Impormptu #4 Ephemerality

When was the last time you were happy? 

When was the last time you were sad?

When was the last time you were satisfied with your share of life?

The last time you felt how unfair the world is?

Our thoughts, our feelings are but gusts of wind borne off of our experiences . Raining one minute, sunny the next. In the course of this roller coaster ride, we hope, nay, we believe that our memories are powerful enough to remember all these details of the why and when of when we are happy but how truthful are our memories?

All it takes is a 6 hour ride in a bus from Delhi to a remote village to forget all the good times you've had at home and to start cursing your luck. All it takes is five minutes of talking with an old friend to relive you of the horrors of the bus ride, before the news of an exam takes you back into your dive. 

Its times like that when you truly appreciate our ability to write, to capture in words those ephemeral feelings that we experience at the time. Feelings of joy, of despair, of longing or anger, it all comes pouring out forever plastered on paper for all the world to see. It isn't for the permanence of its existence, of  its survival after our death, of talking to our successors or of leaving behind a memorial that we write, it is for us to relive our own memories, to remember. 

The computer has made life easier for us who hate using a pen, letting us instead write on a screen where our woe begotten handwriting is forgotten but our feelings live on and our writings only as permanent as we see fit. It has made a writer of us all and is a call for us all to begin in earnest the task of holding on to our ephemeral thoughts since A memory is what you make of it. Something as simple as going to play football with your group of friends could become a memory that you cherish for the rest of our life. To remember the feeling, to jog your memory of not just the good times, but also of the bad, to feel the nostalgia welling up in you is why we write. 

To all ye folks who are yet to pick up a pen, pick up a keyboard instead and start writing, for memories may fade and feelings forgotten, but the written word stays on.

Animania

Anime are the next best thing to books, Paths into the minds of the creator and of ourselves. Their spread of topics is as diverse and  delivery makes much more  of an impact, albeit more limited in depth. This post is along the lines of the book bucket challenge spreading across the social networks and is my attempt to distill a few anime that impacted me the most from the several that i have so far seen.

I have been an avid anime watcher and found myself fascinated by them right from age old ones like Flame of Recca and DBZ to more recent ones like Mirai Nikki and what sets them apart for me, is the freedom which the animator has compared to regular movies. There are no limitations in what can happen in an anime unlike in the case of movies which can at best, showcase a mocking attempt at replicating something unnatural.

Case in Point, DragonBall Z (Spoiler Altert), an anime whose craze sent entire generations shouting in joy when Goku went Super Sayian and plunged them into dismay when Vegeta blows himself up in a failed attempt to kill Cell. An attempt to make a movie out of this anime drove the fans into a frenzy at the despicable nature of the result because it is NOT possible to have a realistic representation of the supernatural.

A book definitely has better freedom of expression as thoughts are better explained and elucidated at a pace comfortable to the reader but an anime has its advantage in the entertainment it provides simply because it's an audio-visual platform with an impact quotient that is greater.

To draft a list of anime that has impacted me is to list all the anime that i have ever watched since each once has atleast a subtle impact on me, if not by subject, atleast by delivery. But, to choose, the most impactful, they would be

1. Bakuman



An anime about a pair of students who aim to be established Mangaka ( Manga Writers ) and to release an anime in their name. It appeals to the heart of every Anime Aficionado and writer out there. It describes the state of mind of these budding mangaka through the ups and down of their career, spiced up with a romantic side story and several subplots ( read - manga within a manga - Mangaception ) and delivered in brilliant style. The heart warming story also is a great teacher walking the viewers through the process of manga writing while  also showing a dramatized back story to describe the motivation of the various writers.

I am not smoldering and incompletely combusted like those guys over there. Even if it’s just for a moment, I’m gonna Burn so Bright and so Red, I’ll Dazzle Everyone.
(Bakuman)



I prefer to be a humble dreamer, with visions to be realized, rather than the ruler of people with no dreams or desires.
Mashiro Moritaka (Bakuman)


2. Shinkgeki No Kyojin

A dystopian anime that reminds you both of the joys of freedom we enjoy and the depravity of humans when confronted by danger. A cynical, dark, tale of humanity's last stand against external and internal forces. Combining advanced technology with a semi-rustic setting and extremely realistic character descriptions, this anime has it all.

