Assorted Thoughts- Decaffeinated Age & Anna Movement

A lazy Sunday  made me to switch away from the optimizing macroeconomic models that I have been working on to write something different with loose ends. Optimization in economics can be quite an objective process where satisfying certain conditions can lead to a sort of 'optimal result'. But in normal life 'optimal' is a very subjective process. Its not easy to pin down some consensus conditions to reach a 'particular optimal state' of being.


One Silver Lining of the Anna Movement - Hearing the sad news of the new horrific rape case today made me to think are we a nation of rapist with so much repression. With callous government and brutal police force, de-facto India seems like a banana republic . Highly class driven society where 'human sensitivity' is class bound. Democracy in India is more like what Zizek expresses about pornography, which is de-sexualization of sex. In the same way, India is a democracy without democracy.

The new tradition of mass protests with wider media attention (Anna Effect) seems the way for getting some 'justice' in India. I think this is quite an important change from the slumber in which we all seemed to be immersed. Some opponents argue this thwarts democracy, but then I thought have these guys really thought what is a 'democracy'.  But is this the only way forward. No but I think this can be quite important for other transition paths to follow. Zizek explains this phenomenon in a Hegelian perspective. Hegel uses the word “rabble” for those people who are not part of the organized social sphere and cannot participate in the social production process thus not able to reform the ills of the society. These people express their discontent in the form of “irrational” protest or violence or as Hegel calls “abstract negativity”.  The apathy of the 'common' folks seems to have reached a tipping point or can be said it had reached quite long ago but then it required a trigger to act.
As Zizek rightly nails this conundrum of our times in these words, "What function does our celebrated freedom of choice serve when the only choice is effectively between playing by the rules and (self) destructive violence" 

Decaffeinated Age ! - An age where happiness is bought not sought, an age where people 'Like' things by pressing a button, where music is based more on 'hits' then it really touching your heart/mind. Where people drink (wine/beer) for the sake of drinking without really enjoying the drink.
 I was thinking what are the new characteristics of the folks in this generation from the earlier generation. The whole generation of the social media has made the new internet folks more vocal and more asserting. Which is good in many ways for social issues etc. But as Chomsky rightly said internet is like a hammer. It can be put to constructive use but it can also be destructive when banged on someones head. The 'argumentative Indians' mostly can be found on the social media posturing /asserting/bullying/abusing etc.

 Less attention spans and lack of deep focus on an issue etc characterizes the FB generation. It seems such an 'exaggerated' narcissistic enterprise which somehow deepens the egoistic traits. People seem to have comments for everything in the world. Its good to be part of a debate but most of the time it doesn't seem useful and lacks any constructive thought process. It seems everyone has become a 'citizen journalist' trying to get a news bite but in this case creating 'news' out of thin air.

When the Thought was made to rest

(Some excerpts from my notes during my meditation retreat in India)

The mind being made to meditate is a counter process to its existence. Mind which is a collection of infinite thoughts thrives on it. The process of making the mind to meditate makes it quite uncomfortable especially the first time when its undertaken. The mere ability to observe and listen has been time memorial considered to be the characterstic of wise persons.

Day 1

My first day of meditation in Tiruvanamalai also was not an easy task. Suddenly when I started the process, thoughts seemed to have bombarded me and the mind was lost in many eclectic events. This happened especially because I was meditating properly after a long time. It is like a process when there are so many insects in a room and disinfectant is sprayed to clean it creating chaos at the beginning. The process of observing your own thoughts is an exercise undertaken by very few individuals. The resistance for silence or meditation is so huge in the mind as it rightly understands the cataclysmic impact it would entail. When the process of 'enquiry' calms the mind with lesser thoughts and eventually when a thoughtless state is reached, recent scientific evidence also shows that there is some positive transformation that occurs in the brain.The silence reminds me of the process when there is perfect servicing and cleaning of the mind like of a car done in an effecient car repair shop.

At the end of first days meditation, the dreams experienced at night were more vivid and there were thoughts that emanated from early childhood. The dreams sometimes are quite weird. Here I don't think Freud's interpretation would be right as it is not always fulfillment of my desires consciously or unconsiously. The scattering of thoughts seems to me to be a sign of thoughts beings unbundled and would eventually cast away its moorings.

