Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Google Zeitgeist
One of the cool ways to check the pulse of trends in our "globalized" world is to follow the country-wide searches. Google maintains this, and calls this zeitgeist. While internet may have shrinked the world, but looking at these searches - it seems culturally, we are still localized. For a glimpse of this mix of heterogeneity and homogeneity check: Google Zeitgeist
Monday, May 29, 2006
From Hollywood
Once upon a time, all I knew about America was Disneyland, a place where “ET” came from, and where most movies were made.
There is concept in modern physics called the “participant/observer” which simply speaking means that it is not possible for the observer to completely get the true nature of the observed without disturbing it. In other words, observers cannot avoid being participants, hence, objective truth is impossible to detect, and uncertainty is inherent in what we are observing. This concept extends beautifully into what eastern mystics have called Maya clouding absolute truth or what the western poet calls – “beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder.”
Though, I like to believe that my experiences have provided an understanding of the changing times, but being a participant, my vision is clouded. And the truth gets largely hidden – unless there comes time when situations force me to turn my head to look at what has changed. For me – it was a pleasure trip to Hollywood!
So here I am in Universal Studios, where I am riding “Back to the future” to “Jurassic Park”. Here Judy Garland has never grown old, and Lucy still lives with her slapstick. Looking around, I find so many saree-clad ladies that not only do I seem to have lost my time compass but also my space compass.
Anyway, this is what gave shape to America many years back – in my own world far in India. Hollywood put America in my mental map as that country that existed behind the clouds in the western horizon; as that country that was on the other side of the rainbow.
In those years – maybe I was eight or nine, like many others in India, USSR was the role model. The conversations on the splendid Spasky-Fischer’s chess matches were still alive, and childrens’ magazines like Anandamela still ran articles on those games, there were those childish grandification of superiority of Russian military, that Sputnik came first and America can never catch-up, that USSR was better off in sports – you name it, and there were no doubts who was the winner. Even in the multiple country jokes, Russia will come second to India. The Olympic games in 1984 was discredited in our hearts, because USSR was not there. In sum, that was the psyche of a typical child growing up in India, with some limited access to print and televised media; and I was no different.
I grew up with what I can collectively term as “Russian books”. Up to the point when my memory goes, there was this lady who would come once a month – going door to door, selling Russian books of all genre. My child heart would crave in anticipation whenever I saw her walk in my compound; my mouth salivating. Suddenly, I would become a very good, obedient boy, so that I don’t ruin my chances by annoying my parents. And when that happened – once or twice, cajoling my grandfather would always work. Her magical bag had the keys to my kingdom. Not that she was that old, but her bag was my mythical thakurmar jhuli. The books were colorful, glossy, and most importantly they smelled so good. Since then, the smell of a new book has always been as enticing as what was inside.
So my journey began with a BIG book whose main character was “UCK” all the way to Chekov and The Idiot. She saw me grow from shorts to trousers; her own hair turning from black to grey. I never knew where she came from; I never bothered to find out - up until the day when I realized that she was not showing up anymore. It was not that obvious, and only after a few months, I came to terms that she will not come anymore. An unceremonious exit from my life. Much like the way Russia wiped out from my psyche, as the model nation.
By then, I had got into the rigor of Math and Physics, and solving Irodov’s physics problems became my full-time and pastime vocation – just because they were so hard and challenging. By then, I had learned a bit about the hollowness of Soviet socialism. I also met few people who shared their experiences in Russia, and though, hard to believe, I did realize there was something fundamentally wrong - that was against human dignity. I also learned how this book selling was a part of a larger propaganda machine. In West Bengal, this was all the more pronounced because of support from the local communist groups. Every gathering - be it a village fair or Durga Puja, there is a red color communist book stall selling literature. But why and how the collapse of the Soviet Union took place has always intrigued me. When I ask my Russian friends who have moved to US, they prefer to avoid sharing their lived-experiences, much like what the typical German response is to Holocaust.
Maybe someday I will understand conceptually what happened, but it will take a lifetime to uproot the wonderland that was cooked up – rather fictitiously, by the fairy tales that lives with me. Hollywood will take a while to replace that – and it will not be that easy. In some crude sense, the fact that I was a participant within the propaganda machine - Hollywood could show me that.
There is concept in modern physics called the “participant/observer” which simply speaking means that it is not possible for the observer to completely get the true nature of the observed without disturbing it. In other words, observers cannot avoid being participants, hence, objective truth is impossible to detect, and uncertainty is inherent in what we are observing. This concept extends beautifully into what eastern mystics have called Maya clouding absolute truth or what the western poet calls – “beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder.”
Though, I like to believe that my experiences have provided an understanding of the changing times, but being a participant, my vision is clouded. And the truth gets largely hidden – unless there comes time when situations force me to turn my head to look at what has changed. For me – it was a pleasure trip to Hollywood!
So here I am in Universal Studios, where I am riding “Back to the future” to “Jurassic Park”. Here Judy Garland has never grown old, and Lucy still lives with her slapstick. Looking around, I find so many saree-clad ladies that not only do I seem to have lost my time compass but also my space compass.
Anyway, this is what gave shape to America many years back – in my own world far in India. Hollywood put America in my mental map as that country that existed behind the clouds in the western horizon; as that country that was on the other side of the rainbow.
In those years – maybe I was eight or nine, like many others in India, USSR was the role model. The conversations on the splendid Spasky-Fischer’s chess matches were still alive, and childrens’ magazines like Anandamela still ran articles on those games, there were those childish grandification of superiority of Russian military, that Sputnik came first and America can never catch-up, that USSR was better off in sports – you name it, and there were no doubts who was the winner. Even in the multiple country jokes, Russia will come second to India. The Olympic games in 1984 was discredited in our hearts, because USSR was not there. In sum, that was the psyche of a typical child growing up in India, with some limited access to print and televised media; and I was no different.
I grew up with what I can collectively term as “Russian books”. Up to the point when my memory goes, there was this lady who would come once a month – going door to door, selling Russian books of all genre. My child heart would crave in anticipation whenever I saw her walk in my compound; my mouth salivating. Suddenly, I would become a very good, obedient boy, so that I don’t ruin my chances by annoying my parents. And when that happened – once or twice, cajoling my grandfather would always work. Her magical bag had the keys to my kingdom. Not that she was that old, but her bag was my mythical thakurmar jhuli. The books were colorful, glossy, and most importantly they smelled so good. Since then, the smell of a new book has always been as enticing as what was inside.
So my journey began with a BIG book whose main character was “UCK” all the way to Chekov and The Idiot. She saw me grow from shorts to trousers; her own hair turning from black to grey. I never knew where she came from; I never bothered to find out - up until the day when I realized that she was not showing up anymore. It was not that obvious, and only after a few months, I came to terms that she will not come anymore. An unceremonious exit from my life. Much like the way Russia wiped out from my psyche, as the model nation.
By then, I had got into the rigor of Math and Physics, and solving Irodov’s physics problems became my full-time and pastime vocation – just because they were so hard and challenging. By then, I had learned a bit about the hollowness of Soviet socialism. I also met few people who shared their experiences in Russia, and though, hard to believe, I did realize there was something fundamentally wrong - that was against human dignity. I also learned how this book selling was a part of a larger propaganda machine. In West Bengal, this was all the more pronounced because of support from the local communist groups. Every gathering - be it a village fair or Durga Puja, there is a red color communist book stall selling literature. But why and how the collapse of the Soviet Union took place has always intrigued me. When I ask my Russian friends who have moved to US, they prefer to avoid sharing their lived-experiences, much like what the typical German response is to Holocaust.
Maybe someday I will understand conceptually what happened, but it will take a lifetime to uproot the wonderland that was cooked up – rather fictitiously, by the fairy tales that lives with me. Hollywood will take a while to replace that – and it will not be that easy. In some crude sense, the fact that I was a participant within the propaganda machine - Hollywood could show me that.
Thursday, May 25, 2006
Mandal II - Ambedkar out, Condi in
The recent anti-reservation agitation has consumed the front pages and headlines in print and visual media. In the forefront are the doctors from AIIMS who are spear-heading a strike.The whole thing is sort of deja-vu for me as it is for many. Back in 90s, arriving in Jaipur for my undergrad, the stains from Mandal I had not completely dried up. I could feel, breathe, and live the heaviness that surrounded the atmosphere. It was all consuming and distasteful at its very best.
Especially coming from
Jaipur was a “culture shock”. All of a sudden I was being openly asked by college professors about my caste, whether I knew the gayatri mantra, or I was a red nut from
Once in an oral exam, the examiner exempted me saying that – “I won’t ask you anything, since you are a Bramhin.” Caste-wars were right at the precipiece and stories about bloody past wars were part of the folklore. There were divisive fractions – to an extent that people from certain castes won’t even intermingle, avoided hanging around, or discreetly eat in separate tables.
Fault lines were deep. And this expanded outside the campus. During these four years, my frequent trips to my relatives in
Fast forward 14 years, and history is repeating itself.With a difference, and with an edge. The pro-reservation movement seem to have gone "Hollywood". Well, I mean US! Comparison is drawn with Affirmative Action in US and in a way used as a justification. Regular icons such as Ambedkar, are being replaced by examples of Condi Rice and Collin Powell. How they have succeeded because of AA. What works in US will also work in India.
