Category: Flawsophy

  • The Age of Reasoning…

    Lay in drafts for over 2.5 years, waiting for its time. Saw it, and decided there was a reason to post it now, though I couldn’t see it. 🙂

    An interesting discussion over coffee – of why I couldn’t blow away the Bangalore Metro bridge if I so desired. No, neither smoking, nor alcohol is allowed in that cafe. 🙂 We discussed how much we really wanted things to happen, our priorities, of visualising the end result, whether it happens whether or not we work for it and so on.

    And somewhere in between,  it struck me that I was being pulled in two directions, or rather two ways in which I approach situations –

    Everything happens for a reason.

    Everything happens for a reasoning.

    Ignoring the rationalising, I have always been doing the latter, though I have always been pulled towards the former. But I wonder, are they mutually exclusive? And then I remembered a post from years back –  “Keep Walking“. Can ‘searching’ and ‘finding’ find parallels in reason and reasoning, or in religion and science, or in faith and logic?

    The entire line of thought is perhaps a stepping stone to a more basic question of how much of what happens to me is in my control. All? None? Somewhere in between? 🙂 And while on that, I couldn’t help remember that great line SwB wrote in his new year post sometime back. “When you decide to take charge of your own destiny you better be damn sure you’re up to the job.” The answer, I think, is right there. 🙂

    until next time, …”and I guess that’s why they call him the Blues” 🙂

  • Rise!

    It is difficult to make the last part of a trilogy when the first two have set sky-high expectations and one managed to create a larger than life character that would probably have to be one of the best in films, ever, if not THE best. But it had to me made, and 99% would like it. And there would be a 1% hating it – either because they hate crowds, or because their stance would stand out amidst the idol worship. This also includes the .01% for whom this film – objectively and for genuine reasons known to them – didn’t work. I haven’t seen any reviews in this category yet.

    So this is just a thank you note to Nolan and his team, for scripting a trilogy that took Batman out of the “Holy atomic pile, Batman!” and the more recent caricature versions to a status deserving of years of comics. For making an intelligent movie with neat hat tips to earlier villains. For wonderful visuals that let me ignore the small doses of incredulousness in the plot. For providing an awesome closure even while throwing a line of hope.

    But most importantly, for putting together a perspective on morality and the idea of justice, pursuing these themes consistently across the three movies, using characters with different worldviews, backgrounds and thinking as well as modern issues such as economic crisis and terrorism to add layers to it – the affluent Wayne/Batman can afford a moral compass and changes his path from revenge to justice, Selena/Catwoman doesn’t have that luxury but also seeks a more just balance, Bane is radical and seeks an entire wipe out, the Joker was unpredictable with seemingly no plans except chaos and showing the moral decline of society – even the white knight Harvey Dent, Ra’s-Al-Ghul abhors any sort of weakness in the delivery of justice. All have their own notions of justice, fairness and the institutions of society, institutions we have chosen but whose tools have been subverted, whose rules we try to live by have slowly become unfair and shackles those who desire justice. And thus, for the idea of the Batman as a symbol for those good people who restore our faith in humanity with their actions – “Anyone can be a hero. Even a man who put a coat around a young boy’s shoulders to let him know the world hadn’t ended”, and as an ideal.

    until next time, thus spake a fanboy 🙂

    Bonus read: Nolan’s goodbye letter to Batman

  • No kidding

    The debate on twitter, some time back, on the subject of kids on Junior MasterChef Australia was an interesting one to watch. I have no definitive opinion on it, and I understand that it can be debated both ways. So, just a few perspectives.

    I watched the show for a few days, and was amazed by the skill displayed by the kids. I also found the judges being very careful with their words. (they can be scathing as the ‘regular’ MasterChef show would prove) The kids seemed to be having fun. I don’t know if the elimination grind got to them. I don’t know how the entire experience would affect them – irrespective of them being winners or losers.

    What I do think is that in many ways, the show is preparing these kids for the world – for making choices, (I’m reasonably sure none of them have been forced to come here) chasing a passion, the consequences – winning and losing, fame and despair, public scrutiny and the loss of privacy, dealing with judgments passed by others and so on. And that goes for all sorts of reality shows – dance shows with scantily clad kids included. Any opinion I have against dance shows is a judgment based on my baggage, and objectively, I can’t be sure that dancing (of any kind in any attire) < cooking. I could be flawed in my rationale, but that’s like saying Vidya Balan’s performance in The Dirty Picture is somehow lesser than Sanjeev Kapoor’s erm, Dal Makhani.

