Category: Life Ordinary

  • A social club of one

    Sometime back, I read a post on @daddysan’s blog on choices and how we “defend freedom of choice but we criticize those who exercise it because those choices may not be concurrent with ours.”  To be noted that the thrust of the argument is not on ‘labeling’ products/services per se, but labeling the people who consume it, more so in cases when it’s a personal choice and doesn’t endanger or even affect others in a significant way.

    I found this post interesting because I have always been intrigued by choices and their significance, not just from the perspective of whether they are choices at all, but also from that of the judgmental robes we like to wear. The last time I had written about the latter was in the context of expertise. But a comment on this post gave me quite a new direction for thought. More on that in a bit.

    In the context of the post itself, though I understand that labeling (and battles around them) has probably been around from the time the species became 2 in number, I think the publishing power that the internet created has taken it to a whole new level. So while “people who smoke/drink versus those who don’t”, “people who apply coconut oil on their hair versus those who don’t” and so on have had battles fought with much fervour, the internet’s ability to aggregate opinion has escalated many issues to war levels, like the examples daddysan has used.

    And so I wonder if it has something to do with the ‘Like’ necessity that has increased its hold over our lives recently. Social endorsement, even from total strangers. When I am a consumer of X, and you chose to buy Y instead of X, it is as though you have not ‘Liked/Retweeted’ my awesome intelligence in choosing X. Peer reaction was probably a major factor in my choice, whether I acknowledge it or not, and in saying that I have gone wrong, you have invoked my ego and brought up the subject of whether I chose X purely for its tangible or even intangible benefits or whether I chose it to conform to some section’s decree. Now, you probably didn’t mean to do any of this, and also are under some sort of peer review process yourself, but that’s irrelevant and it’s now war. Just like many of the Likes/shares/retweets are from people I don’t even really know, the war just brings in all sorts of strangers and camps.

    For the record, I have exactly one Apple product, which was gifted to me, and if it has any iron parts, it should be rusted by now. I read Chetan Bhagat and when I get a chance, take potshots at him. Just can’t resist. 😀 I think Ponytail sucks, and again, don’t lose a chance to crack a line at his expense, but I have held back much since the time he made a movie with the awesome Funny Deol. Joke sako to Joke low is the policy.

    But, enough. The comment that made me think was made by Jo Chopra McGowan, and it was about how individual choices add up, affect others, and could probably end up in impacting popular culture/lifestyles etc. I’d never thought of it that way. But yes, most of us/our actions influence at least one other person, and so the chain goes. More often than not, our reasons for doing so remain un-shared, and somehow one personal choice could create a conformity wave. Obviously the easy way to stop it is to make conscious choices and that brings us to the vicinity of square one. 🙂

    until next time, unheard mentality!

  • It’s not just a car..

    He stood watching the children play with the car. The car reminded him of himself. Ravaged by fate, time and humans. He still remembered the day he had left it at the crossroad, trying to escape the cops. Five years ago. Time to start afresh. Maybe he would start with finding the car’s original owners.

    …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

    For those unfamiliar with the genre, that was a 55 word story, something I haven’t done in a while. The story behind writing this is probably more interesting. I met Ideasmith for the first time recently, and the first thing she asked was why I no longer wrote them. I could only smile. The 55s were a phase. So this one is specially for her. 🙂

    Later the same day, I met a few other friends for dinner. The conversation somehow moved to how, on a cold morning a long time ago, I had abandoned my first vehicle (the ‘famous’ Kiney that fell in love with the mechanic and found excuses to visit him) in front of the workshop because I couldn’t take it along to our new accommodation. By that time, many of its parts had been spared for the newer vehicle. The conversation thus moved on to abandoned cars. You must’ve come across a few parked on the road – without tyres, insides lined with dust, torn seating, the model usually belonging to an earlier era, and now either ignored or the local kids’ play item . I have always been fascinated by them. For me, they are like snapshots in time. The end of some story. A cross road. A decision. To move on, the car not factoring in the rest of the story. The humans involved and the circumstances that made them abandon the car is always a potential story. Just like the 55 above.