We’re going to explore the outside world someday, right? Far beyond these walls, there’s flaming water, land made of ice, and fields of sand spread wide. It’s the world my parents wanted to go to.
Armin Arelet (Shingeki no Kyojin)

If you win, you live. If you lose, you die. If you don’t fight, you can’t win!
Eren Yaeger (Shingeki no Kyojin)







3. Hungry Heart

Football. Sibling Rivalry. Passion.

An anime whose protagonist is a simple character with whom any person who has ever had a rival will connect to, more-so someone with a sibling. It drives you to the depths of despair and the heights of euphoria in the span of a few episodes. Watched this way back in 2006 and has been my most nostalgically recollected anime since.

When they call my brother a genius, it's an insult. He was born talented, but they don't know how hard he had to work to be that good.
-Kanou kiasuki, Hungry Heart Wild Striker

An Optimistic Cynic

I don't bother reading the newspaper anymore. It's vast pages are filled with more despair than any other piece of literature ever written. It only serves to further affirm my belief in the degradation of humankind and that surely, we can do no more harm to each other than we do already.

War.Murder.Rape.Armed Assault.Bribery.Fraud.Discrimination.

I don't think of myself as an Anarchist but i see myself losing faith in every institute set up by man as none seem to serve the purpose for which they are made. They serve the purpose of those who are a part of them. None of Democracy, Communism or Dictatorship accomplish the objective of their governance and mostly, for lack of will. The Education System is in a rut with student debt now reaching amounts large enough that they would comfortable feed a small family for a few years while not serving its main purpose of preparing the students for life outside. The economic system is on tenterhooks and is in such a precarious situation that governments across the world are all struggling to stay out of debt. Scientific progress is outstripping moral growth and important questions that should be asked before irreversible changes are made are no longer asked for lack of interest and information. The knowledgeable few hide facts in a stew of jargon making it impossible for a layman to have a fair discussion on topics which will soon be an indispensable part of their routine.

And yet,

And yet,

Despite the dark foreboding brought on by the thought of the failure of every system made by man, there is tiny beam of light that shines through. The light that glows from my regular interaction with my friends. The belief that even if every system fails, man will pull through on grit and that humans, by necessity being a hardy creature, will jugaad his way through problems. I still hold in my heart hte belief, surprisingly, that all hell will pass and that the heart of man is not rotten yet. The belief that  in every Hitler is hidden a soft side.

The amplifier, the agent, through which these feelings surface is different for each person. For me, 

it is through my choice of songs. 

Listening to songs like Iron Sky by Paolo Nutini reminds of all the reasons i believe in humans.

these songs which remind you of the good times; which can pull you through thoughts on the uselessness of human systems by reminding you of the goodness of man; which remind you to not over think and which can force you to action reignite my hope in humankind. No creature that can put a smile on the faces of others can inherently wish to harm the same people.  

Iron Sky - Paolo Nutini
Seven Nation Army - The White Stripes
Imagine - John Lennon
Wind of Change - Scorpion
Right Now - Van Halen
Follow me now - Jason Gleed
You get what you give - New Radicals
Cliffs of Dover - Eric Johnson
Bittersweet Symphony - Verve
Suspended Animation (Album) - John Petrucci


PS - Grooveshark is blocked at my college. Some things are truly beyond hope.
I'll be adding the players for these songs when i get access to it. Thanks for reading!

Signposts

Every once in a while, there are times when life seems to keep flowing and its all you can do to stay adrift. The journey turns into a blur and there is no longer any distinction of time. Its an extremely comfortable thought to believe that you can fold your hands and lie down in the boat and hope that you'll pass through any rough parts and emerge at the other end untouched and as fresh as you were when the journey started and along a path that you wished to reach but that hardly, if ever comes true and would need the luck of gods themselves. For the rest of us common folk, it is a necessity to take up the oars and work our way through the rough patches to have any hope of avoiding crashing into the sides but you can hardly be expected to row the entire time and not enjoy the serene beauty along the way. It is for this reason, every so often, certain events pop up to remind you to not let yourself get carried away by the strong tides of the river but to force the boat down the path you seek.

