Pencil, pen, keyboard

Pencil, pen, keyboard- I always felt I am very inefficient at using them. After my 12th, I learned to type, even passing a 40 wpm exam. However, the standard PC keyboard's arrangement is different from the typewriter (the layers are flatter) and hence I was never able to translate that learning into the digital domain. I am a two-three finger touch typist now but obviously could do better.

Same with pens - my handwriting varies with the nature of the pen, paper, and I suspect, even purpose of writing.

I have recently found myself using pencils a lot more than I used to. (We have purchased so many pencils for CTQ and Thinq2win that the house, bag, and notebooks are infested by them). I think my ineffectiveness with pencils is the least worrisome. It is like humming a tune poorly or dressing badly. Done in the safety of the house,  you have nothing to prove and nothing to be ashamed of.

"Varumayin Niram Sivappu" - a Kamal film

"Varumayin Niram Sivappu" (or 'the colour of poverty is red') is a Tamil film by K. Balachander featuring Kamalahassan and Sridevi (it was also made in Telugu and remade in Hindi). Like films such as Mere Apne, the story is about the urban educated unemployed. Irrespective of what we think of our past,  current, and future  professional prospects, I think anyone reading this has never been in a desperate situation with regards to unemployment. These films serve as a document that such a period existed, and quite likely, still exists for people outside our sphere of social connection.

Kamalahassan's character, born to a well to do musician, is unable to reconcile his principles (inspired by the poet-freedom fighter Bharatiyar) with the moralities of most jobs. Poverty is a consequence but as in most KB films, there is a clever way of depicting this world. Like a scene where the lead and his friends pretend to have an elaborate meal behind closed doors so that Sridevi, waiting outside the house for them to finish, thinks they have something to eat.

Finally, the lead finds a job he is happy with - being a barber. It could have been treated as a comic situation but poverty, while being occasionally comic, is not a subject for slapstick. The colour is red, but sometimes, it can be light.

"I, Claudius"

Did you know a lame, partly deaf, stuttering man was once Emperor of the Romans? 'I, Claudius" is a British TV series from the point of view of Claudius, who probably survived routine purges because people thought he was literally an idiot.

In reality, he wasn't. The series, with a cast of some very good British actors, begins from the reign of Augustus and reaches Nero (Christ is born along the way). In between, you get an interesting lesson in Roman history of the Empire at its peak: peak of intrigue, decadence, and power. Most fascinating is the character of Livia, Augustus' wife, who outlived many a plot, and whose sole aim in life was to end up a Goddess.

As Obelix might have put it, these Romans were crazy.

A Persuasive Paragraph to Pardon a Pig

(written on a prompt on a writing group - "convince me that this pig deserves to live")

Winston Churchill once said: "Dogs look up to you, cats look down on you. Only pigs treat you as equals."

So my friend, there's not much that separates you and me. Don't go by the exterior (yours, not mine). We all know the filth you are capable of wallowing in. Perhaps it is a sign of my much-acclaimed intelligence that I refuse to hide it under cloth and cover, polish and perfume, bath and beautician.

Philosophy comes as naturally to us pigs as pork. Keep me on the other side of your plate and we can write a best-selling self-help book together. I even have a title: "Bringing home the bacon".

Shall we shake hands and oink the agreeement?

"Mere piiche maa hai"

In an interesting gesture, Indian cricketers are wearing jerseys with names of their mother instead of where their first/last name would be. Not sure whose idea it was, but since Star, both the sponsor of the Indian team and the sportscaster for the series, has used this in their promotions, it's clearly a PR/marketing choice.

Call me cynical, but I thought this was a fairly hollow gesture. Not so much because it's obviously driven by a PR objective (which seems to have worked well - fair amount of online chatter and coverage), but because it doesn't feel very authentic. None of these players, from what I know, have been associated with this line of thinking before, and it's not associated with the brands of the BCCI, the game of cricket, or Star. And assuming it's a one-off gesture, this is going to be ultimately meaningless.

