Category Archive: Miscellaneous

Anonymous

Posted by Ankit On October 5th, 2009

Wired.com has an article today on a topic which would appear esoteric to most of us. The respectable portal has as its main article, a primer on a collection of online and IRL (in real life) protests, under the umbrella name of Project Chanology, against the Church of Scientology. It doesn't matter what the Church of Scientology is or what it did wrong in order to invite the disapproval; what is more significant is who carried out the protests and in what manner they were conducted. It is all the more significant in the light of the fact that the same nebulous group of people were involved heavily in helping the Iranian protesters and are now raising their voices against Internet censorship in China and Australia. The group goes by the name 'Anonymous' and their culture is one of the most intriguing facets of contemporary online society. It not only serves as an educational study in the purest form of democracy, and how order results from pure chaos, it also raises very important ethical and moral questions.

'Anonymous' is an offshoot of 4chan.org. The site features various bulletin boards, the most notorious of them being its 'random' board which goes by the moniker /b/. The board is notorious for being highly pornographic, scatological, generally rebellious, irreverent and highly politically incorrect in nature (consider yourself warned). It's presence would have been just another flash in the pan, had it not been the host for more than 5 million visitors per month. The board has the general rule that 'it has no rules' and all members post under the same pseudonym of 'Anonymous'. The fact that there is nothing to identify individual posters allows the best and worst of human nature to shine through. Bad ideas are mercilessly made fun of and cruelly discarded, whereas good ones garner a following so huge that the associated tremors are felt far and wide across the internet. But never is the merit of an idea ever influenced by the reputation of its creator. It's a chaotic world where individual imagination is not bound by the one thing that has done more than any other to stifle creativity - social propriety. There is no one to look up to, no precedences to necessarily follow, nothing sacred. What results is a particularly perverted image of humanity - one unencumbered by social mores, but I believe that it is its most honest image actually, and like all things honest, it manages to shock. In fact that is why honesty is probably made such a big deal of. Not necessarily because it's 'moral' but because we place such a high premium on it owing to its capacity to shock. We know that loftier the principle is, the easier it is to justify not following it. Hence want to keep it and preserve it in a jar filled with formaldehyde and we want to lock it, and we secretly want that jar to never open.Â Well, it lies in smithereens on /b/ and human nature, in all its disfigured monstrosity and primal creativity, emerges bare naked therein. The more interesting aspect about the mess that is /b/ is that order does emerge from it. Vague morality and sketchy ethics do emanate where they should have never had to. Coherent debates and funny threads do manage to survive the onslaught of huge doses of mediocrity and listlessness. And every once in a while, as if by magic, an idea is promulgated and a few faceless contributors join hands, and from that small seed develops a small plant which rapidly feeds upon its own nontrivial imagination and swells to suck in its whirlpool, many more 'anons', and we begin to feel its effects in our faraway existences.

Time magazine, last year, conducted an online poll about the most influential person in the world (the results are still online). The top position was won by a guy named 'moot'. He is the guy who started 4chan.org. The next 20 places were won by people, the first letters of whose names spell a 4chan oddity. Time magazine, to this date, doesn't accept that they were completely outwitted.

Help?

Posted by Ankit On September 28th, 2009

Mozart and Art

Posted by Ankit On September 20th, 2009

I went to a Mozart concert by Orchestra Nova today. The pieces played were:

