complex incidental/accidental processes and not the purpose of all those”

In other words, we should not be surprised that all the million pieces should have fallen in place just right in our planet because for one instance where everything fell into place, there are a million instances in this universe where things did not fall in place. So our existence in this universe is no matter of bewilderment. It had to be this way by probability or chance.

So when I read about anthropic principle, I beamed with pride, that a concept discovered and expounded by famous scientists should be conceived by me in my childhood, without any guidance from anyone ! : - )

I made note of a few important points as I read.

Guth has remarked, “It is said that there is no such thing as a free lunch. But the universe is the ultimate free lunch”

The eventual goal of science is to provide a single theory that describes the whole universe.

We hope to find a complete consistent unified theory that would include all these partial theories as approximations, and that did not need to be adjusted to fit the facts by picking the values of certain arbitrary numbers in the theory. The quest for such a theory is known as ‘the unification of physics’. Einstein spent most of his later years unsuccessfully searching for a unified theory but the time was not ripe.

A completes consistent theory that unifies general relativity and quantum mechanics (with its ‘Heisenberg uncertainty’ principle) is what we seek.

The forces that have to be unified are Gravitational force, electromagnetic force, weak nuclear force and strong nuclear force.

The main difficulty in finding a theory that unifies gravity with the other forces is that general relativity is a classical theory; that is, it does not incorporate the principle of quantum mechanics.

Einstein objected to the element of unpredictability or randomness that quantum mechanics introduced into science despite the important role he had played in the development of these ideas. He was awarded the Nobel prize for his contribution to quantum theory. But he never accepted that the universe was governed by chance; his feelings were summed up in his famous statement “God does not play dice”.

Classical general relativity by predicting points of infinite density, predicts its own downfall just as classical (non quantum) mechanics predicted its downfall by suggesting that atoms should collapse to infinite density.

Scientists have been too occupied with the development of new theories that describe WHAT the universe is to ask the question WHY. On the other hand, the people whose business it is to ask WHY, the philosophers, have not been able to keep up with the advance of scientific theories.

It is amusing…As you read about scientists and their experiments and their constants and the adjustments they make to their observations to make them suitable for theories, how subsequent discoveries disprove the established… and the absolutely hypothetical theories they conjure up when faced with obstacles…
When you read in detail, you know not to trust science too much but to watch dispassionately.

This book, needless to say, is a must read – for all those who are comfortable with the basics of physics.

I will have to read this again, but before that I will have to go find my college lecturers, get their notes, and go through them all over again. May be study some equations and even solve a few problems!

Saugandh Ram Ki Khate Hain Hum...

It was the year 1989. Or was it 1990?
20 years is long enough time for clarity to begin dissolving into confusion.
But the mind remembers certain pictures, sounds, smells and tastes of a remote past as if they belonged to a recent yesterday.
I don’t know if it’s an attribute of the mind or the nature of certain events that refuse to dislodge themselves from the grooves of memory.

Among the many pieces of that episode, it is the song that stands out. “Saugandh Ram Ki Khate Hai Hum Mandir Wahin Banayenge”. I do not remember the faces that sang the song. Because I never saw those faces. I was not allowed to.
Standing behind the grill door of the veranda, I had taken a peek at the crowd marching on the street before my house.
I was as tall as the compound wall perhaps but no more.
All I could make out was a throng of red turbans, with red flags above them marching on. About the red turbans and flags, I am not very sure. My mind simply associates the colour red with that episode.

49% Hindus and 51% Muslims. The town of Bharuch in Gujarat was communally sensitive.
There was curfew and we would not go out.

Being from the South, which was very peaceful and calm compared to the disturbed North, all this was new experience to us. We had never witnessed a communal riot and we had never heard of curfews.

Our father explained to us that when there was curfew, no one was allowed to go out to the street. There were policemen everywhere and they carried guns. If they saw someone on the street, they would shoot them. We were thrilled.

That was our first and closest encounter with the Hindu Muslim discord. And it was also the first time I learnt about the Ayodhya Ram Temple dispute.

I don’t remember anything else from that episode.

Those were days when religion mattered to people. There weren’t too many people claiming to be secular or talking about equality. Secularism wasn’t as fashionable as it is these days. I mean, it had none of the prestige value it has acquired today.
There was only one TV channel, Doordarshan and they weren’t aggressively marketing and selling the ideal of secularism.
It was socially acceptable to proclaim that one religion was superior to the other. It was equally acceptable to grimace while talking about another religion.