And then of course we always have the leftist think tank to support any reservation whatsoever. It has become sort of a given that if you are on the left-centre of the political spectrum – you got to support reservation. It is like committing intellectual heresy if you are championing the poor and not supporting reservation. Thanks to those in some of India’s colleges and hot beds like JNU that we almost always get some naysayers like Prof. Jayati Ghosh sitting and stalling the Knowledge Commission.
I understand the drive to promote the subaltern masses. I understand it is hard to dissociate Marx from championing their cause - but what has reservation got to do with this. Why not go back to the old argument of providing opportunities based on economic condiotion? Looks like that the Leftist always take the path of least resistance in this regard because to actually implement what they should is too darn hard.
With Mandal II, the whole issue regarding reservation for higher education is a big diversion, diversion from where the actual focus should be.First and foremost – the keyword for this whole issue is not "reservation" but it is "premier institutions". And it is only fair to state that India spends too much on higher education at the cost of primary education.
The IMF came out with a working paper earlier this year that
Well, it is fallout of Nehruvian economics and his vision. While it has caused an accident of miracles by causing enough highly qualified engineers and managers to sustain the IT boom, but it is evident from reality and research that the common poor mass population is untouched.It will take something like a self sustaining manufacturing sector in poorer states like Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and north east to fuel economic development is a homogenized sense, else we will have pockets of development - Karnataka, Gujarat, West Bengal - and migration of people into these states, thus leaving vast areas undeveloped.
To develop a manufacturing or agriculture base, development of skills and knowledge all over the country is required. Along with that decetralized power to local authorities to facilitate micro-credits, hospitals, etc are necessary. And to develop that we need people to send their children to schools. Learning begets learning, so if primary education is neglected - the poor will not know enough to get into to IIT or AIIMS
So what is happening in primary education? What steps are being taken so that more children go to schools? That the teacher actually shows up in the class. That school supplies are obtained and children graduate and become participants in the market economy. We have seen such a dis-balanced resource allocation. And few talk about it. How much does the center support the states in this endeavor?
In the end, it seems we all know what’s going to happen with this "song and fury" of protests. It has always been a losing battle for anti-reservationists. And it seems that we all are aware of the hidden truth. The protests are not proactive activism for initiating change but a last minute conglomeration to vent one’s frustrations exhumed in one’s hopelessness. The real truth is that there is no fundamental authenticity in these protests – no body wants change because no one believes that it is possible. It is an assembly of individuals who have come together because they have somehow found a coherent individual agenda. There is an undercurrent of resignation that shows up in their statements and discourses. Once time flies – these students will go back to their classes and doctors to the chambers.
Sorry doctors, you may have the right prescription but your diagnosis of the reservation issue is too superficial and your response has come too late. The disease is too deep rooted and it needs a surgical makeover of the political system – followed by a long term treatment. As a starting consider working with those pseudo intellectuals on the left, see if you could get them in your side and then you can go to the next step. No politician will commit a suicide by reversing the policy.
Until then, some of you – enjoy your five minutes of fame through TV interviews and news coverage. That's the saving grace, for once the heat wave subsides, all we have to live with is our social mind-set - whic will become a little more fractured, a little more divided, a little more polarized, accentuating a more heterogenous India.
Monday, May 22, 2006
Thinking, sinking, eating icecreams
Saturday was a gorgeous day in SF: bright sun, perfect temperature, and gentle breeze. So took the BART and decided to get off at Powell – just to hang around in Union Square and then, I knew at some point I’ll be able to pamper my latent desire by sneaking in to few of my favorite places. The place was all lit up with festivity. Street musician, performers, shoppers, tourists, old men, young men, pretty girls, not so pretty girls, uncles, aunts – everybody seemed to be there.
It was apparent there were as many tourists as there were locals. I don’t know in which category I fit in these days. By law I am
Meanwhile, I come to my first treating point. A bowl of rice with the choicest sashimi – and I feel a certain sense of satisfaction and redemption - a sense of completion and a connection to my source of life. All taking place as the empty chair in front of me bears witness to the commencement of my new cycle of existence.
Next to me I find a couple – the guy dressed in all black on this sunny day and a girl who seemed to have outgrown the clothes she is wearing. But all seemed to mellow in their togetherness and their being with each other. The black seemed to radiate color and those knee high boots seemed to wither away in the background - the way they showed their love and care towards one another – unfettered, uninhibited, and unperturbed. I could not resist watching their free-spirit as I glanced with my furtive looks.
Food was great but a string of something missing started strumming in my self. And before it started playing hard, I decided to dissolve in the crowd. Walking from one block to the other – I become one with them. This is one of the reasons I love big cities. Many a time I have cleared my head, solved complex equations, and untangled life’s spaghetti amidst them – the crowd. I am no longer a singularity, for I am among them – a source of boundless infinite energy to draw from.
There are times like this when happiness is followed by a sense of pathos – more specifically an earnest longing for the anticipated lived-experience of togetherness. Pathos not because that she is not there with me physically but because I can’t show her my eyes now - the window to my soul that breathes and swims in her longing. And as I recall what one of the sages tell Maitreyi in our Upanishad – that it is not for the sake of her that she is loved but for one’s own sake. So living through this crest and ebb of happiness and sadness, I come to terms with it – that this long stream of ether does connect me to her – somewhere. So, I decide to ride back to planet earth.
I found myself treating dark hot chocolate fudge from Ghiradellis at
With the last drop of chocolate, I knew I had to move on. So off I enter Cody’s where the books galore will keep me engaged for the rest of the day until night falls and the train will take me back to my bed and sleep.
As for the dinner and cinema and museum and arts - there will be some other day. In the midst of this explosion of human conference and the binding common theme of apparent collective happiness, I know my best experiences can only be lived with her. And I’ll wait for my own sake.
Friday, May 19, 2006
Fair Trade, Starbucks, and Globalization
The Fair Trade movement is catching up in
My introduction to Fair-Trade movement took place few years back when I visited
I am a believer of free-trade, markets, and the
So why are companies really interested in fair trade? How does it relate to “globalization” which seems to be the epicenter of all economic development arguments these days?
First of all, the buzzing of the term globalization has been heavily weighted towards economics and international business just the way history is towards kings and nation-states. But I’d rather prefer a more systemic approach. Often times, people work in their own silos abstracted out by their respective disciplines and specializations – history, behavior sciences, sociology, polity, economics, management, etc. And to come up with a grand unified theory is like inventing cold-fusion and frankly, God only knows whether it is humanly possible to overcome the volume of space and time involved.
I don’t want to write something of the size of “War and Peace” here. So these are simple personal answers to personal questions. And grossly simplified to the extent that it may appear as unstructured vacuuous sentimental chatter in which case you are at liberty to blame it on my espresso which is my driving force here.
Coffee is a drink I live by. It has all the reasons to be my prop. It’s one of the most widely traded commodity and along with cocoa the most popular fair trade good. As history goes it was first discovered by a goat herder in
Now the question that comes to mind is when coffee reaches a multinational giant like Starbucks where does it stand vis-à-vis the coffee drinker. If I drink my favorite espresso in
The same phenomenon can be observed for any other MNC – say McDonalds.
Now does that mean everything can be homogenized? Is that possible? Well, that is a bit tricky – from a business standpoint. Porter’s concept of maintaining competitive advantage requires that goods differentiate. And the reality is smart MNCs tailor their products and services to local tastes and expectations. But to what extent, should they go without giving me the feel – McDonalds in
This ties into what Bruce Mazlish has argued that in all human societies, there comes a balance between homogeneity and heterogeneity. And from a business perspective it is important to understand the belief systems, culture, and traditions to figure this out. It is no longer an option, but a requirement. For example, when I walked into McDonalds in
The other piece is societies and belief systems are dynamic and constantly changing. Certain beliefs, certain customs, and habits are changing faster than others as we are invaded by cable TV and Mariah Carey. And people in
Now, how do we deal with these questions - individually and as a society. And my hope rests on how dynamic our social scientists are in moving with time rather than getting stuck in the details of some epoch. This will determine answers to the market analysts and those who study consumer behavior.
And may be that’s where Starbucks or Marks & Spencer come from when they arrive at Fair Trade? First, I believe it gives them corporate branding. Second, it gives consumers a choice and “feel good” to be a participant in this movement. These companies are telling us that there is a sizeable market segment that will appreciate this idea. So, it is charity or more aptly, quasi-charity used as a selling proposition! In other words - they are being different and they will be so, as long as the cost of this differentiation is offset by their earnings.
I spent few months in outskirts of
I remember this woman, who used to walk 20 miles for half a day to come to the haat, with her baby tucked behind her back, to sell some twigs that she bore on her head. And then she would wait. Wait for hours for the merchant to arrive. As the day progressed she would get more and more anxious. Finally, sometime before sunset the merchant would show up. He’d come late on purpose. Why? Because the woman would be in a hurry to return back home before it got dark. She was forced to sell her stuff in distress – dirt cheap. And then in the next haat, four days later, same thing would happen again.
Exploitation such as this is going on for years from
The MNCs albeit their vested interest are at least listening. Well, I take that back. It’s after all we consumers - our societies and beliefs that is providing incentives to the MNCs to listen. As Howard Zinn has said that the cry of poor is not always just but if you do not listen to them you will never know what justice is. Moving in the direction of listening to them is definitely a good thing.
