India Shining

“Although the Left tends to dismiss it, national confidence is a good thing. Ask any CEO and he will tell you that a sustained positive feeling among employees often separates success from failure. Ask a historian of Rome, and he will testify to its amazing power. Or of 19th century Britain, or Japan between 1960 and 1990, or even current day China—they will all bear witness to the clout of self-belief, which makes ordinary people do extraordinary things. This confidence has been jolted by this election.”

Read more.

Such sound logic rarely penetrates the heads of our communist leaders.

In order to protect the jobs of a few airport employees, the two airports of Delhi and Mumbai will never be privatised and consequently will never be modernized and consequently we will never the reap the rewards of good air connectivity which is vital for business & tourism and consequently hundreds of thousands of jobs will be lost.

Left to the communists, the whole of India will soon start resembling Kerala ( which is not a good thing, read the linked article ) . Pages will be written about the wasted human potential of a country which once was a shining example to the rest of the world.

The matrix explained

Asatho Maa Sad Gamaya,
Thamaso Maa Jyothir Gamaya,
Mrithyo Maa Amritham Gamaya.

(
Lead me from untruth to truth,
Lead me from darkness to light,
Lead me from death to immortality.
)

Thus ends the Matrix revolutions, with a prayer for moksha from the eternal cycle of birth and death.

Much has been written about the trilogy. Popular opinion seems to be against the sequels. Too many seem to have gone to the theatres to find answers to the tantalising questions posed by reloaded. Perhaps, the greatest triumph of the trilogy is that there were no answers. Only an interesting way to look at life and ask questions that the vast majority would never think of.

It wasn't perhaps the easiest of films to understand. Everyone seems to have interpreted the film through the filter of their own beliefs mostly religious. The fact that the brothers chose to derive from multiple belief systems makes every interpretation seem correct.

Here is my interpretation.

Humanity has been enslaved by the machines to generate energy for them to run. The fact that skies have been scorched by a nuclear war prevents them from using the sun as the source. Now to keep the humans alive and interested, the machines plugged them into an illusory world called the matrix.

The architect, the program responsible for the creation of the matrix, created a perfect world in its first avatar. But he soon saw that perfection was not acceptable to humans. Indeed humans rejected this world ( Smith says humans define their existence through misery ) and this led to the crash of the system. The architect then devised a program with a lesser mind, a more intuitive one if you will, the oracle to understand human behaviour and build a system which will last longer. The oracle understood that humans needed to believe that they have choice even if there was really none. This arrangement worked out well for 99% of the humans. But a 1% of the humans still saw through this illusory world and felt something was not right. Now it was the oracle's responsibility along with Mr.Smith to “control” this few people and ensure that they don't go out of hand.

The oracle did this with prophesies which led to the creation of zion and the human resistance. At the end of every cycle, there would be a war between the machines and humans with the One required to make a choice : Whether to return to the source and reload the matrix or to go back to the matrix and risk complete anihilation of humanity and the machines. For five times, Neo has chosen to return to the source reloading the matrix and picking the 23 people who will lead the human resistance in the next cycle. It is not Neo but the oracle which makes the choice for him everytime.

The oracle got tired of this endless cycle of creation and destruction. She wanted a way out, a peaceful way out.

She played a game, a dangerous one. She introduced a new variable into the system. Love in the form of trinity.

She hints to trinity even before she sees Neo that she will fall in love with the one thereby ensuring she does.

When the time comes for Neo to make the choice, for the first time he choses to go back into the matrix. Indeed he doesn't need to make the decision. Like the architect says, the decision has already been made by the oracle when she made him fall in love. All he needed to do was to understand it.

Smith is again different this time around. Neo entered him at the end of the part one and changed him to become his antithesis. Now smith is a program with “one like” powers. This ensures that he goes beyond the matrix to the other world thereby taking a step beyond the machine's control.

Seraph, the oracle's bodyguard is ofcourse a previous incarnation of the one and the one which caries the program code of the one which the oracle uses to create the one in every cycle.

Cut back to the sixth cycle. Love makes neo re-enter the matrix to save trinity. He brings her back from the dead at the end of reloaded. Remember she did the same thing to him at the end of part one.

