College of Engineering, Trivandrum ( CET ) update

Just got a mail on the campus placements in CET this year,



( Via Ajay through Ramanathan ).

Cool. Looks like the tech boom is back for real. Hopefully, the trivandrum technopark will ride the boom this time around.

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.

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 :)

Anbe Sivam

When I started this journal a few months back, I had but a vague idea about what to write on these pages. The idea was to mostly write around the two topics close to my heart : Philosophy and Movies. Now Philosophy was a recurring theme during the early days of this site. But strangely other than just passing references to films, It was mostly relegated to the background.

Why did this happen ? It was not as if I was seeing fewer films. Infact, ever since we bought our VCD player, We have been absolutely living on films. The real reason was the fact that I did not see a single film which was worth writing about.

That changed last week.

I happened to see a film which was a perfect blend of philosophy, realistic acting and the fine art of film making. I am talking about the latest kamal - madhavan starrer Anbe Sivam.

Now, I am not a big fan of kamal. Never was. The arrogance so clearly etched on his face is a major put off for me. But ever so often, Kamal makes me admit ( albeit grudgingly ) that he is the best at what he does.

The philosophy of the film is best explained by the words of the title song,
...
Aathigam pessum adiyaarkelaam sivamme anbaakkum,
Naathigam pessum nallavarrukko anbe sivamaakkum.

Yaar yaar sivam ?
Nee naan sivam.

A rough translation goes something like this,

For the theists, God is love.
For the good among the atheists, Love is God.

Who here is God ?
You and me.


The story is written by Kamal as is the screenplay. He has sung a couple of songs as well out of which the haunting title song stands out. Madhavan is but a tool in kamal's hands which he uses effectively to his advantage.

Kamal's character changes from that of a bumbling idiot in the first few scenes to a communist union leader with a artistic vein in the middle scenes to a god like figure in the last few scenes. In the last scene, as kamal walks away into the horizon, we are left with no option but to stand up and salute the indomitable spirit of a man from whom life has taken away so much but still manages to smile.

I wouldn't describe anything more about the story because any words that I can conjure up here wouldn't be enough. The film tells a philosophy that is best seen and understood.

When Love lives in your mind, you are God.

Sleeping On A Bench.

Yesterday, 6:45 PM.

The old school bus, doubling up as the AT&T shuttle bus in these difficult days, pulled into the parking lot of the usually deserted train station. The sole occupant of the bus, on his way out, exchanges a few pleasantries with the bored driver. He slowly makes his way to the Track no 2 to catch the New York bound train. It will be atleast 45 minutes before the train arrives.

In his hand, the young guy ( the sole occupant will be now onwards referred to as the young guy ) carried a plastic bag with a few sheets of paper in it. Extended waiting times at the train station had taught him to come prepared. It is his habit to print out a short story or two from the gutenburg site to read while waiting. However having exhausted most of the titles from the short story section, he had printed out a translation of the Bhagavad Gita on that particular day.

Having spend most of the day conducting training sessions for new developers taking over his project, the young guy was not in a mood to read. The wooden bench on the platform beckoned him to lay down his tired body in its lap and enjoy a few minutes of rest. Without a moment's hesitation, he streched his long lean body on the bench, using his bag as the pillow and closed his eyes for a small nap.

Unknown to him, on the opposite platform, a middle aged american picked a cellphone and made a call.

A couple of minutes later, a police car pulled into the train station. The young guy was woken up ( he was not really asleep in any case ) by the flashing lights of the car. He watched as a young clean shaved policeman came out of the car and looked around. The moment the policeman's eyes met that of the young guy, he started walking towards his direction. Not thinking much of it, the young guy continued in his horizontal position. When the policeman came and stopped in front of his bench, it dawned upon the young guy that the police man had indeed come to meet him.

This is what followed.

Policeman : “whats going on ?”.
Youngguy ( with a shrug ) : “Well, I am waiting for the train”.
Policeman : “I figured that”, with a cold stare.
Youngguy : “Well, why the question then ?”, with an attempt at a smile :).

The Policeman showed with an expression on his face that he was not in the least bit amused.

Policeman then asks, “whats your name ?”.
Youngguy : “anand”.

The Policeman's eyes drift towards the young guy's AT&T badge, pinned on his shirt, and find a different ( and in no way related ) name there.

Policeman : “Well, your badge here says something else”.

I ( now onwards the young guy will be referred to as I since as you would have guessed by now, he is me ) : “Well, Thats my real name. But since it is so long and difficult to pronounce, I use my nickname which is anand”.

The Policeman is not satisfied but still buys my argument.

Policeman ( now pulling out his notebook ) : “What is your home address ?”.

( I had recently moved from one apartment to a basement sharing arrangement with a friend. I only knew how to walk to my new place from my station and had no idea of the *actual* home address. )

I try to explain my above predicament.

