Why Santa Claus Pisses Me Off - Twice!

No one ever tells you Santa Claus has a raven called Hugin and another called Munin, or that he rides a eight-legged horse called Sleipneir. Or that he originates in Scandinavia, not so much as lives at the North Pole, and that at one of his residences, Gladsheim, he has at his beck and call twelve judges called the Diar, who are not in the least bit concerned whether you've been good or bad this year.

Odin Allfather, Wotan, The Wanderer, is just one myth co-opted by, and rolled into, the legend of Santa Claus. The eight-legged horse may have become an eight reindeer sleigh, and Gladsheim may have become Santa's workshop and factory of happiness... but that is neither here nor there.

An economy has grown around this legend, one that slathers the entire world in red and green ever December, and that seems designed to keep retailers merry and their registers a-jingling; but that is not my problem with Santa. I'm happy to ignore the blatant consumerism that has in turn co-opted the Santa legend in modern times. (If they didn't have Santa they'd invent another mascot). No, my problem with Santa is two-fold:

I see Santa Claus as an enemy - The Enemy - of myth. And I see him also as an enemy of Reason. And yes, I do have an explanation...

The Phantom Menace of Middle-Earth?

I don't remember The Hobbit (the book) as well as I do The Lord of the Rings. I have read it only once, several years ago, and at a breakneck pace (as filler, almost) during my first reading of The Silmarillion. LOTR and the overall Tolkein lore I have read/ mined a lot over time... Perhaps this is why I was able to watch Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey not as an adaptation, but as a prequel to the magnificent LOTR trilogy. And it works!

I loved it, with one or two reservations. I will absolutely watch it again in HFR, having seen it in IMAX 3D. Next week then? Any takers?

"The Phantom Menace" of the LOTR movies this is most definitely NOT. Although... The Phantom Menace would've been an excellent name for this movie, given its attention to Mirkwood :)

Navel Gazing

I have never been someone -
Anyone! - other than I
Speaking here of feet,
Eyes, ears, nose, skin, and, tongue.
Not mere shoes!

How would it feel then, (one fine day)
To awaken as another?
In thought, memory, and dream
Preference, manner, affection
In appearance, relation, in obsession

Would I still be I, and recall
What yesterday felt like?
Or will I have forgotten me;
A faded gong once the hour is past;
Stillness following the ripple...

Has this already happened?
This morn when we awoke
Do I write as Another
In unwitting salute to the I that was...But yesterday?

Am I you? Are you me, right now?
Through time and space, hurtling
Being one another - Aren't then,
Love, rage, envy, lust, pity, hate, empathy
Rather dipped in irony?

Heady thoughts to assail our heart,
And on sated stomach, this Friday afternoon!
Bladder girded, leaping into revelry,
I bequeath the inevitable hangover
To you; for tomorrow!

Cloud Atlas - A Review in Three Metaphors

'Cloud Atlas', the film directed by the Wachowski siblings and Tom Twyker, based on the book by David Mitchell, is a remarkable film. Nothing like this has ever been attempted before, on many levels, and it is likely that nothing close to this will be attempted for some time to come. It is as much a 'paradigm shift' as the first "Matrix" was, and is perhaps best compared not to other movies, but to something like "Faust" in that it is grand, operatic, and yet fundamentally an exploration of the human condition.

Cinema legend tells us that when Darren Aronofsky saw "The Matrix" in 1999, he... "walked out of The Matrix with Jared and I was thinking, 'What kind of science fiction movie can people make now? The Wachowskis basically took all the great sci-fi ideas of the 20th century and rolled them into a delicious pop culture sandwich that everyone on the planet devoured. Suddenly Philip K. Dick's ideas no longer seemed that fresh. Cyberpunk? Done." Feeling challenged the director collaborated with Ari Handel, to toss around ideas for a new film they would eventually call "The Fountain".

I loved The Fountain - it was the one film Cloud Atlas reminded me most of. And Mr Aronofsky? Looks like the ball is back in your court, sir... the Wachowskis have raised the bar. Again!