The war between the machines and the humans start for the sixth time. Smith meanwhile has found his way into the real world and engages in a battle with Neo blinding him in the process. With his eyes blinded, Neo is able to see for the first time. Neo and trinity go back to the machine world into the heart of the machine city. The machines attack and trinity dies relieving neo of the final attachment he had. Now Neo understands his true karma without the distraction of love.

Neo goes on to make a deal with the machines. Peace in return for the killing of Smith who had gone beyond the control of the machines. Smith and Neo engage in a battle of titanic proportions reaching nowhere since they are both equally powerfull.

At the very end, Oracle speaking through smith shows Neo the way out. The death of neo is the purpose of Smith's life. Smith will die the instant neo dies. The solution is clear. Like christ, neo dies for humanity by carrying the burden of their sins ( Smith stands in for evil ) for them.

If you have read till this, you would have seen I have not chosen to comment upon the little girl sati. Indeed her presence puzzles me. What does she stand for ? The next generation of programs able to feel emotion ? An elaborate take on Shiva's wife Sati who commits suicide by burning herself and being reborn as parvati ( Trinity being reborn as Sati ?? ). Or is she the next oracle ? Or the next One ? Or the next architect who defines a matrix born out of love ?

Still a long way to go before I understand the matrix. If you have any thoughts, jot them down here.

My Pithamagan review

I saw Pithamagan, Bala's much hyped film, yesterday.

Before I talk of this film, it is important to take a look at the kind of films that Bala has done in the past : Sethu and Nanda.

The best description for Sethu would be “morbid”, The film disturbs you at a fundamental level.

God knows enough films with “everything is fine and everyone are happy” endings are dished out every year by our directors. Rarely do characters which are out of the common, stories which haven't been explored and situations out of the ordinary get tackled on the screen. To tell such a story and to tell it in such a way that it is a commercial success and not just appreciated by a few “intellectual” critics shows the director's calibre. Afterall, film making is just the new age revision of the age hold art of storytelling in an engaging manner. To succeed in holding the audience's attention with such a morbid story speaks eons about the director's capabilities.

If you are the kind who looks for a hidden deeper meaning in everything, you will appreciate the way Bala deals, albeit in an exagerrated manner, with madness inherent in every love story, in Sethu.

Nanda's uplifting moment is Raj Kiran's scene where he proclaims “every human who fights evil is God” with a tinge of Bhagavat Gita thrown in for good measure. The exact opposite ideology of Kamal's “Love is God” Anbe Sivam. It was saved from the mediocrity of a thousand similar movies by the out of this world cinematography, Surya's arrival as an exceptional actor, Bala's deft direction and this particular scene.

Now comes Pithamagan. Bala doesn't deviate from his favourite theme : Tragedy coupled with unusual characters.

Porraying a character with well defined mannerisms is an easy job for any actor. More difficult is to portray a “normal” human being which calls for a subtler treatment. Kamal excels in the former while Mohanlal excels in the later. Audiences around the world tend to lap up and appreciate the former a lot more than the latter which is indeed a shame.

Anyways, coming back to the film on hand, Vikram does a good job at living the character of chittan with all the exagerrated mannerisms you would expect in such a character but let us not forget the excellent job done by the others like surya, laila and sangeetha.

A lot of questions remain unanswered, the most important of which is why does Vikram end up behaving as if being caught up in a time warp. Surely, anyone who ekes out a living as a cremator would have had semi-regular human contact ( the relatives of the dead ). To show him as a “normal” person with a dead heart would have lifted the film to a different level. Maybe the down to earth sensibility of a malayalam director would have conjured up such a story. Jayaram in a movie remarks with characteristic humour that everything is a bit exagerrated when it comes to the people of tamil nadu. In doing so, he makes a telling remark on the inherent differences between the two states to be found in everything from day to day behavior to the acting styles of a kamal and mohanlal.

All I know is this. Bala is a brilliant director with I suspect a tinge of madness. Eventually, he will come around and let his hero to be a normal human being. I will wait for that day. Patiently.

Meanwhile, go watch Pithamagan. There is indeed a method in Bala's madness.

PS : I am a big admirer of both Kamal and Mohanlal. My remark about their differences is not intended to be a flamebait for either side.

Nigerians happiest people, Indians 21st

“Money, says a study, may not have much to do with human happiness.