1. Violin concerto 3

2. 3 German dances

3. Symphony No. 40

As good as the 3 pieces are, Symphony 40 would be instinctively likable because its main theme is a well known tune. The second movement of the symphony was the one that I liked the most. It's a slow, almost sad but very romantic piece which managed to evoke a very tangible scene in my mind. The scene of two lovers dancing on a wooden pier over the ocean on a cloudless night. The sky is shot on the horizon in the shape of the moon and it is bleeding its milky agony on the scarred ocean. The only sounds are the creaks of the wooden floor of the pier as the hard soles and piercing heels of the dancers create rhythmic impressions over its accumulated dust. The dance is slow and intimate now and energetic and primal then and the rest of the universe with all its consequences and concerns has melted into the significance and insignificance of a few mutual gazes and some skipped beats. The two, oblivious of the celestial firmament above and around, dance away to the tunes of an invisible hand and whims of an unseen puppeteer, his gestures sure and controlled, her movements rapturous yet precise. The two ephemeral inky blots move among the mighty company of stars with the confidence of stupidity and the egoism of love but on the dull and permanent canvas of the heavens, they mark their patterns with the brilliance of human will. And it's a beautiful pattern. It is smooth and differentiable where the violins have taken deep breaths and discontinuous where the strings are plucked. It is serene and slow where the music is stringed and agitated and violent in the company of horns. Every now and then, they come close, their hands held together, the sorry moon imprisoned between his palm and hers - when the music goes quiet - and with a tremendous jerk as the crescendo is reached, the other side of the night sky gets drenched in the moonlight.

Mozart might never have intended images to be associated to his music but I feel that the importance and essence of art is not in the creator's intent but in the viewer's interpretation. I have colored his sketchy drawings with my imaginations and probably have gone overboard but art is nothing if not a good lie. Its importance is in its ability of making us invent beautiful false stories. It's actually useless when it is factual. And at this point I get reminded of a beautiful passage by Wilde where he talks about the real utility of art - the capability of inventing lies:

'Art, breaking from the prison-house of realism, will run to greet him, and will kiss his false, beautiful lips, knowing that he alone is in possession of the great secret of all her manifestations, the secret that Truth is entirely and absolutely a matter of style; while Life---poor, probable, uninteresting human life---tired of repeating herself for the benefit of Mr. Herbert Spencer, scientific historians, and the compilers of statistics in general, will follow meekly after him, and try to reproduce, in her own simple and untutored way, some of the marvels of which he talks.'

Red Balloon

Posted by Ankit On September 6th, 2009

A bouquet of anarchy

Posted by Ankit On September 3rd, 2009

The inspiration for this would be evident to those who like graffiti art.

Jabberwocky

Posted by Ankit On August 29th, 2009

How can anyone have the ignorance to presume that 'Alice in Wonderland' is a mere children story when Lewis Carrol has also given us Jabberwocky. A poem which is often hailed as the greatest nonsense poem ever written and which probably holds the record for the most number of new words introduced into the language for a literary work this short (can you identify some?). Here, I share one of my favorite poems, a work that more than makes up for its lack of meaning with its aesthetic depth, which is a testimony to the primal allure of sounds and the pulchritudinous potential of the written word:

------------

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he soughtâ€”
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! and through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

-Lewis Carrol

The poem has been translated into a number of languages but translators were faced with the challenge of inventing their own words since a lot of words in the original poem were entirely made up. Not only did they not have counterparts in other languages, Carrol did not even make it clear what they were intended to mean in the first place. Here I produce a German translation by Robert Scott:

Es brillig war. Die schlichten Toven
Wirrten und wimmelten in Waben;
Und aller-mumsige Burggoven
Die mohmen Rath ausgraben

>>Bewahre doch vor Jammerwoch!
Die Zahne knirschen, Krallen kratzen!
Bewahr' vor Jubjub-Vogel, vor
frumiosen Banderschnatzchen!<<

Er griff sein vorpals Schwertchen zu,
Er suchte lang das manchsam' Ding;
Dann, stehend unterm Tumtum Baum,
Er an-zu-denken-fing.

Als stand er tief in Andacht auf,
Des Jammerwochen's Augen feuer
Durch turgen Wald mit Wiffek kam
ein burbelnd Ungeheuer!

Eins, Zwei! Eins, Zwei! Und durch und durch
Sein vorpals Schwert zerschnifer-schnuck,
Da blieb es todt! Er, Kopf in Hand,
Gelaumfig zog zuruck.

>>Und schlugst Du ja den Jammerwoch?
Umarme mich, mein Bohm'sches Kind!
O Freuden-Tag! O Halloo-Schlag!<<
Er schortelt froh-gesinnt.