Most people, nay, all people unanimously mistrusted the Muslim community.
I do remember clearly that at a personal level, there was harmony and goodwill between Hindus and Muslims. They were ‘bhai-bhai’ indeed. My best friend at school was Sakeena, a Muslim.
But as a community, the Muslims were perceived as ‘outsiders’.

I remember clearly how, 2 years later, when we were living in Ahmedabad, during that conversation on the terrace, all neighbours living in the apartment building had assured themselves and each other that the Muslims would meet their doom very soon.

There was Mrs Fernandez, Mrs Pai, Geetha, myself, mom. I am not sure if Alka, daughter of Mrs. Fernandez was also there. There were other people too.
Mrs. Fernandez had announced that according to the predictions of Nostradamus, in the year 2000, when all Muslims gathered in Mecca for Haj, ultra-violet rays of the sun would penetrate through the ozone hole in the atmosphere, fall on them and all of them would die. And after that she had said Christianity would be the greatest religion in the world (of course) followed by Hinduism in the second place.

For all the upheaval that was happening around us, we children were simply happy that our school remained closed for weeks and we had vacation all the time.

Very soon, my father was transferred to the South and the Hindu Muslim discord became a distant cry of another world.

My father often said that there were three issues in our country that would never be resolved and would remain forever. The Kashmir problem between India and Pakistan, the Cauvery water dispute between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu and the Ayodhya Ram Temple dispute between Hindus and Muslims.
I believed him.

So when I learnt that the High court would announce the Ayodhya verdict, I could not believe they had taken a decision at last.
First I thought it had to do with the demolition of the mosque.
But when it turned out that it wasn’t the demolition incident but the bigger and older issue of the ownership of the land that they were going to judge, I was surprised.

When there was talk of closing schools and colleges and a country wide bandh, I thought it was unnecessary.
Does anyone care today about Ram or his temple? Does religion matter to people anymore? How many of them there are who proclaim they don’t have a caste and they don’t have a religion!

A lot more had changed in 20 years than anyone had anticipated.

Apart from reading the tweets of Barkha Dutt and certain others about the high court verdict, I hadn’t really been following this story.

But on the day of the verdict, after I returned from office early, I became curious.

I was almost sure they would favour the Muslims. The majority of us being pseudo secular, the whole political system being minority-appeasing and then with Congress ruling at the centre, it could not have been any other way.

As I sat pondering on that quiet afternoon, waiting to hear the verdict, having nothing else to do, I realized that I had never really thought about the question of Ayodhya seriously.

What was my own opinion on this subject?

All the reading I have been doing on the subject of history had helped me understand that this world is like a canvas. All the deeds of men are like the strokes of a paintbrush on the canvas. Kingdoms, emperors, ordinary people, craftsmen, builders, painters, religious leaders, thinkers, rebels, reformers, all of them hold a paintbrush in their hand and put up a painting on the canvas of time.
As time progresses, there are layers of pictures because each one paints on a picture created by his predecessors.

So, layer upon layer, the picture evolves.
As men come and men go, the painting changes, the picture changes.
Some strokes remain on the canvas undisturbed, some mix with new strokes and acquire a new shape, colour and meaning; some become obscure as fresh strokes fall upon them, some of them are completely obliterated as if they never existed.

One may, upon looking at the picture, feel, for whatever reason that a picture of a previous time was more beautiful, was more just, more correct and may want to revive an old picture.
You may, having been convinced by him or having been beaten by the force of his assertion, permit him to peel away a few layers and revive a picture of the past.
But suppose another raises his voice and asks to revive an old picture 10 layers below, what will you do?
Will you let him peel away 10 layers and restore a picture of a remote past?

Just then,

Someone raises his voice to say the period of Ashoka was golden and should be revived…
No Chandragupta Maurya was better still…
The Gurukulas of the Vedic times provided holistic education… says someone
Yes, the barter system was better…says another
The Gandharva Vivaha was charming…so were the Swayamvaras…
The land between Egypt and the Indus River belongs to Alexander and ought to be unified…
Bhagat Singh was unjustly persecuted and we must seek retribution…
Let’s bring back all the teak of Burma from the palace of the Queen of England…
Let the Romans recapture Istanbul from the Ottoman Turks and call it Constantinople again…
In the dead of a night, one man ran the tip of his pen, impromptu, on a map spread before him and that line became the border between India and Pakistan. Let’s undo it…

How far back can you go in time?
How many layers is it permissible to peel off?

