What is Evil?

Just finished reading 'The Immortals of Meluha' by Amish Tripathi. It's an interesting read, blending mythology and fiction like I've never seen before, except may be in 'The Great Indian Novel' by Shashi Tharoor. It's a new genre of sorts.

But that's besides the point. I was intrigued by the concept introduced in the book by Tripathi, that evil is a relative term. What one person or community thinks is evil or bad is probably just a different way of doing things, which they aren't comfortable with. A good example would be, capitalism and communism. The capitalist world considers the communist as backward and bad as a way of living with highly restricted freedoms. The communist world have their own views of how capitalism is bad, leads to tremendous social inequality and stuff. There have been wars, many of them, over these differences and their incorrect interpretations. Why? Just because they don't believe in each other's opinions and feel that the other's influence may increase if they don't stop them. I'm probably over simplifying this, but it can't be completely denied.

Evil, if you look at it this way is then a difference of perspectives. Of course there are exceptions like pure badwill. But then it's just circumstances and perspectives causing distortion of 'what is right' at such an immense level that entire civilizations are blinded.

Evil is relative, just like everything else in this universe, conditions apply.



I await the next two parts of the 'immortals' trilogy, to see where the author takes the definition of evil to.

PS: This post was written on a phone with a brilliant predictive keyboard, SwiftKey.

Innovation & Art

I've these really neat conversations with my instructor at the art studio that I go to. She likes to dive into philosophy when explaining approaches to art, and what can be more interesting than that :) We have had many such conversations, I'll some day write on the others, which were equally interesting, but let me elaborate on the latest one which left me thinking for a while.

So, few days ago we were talking about a new piece I'm working on. I told her I know exactly how I would go about doing this, and I don't want to do it that way. I've this concept, which now in hindsight doesn't seem all that right, of not doing the the same thing again. By that I mean that, if I do use a certain idea and style I use it once for a piece, I don't go about exploiting it as such. My intent is to keep things dynamic, and to venture into as many things that I can(perhaps to learn more?).

But people like to make a series of paintings on a idea that they have, and they use a similar style for all of those. So you get a nice set of pieces that go very well with each other, and form what is called, a 'body of work'. This is what most artists seem to be doing, and that is how someone gets interested in their work. It's like Hitchcock making a series of suspense thrillers.

So, what she was trying to imply is that, dynamic ideas are good, but the dynamism should be paced out. In other words, she was implying that innovation is not always a good thing. If we innovate something, and keep working on that idea, we refine it and make it more sophisticated. And that makes for good art, which is appreciated and understood.

To conclude, innovation should be accompanied by refinement. And refinement reaches a stage where we call it 'art'.

Talk about refinement, here's a Hyundai commercial for that. Needless to say I really dig what this company is upto.

The unreachable 'z'

Talking to a friend recently, he came up with a question that has left me thinking. A question for which I don't have an answer.

'What do we do with the things we do?'

'What is the ultimate aim of things we follow so passionately, spending so much time and effort?'

I, for the life of me, don't have answers to these questions, perfectly right questions to ask. These days I spend a fair amount of time on my 'hobbies'. Time, the most valuable thing in the universe you can expend, you spend so much of it on following your passions. What do you do with that?

It's forthrightly easy to say that the destination doesn't matter, it's the journey that really counts. But I think that this is a feel-good, but overrated, and highly flawed argument. After thinking a bit over this, I find asking these questions is important to bring things in perspective. Though just asking such questions will not make things concrete, for most things.

I found that asking these questions, makes you think where you are with your 'hobby' and how much better you can get at it by setting some tangible goals. This ROI oriented talk sounds all very management-training-styled, but no. Think over it, the more you think, you'll make your passion for the things you love stronger. You'll aim for the rainbow, in process you might just cross couple of mountains and valleys, but you'll be well off than before.

But then this brings me back to the original questions. At the end of it, you might manage to get from 'a' to 'g' instead of 'd', but there is no 'z', not in this lifetime. Or put other way, the 'z', the relative 'z', is always unreachable from where you stand. Then what do you do, does that make all of this futile? I think, reaching far enough is satisfying enough, you don't need a 'z' to attain, and even if you did you wouldn't know!

Inertia

I'm dead tired. Tired with this thing called inertia. And its not the Newton's inertia, that is slightly better. There, if you are in motion, you keep being motion. The inertia I've currently makes me stop if I'm in motion, and makes me stoop if I'm stopped.

