Five Point (yawn) someone

Complexvanilla was having suffering from another bout of insomnia when he happened to chance across 'Five Point Someone', a book which he had religiously avoided reading, as all things overrated put him off, and this was a book that he felt, was certainly all hype and publicity, like the crap Arindham Choudhary dishes out.

A couple of hours zipped by with no signs of approaching sleep and the book continued to hold interest and CV continued to plough through it. Five hours after he started with the cover page, the last page had been turned. The book was over. CV gave a yawn and reflected on the story. This post is not a spoiler of the book, nor is it intened to be a review, but it intends to dissect the book to find out what led to it's success and popularity, and whether it truly deserved it.

Three dudes with contrasting natures come together as hostel mates in the hostel of IIT Delhi. The book is about their adventures and misadventures. With one of the characters (Ryan) portrayed as an Indian version of Ayn Rand's Howard Roark (some seqeunces seem to be lifted straight out of Rand's Fountainhead - for instance, Roark speaks out against the need to copy the Parthenon while Ryan speaks out against the need to copy the design of a car-jack. So very original! ) and the dialogs straight out of hostels and college campuses, it cultivated the fan following of the college crowd. The second wave was created by people who just had to read or be able to claim to read what the 'in-crowd' was reading so they took to reading it. The book has an intriguing love story woven in it - or so the people said. CV was rubbing his eyes in total disbelief. Since when did women start asking to be taken out by slightly overweight strangers whom they happened to knock down on the road? Offering a lift is one thing, but an offer to go out for ice-cream? Either that was one desperate girl or the author was indulging in some bizarre fantasy. Or maybe the author wants to say that women hit on IITians even if they look like shit? Maybe. In any case, disbelief, suspended or otherwise did not stop CV from reading the whole damn book.


So, anything interesting at all??

Yeah, CV thougt that the timelines adopted in this book were different. There are three timelines in this book. One is set in the past, when the adventures and misadventures occured. The last two pages bring out the remaining two timelines: Hari, when talking about Neha (The Girl), says that he can now say what happened between the two of them (current timeline) and says that it is irrelevant and goes on to another timeline (intermediate timeline) in which Neha is yet to arrive in Mumbai where Hari-boy is chilling out. So, the mystery is whether Neha and Hari stuck together? Hardly. If that were to be the case, the author could have just done with two timelines, finishing off with a Hollywood style credits line, with a quick description about everybody, something like 'Ryan is currently a full time researcher in lubricant technology while Alok is happily married with a fat kid to boot, Neha and Hari went on to sire a foot-ball team' and so on and so forth, but the peculiar nature of the third timeline indicates that things did not go all that rosily with the couple.

Verdict? Overrated, as initially suspected, but is worth a read, if you have a couple of hours to kill and no TV, PC or laptop anywhere near.

complexvanilla redefined

So complexvanilla is back here, roused from his slumber once again. Actually, he's not really been off the blogsphere or something as he keeps contributing to another blog, at least in part. Though the other blog might be more thriving, this blog still remains what it was created to be, a stomping ground for the nested minds, which are collectively called complexvanilla, which means a difficult combination combination of something very simple, or a complex mixture of ingredients that by themselves are plain vanilla. Which brings us to the question 'If complexvanilla is a bunch of minds and not really the person to whom they supposedly belong to, does complexvanilla have a gender? How is complexvanilla to be reffered to? As a collective noun? He? They? To simplify things and abstract philosophy from bare-bones reality, complexvanilla will be he. The personal pronoun 'I' which indicates a single identity is no longer considered accurate in describing the amalgam that is complexvanilla, and is henceforth given up in favor of either the proper noun complexvanilla or the third person. From now on, complexvanilla takes center-stage, as it was always meant to be. There is no 'I' that owns complexvanilla. complexvanilla is free. He can and will do as he pleases.

Stephen King's 'The Shining'

I have watched Stephen King's 'Pet Semetary' and read 'Rose Madder' and liked both. A friend of mine has recommended King's 'Thinner' very highly, but whether I will be reading it in the near future is another matter! Why? I happened to read King's 'The Shining' and had a nasty experience!

Stephen King adopts a dark style of narrative which appears to go down pretty well with his fans, but then, if darkness is shown to contrast with light or to even accentuate it, it's different, but when all there is to the story is darkness and more darkness, one feels suffocated. Here's my take on the story:



SPOILER WARNING: Given below is a gist of 'The Shining'. Plot details (if there are any!) will be discussed.

Let me introduce the dramatis personae and give the lowdown about them till the starting point of the novel.

Jack Torrance: Talented book-author and budding playwright whose career and ambitions seemed to be going downhill after he became a full-blown alcoholic. He was forced to quit drinking when his wife Wendy threatened him with divorce after he broke his infant son's arm in a moment of alcohol induced madness. After quitting drinking, his frustration levels kept increasing. He got fired from his job as faculty member of a college when he almost beat a student to death upon catching the boy trying to slash his car tires. With the help of an influential friend, he found a job as the winter caretaker for the Overlook Hotel, Colorado. Jack Torrance needs this job very badly.

Winnifred Torrance aka Wendy: Jack's long-suffering wife. She always put up a brave front and lived with the crazy antics of her alcoholic husband who is now reformed. Like most wives, she too is given to nagging her husband and often suspects him of drinking, even though he has stayed off the liquor for months, causing him a lot of heart-burn.

Daniel Anthony Torrance aka Danny: The Torrence's kid. A boy gifted with telepathic and precognitive skills. Often sees snippets of the future as well is able to read people's minds. These days, he is plagued by nightmares, some of them related to Jack's new job.