MNCs are the only institutions that can truly globalize the world. The half-glass empty viewpoint will be - they are our only hope. As someone noted - to understand which institution is most prominent in a given period in human society – the simplest way is look at the size of buildings. There was a time in history when the tallest and grandest buildings were churches, cathedrals, and temples when religious institutions used to dominate human life. Then later the seats of governments had the grandest building – when politics and Hegelian states were most powerful components of society. Now, if you look at the size of today’s buildings – there’s no doubt that the present belongs to the MNCs.
So whether Fair Trade will bring in prosperity to farmers I don’t know. Whether others will join the bandwagon that Starbucks and Marks & Spencer have embarked upon - we have to wait and see. But at least some people are thinking and have made a start.
http://www.starbucks.com/aboutus/StarbucksAndFairTrade.pdf
Sunday, May 14, 2006
Ma
For most of my childhood, I hated my mother. She was the wrong mother for me. She was dominating, overbearing, and interfering in all areas of my life. It was a perennial boot-camp – a time to study, a time to play, a time to watch TV, and so on. The only haircut that she allowed was the crew cut. The only mantra for life was “discipline”. It took me many years before I could actually see her – her real self. When I saw her, what I saw was pure gold. And I am thankful today for who she has been for me – through thick and thin.
My mother is not a famous person, nor does she possess any credentials that make her anything special in a worldly sense. A mother of two boys, her life has been one of an archetypal life of a Bengali woman. Born in a well-to-do family, she spent her entire childhood with her grandfather in
My father came from a rather humble background – where to meet daily needs was a continuous struggle. I still wonder how she could go through a complete lifestyle makeover overnight – from the Plymouths, bunglows, and orderlies to a one room company flat in
Up until the time my memory goes, she has always seen me as an independent and self sufficient person. There was nothing that was available in a platter to me. So, since the age of seven, I remember ironing my school uniform everyday, polishing my own shoes, cleaning my desk, making my bed, and keeping my books and physical space organized. By eight, I was running small errands – much to the surprise of my neighbors. By nine, she ensured I knew how to make my breakfast. Later of course, my penchant for cooking triggered by my epicurean instincts would expand my cooking abilities many fold.
Those were years of torture for me. Home became my
During that time, one day, after a lengthy educational discourse with a friend in my school bus, I naively asked her, utterly confused - “What is sex?” And she looked at my innocent eyes and without a blink said, “It means male or female.” I was sure there was more to it, but did not dare to ask her. After a couple of years, when I found out I was glad I did not ask her.
As years rolled by, and I entered my teens, there was a shift in her attitude towards me. She was not that strict disciplinarian anymore and there seemed to be more clearance in my daily routine. Not making the bed was pardonable, hanging around with friends was encouraged, and wearing trendy clothes was absolutely okay. Was it the mellow of age or was it on purpose - I will never know.
She also opened up. While accompanying her to the market or to someone’s house, she would express the intricacies of family life – how my grandmother would throw tantrums and how difficult it is to satisfy my aunts and relatives. Slowly, I was stepping a world which was not that carefree as kite flying, not that straightforward, not that linear. The burden of family obligations – taking care of grandparents, making customary visits to relatives, arranging gifts during festivals, and entertaining guests were many times more of “have-to” than “want-to”. And in spite, there were relatives who would bad-mouth, and say hurtful things - those who are never satisfied and always find something to complain. Yet, to live together, she said, one needs to compromise and tolerate – patiently and silently. The last part was always hard for me to digest. Why tolerate?
As she transformed from being someone sitting in a pedestal exercising authority to someone more human, I slowly began to garner my own individuality. She would seek my suggestions and opinions.
With a family polarized towards the dry world of science and engineering, she became the counterpoint with a balancing perspective on how people feel. Cooking on the gas oven, with eyes squinting to avoid the pungent vapors of heated mustard oil, she would explain how intricately Cassius brainwashed Brutus, how teenagers are vulnerable, and how important it is to keep one’s finer senses alive through appreciation of nature and music.
Every Bijoya, she would meticulously force me to write letters to all the relatives – even those I have never met. “Who is this Buchu kaka?” What’s the point in writing when I don’t know him?” I used to question the futility of this exercise, but I could never win that argument. Years later, when I met one of those part-fiction Bijoya uncles in US, he recalled how important and warm he felt as a college student, when he got those letters from a distant land. I have since bowed down before networking 101 – Ma-style
Her conversations became more stimulating and at times she would bring up esoteric writings of Machiavelli and Radhakrishnan to probe my curious mind. To her it marked a transition as I was stepping into adulthood. Consistent with her philosophy of teaching how to fish, rather than giving the fish - she opened my gates of personal enquiry rather than being didactic or pedantic in a certain way on how to think for myself. She became more of a backstop – as someone who is there for consultation but will not do the work for me. Over the years, she has advised me on variety of subjects – from how to make lemonade at home to check loose motion to how to keep girls happy.Today, the world is celebrating “Mother’s Day”. In my mother’s world, it will be just another day. She will make the morning tea and then wake my father, saying, “Shuncho, saat ta beje geche.”(Listen, it is seven o clock.). And her day will end by making a final check that all doors are locked and all lights are switched off.
Few months back after my relationship broke apart, I was all upset with life. In her stoic manner she said, “When I break an egg, I don’t regret why I can’t have a boiled egg, I rather try to make an omlette and enjoy.”
Sunday, May 07, 2006
Reading tomorrow
Yesterday was an unproductive day, an overture to my my lock-stock-and-barrel move later this week. But I had some urge to flirt with myself thinking about what my adulthood really means for me - now. I have been grappled with a mystery and have been feeling overwhelmed - time to time. Nothing new. But what awes me is how tender, soft and serene I feel about it this time. It is as if the more I grow farther from the childishness of adolescence, softer this feeling get. The more worldly I get the more innocent it becomes.
It’s my perennial love for whom I lived my life. It is alive again. And I have started to read the poem that has not been written.
I think I can see her, this time, not far away – in my future. We meet and we take a walk - in the evening mist for hours in that winding road, holding hands, anticipating the moment when she will rest her head on my shoulder. Gentle and pristine. And I hear her breathe – from as close as I can get to her. I then wish the world was really flat. So that as night falls, we walk and fall off the edge – and swim in the emptiness of the open dark sky. Nothing exists – just us and the universe, left behind.
Love is absolute. It is giving everything. There is nothing in between. It is my belonging to her - wholly and completely. A belonging that is so painfully sweet, that I rejoice to this dolor. And wait for that day to come.
Where are the answers?
As a kid, my mother used to reprimand sometimes by saying – “...only God can help you now.” George Packer makes a parallel statement in this week’s New Yorker, that God needs to come and only He can help the West Wing the way things are going on with this government.
For me, energy is what I live by during the day. After work, I am engaged in understanding politics and foreign policy, and how history, literature, and anthropology contribute to the way human beings think and develop societies. And my waking hours are completely muddled these days with the current state of affairs. It is disempowering. It is disturbing the anchoring hope that something worthwhile is possible by the tools that are currently available at human disposal. Time may help to soothe, and give clarity to the way things play out, but that’s after the fact.
Conference after conference, meetings after meetings, from living room coffee table talk to water cooler discussions, it seems all the same. People are raising the same questions – over and over and over again. Granted, that problem identification is not easy and to verbalize a problem out of an amorphous ambiguous set of disconnected factual incidents is challenging. But give me a break now. We know what the problems are. Now start answering them. What are you waiting for? Probe anyone on giving answers to - who is going to pay for modernizing the grid, or when will
When did giving half the loaf become an accepted and celebrated fact? If you don’t know well enough who can answer the question, stop asking it. Stop slicing and dicing, if it is the same baloney. You are just slowing the process, bogging down the system, and eating away other people’s valuable time. If you keep doing the same, we as humans will have no choice but to look for answers where we have always looked for when it came hard questions. Why do we live? What is the purpose of my life? Is there an after life? Yes, resorting to the Almighty. With all due respect to my belief it God, it will be a pity that after thousands of years of human civilization that brought our science and political thought from Archimedes to Einstein and Aristotle to Huntington, the only way to resolve our energy and foreign policy problems is by using both of our hands close to us and saying a little prayer.
Friday, May 05, 2006
“It takes all the running you can do ...."
“It takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place” –Red Queen to Alice
From Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
Friday night. End of another week. End of work week means weekend. And as I spend few seconds to reflect what I have done, what I have accomplished - I get this momentary euphoria that I did something. And then I wag my proverbial tail until that thought flies by - like puff of air - that destroys everything. Was it yet another week of keep-pace-or-may-be-replaced? And am I at the same place relative to others. Oh! Tocqueville, help me, when will I discover this wonderland?
From Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
Friday night. End of another week. End of work week means weekend. And as I spend few seconds to reflect what I have done, what I have accomplished - I get this momentary euphoria that I did something. And then I wag my proverbial tail until that thought flies by - like puff of air - that destroys everything. Was it yet another week of keep-pace-or-may-be-replaced? And am I at the same place relative to others. Oh! Tocqueville, help me, when will I discover this wonderland?