Compare this with:

* Director Sanjay Leela Bhansali who has adopted his mother's name in his own

* The Pink days at the SCG to raise awareness about Breast Cancer by the McGrath foundation (because of a deep connection with Glenn McGrath)

For this gesture feel 'authentic', it ought to be * reflected in everything the brands behind this do from here on (including supporting women's cricket?). I'm sceptical. Will this just be one piece of trivia for a future cricket quiz, or can one expect more meaningful outcomes along with a PR success?

Cynics and dreamers - the aisle seat is for neither.

Apropos this Economist article.

I used to prefer aisle seats on domestic flights until I realised one day, I'm going to end up murdering people sitting in the middle/window seats who want to get into the aisle as soon as the plane has landed so that they can stand uncomfortably on the toes of mental midgets like themselves. Have had quite a few if-looks-could-kills and actual arguments.

So looks like the cynics should prefer the window seats, and are better off dreaming about a future where everyone remains calmly seated as the plan comes to a halt instead of wanting to instantly eject out of their seats (which I would gladly help them accomplish while in the air, if I could).

"Cat Pictures Please"

Here's the winner of the 2016 Hugo for Best Short Story. In keeping with the flavour of the season, it features an AI. It's pretty good.

It's been 2 years since the Mars Orbiter Mission (also known as 'Mangalyaan' when it's at home, sipping tomato juice) officially began its orbit around the Red Planet. They hoped it would be there for six months - another 18 months and it seems to be doing just fine.

I wrote this piece for Architectural Digest last year about MOM on its first orbital anniversary. Here's to MOM painting the town red for some more time.

Chrome Fume

The biggest personal productivity boost in recent times has come by unchecking a single checkbox: the one that says 'enable hardware acceleration' in Chrome's settings (on Win 10). I haven't quite figured out why this option had caused such a slow down, but apparently, it's something to do with the display drivers.

I've often had to wait for as much as 10-15 mins after the laptop resumes from sleep for Chrome to come back to life.

For once, a silver bullet.

How do you tell...

...a kid that he is a total git?

Brian Bilston, the 'Poet Laureate of Twitter'

OF NO FIXED ADOBE

Her interest in him

had waned,

then gradually eroded.



Like an update

to Adobe Reader,

he’d never be downloaded.

---

I discovered Brian Bilston's Poetry Laboetry. He is wonderful to read. (Probably because I can understand what he says and there is whimsy involved.)

Points to the Iceland football team

Not only did they draw their first ever tournament match, they made Ronaldo whinge. (Not that he needs an invitation to.).

Today

Today was the scariest day of my life.

Today was the day it was supposed to happen. (But it didn't.)

Things were supposed to get going, pick up, take off. (But no.)

I was supposed to do things. (I didn't.)

When I woke up with a To Do list bubbling with the energy of optimism. By the end of the day, it had drooped and wilted. Too much exposure to the sun.

The day I was supposed to go outside and see the light. (But I stayed inside.)

The day when the epiphanies, like the groceries, were failed to be delivered. (They tried calling, but no one picked up the phone and they couldn't find the place and it's your fault.)

Today, I looked back at the last 8 hours. (I shouldn't have.) No one knows what happened to them. (Did they even exist?)

Today was just like yesterday. (Perhaps an identical twin to tomorrow, just born a day earlier.)

Tomorrow may be the scariest day of my life.

Getting past the sky

Kaun kehta hai ki aasmaan mein suraakh ho nahin sakta,

ek pathhar toh tabiyat se uchhaalo yaaron.

I had no idea these lines existed.

Can't stop thinking past it. Unabashed optimism and derring-do. Something that I doubt I have ever experienced or used. Can't remember if there was a time where I could have thrown a stone "with conviction".

Sky or not, but it just zipped past my defences.

Now how to make going to read Dushyant Kumar a priority?

(from Varun Grover's article about using this poet's lines in "Masaan")

The Magna Carta Joke

From about the age of 10, I could remember that the historic signing of the Magna Carta happened in the year 1215. How? Thanks to this joke which I read in Reader's Digest:

A tourist guide is with a group of visitors at Runnymede, where the Magna Carta was signed. He tells them: "this is where the Magna Carta, or the Great Charter, was signed in 1215.

One visitor looks at his watch and remarks: "Damn, we just missed it by about an hour, then".