Tony: Danny's 'invisible friend'. A mysterious boy who appears in Danny's mind and shows him glimpses of the future and things which otherwise would not be known to Danny.

Al Shockley: Jack Torrance's long time drinking companion as well as a rich and influential person. Majority stakeholder in the Overlook Hotel. The man who got Jack his caretaker job at the hotel, after Jack lost his teaching job.

George Hatfield: The boy on the debate team whose influential father was despised by Jack Torrance. Jack threw George out of the debate team on the pretext that he stuttered while speaking. George showed his displeasure by slashing the tires of Jack's VW Beetle. Jack retaliated by nearly beating George to death and lost his job as a result.

Dick Hallorann: The chef who works during the summer at the Overlook. Like Danny, he too can read people's mind and sometimes foresee the future.

Stuart Ullman: The notoriously uptight and tight-fisted manager of the Overlook. Jack's boss.

The Overlook Hotel: A luxury hotel with a notorious past including murders of mafiosi, suicides and accounts of prostitution. Rumors of it being haunted do the rounds often.

The story in a nutshell:-

Ullman, upon Al Shockley's insistence gives Jack the job of the winter caretaker of the Overlook. Dick Hallorann, a chef, briefs the family about the kitchen and the stores and in the process discovers Danny's special gifts of telepathy. He takes a liking for the boy and tells him that he too can read minds and further goes on to warn the boy about the queer things that occur in the hotel. He also tells the boy to telepathically signal to him for help, if he may require it. The Torrances are left to fend for themselves after all the staff of the hotel, including Ullman, leave for the winter. Initially Jack is happy, but the loneliness and the gloom (and the ghosts?) of the building overcome Jack who starts going on the wane. Danny is attacked and nearly killed by a ghost. An illogical and stressed out Jack puts paid to the family's only chance of leaving the hotel and reaching the main town when he sabotages the only snowmobile on the hotel premises, the only mode of transportation in the extremely snowy conditions which were prevailing. Jack goes completly insane and starts halucinating about drinking and even gets drunk on drinks which inexplicably appear in an empty wine-cupboard (Work of ghosts?) Maddened by his drinking and the voices of the ghosts that seem to appear and talk to him, he tries to murder his wife and son. His son sends out a telepathic SOS to Dick Halloran who comes down to help them out, only to discover a stark raving mad Jack. An injured Hallorann (injured griviously by Jack) along with Wendy and Danny make their way out of the hotel even as the old boiler (whose pressure had to be periodically reduced to prevent an explosion) exploded after the insane Jack had forgotten to dump the pressure for an extended period of time.

END OF SPOILER

Stephen King has bloated this gist in the most obscene manner by adding reams and reams of absolutely useless 'filler' data, information that is present just for the sake of increasing the size of the book, the number of pages. One is also not clear as to what King wishes to convey through the story. Through the collapse of Jack, one feels that King intends to say that 'Once a drunk, always a drunk' or something to that effect. It is a very disturbing and depressing read, especially for a person who may be contemplating or trying to quit drinking. Darkness, it is said, is not an attribute by itself, but the mere absence of light. There is so little light in this novel that Darkness, one feels, has become an attribute in itself. Darkness is all-pervading and one feels the need, nay, the very yearning for light, which is not there and the reader is left high and dry, marooned, so to speak. Completely avoidable reading.

What is Love?

Is Love a destination or a station in transit? Are people who claim to be on the lookout for love really looking for love or is it something else that they are seeking? Love means many different things to different people but can anything really exist in so many different forms or is it just one thing that people have bent around for the sake of their own convenience? George Orwell paints the darker side of a society that cares only for convenience and not for values in his timeless offering, 'Animal Farm'. Rules are part of every society, religion, race and culture but how often is it that these rules are bent, often twisted completely out of context to obtain licences for doing things that would be too dastardly otherwise? These people who bend the rules feel guilty no doubt, about what they do, but that guilt is shortlived. More so when the society that these law breakers fear condone their actions instead of condemning them. That is how people get damned, twice over. Once for breaking the rules and the second time, for fooling themselves into believing that what they did was not bad, after all.

Love too is no different. Gibran says that Love puts one through the most taxing and stringent of tests before bestowing its gifts on the people who aspire for it. He says that Love threshes you to seperate your husk from you and then grinds you into wheat and then kneads you into dough to make you plaint and in the end, bakes you in the oven to make you fit to feed the Gods. Love puts one through so much of pain, anguish and suffering but in the end, gives the seeker so much more, but does anybody stay long enough to find out? Does anybody really experience the true nature of love? Often, I have come across people wistfully hoping for their Prince Charming/ Princess Snowhite to appear out of the blue and spirit them away from the humdrum everyday realitiies but do these people even realize that the same reality that they despise today might look like a bed of roses in comparison with what may befall them the next day?

People think they are looking at love but it's actually something else that they are looking at. Even the people who might know the truth deep down would not be willing to accept it. Why rock the boat when it is in steady waters? Why get up suddenly and lose the wonderful dream that is there? Why fix something when it is not broken completely and so on and so forth.

Love never makes an attempt to hide a part of itself, but if peoplle refuse to accept it for what it is and instead fool themselves into believing something that is not there, who is to blame? Love never fails, but people in love or those who think themselves to be lovers. often do. All too often.

An ode to Anger and the Mind that created it

The Dark recesses of the mind reek,
Of the overpowering vitriolic odour of Anger;
An anger deeper than the Oceans,
Anger at having been relegated to,
The status of a non-entity.