Day 2

Early morning innocuous alarm woke me up and I felt that the sleep was sufficient. After having wonderful idlee's and upma for breakfast along with a fine filter coffee, I went back to my room to read and relax a bit. Lunch is early but is really a paradise for the mouth. Then I had a short nap after which I went to the meditation room in the afternoon. This was the main hall during Ramana Maharshi's time where he used to sit in silence transmitting his teachings in silence. In a sense there is no teaching. The only teaching is to know 'Who am I'. The answer lies within everyone and has to be found or has to be identified. To be precise there is no identifier or anything to be identified, there is the process when 'I' perishes and 'Self' prevails.

The meditation started with lesser thoughts and there was more calmness. The meditation went for more than 1 hour and after that I went for the evening tea. I thought of buying some books as I had not much to read. After getting the books I went to my room and the process of reading was much easier with mind reduced of distractions.

With every proceeding day of calmness in the mind, the memory seems to be in full power with great retention abilities and there was a sense of fulfillment and joy experienced in every moment. Being alone literally didn't make me to think about others. The silence makes the mind enjoy the moment which theoretically it has swallowed and said many times. This time I realised this distinctly when I was in no mood to talk to anyone as I was really rejoicing and fully observed with myself in silence. 'Fully absorbed in oneself' may seem like a egoistic exercise swimming in one's (ego's) own thoughts. But here the ego was diminished and it was as if flowing with the wave.

 Meeting ST

Meeting a person with no ego is a great experience and event which rarely happens in once lifetime. And a person with no memory who literally lives in the present is even rarer. It was a sort of a magical experience being with such a person and listening to his talks. Magical realism seems more real when I heard ST speak. There was no doubt in my mind that what he was saying was true, but to an outsider it might seem all airy.

Is not time the most puzzling and distorting thing to us. 

The Art of Poetry - Jorge Luis Borges

To gaze at a river made of time and water
and remember Time is another river.
To know we stray like a river
and our faces vanish like water.

To feel that waking is another dream
that dreams of not dreaming and that the death
we fear in our bones is the death
that every night we call a dream.

To see in every day and year a symbol
of all the days of man and his years,
and convert the outrage of the years
into a music, a sound, and a symbol.

To see in death a dream, in the sunset
a golden sadness--such is poetry,
humble and immortal, poetry,
returning, like dawn and the sunset.

Sometimes at evening there's a face
that sees us from the deeps of a mirror.
Art must be that sort of mirror,
disclosing to each of us his face.

They say Ulysses, wearied of wonders,
wept with love on seeing Ithaca,
humble and green. Art is that Ithaca,
a green eternity, not wonders.

Art is endless like a river flowing,
passing, yet remaining, a mirror to the same
inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same
and yet another, like the river flowing.

--translated by Anthony Kerrigan

IEHE Days Recalled:Tendua (Leopard) Gazing Expedition

Tendua (Leopard) Gazing Expedition.

(Wrote as part of a memoir for a friend (Alakh) as his Birthday gift from his wife)

The effervescent undergraduate days are normally filled with ‘bubbly’ incidents which juggle between sense and nonsense. The days at IEHE  were also filled with such vignettes. Scratching and recalling those old memories,  somehow I realise that it was destined that such a group of people had to meet, who were basically ‘innocuous minds’ endowed with ‘spontaneous niceness’ and a penchant to discuss on ideas or issues (most of the time blabbering !!) . One common characteristic of this group was the ‘groundedness’ inculcated in them from the small town and cities from which all came and the eagerness to know more about the world. Bhopal was the appropriate place for these bunch of innocuous minds to converge which itself was a  neutral lesser known capital.

The group arguably had an eclectic array of minds. And in this group there was Mr. Simple (Alakh), simpler than us ‘khurapati’ simpletons. Not overplaying ‘simplicity’  but we all were simple minded folks in the sense with no addiction to alcohol or smoking (sometimes a beer or two would quench our real thirst and maybe some whisky/vodka would save us on a cold night),, a set of harmless chaps, with the capability of throwing in lot of ideas and stories with “rationality’’ lurking somewhere and ‘wise thoughts’ sometimes mysteriously emanating  from nowhere. We can be considered appropriately the microcosm of the ‘Argumentative Indians’.