Policeman ( getting annoyed now ) : “What is your home phone number ?”.

I did not have a phone for my personal use and had no idea about the owner's number.

Policeman : “Show me another id, Please”.

I did not have any other.

Policeman ( getting a bit frustrated here ) : “What is your Social Security Number ?”.

Me : “I dont remember :(”.

Policeman ( now getting really irritated ) takes a look at my plastic cover : “What is in there ?”.

I say,“Just a few printouts” and hand it over to him.

Policeman opens it casually to find the title on the first page saying Bhagavad Gita. Now getting increasingly interested in me, he says “Do you always carry the Gita with you?”

I say defensively, “I just printed it out to read while waiting for the train.”

Policeman asks me many more questions during the course of which I blurt out ( quite honestly, I must add ) that I am flying from JFK next week.

The three letters, JFK, had an electric effect on the Policeman.

He walked a few steps away, pulled out his walkie talkie and called ( presumably ) his superiors.

I ( watching this scene from a distance ) was getting a wee bit worried. My position definetely looked bad.

A couple of minutes later, a bigger police car made its way into the now slightly crowded parking lot. A big fat guy and an old wise ( the reason for him being called a wise guy will become clear in a few lines from now ) guy got out.

A few more questions later, We still dont reach anywhere. There is nothing on me to prove who I am and nobody nearby to tell them I really am what I claim I am.

The three men start an internal discussion at a small distance from me.

The young policeman says “We must detain him until we can verify his id.”.

The old wise guy takes a look at me and says, “He doesnt look suspicious”.

All three look at my direction. I put on my best smile and try to bring an expression onto my face which says that I am the nicest guy on planet earth :-) The three men realising that I have overheard their conversation walk away a bit further with a sheepish grin on their faces.

An even longer discussion ensues with a lot of shaking heads and gestaculating hands. I watch in rapt attention while three men discuss about who I really am.

Finally, the three men walk towards me with the old guy leading the way.

He asks me a strange question. “Where you sleeping on the bench ?”.

I reply in the positive.

He replies with a weak attempt at humour. “People dont do that in these places.”

I raise an eyebrow and say nothing.

It seems a gentleman ( the middle aged american on the other platform ? ) had called in to report a suspicious character. With a friendly warning to carry an id with me whenever I go out, he wished me good night and walked away with the other two.

and I turn back and walk, in the land of free, unable to sleep on a bench.

meek

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.”

Jesus Christ said those words in the famous sermon on the Mount, 2000 years ago.

I have always wondered about that one ever since I read it. According to a certain Mr.Darwin, “Its a jungle out there and it is the Survival of the fittest”. If you look at it, the two more or less contradict one another. Darwin paints this world as a jungle where you fight for your surivival with all you have got. Jesus asks us not to fight, give yourselves up in love and says the world will be ours.

I have always wondered which one is right.

Anyone who is cognizant of the real world knows what it is to be out there. A normal day of work is a game of oneupmanship played by you and your colleagues with a biased manager monitoring and pushing his own strategy. Niceness is a required quality in the other guy ( not in you ). Nobody returns a favour anymore. Aggressive, confident people are the winners here. And all this seem to point that Darwin indeed is the right one.

But wait. Ever had a fight and not felt bad afterwards ? Ever worked/fought hard for something and not felt hollow afterwards ?? I am a passionate debater : one who rarely gives up. Lately, I am beginning to hate all that. I wonder why I fight hard to establish a point I myself am not sure about in the first place. I wonder why I work late nights ( and on weekends ) just to earn a higher appraisal rating enroute to a higher salary. I have acheived a lot and yet I want more. I am worried about a future when I should be happy about the present. It is this feeling that you are in a rat race that makes me do all that. It is as if I stop for a moment's rest, I might be left behind.

Something tells me Jesus is right.

Something tells me, I must change myself. I must remove all forms of aggression from my behavior. I must learn to be meek : to give up. I must learn to be satisfied with what I have. I must stop dreaming and keep my feet firmly grounded. I must learn to see the beauty of what is there before me rather than dreaming about a beauty that never will be.

Life is an illusion : Maya. This is something I keep saying but never have realised its true meaning. Slowly I am getting it. I am learning to lose and more importantly, slowly learning to enjoy it.

Not for me the turbulent mind of a chaser of dreams. I long for the peace and calm of a mind which has only love, gentleness and kindness inside it. Not for me the turbulent waves of the sea. I long for the gentle stillness of the stream.

I want only love to live inside my heart. nothing else.

and for that, I must be meek.

Something tells me the contradiction in the above line ( “must” and “meek”) ensures that I may not acheive this. But I am going to try.

Magic Realism.

Words Fascinate me.

I am starting a series of blogs wherein I will be talking about the books that I haved loved the most.