It is impossible to describe this movie in regular terms. I cannot commit the atrocity of trying to "summarize" the plot. I cannot give you a dramatis personae because it is beside the point. Having not yet read the novel I cannot put forth a tirade on the literary underpinnings and compare the book and the movie. If I was being crude, I'd describe it as the love child born out of an orgy that V for Vendetta, Pulp Fiction, The Fountain, Blade Runner, Faust, and Mutiny on the Bounty had, because it has DNA from each one of them... and yet. Yet. This is a whole new ballgame.

Nor does this movie play the game of regular terms. It will likely not be a box office hit, and one is heartened by the fact that it was made independently. Even if it makes a loss, it is good to know that there are people (despite the knuckleheaded corporatised studios) that spend money on good art. It deserves (but may not win) an Oscar or twenty. It is almost three hours long, but was never dull for me.

I think it is also impossible to review this movie - although Roger Ebert has reliably done a beautiful job of it by employing the Churchill quote about Russia; "it is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma". Let me then attempt to review this movie, without spoilers, and not in the usual way. Perhaps fittingly, here follows a review in three metaphors...

iExperimented

That's no Apple!

The Rebel Alliance has acquired a Death Star.

Zounds!

Listen, I am no Apple fan when it comes to their software or policies, let alone attitude. I have always admired their hardware though... and you have to give them credit for upending conventional wisdom time and again, whether with the iPod, or iPhone, or iPad. So when the chance came to give an iPad a real world whirl, I took it.

My dad got a (then New, now old as of yesterday) 3rd generation 32 GB iPad, with WiFi and 3G (which I won't be using). He had trouble getting it to work for him, and gave it up in the end as too much of an effort to unlearn Android (he loves his Note). My mom meanwhile couldn't be bothered with unlearning Windows and so never quite took to it. Result?

Here I am, with iPad in hand. Free. Apple. Hardware. Narf!

I've now spent 4 days playing around with it... I'm sure I will eventually get to a point where I'll jailbreak it, and beg the wizards over at XDA to come up with an Android Key Lime Pie ROM I can put on it - but first, I thought I'd validate how much of my own Android love/ Apple 'hate' are justified.

Like that TV show where some racist people were made to live - for, what... 40 days? - with the very people they hated to see if racism survives reality, I'm willing to be a guinea pig and write about my iPad using experience without prejudice. Maybe over 40 days, maybe less, maybe more.

So, enough prelude... Hail of bullets follows, sorted into categories I made up on the fly...

A Sigh of Dust

My sister pinged me with this link, and this introduction and instruction: "have you heard of this guy? I read him now and then... some one had fwded his blog called A Dust Over India... read at leisure, and let me know what u think of him...". And so now I have.

It occurs to me, that there are at least five reactions possible to this article on the part of any "red-blooded" Indian (whatever that means):

One: Go boiling mad, counter fervently,
Two: Get depressed, shed a helpless tear,
Three: Get idealistic, pick a damn fool cause and get to work,
Four: Go into denial, focus on the silver lining, move along. Nothing to see here...

As you probably guessed mine was none of the above. Me? I sigh.

Five: I read this, sit back, and sigh.

F-ed Up Agitprop

Look at that - I'm angry! That's new!

Listen, I don't like to wade into politics OK? I am not one to shy from a debate or (even better) from ranting, but I live a very comfortable, even blase existence... until it ran into this completely egg-headed bit of propaganda released, apparently, by the government of my nation.

It's just... stupid, and I went on to rant about it on a social network when a friend shared it. What follows therefore is not cogent thought (ahem) but a rant. Unfiltered, uncensored. Maybe it's a product of the fact that I had a long day - but I'm ticked off, and just couldn't help but write this up...

Unconditioned Surrender?

Captivating  NYT graphic 

As usual, another day, another thought (and blog) provoking article in the NYT. This article, and a very nice accompanying graphic, highlight the quandary that is presented by, on the one hand, an increasingly warming planet and on the other an increasingly affluent, tropical, and urban populace that would like nothing better than to beat the heat (thus adding to energy scarcity and global warming problems).