Alakh was one of the most affable of our wonderful group. If I may recall Alakh had a ‘Vivekanandian’ world view towards things during that time. There were lot of ‘philosophical’ discussions which we all used to have especially with Alakh at places including the beautiful Kaliasot Dam.

But here I would like to write  particularly about an interesting expedition - where Alakh, Mayank and me had a sort of a close encounter with ‘death’.

There was a trivial news that had captured our imaginations and became an obsession of our dear friend Mayank. I can remember he used to come to the place where Aruni, Brahm and Prashant  stayed and invariably I and Alakh could also be found there. In this place words such as ‘revolution’, ‘action’,’corruption..fundas about life ...adrak wali chai..could be regularly heard.

One evening with Tendua in his mind, and unconsciously fascinated and inspired by Mowgli, Mayank came to undertake his dream of finding the wild animal.

The conversation would be something like this...

Mayank - (in a serious tone as if hatching a plot of espionage)... Tum logo ne Tendua ke baare mein suna hain..

And then someone would say (...Prashant) -  

 Hain koi kah to raha tha..  sab farji bada hai... tumhare jaise dhurrandaro ko uksane ke liye..

Another voice -  Kya mayank babu....Tendua pakadne ki soch rahe ho kya...

Mayank -  Raat ko jab Mummy- Papa so jaayenge .tab hum  van leke chalte hain Tendua ko trace karne.  Kabhi Tendua nahi dekha hain yaar...

Another voice - .sahi hain ..sahi hai ….kab chale ?

Mayank had a couple of thrilling encounters, one with Alakh and me, and the other with Aruni and Brahm. If I may recall correctly,the encounter in the case of Aruni ,Brahm and Mayank  was much closer  as they ‘smelled’ the Tendua around  and 'imaginatively' escaping the claws of the Tendau jumped in a filmy style into Mayank’s maruti van and hence making history in the present pages.

Unfortunately in our case, there was no foul smell of Tendua but  just an eerie fragrance of the unpopulated green beautiful Kerwa Dam Road and then sudden outburst of repetitive voices from inside the van...

‘kuch awaaz to aaye...kuch sunayi diya ! Haan kuch to sunayi diya...

Nahi... kuch nahi !!

And then we may stop the van anticipating to see the ‘Azad Tendua’.

But we didn’t realise it was not the danger of the Tendua but another danger waiting for us on our way. As we were going back, we came to a crossing where the sloping road was submerged in the river. Time was past dusk and the light was bleak to estimate the depth of the water on the road. Alakh gave a warning that this may be dangerous to cross and I was also not decisive to go. But our ‘Aar ya Paar’ (one with Jackie Shroff) movie inspired Mayank (with music of the movie playing in his van) thought we can do it. Not anticipating fully the perils of the huge lake (Bada Talaab) besides us, he pressed the accelerator and vroom the van went. Without much speck of time passing  we realised that the van has got stuck in the water.

In hindsight we realised the mistake was the gear changing done in the water which led to the water flooding inside and hence locking the gearbox. Now we realised and saw to our horror water on both side of us and we sort of freaked out. Not ‘sort of’ but really freaked out. The calmer guy out of us was Alakh.

Alakh - Koi nahi..kuch nahi hoga..

Now we had two tasks in hand, to save ourself and to save the van. The flow of the water was strong. We ‘wisely’ reached the opposite side of the flow and held on tightly to the van not necessarily trying to save us but the van.

The conversation was something like this ..

Yaar band baj gayi !!.....

Puree jaan se gaadi ko pakdo !!....

Yaar paani Thanda hai !...

Alakh ne sahi bola tha !.

But after a while fortunately we saw a group of villagers passing by and they stopped seeing us holding to the van.

ONE VOICE - Paani mein fus gaye kya... ( we might have thought of saying -  Nahi yaha pani ke beech main gadi pe masti mar rahe hai)

Arre Bhaiya aake thodi madad kar do yaar.. paani mein fus gaye hai !!

And hence we were saved !