It is damn difficult to get out of it, has an over-powering omnipresence of sorts. Now all this sounds pretty whimsical, but heck it is true. I lose my initiative, my excitement and my enthusiasm, pretty soon after it gets back. Not being able to maintain it, I'm tracing the root cause. And I have a strong feeling it is "motivation".

My posts these days are mostly coming out of random conversations with friends. In a recent one, the conclusion was that, there is no motivation because there is no goal. Then again, there is no goal because there is no motivation. In this typically, what you could call, a vicious cycle the thing getting killed is 'progress'.

To break the cycle need a strong, equally over-powering, momentum that can guarantee an uninterrupted supply of motivation without really having to have a goal or a set of goals. The deal is to find it, and google doesn't help. There is a spoon, and there are forks and knives too, if you care to look the other side.

Water, glass and light

Time for change again. This time it wasn't planned. Suddenly it struck to me that one of my recently taken pictures, is a typical blog header. By typical I mean the ones you'll generally see on Wordpress blogs...grass and greenery in general with macro closeup. But I can never swallow a deadpan plain image for a header, I have to dress it up. Gives me a rare creativity kick.

No colors. I was trying the msnbc spectrum glow effect, but it was underplaying the picture, particularly the dew drop in focus. So I decided to keep all the effects colorless. Glassy squares which give a glittery feel, glassy strip with the heading and glowing lines. So here it is; water, glass and light.

If you are the curious type, previous headers are in the pics link.

The Third Act

Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called "The Pledge". The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course... it probably isn't. The second act is called "The Turn". The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call "The Prestige".

- Cutter (The Prestige)

take_change

It was time for change. Cursor was carrying the same look for last one and half years. This time around, I decided to go for simple templates. Hunted to find this gorgeous combination of black and grays. Thanks a lot to the designer and the people who ported this to Blogger, credited below.

In the meanwhile, I have been trying, with really bad results, to get back to painting. One of them, with some color modifications to suit this gray template, is now the header image. Its equally bad, but it has that raw look, which I liked. The previous ones are in the headers album in pictures link at the top of the header.

So, till next comes, its a gray world.

Poker

When you already have "invested" so much there is no point even thinking about a "fold". You keep playing, till you can, either "raising" if you feel the ball can be hit or "checking" if you are not aware of what is happening. And when things are all done, you wait for the "showdown". You wait till you see cards of all players, and hope that the universe is conspiring for you.

And while doing all this, you bear it all without a smirk, without a frown, hence the term "Poker face". All in.

Poker, is so much fun!

The Window of Perception

I'm reading too much poetry these days on fellow blogizens blogs. And its showing its effects, bear one more here. Had a running thought, which I wanted to write down before I lose the strings, and prose wasn't helping.

Perceptions are a gamble,
Thoughts with a fumble,
A cheek with a dimple.
Whatever they are ,
They but, always blur the simple.

There was a cat,
Magic under its hat.
Something has changed,
A bit here and a bit there.
And strings have deranged.

I say, aha
I hear, aah
Or was it the other way around,
Not merry is this go-around.

Its midnight now.
And in front of the forces,
One has to bow,
Fight these coerces,
Is life, and how.

Strive through this night,
Long will be this fight.
And then there will sunrise,
No more deception.
Through this window of perception.

Lost in a February song

February is special. It always rings the bells for me. Its a magical month...though its not often that have I seen the extraordinary happen this time of the year. Its this time, that I feel that life is taking new turns, and it does. Sometimes in my knowledge, sometimes a realization that it did, later. Intuition keeps knocking the door a lot..this time of the year. So February, where are we going, this time around...?

Where has that old friend gone
Lost in a February song
Tell him it won't be long
Till he opens his eyes, opens his eyes
Where is that simple day
Before colors broke into shades
And how did I ever fade
Into this life, into this life

- from the soulful February song by Josh Groban

Fight Club

Life is always a fight, isn't it ?

You never get anything just like that. There are NO free lunches...not on this planet. I don't know why the Alchemist guy keeps saying "when you really want something to happen, the whole universe conspires so that your wish comes true"[1] and other crap. It is not true...why would the universe care ? It has better things to do...like running its bloody gigantic self. And if it did try to care, why the hell would it conspire...? To give you a nice bundled sweety surprise you might be thinking ! Forget it. If it did have that much soul, science would not need a proof of the existence of the ultimate being.

All you need is to get things done yourselves, make them work, make them work for you. And thats why some atheist must have said "He helps those that help themselves". Magic is always the fantasy and never the fact...and if does happen its always an illusion. Till the time you realise it was an illusion you have been already had. Welcome to the real world[2].