Es brillig war. Die schlichten Toven
Wirrten und wimmelten in Waben;
Und aller-mumsige Burggoven
Die mohmen Rath ausgraben

-Robert Scott (courtesy: Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid)

I wonder if there is an Indian language translation...

A walk down memory lane

Posted by Ankit On August 18th, 2009

Kapili hostel

Has it really been 5 years? It's hard to believe that 5 years have elapsed since I took the last meal in Kapili's mess hall. The taste of rajma, rice, and fried potato chips is still fresh on this tongue. These ears are still abuzz with the insistent din of 100 unwashed, uncouth, uncivilized IITians eating their lunch together under the high ceilings of the Kapili mess hall. I visited my old hostel. I stood in front of my final year room. It was locked. I looked closely and noticed a slight dent on the bottom left side of the steel lock. Oh yes, it has been guarding the room for the last 6 years all right. That dent was the result of a particularly frustrated afternoon. I stood looking at it for more time than a mere lock deserves. I was thinking about how bloody familiar that lock seemed. I knew exactly how easily the key would slip into the notch and how smoothly it would rotate clockwise. I knew precisely what sound it would make while opening and I could accurately visualize how it would bounce off after opening. Deep down inside, it hasn't really been 5 years. Not if such trivialities are so fresh in my mind. How I wished I had the key so that I could open the room and walk barefoot over its dusty floor or jump over the unmade bed and slide open one half of the huge window and from between the iron bars, look out far into the distance at the green mountains. How I wished I could thrown open the balcony door and let the bittersweet wind blowing down from the mighty Brahmaputra create slight flutters and ripples and crackles on the used newspaper sheets covering my small wooden shelf on the opposite wall and how I wished I could make patterns on the dusty screen of my barely used computer.

My room was second last on the left

I walked down to the transit complex. That was where the academic stuff happened. It's deserted, now that everything has moved out to the new and bigger academic complex. I have clear memories of walking into that same complex for the first time 9 years ago. There used to be 2 big halls, H1 and H2, as soon as you entered. At least they appeared big then. With the furniture removed and the human bustle quieted, they seem to have been cut to size. I walked down the corridor on the right which leads to what was then the library. You don't have to know that there used to be a library in place of the empty space. The humid smell of bound books that still permeates the air there is enough of a hint. When time has razed down structures, ambitions, and characters, it has failed to obliterate the memory of knowledge. I walked down to the erstwhile bastion of the CIV2K class, a sequence of rooms which constituted the concrete testing lab, environment engg. lab, faculty rooms, and the computer center, and I stood there looking at the lonely corridors. In front of my eyes were swimming the scenes of my friends, staff members, faculty, and other students frenetically going about their businesses - the sounds of doors opening, pleasantries being exchanged, curses being hurled, the sounds of heavy machinery and printers and faxes and keyboards, the vision of people getting in and out of rooms and the sorry and hilarious sight of me and my batch-mates getting ready for another unbearable lab session. And I blinked; it all disappeared, melted away into the silence which fills every single fiber of the transit complex's ghostly existence today. The building has quietly transited into the inevitable arms of nostalgia.

The deserted Civil dept. at T.C.

I walked to Rubul's tea stall which lies just outside the campus. The place is bustling with activity now and it took me a considerable amount of time finding the shop which sold the best tea that ever touched these lips. The place has been considerably upgraded but the secret formula, it appears, is safe. I met a lot of people who used to work in different capacities when I was there. The cleaning staff (Naveen, Ganesh, and Amjad), the photocopy guy who had a thing for all the girls, the canteen staff (lambu and others), the mess workers; everyone recognized me, and very lovingly and graciously arranged for me to have the mess lunch under the high ceilings of Kapili while I talked to some of them about the changes in the intervening 5 years and what they felt about them.Â I didn't even have to get the food myself, and for once, rajma, rice, and fried potato chips didn't taste as bad as they used to.

