ख़बरदार!

(Click to enlarge image)

On Reading Neuromancer Again

The world could have ended
Right before my birth
And nothing would be lost.

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.

Pretty Good Year: Reading List, Jan 2013 - Jan 2014

1. आषाढ़ का एक दिन (मोहन राकेश) (tr. A Day in the Month of Aashadh (Mohan Rakesh))
2. 1Q84 (Haruki Murakami)
3.  लहरों के राजहंस (मोहन राकेश) (tr. Waves' Royal Swans (Mohan Rakesh))
4.  On Beauty (Zadie Smith)
5. टाटा प्रोफेसर (मनोहर श्याम जोशी) (tr. Ta-ta Professor (Manohar  Shyam Joshi))
6. चीड़ों पर चांदनी (निर्मल वर्मा) (पुनः) (tr. Moonlight on Pines (Nirmal Verma) (reread))
7. Galactic North (Alastair Reynolds)
8. हरिया हरकुलिस की हैरानी (मनोहर श्याम जोशी) (tr. Hariya Hercules's Bewilderment (Manohar Shyam Joshi))
9. पैर तले की ज़मीन (मोहन राकेश) (tr. Ground Beneath the Feet (Mohan Rakesh))
10. बिस्रामपुर का संत (श्रीलाल शुक्ल) (tr. The Saint of Bisrampur (Shrilal Shukla))
11. प्रतिनिधि व्यंग्य (हरिशंकर परसाई) (tr. Representative Satire (Harishankar Parsai))
12. हर बारिश में (निर्मल वर्मा) (पुनः) (tr. In Every Rainfall (Nirmal Verma) (reread)) 
13. Dongri to Dubai (S Hussain Zaidi)
14. The Master of Petersburg (J M Coetzee)
15. Tenth of December (George Saunders) 
16. Waiting for Godot (Samuel Beckett) 
17. Gravity's Rainbow (Thomas Pynchon) 
18. Gulag Archipelago Vol 1 (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn) 
19. प्रतिनिधि कवितायेँ (केदारनाथ सिंह) (tr. Representative Poems (Kedarnath Singh))
20. Gulag Archipelago Vol 2 (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)  
21. Pattern Recognition (William Gibson) 
22. Gulag Archipelago Vol 3 (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)  
23. रसीदी टिकट (अमृता प्रीतम) (tr. Return Ticket (Amrita Pritam)) 
24. इन दिनों (कुंवर नारायण) (tr. These Days (Kunwar Narayan)) 
25. Spook Country (William Gibson) 
26. Slow Learner (Thomas Pynchon) 
27. Red Plenty (Francis Spufford) 
28. नेताजी कहिन (मनोहर श्याम जोशी ) (tr. Netaji Sayeth (Manohar Shyam Joshi)) 
29. Consider Phlebas (Iain M Banks) 
30. मोहन दास (उदय प्रकाश) (tr. Mohan Das (Uday Prakash)) 
31. The Player of Games (Iain M Banks) 
32. त्रिवेणी (गुलज़ार) (tr. Triveni (Gulzar)) 
33. यार जुलाहे (गुलज़ार) (tr. Weaver Pal (Gulzar)) 
34. The Use of Weapons (Iain M Banks) 
35. Zero History (William Gibson) 
36. Excession (Iain M Banks) 
37. खामोश! अदालत जारी है (विजय तेंदुलकर) (tr. Silence! Court is in Session (Vijay Tendulkar)) 
38. The Golden Compass (Phillip Pullman) 
39. The Subtle Knife (Philip Pullman) 
40. The Amber Spyglass (Philip Pullman)
41. वे दिन (निर्मल वर्मा) (पुनः) (tr. Those Days (Nirmal Verma) (reread))  
42. घासीराम कोतवाल (विजय तेंदुलकर) (tr. Ghasiram Constable (Vijay Tendulkar)) 
43. India After Gandhi (Ramchandra Guha) 

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!

