Category: Yesterday

  • Book values

    Sometime back, a colleague excitedly pointed me to Bookshelf P0rn, and I remembered bookmarking it a year back. The room with massive bookshelves has been one of the key attractions of the ‘when we buy our final home’ thoughts. (‘buying homes for life stages’ is another post 🙂 )

    Yes, I’m still one of those who religiously visit Blossoms on Church Street, and get a high when I walk around shelves that house a musty smell of old books, when I run my hand through ridges and pages and discover stories within stories, when I read words that reach out to me from across time and space. And yet, with the reader and tablet explosion, I wonder how long these books will be around. Even if I stubbornly resisted e-books, would there be a market to support it? The economics just might not work out. These thoughts crossed my mind when I read this wonderful article on the process of book publishing – its past, present and future.

    On Brain Pickings, one of my favourite sites, I caught these words from Carl Sagan that completely resonate with me

    What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.

    I’m just getting familiar with the idea of a book community thanks to Goodreads. The idea of reading books and seeing annotations left by those who have read it before me, ‘browsing their thoughts’, including, probably the author’s, and thus ‘traveling’ across time and space does seem fascinating, something that is provided by the current form of reading only to some measure.

    In the interim, I wish someone would build a white label e-book, that looks and feels just like a real book, one which I can really bookmark, flip pages etc, but one in which I can download a book and it would automatically change the cover, re-paginate and bring in all the benefits of technology. Best of both worlds to help me evolve! Maybe it already exists. 🙂

    until next time, booking the future

    “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.” (Bill Gates)

  • Moral Signs

    A little more than a year back, I remember writing a post on identity – what exactly constitutes the individual – work, relationships, consumption, combinations of these…….

    More recently, I read a Scott Adams post which actually asks the same question ‘Who are you?’ He also provides his best answer to it ‘You are what you learn’. It’s an interesting point and I do agree that what you learn is what gives you additional perspective. It changes the way you view older experiences and how you react to new experiences. And so, despite believing in being prisoners of birth to some extent, and knowing that the apple never falls far from the tree, and at the risk of generalisation, I would tend to agree.

    Which brings me to learning. In an earlier era, our ‘channels’ of learning were limited – parents, relatives, friends, teachers, literature, some amounts of media, and so on. Limited when compared to the abundance that a media explosion and the internet have brought into our lives. Sometime back, I read a post in the NYT titled ‘If it feels right‘, which discussed a study on the role of morality (rather, the lack of it) in the lives of America’s youth. The author clarifies that it isn’t as though they are living a life of debauchery, it’s just that they don’t even think of moral dilemmas, the meaning of life and such. The study ‘found an atmosphere of extreme moral individualism’, mostly because they have not been given the resources to develop their thinking on such matters.

    It led me to think about the moral frameworks that were instilled in us by our sources when were young. At the very least, value systems existed, though obviously their ‘quality’ would be a subjective affair. I wonder, if in this era of abundant sources, we are missing out on inculcating the basic moral guidelines that are necessary for a society’s sustenance and  evolution. If people are what they learn, then the least we could do is take a closer look at our own moral framework. The next generation, despite the abundance of sources, could be learning from it. Or perhaps this is the way it has always been, between generations. 🙂

    until next time, moral poultice

    PS: a beauuuutiful related video

  • 1, 2….34

    One of the characters in Preeta Samarasan’s “Evening is the whole day” asks, during a conversation, “Everyone is always so tired nowadays. I wish we could all be young forever, or whatever age we ourselves choose. What age would you be if you could choose..?“

    It made me think of what my answer would be. At first, I wondered if I would like to be older than what I am today – to sit back comfortably with the perspectives I have gained.  As the years pass by, and the memories accumulate, I seem to be viewing most phases of my life so far through a happy prism. Despite remembering a few specific instances that made me unhappy, and (paradoxically) being certain that I was probably frustrated/terrified/bitter on many occasions and would never want them to be repeated, I can now look back and smile at the overall scheme of things. Perhaps I am lucky or perhaps, this is the way it works for most of us.

    And yet, even happy memories, I have noticed, can evoke contrasting sentiments within me. When melancholy strikes, and I remember happy times, it’s a bit like what Alfred Tennyson wrote (in a context I have no idea of)

    “Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, 
    Tears from the depths of some devine despair 
    Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, 
    In looking on the happy autumn fields, 
    And thinking of the days that are no more.” 

    until next time, “I’ll spend my future living the past“

  • Irascible

    In Nayantara Sahgal’s “This Time of Morning” (review later), there is an episode (p 247- 250) where one of the characters recollects the first time he had seen the British’s Divide and Rule policy in action, in the context of religion.

    To summarise, towards the end of 1919, a Swami Satyanand, who had a reputation for his protests and fiery speeches against the British, and was a hero figure in all communities, once began a speech on the steps of the Juma Mosque in Allahabad. He said he had chosen the location because he wanted to emphasise that the name of the faith didn’t matter. With the mullah standing behind him, he began to speak of the messages in the Bhagvad Gita as a rapt crowd listened. The policemen arrived suddenly, and even as the Swami kept saying that the police were ‘our’ brothers and the crowd should stand still, he was attacked, finally collapsing beneath the arch. The mullah wept as he was carried inside, and later, when he came out to announce that the swami was dead.