I visited the faculty members and was surprised by how differently I was treated. Where there used to be contempt, there was respect. They even went as far as saying that our batch wasn't really a troublemaker. I took offense at such an offhand remark because I know how hard we worked at being complete jerks and how much we sacrificed. We earned our bad reputation honestly and squarely and I personally cannot see it being diluted, much less forgotten. The talk went well and the enthusiasm with which it was received, the lack of knowledge which exists about the topic and the practical/social utility which the research holds has givenÂ me some new ideas.

I came back to the guest house tired and exhausted, packed up my stuff, and arrived at the reception to return the keys. I had made some long distance calls, and had a few meals during my stay so I inquiredÂ how much I would have to pay. "It's all taken care of sir," he said, "The bill will be sent to the department." I couldn't help smiling. Maybe 5 years have indeed passed. The world seems to have turned upside down.

Oh! India.

Posted by Ankit On August 13th, 2009

India, I must admit, is a thoroughly confusing place. It makes one question all that he has come to believe in his cocooned existence in the white-walled penthouse of his ivory tower. But the fact of the matter is, that beautiful white walled penthouse is as essential to understanding India as India itself. Not that I make tall claims about understanding it either. If anything, all that India manages to do is send me on elaborate, star studded guilt trips shadowed by the menacing clouds of self-doubt. I like to think of it as a wild, pulsating nerve the skin from whose top has been peeled off. You can see it throbbing in blood and flesh and it's reality and immediacy has a vulgar nakedness to it. Every thing that you've thought of in well measured doses of rationality and finely tuned environments tends to break apart as soon as you step into this brilliant mayhem. But you need to have built those thoughts in the first place in order to appreciate the causes of their obliteration. And it must be hard to do when the suffocating mass of humanity weighs down on your life, ambitions, relations, and breath like an omnipresent overbearing coffin. But that coffin has floral patterns on the inside and it has a scent of sandalwood and you don't mind much being there and that is the dilemma that is India. It offers you so many opportunities to learn, it is such a great teacher, but like all things worth learning it makes you bleed through your nose. That heartless savant! Where am I going with this? Hopefully nowhere. That would be the best way to summarize my impressions on this trip.

Forster, Vonnegut, India et. al.

Posted by Ankit On August 6th, 2009

I guess it was the apt time to read Forster's 'A passage to India'. Any book that Kowsik recommends demands to be taken with a pinch of salt by me. Not to cast any aspersions on the merits of his choice for his is an extremely keen intellect and possesses a very envious literary repertoire, but our reading habits and general lines of beliefs diverge enormously. This book, though, is a thoroughly enjoyable masterpiece, although I liked it not for being a great story but for Forster's insightful painting of flawed characters set against the Indian background - a background which has been beautifully dissected by an author more observant than most. His language sketches the Indian landscape in surreal, metaphoric shades and nails the famed subcontinental overdrive of emotions to the T. His portrayal of the religious umbrage that clouds the Indian social intercourse is exactly what it should be - drugged at places, euphoric at others. Because it is futile trying to capture that abandon in logic. As much as a nonbeliever as I am, I cannot but respect the primal surge, the self-sacrificial faith that drives religion in India. It is a spectacle that should be described in words as turbulent as the phenomenon itself. Forster's characters are gray, something which is very welcome because real life doesn't have infallible heroes and impeccable mistresses. His characters fall repeatedly to weave a story that actually appeals to one's emotions and sympathy. A very good book all in all.

The other book that I read was Kurt Vonnegut's 'Breakfast of Champions' and found it to be too episodic, too incoherent for the most part. Aware of the author's mighty reputation as a contemporary master of prose, I was searching for vantage points, lookout hills, from which to make sense of the book but I did not find any till about 2/3rds. It seemed to me to be a sorry attempt at imitating Joseph Heller's humor, only less complex. But then I came across a few lines which put everything in perspective and explained away 200 pages of incoherence and arbitrariness:

'I thought Beatrice Keedsler had joined hands with other old fashioned storytellers to make people believe that life had leading characters, minor characters, significant details, insignificant details, that it has lessons to be learned, tests to be passed, and a beginning, a middle, and an end.