...

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.

(Another) Resolution With Capital R

Read more 

Read better

Write more 

Write better

Try more 

Try better

Fail more 

Fail better

आरम्भ है प्रचण्ड...

The fabulous Caravan magazine continues to impress. Here's Akshay Manwani's wonderful, in-depth portrait of Piyush Mishra, a staggering talent whose worth Hindi cinema has still not managed to appreciate. Read in full: An Artist's Demons.

Bits of Money

A somewhat long, detailed but ultimately very well written, non-technical, readable introduction to the question "What the hell is Bitcoin?". Highly recommended for those who care about such arcana. Read it here: "How the Bitcoin protocol actually works".

For Fellow Mathurbators

1. Courtesy Wired, exciting new developments on the Twin Prime Conjecture front. The classic tale of the loner mathematician, Yitang Zhang, who despite a long history of being ignored and savagely underemployed (he worked in a Subway sandwich shop for a while) makes astonishing advances by putting a finite bound on the separation of successive primes, thereby bringing down the gap between successive primes from infinity to 70 million! This puts the ball rolling and teams of number theorists worldwide (led by the obscenely brilliant Terence Tao) begin a race to bring the gap down. Within months the gap has been shortened significantly and mathematicians are rejoicing until another outsider, a non-participant of the group project (whose progress is being chronicled here in Terence Tao's blog's Polymath project) - a postdoc from U Montreal, James Maynard - brings the gap down to a stunning 600! This very exciting, fast-paced, wonderful math reporting reads like a thriller and offers plenty of commentary on the two schools of doing math - "the lone wolves" as exemplified by those like Yitang Zhang and James Maynard (and also by Grigori Perelman and Shinichi Mochizuki); contrasted with the "workman's way" exhibited by those like the more mainstream genius Terence Tao. Heady, fabulous stuff! Read the full story here: Sudden Progress on Prime Number Problem Has Mathematicians Buzzing.
2. From the Scientific American, dispute over two possible alternative extensions of axiomatic set theory (the ZFC: Zermelo Fraenkel Set Theory with the Axiom of Choice). Set theorists are fighting over which appendages are more appropriate - Forcing Axioms - that will disprove the Continuum Hypothesis (the hypothesis that there is no infinity "between" that of the natural numbers and that of the real numbers); and the Inner-Model Axiom - that will validate it. Critics of the Inner-Model axiom posit that it restricts the kind of multifarious infinities that may otherwise exist and that holding on to the Continuum Hypothesis may be too high a price to pay for future mathematical growth. Their opponents claim that Forcing Axioms are ugly, inelegant and workmanlike. Which one will survive? And what would it mean for tomorrow's Mathematics?  The future is pregnant with exciting possibilities! An excellent read: Dispute Over Infinity Divides Mathematicians.

The Indian Onion

Millions of Indian engineering students well up, shed quiet tears and switch their allegiance to Salman Khan after hearing his claim of being a fellow virgin. (Link.)

बटरफ्लाये इफ़ेक्ट

देखा कुछ
दिखा कुछ
सुना कुछ
सुन गया कुछ
पढ़ा कुछ
समझा कुछ
लिखा कुछ
लिख गया कुछ
भेजा कुछ
छपा कुछ

"अच्छा लिखा!" जब कहा आपने
सकपकाये हम, लगे बगलें झाँकने

बेजिन हाकुमेई के सौजन्य से: कटियाबाज़

 

 

बहुतै भयंकर कनपुरिया कटियाबाज़!

(संगीत: इंडियन ओशन)

एक अदद बेपढ़

(टाइटल सत्यव्रत की कविता "एक अदद कम्बस्टिबल" से चोरी किया हुआ)

...

