पृथ्वी की गंध

 The superlative living master Amit Dutta at his most direct, and most accessible in the 2 minute 'The Scent of Earth' [मिट्टी इत्र]. 

Go forth and prosper, o successor of Mani Kaul! 

Wanted

From the film 'Nafrat ki Aandhi' (tr. 'Gale of Hatred). Composer Bappi Lahiri, lyrics: Indeevar and Anjaan.

...

ही मैन, ही मैन, आए ऐम ही मैन 

चाहिए... ही मैन ही मैन ही मैन 

 चाहिए... ही मैन ही मैन ही मैन 

मज़बूत बाहों वाला, 

प्यार करने वाला, 

मुझपे ही मरने वाला,

अरे प्यार करने वाला 

टुल्ल लुल्ल लू, टुल्ल लुल्ल लू, मामा चूमा वाला 

टुल्ल लुल्ल लू, टुल्ल लुल्ल लू, मामा चूमा वाला 

ही मैन, ही मैन, आए ऐम ही मैन 

इज़्ज़त पे मेरी बन आएगी 

जब छेड़ेगा रूप का चोर मुझे 

दुश्मन से कैसे बचाएगा 

उस वक़्त कोई कमज़ोर मुझे 

चाहिए... ही मैन ही मैन ही मैन 

 चाहिए... ही मैन ही मैन ही मैन 

...

He man, he man, I am he man

Needed... he man he man he man

Needed... he man he man he man

The one with strong arms

The one who loves

The one who'd die only for me

Oh the one who loves

Tull lull luu, tull lull luu, mama chuma wala

Tull lull luu, tull lull luu, mama chuma wala

He man, he man, I am he man

Imperilled will my honor be

When the thief of beauty accosts me

From my foe how will I be saved

That instant by some weak knee

Needed... he man he man he man

Needed... he man he man he man

...

करीब नहीं

Composer: Yo La Tengo, Album: Painful [1993]

Do you know how I feel

How I feel about you

Do you know this is real

How I feel around you

When I see you look at me

I'm not sure of anything

All I know is when you smile

I believe in everything

Do you know how I dream

How I dream about you

Do you know how I feel

Do you know...

Do you know how I feel

How I feel about you

Doesn't take much to tell

That I love, oh, I...

Everyone is here

But you're nowhere near

No you're nowhere near
No... nowhere near

...

तुम जानो ये कैसा लगे है

मुझे बारे में तुम्हारे

तुम जानो कि ये सच है

लगे कैसा मुझे इर्द गिर्द तुम्हारे 

मुझे ताकते तुम्हें देखूं जब

हो न निश्चय किसी का

मुस्कुराओ जब बस जानूं ये

यकीन हो चले सभी का 

तुम जानो कैसे देखूं सपने

सपने बारे में तुम्हारे

तुम जानो ये कैसा लगे है

तुम जानो ये...

तुम जानो ये कैसा लगे है

मुझे बारे में तुम्हारे

ज़ाहिर है सब कहना ये

कि मैं प्यार... ओह मैं 

हर कोई है यहीं 

 तुम बस करीब नहीं
हाँ तुम करीब नहीं

  हाँ... करीब नहीं 

...

Oldy be goldy

From 'Howrah Bridge' (1958), lyricist: Qamar Jalalabadi, composer: OP Nayyar

बाबू जी मैं चीन से आयी 

चीनी जैसा दिल लायी 

सिंगापुर का यौवन मेरा 

शंघाई की अंगड़ाई 

दिल पे रख ले हाथ ज़रा 

हो जाए ना पागल तू 

मेरा नाम चिन चिन चू 

चिन चिन चू बाबा चिन चिन चू 

रात चांदनी मैं और तू 

हेलो मिस्टर हाउ डू यू डू 

बा बा... बा बा...

Oh darling I came from China

My sweet heart jus' couldn't be finer

From Singapore does hail my youth

From Shanghai its yawn no minor

Keep 'em hands on to your heart

May you not go loony too

Name be mine Chin Chin Chu

Chin Chin Chu baba Chin Chin Chu

Night be moony me and you

Hello mister how do you do

Ba ba... ba ba...

...

More TASWOSAW Inversion

From 'Jaan Tere Naam' (1992), lyricist Sameer.

तेरे से मैरिज करने को मैं बम्बई से गोआ आया 

पर तेरे डैडी ने मुझको रेड सिग्नल दिखलाया 

डैडी से तेरे क्या लेना मुझे?

तू मुझको चाहे मैं चाहूँ तुझे 

ये अक्खा इंडिया जानता है हम तुम पे मरता है 

दिल क्या चीज़ है जानम अपनी जान तेरे नाम करता है 

...

To get wedded to you from Bombay to Goa I came

But your daddy he red signalled me all the same 

With your daddy what do I have to do?

You love me and I love you

The whole India knows it that I'd die for you

What trifle be a heart o dear I grant my soul to you 

Inverse TASWOSAW continued

From Tridev (1989), written by Anand Bakshi:

गली गली में फिरता है

तू क्यों बन के बंजारा?

आ मेरे दिल में बस जा

मेरे आशिक़ आवारा

तेरा प्यार है इक सोने का

पिंजड़ा ओ शहज़ादी

मुझको अपनी जान से प्यारी

है अपनी आज़ादी

You roam in streets and alleys

Having become a wanderer

Come live in my heart

My lover philanderer

Your love is but a golden

Confinement o princess

Lovelier than my life

Is my own egress

...

Goodbye Blue Sky

Sayonara Suzuki Sensei

Seijun Suzuki passed away recently on Feb 13, 2017 and was known for his zany yakuza films including his two most famous works — Branded to Kill (1967) and Tokyo Nagaremono (1966) (tr. Tokyo Drifter). NF has very pleasant memories of encountering Tokyo Nagaremono in the New York Film Festival a few years back where a retrospective of his films was being hosted. His idiosyncratic style and subversion of B films' genre expectations were certainly exceptional as was his unusual fanbase, comprising some seriously accomplished arthouse directors. 

Here is the eminently melodious, surprisingly catchy title song from the trailer of the very enjoyable Tokyo Drifter.

Sayonara!

The Meeruthiya Gangster

Hindi genre fiction loses a stalwart after the demise of Ved Prakash Sharma on Feb 17, 2017. He remained an extremely prolific genre writer, writing several books a year, for his entire career. Bus stands and railway stations were where you'd encounter his fare most. NF distinctly remembers his most famous book Vardi Wala Gunda (tr. Hoodlum in Uniform) populating wheeler stands all over Uttar Pradesh all through the '90s.

Manik Sharma writes a very well rounded, informative obituary in Firstpost where he remembers the impact of Ved Prakash Sharma in particular, and pulp fiction more generally during the '90s. Here's the excellent closing paragraph:

Sharma, in an interview before he passed away, said that he believed pulp fiction would come back in a big way through television and film. And it makes sense, because while the reader is upwardly mobile in his or her aesthetic pursuits, and the marketing model shows no signs of evolving, only the visual can embody the audacity of a pulp novel’s opening, like that of Sharma’s Vardi Wala Gunda: 

लाश ने आँखे खोल दी. ऐसा लगा जैसे लाल बल्ब जल उठे हैं. 

(tr. The corpse opened its eyes. It felt like red bulbs being switched on.)

An Arrow a Day...

Kenneth Arrow, the colossus who in NF's opinion was the greatest of all time (GOAT) economist passed away on Feb 21, 2017. There's hardly anything a nobody like NF has to add to the volumes of perceptive tributes about Arrow's work readily available elsewhere. On his very deep Impossibility Theorem, to his work with Debreu on general equilibrium, to the theorems on welfare economics, and many, many other immense contributions, NF highly recommends the ever-amazing blog A Fine Theorem, which is adumbrating Arrrow's impact in four posts suitable for (quasi-)laymen. (Part 1, Part 2.) For those more mathematically savvy, NF heartily recommends the five page paper by John Geanakoplos, offering three very simple, alternative proofs of Arrow's Impossibility Theorem (John Geanakoplos (2005), “Three Brief Proofs of Arrow's Impossibility Theorem,”. Economic Theory 26(1), 211-215).

Here is great obituary from Stanford News.

Keynes once said:

The master-economist must possess a rare combination of gifts .... He must be mathematician, historian, statesman, philosopher—in some degree. He must understand symbols and speak in words. He must contemplate the particular, in terms of the general, and touch abstract and concrete in the same flight of thought. He must study the present in the light of the past for the purposes of the future. No part of man's nature or his institutions must be entirely outside his regard. He must be purposeful and disinterested in a simultaneous mood, as aloof and incorruptible as an artist, yet sometimes as near to earth as a politician.

Arrow was all this and more. People have remarked on his inhuman level of depth as well as breadth of knowledge not just in economics but in mathematics, statistics, philosophy and several other disciplines. Here is a well-circulated story recounted by Eric Maskin and featured in Arrow's New York Times obituary where his colleagues once tried to artificially test him on breeding habits of grey whales, to their eventual woe of course. (His brother-in-law was the other GOAT contender: Paul Samuelson. He was also uncle to Lawrence Summers. He also appeared in an Errol Morris short film.)

In academia one encounters several freakishly intelligent people somewhat regularly. However, the ones who leave behind the greatest legacy are those whose students also manage to continue in their great tradition. And indeed, it is in this particular respect that Arrow leaves behind everyone in the dust, with five of his students going on to win Nobels of their own! (And that's not counting Amartya Sen.)

Alvin Roth described him as the Einstein of economics. NF couldn't agree more.

Sayonara.

So Meta, It Stasized

Attention Conservation Notice (h/t the great Cosma Shalizi): A (very, very) long, meandering, frequently digressive piece on, and an unapologetically hagiographic review-of-sorts of, Mani Kaul's Siddheshwari; featuring factionalism in Parallel Cinema, Shahrukh Khan and self indulgent navel gazing (not in the same order). To expect a cogent, critical, objective analysis from this piece would be tantamount to expecting a leg break from Anil Kumble; or anything but from Venkatesh Prasad. 

You have been warned.

(A part of NF still thinks ending the post here - right after detailed instructions on how to read it have been enshrined - would be cool (so second order meta!). Thankfully NF isn't a teenager anymore and has been declared free from cleveritis for some time now.)

...

Mita Vashisht as Siddheshwari

When someone asked him where they could find his films, he once said: “It’s good you haven’t seen them, but heard about them, you know; as time goes by the negatives of most of my films, which are in very bad shape, are getting worse, and there are very few prints anyway that are still alright…so, as I get more and more known, fewer people see my work. There will be a time when there won’t be any work left, and I will be gone, and people will be saying, ‘Mani Kaul, Mani Kaul, Mani Kaul’...” 

(Link: http://www.caravanmagazine.in/arts/requiem-vision)

NF has whined often about discovering his heroes only after they've been dead for a while - Nirmal Verma, Manohar Shyam Joshi, David Foster Wallace were all part of this list, which now has the dubious distinction of adding yet another newcomer: Mani Kaul (the only hero who has been spared this treatment has been William Gibson - forever long may he live). Truth be told, while NF got around to finally watching his first Mani Kaul film a few months ago, he had been meaning to do so for many years now - having bought a three-in-one DVD of his films (Uski Roti, Duvidha, Nazar) from NFDC a few years back. That DVD still lies atop his bookshelf - its dust-laden cover, having never been in danger of being opened. That his films are supposedly challenging and not for the fainthearted, filled the prospect of viewing them with dread and subliminal anxiety.

In an eerie twist however, when he did finally see Siddheshwari, his universe was so jolted, so awestruck he was that he felt paralyzed to get the word out, since a post about the film, with an even remotely similar scope felt intimidating beyond belief. And hence this post has been more than two months in the making - the fact that it's finally being put to paper isn't about slaying personal demons or climbing mount impossible; but is more of a mad rush for self preservation - the sooner NF gets it out of his head, the quicker the end of his obsession with the film. It probably also has to do something with a newfound ambition NF's been suffering from, which causes him to think he can do justice to the subjects he's going to write about, making said prospect of writing filled with the aforementioned dread and subliminal anxiety. (There are some other posts several months in the making too - the utterly, utterly delightful Frances Ha being another one of them, with NF given to swooning over the mere mention of Greta Gerwig - levels hithertofore reached only by the likes of Fatima Bhutto (O heart, do be still!).)

NF finally took the plunge after watching Bollywood celebrities pay their respects to the great master soon after his demise. Rajat Kapoor, Anurag Kashyap and Mita Vashisht, straddling arthouse and commercial cinema alike, were natural candidates; but it was Rakesh Omprakash Mehra's account of stumbling on to Siddheshwari at a local theater that gave NF courage. Unaware of Mani Kaul and being a fan of Siddheshwari Devi - the legendary thumri singer from Benaras - he went in hoping to see a documentary (which the film ostensibly is); and so transfixed he was by what he saw that he watched it again and again and again obsessively - about six times in over a month!

This was the final push NF needed.

Table of Contents:

Ostensibly, Siddheshwari is a 1990 National Film Award winning documentary about the life of Siddheshwari Devi - a famous classical singer from Benaras; but this sentence might just be the most misleading description of the film ever - as Rakesh Omprakash Mehra was to discover. Mani Kaul preemptively assuages the lay viewer who is soon going to be hit with a barrage of wantonly, obscenely beautiful imagery, the meaning of which will be forever, maddeningly out of her grasp, by including a very helpful 'Table of Contents'. Urvashi curses Arjun for scorning her and then relocates to earth as a Gandharva; Siddheshwari's childhood with her mausi (maternal aunt) who trains her daughter (though not Siddhi) in classical music which Siddhi osmotically absorbs, eventually astonishing the guru so much that he takes her under his wing after Siddhi is evicted by the aunt; her musical peregrinations (literal and metaphorical) over boat rides over Ganga due to the patronage of the local ruler; and eventual fame and acclaim.

This table of contents is absolutely key to understanding the film - so much so that its exclusion will result in complete and utter bafflement - and yet its importance is easy to miss on a first viewing, as NF was to discover. In fact, NF strongly suspects that this table of contents was the stand-in for a screenplay - Kaul's untethered, rich, insanely imaginative visuals seem impossible to be tied down systematically in a detailed script. If so, he wouldn't have been the first - Wong kar Wai - another example of an ultra-stylish director prioritizing lush visuals over plot, relies only minimally on detailed screenplays.

The film is a radical inversion of what a documentary supposedly is and arrogates to itself the right to reimagine the idea of being Siddheshwari. More a montage of exquisitely beautiful images in motion tied only loosely by chronology, mythology and musicology, it feels like a plotless, surreal dreamscape propelled only by the powerful voice of Siddheshwari Devi; and an impenetrable-at-first internal logic that begins to make more sense on repeated viewings. NF has no hesitation in acknowledging it as the most formally inventive, authentically avant garde Indian film he's ever seen, with its slow-swooping camerawork, cinematographical wizardry and all round technical excellence putting to shame even current films - commercial and arthouse.

Fact, fiction, myth, music, the impossibly narrow gorgeous alleys of Benaras, whispers, oblique dialogues - all meld together in a jumbled, impressionistic collage to induce a state of mind that affects you viscerally - on a level so low that conscious thoughts find the gates barred for entry. The camera lingers on its subjects' profiles, then languorously shifts its gaze to the ghats and steps of Benaras and the richly hued doors and windows it houses, acquiring sepia tones when transgressing reality; donning rich colours when merely accentuating it. Mita Vashisht is impossibly ravishing and looks every bit the Urvashi whose curse would turn Arjun into a eunuch. The style is dazzling; the effect, hypnotic.

The sheer density of visual poetry per frame in the film is unprecedented. It is gloriously, glacially, majestically, powerfully, stunningly beautiful. It looks the way Nirmal Verma reads. NF finds it useful to think of Siddheshwari as a ninety minute long thumri music video with visuals so lavish and style so breathtaking that it'll turn Tarsem Singh, Chris Cunningham and their ilk green with envy. 

And what an inconceivable, perfect, even subversive ending that inverts, yet again, the identities of subject and object. The only other equally satisfying, artistically impeccable ending that shook NF to the bone was Kieślowski's Three Colours: Red's. Indeed, in terms of technique, the only valid comparisons to be made are those with Tarkovsky and Bela Tarr; and heavily biased as NF is, he feels the former's Stalker and Kubrick's 2001... to be the only films that are as visually powerful and formally accomplished. The magnitude of the achievement is every bit as stratospheric as Ray's Apu Trilogy - among the greatest that Indian cinema, arthouse or otherwise, has ever produced (though on an artistic spectrum, the farthest possible from Ray's Indian neorealism - quite self-consciously as it turns out; for Ray was famously dismissive of Kaul's "anaemic" and "aesthete" brand of filmmaking).

(For those who would think that Indian parallel cinema was a monolithic movement against formulaic, popular cinematic traditions will be sorely disappointed. Not only were there several parallel movements, there wasn't much love lost between them, though it is said that there were two towering masters - Ray and Ghatak - who along with their numerous disciples (Kaul and Shahani were supposedly in the Ghatak zone) dug themselves in two camps: neorealism (Ray) and non-neorealism (!) (Ghatak). Shyam Benegal and Govind Nihalani despaired over Kaul and Shahani's branding as 'parallel' filmmakers, Kaul thanked Ghatak for curing him of the 'disease' of realism.)

Normals and Tangents

This brings NF to the curious case of Amit Dutta who's fast become the Ted Chiang of avant garde filmmaking - a bona fide freak as far as prizes per unit artwork is concerned. His short FTII thesis film Kramashah (tr. To be continued/In sequence) was introduced to NF by Somnath Pal - an old friend and budding filmmaker whose fan NF's been for years. By the end of the film, NF sat thoroughly destroyed and completely bewildered by its sheer brilliance, being totally unable to get a handle on what the fuck it is and how the fuck is that even possible. 

Not many can take out 90 minutes to watch the dazzling brilliance that Siddheshwari is. But to not take out 20 minutes to sample how truly path breaking Kramashah is, is simply inexcusable. Here is the full film, with subtitles:

Siddheshwari however, is the rosetta stone that helps unlock Kramashah. While substantially original, it bears Kaul's distinct cinematic stamp - gorgeous shot selection; exquisite camerawork; a preoccupation with Indian folk tales and myths; elliptical, oblique dialogues and slightly out-of-phase whispers with their curious mix of literary and folk Hindi; and an unabashedly (for lack of a better word) avant garde sensibility that remains obdurately, authentically Indian. Kramashah could not have been possible without Siddheshwari in the same way Smells Like Teen Spirit would've been impossible without Surfer Rosa. This is not to deny Amit Dutta his fiery originality but to underscore that flying off a rooftop to aim for the moon often ends with you legs up in the garbage dump, as Rajat Kapoor's short Tarana (Kaul's Dhrupad's bad copy - that it won the National Award is a scandal!) reminds us. It took Rajat Kapoor twenty more years to craft an homage that is true to the spirit of his mentor in Ankhon Dekhi. NF admires his tenacity and persistence since most ordinary mortals would've jumped off a cliff after the embarrassment that Tarana is.

Amit Dutta (in general) and Kramashah (in particular) are spiritual successors of the legacy of Mani Kaul (in general) and Siddheshwari (in particular).

On a somewhat tangential note, Shahrukh Khan produced and Amol Palekar directed the remake of Mani Kaul's 1973 Duvidha, in turn adapted from the cult Rajasthani writer Vijaydan Detha's short story. The same SRK was no stranger to Kaul's art by the way. Back when he was a mere mortal, his repertoire of films comprised an incredibly artsy portfolio - ranging from Pradip Krishen's oddly titled (and somewhat pretentious, though don't just take NF's word for it) In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones (starring Arundhati Roy as the protagonist Annie), Ketan Mehta's Maya Memsaab and Mani-fucking-Kaul's Ahmak - an adaptation of Dostoyevsky's Idiot (no NF hasn't seen this yet). Here is a completely unbelievable news item from 1992 (archived from 2012) on Shahrukh Khan's then incipient rise and features this golden gem from SRK: 

"Yaar," he says, laying bare his carefree air, "shooting for Mani was something else. I didn't understand the movie but I loved the art film environment..."

Silencio

Watch Kramashah, it's only 20 minutes long and is gloriously, unforgivably gorgeous. If it's up your alley, be fearless and take the plunge, for Siddheshwari is a high risk high return proposition - if it's a miss, you'll know it after having watched Kramashah, if it's not, it'll be a film you will never forget for it will paralyze you with its beauty. It will make a fan out of you of Mani Kaul, of his vision of avant garde cinema; and not least - of Siddheshwari Devi's mesmerizing art which you, like NF will begin listening to on a loop. Of so much ink that NF wasted in this post, not one sentence was about how Kaul uses Siddheshwari Devi's divine thumri to devastatingly good use. NF just hasn't developed the vocabulary for that. If you don't think you can watch Siddheshwari, just to sample what you've missed, watch this stellar, stellar scene where the guruji lays supine on this bed and plays the sarangi; and just observe how slowly, lovingly the camera moves around the room, as if sculpting in time.

http://youtu.be/dBfY-vHSjlw?t=1h5m58s

For the brave and fearless, here is the full film (no subtitles though). Viva friggin' la!

कुर्सियां!

NF has just gotten off binge watching four season 1 episodes of the web original, overnight IMDB phenom, mini series: TVF Pitchers, and boy, is it stunning! 

The show is about the much vaunted startup scene in India, in particular around Powai, Mumbai (wouldn't Bangalore have been a better choice? Oh well...) and not only does it look real and is very funny (the first episode: Tu Beer Hai (tr. You Are Beer) being a great example); it can also flaunt dramatic complexity and nuance when it wants to. Here's a longer, more in-depth review at Huff Po India: The Viral Fever's New Web Series Is About India's Frenzied Start-Up Scene.

It's also stylish, slick, and looks really fuckin' cool. 

The main actor is that same writer boy from Sulemani Keeda, which, come to think of it, occupies a very similar space in recent Hindie ventures. Its casting (including a very edgy, intense cameo by the ever awesome Rajesh Sharma), acting, writing, production values etc. are far beyond what you'd expect from a web original - in fact, it looks and feels better than anything on Indian TV. 

And of course, any self respecting series about engineering graduates must have a Sourav Mondal character  - and what a great campy, fun Saurabh Mandal (from IIM Indore lest you forget) we get to see! 

@ Ra and SatyaVrat: You guys've got to comment on what's your take on this!

It starts here on Youtube. Do, do watch!

Very Good Sentences à la Tyler Cowen

From Wikipedia: (see link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jigglypuff)

"Known as the Balloon Pokémon, Jigglypuff evolves from Igglybuff when it reaches a certain point of happiness, and evolves into Wigglytuff when exposed to a Moon Stone."

...

Since we're on this topic, here's another two-minute gem (courtesy: Bejin Hakumei)

Quiet Flows the Don

Libra is quintessential DeLillo - terse-without-being-minimalist, exquisitely paced, wonderfully evocative without being overly descriptive; and very powerfully unsettling, although NF believes he has not quite understood the book on a satisfactory level yet, that more readings perhaps are required to understand why the book moves him the way it does.

Having become somewhat familiar with DeLillo's oeuvre now (White Noise, Underworld, Point Omega and now, Libra) NF has begun to appreciate the infrastructure of his worldview - that of technology, mass media and political violence arrogating to themselves, the role of mediating our narrative; our collective, worldwide conversation - a role played in the past by writers and intellectuals like Dickens or Tolstoy. NF has come to feel that it is DeLillo's powerful influence, much more than that of the wordy and maximalist Pynchon's, that pervades the pages of William Gibson, sharing as they both do, their desire to channel the emergent effect of technology's impact on human societies. (Gibson's insistence however, is more cosmopolitan and hard-tech obsessed, while DeLillo's theater is more literary, soft-tech Americana.)

NF also had a chance to read his autobiography, albeit a mere seven word one, courtesy the wonderful Brain Pickings of Maria Popova. (For other seven word autobiographies including those by William Gibson and Daniel Kahneman, visit here.) Here it is, typifying the simplicity and depth of his expression:

      Bronx boy

wondering

             why he is here.

DeLillo also participated in a BBC documentary about his work (though it seems surprising that someone who's so averse to publicity will have starred in it so prominently). In it, the writer comments about the themes that attract him, the strange coincidence that links him to Lee Harvey Oswald (spoiler: The Bronx) among other musings and reenactment of scenes from his fiction. Watch it here:

NF's playlist now features Ratner's Star, Mao II and Cosmopolis next and enjoins those with an excess of time, to give DeLillo a try!

Miniscule Musings

1. NF has gushed about the awesome writing of Vikram Chandra before, especially his sprawling, beautiful ode to the Bombay criminal underworld: Sacred Games. Hence it's even more gratifying to know that greats such as James Gleick have joined the fan club! Here's Gleick's review of Chandra's "Geek Sublime" - a book about Chandra's ruminations about literature and...programming! Turns out that not only is Chandra an excellent writer but also a serious programmer (a few others with such a unique skill set include Charles-fuckin'-Stross and Neal-friggin'-Stephenson). Gleick's review is excellent and will make you want to read the latest from Vikram Chandra, in which he muses on Chomskyan generative grammar; Panini's anticipation of the same some 2500 years ago; the roots of programming languages; beauty in poetry as understood by ancient Sanskrit texts; the cosmology of Abhinavgupta and so on.
   
   And here's Vikram Chandra on Wired today: What India Can Teach Silicon Valley About Its Gender Problem.
   
   
2. This is how William Gibson coined the term "cyberspace" - first in his paradigm shifting short story collection Burning Chrome - and then in his truly revolutionary and powerfully disruptive work Neuromancer. This three minute video features Gibson at his witty best - self deprecatory, wry and really funny! 
   
   
   
   
   
3. And here is a collection of eleven funniest papers written in professional economics journals as compiled by Yoram Bauman - the first standup economist comedian. Though personally, NF knows that economic theorists are a funny lot (in particular game theorists are among the funniest professional groups that NF's come across - much more so than say applied mathematicians (but don't just take NF's word for it - he might be biased)) the list of works - some of them famous enough (examples being Krugman's paper on interstellar trade; and Avinash Dixit's on Seinfeld) but others, a complete revelation - examples being "Macroeconomic Policy and the Optimal Destruction of Vampires (Snower 1982)" and "On the Efficiency of AC/DC: Bon Scott Versus Brian Johnson (Oxoby 2009)". NF can't resist quoting a couple of lines from some of these papers. So here's Krugman:

   This article extends interplanetary trade theory to an interstellar setting. It is chiefly concerned with the following question: how should interest charges on goods in transit be computed when the goods travel at close to the speed of light? This is a problem because the time taken in transit will appear less to an observer traveling with the goods than to a stationary observer. A solution is derived from economic theory, and two useless but true theorems are proved. 

   Many critics of conventional economics have argued, with considerable justification, that the assumptions underlying neoclassical theory bear little resemblance to the world we know. These critics have, however, been too quick to assert that this shows that mainstream economics can never be of any use. Recent progress in the technology of space travel… make this assertion doubtful; for they raise the distinct possibility that we may eventually discover or construct a world to which orthodox economic theory applies.

   
   
   And here's Avinash Dixit - who's among the most naturally witty people NF's personally come across. A few years back, the econ blogosphere was set ablaze by his paper "An Option Value Problem from Seinfeld" with what is most definitely the greatest abstract ever: "This is a paper about nothing". 
   
   
   Here's a little more:
   
   

   In an episode of the sitcom Seinfeld (Season 7, Episode 9, original air date December 7, 1995), Elaine Benes uses a contraceptive sponge that gets taken off the market. She scours pharmacies in the neighborhood to stock a large supply, but it is finite. So she must “re-evaluate her whole screening process.” Every time she dates a new man, which happens very frequently, she has to consider a new issue: Is he spongeworthy”? The purpose of this article is to quantify this concept of spongeworthiness. 

   When Elaine uses up a sponge, she is giving up the option to have it available when an even better man comes along. Therefore using the sponge amounts to exercising a real option to wait and spongeworthiness is an option value. It can be calculated using standard option-pricing techniques. However, unlike the standard theory of financial or many real options, there are no complete markets and no replicating portfolios. Stochastic dynamic programming methods must be used.

   Do read the entire thing here: Top 11 funniest papers in the history of economics.

When an Unstoppable Force Meets an Immovable Object

The funniest 4 minutes you will experience in this life: an absolute must-see for fellow Gunda fans - I give you... the Gunda Hobbit. I laughed so hard that tears gushed forth from my eyes, ears, nose and miscellaneous other orifices.

Like Fish in a Bowl: On Žižekian Ideology

You may agree, disagree or more often than not, just plain not understand Žižek and his extensive, frequently digressive commentary on the omnipresent, lurking-on-the-sidelines-but-not-quite-visible-yet-silenty-influencing/manipulating-everything-all-around nature of "ideology"; but it's hard to not find him immensely entertaining. His hyperactivish, super-heavy-East-European-accent-laden, verbally incontinent commentary makes for mostly incomprehensible but supremely engaging listening. Add to that his frequent examples/instantiations, drawn in a large part from popular and arthouse films, from Hitchcock and Wachowski Brothers' to Tarkovsky and Frankenheimer's; and the spell is complete - his filmic, discursive and immensely entertaining faux-documentaries The Pervert's Guide to Cinema and The Pervert's Guide to Ideology being wonderful examples.

However, if one tries to really understand what he's trying to get at, by means of an all pervading "ideology" as the medium in which everything happens (and we're pretty much like the fish for whom "What is water?" is a meaningless question) by means of some of the examples that do hit home, one is struck by their obviousness. (This is a common criticism of Continental philosphers - they're almost always incomprehensible but on the rare occasion when they're not, they say obvious and trivial things: see this critique in a Noam Chomsky interview for example.)