So forget global warming and climate change for the moment, right? Even if you are a "climate skeptic" (and it is difficult for me to give you that), one walk around office blocks or residential communities here in India will (not scientifically, but still) show you how there is more latent demand for 'AC' units in any one major Indian city than all of the continental US. The problem, as highlighted by the recent epic failure of two major grids in Northern India, is that there just isn't enough power to fuel all those ACs (which are increasingly affordable)!

The article also points out that air conditioning isn't a nice to have feature any more either - there are plenty of studies showing it helps human beings be more productive at work and have better health overall (when used 'correctly'). Anecdotal evidence suggests also that a lot of modern architecture, obsessed as it is with fitting as many people into as little space as possible in offices and in homes, actually demands air conditioning to make the buildings habitable!

So what is to be done?

Mortal Moron of Meluha

That "The Immortals of Meluha" is a #1 national bestseller should spark off an agitation where every book lover in India should fast until they are mummified.

Here's a quick summary of my quick read-through...

Page 1 - 4: Tribal leader Shiva standing near Manasarovar smokes marijuana (without any discernible effect). As he walks back to his hut the author marvels that the huts of this village are more luxurious than others in the region - a grown man can stand up inside one of them. Yeah, because no one else wants to die of the @#&^$% cold. Low roofs serve a purpose, dingbat. (In my defense, this was still page 2 or 3 - I was expecting world-building).

The tribe gets an invitation to immigrate (I kid you not) to Meluha, the "richest and most powerful empire" in the world. Apparently once there, they can pay their taxes and nothing more is asked of them. One suspects from the blurb that there is a hidden agenda. Oooh... intriguing!

The Dark Knight Rises (To the Everest Base Camp)

Gather round, kids, and let me tell you the story of how one of the most iconic movie trilogies of its time ended. The second part of the trilogy was one of the greatest, most beloved movies of all time, and great expectations rested on the shoulders of the third - the epic conclusion! The creative force behind the trilogy decided he wanted to close with a bang. He lined up the biggest plot device he could imagine and did everything right... but ended up with a conclusion that was ultimately less loved  than the second part - even though it was crafted with precision, it got accused of being a color-by-numbers predictable ending. Oh, and the big plot device, was a lazily reused Death Star...

You probably guessed right: the trilogy was Star Wars, the conclusion was Return of the Jedi, and the year was 1983.

But hang on you say... wasn't this blog about The Dark Knight Rises, you ask? Well ok... tell you what... go reread the opening paragraph of this quasi-review/ pseudo-rant. Just replace "Death Star" with "Nuclear Weapon", "Star Wars" with Chris Nolan's Batman Trilogy, and 1983 with 2012. Go on... I'll wait...

On Creation

It is a pity
The Inner Eye cannot
Wield pencil, brush, or, paint
If it could,
I would paint...

From the left,
An Olympian hand
Elbow shrouded in finest silk
Squeezing with abandon
A mortal chest, until,
From the puny eyes, ears, and mouth,
Bursts forth
A brilliant yellow light
To arrest
A Stygian dark

And I would call it
"Creation!"

Or perhaps
I would paint...

Two mortals,
Cowering, and Confident,
Atop a chariot
On a field of battle
No glory, gold, no halos,
Only kin,
Arrayed for slaughter,
Adorned in boiled leather;
One holds in his hands
A puny bow, awaiting
Stone tipped arrows
From a wooden quiver
Dipped, in lethal intent
The other spews forth
A steady stream
Of heady justification,
Deadlier than any weapon
Under a sky
Blood-red with fate

And I would call it
"War!"

A pity, thus,
(Or relief!)
That my Eye but paints
With words...

Speaking of Tongues

Language Families in India
via Wikipedia

The reason I write today is this article by Saritha Rai on the NY Times' India blog, which my sister linked to. It laments the fact that the next generation in urban India is cut off linguistically from the country/ region/ their homeland because they speak - and think - in English. For me personally, this article has come about twenty years too late, because I have no hesitation in saying that English has always been my first language - perhaps not my mother tongue, or native tongue, but always my operational tongue (if you will).

I think it's a great article - but I also think it is an article that only scratches the surface of a deeper, wider phenomenon that "English as a First Language" is merely a side-effect of... what follows in this post is a predictably lengthy meditation on this phenomenon, as opposed to the symptom.