A survey of 65 countries, published by British magazine New Scientist, says that Nigerians are the happiest people on earth, followed by the Mexicans. Venezuela, El Salvador and Puerto Rico are close behind.

India has been ranked 21st in the world happiness index.
Nigeria, with an annual per capita gross national product of slightly over $300, ranks among the world's poorest as also the most corrupt countries.”

Read more.

Are you happy ?

Early retirement

It is something that has been in the back of my mind right from my college days, yes even before I started working :-)

Once you take out work from your life, you have an endless supply of time in your hands and life suddenly seems teeming with possibilities. The promise of doing something new every single day is tantalising, dont you think ?

Ofcourse, boredom is a highly possible outcome. The trick is to keep yourself occupied, this time around doing something you enjoy rather than something you get paid for.

Social service will be the first thing I take up. To be able to make a difference, however small, in someone's life is the intended redemption of a human life. This will most likely involve teaching. I used to teach a good number of my classmates and have been given fairly good reviews of my teaching capabilities. So teaching is definetely on the cards.

Sreekanth and I must have talked endless hours about how with a little effort you can change a lot of things you despise around you. Hopefully, at some point in our lives, we will be able to do something about this rather than keep talking.

Other stuff that I will be doing include,

Travel. First the whole of India and a few choice destinations around the world. Travel is ofcourse expensive and would most likely to remain an unfullfilled dream in the back of my mind ( It must be getting crowded in there :) ).

Learning a musical instrument is something that I have always wanted do.

It is a sad fact but I really do like sitting in front of a computer for endless hours, browsing, reading and occassionally writing. I am perhaps too addicted to the internet to let go completely. I mean where else can someone like me get to be a fashion designer ;-) At some point in the future, I would like to close down all my “for profit ventures” and create something which is informative and usefull.

The word “Family” is ofcourse an unknown variable in this equation. Being a bachelor is investing in time. Getting married is investing in love. Hopefully, I can get a fair dose of both :-)

More than anything else, I would like to slow down my life. I am tired, very much so, of the constant hurry burry of the daily life. Images of a slow calm life, somewhere along the banks of the backwaters of alleppey is a recurring image in my dreams. Someday, I want to open my eyes and find it to be true.

Capitalism is not the answer

I love a good debate. Occasionally, even flame wars will do. If you read my comments elsewhere on the net, you will, more often than not, see me take a contrarian view to the popular opinion, just to liven up the debate.

Something of a prankster ( slashdotters might prefer flamebait ), you might call me. Occasionally, I step beyond the line and get burned but then that is an occupational hazard.

It is my belief that more can be learned by seeing the issue from both sides than passionately sticking to a single viewpoint. Everything is relative, anyways. In my school days, we used to do this fun activity where the same guy had to defend and criticize a topic, switching viewpoints at the sound of a bell. “Just a minute”, I think it was called.

I learned this form of debate growing up in kerala discussing films. Yes, films. Keralites devote ( atleast used to ) an unusual amount of time discussing the question : “Mamooty, Mohanlal : Who is better ?” Since I didn't have a preference either way, I used to oppose the prevaling opinion in the crowd that I was in, for the sake of a debate :-)

I think, it is this middle of the road approach, that made me an Agnostic. I enjoy riling up atheists by asking them to explain the fundamental issue about the origin of the universe ( “How something can never come out of nothing” ). To theists, I normally ask, “If God exists, why can't he do a better job at proving he exists”.

Ofcourse, there is a problem with not having strong principles, best said by the quote,
“If you don't stand for anything, you will fall for everything”.

Still, I prefer it this way.

Why am I writing all this ? I have been part of several debates on the future of america's economy on public forums lately. I have written both extremely positive and highly negative predictions based on the type of the forum I am in ( the opposite view to the popular opinion ).

Paul krugman and others well known columnists have been extremely critical about Bush's tax cuts and the burgeoning US budget, current account and trade deficits. Paul krugman infact goes on to say, in one of his regular columns in NYT, that America possibly can face an argentina style crisis if tax cuts are not rolled back and government spending curbed. Coming as it is from the man considered to be the world's foremost expert on currency crises, it has caused widespread concern.

