The history of writing

Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow. — Some dude.

I was really flattered when Rajneesh pinged personally and congratulated me for this blog-post in which I stated about my feeling of loneliness. For a mediocre guy like me, to produce magic of ecstasy for friends through written words give intense pleasure. I have frozen frame of the moment in my memory when Himanshu Gupta applauded me for enjoying a healthy and detailed chat on diverse topics. Topic started with him explaining about science in a movie AI to me and continued 3 hours at the lobby of Morvi Hostel (IT-BHU). A sense of confidence was born from inside. It is one the most encouraging memory to cherish till this date.

I always go slow and hate the stopwatch mentality of the world. Deadlines drives me crazy and nervous till this date. The line between an intellectual and a pretentious bore is at best thin. Hence, I feared much in expressing myself. I was like sponge as a kid soaking all in it. Hence, there was so much to tell to this world. Wisdom is learned by 3 ways in the life: Reflection, Imitation and Experience. Imitation gives only outer shell. Experience is most bitter of all. Reflection is the best in all learned retro/ intro - spection.

Imitation kills initiative and discourages independent thought and effort in long run. Foreign words became insufficient to express the experience and thoughts. A sense of dissent for western metaphors or simile is there inside me, as they take mine unique Desi identity and makes me more English. As English isn't my first language, expressing myself through it creates a mental hurdle of translating. Hinglish education had changed my habit of thought and scale of values. Prolonging intellectual serfdom in classic English leads me to indiscriminate adoption of alien wonts and usages. I always try to avoid it. I always like the writing of Salman Rushdie due to his use of Indian English. A sense of Desi belongs in it and English language transforms from British background to urban India. But, I can't adapt his lucid style of complex statements and have deep impact of Premchand's simplicity in Hindi. Hence, imitation way was not for me. Then, I learnt that I had to carve my own way for establishing myself.

Experience comes with passing time through reading and writing ; Advice through comments gives feedbacks of the proactive writing. The reactive comments help in knowing the minds of readers. This stage of experience writing is best expressed by me in a previous blog post.

Reflection makes you strong from inside and a crystal clear point of view appears. Take the seed idea and develop in its essence. That is called adaptation with reflection in my books. The Pareto principle (also known as the 80-20 rule or the law of the vital few) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. I think that both every distributive system follows this principle. And personal reflection is that 80% in the mine writing. It may be only small part but its effect is massive.

The three stages are always going in different proportions in writing about any topic. If something is worth writing, it is worth making it extraordinary in the nature. As John Quincy Adams rightly said: If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader. So, I am creating anonymous leaders in blogland...

FYI, Abhishek Arora and Vivek Tripathi have started there own blog. Cheers for them...

How Populism Works ?

I'm reminded of the well-known satirical novel by Robert Escarpit – The Literatron. I haven't read the novel but just a summary of its review is reproduced from eurozine article. It explains in subtle about how populism works....

I'm reminded of the well-known satirical novel by Robert Escarpit – The Literatron. The Literatron is more or less a machine for creating texts similar to a computer. The idea of its creators was to generate the perfect novel based on the best images from world literature. In response to the highest of expectations, the machine produced a bestseller – Virgin and Typesetter! When the Literatron was asked to compose a political speech the outcome was even more scandalous. After processing the entire history of political rhetoric the machine spewed out a series of gaffs such as: "This politics thing the more it changes the more it stays the same... There are no two ways about it, the clever people are the most stupid of all... All you have to do is hang a few of them (politicians) and things will improve...". This line of thought fits perfectly with an eloquent phrase from the Bulgarian transition, wrought by another merciless critic of his time, the Bulgarian satirist Aleko Konstantinov: "They are all rogues, on both sides!" The speech generated by the literatron was welcomed with raptures by the electorate and the politician whose job it was to make it quickly became a star. Every attempt to deviate from the absurd scenario led to vigorous disapproval.

I can't remember what happened to the literatron, whether it was destroyed as a malicious invention or if it destroyed itself. What was more important was the principles on which the machine operated. Its aim was universality and in the process it purged all nuances, simplified the meaning and looked for an arithmetical mean. The aim was for the text to reach the widest possible audience. The greatest irony was that a message meant for all was in practice a message for no one. This undermined its purpose, since it would have left its audience completely indifferent. The literatron is clearly a metaphor for populism as a leading principle of the political machine. However, populism works. If it didn't, politicians wouldn't resort to it so often.

