Movies

Today am going to talk about movies. Why do we watch movies? And what do we like to watch in movies? Please note that all views and thoughts here are mine. And all generalizations done here about people and mankind are either extrapolations of what I think/believe or are my assumptions/guesses, based on my fundas of the world. (It's funny, one declaration and you have licence to talk any crap!)

There are two schools of thought (there ought to be) on what movies are meant for. None of them exist as far as I know, and I don't know much anyway, more so in this area. But there must be 2 schools, coz they make sense to me. Here they are - (i)People watch movies to see their dreams, fantasies & nightmares in action. Now dreams, fantasies & nightmares can be good, bad, ugly, dirty, scary and whatnot. That's why we have myriad varieties of movies. (ii) People want to see reality in movies.

The second school of thought, I believe, is not true. It is actually an illusion people have in their minds, and comes from the (i) itself. People want to see their ideas and perceptions of reality live on screen. (Could have included this in (i) along with dreams, fantasies & nightmares. But chalta hai :P.) It gives them immense satisfaction and self-assurance. Works a great deal in boosting the self-esteem of any individual.

I think I have somehow answered both questions we started with - Why do we watch movies? And what do we like to watch in movies? Please comment to express your views on this topic. (I'll reply/respond with mine.) There is a lot of shit we can talk on this topic. I have not even scratched the surface properly.

the 'me' paradox

The population of Tigers in India has been dwindling very rapidly over the past few years. There are appriximately 1300 tigers in India right now. In 2009 alone, 72 tigers died according to the Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI), an NGO; and 54 died according to National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), a government body, which is meant for conservation and is hence conservative!

I often wonder whether we are right or wrong in dominating the earth the way we do, and in screwing the lives of most other animals of sizes comparable to ours. As we are also animals, and part of the same nature, perhaps we are also a force operating in taking the nature to a different configuration or a stage of evolution. As we gradually end most animals our size, through reluctant selfishness inspite of attempts (that are even more reluctant and compromised in their seriousness) to save these endangered animals from us, the earth is gradually moving to a place majorly inhabited by smaller species. At the micro level, they have been beyond our control and imagination anyways. And it is natural for us to want to be all powerful and dominating, if we can, in the ranges in which we thrive. So we ruthlessly cage animals, kill them, fake wanting to save them. May be we don't fake. It's genuine. But the rationale behind it is probably still selfish - perhaps many of us fear the death of these animals may somehow lead to our own death. Why? May be because - (a)we don't think we are responsible for their death. So somehow their dying signals to us that something's wrong and we might also die because of it; or (b)we know that we are responsible for their death, and it scares us big time that we committed a sin of ending life, of which we are also a kind. I am not sure what's the actual reason. May be it's a mix of both. May be it's something else. It's weird, we are not sure what goes on inside our minds when we do things, and what really makes us do them. The brain, if at all it takes all decisions, has various ways of doing that, some of which it does not reveal to the part of the brain which 'we' seem to be conscious of (are 'we' not our brains? minds?), the thoughts, beliefs, etc. that we are aware of. It's fairly complicated how something that is helping 'me' think ('me' is again defined by that something itself) hides a part of itself from that something, which it can't, so may be it hides itself from 'me', which it seems to me is that something itself. It's terribly complicated. God must be crazy!

Have sex, Indian cricket team told

The Indian cricket team players has been asked to have more sex to increase their testosterone levels, and through that, increase their strength, aggressiveness and competitiveness. Click Here to read about it.

I am wondering whether this is good news for cricketers' wives or is something that scares them big time. Can't say how sex-deprived they are, but if they really are, then it's dream-come-true for them. But if they are not, and there could be various reasons why they may not be, then they will now have to bear some crazy fucking (ahm ahm, sorry, it's f*king). God have mercy on them!