"Genome" by Matt Ridley

"Genome" is undoubtedly one of those books that will change the way you look at the world and yourselves. The triumph of the book is keeping the matter accessible to lay readers, without dumbing the import down. Though I thought Ridley's discipline ran out towards the last couple of chapters in terms of accessibility, it's still something you should pick up at the earliest.

After all, it's your "Autobiography in 23 Chapters" (Flipkart link here).

San Diego Zoo and the suffocation of choice a.k.a the buffet problem

Visited San Diego Zoo, considered by many to be among the best zoos in the world. There's always something conflicting about zoos: on one hand, however gilded the cage, the animals are in captivity, but on the other, we get to be so close to them and feel why its worth conserving as many of them as possible (which this zoo is also famous for).

Saw my first ever gorilla, toucan, and polar bear (partial list here). It's also one of the most accessible outdoor spaces I've ever seen, with even an escalator segment that helps you navigate some of the steeper parts of the zoo.

We must have seen about 40-50% of the zoo, given the size of the campus. That's pretty much the most you can do in 4-6 hours, especially with children in tow. Which means you have to choose. With a dazzling array of choices, this act is very difficult. You have this problem at large buffets and bookstores (ok, *I* have this anxiety at bookstores).

People have been studying the problems of abundance - when we can't have it all, it makes us uneasy, for making a choice implies saying no to something else, and thus a potential loss - what if you made the wrong choice?

Sheena Iyengar's book Buy The Art Of Choosing sums this up nicely.

The usefulness of naivete

Just completed an exercise of collating all the questions we did for Doolally's weekly pub quiz in 2014. Realised how much our thinking has changed, evolved, even transmogrified since Jan 2014.

And how naive, new, and noble we once were! But it's good to know that state of mind, which accompanies anything that you begin from zero, can be rediscovered. Gives you a chance to refresh and scrape off cynicism accumulated in other aspects of life.

Passive Aggressive

The great thing about passive voice in bureaucratic writing is how it allows for the person doing the writing to not attribute any responsibility to any persons(s).

Consider:

"It has been decided to remove access to xyz"

Not "I have decided" or "we have decided", but "it has been". Borderline euphemistic, don't-come-complaining-to-me. Blame the ether.

Richard Attenborough

Sir Richard Attenborough passed away in Aug 2014. Until my early twenties, I only knew of him as the man who directed 'Gandhi' (I hadn't even seen Jurassic Park.) Then, I happened to read a book about him, which opened up his acting life and shone light on his other films which had been out-dazzled by 'Gandhi'.

In 2002, for my Mastermind India final, I was fast running out of ideas for a topic in the specialised round (there were just 3 weeks between the semi-final and the final, and it would have been premature to think of the final before). I eventually ended up opting for "The Films of Richard Attenborough". It could have been a disaster, considering that these were the days before movies, especially less popular ones, were easily available all around you as is the case today. I was banking on that book from the library and IMDB to get me through.

.

It didn't happen - I got a call from the producers asking me if I would mind switching to another topic ('The Tommy and Tuppence Stories of Agatha Christie'). I didn't know why that happened, but I had no hesitation in accepting - it was an easier topic to prepare for and I just needed to ensure I had all the books of the series (I had 3 of them already). Incidentally, there is a tiny connection between T&T and Sir RA: his wife of many years Sheila Sim and he had portrayed the detective duo (on stage, I think).

Later, I watched a little more of his work and would have no hesitation recommending the following for your viewing pleasure:
1. 10 Rillington Place - he acts as your uncle next door who is also into serial killing.
2. Chaplin - directed by R.A, features Robert Downey Jr. in a well-acted biopic on the famous Charlie
3. Shatranj Ke Khiladi - as General Outram, the no-nonsense imperialist
4. The Great Escape - leading the secret escape committee in a PoW camp

I have yet to watch Brighton Rock, his big breakthrough performance.

I got somewhat tired of watching the slightly too-positive 'Gandhi' over the years, but it's a tremendous piece of cinematic work - kind of like watching a long, carefully constructed Test match innings by the likes of Dravid or Gavaskar. And like their notable performances, there are a lot of great behind-the-scenes stories of how he went about putting it together.

Now that would make a great movie.