But hey, its not all that bad, but its not the way we imagine it to be. The spoon is lying on the floor, you have to look for it, search it, kneel down and lift it. And don't think the spoon is made of silver, you won't get that on this floor. For that you will have to climb a hundred steps to the next floor. The number of floors are limited by your ambitions, nothing else. Different people climb for different reasons.

And offcourse theres the source on the terrace, but one never reaches there, its just an illusion that some people have. They grow beards, wear funny clothes and do funny things...and they think this might be the way, but they don't know they are in the illusion all created by themselves.

The one who sees the truth, that theres no truth, its an endless end, lives merrily. Moral of the story, don't worry be happy.

[1] Paulo Coelho in The Alchemist
[2] Morpheus in The Matrix

Category [ _Review_ ]

OK..so its the new year

OK...so its the new year.

This time i have made a decision, to make new year resolutions and to religiously follow them. Every other chap makes such kind of resolutions, and everybody speaks of them too. So am I.

Firstly, i will try to bring some organization in my life. I know the term sounds boring, very process oriented kind of, but i have realised that i am going haywire, and it is wasting my efforts, if any. So I am going to lay down some rules and try to abide by them. Next is i will try and reduce the rate of watching movies. By general statistics, 90% of them are crappy when you watch 3 out of every 4 released. This is wasting a lot of my money, and `my precious` precious time, as Gollum would say it.

Thirdly, i am going to get my creative cells up and running, they have been hibernating for quite a while. I dont see anything really nice-n-stunning done in the past 1 or 2 years, something which i can look back and say, man that was cool. The basic reason behind the ignorance is laziness. Thats why they say, ignorance is bliss.

And i am trying to do some anger management. For many who havent seen me angry ever, may find this odd, but i know better, i am just too short tempered. Have to work on that.

All said, i am excited about the new year 2006. For those who have minimal interest in astrology or numerology goto DONE. 2006, is the year of the number 8, and i am a number 8 person, with my birthday on 17th. A lot is to happen this year according the experts, either good or bad. Hoping for the best. Also the current 'age' as is referred by many astrologers is the Age of Aquarius. To know more about this Age stuff, google the term, this is not a GK centre. And i being an aquarian am pretty interested in what effect this is going to have on things to come. Though it may get creepy, feeling that the future is controlled by someone who is not you, and blah blah...i still do believe that and have actually seen that if you strive enough, you can trespass. You need not follow the route devised...ok now its getting creepier, 'correct baby'..."Sorry..."...'Exactly!'

DONE:
So people, have a nice day, everyday, in the new year.

Category [ _Unfiled_ ]

What if...

Writing after a brief sabbatical. Was too occupied with a lot of other things at work & home. Still am. The subject for this post was the result of a casual topic in a discussion.

Think of the end of the world, as we see it now. Say some tera-tera watt (or whatever ) electro-magnetic pulse struck earth, or somebody instrumented it. Or say a nuclear device annihilates 90% of mankind. Everything is destroyed. What now ? Resurrection & recontruction.

The techies out of the people that are left begin reinventing the wheels. The people of traditional engineering backgrounds start making things from whatever materials are available. They make wheels, bicycles, buildings, even electricity. With some forging, casting & assembly even a decently educated guy can rebuild a internal combustion engine. And this part of our scientific evolution can be rendered to use within a small time span.

But what about computers !! We can't resurrect them that easily, being a very complex symbiosis of hardware and software. Making something like a micro-processor will take ages. Writing a basic OS on it will take a few more decades !! And offcourse we will need to have geniuses like Moore & Rithcie around. Think about it. We dont have enough technology & intelligence to resurrect our current state of technological evolution after everything is grounded.

Now i can understand why people like Carl Sagan and others would have thought of things like sending information filled to outer space & burying them below New York.

But this is really a serious issue. If at all something like this happens to mankind we will not only vanish without a trace, our descendents that are left would spend eons in redundancy. And what am i doing about it. I am documenting this fact, here :P

Category [ _Tech_ ]

Gibberish

Why do people think so much about things they should not? They keep worrying of the scratch on the new jeans, the hair streak which refuses to get tamed, the pimple on the chin, the bad handwriting on the freshly written cd, the dust on the computer screen, the drawing room clock that is 7 min late...just why.

Isnt life already complex enough...not being a Deepak Chopra here, but i feel completely inundated by what life has to offer. It just springs surprises one after the other like ice balls rolling down an avalanche. But sometimes it feels more sluggish than a snail, but that i think are intermittent oppurtunities to stop you falling off this roller coaster ride. When you glance back you realise that it really has been one hell of a ride. If you dont, probably your at the top spot of the ride where the buggy slows down almost to a halt...be alert, adrenaline is just a second away.

