Saturday, February 27, 2010

Don't curb your enthusiasm

So there are days when you have a fixed routine, 9 to 7 kinda work, a sad lunch, only chips and coffee through rest of the day, you know ... ending up with a general lowered expectations about your own self.

And there are days when you start on a positive note, take chances with your bosses in the heirarchy, think about expanding your horizons in your personal time, think nervously about those others, rationalise your being, soothing your ego.

And there are days when you beat all perspectives, being like water, start out with stalking wild deer, take chances with your bosses and stick it to the man, have an extravagant day with the code, expand your horizons, expand your circle, feast and enjoy the beauty of an urban existence, get into trouble with the cops, feel the thrill of the night, setting record times on your bike; and you feel the wafer-thin layer of all apprehensions and high grounds giving way.

Let's call them the day before, yesterday, and today.
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Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Thinking about him



Camou,
and Camou

 

Eckhart Tolle came upon a realisation, at the age of 29
I couldn’t live with myself any longer. And in this a question arose without an answer: who is the ‘I’ that cannot live with the self? What is the self? I felt drawn into a void. I didn’t know at the time that what really happened was the mind-made self, with its heaviness, its problems, that lives between the unsatisfying past and the fearful future, collapsed. It dissolved. The next morning I woke up and everything was so peaceful. The peace was there because there was no self. Just a sense of presence or “beingness,” just observing and watching.


Am I crying out loud for something by hinting at that? Just a bad day, you say?
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Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Indian zeitgeist :(


Google (India) auto-complete for "can girls"



Google (India) auto-complete for "can guys"
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I have fondly fallen for a 2 month-old calf at the milkman's.
I hope this needs no explaining.
A visit planned this morning to see him again.

They generally milk the ma cow LIVE, because me and a buddy get there early enough. Before the milking begins, the calf is let free to raid on its ma's udders...and thereafter pulled away, and the milking commences. Still hungry, the calf responds to my petting by suckling on my fingers, as if it were its ma's udders.
I realise. This story can branch off anywhere. Or be symbolic.
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Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Our friends, as Nash et al put it

The world is a game. And this game is defined by game theory. See it as the iterated prisoner's dilemma...we have repated exchanges with other individuals, and each adopts their own strategy which is built from being rewarded/bruised several times in exchanges in earlier stages of our lives. Being 'mature' is what we call adopting a consistent strategy in such exchanges. However, considering the family as a single unit, being 'mature' is when you can exactly mimic the strategy of your elders.

We choose our friends based on how they play the prisoner's dilemma. We are mean and selfish in naked reality. 'Ethic' is just another word for the strategy. Societies and countries are defined as a geographically consistent stragegy.

The concept of Karma dissolves here. Karma hints at a tit-for-tat strategy, where we assume the entire universe to be retaliating if we ever do.
Tit-for-tat is also how much of our heartlands of UP and Bihar work. Quick justice. Unfortunately, tit-for-tat is not the best strategy in the long run (it succeeds magically in limited duration exchanges, though).
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Censoring Karma

Reading an earlier article from Anurag Kashyap had me thinking about how nothing has changed in the past couple of years, and how nothing can. It's ironic, since our Hindu philosophy is based on the principle of KARMA, yet everybody starts pissing all over on a mere factual mention of those they love/idolise, if it comes anywhere to being disparaging. It is like there is a censor towards being treated the way you deserve. The fuck-up over "My Name is Khan", which derives from SRK's apolitical move in the IPL, is lunacy.

On one hand we cannot tolerate criticism. One the other, we have the 'grass is always greener on the other side' perspective, a result of which we have never been able to appreciate what's right next door. Take, for example, Slumdog Millionaire. We were left fuming. Take, for example, a lesser-known movie "Valley of Flowers", which received rave reviews on IMDB, being described as a newer, mature genre. But it fell totally flat on me and friends, despite Nasiruddin Shah and despite the sensual treatment provided through much of the first half.

ps: Anurag Kashyap wrote the script for Valley of Flowers
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