Anger so potent that it can burn the Mind down,
And with it, what houses it.
Anger knows no distinction between the good and bad,
For it, it makes no difference,
They are all the same, the same common enemy.

The Mind that bore Anger in its poisonous womb,
Regrets not, bearing its dreadful child.
It takes pride instead, in the fact that it too is not spared,
By the horrendous destruction brought about, for it knows:
What its child wreaks is but what it wreaks, upon itself and upon everything else.

-complexvanilla aka Prashanth Dwarakanath Chengi

More movies

This blog, meant to be an outlet for my inner mind, seems to have become a veritable movie review page! If you haven't felt so already, I might just be giving you the reason to decide so. I'm writing about movies, again! Over the past month, I watched about half a dozen movies, most of them run of the mill, but two were outstanding. One was an English movie from the year 2006 starring Hugo Weaving and the other was a Bollywood flick. The contrast between the two movies could not have been greater, but then, they were from totally different genres and each shone in its own right.
The first one, the Hollywood flick, was V for Vendetta. I have not read the graphic novel by the same name, so I would not be able to comment about how 'true' the director of the movie has stayed, with respect to the original content, but the product looks very slick and well made, and Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith of Matrix fame), with his impeccable English and style of dialog has truly performed brilliantly. His face is never shown in the movie, as he is always masked. Many other actors who were earlier considered for this role had their reservations about the assignment, but Weaving has pulled it off like nobody else could have. Set in the 2030s, the movie is set in a world in which England is the sole superpower in the world, with the mighty US of A being reduced to a pauper state thanks to their itchy nuclear trigger-fingers and their 'Godlessness', as accused by a character in the movie called the 'Voice of London'. It chronicles the efforts of a man who is only known as 'V', to usher anarchy in the place of the totalitarian rule that has come over England, portrayed in the movie as the all-powerful state. The movie raises interesting questions and watching it was a treat after being forced to watch movie after movie showing Americans saving the entire world from Aliens, Monster Creatures, and Alien Monster Creatures. Whew!

The other movie, the Bollywood flick, was called 'Ek Chaalis ki last local' (The last local train, 0140hrs). It was rated very poorly by the critics of almost all newspapers, but I enjoyed the movie immensely. Over the years, I have learned to never depend on the reviews provided by the newspapers. In any case, tastes in movies, food, art and reading differ from person to person and I still don't know why so many people think that these reviews are sacrosanct. Reviewing is an art, wherein the person has to try his or her best not to bring in personal biases and personal opinions into the review. I never write reviews. I only write my perception of the movies in my blogs. This gives me the right to be as opinionated as I want to, but people writing reviews ought to refrain from that, but they seem to be carried away by the power their words wield. 'With great power comes great responsibility' goes a famous quote, but it seems to be ignored by these reviewers. So, let me stop bashing up these reviewers, and get on to what I loved about the movie.
The pace was really slick, with hardly a single slack frame in the entire movie (about 2 hours and 20 minutes of running time). The twists and turns in the movie are very well executed, meaning that one can never guess what is going to happen in the next frame! The comedy is spot on, the picturisation is stark and without any unwanted excesses and all the actors (most of them unfamiliar) have done a brilliant job. The characters of the Police inspector, the crazy gangster-woman, the myriad goons and gangsters have all been well sketched and the casting is perfect.
The story itself is highly original. It charts the crazy fortunes of the protagonist after he misses the last local train for the day at 0140 hrs from Kurla to Vikhroli (places in Mumbai, India) . The next train is almost four hours later, the first train of the next day, at 0430 hrs. As he ponders on how to get to his destination (Vikhroli) in the night, he comes across a beautiful young woman, who also seems to have missed the last train. Coincidentally, she too has to get to the same destination as the protagonist. Not having any success at hailing even an auto-rickshaw at that unearthly hour (0145 hrs), they walk off together into the night, hoping to get a taxi-cab else where. The movie is about the protagonist's adventures in the night that puts his life at serious risk on more than one occasion and ultimately leads to a windfall for him, as ends up with one and three fourth crore rupees (about USD 350,000) that originally belonged to a bunch of gangsters. The movie ends with the protagonist having the money and even the company of the beautiful woman, whom he succeeds at befriending. Very nice movie. I would rate this movie five on five!

Retrospection mode: The nested minds revisited

The cacophony of the voices of my many minds are plainly evident in the body of this blog. Putting a premium on to one's mind, sweeping away the cobwebs of the mind, stoking the inner fires, so on and so forth. There is an unmistakable feeling of familiarity, yet the feeling that I don't even know the stuff that I write about haunts me. Well, that is the basic premise of the concept of nested minds, but to have it proving itself is slightly unnerving! I really am amazed about how things are going, the way my minds seem to be at war with each other. The differences in the quantity and quality of my work is something that has never failed to amaze both my peers and seniors, but what they don't know, but I happen to know is that I myself am equally surprised about my own ways! I might end up finding men in white coats coming to take me away if I ever admit to it (yet that is exactly what I'm doing right now!!!).

Self motivation is by no means easy, and that is the number one reason shrinks and motivational speakers continue to laugh all the way to their respective banks, selling pep talk and motivational tapes!!! I really don't know how much these books, tapes and sessions that come at fancy prices really help people, but it is safe to assume that if all the buyers of such paraphernalia were benefited, there would hardly be an unhappy soul in the world, barring those who haven't had the resources to procure or read of of those books or hear to one of those wonder-tapes!!!!