These columns about “america needs a billion a day in FDI to finance the ever increasing debt of the country” or the “fundamental shift in the economy which has resulted in a jobless recovery” get endlessly discussed in public forums with ridiculous suggestions like “Let us build a fortress around america and ban all imports” thrown around as possible solutions.

It is fun to occassionally step in and point out that for the last few decades, america benefited most from globalisation. Now is payback time.

What americans are most concerned is the apparent lack of care shown by big companies when sending jobs offshore. They forget Capitalism is not driven by ethics but by profits. Capitalism is inherently cannibalistic in nature, a dog eats dog mentality as well chronicled in the history of microsoft.

There is already increasing evidence that although the US GDP is picking up, the benefits will not reach the “common” man but will stay at the top level in the hands of the already rich. Fortune's latest list of the 400 richest americans seems to confirm this when it says that the rich got richer. Not consistent with the situation on the ground. Infact, The word “Oligarchy” has started making the rounds.

Ofcourse, when I point out all these on the “Nothing can touch US” forums, I get very few people to agree with me. More often than not, I get flamed to hell :-)

I like the socialist welfare economies of europe. They have taken the middle road between capitalism and communism and seemed non the worse for it. There is a serious risk of deflation for a few of them but then that might be because of the export dependance on the states.

China is an interesting study. Perhaps, theirs is the hardest task of all. To preserve a communist styled leadership while having a capitalist economy. For now, the western MNCs are interested in tapping china's huge and seemingly endless supply of $100 a month cheap labour. Once popular issues like China's human rights track record have conveniently been relegated to the background in a relentless pursuit to improve their bottomline, a popular buzzword in a recession. If china manages to pull it off inspite of all these, it will be a miracle unmatched in the annals of human history. Only time will tell.

Finally, there is India. If there is any award for the country with the maximum potential, we will walk away with it hands down. Sadly, the potential rarely gets realised. Unfortunately, the very diversity that we are so proud of is proving to be our bane. A collective decision is more or less impossible in our scheme of things.

Like our cricket team's reliance on sachin, will we will always end up depending on individual brilliance ( Naidu ? ) to save us at the end of the day.

Luckily, we seem to be finding a new hero ( anju george ? ) regularly these days. Maybe, it is a tide of better things to come.

All these forums did help in increasing my limited knowledge of how the global economy works. Till I lose interest, my occassional ramblings on politics/economics will continue. Anyone wants to take a contrarian view ?

India's one billion population could leverage growth'

“R.K. Somany, president of the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham), revealed that what struck him most during his recent visit to China was the fact that "Chinese look upon its growing population as their biggest strength. So why should we look at our population as a drag?"

The experts stressed that with the changing concept of business and the knowledge economy driving growth, there was a revival of the "direct equation with the customer".

This has led to the era where the human mind and not machines dominate, said Rajendra S. Pawar, chairman of NIIT Ltd., one of the country's leading computer training and software development companies.

"The knowledge economy is bringing back the best tradition of communication. With it the dependence on human mind is coming back," said Pawar.

According to Pawar, the need today was for "leaders to perpetually create dreams and inspire people to keep the process going".

Jalan supported this view by citing the examples of Japan, South Korea and Israel, which have inspired its people to withstand adversities and lack of natural resources to become a thriving economy.”

Read more.

Quote of the day

“Always there will be the intoxication of power. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - for ever”

from 1984.

Reloaded !

“I'm sitting in a former naval barracks in Alameda, California, watching the digital assembly of a human face. Bones, teeth, glistening eyes. Layer upon layer. Finally the hair and skin, the creases and tiny scars that make us who we are. The face blinks and breathes. Then it snarls, and my skin crawls.
Agent Smith is back, and he's pissed.

”People get really preoccupied with, 'Are you going to top yourselves this time? Are you really gonna come up with a zinger?'“ Gaeta tells me. ”My job has nothing to do with making zingers. The point is not to knock you over with a visual trick. The point is to be able to construct events that are so complex, in terms of what human bodies need to do, that the total 'effect' is impossible choreography. 'My God! It looks real, but it just can't be.'“

If the dojo fight in The Matrix was a kung fu sonata, the Burly Brawl is a symphony. Neo tears the sign from the ground and wields it as a kendo sword, vaulting pole, and battering ram. A woman walking by can't believe what she's seeing; suddenly her body is hijacked, she drops her grocery bag, and another Smith charges into the fray. Whole battalions of Smiths arrive, mount assaults, attack in waves, scatter, regroup, and head back for more. (At ESC, one massive pile-on was dubbed the ”Did someone drop a quarter?“ shot.) In the thick of it, Neo is dancing, chucking black-tied bodies skyward, pivoting around the signpost, and using shoulders as stepping-stones over the raging river of whup-ass.