Let me start off with one of my all time favourite books, One hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, one of the masters of the Magic Realism genre. To define what Magic Realism is indeed difficult but let me make a try. Magic Realism is seeing life with a new set of eyes : combining magic with the mundane, coupling the ordinary with the fantastic, seamlessly blended so much so that you are left wondering what is real and what is unreal. You cannot survive from the hands of a master of magical realism like Garcia, without doubting your own sanity. You will learn to laugh when you should be crying and cry when you should be laughing. In short, at times reading a book like this can be a life altering experiance :)

One hundred years of Solitude is easily his best book : a story about the island of Maconda depicted on an epic level ending with its ultimate disappearance. An extract from the book :

. . . for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth. (422 ).


read an interesting lecture on this book here.

Learn more of Julio Cortazar, the argentine master of the fantastic short story -here

An extract,

"'It's like a waiting room, life is,' said the bald gentleman, carefully grinding out his cigarette with his shoe and examining his hands as if he didn't know what to do with them now; the elderly lady sighed a yes born of long years of agreeing, and put away her little bottle just as the door at the end of the corridor opened and the other lady came out with that look all the others envied, and an almost sympathetic goodbye when she got to the exit.' (from 'Second Time Around')


Read an excerpt from German Master of Magical Realism, Gunter Grass here

A couple of extracts,

Often after airing he finds time to sit by my bed for a while, disentangling his strings, and spreading silence until I call the silence Bruno and Bruno silence.

I shall begin far away from me; for no one ought to tell the story of his life who hasn't the patience to say a word or two about at least half of his grandparents before plunging into his own existence.


and how can I forget our own Salman Rushdie and his Midnight's Children, that fantastic interpretation of Midnight, August 15, 1947.

An extract,

Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems - but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible. Suppose yourself in a large cinema, sitting at first in the back row, and gradually moving up, row by row, until your nose is almost pressed against the screen. Gradually the stars' faces dissolve into dancing grain; tiny details assume grotesque proportions; the illusion dissolves - or rather, it becomes clear that the illusion itself is reality.

read more of him here.

Have fun.

A conversation with Dr.Muralidhar Pai.

An interesting conversation with Dr.Muralidhar Pai in Malayasia,

Sir,

I am not afraid of using my real name. It is just that I like to sign my mails with the more personal nickname of mine, which is /.\ n a n d. I hope, that clears your confusion. I had given my complete personal details to rediff.com. They chose not to publish it.

Now let me answer to your colleagues comments,

{All throughout the story you say there is a god, everywhere in everybody who (The god himself) is teaching us love.You choose to end with- I want to live in a world where there is no God (Is it not contradictory).

Yes, Sir .. It is contradictory ... Not by accident ... It is meant to be ... I and you, *intelligent* guys of this world can understand to a certain extent, the essence and meaning of the word God. But put yourself into an uneducated man standing on the soil of Ayodhya. What is going through his mind ? His views of God are influenced by the epics and the various (mis)interpretaions of God by people who want to twist the mass opinion in their favour. So although God is a noble notion in itself, It is not practical in a world like ours. That is why i say, until each one of us have the sense to understand God, let there be no God. And everyone knows that to expect all people to be sensible is impossible. So I wish to be reborn in a world, where there is no God.

You say, let there be no religion (You claim to understand true meaning of religion and then deny it).

Same as above. I understand Religion. Others dont. Others are a majority. So I dont want religion in order to have peace.

You say, let there be no believers. For, every believer (Have you lost faith even in yourself, have you lost faith in the world. This world is so beautiful because majority of people can think rationally not because of handfull of fanatics) can turn into a fanatic with the right amount of provocation.

The sensible people of this world are always the passive observers. And the fanatics, even though a minority, are the more active and hence dangerous. In India, while the intelligentia shun the politics, the ignorant and the *gundas* take control of the government and decide the way we live.

Until man has the sense to understand God (After writing so much about understanding how can you say that man does not understand god. Or you think you are not man), let there be no God. Indeed, a Krishna, Jesus or Allah would be willing to die a thousand deaths if that would bring peace to this world.

Yes, I am a sensible man. But I am also a minority. No use what i think. It is the *mass* thinking that needs to change. and it wont. So I dont want a God.

Let us kill religion (Do not borrow words from the same fanatics whom you denounce in the name of decency)so that humans can live. Yes, I want to live in a world where there is no God.

Fanatics understand tough words. Only by shocking people with tough words can i hope to change the status quo. If i had used any lesser words, I would have got far lesser impact.

Is it not just to show yourself as god or you believe you are equal to god}

I have no pretensions of being God or showing off. I am just a concerned citizen who refuses to see India burn and keep quiet. I have written what I thought is right. To take it or leave it is your perogative.
Thanks and Regards.