Then we went to Alakh’s place and if I may recall correctly had some tasty samosas which Aunty had made with adrak wali chai which we enjoyed while narrating our story. Then after that Alakh dropped us back home one by one in his Hero Puch.

When the Guitar Struck Again !

There is an unexpected yearning that knocks the door of the mind to enter it and entertain it. Music is one such thing that the mind yearns if left unnoticed for a while. Having not heard the guitars strings for a few months , my mind craved for the strings to soothe it. Guitar strings have this somewhat uncanny ability to pull the joy out of us. I thought of hearing some Rock guitar greats that I have loved hearing for more than a decade now. The spirit of rock shares a great experience of life...
Life is not to be lived in conformity
It is meant to be thrown overboard into uncharted waters
That would make us swim into the deep seas
Letting us know what is wild,
getting us to know that life is not mild. 

(Click on the songs to hear it)
David Gilmour of the Pink Floyd group was one of my early and has remained my consistent favourites -
Wish You Were here
Uncomfortably Numb
Marooned

Jimmy Page (Led Zepellin) may be one of the most innovative and trancelike guitarist in the rock history
Stairway to Heaven ,Babe I’m gonna leave you, Whole lotta love, Heartbreaker

Eric Clapton brings simple joy - Layla (version 1, version 2 , version 3) All versions are sort of different.
Cocaine
,While My Guitar Gently Weeps (and here original with George Harrison)

Guitar Maverick- Jimmy Hendrix  - All Along the Watchtower , Little Wing.
Dire Straits - Private Investigations, Sultan of Swing, Telegraph Road

Maggot Brain ...Funkadelic- Two shots down you would feel the beauty of the trance like guitar.
Eagles-Hotel California - Unplugged

Santana- Black Magic Woman
Gipsy Kings | Flamenco Tangos
Departed Guitar Theme

Requiem: Mozart's Tryst with Death

There is deathly beauty in Mozart’s requiem especially as this masterpiece was his last work. I have to confess that Mozart’s music doesn't stir me much but his requiem is an exception.

The story goes that Mozart was commissioned by a stranger to write the requiem. He had never written a requiem earlier, and so he absorbed himself in finding the true funeral music.While writing the music, he came to realise that he was writing the requiem for himself. Legend goes that death dictated the music for him, and in exchange took his life. This might seem far-fetched but the amazing part was his original manuscript of the requiem didn’t have any corrections, as if the music was already completed in his head. 

There are many powerful funeral musics composed in the Western Classical repertoire such as the hypnotic Mahler's 5th Symphony, the beautiful Funeral March of Chopin (Sonata 2), Beethoven's Funeral March , the melodramatic Verdi's Requiem and the austere Brahm's German requiem. But I have to say that Mozart's requiem is most unsettling to hear. Being a big Mahler admirer, I enjoy listening his fifth. But listening that music doesn't unsettle you as much as Mozart's requiem. The real power of music can be felt in these requiems.

Appassionata : Emotional Outburst of Beethoven

Great works of art are mostly produced when emotions stab the limits of the minds. My favourite and considered by many as the greatest piano sonata 'Appassionata' also emerged in such an emotional heightened state. Hurt in love, completely shattered and converging towards deafness impelled Beethoven to produce one of the finest music of emotional expressionism. The music starts in with chords which are melancholic and portray despair but then out this despair emerges a music of an indomitable spirit. The music sort of explodes portraying the invincibility of his character  There is a mark of introspection that also reverberates in the music with constant questioning which seems to reaffirm the invincibility of his spirit to never give up. But the sonata has a tragic ending. It is the sonata where his life's tragic glimpse is shown with his spirit trying to overcome it.  There are variations of tragedy coupled with hope in the whole sonata. It is a piece of music with shades of different emotions posed in an aggressive manner. The only other piano sonata with such an explosive character is another of Beethoven's sonata 'Hammerklavier'. Hammerklavier is considered one of the most technically demanding sonatas to perform.

Above You Tube video (1st movement)  is not one of the best recordings. The best recordings according to me are of Maurizio Pollini and Richter. Just to get a short intense glimpse of Pollini performing click here -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXaWutqQSa0