27 September 2006

Syriana: The movie

Another Disturbing Affair

A dear friend of mine posted in the link above about the movie Syriana (The IMDB link is here). As he writes in his blog, it had a disturbing effect on him, which I too shared, and so I started to rewind the movie in my mind. The long time gap (a few months) smothered, perhaps, many small details but the overall impact of the movie has matured inside me, signs of a truly brilliant creation.

The brilliance of the movie lies in the story telling aspect, of which I believe the author, Robert Baer, of the original memoir-novel, See no Evil, should share the credit with writer-director Stephen Gaghan. Much has been reviewed, debated and said about the movie, but I would like to mention why I found the movie so enlightening and disturbing.

The movie has a multiple storyline narrative that lays bare the workings of the biggest of the mega corporates, i.e. the oil industry, and the other mega industry that affect the lives of this earth as profoundly as any other, the organization of the religious fundamentalist terrorists. The movie succeeds in depicting the carnivorous, rather cannibalistic, attitude of these two mega corps.

The global oil industry is supposed to be the epitome of the free market economy which is built on the premise of freedom and opportunity for all, and the religious fundamentalist regime of the middle-east is supposed to ensure a social structure that provides security and a universal umbrella to promote the goodwill of all with a more socialist set up. And what happens in reality is that they both feed on each other and lead the rest of the hapless inhabitants of the earth to destruction by ensuring a feudal set up which effectively ensures the confinement of power within the hands of a small minority. This minority doesn't compromise in spewing any venom on the society for their narrow minded individual profit and control of power. The oil industry and the 'powermongers' of the west remove the progressive movement in the middle east, in fear that there monopoly will be undermined, and the religious bigots develop the factory of jihadis to ensure their stronghold on the society by denying them any freedom of thought and philosophy.

Brilliantly told story which is enormously complex in its manifestation, this movie is disturbing for the sole reason that the end shows that the good is struggling hard and losing ground in this battle against evil, and there are enough compelling reasons that show that the current movement is perhaps irreversible. The eternal truth that we have been led to believe in our childhoods, the ultimate safe haven of our imagination, that good in the end triumphs over evil, will need much more complex battles to win to ensure that the struggle doesn't remain hopelessly lopsided........... and we have to really look hard into what minute roles we can fit, in this battle. An inconspicuous individual has no effect in these turns of events at this mega global scale, and this is what I find so disturbing, this inability to turn the tide.

22 September 2006

Battle of the sexes

Men love battles and competition, and this basic trait of their innards had relegated the supposedly more feminine approach of empathy to a less regaled status, until the feminists woke up to take up the cudgel, trumpet the battlecry and shove all empathy down the drain (well, nearly!). Thereafter the phrase 'battle of the sexes' became so popular.

Now the battle has taken up a new phase; it is fashionable to be 'metrosexuall', which is supposed to imply that men from metros have suddenly woken up to their softer side and are not ashamed to display it. I am not sure if men from the smaller towns are not supposed to possess these attributes, and in case they do should they be forced to relocate to the cosmopolitan environment so that they find peace and togetherness in the fraternity that exists there.

And of course the never ending debate of the inherent equality of the intellectual and other capabilities of the sexes keeps on getting new fodder for the media to feed on: some academician makes some comments regarding the relative lack of participation of women in scientific research (especially maths and physics) and the media goes agog reacting to some phrases in the speech and taking matters out of context, or some columnist decides to generate some controversy (to improve his readership rating, obviously) by stating that career women make inferior wives and the piece has the desired effect, or some biologists claims some difference in the structure in the brain the male and the female samples of homo sapiens (to ensure proper media coverage to further the research grant, I suppose), or....etc. etc....

This topic used to be extremely interesting point of debate during the teenage years when raising such an issue in a public place (like the canteen) was a sure shot mode of getting attention from the fairer sex (yep, I liked that term in those days only to realize later that it was a misnomer, girls ain't fairer, it took a few years to learn the truth!). But it seems the media has taken cue of the advertising world and targets the younger population to sell their stuff, or may be they don't want people to grow beyond the teenage, because selling stupid stuff to a matured mind is far more difficult requiring matured strategy and approach. So in the guise of intellectual journalism it just feeds on juvenile stuff, leaving serious discussion to blokes like me whose blogs no one reads!!

So let me get a little serious and finish today's piece by an observation. Our neighbour's daughter (we stay in an apartment), about a couple of years older than my 2 year old son, one day met my son (they were both accompanied by their mothers) downstairs at the vegetable sellers shop. My son, like the usual male, was busy playing around, while the girl was trying her level best to introduce him to her mom. My son's expression was like 'why involve parents in the fun we are having?' and the girl was emphatic about her mom's approval of her friends. The next day we spotted that the girl was cajoling our male offspring to guide him to her home and he was very reluctant about it preferring to play outside, although he relented in the end, but didn't stay indoors for long. Now this behavioural attitude may be typecast as typical inherent characteristics of male and female, but my hunch is that even at this stage, it is the difference in the treatment meted out to the girl and the boy that has a more pronounced effect on their behaviour. We don't put much restriction on the movement of our boy, while the mother of the girl tries her best to keep her daughter indoors and encourages her to bring her friends home (a typical scenario in the Indian household), and although they are only 2 & 4 years old, their psychological set up is getting shaped irreversibly and is reflected in their behaviours. Now, the debating point is whether the difference in the mothers' attitudes towards their male and female offsprings is due to any inherent difference of the genetic/physiological difference or simply due to cultural conditioning. The question is somewhat like the chicken and egg problem, cultural conditioning supports a certain type of genetic manifestation or the inherent genetic difference causes the cultural evolution? I am still searching for an answer!

21 September 2006

The feudal system of humankind

The feudal system is the most stable set up of the human society. Despite centuries of efforts to upstage this system, including all the possible experiments with democracy as well as communism, the human system has
failed to see beyond the feudal lord.

Democracy is supposed to be a system 'of the people, for the people and by the people', while effectively its just that in this statement the 'people' consist of one small, rather minute, class that rules over the other, and the other class lets itself be ruled only because of the dream that each individual entity of the ruled class has, that of making the transition to the other ruling class. It is this aspiration that preserves the feudal system.

The biggest responsibility that a man can ever undertake is that of the consequences of his own actions, on the contrary it is much of an easier job to criticize someone who is running your life. Although more often than not the individual doesn't have any option but to run to the diktats of the master, be it in the form of the proprietor, boss, or the administrator, in the sense of acceptance of fate there lies, perhaps subconsciously, the lack of will to take charge of matters into one's own hand, because that will ultimtely imply being responsible for your own actions, and you wouldn't have any imposter to blame for your state of affairs.

There is always a minority who do not follow the trends of the general mass, the ruled class, and they fall in two categories: the major chunk who plan willfully to make the transition into the upper echelon, and the minority who decide to take on the system, often by force, to change it for the better. More often than not, all the major steps forward in the evolution of the civilization has happened due to this small minority. But, the human system stabilizes back to the old feudal system, with some incorporation of the newer innovative ideas of the few who had tried to change the system. After all, it is much more fun to decide the fate of multitudinous many rather than your own, and so the transition to the ruling class is much more attractive and profitable rather than taking on the system.

Ultimately, both the ruling class and ruled class are living in their own illusions, the ruled class believes that they are guided by outside forces who cause all the miseries of their lives and they have no responsibility in the state of their own affairs as they are not really guiding their lives. While the ruling class believes that they are deciding the fates of multitudinous many. The truth is that we are all guiding our own fate, and only our own, by our affirmative actions or passive acceptance by inaction.

It can be argued, correctly, that most of the time the ruled class doesn't have any option, but the counter argument is that one should at least keep looking for options, instead of tacit acceptance of the situation, and not give up. The small minority that manage this are the ones who have brought out the changes in the human civilization, perhaps most of them get unnoticed as history eulogises the ruling class. There are a few who make the successful transition to the ruling class without losing the appetite to take on the system headlong, and they form excellent examples of the history of human spirit. These people never really adopt completely in the ruling class despite having the influence over one and all, but the tragedy is that more often than not their followers very effectively imbibe the philosophy of the ruling class and stabilize the system back to the nearly original state. Then comes the group who make their mark invisibly, only the marks are seen and not the markers. The ripples are seen but not the stone that set it in motion, and if the situation is favourable these ripples leave indelible marks and the society is gradually changed irreversibly. The purpose of democracy is to give more authority to these ripples, and not let the system get into the completely stable state of dead action, which the ruling class always professes to preserve their rule.

One has to realise that there is never a completely stable system, i.e. a static system. Had it been so, this universe (or multiverse?) wouldn't have existed. Life wouldn't have moved forward had it been static. One has to look for dynamic stability. The closest analogue is that of a moving vehicle, say a car, which is most stable when it is not moving, but to move ahead it has to compromise and optimize between stability and forward motion. This falsehood of equating static with stability is the trump card of all dictators, who play on the basic insecurity of the people, and the few who see through it are seduced by the lure of power into making the transition to the ruling class. Democracy is the mechanism to create a multi-layered complex hierarchy in the system to distribute the feudal authority to enable logic and free flow of knowledge to take precedence over personal short sighted ambitions.

19 September 2006

View from the top: cricketing perspective

I think I will start from where I ended the last time, but discontinue the didactic preaching attitude. Not that I have anything against the 'didactic preaching' stuff, in fact it has very good market nowadays, but more on that later. And it does feel good to write some of those hushy-mushy inspiring things now and then, it camouflages the lack of content with an impression of classy intellectuality.

Cricket, the sport, is as much a metaphor for life as any sport can be. More so it has different versions, and any preference of the individual pertaining to the particular version reflects the basic personality of the person concerned. One can write long essays on this metaphor, and as a sport this is the game that produces the maximum amount of written material than any other sport, in the form of books, essays, anecdotes or the most obvious forms, reports. And I guess in future this blog will see many reference to this wonderful game which is changing its shape as our culture evolves.

Today, let me talk a bit on the view from the top in cricket, i.e. the captain's perspective. And when one talks about India's captains, the inevitable name that comes foremost in the mouth of everyone is Sourav Ganguly (whether one utters the name or not is different question, for many complex equations come into play in a typical Indian's mind when it comes to the uttering one's thoughts!) as a contrast to Rahul Dravid, and the resultant pity is due to Indian cricket. When Ganguly was the captain, he made Dravid the wicket-keeper defying all opposition, including that of Syed Kirmani,one of the best glovesman India has ever produced, who always criticized the idea of Dravid behind the stumps but had to relent when he became the chief selector! Ganguly wanted to include Dravid at all cost, and since in the 1999-2000 period Dravid was going through a bad phase and was ousted from the one-day team and was going through a lean patch, worst being the Aussi tour under Tendulkar, Ganguly had a doubleprone strategy,that of including Dravid permanently in the team, and getting a balance in the team, which brought the best victories not only in the last one and a half decade, but in the complete history of Indian cricket. But under Ganguly, Dravid didn't relent at one place, he refused to open the innings in any form of the game, long and short. In the limited overs edition it was never needed with Ganguly, Tendullar and Sehwag ruling over the world, but in the tests Ganguly had asked Dravid to do the needful for the better balance of the team, knowing fully well that he had the technical acumen for the job. The media and the pundits all supported Dravid saying that he was too valuable to be risked at the top, as if the person to open the batting is a lamb to the slaughter. Then came the infamous episode of Ganguly being ousted, and the first thing that Dravid does is open the innings, inspite of the lack of enthusiasm from the team coach Greg Chappel, and Ganguly himself, and nearly broke the world record of opening parntnership.Then he continued the trend in the one-dayers, even when Tendulkar and Sehwag were both in the team, and is continuing to do so. The media has suddenly realized that the opening spot is not meant for the lambs to slaughter, but instead it is a viable option! The view from the top indeed changes the complete outlook and attitude of the man, and the sycophants that constitutes the followers (which is what the media is mostly made of) follow suit. The question to be asked is, the change in the outlook can stem from two reasons, first is that he gets aware of the broader picture and the individual aspirations and insecurities fade from the consciousness as one gets more concerned about the team balance and approach, while the second reason can be a burning desire to outdo the predecessor in all his acts. A person is usually a composition of all the possible facets, and it is likely that subconsciously both these facets are driving our current captain in his pursuit for the peak that he is trying to climb. We have to wait and see where Indian cricket lands up under his endeavours, before passing any judgment. But the journey so far has been far from impressive.

View from the top: change of perspective

Trekking the hills can be perhaps more educating than a mere adventure of quellnig nature's multitudinous challenges. As one starts the climb from the bottom, the initial inquisitive trepiditions give way to more measured steps in the middle stages where one starts reaching for the reserve stamina until one starts living off one's tenacity in the last quarter till the peak is conquered. The exhiliration at the top rejuvinates the the mind and body to keep it going in the long trudge downhill.

Nature provides metaphor for life in all forms of its physical manifestation. Climbing a hill is a very direct of such manifestations, which teaches one the evolution of the path in the journey of life. As the climb gets higher, the trajectory gets steeper (although there are exceptions to this, as there are exceptions to every rule of nature), the path narrower, and the view more majestic. The inter-relationships of objects in the vast scheme of things get clearer with every step up. The climber discovers one's own inner self in the journey, that is a reason perhaps why people who discover the innate joys of mountaineering get addicted to it. But, as in life, different people react differently to the same situation encountered in the path. It is while climbing a difficult stretch one realises how intricately difficult it might be when it comes to a single step, for there can be occasions that the single step decides your fate, and hence one needs to employ all the planning and execution skills that experience might've taught you, but more often than not one has to improvise and gather new experience in the process, and this contunues on and on for the whole journey, more so while climbing down! Also, it teaches the person to go beyond one's perceived limit to realise that humans' capabilities are indeed limitless, yet extremely limited. It is this dichotomy that every climber learns to appreciate, especially one who has ever led an expedition. A trekking expedition forces the individual to realise the truth of what Plato said; "Man is a social animal", at the same time one learns how to lead oneself through the dire stress that may disillusion the mind into believing that one can't go on, but if you are among good friends you will be able to push yourself through, no matter how difficult the situation may appear to be.

The peak gives the best possible picture, the nearly complete perspective, depending on how many other peaks are there nearby! Stand at the top, look around, get your fill of wonder and awe and accomplishment of reaching there, learn of the local geography around, gather the experience in the bag of wisdom you are carrying, and then chart your path of the future ventures. The journey never comes to an end. First you have to find the best way to go downhill. What determines the best depends on the individual (or rather the particular group that is travelling). Keep an account of all the slips that you made in the journey so far and try not to repeat the mis-steps. Come down to the plane, look around at the features that you had failed to observe before but had discovered in the view from the top. And then make the journey to a newer peak.