For example as far as I can guess, Žižek's concept of ideology and its supreme reign in human society is indistinguishable from that of the importance of plausible deniability, maintenance of public appearances, noble lies and in general, of the rather basic fact that common knowledge can radically disrupt the routine behavior of a group of people. Not only are these old ideas (Aumann's seminal paper "Agreeing to Disagree" on Common Knowledge and its implications for Game Theory in particular, was written in '76 and was a complete set-theoretic formulation/mathematicization of this problem) but on their ontological and epistemological characterization and by extension, their application to understanding behavioral aspects of human societies; more has been said, and much more elegantly; by greater minds (in my opinion) than Žižek's.

However, one thing that you can't deny Žižek is how he's taken his brand of obscure (and sometimes obscurantist (!) (though it must be said, he can be very clear, cogent and reasonable, as can be seen here with Charlie Rose: Most Dangerous Philosopher)) philosophy to the level of sublime (no pun intended) entertainment; and for this, he deserves our plaudits.

सुपरमैन...मालेगाँव का मैं सुपरमैन

Finally watched Supermen of Malegaon - a beautiful, brave, heartwarming documentary. Cannot recommend it enough.

Here's the link to the documentary on Youtube:

Bravo!

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Here's an eight minute highlight of the original film, Superman of Malegaon:

From the Malegaon production house, here are the trailers of Koi Mil Gaya Malegaon,  Malegaon ka Ghajini and Dhoom Malegaon - those with fond remembrances of Ramgadh Ke Sholay will cheer at the low-budget-yet-big-hearted spoof production that folks from Malegaon are undertaking. 

The Impressionist

I have been re-reading Ve Din (tr. Those Days, English translation of novel: Days of Longing) and marveling at how timeless and precious Nirmal Verma's prose seems to be, with its haunting lyricism; atmospheric, ambient, low level fragrance of loneliness that permeates each page; and its lack of a conventional plot structure that augments the novel's fragmented narrative scope.

And so when I stumbled upon this gem of an interview by Karan Thapar, I couldn't but share. In it, the 'poet of loneliness' as Karan Thapar describes him, talks about the meaning of writing, the vacuous traps of happiness, the impossibility of true communication with fellow humans, the macabre inception of his writing career marked by his friend's death; and scenes from his childhood in colonial Shimla where he marveled at the beauty of the white legged British mems and the memory's bizarreness when juxtaposed with the destitution of the rickshaw-wallahs whose job was to transport those fragile beauties.

A great man, a deep thinker and in my opinion, the most beautiful writer I have ever read.

बेजिन हाकुमेई के सौजन्य से: कटियाबाज़

 

 

बहुतै भयंकर कनपुरिया कटियाबाज़!

(संगीत: इंडियन ओशन)

...the Words of the Prophet Are Written on the Subway Walls

Two very comprehensive interviews with William Gibson - the prophet on whose every word NF hangs.

The Paris Review's and io9's.

Here's the youtube video for the io9 interview:

His latest novel, The Peripheral (eleventh to be exact - three trilogies - The Sprawl, The Bridge and The Blue Ant - and The Difference Engine with Bruce Sterling being his ten till now) is rumored to be set in the far future - much unlike the trend we've seen with his first ten - with their timelines converging slowly to the present - makes NF drool in anticipation.

@Somnath: Yes, We Were There!

Although banal reasons like the absolute impossibility of easy access to the venue and scarcity of frequent train lines between the village and home cut short our little trip to the film festival and we ended up watching only the first half, NF can confidently assert that Somnath's fabulous animated short "The Candy Tree" was probably the best little gem out there! 

Somnath's film was the third from the beginning and although the audience was comprised mostly of old geezers with only a sprinkling of young blood, 'The Candy Tree' drew approving laughs at the right places and a thunderous applause at its end!

Another brilliant film to be showcased was Jonathan Ng's "Requiem for a Romance" - a fabulous tale of a breakup superimposed on a kung fu fight sequence. Yoko Ono (yes the Beatles' destroyer) also had a film on the show called "My Hometown" and it was the most retarded and third rate film of the festival. One imagines that her work was shown only because the fledgling festival needed big names to prop itself up!

And of course, given NF's fabulous impersonation skills, a local newspaper reporting on the film festival mistook him for the Director-in-Chief Somnath! Here's the link to the item: http://www.thedailymail.net/articles/2012/09/16/news/doc50553490c663c093171125.txt

For those interested in viewing 'The Candy Tree', here's the film on Youtube:

Somnath, take a bow already!

Funny as hell

Here's an iPhone charger...for David Cronenberg.



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Courtesy Boing Boing.