Thursday, May 04, 2006
Panorama photograph of SF 1906 disaster
This is an amazing photograph of San Francisco taken by George Lawrence after the 1906 earthquake. There were no airplanes; he used a camera suspended from kites. The Invention and Technology magazine has an entire article on this photograph. http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/it/2006/4/2006_4_52.shtml
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
Water, Widows, and My India
Today, The New York Times has an article right on the first page about the release of Deepa Mehta's Water and the protests from Hindu fundamentalists. The article points out - lest we forget - that within the outsourcing aura and Tom Friedman's India, the reality of dark ages still lurk and shows up its ugly head time and again. This time showcasing about the widows in Indian life as depicted in Deepa Mehta's Water.
We Indians know all about that. I don't think any Indian disputes these realisites. My great grandmother became a widow when she was 17 years and lived on with us until she was almost 90. An appaling life! No meat, no fish, no sex for all this time. In return, she served others just to survive. She used to say that she is lucky in many ways. Because of all of her relatives were generally nice to her and allowed her to live with them. Otherwise, the norm was to spend her life on alms and benevolence in the shanties of Mathura or Varanasi.
We have all faced the brunt of social conditions in India. For every good thing that India has to offer you will find exactly the opposite. That is the diversity of the country - so, to argue one way or the other will eventually end up in a deadlock. Outliers are as ubiquitous as the primary substance under examination. You have extreme poverty and the evils that come with it. There was and in some rare cases sati, caste wars, people fighting in the name of religion - you name it - and it is there. But there is also the other side of India which is equally powerful - tolerance, openness, pockets of wealth, intellectual curiosity, and survival of an ancient way of life which does not believe in proselytising. As someone commented, India is unique in that it has a Muslim president, Sikh prime minister, Christian leader of the opposition; and they are running a country of 85% Hindus. While widows are mistreated on one side, a widow was the elected Prime Minister who ran the country for several years. Such juxtapose facts give a glimpse about the complexity that's synonymous with India.
Why I am saying this? Because the western intellengtia has always gone after the negative issues more actively compared with the good side. Ask any average westerner about India few years back - before outsourcing. And even if he or she does not know where the capital of the country is, they will know that caste system exisits, a place where virgins are burnt, and where there are myriad goofy ways people get married.
This is a phenomena that started since westerners started coming to India few centuries back. Included among them were the missioneries. From a Christian view of looking at India, it appeared nothing more than a hodge-podge of tribal culture. And that's what they construed and wrote back to their fellow brethren- too many gods, too many customs, worship snakes and cow, and so on. The term "Hindu" became a popular term to group this complex collection and then a way of life suddenly became charecterized as a religion. Bhagavad Gita became Bible's counterpart and so on. From the narrow spectrum of Biblical interpretation, Indian customs and tradiotions began to be graded by the Christian examiner. And obviously "Hinduism" failed in areas of organization, system, and burreaucracy - where Christianity was way ahead. While the missionaries took upon themselves to bring light of Christ to this dark world, the political machinery saw its benefits and allowed this to happen - bringing about division and schism in the society. Well, I agree this is an oversimplified representation but the crux is what matters to me here. And the crux is in the western world, India has been only been slightly greyish compared to dark Africa. It remained a land of backward beliefs and unfound mysticism. Even with Beatles, Yoga, Osho, and the Hippies of the 60s, India remained a land of snake charmers. Books and hsitorical reports all represented this view of India, at least in the popular literature. I am not saying this was always intentional because even today, if you come from a Judeo-Christian world, India will appear this way. But that is looking at blue light with a green filter.
I also hold certain Indians responsible who have played their part in presenting a skewed image of India. I am earmarking those whose sole aim in life has been tradionally to get books published or papers published or looking for a tenure in a UK or US university. When research and writing, especially from a native, feeds into an already established belief in western world - it intensifies the curiosity. And these writings end up giving back-handed compliments and indirectly upholds the supremacy of west over east. After all who does not like flattery especially if it relates to culture, heritage, and roots. Obviously, chances are people will like to read it, and it will get easily accepted as mainstream facts. I am not saying that this is always wrong. But if you put forward only one side of the picture and not represent the other side as well, people will get a wrong impression. In other words, not saying the whole truth is equivalent to lying.
Coming back to this topic on overall social evils. Certainly, I do not support them, but instead of saying this is the way it is and highlighting these issues just for the sake of letting the world know they are there, is doing a disservice. I wish the purpose of the movie is to promote activism to eradicate these issues, not to create sensation to get an agenda through. I hope that's not the intent here with Deepa Mehta's Water - to create a controversy, since as they say there is nothing called negative publicity. So I will take her word for it. She has moved enough stones to complete this movie and she deserves credit. As for the Hindu fundamenatalists I don't care. I don't think their agenda qualifies my basic criteria to even spill ink over to argue one way or the other.
I just want to end saying that India is dealing with institutional reforms here. Questioning belief systems, culture change, and altering something so deep rooted in an organic culture like India will take its time. Don't forget that for Europe to come out of its dark ages - it took 6-7 centuries before 1700s. With only 60 years into independence, progress is happening. For many of us, we will hardly see any change in our life time, but let's face that's the way it is. Until then let's look at how we can expedite the process rather than saying it's there. We all know it's there! We need don't need a Nirad C. Chaudhuri (with all due respect to his contribution to history) . We need more of Amartya Sen. If someone brings up a dark side of the condition of widows, we also need to present the other side, where widows in India are also living in the mainstream, working, going to pubs, and living a normal life. Kudos to Water and Deepa Mehta.
We Indians know all about that. I don't think any Indian disputes these realisites. My great grandmother became a widow when she was 17 years and lived on with us until she was almost 90. An appaling life! No meat, no fish, no sex for all this time. In return, she served others just to survive. She used to say that she is lucky in many ways. Because of all of her relatives were generally nice to her and allowed her to live with them. Otherwise, the norm was to spend her life on alms and benevolence in the shanties of Mathura or Varanasi.
We have all faced the brunt of social conditions in India. For every good thing that India has to offer you will find exactly the opposite. That is the diversity of the country - so, to argue one way or the other will eventually end up in a deadlock. Outliers are as ubiquitous as the primary substance under examination. You have extreme poverty and the evils that come with it. There was and in some rare cases sati, caste wars, people fighting in the name of religion - you name it - and it is there. But there is also the other side of India which is equally powerful - tolerance, openness, pockets of wealth, intellectual curiosity, and survival of an ancient way of life which does not believe in proselytising. As someone commented, India is unique in that it has a Muslim president, Sikh prime minister, Christian leader of the opposition; and they are running a country of 85% Hindus. While widows are mistreated on one side, a widow was the elected Prime Minister who ran the country for several years. Such juxtapose facts give a glimpse about the complexity that's synonymous with India.
Why I am saying this? Because the western intellengtia has always gone after the negative issues more actively compared with the good side. Ask any average westerner about India few years back - before outsourcing. And even if he or she does not know where the capital of the country is, they will know that caste system exisits, a place where virgins are burnt, and where there are myriad goofy ways people get married.
This is a phenomena that started since westerners started coming to India few centuries back. Included among them were the missioneries. From a Christian view of looking at India, it appeared nothing more than a hodge-podge of tribal culture. And that's what they construed and wrote back to their fellow brethren- too many gods, too many customs, worship snakes and cow, and so on. The term "Hindu" became a popular term to group this complex collection and then a way of life suddenly became charecterized as a religion. Bhagavad Gita became Bible's counterpart and so on. From the narrow spectrum of Biblical interpretation, Indian customs and tradiotions began to be graded by the Christian examiner. And obviously "Hinduism" failed in areas of organization, system, and burreaucracy - where Christianity was way ahead. While the missionaries took upon themselves to bring light of Christ to this dark world, the political machinery saw its benefits and allowed this to happen - bringing about division and schism in the society. Well, I agree this is an oversimplified representation but the crux is what matters to me here. And the crux is in the western world, India has been only been slightly greyish compared to dark Africa. It remained a land of backward beliefs and unfound mysticism. Even with Beatles, Yoga, Osho, and the Hippies of the 60s, India remained a land of snake charmers. Books and hsitorical reports all represented this view of India, at least in the popular literature. I am not saying this was always intentional because even today, if you come from a Judeo-Christian world, India will appear this way. But that is looking at blue light with a green filter.
I also hold certain Indians responsible who have played their part in presenting a skewed image of India. I am earmarking those whose sole aim in life has been tradionally to get books published or papers published or looking for a tenure in a UK or US university. When research and writing, especially from a native, feeds into an already established belief in western world - it intensifies the curiosity. And these writings end up giving back-handed compliments and indirectly upholds the supremacy of west over east. After all who does not like flattery especially if it relates to culture, heritage, and roots. Obviously, chances are people will like to read it, and it will get easily accepted as mainstream facts. I am not saying that this is always wrong. But if you put forward only one side of the picture and not represent the other side as well, people will get a wrong impression. In other words, not saying the whole truth is equivalent to lying.
Coming back to this topic on overall social evils. Certainly, I do not support them, but instead of saying this is the way it is and highlighting these issues just for the sake of letting the world know they are there, is doing a disservice. I wish the purpose of the movie is to promote activism to eradicate these issues, not to create sensation to get an agenda through. I hope that's not the intent here with Deepa Mehta's Water - to create a controversy, since as they say there is nothing called negative publicity. So I will take her word for it. She has moved enough stones to complete this movie and she deserves credit. As for the Hindu fundamenatalists I don't care. I don't think their agenda qualifies my basic criteria to even spill ink over to argue one way or the other.