Fear is one thing that routinely brings people down to the feet and much worse. I find that fear of things that are unfamiliar is one the of the biggest impediments to learning. I feel comfortable innovating new things in fields that I have had good exposure to, but I find myself shrinking away from things which are totally unknown to me. It is an almost paralyzing fear, and the feeling is not one that is something that one can live with. I have taken the first step by taking on one of those fears, by starting to study about some new concept that I have long wanted to learn more about, but have always put it off as it fell into the 'unfamiliar territory'. So, no more getting terrified of new experiences and feelings. I'll update this blog about my new experiences, so stay tuned.

Fighting the second-handers

Those who have read Ayn Rand's Fountainhead will know what the term 'second-hander' means. It describes all the people in our society who live the lives of parasites, living off the efforts of others, doing some good work at times but claiming the efforts of others as their own, most of the times, if not all the time. These are people who believe that others exist but for one purpose: To serve them. They not only shamelessly live off these people, but also don't feel any guilt in doing so. In fact, they believe that it is their birthright to expect to be waited upon by these people. The movie Rocky 3 salutes the spirit of Rand without naming it in a scene in which Rocky comes to the prison to bail his brother in law, Paulie, out of the prison. Paulie starts complaining that Rocky hasn't done anything to improve his lot even after becoming rich and popular. He further goes on to say that as a friend, Rocky owes him a lot, to which Rocky retorts "Friends don't owe. They just help". Just because a friend of mine helps me, I would be foolish to assume that it is his duty to help and serve me.

I have been a member of the placement committee of our institution for sometime now, and now, am almost saddled with the task of leading it as the other people have bailed out, thinking that it is a lost cause. I don't really blame them either as the course is really grueling and nobody has the time to devote full-time to the placement activities. However, the attitudes of a few people are really astonishing. They assume that I'm there to molly-coddle them, that it's my responsibility to be in the know about everything related to placements, even about the mails that come to a common mail account, even before I myself get an opportunity to read it! They don't want to do anything about it, but still expect that I work hard at the common responsibilities that have overnight become 'my' responsibilities. Not just that, I also need to be sportive about the unsporting criticism that I get. I mean, I'm doing these guys a favor by taking up responsibilities that none of them were willing to take up, yet I'm supposed be ashamed of myself for not treating these second handers well enough! The very guy who kicked up a fuss was one whose name was also proposed, in the list of committee members, but he was more slippery than an eel in wriggling himself out of any responsibilities, yet he thinks he is entitled to order me about and that I'm bound to show subservience to him.

I'm no Jesus Christ to do all the good and hard work and still get crucified for it! Second handers are worse than pests and ought to be exterminated, or, as the protagonists in Atlas Shrugged do, must be left to fend totally for themselves. Yes, that would be a fitting treatment for them.

Removing unwanted choices

The human brain is unique amongst animals as it is indisputably the most powerful thinking engine, but what of the human mind, the content of the human brain? The human mind tends to be in a highly volatile and unstable condition most of the times as it sees choices where no other animal sees them. Battling with the choices becomes a problem bigger than survival even. Animals on the other hand don't bother about how many ways they can do something as long as they can find any way in which to do it. Only survival matters and nothing else. Luxury is not a concept that animals spend much thought on, but it is certainly not the case with us humans. We have a lot to think about. We have multiple ways of going about any given task, and so often end up spending hours upon hours thinking which way to proceed.

The human mind is also notoriously fickle and can think about a hundred different things at the same time. There is only so much that the container of the mind, the brain can compute, before running out of steam, so often, we see people getting stressed out trying to decide what color trousers to wear, what food to eat and simple things like that. The more the choices, more the overheads for the brain. Eliminating choices is seen as a regressive step, but suffering the aftermaths of too many choices where hardly any are required, is considered acceptable. Hell, we can't give up the luxury of choices. So what if it causes some confusion? In the end, aren't we all happy? But are we really happy?

I want to work on my project which is coming up for submission, work on an upcoming examination, write a poem, meditate to get some peace of mind, smoke a cigarette in the hope of getting the relaxation that the meditation failed to give (well, the relaxation lasted the duration of the meditation, but after that what? I can't possibly meditate all day!) and so on and so forth.
So, what do you think happens? Many of the things on the 'To-do' list go undone and one is filled with a sense of failure. The 'To-do' list promptly goes into the bin and no attempt to schedule jobs that need to get done is ever done again, as the results are already known. Who wants to keep failing? Quitting seems better than trying and losing out to many people and one just cannot convince them otherwise.

So, what's the solution? Put a premium on your mind. If you don't value your own mind, who will? Do only the things that you feel deserve your mind's and subsequently your brain's efforts and trash the rest of the things. Try to cut out the choices as far as possible. Wherever you have a fork ie a spitting of ways, try to eliminate some of the options to leave you with a single or at the most two ways so that you can go and make your move. Choices are seductive, but they are the devil's agents. The more of them you have, the more the confusion. Now, by choices, I mean the frivolous ones, not the important ones. Frivolous choices are those that come disguised as convenience and luxury. Mahatma Gandhi used to fuss a lot about the kind of clothes he chose to wear in his youth, but later, he realized that clothes did not really make the man, as popularly thought. It was just a frivolous choice. He roamed about semi naked till his death, but did it matter in any way? It only increased his popularity!! Cut the clutter out and allow the mind to breathe! And then watch it bloom!