These signposts of life can be something as mundane as a competitive test to something as arcane as receiving gifts for inexplicable reasons and recognizing the rough patch that needs your attention can help make sure that you stay along the path of your choice instead of being coaxed by the flow down dark, gloomy passages.  They are also what tend to remind you of passage down the river. The slow change in what we perceive means that we tend to ignore how much things change around us. 4 years in a college feel like less time spent than a month at home because we sew all our memories together into one coherent past but this coherent past lacks a sense of chronology. It takes a signpost to tell you that the 4 years that started yesterday are about to end and that you are about to set foot into a very different place and once this signpost hits you, there's only one of two things to do, pick up the oars or lie down.

India though, sadly is a country where signposts seem to be everywhere,  every year-end is said to be signpost that determines the fate of the rest of your life. IT ISN'T. Every child in India has heard the saying, "Do this and you are set for life" far too often for it to bear any significance after the first few times. The wolf is said to be everywhere and every person we meet cries wolf to a point where the wolf is deemed to be imaginary. As a result, when Indian children are actually told something important is coming up, they ignore it as just another 'wolf' instead of it being a signpost warning them of a tumultuous time ahead.

PS- Sorry for the dense post, it's just something i had to get off my chest. Thanks for reading

A Childhood Dream

As a kid, i often used to dream of magically teleporting myself to a place far removed from home. A place with no rules and no restrictions. A place where my i don't have my mother at my back all day or my brother dragging me to my room to clean up.

I'd dream of going to a magical place where everyone is my age and there was all the time in the world to play.

I'd dream of vast fields of green and jungles so dense that those i read in books would seem like a well maintained pasture.

I'd dream of cities so densely developed that the sky was blocked out and the vehicles left no room for walking across.

I'd also dream of cities with so little population that the roads were empty most of the time and there were open grounds for me to play in.

I'd dream of deserted hills and arid deserts, of lush oasis and vast seas, of boats and islands galore.

Now, years later, I started travelling across a few places in India and its neighbors and the sights they hold astound and amaze me. The diversity of thought and differences in perspective leave me spellbound. 

Every time i travel from one place to another, a feeling of illusion creeps in, a feeling that the bus/train/plane i'm in is that teleporting machine that i dreamed of, and that the place i was in was just that, since all that remains for me are memories, and the place i go towards is the place i wake up in.

Memory: Noun

1. the faculty by which the mind stores and remembers information.

Sometimes wish that i could stay at each place i've been to and keep them from turning into memories, but then, that wouldn't be travelling, would it?

Here's hoping to find more places that i regret leaving.

Sound Of Silence

It was a hot summer afternoon and the merciless rays of the sun were bearing down on a small suburban house in an unremarkable community near the city of Hyderabad. Inside the house, a one sided battle was in progress between a couple who were married for 20 odd years.

The wife was screaming, "What will you do now?"
The husband looked silently at her, then went back to looking at his laptop screen.
"Why don't you say anything?"
"Silence"
"I am asking you what are you planning to do about your job?"
"Silence"
"Does all this mean nothing to you?" She asks gesturing at the house, "We will lose it all!"
"Silence"
"Damn it", she grunted and turning on her heel, and left in a huff slamming the door in her wake.

By the next day, he had earned himself an interview and in a week, a job. While showing her his appointment letter, he asks, "Would you have preferred me arguing with you or getting this done?'

Language is an extremely powerful device and is rightly given credit for all that human society has achieved over the past few millenia. It is what separates us from prehistoric man and beasts, and is said to be the reason for the evolution of the brain along the path that it has taken. However language begets silence just as light begets dark and is an essential part of communication making silence among the most powerful, yet underrated part of communication.







A friend of mine once said, "Human speech is meant to communicate with someone who doesn't understand you completely, not to communicate with someone who does, since that would make it redundant" and yet, the most frequent use of speech is to repeat what is already known to the receiever leaving neither the speaker nor the receiver any more informed of the situation than before.

Communication in such circumstances is used for emotional reasons but is usally counter productive reducing the efficiency of the work being done and causing a build up of stress with no useful output. These emotional outbursts sometimes launch into full scale arguements which serve as a distraction from the work that needs to be done and only cause more problems. Silence on the other hand, allows complete focus on the task at hand and indicates both efficiency and promise.

However, the importance of silence is not limited to just holding back unimportant communication, it is also essential for improving the quality of communication. A speech with no pauses will not leave breathing space for listeners to swallow and assimilate the content. An emotional moment with no time to think and memorize the moment is lost in time. Music cannot be played without playing the pauses effectively. The very working of our hearing needs a certain pauses after a while to prevent the incoming communication from turning into a stream of gibberish.