    until next time, it’s a caaaar story 😉

  • Your next avatar

    There was a good debate at Slate on how far (if at all) we should go in augmenting what we have been biologically endowed with. I’d noted earlier the three tracks of speciation, and how we are already on two of the tracks. (prosthesis and cell/tissue engineering) The debate introduced me to the word ‘transhumanism’, and its proponents believe that nature has done all it can do in terms of human evolution, and we should now take the ownership of driving our evolution forward. The opposing view (that’s not religion based) is that by manipulating all this, we might lose track of ‘being human’. There is a middle path that advocates augmentation to the “species’ typical best”, so that everyone would be ‘maximum humans’.

    One of the conclusions of this debate is that it will happen to us slowly. This is one of the fears I’d expressed in that earlier post – that we won’t realise when it happens to us. One of my other fears on account of increasing lifespans is the economics of it all, again something I’d written earlier. In yet another post, I’d wondered if we would speciate on the basis of whether we want to keep up with the information deluge or not. Those who choose to, would most likely need augmentation of the mind.

    ‘Evolution on Steroids’ is the theme of this article in BBC News (via Vedant), in which Prof. Church would now like to write/edit DNA, now that we have started reading it, with devices that will monitor internal and external environments, warn us, and then change our body accordingly. It’s probably an inevitable reality, with the only real question being ‘when’ and not ‘if’.

    ‘The Cyborg in us all‘ is another excellent read, this time from the NYT, in which I learned of scientists who are working on controlling computers via thoughts. In one of computer engineer Schalk’s experiments, on the effect of Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall – Part 1” on human brains, a particular brain created a model of what it expected to hear, after the music had been switched off in between. What the guys are really working towards though, are neurons and language – eg. thinking ‘cat’ and the image popping up on screen. Towards the end of the article, there is the NeuralPhone – which lets you pick a name from the phone contact list, telepathically.

    That brings me back to the Slate article which mentions this argument against trashumanism -increased lifespans would cause us to be more fearful, because we have more to lose. That would cause us to opt for “safe but shallow digital experiences, leading to long, ultimately empty lives”. This debate on enhanced and extended humanity reminded me of a post by Scott Adams, in which he writes about programmable avatars, which over time, would pick up our preferences and memories so well that they could live on as us even after we die, thereby extending our mortal lives into the infinite. And in ‘Hitchhiker’ style, he wonders if this has already happened. We are avatars of those who came before us – a premise not dissimilar to one I had reached via a different path. So much for humanity, and the debate about it. 🙂

    until next time, Google Human+

  • Act of Life

    Prithviraj (for those who might not know) is God’s Own Controversy’s Child, though the title has other strong contenders like Kochi Tuskers, and its star Sreesanth, and Ranjini Haridas, the compere who defies comparison. Prithviraj also stars in movies while he’s not busy adding credentials to the title. As you must have noticed from the last line, he’s a person who manages to polarise public opinion. 🙂

    Since any further commentary in this direction would have the potential to ignite a troll war, let’s get to the point of the post. Hailing from a family that can’t get more filmi (late father was a popular actor and Kerala’s own angry young man in his era, mother is an actress, brother is an actor and sister-in-law is an actress too), Prithviraj can usually be found within a few metres of the spotlight, if not in it. His interviews are a lot of fun. Reasonably well read, from what I can gather, highly opinionated, and oblivious of tact as a concept (something he himself acknowledges), he either makes intelligent conversation or tries to play footsie with his running mouth. (most recent example) Entertaining either way, and so I make it a point to watch his interviews.

    Thanks to our original underworld hero Mahabali almost being forgotten at Onam, and Prithviraj playing an underworld don in his Onam release, all the channels queued up to interview him. As always, they provided lots of fodder for hilarity. But the one on Kairali TV (I think) happened to be an interesting conversation, also thanks to the interviewer. Something that the actor said about working with Mani Ratnam in ‘Ravanan‘ caught my attention.