Creating the Burly Brawl, however, is a taller order than inventing Bullet Time. To portray Neo in hand-to-hand combat with more than 100 Agent Smiths in the old way would have required Escher-like tangles of crisscrossing still-camera rigs and years of compositing. What Gaeta needed was a virtual camera that could fly through the 3-D scene - as free from the laws of space and time as Neo is from the physical laws of the Matrix.

”The concept of Bullet Time had to graduate to the true technology it suggested,“ he says. ”For Reloaded, we had to finish the job so that we could get relentless, uninterrupted, and editable chunks of Neo in the zone.“

While the topography of the human face is the hardest to simulate digitally, it turns out to be one of the easiest to map photogrammetrically. It has fewer shadows and occlusions than, say, the city of Paris. The language of the face communicates maximum information through the subtlest inflections. The interfaces of our souls are designed to be read in a heartbeat.

Then Reeves and Weaving each sat down on a stage in front of five Sony HDW-900 video cameras. The massive datastreams from these cameras - one gigabyte a second - were treated like holy water; even the cameras' color-correction software was disabled to prevent any loss of data. Instead of recording to tape, which requires compression, the cameras were modified to send uncompressed data to a bank of high-end PCs that stored it on a huge disk array. ”The scene in that room was surreal,“ Gaeta recalls.

”

Reloaded.

The first one was one of the best films I have seen. Imagination and the realisation of it in a way I have never seen on the silver screen before. After reading this, I dont know how I am going to wait till May :)

The Brahma Hypothesis

It is time now for the Brahma hypothesis.

I am going to use the usual method that people adopt when writing a hypothesis. Collect a few known facts, add a couple of leaps of imagination and present in a whole new style, claiming the idea as my own.

The brahma hypothesis is the expanded name given to the BHM hypothesis which in turn stands for the Brain, Heart and the Memory hypothesis.

All forms of sensory input create a new memory.

The Brain uses memory to create thoughts.

The Heart uses memory to create emotions.

The Brain and Heart battle for our mental space and what we currently feel is a direct outcome of who is in charge.

We all want to be happy, agreed ?

Now we must take a look at the cross-section of humans who are generally considered the happiest among us. Kids.

What do you see ?
Not so developed brains. Heart completely in charge. More emotional than a kamal trying for a national award. Generally seen to be happy for the smallest and the silliest of reasons.

As we grow older, what happens ? Brains start to develop ( well, in most cases :) ) and the more we get older, the more we think. What does your brain do ? It comes and stands in the way of you and your happiness. Now the brain doesnt allow you to laugh easily. It needs a strong reason to laugh. Gone are the days you could giggle without feeling embarassed. Now you will start displaying controlled emotion. Watch a govinda movie and your brain will step in and stop you from laughing telling you that it is a third rate joke not worthy of your laughter. At the end of the movie, the simpleton from the village would have laughed his guts out while you come out shaking your head mutterring about a complete waste of time. Who is the loser ?

An abundance of thought has generally led to sorrow and depression more times than it has led to hapiness. The person who feels hapiness as the end result of series of thoughts over time is rare. But I can show you a number of people who think a lot, get worked up and generally feel unhappy.

Ever looked forward to something, expecting a truckload of hapiness and when the moment finally came felt a sense of disatisfaction ? The brain imagined a hapiness which was not there, in the meantime forsaking the gift of the moment and the opportunity for hapiness in it.

We now take a look at literature and the movies in an attempt to see what they say. We find that almost always the simple folk are shown to be happy while the city dwelling, cultured and the “intelligent” person is often found to be irritated, frustrated, lost in his thoughts and generally unhappy.

Now we will take a look at that noble attempt to understand the human psyche and the meaning of life : Philosophy. Prominent figures like krishnamurthi have written about the need to eliminate the thought.“See without judging. Observe without analyzing”. The exotic religions like tao and tantra talk about living for the moment. That ( in my current prejudiced state of mind :) ) translates to doing away with the brain. Jesus in his famous sermon has said, “The meek shall inherit the earth”. What does this mean ? The meek not in a physical sense but in regards to your brain. Do away with your brain. Do not doubt. Do not think. Live without thinking, Believe without doubting and this world will be yours.

So what do we conclude ?

Do away with the brain. kill the thought. let the heart be the sole contender for your mental space and be happy.

Problems ?
When you live in the moment and let your heart rule, your happiness will be a function of your environment and the people around you, in short you will be vulnerable. You have nice people around ? you will be happy.

The Brahma hypothesis is the brain concluding that it is useless. It is the suicide call of the brain.

Kill the brain and be happy.
Believe in Brahma.

mindless

God's biggest mistake was giving us humans a mind.

Without a mind, a human would be just another animal. An animal kills another when it is hungry. We are now animals, directed by a mind. And that mind tells us to kill another human just because he does not believe in something we believe in.

Without a mind, there would not be a good human or a bad human : only a human. Without a mind, there would not be a Christian, Hindu or a Muslim. Without a mind, there would not be an indian or a pakistani. Without a mind, there will not be money in this world. All humans will be equal : nameless bodies wandering in search of food.

Without a mind, there would not be a knife to stab another, a bomb to blast others. Without a mind, there would not be a war on earth. Yes, fights will be still be there. It will be minor disagreements ( like a dogfight ). Nobody gets killed by another human.

God, Please take away our mind. We have struggled to master it. Tonight, We give up. The mind you gave us : the mind which if used sensibily would have brought peace and harmony on earth is now an instrument used to kill. The mind has done more harm than good. If We dont return it tonight, there would not be anything left of us humans.

Mind is meant for the Gods not for animals like us.

Ezhuthapurangal.

Christ Nagar, Kowdiar : March, 1989.

9:00 AM in the morning.

A chaotic scene unfolds before you. A bunch of kids trying to cram that last piece of information into their already overloaded brains. A few parents who have accompanied their kids to share their pain in this moment of agony, stand beside helpless. The teachers having taken a sadistic pleasure in preparing the most gruesome method of torture known to a kid and going by the name of Examination stand in front of the room gleefully rubbing their hands in anticipation of the first bell.

In the farthest corner of the mail hall, You see a small kid with a smile on his face. From his looks, he must be in the fifth standard. Maybe, sixth.

A kid smiling before the examination ? Something is definetely not right here. Your immediate concern is to whether he has gotten hold of a leaked question paper.

You decide to take a closer look. You find the eyes closed and a dazed expression lingering on the kid's face. Hesitant to break the emotion but driven by a desire to know the reason for the smile, you gently tap on the kid's shoulder. The kid comes to his senses with a start. The conversation goes like this.

“I know, I have no right to ask. But i would like to know the reason behind your smile”. You ask hesitantly.

“My parents have promised to buy me a Hero Cycle once the holidays start. I was day dreaming about cycling through the Pattom main road”, The kid says with a sheepish smile.

and you walk away with a whimsical smile wondering about the vagaries of the human mind.

Yes. I was promised a cycle. A month and a thousand day dreams later, I was told, for a variety of reasons that I will not have it that year.

Being cursed with an over active imagination, My mind works like an yet to be discovered time machine. You give me a little to hope, a promise of something in the future and then I switch on this thing called imagination and proceed to live out the future in full techni-color inside my mind. I create a world of my own, decorate it with my dreams and feed it with my hopes.

That year, Time taught me a lesson. To wait for the future.

Sadly, I was busy day dreaming about the cycle ( which now was to come next year ) when the lesson was delivered and paid no heed to it.

Last Week, I took an imagined flight to india and landed among my loved and dear ones. Behind closed eyes, I had seen a month ahead and felt a joy for an event yet to occur.

Yesterday, Mr.Time delivered the age old lesson of “Dont build castles in the air” again to me.

Yesterday, I was told that I am not going anywhere atleast till the end of the year and maybe till summer next year. My plane had crashed before it took off. All for a few dollars more.

But then, I am not a little kid any more, to accept everything that others decide for me. Today, I have started a chain of events which hopefully will culminate in my still making that flight.

Do pray for me.