They form an essential component of public speaking where pauses are used to place emphasis on certain points or for dramatic effect. The effective use of silence is what separates a speaker from an orator. It is the mastery of this form of building suspense that lead to specches like those delivered by Anthony (Julius Caesar), Winston Churchill and Hitler among others

An extended period of silence is far more dangerous to the human brain than an equivalent exposure to loud noise. An experiment involving a person isolated in a soundproof chamber with no sources of sounds on the inside showed the person growing progressively madder and craving some kind of aural stimulation. The phrase "Defeaning Silence" comes from the fact that the development of the human mind occured in the presence of a background noise and was an essential part of his survival instinct, and when that is removed, the brain is unable to process the absolute lack of noise causing blow to the brain that is immense.

The sound of silence is akin to the color of black. Its importance is its lack which emphasises everything around it.

"Silence Saves"

Black Swan

"The problem with experts is that they do not know what they do not know" - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

There are few things that command as much attention as the idea of a black swan. The possibility that the idea of an angelic white swan can be turned on its head is as disturbing as it is unexpected. As a result of this and their natural rarity, the existence of black swans was earlier confined to myths and urban legends. Their subsequent discovery and acknowledgement gave them particular symbolic value of being beyond human expectations.

A Black Swan event ( capitalized ) is one which is unexpected and when realized, impacts the world in a way that shakes the ground beneath everyone's feet. These events are often followed by attempts by people to then rationalize the event and claim that the event was predictable and could have been prepared for.

Our lives are shaped more by past Black Swan events than by the cumulative effect of all other events.Rare and improbable events occur much more often than we dare to think. Our thinking is usually limited in scope and we make assumptions based on what we see, know, and assume. Reality, however, is much more complicated and unpredictable than we think.

When Writers Hate Writing

I Hate Writing.

During my schooling, when i was asked to write an essay on a certain topic or to write a letter to the teacher saying i was sick and excused from school, despite the practical value associated, it was a task which i wholeheartedly despised and didn't complete unless repeatedly rebuked and coaxed.

Several years hence, and i am no better off. If i am ever asked to give a handwritten letter or assignment, i prefer putting it off as long as i can before forcing myself to finish it and hand in a hastily scribbled version. But, if the same is allowed in printed form or as a soft copy, i spend considerable effort editing it and ensuring the assignment submitted is the best i can present.

This begs the question of why is there such a difference.


The answer lies in the fact that the presentation in a hand written version depends on the aforesaid hand writing and that is something i have never found myself good it. Call it an expression of personality or the level of confidence in a person or simply a matter of clarity of thought but i have never been able to pen a single sheet of paper which has been considered to be of above average presentation or even legible for that matter but i myself find my handwriting perfectly clear and therein lies the problem which kept me away from writing for a considerable period of time. I cannot understand how to write legible script without understanding what it is illegible in the first place and to find out that,i would need to step into the mind of another person. The grapes of legibility lie in too high a branch for this fox, but i did find it possible to express my thoughts without worrying about presentation on computers and that was what augmented my love for them while allowing me to express without restraint.


I am far from being the only such writer who can only express themselves only on computers where the presentation is mostly taken care of and editing is far easier. The established (mal)practice of judging a work by its presentation cannot play as much of a role and commoners who earlier could not hope to voice their views in a manner fit for the papers can now use simple applications to make write without any voodoo trickery to make a legible handwritten version.

What this means is that every person who can frame basic sentences can now legitimately call themselves writers and  write and publish works without ever knowing how to write legibly on paper and this is a fundamental change in our understanding of language and script.

Adding to this, the widespread availability that any piece of writing can now achieve using the internet, you now have a disorganized press in the form of every person who wishes to write criticizing and publicizing actions of the powers that be. This decentralization of the powerful force of the press and ever increasing reach of computers makes me hopeful that there might come a time when oppression can longer find a hiding place amongst the far flung corners of the world.

The value of a script is now no longer constrained by how its written. Yes, there will be calligraphists for those rare and unique hand written copies or to create new fonts but the general use of a script and everyone learning its twists and turns is coming to a close with the use of legible, ready scripts in computers and that, is good riddance.