But I don't think it is logical to assume that the cricketers will go and have sex only with their wives. Their testosterone is dedicated to the nation, and they shouldn't compromise on that if it takes unreasonably enormous amount of time and effort, because of various reasons, to reach and woo their wives. More so lately, because of the economic recession which must have rendered them unable to buy costly gifts and stuff. I am sure the wives would understand. But there's another angle to it. If any cricketer does not have sex in plenty with his wife now, she can charge him for one or both of the following 2 offences - (i)cheating on her, (ii)cheating the nation.

I must say that I intend no offence to cricketers' wives. I respect them, like I respect all women. I don't respect the cricketers though. They earn too much money and appreciation for doing nothing worthwhile. When I did more important nothings in TCS, GSSL and Satyam, I didn't earn even a measurable fraction of what the cricketers do. That's so unfair.

I've realized I occasionally write very long sentences these days. It's due to Amartya Sen. He's spoiling my english. Hey Amartya dada, I hope you read my blog. See what you have done.

I am sure my female readers (there are quite a few who say they read my blog occasionally) must be frowning like crazy reading my post about sex. It's a bad thing, ain't it? No. And it's not bad to talk about it either. The more openly we talk about it, the better. We Indians were all fine in our fundas on these matters before (say 1000 yrs back). The Britishers came, taught us all bull-shit stuff, Catholic fundas of sex is sin, weird English - which Amartya Sen is still not able to get rid of, killed our self-esteem and left us all screwed. Now the west has abandoned all that crap, is open, speaks simple English and chills out. And we are all confused ki bhai chal kya raha hai. Now imitating the west also isn't going to help, coz they picked up all the gyaan from us and adapted it to their cultures, and in the process messed it up. So we need an unlearning of everything they taught us and everything we learnt thereafter by aping them, and then apply our minds and do what's best for us. Each one of us needs to do this at an individual level and collectively it will take the shape of a culture. So the basic change has to come at the level of the attitude and perspective of every individual.

Cost-Cutting...

The UPA leaders are now obsessed with Economy Class Air Travel. Even cancelled some timepass trips, like the goodwill trip to greece. Also cut down on the the size of teams which accompany ministers in their forgein trips.

I think in addition to this, they should also look for other avenues of earning money, besides the government salary, so that they can pay more taxes and contribute positively. For example, in their spare time, they can each write a book criticizing some historical figure and hurt the sentiments of someone who can make enough noise when he cries. The book will sell like crazy. They can also work in movies, coz all of them are great actors already. There have been politicians who have acted in movies while being in office. So it's very much doable. Travel can be cut down by using technology. Afterall, it was cost-cutting that made private companies use video conferencing etc. So the government can do that as well. It's time our politicians got a bit entrepreneurial, and also made entrepreneurship easier and safe for those willing and daring.

One suggestion I have is to abandon projects like the Moon Mission and ask ISRO to focus on things which can add to our economic and social well-being. For example, an artifical satellite that does weather forecasting, remote sensing, spying, etc. is a useful investment. But a thing that goes away to Moon or Mars, rotates around it, and sends back images and videos of rocks and crap from there is a terrible waste of (taxpayer) money and talent for a poor country like India, and should hence be pursued through private investments.

I can think of some logical reasons for still doing them, however. Like, if we don't, we may miss out in terms of our capabilities and the learning curve in the long run. If we start our space program after becoming prosperous, when we will have nothing to worry about except the possibilities of life on Moon or Mars, we will then not be in a position strong enough to do anything significant, having lagged behind everyone in this race. But I am sure we can have innovative ways right now of continuing our research in the area, through simulation etc., while advancing more widely and more rapidly in other areas which make better sense, and drawing learnings through them and other means to enhance our knowledge about travelling into outer space. It's a matter of having the right will. Anyway we should be ashamed to give this justification for continuing with the space program, coz we never give the same importance and seriousness to education, health care, livelihood, safe drinking water, sanitation, skills, technology, infrastructure, etc., where we are already lagging behind most of the world. These things should be topmost in our priority list, rather than setting foot on moon. Later when we have time and money, we can launch ourselves into the dead parts of the universe, and search for life. Till then, I think we must value our own lives and those of the millions who are not getting enough or anything to eat. It's important to align the enthusiasm of our sceintists, politicians and intelligentia towards what the nation needs at the moment, particularly when it comes to policy decisions and ways of spending the taxpayer money. Anything that does not cause any positive impact on our well-being should not be funded by the taxpayer money. For all such activities, even if they are of high intellectual or scientific worth, seek private funding.