I just want to end saying that India is dealing with institutional reforms here. Questioning belief systems, culture change, and altering something so deep rooted in an organic culture like India will take its time. Don't forget that for Europe to come out of its dark ages - it took 6-7 centuries before 1700s. With only 60 years into independence, progress is happening. For many of us, we will hardly see any change in our life time, but let's face that's the way it is. Until then let's look at how we can expedite the process rather than saying it's there. We all know it's there! We need don't need a Nirad C. Chaudhuri (with all due respect to his contribution to history) . We need more of Amartya Sen. If someone brings up a dark side of the condition of widows, we also need to present the other side, where widows in India are also living in the mainstream, working, going to pubs, and living a normal life. Kudos to Water and Deepa Mehta.
Monday, May 01, 2006
Is re-marriage a real option?
Ever since I came back from the wild west, I got myself mired in putting out fires. My woes with driving is not over yet - it seems. After two bangs with my rental on my way to the airport, all I wanted was to see my car drained of battery juice. Anyways, that's what the ubiquitous tow trucks and service places are for.
Finally, as luck would have it, I played with this site and screwed it up! So, here I am at the wee hours of monday morning, getting my brain dump going. By the time it's over, the sun will rise. Being a night owl, the only way I see a beautiful sunrise is when I am awake through the night.
Okay - enough of the preface. Over the weekend, I was working on a paper on "real options" and came across stuff that I found interesting- how well it fits to the decision on marriage. Of course, it's not something novel - Prof. Dixit from Princeton has innumerable annecdotes on this subject.
So here's how it goes:
The overall premise: Marriage is an investment. It's a contractual agreement. Period. Don't agree then just get over it.
The three aspects that are associated with a marriage decision are: uncertainty, irreversibility, and time.
Now, there is a cost or investment associated with each of these aspects. It's an ivestment because in face of these factors, you expect that you will have a successful marriage.
Uncertianty - You will never know everything about what is going to happen in the future. Even if you wait till you get to know there will always be some unknows (Gary Becker - A treatise on the family, ...divorces happen because couples enter marriage with incomplete info, and complete info is impossible to get before marriage).
Time - The longer you wait in the marriage market, the more information you will get about your partner - true which gives the option of backing out. But there is a cost associated with the wait. You get old, but more importantly, if you are turning down someone today, you may end up marrying someone worse or someone better. So there's a risk associated.
Irreversibility - Once married, there is a sunk cost component that you cannot reverse. All the roses, diamonds, telephone calls, etc. Well, divorce is certaintly there but even in that case there is a "title" associated which has a cost component. Now, the decision to get a divorce can be separately modeled - but for now, let's assume that one gets a divorce because he/she knows that the choice to be single again is better than being in marriage. And by the same token, can argue that if he/she decides to get re-married then the chances of making a better choice is higher.
So - the 64K dollar question is - if I meet someone really great - does it make sense to wait? How long?
The short answer is all other conditions being the same (pardon me - I hate that Latin term), it depends how I feel about myself, and the uncertainty associated with my future.
Suppose, you were a fashion designer or Tom Cruise - it would make more sense to exercise the wait option because the chances of meeting someone from the opposite sex would be very high. In more steamy technical terms, volatility will be higher - with more entries and exits into the marriage market game. But, if someone is in an environement where he/she hardly gets to meet someone from the opposite sex - chances are the waiting option will be an expensive option. And oh yes - I know many souls who fall in this category. They are willing to kill the option of waiting to get married early in the game. Just one caution, however, these friends of mine are driven by the few cubic centiliters of testosterone they have (a.k.a manhood) that dominates over their 2 lbs brain. As clear as I can get - I am not taking about these desperate junkheads who are willing to even marry the next lampost they see.
Coming back to where do I fall in this spectrum? To be honest, last time, I was plain and simply lazy not to invest much in my marriage search. Nor, was I willing to pay the cost of waiting. Strange but true, I treated marriage as a check list item to get done with - don't think too much - just do it. So based on minimal information, I had taken the plunge. Realistically, my action qualifies myself as a "rational fool".
You get what you paid for. So, in a way - marriage on the cheap did not turn out so good for me. Bad investment! Now, I am stuck with irreversiblilty, but how low or high that price is again falls under the domain of uncertainty. But with all rationality, I think I played the right game to clean the slate and work for a good future. Did I get hurt? Sure, I did. Did I learn from my mistake? Yes, I did. Am I certain about what's going to happen next time? No, but I am believe I will do better.
How long should I wait?
Ans...
Yackety-yak...and off I fall off the rationality track...
As my heart gets filled one drop at a time, I know, if the drops keep falling, the pain will grow. Right now, I am watching as each drop falls at its own pace - just as the ice melts from the glacier. I am holding off, but it will become a restless young river. And there will come a day, it will overflow, break the levees, and deluge my whole self. No reason will be able to hold the pain. That day, I will pour myself...into her. And vow to be together for the rest of our lives...
Hey, not everything in life can be rational. Love certaintly not! As I was taught love is not a decision. I kinda dont like this word - decide. Wrong family history. Its siblings are suicide, homicide, genocide ... got something to do with killing. Yes, decision is killing all other options. I like the word - choice, instead. I fall in love because I choose to. And I will get married again only when I choose to.
Finally, as luck would have it, I played with this site and screwed it up! So, here I am at the wee hours of monday morning, getting my brain dump going. By the time it's over, the sun will rise. Being a night owl, the only way I see a beautiful sunrise is when I am awake through the night.
Okay - enough of the preface. Over the weekend, I was working on a paper on "real options" and came across stuff that I found interesting- how well it fits to the decision on marriage. Of course, it's not something novel - Prof. Dixit from Princeton has innumerable annecdotes on this subject.
So here's how it goes:
The overall premise: Marriage is an investment. It's a contractual agreement. Period. Don't agree then just get over it.
The three aspects that are associated with a marriage decision are: uncertainty, irreversibility, and time.
Now, there is a cost or investment associated with each of these aspects. It's an ivestment because in face of these factors, you expect that you will have a successful marriage.
Uncertianty - You will never know everything about what is going to happen in the future. Even if you wait till you get to know there will always be some unknows (Gary Becker - A treatise on the family, ...divorces happen because couples enter marriage with incomplete info, and complete info is impossible to get before marriage).
Time - The longer you wait in the marriage market, the more information you will get about your partner - true which gives the option of backing out. But there is a cost associated with the wait. You get old, but more importantly, if you are turning down someone today, you may end up marrying someone worse or someone better. So there's a risk associated.
Irreversibility - Once married, there is a sunk cost component that you cannot reverse. All the roses, diamonds, telephone calls, etc. Well, divorce is certaintly there but even in that case there is a "title" associated which has a cost component. Now, the decision to get a divorce can be separately modeled - but for now, let's assume that one gets a divorce because he/she knows that the choice to be single again is better than being in marriage. And by the same token, can argue that if he/she decides to get re-married then the chances of making a better choice is higher.
So - the 64K dollar question is - if I meet someone really great - does it make sense to wait? How long?
The short answer is all other conditions being the same (pardon me - I hate that Latin term), it depends how I feel about myself, and the uncertainty associated with my future.
Suppose, you were a fashion designer or Tom Cruise - it would make more sense to exercise the wait option because the chances of meeting someone from the opposite sex would be very high. In more steamy technical terms, volatility will be higher - with more entries and exits into the marriage market game. But, if someone is in an environement where he/she hardly gets to meet someone from the opposite sex - chances are the waiting option will be an expensive option. And oh yes - I know many souls who fall in this category. They are willing to kill the option of waiting to get married early in the game. Just one caution, however, these friends of mine are driven by the few cubic centiliters of testosterone they have (a.k.a manhood) that dominates over their 2 lbs brain. As clear as I can get - I am not taking about these desperate junkheads who are willing to even marry the next lampost they see.
Coming back to where do I fall in this spectrum? To be honest, last time, I was plain and simply lazy not to invest much in my marriage search. Nor, was I willing to pay the cost of waiting. Strange but true, I treated marriage as a check list item to get done with - don't think too much - just do it. So based on minimal information, I had taken the plunge. Realistically, my action qualifies myself as a "rational fool".
You get what you paid for. So, in a way - marriage on the cheap did not turn out so good for me. Bad investment! Now, I am stuck with irreversiblilty, but how low or high that price is again falls under the domain of uncertainty. But with all rationality, I think I played the right game to clean the slate and work for a good future. Did I get hurt? Sure, I did. Did I learn from my mistake? Yes, I did. Am I certain about what's going to happen next time? No, but I am believe I will do better.
How long should I wait?
Ans...
Yackety-yak...and off I fall off the rationality track...
As my heart gets filled one drop at a time, I know, if the drops keep falling, the pain will grow. Right now, I am watching as each drop falls at its own pace - just as the ice melts from the glacier. I am holding off, but it will become a restless young river. And there will come a day, it will overflow, break the levees, and deluge my whole self. No reason will be able to hold the pain. That day, I will pour myself...into her. And vow to be together for the rest of our lives...