When Light and Sound Are Not Enough

What would be the most terrifying,exhilarating, adrenaline inducing moment for mankind?

As a species that has forever feared the unknown and invented innumerable ingenious ways for self protection (destruction), it could be the moment we launched a nuclear war and annihilated all life on the planet. It could also be the moment when we first come face to face with life from a different planet.

How would we react in such situations?



How would we attempt to talk?

Lost in a Technological No-Man’s Land

This semester has been particularly hard on my electronics sparing none of my various devices. The count thus far is a broken phone, slightly injured camera and a shorted laptop charger. The phone replacement that I use is a dumb phone which manages to service just the bare minimum calling duties. This leaves me in a very precarious position since a majority of the work done recently requires certain applications which are taken for granted as available on every phone.

On the first day of using the dumb phone in place of my smart phone, I suffered from a lot of distress which I can only classify as withdrawal symptoms and had a hard time adjusting to not having a regular feedback/ communication device and being unable to maintain contact with my peers on a regular basis, not to forget the lack of games and other applications.

A few days after I settled down into the new routine and found replacements for my most necessary smartphone applications on my desktop, I realized the amount of time freed up by not using a smartphone and the opportunities it opened up.  The lack of a consistent reminder of pending work in the form of reminders/messages/calls meant I was far more effective at what I was doing at the moment. The lack of games in my phone also meant I was less distracted.

While a smartphone might be helpful in organizing a hectic schedule into manageable chunks, it also is a constant reminder of the work remaining for the day and is a psychological load.

The biggest problem during these days when I was not using a smartphone was maintaining contact with someone who does. The users of smartphones tend to use applications like Whatsapp/Wechat to communicate with others more effectively but this tends to leave out users of dumbphones. With no way around, I ended up using an emulator on my desktop to keep in touch with smartphone users. The parallel worlds of communication need to coalesce into a single method of communication to avoid further widening of the trench between dumb and smartphones.

Technological Evolution has left the world trying to sort itself into the various categories of phone users. The dumbphone user who couldn’t care more about the progress of technology. The avid smartphone user who uses every popular application there is. The workhorse who uses the smartphone to manage their everyday life. The highend phone users who have phones with far too many features to handle and several other such. This has resulted in certain trenches being formed in communication where only devices above a certain barrier can use certain means of communication leaving the others stranded. While evolution is but a way of life, the evolution of technology should not be used as another means of erecting barriers between the Morlocks and the Eloi. 

Of Censorship and Hectic Schedules

3 months is a really a long time to keep away from writing. The reasons are many but the most distasteful of the lot is the fact that BlogSpot was blocked on my institute internet for a while. Censorship in India has been on the rise over the last few years with intolerance becoming more of a norm than an exception.

There are several arguments that the promoters of censorship use to justify their actions. Public safety and the influence of the pieces of art to incite communal tensions are prime arguments and often seem to make sense if the act of maintaining piece is considered to be a balancing act on a knife’s edge. Other arguments used point to the influence that books have on young and impressionable minds ‘whose mind should not be allowed to stray’, this being a quote from an acquaintance of mine. This same argument has been used to justify blocking content on the net by institutes and other authoritative bodies.

We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship.

E. M. Forster

The flaw in all these arguments lies in the fact that they assume that the individual has no sense of discretion and is swayed by everything they read which is hardly ever the case. The rationality of the individual is ignored while the decisions are made on what is to be blocked. This is something that is to be considered furthermore when it comes to blocking sites online since everything read on the internet is met with a good deal of skepticism and further reading is done before a conclusion is reached by the individual. Blocking a site irrespective of whether or not the content is accurate lends an air of credence to the facts contained within and is consequently counterproductive to the original aim of blocking the site. Furthermore, blocking a site only means the mass moves to a similar parallel site to voice their opinions and unless a ruthless 1984ish authoritarianism is applied, there is no end to this.

Misuse of the anonymity provided by the internet is a known fact and while countering it may not be easy, it is not reason enough to block websites. Banning fire because it burns is not the way to go. Enforcing control, establishing identity and teaching proper use of the internet is the need of the hour.

On another note, my daily schedule has exceeded all bounds leaving hardly any time for blogging, hence the lack of posts even after BlogSpot was unblocked but random short posts like these shall keep coming in every now and then.