Economic Indicators

There is no positive news on the front page of Business Standard today. There is immense confusion right now about whether the economy is really recovering. Just like there was confusion for long in early 2008 about whether there was really a recession or the economy was just acting weird.

As all hopes are pinned on China to drive the recovery, India continues to feel great about its positive GDP growth figure, which, by the way, is a highly arbit figure, given the way it is calculated in India, and everywhere for that matter. The actual figure could be much higher. Similar is the case in India with WPI, the indicator for Inflation. The basket of goods it comprises includes stuff which nobody uses nowadays and excludes stuff that grab the major spending today. And we end up having a negative Inflation value. That's pretty silly. On top of that, the new WPI under consideration chooses to exclude mobile phones, coz it is based on some upgraded basket of goods at some point a few years back when mobile boom had not picked up. When everyone knows it's bogus, why not fix it? It would have been great if we had more accurate measures to judge the economy. That would have helped us take better policy decisions. Economies are not supposed to be run by trial and error. It's no better if the tools you use are visibly erroneous.

Three

I have an essay-writing competition today in some time... Perhaps my last chance in life to participate in such a thing. MBA has given me a chance to do a lot of things whose skope I thought had ended in 2004. And interestingly, it has not put a pause on any of the fun that I had as a salaried person. Am having more of all that fun, and with a more relaxed mood. But it's going to end soon. I am gonna graduate on 13th April 2010, unless I flunk in a few of the 10 credits remaining to pass (i.e., out of the 36.5 credits + Summer Internship that together make the kickass PGDM from IIML).

I have 2 main worries now. The first - of getting back to doing jobs after MBA. Well, the very reason I came to do MBA was that I hated my job. The 4 years of work-ex that I proudly show on my CV are 4 years of frustration, job-hopping, hating my work, gazillion lines of instant-messaging, blogging, reading TOI and ET online, and barely a hundred lines of java code (well, perhaps a little more than that... I have a habit of understating my achievements ;-)). It's the same for most people who go on adding number-of-years to their work-ex hoping to get into ISB or some IIM which now gives weightage to work-ex too (and forgives your low CAT scores which keep getting more and more pathetic as you grow older and older), or some of the executive MBA programs which teach old and hence slower minds what's what in less time and more cost.

NB - if you are a recruiter and reading all this stuff trying to investigate about me, lemme tell you that I am just trying to be funny here. I have really done all that you can see listed on my CV under "Professional Experience". Stuff like "Led a Team", "Client Impressed", "Conceptualized", "Pioneered", "Spearheaded" etc. etc., and everything in bold or italics, and even my hobbies and interests - all that is true. This blog is about my personal life, don't poke your nose into it. It is meant to impress girls ;-). So you don't worry about it and rest assured about the truth of the CV (It has been verified 100 times by IIM people; so it's all genuine stuff!). Go check my linked in profile, which has my CV copy-pasted. Some points are under different headings, but you will find all the points over there for sure. Also a few people have recommended me there, very honestly. (I did return the favor to some of them by writing honest recommendations for them also).

And the second worry - of getting married. Am not sure whether that's the right thing to do. No one who is married seems very upbeat about it. Besides it is very hard to find a beautiful, gult, brahmin, veginaatlu, 5'3"-5'8", well-qualified, homely girl from a good (middle-class) family who also likes a guy who is bald (the hair is probably coming back, I swear; I may get a transplant too if I get a decent job somehow), pot-bellied-but-getting-thin-coz-he-jogs, confused, 6-pointer-approaching-5 (ok, CG is not important, I know :P), etc. etc. (you don't need more details here... can't trust those recruiters... anyway it's girls' problem, let them figure out on their own).

