Thinking in Metaphor

I cannot, for the life of me, stop thinking in metaphor. My speech is riddled with simile. I understand the world best when I apply a reductive approach to it. I get animated and my arms start waving when I hit upon the right metaphor.

The other day I was talking about software design. We had a team that had gone and built a sub-system that did not talk to any others and just quietly did what it was supposed to. Now the task at hand was to integrate it into an ecosystem of other sub-systems. The only way I could talk about it was to compare it to an internal combustion engine that had been designed in isolation but now the block needed to be lowered into a chassis, and we needed to make sure all the connections were made and the structural integrity was OK and so on. I probably sounded incredibly patronizing as I said it, but I could not help myself. I was dazzled by the image. People likely went on mute and groaned...

Know Thyself - An Essay

Reflect!

An Indian actor commends an Army officer for using a human shield and in fact recommends using an author he disagrees with as a human shield. A (now powerful) deranged 70 something lecher tweets inanities from the White House. Elections are swayed by industrial strength trolling. A vacuous polity hides behind sensationalist rhetoric.

This leaks into day to day interactions in real life too. I was shocked the other day when speaking to a friend casually she suddenly offered "I really hate Gandhi. Something about him just makes you hate him". Really - hatred? Is there no room for nuance? Can you not support whatever politics and historical narrative you believe in and still have room in your mind to say Gandhi might've had a good thought or two? When did it become fashionable to spit on the man who stood for non-violence?

Every day, each one of us stares at the empty "What's on your mind?" box on Facebook or "What's happening" boxes on Twitter and proceed to either up the vitriol. score a cheap laugh, or like and re-tweet our opinion to the world, regardless of whether it really is worthwhile. That I am doing so now adds to the irony. :)

Everything always has to have two sides - no more, no less! The minute an event takes place a narrative and a counter-narrative is crafted, and "fake news" or "presstitutes" or some such over-generalization becomes the battle-cry for *both* sides! Talking heads and champions for each side sprout so fast TV screens run out of real estate accommodating them, and the average viewer's glazed eyes go in search of the volume reduction or mute buttons on remotes. They do not however, switch channels...

Forgotten is the fact that "with us or against us" used to be (correctly) looked at as a naive world-view. Surely we can admit to the fact that Kashmir is an absolute shit-show for all its people, that they have crappy lives, and still say it is Indian territory?! Surely my patriotism is not put in question because I feel like that Major was perpetrating a crime against humanity and this was a heinous act? Is morality one-sided - they ask - why don't you preach to the stone-pelters. Well yes absolutely morality is one-sided! We can never force another person to be moral; the choice always is whether or not we will do the right thing regardless of the cost? Anything else would be moral relativism of the highest order!

There was a time when everyone did not have a voice. If you were outraged by something the only way to react was taking to the streets. A privileged few had access to the media to air their views and they would drive the conversation. Things did not change until they reached a boiling point, and there are always those who take advantage of the confusion of revolutions large and small and perpetuate their agendae.

I would not wish a return to such times and I do not think we have really left those times completely; but I don't think we've reached the next step either. I don't think the world is ready for everyone to have a voice. I think participation in polity is strengthening mobs, not enlightening souls. And mobs are easily manipulated.

The world-stream - that ineffable aggregation of TV, radio, the web, and social media - is a fire hose and we drink from it at the cost of sanity.

So please - the next time you feel like expressing yourself, sleep on it. I did, before I wrote this. Let your expression not be reactive or a search for the next hundred likes, thousand followers, or fifty re-tweets. That is the way to join a mob. Let your expression be considered, deliberate, and tempered by deep thought.

The urge to win the argument at the cost of the cause, the urge to escalate the hysteria, scoring points by going viral - these things are ruining public discourse.

They call it going viral for a reason you know - these gotchas are an infection in the polity. It is time to find a vaccine. Inoculate yourself.

Know thyself.

Dialogue - a poem

How do I describe a life to you,
If you've never lived it?

A sea of words rises and falls
Froths and eddies
On the shores of your understanding
And above it
So far asky
Soars the gull of this thought

How do I describe a sight to you,
If you've never seen it?

An apple pie wafts upon a sill
Warmth and cinnamon
That pinch of sourness on your tongue
And a memory
Unbidden
Is the longing for joys past

How do I describe a taste to you,
If you've never smelled it?

A piano key finishes the crescendo
Sadness and joy
A ringing in your ear that is silence
Applause as
You crave
An encore that shall not be

How do I describe a sound to you,
If you've never heard it?

Two hands brushing in the darkness
Fear and exhilaration
A shiver down the spine,
Breathlessness​,
Awakening
Promises made needing no words

How do I describe a touch to you,
If you've never felt it?

Dimly lit is the path to this moment
Incandescent, unafraid
I peer into the gloom ahead, dispersing
Curiosity
The mist parts
Revelations​, climaxes, conclusions without end

How would you describe a life to me,
If I've never lived it?

Topical Fruits

So I experienced the most vivid food memory, one that made me laugh. Standing in our kitchen, doing the gloriously icky, painstaking, and enjoyable task of making aamras (runny squeezed mango pulp is the closest English approximation, often with added sugar to balance the sour, or with a dash of milk) for dinner, I stood with one fleshy mango seed (koy) in each fist and squeezed, letting all the juice and pulp from it run into the container below. When I opened my hands, the koyi were completely juiced out. No further processing required - just dump them on the pile of skins.

I make less of a mess now...

I giggled as I realized I'd finally attained one of two food related superpowers that as a child I used to think only grown-ups have: one squeeze mango koy processing! (Oh, and let it be said that no one, but no one in living memory, ever came close to juicing a fleshy mango koy in one squeeze like my grandma, Mai aaji.)

I was transported to a kitchen from my childhood, where like a starving doggie I would wait by my mom's and my aaji's side as they prepared the day's aamras. Every discarded skin, every processed koy was handed to me for a final, slobbery clean up job. I never wanted the koy that aaji processed, because it was far too well squeezed - mom's koy however usually had a few fleshy bits still on. She spoiled me rotten, that woman...

Quantum Break - Wow!

Quantum Break is the most innovative gaming experience I've had in over a decade. Yep, I said it. An enjoyable first-person shooter science fiction (time travel) game, it is to my mind the first true 'Xbox One Exclusive' that would justify a purchase of the console. It was marketed as a hybrid video game and TV show, and what it really is, is 5 acts of gameplay interspersed with 4 slickly produced, tautly written, and very well-acted episodes. Shawn Ashmore and Dominic Monaghan deliver serviceable performances both in the TV elements and in their virtual avatars.