Rocky completes a full circle

The saga of Rocky has come a full circle, bringing a proper conclusion to a series of movies that delivered powerhouse performances, sequel after sequel. The story of the underdog boxer rising to dizzying heights, biting the dust and resurrecting himself all over again was truly the stuff of dreams. To me, it meant a lot more than just another movie series. In fact, Rocky was phenomenal in several aspects. At a time when sequels were looked down upon, it was Rocky that set the path for the others to follow, and how! Each sequel had something new to offer and were not merely an exercise in squeezing out more money out of a successful franchise.

Penned and directed by Sylvester Stallone, the movie was what gave the struggling Sly a firm toe-hold in the movie industry. Though the producers were initially skeptical of casting Stallone in the lead, the man with the slurred accent and a cerebral palsy induced sneer delivered a phenomenal performance in Rocky, which was termed a 'sleeper hit' on account of the low investment and phenomenal returns that it earned. The accompanying music scores too were very popular and had the original theme by Bill Conti recurring in all the subsequent Rocky movies with the exception of Rocky IV.
If one looks back, none of the Rocky movies really have any elaborate story or plotlines, yet what made them the success that they were was the fact that people could relate to every aspect of the movie.

Even though Rocky lost the fight against his opponent Apollo Creed in the first Rocky, he had made his mark. A rank nobody went the distance against an established champion and earned the love and respect of his fans. Rocky II saw him fighting a rematch against Apollo and winning it in the last round. Rocky III sees him getting complacent and lax and he pays the price for it, by going down against an aggressive boxer, Clubber Lang. I was almost in tears when I realized that Rocky went down and out. The resurrection of Rocky with the help of his new found friend Apollo Creed, combined with the excellent soundtrack 'Eye of the tiger' by Survivor, made for a superb movie. I'm sure that the movie has motivated a lot of people to overcome their obstacles and fight their inner demons. I'm one of them. I listen to 'Eye of the tiger' every time I feel down and it peps me right up. Rocky IV was about avenging the death of Apollo at the hands of a burly Russian fighting machine, Ivan Drago. The montage in which Rocky trains in the cold and frozen wastelands of Russia was in total contrast to everything that he had done till then, and it too was brilliant. Stallone even jokingly claimed credit for bringing the cold-war to an end with Rocky's line "If I can change and you can change, everybody can change!!".The soundtrack 'No easy way out' too was bang on target.

The storyline of Rocky V was surprising dull and lacklustre and die-hard Rocky fans felt let down with the way Rocky chose to make his final exit. Apparently Stallone too was not happy with it and so he came back, one final time with Rocky Balboa.

Initially I had my doubts as to how good the movie would be, given the fact that Stallone has aged considerably, but all those doubts were firmly laid to rest by the movie, in which Rocky comes back against all odds, trains hard, concentrating on building mass, as speed is not something that he can hope to improve upon, given his age and reduced reflexes. He delivered another powerhouse performance and the movie is considered to be the most authentic boxing movie of all time. In a salute to the first Rocky, Stallone aka Rocky Balboa goes down to the current heavyweight champion, Mason 'the-line' Dixon, in a split decision, after going the distance all over again. Though he lost the fight, he won hearts right, left and center. He proves that anybody can achieve anything, as long as the desire to perform and excel is present. If a guy can come out of retirement, get the heart and the guts to take on the reigning champion in a boxing ring and perform as well as he did, it just means that there is no such thing as 'Impossible'. This movie gave the saga of Rocky the most suitable conclusion possible.

Containers and containment

A container as we all know is something that holds something within it. Contain also means to limit. So, apart from containing something within, a container also limits the contents to its own limits. The contents can never become larger than the container. So far, this reads like something out of a dictionary. True enough, but its relevance cannot be over emphasized, as the rest of the article attempts to prove it.

The mind is a container for our thoughts. We often think that we can think about just about anything that we want, but in reality, it is different. Fantasizing is one thing, thinking is another. To a large extent, even fantasies are bound by the restrictions placed by the container, the mind.
When Jules Verne wrote about nuclear submarines and scuba diving equipment which would enable the diver to stay underwater for prolonged periods of time as he could carry his own supply of oxygen, this was clearly a fantasy, but one which was well beyond the scope of an average man's fantasy, during his time. How then was he able to come up with something so fantastic? It's only because he stretched the limits of his container, or even disallowed its existence. Often, when we read the works of celebrated philosophers, scientists and writers, we feel that they were way ahead of their times. In reality, all they did (although this was the toughest part) was to suspend their own disbelief. They refused outright to be limited by the bounds imposed by the container of their thoughts, their minds.

I have read that animals kept in captivity for extended periods of time do not even make an attempt to leave their cages, even if the door is left open, as their minds are thoroughly conditioned to believe that they are not open. They have resigned themselves to their fate and have accepted blindly the limits of their freedom. All too often, we are in similar situations ourselves.
If there is something that we feel is beyond us, more often than not, it is a result of the conditioning of our mind. If we refuse to accept it at face value and try to explore beyond, chances are that we will find that we can achieve a great deal more, but we often don't possess the courage required to do so.

The movie 'The Matrix' shows us an over simplified version of the same, time and again. One of the most memorable scenes is one in which Morpheus, one of the central characters asks Neo, the protagonist, to jump from the roof of a very tall building, to the roof of another building right across the street. Neo stares in disbelief while Morpheus tries to explain to him that the rules of gravitation do not apply in that particular dimension of the world, and that if only he believes that he can make the jump, he can. He demonstrates it by jumping himself, but Neo tries and still fails. Only because he cannot suspend his own disbelief. In another scene, when Neo sees a young boy bending a spoon, a la Uri Geller, he is stupefied, but the boy explains to him that he only needs to think that the spoon is one with him and he can do it. Neo goes on to do just that and succeeds in bending the spoon.

The point is lost on many people as they stick to the examples provided while ignoring the message 'contained' within. We need not be able to jump fifty feet or bend spoons to break the shackles imposed upon us by our own minds. We just need to realize that we can overcome several of these limitations. I have seen people lose long standing fears just because they made an attempt to conquer them. I have always been extremely nervous about things as mundane as swings and a ferris-wheel, but I decided that I had to do something that would throw my fears right out of the window, and so signed up for a bungee jump.
What happened next was something that was totally unexpected. Not only did my violent fear disappear, but I enjoyed myself so thoroughly that I did the jump two more times!

Anybody can overcome any fear and cross over any mental barrier, if only they are willing to suspend their own disbelief. Once that perceived myth is busted, the mind automatically increases the bounds of the container, giving one more room. Keep busting the myths and see how the horizon pans out. Happy exploring!

The flip-side of being intelligent

Everybody goes through it at some point of time or the other, in which one feels totally inert. The pressures seem to be too much to take on. Familiarity is not present and though one might have talked his mind into pursuing something totally new, there is no fuel to do so. You feel that you have feet of lead, that just refuse to move in the direction that you want them to move. What then?

The more intelligent the person, the greater are the chances of suffering from these symptoms. I find that the less intelligent ones are spared of this dilemma as they just work with their blinkers on. They live their entire lives around the median. Finishing a project doesn't give them a spectacular high, but they are scared of the consequences of not finishing it. In the case of the more intelligent ones, there is no such thing as a median. In the event of a finished project or task, the feeling of exhilaration is substantial, but strangely, it is their ability and the confidence in their abilities that stops them from feeling scared when things don't go their way. They exude an air of nonchalance about them. They know that they can do a certain task and the actual completion of the task is only secondary to them. They work only for their own satisfaction, and since their own standards are very high, in the event of them being satisfied, nobody find faults in the completed work. But then, that is the million dollar question. How often do the intelligent people complete their work?

One of the main reasons that intelligent people don't always get the top grades in a class is only because they are more bothered about their own satisfaction. If they perceive a task to be less challenging, they often even avoid it. The less intelligent ones pounce on it, and do not cease till it conforms to the standards that someone else sets for it. They seldom set their own standards and even despise the more intelligent ones who do it. The end result? The less intelligent person has completed one hundred percent of the easy to do task while the more intelligent person may or may not have completed his more difficult to complete task.
An intelligent person is temperamental, most of the time and paces himself. He does not bother in syncing himself to the pace of others, so if all goes well and the person does not get distracted or jaded, the task will get completed and very well at that, but in case he gets demotivated or distracted, that will be the end of the progress.

So, is being born intelligent a crime? Or can intelligence be used as an excuse for under performance??? Neither, but often, the troubles the intelligent people face when making decisions is mocked by others who are not considerate and often less capable. The only real solution is that the intelligentsia should give up their quirkiness and work with a will. Whether the job comes up to their own standards or not, it is there and it has to be completed, and there are no two ways about it.

Familiarity breeds contempt- True or False?

'Familiarity breeds contempt' goes a famous adage, but does it hold true for matters of the mind too? All to often, people get into ruts, only on the account of familiarity. Far from contempt, people develop a sort of love to things that are familiar to them and in fact, tend to avoid changes. People doing the same work day in and day out admit to feeling bored, but often shrink away in fear when asked why they don't do something different. It's like a pacifier given to a baby. Conditioning sets in after a while.

In the book 'Who moved my cheese?' author Dr. Spencer Johnson suggests that the biggest reason for long standing problems not getting resolved is because our mind is conditioned to avoid changes, even those that could solve the problem.

We have a fear to start off on things that are unfamiliar to us. In a field like Computer Science where today's knowledge may become obsolete the next day, many professionals shy away from updating their skills giving the excuse that the changes don't really fall in their domain. The real reason is that though they know that the changes are very much part of their domain, they look the other way only because they are scared to do something new. How long has it been since you have learned something new?

Many of us want to learn new skills, new past-time activities and explore new and uncharted territories, but the inner-mind gets in the way, telling us to stick to what we know and have explored, to stick to the tried and tested recipes. We have to overcome this inertia in order to be able to progress. Change is after all one of the signs of life and yet, people avoid it all the time and later even complain that things are not the way they used to be, and that they feel that something has died inside of them, that the passion is not there, where it used to be.
Ask a gardener what to do in case you see that your favorite potted plant is on a decline and chances are high that he will ask you to dig up the soil and recharge it, i.e replenish it with new soil that is nutrient rich and also add a bit of fertilizer as the plant would have used up all the nutrients in the soil for its growth. We ought to do the same with our minds, but do we ever give it a thought?

Our mind is capable of a lot of wonderful things, but it too needs to be recharged every once in a while, otherwise it too, like the potful of nutrient deprived soil, will not be able to support the germination of new thoughts and the blooming of new ideas.
Familiarity is a good thing to have, but exploration of the unknown refreshes our minds and keeps us young, in the mind.