Chronicles of the Black Company

The Omnibus Edition

So I bit the bullet one fine evening last month, and on impulse purchased the first volume of Glen Cook's "Black Company" series. This is the omnibus edition of the first three books in the (thus far) ten book sequence from Cook, comprising the books "The Black Company", "Shadows Linger", and "The White Rose". I read the Kindle edition.

My interest in Glen Cook is explained in large part by my being an unabashed fan-boy for the works of Steven Erikson (SE) and Ian Cameron Esselmont (ICE), who are the co-creators of my favorite fantasy series - or universe, really. SE's Malazan Book of the Fallen is a true magnum opus, and ICE's Novels of Malaz are great additions to the vast universe they've gamed out. Time and again, I had heard that SE and ICE owe a great debt of inspiration to Glen Cook (they even admit themselves that there are elements in their books that they ripped off of Cook wholesale!)... I thought it was about time I started tracing the antecedents for SE and ICE's work. Who knows? Doing so might even inspire me to complete my abortive "Malazan Mediation"...

This then is a reflection (not quite a review) on my first run-in with SE and ICE's genre daddy! At the risk of giving away the gut punch of this article early, let me say this: as soon as I finished "The White Rose", I ordered the remaining seven published books in paperback from Flipkart, because they don't seem to be in the Kindle store!

Our Peacock Apes The Eagle

The New India?

This is a response, rambling per usual, to a thought provoking article by Akash Kapur, whose identity in a sense straddles America and India. Every day, anyone living in India is witness to any number of 'Americanisms' introduced in our day to day lives. Not all of them are bad, and not all are good.

Supermarkets and fast food such because they are killing traditional Indian (sustainable) farming and health. Shopping malls bring with them consumerism of a at times revolting magnitude. Builders of gated communities, whose projects are at times unsupported and in the long term unsupportable by existing infrastructure are building their own little fiefdoms complete with power and water grids. Any one living near a major city is witness to large roadworks and an explosion in the number of cars on the road, and all the attendant evils of pollution.


One fondly remembers greenery with nostalgia, as concrete rushes to fill the void... and as you look at this concrete jungle, you wonder how long it will be before it breaks down for lack of water, of power, of fuel, and there is blood in the streets...

"The Man" and Curiosity

The Trial of Galileo
From Lightandmatter.com

Something about this Op-Ed article by David Brooks in the NY Times rankles me.

Forget the specific story of Jefferson Bethke who (in a viral video) said he doesn't like "the Church" but loves Jesus, and then went on to backtrack when a blogger, Kevin DeYoung, made what seemed to him a persuasive and perhaps better informed counter-argument. Ignore for the moment the question of whether or not the teachings of Jesus or the various Christian church systems are worth living by - that isn't what concerns me.

Here's what got my goat. David Brooks takes this example and then generalizes to say rebellion against established ideas is not a good idea in itself, for most people. (No, this rant is not about the 1% v 99%)

Apple and Utopia

Apple Devices Image credit: TechGenie

Call me slow, but until today I hadn't read the two New York Times pieces that have been in the news lately. The first was about Apple's manufacturing getting off-shored and whether medium skill manufacturing jobs (the ones that created the American middle class) will ever return to the US (short answer: No). The second was about Apple's supply chain and worker conditions in factories in China, that are, to put it mildly, inhuman. Workers work 70 hour weeks routinely, make hardly any money, have workplaces and working conditions that would make any Westerner scream and any Indian grimace (is true!), and have alarming suicide rates.


I must ask you, gentle reader, to first read these pieces in full before proceeding. Yeah, I'm a long-form kind of guy. Seriously, off with you... shoo!


So how did the world react to these 'exposes', that to the informed person merely brought a light to bear on what was well known - or at least very well suspected? The first article was met with the usual election year responses over in the US. Some chitchat about manufacturing having left American shores, noises about 'new economy' jobs not filling up the resulting vacuum quick enough, and so on. The second was met with outrage (as well it should), even as the cognoscenti acknowledged that Apple was an industry leader in policing and bringing to light such abuses, and really... unless we want an iPad to cost several hundred dollars more, nothing can be done about it...


What was my reaction? Multi-faceted...