It's almost time for the essay competition. It's about love being the hope and hatred being hopeless... something like that. I have to write about how love is the ultimate reconcilliation to all the world's problems and blunders. It's something the United Nations is promoting for fixing the world. The essay competition is being conducted jointly by the UN and Swami Ramchandra Mission, that is adjacent to IIML. They say they will judge our essays based on our 'spiritual quotient'. Wonder what that is. Frankly, I don't think just love can solve world's problems, because we cannot have such ultimate all-pervading love in this world, which has place for other feelings as well. Love cannot be there without hatred. But I guess I am still gonna go and write that love is the answer to everything. Need to win this one, my last essay competition. Will fake some "spiritual quotient". See ya soon!

Gone Behosh

About 8 months back, I fell down unconscious a couple of hours after donating blood, and skipping lunch thereafter. I thought the banana, the apple and the muffin along with coffee, that were given to me after the donation would suffice for lunch, but I was wrong.

It was an interesting experience nonetheless. I was in the men's room when everything went dark and I fell. The last thing I remember of what happened before I was lost, is that my head hit against the wall. My eyes opened again about 5 minutes later. Not sure of this duration, coz I didn't check times before and after. Was too confused over whatever was happening, coz my alerness, mental state, brain responsiveness were far from their best.

I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling. Realized in a few seconds that I was down in the toilet. Started wondering for a while as to how I could fall asleep on the floor of such a place. Then tried to recall what had happened, felt a slight pain at the back of my head, and I got scared with the realization that I had fallen unconscious. I immediately got up, though with difficulty. My vision was still blurred. I walked to my room about 30 metres away. Immediately called up Fauji Dhaba and ordered 2 Aaloo Parathas and continued with the movie I had been watching before I went to the toilet - Kungfu Panda (a great movie, I do remember quite a bit of it). I was feeling incredibly great at having had such an experience. I then went ahead and broadcasted through my instant messenger status that I had gone behosh, claimed after some time of having had a Near Death Experience, just to gain some publicity and sympathy. But the world was too busy to show sympathy of any kind :-(. I also went on and got busy doing something.

Back...

Back to Blogging after 4 months! But I have to start on a sad note. Fatima Arunkumar Marneni, a batchmate of mine, passed away yesterday. I don't know the exact details of how it happened. I am shocked and sad. He was such a nice guy. I have been thinking hard about life and death lately. I am unable to comprehend either of them.

I am back in IIM after a 5-day log vacation at my hometown in Bilaspur. All I did during the holidays was to eat and sleep. Need to start working out to get into some decent shape. Jogging, which I did a lot the past 4 months, has not helped much. Or may be I didnn't stress myself enough.

Bought a book, which I had planned to finish reading during the vacation, but barely managed to start. It's The Idea of Justice by Amartya Sen. The topic is quite interesting, but Amartya Sen's style of writing sucks big time. Each of his sentences runs 5-6 lines of printed text - so long that when you end the sentence you forget the beginning, and almost 80% of it in my case. Many times, when I finish a sentence and try to think what is being said, I go blank for a while, a long one at times. I wish Amartya Sen wrote in English that is more contemporary and simple, one almost like the spoken form of the Language. But I am sure he takes pride in his ability to write in such English, of whatever style that is (Victorian?) and hates the current simple style. Can guess that from his hatred for the reply "Good" for "How are you?", rather than "Fine". Incidentally, and interestingly, I too at times find "Good" quite weird, having been taught by Anglo-Indian ma'ams and sirs. But have now understood well that "Good" is the contemporary, American way and you better use it if you want to sound normal. I do sometimes use it now, though with noticeable reluctance. I still prefer "Fine" though. That's why I don't blame Amartya Sen for sticking to his old 6-line-long-sentences-wala English.

I've read 75 pages so far, of the 400-odd pages. Will finish it, no matter how painful it is to read it, and how little of it really gets into my head. Coz starting a book and not finishing it is very very frustrating (for a book-lover). Can you notice analogies with something else? ;-)