Actually, you cannot peel away even a single layer.
All you can change in the picture is a stroke here and a stroke there when the paint is still fresh.
When the picture is still in its making.

After it is made, it is made.
Beautiful or ugly. Fair or unfair. Just or unjust. Kind or cruel…

You cannot peel away time. You cannot undo.
As far as political correctness goes.

The clock struck 3.
I dashed to my neighbour’s house for I don’t have a television at home.

The verdict was announced.
The land had been divided into parts and one was given to the Hindus. The solution was out of the box. I did not know a court of justice could take such a decision. I thought it was like a debate. They had to be either For or Against. I did not know they could hold a middle ground.

People’s reactions were so varied.
Many Hindu countrymen must have thought it their right to have custody of the land given to them. Many must have gone further and believed that they should have been given all of the land and not just a part of it.

As for my reaction, I was happy, Hindu as I am; though only yesterday, I did not care much.
Because it took me by surprise. Because it had happened in spite of the pseudo secularists.

But coming from all the contemplation of the afternoon, I saw the verdict not as justice deserved, not as the restoration of our rights, but as a bonus, a mercy and felt grateful for it. (and that is the point of this whole article)

With the Muslim groups wanting to claim all of the land and moving the Supreme Court, it remains to be seen however whether the birthplace of Ram will ever see a temple.

May peace prevail.

The Other Song

Jan 8, 3 PM
Short film – The Other Song – 2 hours, by Saba Dewan
Venue : NGMA, Bangalore

The search for a lost song brings her (the film maker) to the twisted narrow alleyways and lanes of Kashi or Varanasi or Benaras, by the vast expanse of the holy Ganges. As she traces the song, she meets men and women of a special community of Varanasi living on the edge between light and shadow – the courtesans, the 'Tawaifs', the prostitutes.

Actually I should not be using the word prostitutes here. For their state is not one of depravity and wretchedness.
But unfortunately, a language of the west proves again and again, its inadequacy, it’s meagerness to capture and express the many nuances of this country, that are to be found only here and nowhere else.

One word that comes close is courtesan.
It is ‘close’ but not adequate yet, for courtesan is a paramour, a prostitute who associates with noblemen or men of wealth.
The women we are talking about here are superior than that.
They possess talent; they are trained in classical music; music is a family heritage among them, bequeathed from generation to generation; they are blessed with a lovely voice, they are self respecting people who choose to consort, not merely with men of wealth but men whom their heart desires.

And that explains why I chose to say ‘living on the edge between light and shadow’ instead of ‘living in shadows’ as one would expect.

As the narrative progresses, it becomes difficult to tell whether the theme central to the documentary is the Thumri music or the Tawaifs of Benaras.

“In 1935, Rasoolan Bai, the well known singer from Varanasi, recorded for the gramophone a thumri that she would never sing again – ‘lagat jobanwa ma chot, phool gendwa na maar’ (my breasts are wounded, don’t throw flowers at me). A variation of her more famous song – ‘Lagat Karejwa ma chot, phool gendwa na maar’ (my heart is wounded, don’t throw flowers at me), the 1935 recording, never to be repeated, faded from public memory and eventually got lost.”

Different people have different explanations to offer when asked about the two versions of the song.
‘lagat jobanwa ma chot, phool gendwa na maar’ and ‘Lagat Karejwa ma chot, phool gendwa na maar’.

Some say both mean the same, some are not sure about the cause of the variation.
When one man hesitates to translate ‘jobanwa’ to breasts, and tells the interviewer “I cannot talk about that to you now...”, I felt that I was far removed from this place and that the man must have been from a different time - there are places still, in this fast changing country, where people are as conservative as that!

Among the many women that the narrator/film maker speaks to, it is Saira whose life experiences the viewer gets to know more closely, and more in detail than the others.

She learned music from a master whose name she takes with fear and respect.
She was invited to perform at functions.
“She was highly respected wherever she went”, says a man. The artists accompanying her (the tabla players, harmonium and others) too refer to her and other singers most respectfully.