    Apparently, Mani Ratnam manages to identify and understand an actor’s comfort zones within a couple of days. He then proceeds to put them in situations they would find uncomfortable. His reasoning is that he doesn’t want their acting to be affected by their conditioning or them to fall back on the learning from earlier characters they have essayed. I thought that was a really smart way to bring some freshness to even the most veteran of actors. Wonder if Prithviraj gained this insight himself, or the director told him.

    But it leads back to a life lesson on conditioning. The routines, the benchmarks, peer pressure and the other daily grind machinations force us back to our conditioning. I know (subjective) from experience how difficult it is to look past the attitudes and responses that smack of conditioning. I have found it difficult to sustain whatever levels of objectivity I might have built up over a period of time. Even when I disrupted a routine, the disruption became a routine. It is as though the equilibrium is always a comfort zone.

    What is a measure of the mettle of an actor? Is it the way he manages to make a done-to-death character come alive or is it how he handles a completely new character convincingly? I guess you’d say both. Unfortunately, I don’t think ‘both’ is an option when you apply this measure to how one lives a life. You’d have to choose one role and play it really well, isn’t it? Life is the movie, there are no re-takes, and getting out of the character is a really difficult thing to do.

    until next time, roled into one.

  • Timestamps

    Thanks to the weird processes of online tax filing, I had to go to a real post office sometime back, and realised that I hadn’t visited one in at least 8 years! That’s the time we have been in Bangalore. I clearly remember frequenting the one near home in Cochin, and the one in Goa, housed within the GIM building. But 8 years is a long time. The Rs.5/ Rajiv Gandhi stamp was something I’d never seen before and told me how out of touch I was.

    Like many others, I too used to list ‘collecting stamps’ as a hobby. I remember the last time I was in Cochin, I fished out the briefcase that has been the caretaker of my stamp collection for many many years now. The collection had a much humbler residence in its early days, when I was in school. I only realised later that Dad had an interest too and can now imagine how horrified he must have been when he found that foreign stamps could be bought from stationery stores. Fake stuff, but good enough for ‘exchanges’ at school.

    The circular Singapore one, triangles, ‘diamonds’, Malaysian butterflies. There was even a ‘3D’ one, from Bhutan apparently! The circle, a few triangles and the butterflies were original, I think. 🙂 Later, a grand uncle, who could actually lay claim to serious philately gave me his entire collection which included a lot of first day covers and half/1 anna (currency not hazare) envelopes. Priceless stuff!

    That’s around the time when dad gave me the briefcase, though I can’t remember why. It used to be the one he carried to office, and was special because it had a number lock! Yes, it was fancy then. Along with albums, the entire collection had a new home. After a few years, it was ignored, thanks to the many other interests that made their way into life. Many years later, I chanced upon the briefcase, and realised I had forgotten the code! I somehow remembered it, but became paranoid about it and gave the briefcase a makeover, one that can now be described as a Ghajini theme. All over its wonderful brown exterior, the number now exists – in various sizes and colours, courtesy the magic of permanent markers!

    And that’s how I found it in the room, coated with a layer of dust, and safe behind a bookshelf, housing those tiny pieces of paper that allowed messages to travel over distances. Mobiles, email, social networks and evolution of self and others, all have contributed to the demise of a snail mail culture that included among other things, pen friends and chain mails, a glimpse of the person through his/her handwriting and the sheer joy of a mail waiting for you when you reach home.

    And with that, perhaps a related hobby is also forced to breathe its last. This generation will probably be among the last to know of post offices and a hobby called philately. I wonder what the legacy of the stamp collection is. Maybe the briefcase is just like the other baggage that I own, a friend who reminds me of an earlier era, whose story and context end with me.

    until next time, a briefcase history