Hey, not everything in life can be rational. Love certaintly not! As I was taught love is not a decision. I kinda dont like this word - decide. Wrong family history. Its siblings are suicide, homicide, genocide ... got something to do with killing. Yes, decision is killing all other options. I like the word - choice, instead. I fall in love because I choose to. And I will get married again only when I choose to.
Friday, April 28, 2006
I am
What am I passionate about? How do I want my ideal day to be? Why are these such hard questions for me? Is it because I am so dreadfully scared of searching or looking for what I am passionate about. Can we really find something that we are passionate about? Or, is it just my own vanity?
It seems to me that I can’t find it is because my passion is so personal, so treasured, and so protected that I do not want to bring to the surface lest it loses its validity and veracity. It’s so personal that I am extremely touchy about it. It’s so huge that if you analyze with your peanut sized brain - I won't stand it. Don’t’ ever say that it's stupid. Just hold onto it for now - as I brainstorm my ownself.
So this is what has happened. I have in a way forgotten what it is. It is somewhat like protecting or keeping away your precious possession – that mark-sheet, or that first love letter that you kept in such a safe place that no one can find it only to realize over time that you yourself have forgotten about where you kept it. With my passion - since the time I have forgotten, I don’t really know what I am living for. It seems I have been riding my horse called life in the direction the horse wants to go. And when it is going I don’t even know where the hell it is headed. I don’t want to stop, just ride along and smell the roses. Where it goes does not matter. I know it will dissolve into the universal cosmic dream.
Do I construe that I have nowhere to go? Or, am I too scared to sound preposterous or too ashamed to proclaim that my life has come down to food, ---, and silence. And any semblance to fulfilment of the possibility arounds these three axes is all that's there for me, all that I care about. That’s where my passion lies, that’s where my carnal desires lie, and that’s where my day begins and day ends. And to get to there, I am willing to put up with the fight. The daily chores - waking up, going to work, making a good name, pleasing others, and earning money. The rest is just a bouquet of derivatives, corollaries, and means to the end. What a sham human life is? What big actors we all are? We are something during the day – running to drive our existence a meaning and at night – like right now, all I care is a pathway to silence and that pathway comes through that heavenly gateway – the doors to which can only be unlocked by her divine grace. Right now, that’s where my passions are reeling and aching my forlorn body.
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Read This
This is interesting! Read today's Tom Friedman's op-ed column http://select.nytimes.com/2006/04/28/opinion/28friedman.html?hp
"It is the fact that energy, broadly defined, has become the most important geostrategic and geoeconomic challenge of our time — much as the Soviet Union was during the cold war...
"It is the fact that energy, broadly defined, has become the most important geostrategic and geoeconomic challenge of our time — much as the Soviet Union was during the cold war...
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Chernobyl – “Nuclear Power -Did I say - No Thanks?”
I did a ten minute scan in the web to see what the press covered on Chernobyl’s 20th anniversary. Even though it is not yet April 26 in US, I did not find too much being covered by the American media. In stark contrast, there has been a series of articles written about the “health-holocaust” in the European media. Different interest groups in Europe are using this occasion to refresh old wounds and to recreate this as that watershed event in east eurpoean history that led to the demise of the Soviet Union. Well, that is looking at this more from a political aspect. In words of Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievitch this was an example of “negative globalization” since the disaster broke all political boundaries of space, as well as time – since the health impacts still exist. Furthermore, they revisit how closed USSR was, how journalists were lied to, and how Gorbachev did not make a statement until nine days after the incident.
I am not so much interested in this aspect – not that I don’t care about nor do I want to belittle this event by oversimplifying the occurrence. But what I am more interested in is about the future of nuclear power and how to forward this debate in this country which seems to be getting closer to a dogmatic feud rather than a rational argument.
In my professional life, I have come across various opinions regarding the future of nuclear power. Ever since Bush came up with this renewed interest, the ardent believers of nuclear power have never been more optimistic than they have in the last 25 years. But then we have the critics. And by critics, I am limiting to the more rational bunch – not for example Greenpeace.
So what are the benefits of nuclear power that really stand as advantages? First, the marginal cost of producing nuclear power is cheaper than any other forms of electric power, such as from coal, or gas. So much so, in the good old days, when nuclear power was just rising above the horizon people said that it will be too cheap to meter. I don’t think it is totally true anymore but it is close. Second, it is clean. There are no environmental emissions. With Kyoto, CO2, and environmental groups pounding on greenhouse gases, this is a good thing. Third, it has got strategic importance in terms of national security because it reduces dependence on foreign oil. Now, on the side of disadvantages - first, the capital costs for building new plants are high. Second, there is always a potential for nuclear accidents that can have very serious consequences. Third, the waste disposal of nuclear spent fuel is up in the air and is a serious problem.
Given these issues, should nuclear power be promoted? The jury is still out on this issue. And the primary reason for that is people have not accounted for the right costs of various components that are critical in making a decision. For example the Price Anderson Act - which limits the liability of nuclear power companies in case a major nuclear disaster take place. Simply put, the risk is borne by common people like you and me. If we add a monetary component we are in a way paying for the insurance against a nuclear disaster. Now look from a different perspective – Bush’s energy policy is going to pump in tax payer’s dollars into the research program for next generation reactors and subsidize building new power plants through various Department of Energy initiatives. So you and I, the common taxpayer are paying both ways. Who gets to keep the profits – the power companies. Now the way power is priced, part of the capital costs are passed on to the consumer anyway and we pay that through our monthly bill. So how many ways you are paying for? Get the picture? To expect this modus operandi from a Republican government is something I can’t understand. While I do understand that the regulatory process for licensing a nuclear equipment is so expensive that the initiating costs are prohibitive, but how much of that burden a common taxpayer take? That's the question to ask.
The next big issue is about waste disposal. Once the nuclear fuel is used up, what remains is the spent fuel which is radioactive. Typically, for the last 20-30 years, power plants have been storing these in casks in their sites. Now, they are temporary storage sites and getting full pretty fast. As a permanent storage facility, Yucca Mountain in Nevada was selected. Now here’s the deal. The site has to be designed such that the radiation levels in and around that area should be acceptable for the next 10,000 years extended to 1 million years. This is a totally ridiculous timeframe. Who were we 10,000 years back – cavemen? The argument has lost rationality and has become more of Nevada not wanting this mess in their backyard. And as long as Harry Reid and others are there – boy, this will be tough to get passed this argument. The other option is to reprocess/recycle the waste. This is what France does. Not that it is very cost effective, but you know, they are French. The good thing is that they don’t have a waste disposal problem. One other option – is to dump the waste on some foreign land as long as they are being paid and willing to take this garbage from us. This will anger people like Noam Chomsky, and I am not sure whether that is a moral, or not but we all know how this country works. Moreover, there are security issues and who knows someone can make a dirty bomb.
Finally, the third big issue is safety which to my mind is the least disconcerting of all. There has not been a single accident even close to that of Chernobyl in US. The closest was Three Mile Island in 1979. Since then the industry has taken such drastic measures in safety that nuclear power plant is definitely one of safest places to work. Just imagine – not a single death in the plant ever due to any nuclear related accident. I don’t know which industry has a track record like that. But that does not mean, that errors or lack of oversight will be pardoned. Few years back there was close call in Davis-Besse nuclear plant, in which I got personally involved in. But overall, safety aspect has been pretty well covered by the industry.
I wish the debate goes on as I firmly believe that rational argument and debate is the basis of a free society and good decisions come out of dissent and argument. That’s something that we are proud of in this country, a far cry from the closed doors of Soviet Union that has to live through the nightmares of Chernobyl.
I am not so much interested in this aspect – not that I don’t care about nor do I want to belittle this event by oversimplifying the occurrence. But what I am more interested in is about the future of nuclear power and how to forward this debate in this country which seems to be getting closer to a dogmatic feud rather than a rational argument.
In my professional life, I have come across various opinions regarding the future of nuclear power. Ever since Bush came up with this renewed interest, the ardent believers of nuclear power have never been more optimistic than they have in the last 25 years. But then we have the critics. And by critics, I am limiting to the more rational bunch – not for example Greenpeace.
So what are the benefits of nuclear power that really stand as advantages? First, the marginal cost of producing nuclear power is cheaper than any other forms of electric power, such as from coal, or gas. So much so, in the good old days, when nuclear power was just rising above the horizon people said that it will be too cheap to meter. I don’t think it is totally true anymore but it is close. Second, it is clean. There are no environmental emissions. With Kyoto, CO2, and environmental groups pounding on greenhouse gases, this is a good thing. Third, it has got strategic importance in terms of national security because it reduces dependence on foreign oil. Now, on the side of disadvantages - first, the capital costs for building new plants are high. Second, there is always a potential for nuclear accidents that can have very serious consequences. Third, the waste disposal of nuclear spent fuel is up in the air and is a serious problem.
Given these issues, should nuclear power be promoted? The jury is still out on this issue. And the primary reason for that is people have not accounted for the right costs of various components that are critical in making a decision. For example the Price Anderson Act - which limits the liability of nuclear power companies in case a major nuclear disaster take place. Simply put, the risk is borne by common people like you and me. If we add a monetary component we are in a way paying for the insurance against a nuclear disaster. Now look from a different perspective – Bush’s energy policy is going to pump in tax payer’s dollars into the research program for next generation reactors and subsidize building new power plants through various Department of Energy initiatives. So you and I, the common taxpayer are paying both ways. Who gets to keep the profits – the power companies. Now the way power is priced, part of the capital costs are passed on to the consumer anyway and we pay that through our monthly bill. So how many ways you are paying for? Get the picture? To expect this modus operandi from a Republican government is something I can’t understand. While I do understand that the regulatory process for licensing a nuclear equipment is so expensive that the initiating costs are prohibitive, but how much of that burden a common taxpayer take? That's the question to ask.
The next big issue is about waste disposal. Once the nuclear fuel is used up, what remains is the spent fuel which is radioactive. Typically, for the last 20-30 years, power plants have been storing these in casks in their sites. Now, they are temporary storage sites and getting full pretty fast. As a permanent storage facility, Yucca Mountain in Nevada was selected. Now here’s the deal. The site has to be designed such that the radiation levels in and around that area should be acceptable for the next 10,000 years extended to 1 million years. This is a totally ridiculous timeframe. Who were we 10,000 years back – cavemen? The argument has lost rationality and has become more of Nevada not wanting this mess in their backyard. And as long as Harry Reid and others are there – boy, this will be tough to get passed this argument. The other option is to reprocess/recycle the waste. This is what France does. Not that it is very cost effective, but you know, they are French. The good thing is that they don’t have a waste disposal problem. One other option – is to dump the waste on some foreign land as long as they are being paid and willing to take this garbage from us. This will anger people like Noam Chomsky, and I am not sure whether that is a moral, or not but we all know how this country works. Moreover, there are security issues and who knows someone can make a dirty bomb.
Finally, the third big issue is safety which to my mind is the least disconcerting of all. There has not been a single accident even close to that of Chernobyl in US. The closest was Three Mile Island in 1979. Since then the industry has taken such drastic measures in safety that nuclear power plant is definitely one of safest places to work. Just imagine – not a single death in the plant ever due to any nuclear related accident. I don’t know which industry has a track record like that. But that does not mean, that errors or lack of oversight will be pardoned. Few years back there was close call in Davis-Besse nuclear plant, in which I got personally involved in. But overall, safety aspect has been pretty well covered by the industry.
I wish the debate goes on as I firmly believe that rational argument and debate is the basis of a free society and good decisions come out of dissent and argument. That’s something that we are proud of in this country, a far cry from the closed doors of Soviet Union that has to live through the nightmares of Chernobyl.
Monday, April 24, 2006
Is being light wrong?
Everything in life has to have a reason, is significant, and is worth examining. In other words, living for momentary beauty or pleasure is crass and bad. This view of life is so innate in me that there could be any other possibility simply doesn’t seem right. But after spending few years with someone, who was so unavoidably close, I am forced at least to ask myself this question. At the end, however, I find myself back to where I was, just a little stressed out, and just a little exhausted. Bruised but not broken. So is being light good or bad?
I am an ardent believer that life does not run in a one-dimensional absolute pathway. That’s the simple reason we have so many explanations for life, time, love, and other hard questions. So when I landed up reading this novel authored by Milan Kundera – “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” I sort of get a detailed perspective of weightiness and lightness.
Purely from my own personal context, I have been accused of – “why do you take everything so seriously”. Why do you think so much? Just to qualify seriousness a bit more, it is not that I don’t enjoy or have fun. But there is an undercurrent of an intense reason or dedication for every thing that I do. Even things that I do spontaneously, I need to go back and find a reason why I did so. Even my feelings typically have to have a rational basis. And the biggest irony is - at times the reason I give is – “It’s okay to be unreasonable.” Like calling up my dear friend at middle of the night and asking her out for a coffee. But until I do not have a basis – I just go nuts! This has its own share of consequences. There is a constant battle of heart and mind that I need to fight. My emotions at times lack clarity. I appear confused and indecisive. Yet that’s precisely what makes me, defines who I am, and expresses me. This is my weirdness. I think as human beings all of us are weird in our own ways. The sooner we embrace that part of ours the better off we are, overall.
As Kundera has described through a marriage of two polarities – the guy is light and the girl is weighty, and how such a relationship becomes a big torture. The guy is a philanderer, the girl is a dedicated soul – a lover of Beethoven, and has a purpose and belief in her existence. Hmm! Tell me about the compatibility part. Although the beauty of the novel was how the characters develop – the guy from being light gets diffused gradually by the weight from his wife and makes mends in his ways to be with her finally. The marriage will never be happy, it will always be a struggle, but they carry on. In real life, I guess, divorce is an easier option. I am thankful that I read this book, to get a historical and philosophical perspective that lightness is not necessarily bad, as I have always made that out to be. It is just another way of being just as weightiness is. And just as absolutes will never carry the day – being perpetually weighty or perpetually light is not going to be good either. But that’s an ongoing training and development as far as living my life is concerned.
Now this I write in a conceptual way. But I know that being weighty and significant is so ingrained in me that – that ain’t gonna change! Maybe, change incrementally over a long period of time. Growing and relishing my diet - Ayn Rand for lunch and Karl Marx for dinner - in my formative years, and beyond, I cannot expect to be light in any way. But it is interesting how the Greek philosopher Paremenides considered weight as negative many years back. And for now, I can simply marvel and rejoice – how many shades and how many different ways of living life exists in this beautiful world.
I am an ardent believer that life does not run in a one-dimensional absolute pathway. That’s the simple reason we have so many explanations for life, time, love, and other hard questions. So when I landed up reading this novel authored by Milan Kundera – “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” I sort of get a detailed perspective of weightiness and lightness.
Purely from my own personal context, I have been accused of – “why do you take everything so seriously”. Why do you think so much? Just to qualify seriousness a bit more, it is not that I don’t enjoy or have fun. But there is an undercurrent of an intense reason or dedication for every thing that I do. Even things that I do spontaneously, I need to go back and find a reason why I did so. Even my feelings typically have to have a rational basis. And the biggest irony is - at times the reason I give is – “It’s okay to be unreasonable.” Like calling up my dear friend at middle of the night and asking her out for a coffee. But until I do not have a basis – I just go nuts! This has its own share of consequences. There is a constant battle of heart and mind that I need to fight. My emotions at times lack clarity. I appear confused and indecisive. Yet that’s precisely what makes me, defines who I am, and expresses me. This is my weirdness. I think as human beings all of us are weird in our own ways. The sooner we embrace that part of ours the better off we are, overall.
As Kundera has described through a marriage of two polarities – the guy is light and the girl is weighty, and how such a relationship becomes a big torture. The guy is a philanderer, the girl is a dedicated soul – a lover of Beethoven, and has a purpose and belief in her existence. Hmm! Tell me about the compatibility part. Although the beauty of the novel was how the characters develop – the guy from being light gets diffused gradually by the weight from his wife and makes mends in his ways to be with her finally. The marriage will never be happy, it will always be a struggle, but they carry on. In real life, I guess, divorce is an easier option. I am thankful that I read this book, to get a historical and philosophical perspective that lightness is not necessarily bad, as I have always made that out to be. It is just another way of being just as weightiness is. And just as absolutes will never carry the day – being perpetually weighty or perpetually light is not going to be good either. But that’s an ongoing training and development as far as living my life is concerned.
Now this I write in a conceptual way. But I know that being weighty and significant is so ingrained in me that – that ain’t gonna change! Maybe, change incrementally over a long period of time. Growing and relishing my diet - Ayn Rand for lunch and Karl Marx for dinner - in my formative years, and beyond, I cannot expect to be light in any way. But it is interesting how the Greek philosopher Paremenides considered weight as negative many years back. And for now, I can simply marvel and rejoice – how many shades and how many different ways of living life exists in this beautiful world.
Sunday, April 23, 2006
One of my favorites
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
by T.S. Eliot
S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.
LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
It is perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin? . . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. . . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.” . . . . .
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
by T.S. Eliot
S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.
LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
It is perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin? . . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. . . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.” . . . . .
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
Saturday, April 22, 2006
My own Charlie!
My stay here in SF has been extended by four more days which gave me an unexpected luxury of a lazy saturday. And when I saw the day was simply - a la sunny California - something that I rarely saw for the last two weeks, I chose to take a walk. With the intention of killing two birds with the same stone, I thought of eating lunch outside. Little did I realize that the walk would be so long as I hopped from one block to the next, hoping that the door of the next restaurant will be open. I was in no mood of spoiling this rare time-off and started wondering how to make the best out of this potentially great situation which has started to turn miserable. In short, this seems to be the story of my life. So obviously, the question to ponder was - who would represent me or to whom or whose ideas can I relate to the most.
As I have always looked at myself as a bundle of contradictions - even in the most trivial matters, the biggest of all - of course is in the area of trusting an outcome. In this matter, when it comes to trusting people - I seem to be overly trusting to the extent that my close friends call me naive, immature, and impuslive. On the other end, the fact that I fundamentally trust people provides me this inherant strength that trust will lead me to success.
I don't know which is true. In my relationships with people, while I have been really blessed with very understanding, caring, and loving peers; in the area of my most intimate relationship, time and again I have come across abondonement, despair, and melancholy. And everytime, I take a knee-jerk vow - I got to be more careful next time. Why hurt myself? But will this ever work for me? I don't think so. I don't believe I can change much in this area. I am cooked.