    I am not a parent, so I can only talk from the perspective of a child that I once was. 🙂 We didn’t have reality television then, but we had non televised competitions, and I have been a participant. Music, debate, hockey, quizzing, cricket, dumb charades – I’ve represented  my school/college in all of these. I was lucky enough to be encouraged in most of these (very few got the point of Dumb C 🙂 ) by my parents and teachers. I can only dimly imagine the sacrifices my parents might have made for letting me pursue these and my other indulgences – voracious reading, for example. 🙂

    I do believe that most parents want the best for their children, though the way they show it could be seen and judged in different ways. Parents have no inkling of what the world will become, though they pretend to. They make choices based on their experiences, their perspectives of the future, and their desires for their children. I have a choice to make now too – I could blame my parents for not making me focus completely on studies. (for example) Who knows, I might have gotten in and out of an IIT/M and might have finally written a book. 😉 Or I could be thankful for the choices they made for me, and for the experiences that gave me. I, for one,  am indeed thankful, and think that these paths gave me valuable perspectives – with regards to all the ‘preparation for the world’ points I had listed earlier. There can be no A/B testing for all this, you realise. 🙂

    The fun part is that somewhere along the way, I started writing a bit. This blog has been around for more than 9 years, I write 2 newspaper columns. I haven’t been trained for any of this. Whether the story has a fairy tale ending is completely subjective and dependent on many factors that are beyond the parents’ or the child’s control, or imagination. The parents and the children are living some great moments. Perhaps that’s all there is to it.

    until next time, show stopper

  • It’s all roleplay

    The other day, Samadooram, a talk show on Mazhavil Manorama featured Revathy, in the context of Revathy’s own show Kanamarayathu on the same channel, that deals with children who have run away from home. I’m not a viewer of that show, and cannot really comment on the content, but… (Opinion – on related things – follows. 🙂 )

    One of the things that piqued my interest was something that Revathy said during the show – that she was disappointed by the attitude of a well educated person who asked her whether they created so much melodrama on the show to attract more viewers. (that the Malayali audience is addicted to glycerin is well established by the success of the daily soaps on various channels) That reminded me of the twitter reaction to Day 1 of Satyamev Jayate and the posts that followed in the next few days – swinging from abject cynicism to equating it to the second coming.

    (Generalising) In India, there is obviously a huge difference between the perspectives of the low single digit percentage of people on twitter who are rarely directly affected by issues (barring #firstworldproblems) and the billions who are not on twitter but who are directly affected. However, the polarising of opinions is something I’ve seen outside of twitter too, increasingly these days. In that sense, twitter does act as a microcosm of the world outside. Which brings me to the other related point that Revathy made – sensitising people to the things that happen around them, not directly affecting them, but could later, or which they could influence in a positive way if they acted on it. Not to blame anyone, but I am aware that today’s society is becoming increasingly selfish and living in self made bubbles. Existential pragmatism perhaps.

    But what I’d like to think about here is media’s role – the question that was asked to Revathy. Media, and I’m talking of the institution here and not any one specific, could play a great role in sensitising, mostly thanks to its reach and the varied perspectives it can capture. However, such is the competition for eyeballs and money, that ‘any means necessary’ is the accepted credo. Such is the onslaught on the remaining senses that I wonder if collectively, media has forced its audience to move directly to a desensitised state without pausing at ‘sensitise’. Whose responsibility is it finally to filter – the sender (media) or the receiver? (audience) I am really not sure. On my part, I don’t watch news channels, and I can’t say it has damaged me permanently. What do you think? (No, not about the damage it has/not caused me, but the roles)

    until next time, know your role

    Postscript: While on the subject, a small bit on celebrity anchors. They have enormous personal clout, and (this is an example) this can do + and – for their shows – bring and take away focus. I don’t grudge Aamir making 3 crores out of a Satyamev Jayate episode. He is a professional actor and it so happens that this is a project that (seems as per propaganda) is close to his heart. He does not need to part with his remuneration to show his commitment to the cause. That’s like forcing an employee to spend x% of his salary to buy his company’s product/service every month on salary day, since he’s supposedly – in pop lingo – ‘passionate’ about his job. On the flip side, Aamir is not doing the world a favour by being the face of the show either. What he could do to help though, is to write a small note that clarifies his role for the audience. It’s not an obligation, but whether it’s a job as a professional or his own personal affection for a show – if he were true to it – he would want the conversation around the topic of the show – the issue at hand.

  • Mythistory

    Centuries apart, but both in The Wonder Eras and Irascible, I had written about the documentation of incidents that we now call mythology and history. (respectively) In the former, I had mentioned the feeling when I saw the place where Sita had been temporarily imprisoned in Lanka, and in the latter, a fictionalised version of an event that happened in 1919. Both a bit intangible – the first only because of the centuries that have passed and it was still difficult to believe that myth was just history but more ancient, and the second because I am not sure if it actually happened.

    Sometime back, I read William Dalrymple’s ‘The Last Mughal’, that uses Bahadur Shah Zafar as a ‘device’ to write about the events of 1857. The book is based on actual documents. As I wrote in my review (will share soon) what remains with me long after I have read the book, and something I went back to, almost every time I picked up the book to continue, is the photo of Zafar, lying with his face to the camera – the face of a broken old man who through his life saw the dominion of his ancestors taken away from him until all he had was his city and an empty title, who had just been made to undergo a trial and many humiliations before it, eyes expressing melancholy, and resigned to his destiny.

    Suddenly, the images that I remember from history textbooks were transformed into a real person, and history was somehow tangible, as was his plight. It was almost as though that if I could take a few steps more, I could somehow feel the same about our myths.  Have you ever felt that when reading/seeing anything?

    Perhaps it is that way in every age, when some things that were history move into legend and then on to a myth status. I am still debating in my mind whether the layering that happens, adds or subtracts.

    until next time, history repeats?