Oppurtunities knock your door...i dont know about others, but i invariably forget to answer those destiny's eager bells. The less eager ones i do attend, everybody does. But you just keep hope..this word hope has started sounding all the more cynical to me everyday. Its like clinging to something & getting all embarrased about it. But its like the last man standing when everything else just falls apart.

This is my problem, i end up getting all philo...& my sense of humour sucks. But i am having classes for that...Mr. Douglas Adams would you please stand up. My standing ovation or better , sashtang namaskar to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Please feel free to get yourself a copy.
Space, time & humour has never remained the same ever after this got published !

Category [ _Review_ ]

Alpha Said-Turvy

Alpha, he is a simple guy. Never took much care of himself, the typical shy guy you see around. He cant stare in peoples eyes & many a times fails to react in time while attempting to get the right words. But he is one of those self made people, who can turn themselves into almost anything they want to, the ones who have control over everything they do. And though Alpha knows this himself he still finds it difficult to be in terms with life, which he finds unimaginably overwhelming.

Alpha though very rational at heart, believes in angels. He even thinks there is a one that looks after him, who is always with him. He calls his angel Pi. The past year was very painful for Alpha, it still is. But he is gulping it all down his throat, he is strong, at will & at heart. He knows whatever be, Pi is always there, the twinkling but bright looking star, up in the sky. Pi once told Alpha, life is never too short to stop learning. Get your scores right the next time.

The Jupiter's moons, the Saturn's rings the Sun & the stars. Alpha always read all these bigwigs have the remote control. Your will is just a gamma ray trying to make way out of the pull of the black hole. But he never gave a damn to the bullshit, until now. His determined nature though very persistent, never got him what he wanted. This time he really wanted his wish to come true.

Knew it would bring magic to his helter-skelter life. But, ohh these buts, they take out the fun out of things. And let me tell you i have never ever seen Alpha so hopeless before. Pi knows it too. But Pi is confused, he doesnt know how to explain FATE to Alpha, and he knows whatever he does he cant get Alpha what he wanted.

Pi doesnt know how to get Alpha out of this gloom. Particularly because whenever Pi tried to, something bad had to happen to Alpha. Alpha now seems tired to fight, he has always been fighting. He feels cursed, one who has to strive hard for the simpler things. But its these simple things that matter to him, he knows they are special, they make him happy. He has come to think FATE considers him expendable. He fails to understand why is he so discontented. He even questions the existence of Pi these days. Is Pi an angel or just a onlooker, spectator. Alpha is troubled with questions & he doesnt have the answers.

It is time for me to help Alpha, i dont care if Pi doesnt care anymore.

Category [ _Unfiled_ ]

Uhh...what day is it ?

Life has become living the next day...i am trapped in this vicious grid of stagnancy. Things arent moving & nor am I. Just living endlessly as if trying to survive with the premonition of annihilation,...that was too much, sounds like the sci-fi i am reading is taking its toll...

Eventless, waiting just waiting, on all fronts for i donno what & why. Hope floats they say. But i am not in even mildest melancholy. Just that theres nothing worthwhile occuring, since eons. Or may be it is & my consciousness cant feel it or may be its too gradual. Patience is a wise man's crown...but hey wise man what worth is a crown !!

May be i havent yet graduated from the school / college days where everything changes every six months. Perhaps I havent realised yet that i am in that part of life where i will be next 30 years or so, with changes frequenting at their leisure. It remains for me to figure out a way...something that gives a perma-solution.

Then again, i think its just my second mind (that which keeps working in the background, the one that keeps humming the same tune throughout the day, [term courtesy, Paulo Coelho, The Valkyries]) that is feeling this heat. The first seems to be having a ball, enjoying the work, enjoying the flat pulse, knowing there are a billion storms coming...

What day is it...who cares..?

Category [ _Unfiled_ ]

There are stars staring at us...

At the Stourbridge fair in 1663, at twenty, he purchased a book on astrology "out of the curiosity to see what was there in it". He read it until he came to an illustration which he could not understand, because he was ignorant of trigonometry. So he bought a book on trigonometry but soon found himself unable to follow the geometrical arguments. So he found a copy of Euclid's Elements of Geometry, and began to read. Two years later he found differential calculus. He was Isaac Newton.