As I approached my fiftieth birthday, I had become more and more enraged and mystified by the idiot decisions made by my countrymen. And the I had come suddenly to pity them, for I understood how innocent and natural it was for them to behave so abominably, and with such abonimable results: They were doing their best to live like people invented in story books. This was the reason Americans shot each other so often: It was a convenient literary device for ending short stories and books.

...Once I understood what was making America such a dangerous, unhappy nation of people who had nothing to do with real life, I resolved to shun storytelling. I would right about life. Every person would be exactly as important as any other. All facts would also be given equal weightiness. Nothing would be left out. Let others bring order to chaos. I would bring chaos to order.'

As long as someone does something not just because he cannot do any betterÂ but because he believes in it. I actually ended up liking the book.

Finally, India! The source which generates a million thoughts, a billion confusions. You only need to peek out of your window to see the radiant faces on malnourished bodies of sunburned toilers and marvel at the mysterious source that keeps them going in a life that doesn't and will not reward them in a manner commensurate to their efforts. It not only does not give them clean water, decent food, and breathable air, it breathes venom and sucks them dry of their last reserves of life. And yet, and yet... How do they manage their smiles? Why doesn't the twinkle not vanish? In a society where material comforts are on such short supply, I'm actually thankful that religion, with its nebulous promises and abstract goals, has such a strong hold. It is such a reason to live for so many people here. It has ideals which might never be achievable, but at least those ideals would never be beyond one's reach simply because he was unfortunate enough to be born without means. For all its shortcomings - and glaring they are - I'm happy that it's there, at least for now.

I'll be going to Delhi this weekend to meet my best friend - I talk to him once every two months for a few minutes. Next weekend I'll visit IIT Guwahati for the first time after graduation. I hope there will be experiences to speak of!

Intersection

Posted by Ankit On June 22nd, 2009

I stood still at the intersection, hands warm in the jacket's pocket, eyes trying to make forms out of vague apparitions in the inky darkness. It was past midnight and I could not decide which road I wanted to cross. So I decided to just stand there for a while, look at the traffic, and something more-but only if I get unlucky.

It's both an epic excercise in futility and complexity. Cars waltzing to the whims of an inductive loop, slowing, stopping, and moving as the night is painted crimson, red and green. Stretched over a large enough time, the repetitive nature of this excercise evokes an almost derisive smile. A shake of the head. A shrug of the shoulders at the robotic predictability of modern life. The grunt of the engine as it is restrained, its eager supplications, and the euphoric release-and the neon periodicity reflected over a blurred asphalt. I have driven cars on my share of solitary nights through my portion of deserted intersections. I have, on some of such occasions, wondered about the pedestrian who is seen crossing the road at such an hour-his motives and destinations hard to fathom. I have seen in him a pointlessness. I have often juxtaposed him against myself and felt bemused-purposefully sitting in my car, although temporarily stationary, my right foot is only waiting for the green signal. And then I'd leave him far far behind and when I'd be miles away crusing toward a purpose, a destination, he would have covered just a few steps. And the neon lights would be shining on his back, prodding him to move faster, coloring his shirt in stamps of uselessness.

Standing at the intersection, I was aware of both the roads. But I decided to just stay there for a while, look at the daubs of paints. In the background of lighted buildings, amidst the complexity of vague forms, reflected in false colors on the beguiling road, almost everything assumes the outlines of your desires. And you cannot make out the identity of things in this madhouse of impressionistic chiaroscuro, until you are certain of its lifelessness. Late night walkers move in elongated shadows and you can almost tread over their heads. Headlights shine rudely on your eyes just as you are trying to make a red spectrum correction. I stood there for almost an hour, trying to make out discernible figures in moving objects. I stood there, trying to identify the figure I did not want identified. Do you not walk at night these days? Or have you finally managed to blend in the background?