The story is over dudes..

Justice and Democracy

The seed of post was sown when Joie de vivre commented in mine recent post that we live in the country where Logon ko democracy ka D bhi nai pata. She was absolutely right that Indians have a long way to go to understand the values of rights and duties of citizen. Personally, I don't have very strong belief in democracy but have a faith in swift and vigilant justice. Yet democracy seems to me as best way of giving voices to myself and the people. This is my naive attempt to understand the complex relationship of justice and democracy.

Democracy is ethically right but intellectually void.-- Max Kislanski

I once asked my father why people rate parliament above supreme court running on constitution. He replied me that constitution is made for serving the people not the vice-versa. When representative of people at Parliament veto supreme court verdict, they are abiding the rule of people only. I was silenced then. After many years, this memory resurfaces in studying Shahbano Case. I got my reply that while voting in Parliament just supports majority, it may or may not be the right voice. A wrong decision by majority may lead to injustice and may provoke decay of values and law in the society.

Justice is wisdom on merit and democracy is the choice to take different opinion. Too much democracy is like free market without any control. This is what Fareed Zakaria (former editor Newsweek) calls the tyranny of the majority. He argues that democracy, overwhelmingly, has had wonderful consequences. But the construction of a rich, diverse and complex social order needs a multitude of ideas to flourish. Democracy as a single ideology across politics, society, arts and business is akin to religious dogmatism where faith dictates every aspect of life. This is a very important argument. Democracy has proven itself to be the most acceptable form of political governance where the will of majority forms the basis for legislature. Still mindless ‘majorityism’ is dangerous. A journalist and novelist Pankaj Mishra points out this flaw of democracy ---

"When last week in Ha'aretz the Israeli historian Tom Segev judged Israeli "apathy" towards the massacre in Gaza as "chilling and shameful", he brought on deja vu among Indians. In 2002 the Hindu nationalist government of Gujarat supervised the killing of more than two thousand Muslims. The state's chief minister, Narendra Modi, who green-lighted the mass murder, seemed a monstrous figure to many Indians; they then watched aghast as the citizens of Gujarat - better-educated and more prosperous than most Indians - re-elected Modi by a landslide after the pogrom. In 2007, a few months after the magazine Tehelka taped Hindu nationalists in Gujarat boasting how they raped and dismembered Muslims, Modi again won elections with contemptuous ease. Though prohibited from entering the US, Modi is now courted by corporate groups, including Tata, and frequently hailed as India's next prime minister. As the Israeli right looks likely to be the latest electoral beneficiary of state terror, it is time to ask: can the institutions of electoral democracy, liberal capitalism and the nation-state be relied upon to do our moral thinking for us? "Trust in the majority," they seem to say, but more often than not the majority proves itself incapable of even common sense. " [Origin]

Our society is driving towards consumer culture and lack of awareness about ground realities is hurting our chance of progress. People aren't dumb but they take time to retrospect its decision. Impact of popularism is like mob madness. Each person involved in the mob takes his own time to return from the state of hysteria. People deserve better but they don't know about other options. A balancing act is done by media by providing voice to the lost causes and people living on periphery of society.

A sense of power to control is what the media is in turn giving to public in reality shows. It’s the manipulation and unreliability of methods media use to determine what people want. What media should fix is error in the systems, not the society. A democracy should encourage a person to tell the truth as it is, the truth about the truth. The freedom and liberty are more greater than the idea of democracy or theocracy or dictatorship.

So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly arise and make them miserable. --- Aldous Huxley

Dazed and Confused Observation of Indian Cinema

The result of 55th National Film Awards are out. And they are quite unbiased ones. National film Awards had also got bad name when Raveena had got it for Daman, Saif for Hum Tum and Karishma for DTPH. It forced me to compile and compose (not purely compose) recent development in Indian cinema through mine observations.

We didn't start the fire, It was always burning
Since the world's been turning, We didn't start the fire
No we didn't light it, But we tried to fight it

Billy Joel definitely should have written that song keeping in his mind about cinephiles unbounded zeal or passion or FIRE for cinema .

Today,in the words of Margaret Mead, I will express myself: Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

All the people involved in this project of educating people about cinema through making films and writing about it are those handful of committed people. Public acceptance can’t be the only criteria for judging success. Dialectic and sound critique have important roles in the society. When we taunt them or dismiss them off as elitist we are threatening the basis of human progress over ages. My best wishes are with PFC & Indian auteur.