- Carl Sagan in Cosmos


If we look at what the text above means to say its : keep looking for things you dont know n you will tumble upon more things u dont know. And in the process u may* end up discovering things new in themselves. This is supposed to be the path of intellect, the way logic works n the place where it should end. So if everybody follows this policy, OMG, i think we would have evolution (intellectual) at speed of thought. Sounds very enticing, but alas we arent ideal beings.
Laziness, implied by ignorance rules our lives, n we dont pursue the necessary. I mean we do, but this latter "we" are inevitably rare. If we manage to increase this "we" we can fast forward our progress blazingly. But we are too much engrossed in our lives, n that seems natural, man is a social being first, intellectual after that...


* subject to one's iq:eq preference.

Category [ _Unfiled_ ]

Time

Planning
> since last 1 year to get a new belt
> since last 4 months to get a PanCard
> since last 5 weeks to get up early n go jogging
> since last 3 weeks to get a pair of socks
( no, none of the present are odoriferous )

Ignorance is bliss...basking in its glory more so. This is costing me dearly, n i turn a deaf ear to it very conveniently. ( my reasoning behind the cost i pay for having a sad bad belt is preposterously far fetched n hilarious, not mentionable ). And i have made it a resolution...new year being just a good occasion, to give up this flamboyance in the context of "doing the things in time".

This reminds me of The Fifth Element, sci-fi, very, the story seems like dilution of one of Arthur C Clarke's. It has one of the greatest lines i have ever heard regarding time, Time is not important, life is. Though this is contrary to everything, it gives you the feeling of why time is called as the 4th dimension. It has loads to say when it comes to lives of people...they are so engrossed into doing things in time, they forget the very purpose of all doings, life itself. Some mech batchs punchline on their sweats read Even time ticks by gears, mechanical rules , yup, so very true, mechanical rules, n the metaphysical is lost, crunched between the cogs n wheels of time.

But the harsh reality is that everything n anything is bound, bound by time... n theres nothing anybody can do about it, an absolute nothing.

Category [ _Unfiled_ ]

1st Day of 2005

People are divided into two groups. There are people who
get lucky, lucky by luck, lucky by coincidence. These people
take the coincidences as a sign of divine intervention, they
start believing that someone somewhere is looking for them.
They develop hope on this faith. They believe that miracles do
happen.

Then there are people who think coinidences happen by
coincidence n that luck isnt always there, its all probability,
50-50 chances of things to happen.Such people have hope on
the fact that there 50% favorable chances, but deep inside they
know that whatever happens they are on their own.
- Mel Gibson, Signs( though not a word to word excerpt)

So what kinda person are you ? A miracle man, or the other kind. Or better, a third kind ? I believe everyone needs considerable time n energy to figure this out.

I heard this piece of the movie while surfing...early morning, offcourse the early morn happened to be noon cause of the revelry on new year's eve.2004 was a very eventful year for me..so many things happened in so less time...i am feeling like am sitting in a time capsule hurtling forward at light speeds...and yes i am glued...waiting anxiously to what is coming next. With so many events to deal i needed tolerance levels more than ordinary, & i am glad to come out almost ;) unscathed...

I have always been, & will remain an avid dreamer and though I expect the modest, I keep longing for miracles to happen... i guess everybody does, n so do I from 2005.

Category [ _Unfiled_ ]

The Yo-Yo syndrome

Today was officially my last day on my current project.
Tomorrow onwards starts a whole new ball game...

I retouched the header again...i think now it looks
less noisy.

This phenomenon...i donno what to call it, i feel like my
life is all but a aimless, zig zag thing bereft of any zeal
n life itself. I get this feeling all the time when i try to
think over what happened through the day. Its more like
dragging along with a limping foot heavied by a stone
tied to the shoe string. But then when i look it from a bird's
eye view...that is say after a month or so i feel like great
going man, so many things i did, i screwed, i fixed n i
awaited n rushed at !! ( read things in a more generic aspect
here than just technical, life sucks with just technicality
attached to it ). And everyday i dont get the satisfaction
that i lived the day to its extent...but yes after a month its
like...what a well spent month !!

These extraordinarily ironical waves absorbed when felt at relative
distances are so confusing...sounds like Doppler effect or
something, or is it the relativity theory again...

I am pretty sure many people, my age may be experiencing this
phenomenon...ok let me give it a name...The Yo-Yo Syndrome...

ek paheli hain tu
nar naveli hain tu
jitna main suljhau...
aur ulhajti jaye...
khicha chala...jaaye...
kachche dhaage se saiyan...

great lyrics...explodes with a million interpretations..one of which
should be the thread battered over here.


Category [ _Unfiled_ ]