And I know, for sure that I am taking this ride again. Future only knows whether I will get hurt. But to not take this ride would be a greater pain.
For the last ten years, I have resorted to Satre to explain the intricacies of several questions. And I watched almost all Woody Allen movies. The fact that it is very difficult to be a human being and the only way to fight against it is to live an active life looms over me. It has helped me to appreciate the power that resides in a human being to create his own life. Out of nothing. That finally we all die and life itself means nothing. Simply put - shit will always happen, but it is in my choice what interpretation I give. And whatever happens to me, I get to choose who I am being. Also, that I am the cause in the matter. In other words, responsible for my own outcome. So, if a relationship did not turn out the way I thought it would - I have got something to do with it. Who I am today is a function of my past actions and no one but I am responsible for this outcome. For example, I did not study liberal arts but engineering not because my parents did not give me a choice but because I did not have the guts to speak up for myself. For every action, or inaction; for every communication, or lack of; there are consequences to face. And when I chose to act, I inherently choose the consequence that comes with it. That has explained a lot of stuff for me. It has given me the chance of forgiving my ownself and opened the vista for a fresh new start.
While I can relate to Satre to a large extent, and he can explain my despair, agony, and distress very well, he cannot explain my optimism. That life is to live with the hope of rejoicing. So who can fill up this gap. None other than my dear Charlie Brown.
Charlie Brown lives in possibility. That beoynd abondonement and despair there is hope. It's not the trusted-friend-turned-backbiter-failure that kills me but it is that I can take ownership of that. Charlie Brown also explains why I can so easily give up "once bitten twice shy" approach to love, life, and everything in between. For fifty years, he has made a fool of himself in the baseball game. Why does he still go to pitch yet again? Why keep getting bashed by Lucy time and again? Because what happened in past does not necessarily will happen in the future. And this is the crux of life.
Charlie Brown gives me a liberating expereince. He inspires me to live by my own inner voice and rise up every time I fall. He makes life beautiful for me when others cannot.
Thank you for being my own Charlie.
As I have always looked at myself as a bundle of contradictions - even in the most trivial matters, the biggest of all - of course is in the area of trusting an outcome. In this matter, when it comes to trusting people - I seem to be overly trusting to the extent that my close friends call me naive, immature, and impuslive. On the other end, the fact that I fundamentally trust people provides me this inherant strength that trust will lead me to success.
I don't know which is true. In my relationships with people, while I have been really blessed with very understanding, caring, and loving peers; in the area of my most intimate relationship, time and again I have come across abondonement, despair, and melancholy. And everytime, I take a knee-jerk vow - I got to be more careful next time. Why hurt myself? But will this ever work for me? I don't think so. I don't believe I can change much in this area. I am cooked.
And I know, for sure that I am taking this ride again. Future only knows whether I will get hurt. But to not take this ride would be a greater pain.
For the last ten years, I have resorted to Satre to explain the intricacies of several questions. And I watched almost all Woody Allen movies. The fact that it is very difficult to be a human being and the only way to fight against it is to live an active life looms over me. It has helped me to appreciate the power that resides in a human being to create his own life. Out of nothing. That finally we all die and life itself means nothing. Simply put - shit will always happen, but it is in my choice what interpretation I give. And whatever happens to me, I get to choose who I am being. Also, that I am the cause in the matter. In other words, responsible for my own outcome. So, if a relationship did not turn out the way I thought it would - I have got something to do with it. Who I am today is a function of my past actions and no one but I am responsible for this outcome. For example, I did not study liberal arts but engineering not because my parents did not give me a choice but because I did not have the guts to speak up for myself. For every action, or inaction; for every communication, or lack of; there are consequences to face. And when I chose to act, I inherently choose the consequence that comes with it. That has explained a lot of stuff for me. It has given me the chance of forgiving my ownself and opened the vista for a fresh new start.
While I can relate to Satre to a large extent, and he can explain my despair, agony, and distress very well, he cannot explain my optimism. That life is to live with the hope of rejoicing. So who can fill up this gap. None other than my dear Charlie Brown.
Charlie Brown lives in possibility. That beoynd abondonement and despair there is hope. It's not the trusted-friend-turned-backbiter-failure that kills me but it is that I can take ownership of that. Charlie Brown also explains why I can so easily give up "once bitten twice shy" approach to love, life, and everything in between. For fifty years, he has made a fool of himself in the baseball game. Why does he still go to pitch yet again? Why keep getting bashed by Lucy time and again? Because what happened in past does not necessarily will happen in the future. And this is the crux of life.
Charlie Brown gives me a liberating expereince. He inspires me to live by my own inner voice and rise up every time I fall. He makes life beautiful for me when others cannot.
Thank you for being my own Charlie.
Friday, April 21, 2006
A leaf flew from the past
I spent the large part of today's evening searching for G.V. Desani's "All About H. Hatterr" in all over the online stores. No luck! So just as my frustration was steaming up, my mind was flying from the bookstores of Nai Sarak to College Street with this rivetting conviction - "Had I been there, someone would have defintely got me a copy." And thinking about College Street, memories from years bygone rose up magically like the dead Lazarius. Random voices of the colloqialisms of Calcutta, hyperbolic chants of archaic Shakespere from my English class, and the voice of our dear Babus in the fish market all tied together in disctinctive cacophony.
And then as my fleeting mind punctuated, I got to see how things have changed. A part of my life with my surroundings and expereinces are not around me anymore. That's when I really know that I am growing old - when I realize that I have taken the train of life and left them behind in the station I grew up with.
Such an expereince that I got left behind is "Quizzing". The year was 1985, when cool Siddharth Basu visited our living rooms with Quiz Time and made quizzing a sexy pastime for my generation. By the time I was in middle school, my life was about reading weird facts and crazy theories. The urge to spit out the right answer in those 10 odd seconds took me to those dusty racks of my school library where hardly a sane soul would go. It introduced me to the history facts and figure, forced me read the daily newspapers, and expanded my eagerness to learn indiscriminately.
Time rolled by, and so did my passion grew. Calcutta was the place to be. Taking the tram to DI (Dalhousie Institute) and getting down at the "Quiz Stop"as it was colloqialised, Calcutta-style, just to register in yet another "open quiz". And there was our daddy - Neil O' Brien. In his typical manner he would say - "Back in the days of the Raj...." And then you know he is in his element. Other regulars were Francis Groser, Jug Suraiya, and Ramen "Ramu" Sen. My favorite was the Sportworld quiz. The prizes were hardly ever enticing. Who ever cared! Excitement was everything.
Where is that world now? Between "Weakest Link" and "Who wants to be a millionaire" I search for the spell that used to cast on me in those days gone by. Rather hopelessly! Quizzing as I knew, as I enjoyed, and as I had so dearly loved is a thing of my past. It's that mystical leaf that I have preserved in one of pages of my favorite book. I am complete with it. With that gone are those sleep-overs in friends' houses, the secret disapperance from the boring class -sit in the corner - roting those facts - getting caught by the Fr. George, and still be pardoned. And then when another quiz day came - that would the be-all and end-all of my existence. That's all history. Yet what remains is what once-a-favorite pastime has made out me. As Hercule Poirot would say - It's for "Those tiny little grey cells ... Mon Ami." And it also gave me the gift of reading and taught me the joy of winning.
And then as my fleeting mind punctuated, I got to see how things have changed. A part of my life with my surroundings and expereinces are not around me anymore. That's when I really know that I am growing old - when I realize that I have taken the train of life and left them behind in the station I grew up with.
Such an expereince that I got left behind is "Quizzing". The year was 1985, when cool Siddharth Basu visited our living rooms with Quiz Time and made quizzing a sexy pastime for my generation. By the time I was in middle school, my life was about reading weird facts and crazy theories. The urge to spit out the right answer in those 10 odd seconds took me to those dusty racks of my school library where hardly a sane soul would go. It introduced me to the history facts and figure, forced me read the daily newspapers, and expanded my eagerness to learn indiscriminately.
Time rolled by, and so did my passion grew. Calcutta was the place to be. Taking the tram to DI (Dalhousie Institute) and getting down at the "Quiz Stop"as it was colloqialised, Calcutta-style, just to register in yet another "open quiz". And there was our daddy - Neil O' Brien. In his typical manner he would say - "Back in the days of the Raj...." And then you know he is in his element. Other regulars were Francis Groser, Jug Suraiya, and Ramen "Ramu" Sen. My favorite was the Sportworld quiz. The prizes were hardly ever enticing. Who ever cared! Excitement was everything.
Where is that world now? Between "Weakest Link" and "Who wants to be a millionaire" I search for the spell that used to cast on me in those days gone by. Rather hopelessly! Quizzing as I knew, as I enjoyed, and as I had so dearly loved is a thing of my past. It's that mystical leaf that I have preserved in one of pages of my favorite book. I am complete with it. With that gone are those sleep-overs in friends' houses, the secret disapperance from the boring class -sit in the corner - roting those facts - getting caught by the Fr. George, and still be pardoned. And then when another quiz day came - that would the be-all and end-all of my existence. That's all history. Yet what remains is what once-a-favorite pastime has made out me. As Hercule Poirot would say - It's for "Those tiny little grey cells ... Mon Ami." And it also gave me the gift of reading and taught me the joy of winning.
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