    The next day, the English dailies carried the news that the Swami had died at the Juma Mosque and insinuated that the Swami had deliberately tried to incite the Muslim community and had died as a result. It also chose to emphasise that mutual seclusion was the only way to peace among the communities, and this was what the government was trying to do. The regional dailies were warned against carrying the news at all. And though Muslims and Hindus joined the procession which ended with the Swami’s pyre being lit by the mullah, none of the dailies covered it.

    The book is a work of fiction though historical figures also play minor roles. But many incidents and scenarios are based on real events, and the above incident seems highly possible. It made me realise that the only perspective we can derive of the events that happened then are from newspaper reports and in some cases, journals/books written by people who lived then. But the latter is not so easy to find, and we mostly rely on the former.

    I read this book during the time that Mr.Sibal was making his infamous censorship statements, and the internet began its #outrage. (Yes, I did 2) The above episode gave me a glimpse of what the internet has achieved in terms of documenting data and what we, and the generations to follow, would be missing out, if censorship came to life. Thankfully, even George W Bush has said “You can’t put democracy and freedom back into a box” 🙂

    until next time, Jaise Har Ek Baat Pe Democracy Me Lagne Lag Gaya Ban 🙂

  • Kochi Chronicles – Part 2

    ….continued from Part 1

    Much as Willingdon Island has remained unchanged, Cochin itself has a completely different story to tell. As I’ve mentioned before, each time I visit, I am presented with a new landmark and a demise of an older one which belonged to an earlier era.

    For lunch, we decided to go to a trusted old timer – Tandoor. At Chillies (1st Floor) they serve an excellent Andhra meal. It’d been a while since I tried the Chicken Biriyani, so I chose to have that while D and the other M hogged the meals. No meal in Tandoor is complete without their special Kadai Chicken, so we shared a half plate. Amazing as it has always been.

    Chillies hasn’t changed a bit though Tandoor downstairs keeps changing the decor. A dimly lit ambiance that somehow manages to freeze time. Helped by the huge photos from a long gone era. (the owner is related to the Travancore Sisters, so you can find many like these featuring them and MGR/Sivaji Ganesan)

    The plan for the afternoon was ‘Beautiful‘. A movie we missed in Bangalore. We watched it at Padma, one of the several ‘feminine’ theaters Cochin is famous for. Most of them have survived, though the multiplexes have begun their march. Beautiful lived up to its name, and I loved the way they have quietly, but wonderfully shot the city and Fort Kochi in the movie. The day before, the other M had asked us to note a house in Fort Kochi – the one that had been featured in the movie.

    In the evening, I met a friend whom I knew from Bangalore. K suggested the Cocoa Tree on MG Road, a place that has consistently ticked me off whenever I have visited, but is still a fave hangout for many in Cochin. She had moved to Cochin only a while back and I quizzed her on her first impressions. A city in transition, we both agreed, and something that reminded her of Bangalore a couple of decades ago.

    To me it was still a small ‘town’, where most people still knew most other people. I probably bored her, talking of old landmarks and routes to school, and how the skyline has changed since then. I told her that I’d never felt a Cochin culture, something I could sense strongly in Trivandrum, Kozhikode, Trichur etc. Cochin has always been Kerala’s big city, changing too fast to have crafted an identity beyond that. She showed me the photo of her house with an awesome balcony view. Once again, I began thinking of where my final home would be. Oh yes, it would be fun to walk the roads as an old man – to walk past the Public Library, where I have spent so many hours, the CISF grounds whose pitch has seen many of my ‘spin experiments’, the school and its surrounding areas which has seen me transition from walking to cycles to a motor vehicle, Foreshore Road, where a dimly lit university computer room hosted my first forays into the internet, and so many many others. But would they be the same? A thought that crossed my mind when I walked back home, seeing familiar faces that had grown older, same people, doing the same things, even as time passed by. A mirror of a different sort.

    Dinner was at Kahawa, the owners were the other M’s friends. A coffee shop+ with a distinct character. Hand painted wall art, a book lending mechanism ( a tie up with another of their friends) and reasonably decent food. They also have a section upstairs which is opened on days that Manchester United has a match on. Also available are group discounts and discounts for the Mayor on Foursquare. 🙂

     

        

    We tried the Mango Italian Soda, which could have done a better job with the fizz. The Choco Chiller was significantly better and so was the Mint Hot Chocolate.

     

    In the main course, K had recommended the mashed potato and Meat Sauce, but the Roast Pork was too tempting. But sadly, it just about passed muster, as did the Chicken a la Kiev. The best dish was the Grilled Fish with Mornay Sauce. Once again D was the one who got lucky! There were a few options for dessert, but nothing that we really fancied.

    Before we left for the airport, we stopped at Malabar Chips – banana chips for Bangalore. Familiar faces, though they didn’t recognise me. Except for one person. 🙂 I wondered if this was the idea of home – a place that you can come back to after several years and still be  recognised, a place that thus gives you a sense of belonging.

    As we passed the North Bridge, we saw the first signs of the Kochi Metro construction. There was a line that stayed with me long after ‘Beautiful’ – “Maturity is the loss of innocence” It probably is true of cities too, and I wondered if it was only incidental that there were huge hoardings of a TOI launch on Feb 1st.

    We detoured through the University, and though the place shows small signs of transformation every time I visit, there are parts of it that refuse to change. Islands in time. Places where I could stand and travel back in time, because the settings were the same, all I had to do was remember. But I had a flight to catch, and a journey to end.

    until next time, timed travel