Criticism, like rain, should be gentle enough to nourish a man's growth without destroying his roots. ~Frank A. Clark

PFC and Indian Auteur are leading two poles of cinema writings which taught me what swings inside the mind of film makers and critics. PFC has made it possible for current debut film makers to reach aspirants & cinephiles. Indian Auteur has made the standards of criticism high and quality uncompromising instead of financial woes. I still remember the debate between them and anyone remotely interested in Indian cinema with the nature of film-love in the country should read this discussion. It helped to downplay emotion of people blindly praising Anurag by an external shock. This lead to the write up of Anurag isn’t God, he ain’t Godard either on pfc. Time will reveal that this discussion as a very crucial juncture of Indian cinema and criticism. This in real term is called Manthan, the churning of opposite forces for the sake of greater good. And let us hope that it will produce gems in future, if not poison and elixir.

People think differently and in different directions and to bring them under one direction is the job of auteur. We have today a movement started by the RGV, Anurag Kashyap, Santosh Sivan & Dibakar Banerjee etc. it reminds of American cinema movement of 70's.

Today, Multiplexes has nourished the popcorn movie lovers but it has helped a lot of indie film makers. World cinema has shown that urban Indian audience are ready to deepen the awareness (with all its consequences) that better cinema different from ours, really do exist. Rural audiences had abandoned meaningful cinema of 50s and 60s giving upper hand to the entertainment movies saga of 70s & 80's. Parallel cinema had born and demised in between the urban audiences only. Post 90's liberalisation era, commercial cinema has abandoned rural India completely in the search of new NRI market only. Just look at the difference in dance scenes in our entertainment movies. First all the backstage dancers were local guys/gals from Mumbai but now they are all white firangis.

I used to feel that some story is shown in the movies which is about somebody else or characters are not known to me. Perhaps this is not the cinema. As a viewer, world cinema and new upcoming sensible films made me realise that cinema is all about me either as a film maker or a film viewer. Cinema of Tarantino shows that cinema is all about reflection of film maker. You have to make the film or write a book or event paint a picture in a way as you see it in your mind. There is no need of blindly following west for their appreciation, our films should reflect our experinces and voices.

I want to focus on an issue that why is it so that all greatness in India mostly approved by the west first. This may be either due to our affinity for the approval of white men or west has got eye for appreciation of talent on merit like in the case of Srinivasa Ramanujan to Satyajit Ray. Just don't know the answer...

In arts, especially popular arts like cinema, there’s no right or wrong or what we call binary choice. The difference between the two decisions is too obvious to miss. It’s the difference between being right vs being likable. Objective vs subjective or Facts vs opinion. So while general opinion can be wrong about something that requires deeper data and fact-based analysis. The primary key to determine success is the ‘goal’. Isn’t the goal of popular art likability? The five points of eternal debate in any field are: Quantity vs Quality; Adaptation vs Originality; Price vs Cost; Funding vs Delivery; and Excellence vs Inclusion. Cinema has to optimise the solution between these parameters. Creativity should precede public acceptance and simultaneously stimulates the mind!

In the end, I know that it is a great shame really that even after winning the national award quality cinema will die a natural death due to lack of audience. What a pity...

Wisdom Words

No power on Earth can stop an idea whose time has come. --- Victor Hugo

Indians also refract technology through their ancient social lenses and let the light that falls on the other side reflect their old prejudices and insecurities. --- Ajit Balkrishnan

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. --- T.S. Eliot

To be persuasive, we must be believable; to be believable, we must be credible; to be credible, we must be truthful. --- Edward R. Murrow

If you read a lot of books, you're considered well-read. But if you watch a lot of TV, you're not considered well-viewed. --- Lily Tomlin

The will is not free - it is a phenomenon bound by cause and effect - but there is something behind the will which is free. --- Swami Vivekanand.

Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it. --- Malcom X

Democracy cannot consist solely of elections that are nearly always fictitious and managed by rich landowners and professional politicians. --- Che Guevera

I have travelled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief, such wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values, people of such caliber, that I do not think we would ever conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage. --- Lord Macaulay's Address To The British Parliament on 2nd February, 1835.

They say true love only comes around once and you have to hold out and be strong until then. I have been waiting. I have been searching. I am a man under the moon, walking the streets of earth until dawn. There's got to be someone for me. It's not too much to ask. Just someone to be with. Someone to love. Someone to give everything to. Someone. --- Henry Rollins