The film alternates between the story of the courtesan, the inquiry into the lost song, reminiscences of the women, brief performances of singing by them, and the black and white photographs of these singers in their youth. And then of course, there is the silent Ganges, flowing as if dispassionately.

The women, when they speak of the men they consorted with, speak comfortably, candidly, unabashedly and without a shade of guilt or shame.

Saira talks about the father of her children, now no more; he was a Rajput, an already married man.

Another woman talks about a prince, a ‘kunwar’ who wished to be her lover. She had kept him waiting because her heart had not swayed yet, and the next time he came, he brought muscle men with him, one of whom pointed a dagger at her throat upon which she bravely told him he would not get anything by force.

When Saira sang, every man in the gathering felt she was singing for him alone.

Saira’s daughter working on the sewing machine, with a red embroidered sari spread before her, says shyly, that she doesn’t want to learn singing. Of course she loves the way her mother sings but she is not interested in learning.

The fact of Muslim women singing songs about Krishna and the Gopis is something that registers in your mind. India had a way of assimilating its invaders by means of a ‘cultural synthesis’.

Once when Saira was invited to sing at a function where other famous accomplished artists in the music world were performing, someone made a derogatory comment asking (of Bismillah Khan, I think) why she had been invited to a respectable gathering like that? What did she have to offer? When Saira began singing, he replied to the commenter “this is what she has to offer”.

During freedom struggle, these women tried to remove obscenity from their music following Gandhi’s advocacy. They even threw their musical instruments into the Ganges.
But when they offered their contribution to freedom struggle, they were rejected by Gandhi.

As for the fate of music, when the Muslims came, Indian art forms started dying as the Muslim kings in their courts encouraged their kind of music.
There was some revival attempt too, the details of which I don’t remember.

The narrative has its moments of humour and laughter too.

In what seems to be Saira’s elder sister’s home, the sister when asked who was more famous among the two states confidently that she was more famous and once she stopped performing, her sister Saira became famous.

One particular frame shows a woman, singing a love song to the accompaniment of the harmonium and tabla. When the azan at the mosque begins, she stops at once. She changes her posture, closes her eyes and chants hymns. Soon as the prayer is over, she resumes her love song with a wink in her eye and a naughty smile as if the two of them, religion and her playful singing did not conflict with one another in any way.

One of the women had stopped singing for some reason. After this she had a strange illness for which no cure was found even after consultation with many. Once she visited a Bengali doctor at his clinic. Upon receiving a patient, he asked the neighbourhood folks to turn off the blaring loudspeakers that were playing music. When she asked the doctor not to stop the music, the doctor asked her “do you sing?” she said “I used to sing, not now” to which the doctor tells her “start singing, you have no illness, once you start singing, you will be well”.

It is a very well made film in that it makes the viewer leave behind judgment and look at ‘prostitution’ with an eye of sympathy.
Though courtesans, these people had a culture, they too occupied a position in the social order, they lived by principles. It was not business, it wasn’t flesh trade, but a way of living.

Most important, the film shows how ‘Traditional prostitution’ in Indian society was very different from ‘prostitution’ the world over. It wasn’t purely commercial, it wasn’t just for money. It was much more nuanced.
The character of ‘Vasanthasena’, a courtesan was crafted by Shudraka in his Sanskrit drama Mritchhakatika. Amrapali, the royal courtesan of Vaishali is known to have served Buddha and later to have converted to Budhhism.

The film helps you empathize with these women.
When the narrative reaches the point where the upper caste people boycott these singers as part of an initiative to cleanse the city, the viewer’s sympathies are with the Tawaifs and not with the moralists.

The frames that show the juxtaposition of the vast expanse of the Ganges by the Benares ghats produce a strange effect.

The only hitch in the film was the tone of the narrator which indicated that she was not a nuanced person.

The last lap of the film shows a white woman clad in a sari and blouse entering Saira’s house and toucing her feet.
Saira had stopped singing but upon the insistence of the foreigner woman, she starts singing again. The white woman is her pupil, attempting to revive what was lost or helping to sustain whatever remains of a very old tradition – the thumri music.
Both of them talk about how they approached the ‘radio’ and they were humiliated.
Thanks to the efforts of her white pupil, Saira went abroad and performed in Italy.

We left the auditorium smiling, laughing as the last scene showed a Saira in pants and T shirt and wearing sunglasses, a complete change of image from her usual sari and red coloured stains of beetle leaves in mouth.