The Obsessive-Compulsive 'do-gooders'

Many people are very filled with negativity these days and most amongst them are constantly bothered by pangs of guilt over the fact that they are not giving their spouses/children/loved ones enough of 'quality time'. They are willing to do absurd things just to feel better. In my earlier post 'Stoking the fire within' I wrote about the need to feel good. I recommended doing something concrete, something that we are good at, to achieve a sense of success. The artists amongst us can paint, poets can pen poetry, and so on, but there are a whole load of people who don't really want to do anything that involves real effort, but still want to feel good. What do they do? Give alms to people who don't deserve it, donate money to causes without even finding out their antecedents and do many other irrational things, just to feel that they have done something good. Just a little something to ease the pangs of guilt. If a meaningless act can mean lesser feelings of guilt and sounder sleep, well, so be it.

In the photograph alongside, you can see a pile of biscuits put there by one such 'do-gooder' individual, apparently to feed the stray dogs. Its another matter altogether that no stray dog in the vicinity is even remotely interested in eating it, as they can get hold of choicier food thrown out by nearby eateries! The biscuits just lie there, till they gradually mix in with the dirt or till rain or winds blow them away. In the rarest of rare events, a municipality sweeper may sweep it away. Yet, the person who threw away a packet of good biscuits went home with a lighter heart, telling himself that he had done the day's good deed, public cleanliness be damned.
If the person really cared, he could have found a hungry dog and fed it. Absurd? Well, littering a public place in this fashion seems absurd too! A friend of mine organized a fundraising drive for the cause of blind children and bemoans the fact that she could not get enough publicity or money for the cause. She is not resting on her laurels or sleeping more soundly thanks to all the feel-good energy that she has accumulated, but she is planning a bigger event that can gain more publicity and rake in more money for the cause. People like her a rarity, while the hipocrites like the one who walked away satisfied after littering up the neighborhood for nothing, are found all too often.

Stoking the fire within

Sunday evening. Still feeling dog tired. Have picked up a fever and a nasty cold too. Work has been forced to a standstill, the to-do list is growing faster than ever. The seminar of yesterday was not an absolute disaster, but it came close to being one. The fire in the belly is weaker than the fever that is raging within. All is not well.

Rage is good. Rage can fuel a person into activity when everything else fails. The fire being out inside of you does not mean that you have become a very diffused and peaceful person. The rage is still present, but its totally misdirected. It will be in the blame mode. Pointing fingers at everybody at large, the whole society. Everything and everyone, but yourself; Which is where it ought to be made to point, if you hope to get out of the rut.

Rage, however has a major drawback. Its very exhausting. It can at best be a stop-gap arrangement, much like a shot of adrenaline. To expect to run entirely on rage is foolishness. Rage can be harnessed to get results in the short-term. It can be remarkable effective for a whole night's frenzied activity, for instance. I used just that to get my seminar organized, but the after effects are very visible. I have a fever and don't even have the energy to even sit here much longer.
Rage is not good at rekindling fires, but is quite adept at setting new ones of its own, and that too, in the wrong places, so our original problem of stoking the fire within still remains a problem.

Lots of 'solutions' are being aggressively marketed. Solutions ranging from a cruise in the mediterranean to a spiritual sojourn, depending on exactly how deep your pocket runs. Totally customised solutions, yessir, but how many of them are really feasible for a burnt out student or techie who desperately craves, but in vain, for more rest than the two day weekend provides.

The most practical solution however, is success. Success has the ability to charge up even the most dejected person. Half the reason why a person feels dejected in the first place is because he would have forgotten the feeling of a success-induced euphoria. Do something that you know you are good at, something that you are likely to taste success in. This is not like fishing in an aquarium. Everybody needs to feel good. Feeling good automatically stokes those fires. Im now calling it a day. I hope to wake up feeling better. I intend to start my day doing what Im good at. Solving programming puzzles and problems. Even if they are not related to my immediate work. The high that I derive out of solving a puzzle successfully will go a long way towards rekindling my inner fire.

Crash and burn

Project submissions, seminars, tests... all within the span of a few days. Some of them not even separated by as much as a day. Stuff that nightmares are made of. Absolutely the wrong time to suffer a stress-shutdown or something like that, but it seems so close. The men in white coats seem to be just around the corner. Maybe the sight of them is even going to be welcome, but that too is just another illusion created by a harrowed and fatigued mind. It isn't going to happen, after all. Its just me against myself. My minds slugging it out for control. Nothing more, nothing less. It seems that just when the situation requires the maximum efficiency of body and mind, I'm clean out of fuel, or on the verge of running out. I have a seminar slated for tomorrow. The first for tomorrow, in fact. And I'm clueless as to how I'm going to be able to organise my thoughts by then. Its not really a question of butterflies in the stomach because of the audience too, as I'm quite used to speaking before a large audience. The numbers don't overwhelm me, but my own lack of preparation certainly can. The fire in my belly is all but out.

I got to know that a friend of mine, a senior software engineer in an MNC is putting on a dance performance to raise funds for the cause of blind children. I hear about and see these people around me and feel a tingle in a region that I thought was dead to the world. How do they have the energy, the enthusiasm, the verve and the conviction to do these things? Where is my enthusiasm, my energy? Is it dead? I wanted to be a champion bicyclist, a journalist, a master programmer.... I have made compromise after compromise, giving up things that mattered to me. I have had to make tough decisions, but I have stood by them so far. Why then am I feeling so alone, so weak, so disconsolate now?

The Order-Chaos Continuum. A book lover's perspective

Books of Ayn Rand are something of a hand-me-down in my family. When I told my uncle that I had just finished reading the Fountainhead, he gave me a knowing smile and asked me how I felt about it. After listening to my enthusiastic response, his smile widened and he said that I was now ready to take on her next book, Atlas Shrugged. He not only said this, but also gave me his much dog-eared copy of Atlas Shrugged, the same copy that has been read by many of my cousins, over and over again. It was a matter of great pride for me to receive it. It was a sort of coming of age ritual. I was now no more just a kid, but an adult, who had an independent reasoning mind, one that could assimilate the profound thoughts of Ayn Rand.

Its been over three years since I read Atlas Shrugged. I used to be a voracious reader, but have become a shadow of my old self, of late. Maybe because of the rigors of my course. Maybe not. Its been a long time since I read a book, fiction or otherwise. My last reading was Stephen King's horror-thriller Rose Madder. Late 2005 and early 2006 was a period that was really memorable for me. I was working for a college as a lab programmer. The job was fun and my heart was light. I went on a book buying spree in which I bought amongst other things, 'The Green Mile' (TGM) by Stephen King, a travelogue of sorts of Agatha Christie called 'Tell me how you live'(TMHYL), 'Notes to myself' by Hugh Prather and 'The Virtue of Selfishness' (TVS) by Ayn Rand. While I got through TGM and TMHYL early last year itself, I still haven't gotten around to finishing either TVS or Notes'. The ever present Damocles' sword of deadlines hanging over the head and the gruelling schedule has put paid to all that. The stress levels have gotten phenomenally high and there is no sign of any kind of respite on the horizon. New year came and went. Those who partied are now feeling that it was a time that was ill-utilized, that the party was a luxury that they couldn't really afford in the first place while those who did not are feeling pretty blue too, thinking that they could have at least had a bit of fun while it lasted!!!

While its true that there is no sign of any respite along the horizon, I have no intention of turning into a nervous wreck just because the work load is high. I have the ability to work with focus for extremely prolonged hours, often at a single stretch and this is the very trait of mine that I'm putting my money on to get me through this course, and also perhaps through many a situation in the outside world. After rummaging through my belongings in the chaos that is called my room, I managed to find my copy of TVS, and just about began reading it. The clarity of the thoughts of the author (Ayn Rand) is just amazing. I really like her thoughts and identify with her ideas about Objectivism. Reading a book, and that too a Rand book, after a really long time brought back fond memories. Its a nice feeling to read a book and though at present, I really can't afford the luxury of reading books cover to cover, its nice to even read a few pages now, a couple later and so on.

The couple of pages of TVS that I read today charged me up somewhat and I googled Objectivism. While the first couple of hits led to Ayn Rand Institute (as expected), that was not what I really was interested in. I was looking for other people's thoughts about Objectivism, and came across plenty of that after the first page of search results. To say that the results were disappointing would be an understatement.

The search result brought up a piece called 'Whats really wrong with Objectivism' (http://www.jeffcomp.com/faq/) by a person called Chris Wolf. This was just one of the hundreds, maybe thousands more like it. The article, whether biased or unbiased (though Mr Wolf makes his intentions pretty clear and even uses words that are pretty uncivil, I'm giving the article the benefit of doubt) makes it pretty clear that not all is well with the Objectivists of the world.

Another piece, authored by a person claiming to be an Objectivist claims that Atheism is the key to be an Objectivist, while Rand herself, to my knowledge has made no such statements.

The results just proved that no organisation, thought, or philosophy could really survive with its integrity intact, over a period of time. The period of time varies from case to case, but in the end, everything gets corrupted, beyond the point of redemption. There will always be purists who will try to hold on to the shards of truth and keep it from getting corrupted, but there is only so much that a small set of people can do. Its comparable to the sound of a buzzing bumblebee in a busy railway station. The bumble bee never goes silent, but is it audible over the din?

George Orwell's 'Animal Farm' is a book that comes to the mind when the topic is of dilution/distortion/disintegration taking place in any organisation.

Spoiler warning: The storyline of 'Animal Farm' is discussed in brief below.

'Animal Farm', is a story in which a group of farm animals, lead by a pig, fed up with the way their owners mistreat them, organise a rebellion and become independent and set up their own farm called the 'Animal Farm'. A set of rules to protect the interests of the members of 'Animal Farm' is laid down and is painted on a wall. The book describes the manner in which the leadership of the farm changes hands and how the disintegration of values takes place. The rules that were laid down are diluted to suit the purposes of the leaders. For example, one of the original rules that said "No animal on the farm shall drink alcohol" is changed overnight to read "No animal on the farm shall drink alcohol to excess" just to accommodate those in power who wanted to drink alcohol. The very spirit of the farm is killed in a gradual manner. The first and most important slogan of the Animal farm, 'Four legs good, two legs bad' is also given an unceremonious burial with the power block (the pigs on the farm) coining a new slogan 'Four legs good, two legs better' and even proceeding to begin walking on two legs to prove the point.

End of Spoiler.

I studied a bit of Kannada literature in my high school and had a non detailed piece called 'Naagareeka' (Citizen or civilian) in the syllabus, that further reinforces this thought. It was a story about a citizen of a certain fictitious city who is very frustrated in life as he feels that there is no hope to anything or anybody. His pet peeve? The crumbling of the legendary Vijayanagara empire, painstakingly put together by Sage Vidhyaranya. The citizen feels that when an empire as glorious as the Vijayanagara empire can come down like a pack of cards and slip into oblivion, there can be no hope for anybody else. The piece ends with the citizen getting a vision in which the dead Sage Vidhyaranya comes back, alive and well, a vision in which the great sage tells the citizen that everything in life, including Dharma itself, has an expiry date attached to it, after which the clean up starts. Everything has to go through all the stages. The four Yugas or eras in the Hindu belief too are designed for this very purpose. Order falls to chaos and garbage collection follows before order is restored.