वो किताबें नहीं पढ़ता था
न पढ़ पाता था लोगों को
कुछ लोग तो ये तक कहते हैं
कि पढ़ना उसे आया ही नहीं

फाड़े वो आंतें लोगों की
खून गटक पी जाता था
चूलें हिला दे ज़ेहन की
खौफ से दिल थर्राता था
औ फोड़ के सोये से कपाल
वो मगज़ गूंथता आटा सा

नाक नक्श बेढब बदरंग
हाल हुलिये से निपट फ़कीर
काम बिगाड़क, उग्र विचारक
हम सरल सपाट, वो टेढ़ी लकीर
प्रचंड अनपढ़ था वो निश्चित
इक अदद बेपढ़ - जैसे कबीर

औ सफ़ेद पन्नों की स्याह हर्फ़ हम
उसकी रंगबाज़ी से जलते थे

Hell Hath No Fury Like a Hipster Scorned

NF knows this is a quite tragic development (all deaths are!) but reading it, he just couldn't stop laughing.

Where else could this happen but Brooklyn?

मोनू के सौजन्य से

नॉएडा की फ़िल्म सिटी में नागराज का पदार्पण!

(विस्तृत फ़ोटो देखने के लिए इमेज पर क्लिक करें।)

NEETest Story Ever

There are many things that work out great for Eden of the East - a fabulous first episode (although NF has seen quite a few anime over the years, he hasn't quite seen one in which Washington DC was featured so heavily (the first episode in Eden of the East) and so wonderfully accurately! And while NF cannot (sadly) vouch for the accuracy of depictions of Shibuya, Shinjuku, Akihabara, Roppongi, Ikebukuro or the other Tokyo neighborhoods featured often in other animes, in this case at least, he could really appreciate the accuracy of the DC architecture that formed the background for the exploits of the protagonists in the first episode); a breezy, smooth flowing story arc; and wonderfully well etched characterizations.

But the thing that struck NF as the most impressive was the seamless transition of a series that looked like a simple, somewhat formulaic romcom (NF was a little apprehensive at first, given the theme, but the first episode convinced him to at least watch the complete eleven episodes of the series) into a bona fide science fictional escapade! In fact the SF themes are so subtle, unhighlighted and well stitched into the entire fabric of the series that you might be forgiven for missing out on them completely! The characters' interaction with technology is so realistic, effortless and casual that it makes you realize how even advanced technology slowly permeates our entire being with its users barely conscious of how their habits and routine have absorbed, adapted and subsumed and in turn have been subsumed by the said technology. (Another wonderful anime that manages to do this very beautifully is one of NF's all time favorites - Dennou Coil.) One wonders if it is unique to the Japanese culture to think so naturally about technology and portray its effect on society in such a restrained, understated way (the NEET phenomenon sure is very unique to the Japanese) or is it the hallmark of simply brilliant direction - after all the great Kenji Kamiyama - the director of Ghost in the Shell TV series, dons the mantle!

Great series - highly recommended!

(Omae Wa...) Honto ni Baka

It could be interpreted as an allegory for extreme competition for scarce educational opportunities (in India especially, but also in Japan and South Korea) but Nanga Fakir is sure that that was not what the creators of Baka and Test had in mind when directing the zanily, side splittingly funny anime. Its premise is that students, on the basis of their scores are split into six classes - A being the highest and F being the lowest. The allocation of study materials, educational infrastructure etc. are highly unequal and cater to the higher classes, with those at the bottom not having even tables or chairs in schools, forced instead, to make do with bad tatami mats and makeshift desks - a no-holds-barred free market fueled inequality if there ever was.

There is possibility of social mobility though. To ameliorate class tensions and offer "hope" to the downtrodden (the F class students in particular, whose tale the anime mostly is) classes can challenge each other to wars - with the victors entitled to the infrastructure of the vanquished - a great motivation for those having no resources, to pillage, confiscate and hopefully use the spoils to better their class's fate educationally by acing future tests. 

The sight of bleeding school children not being so salubrious, the school has allowed them to fight in virtual reality environments, with their avatars doing the fighting, killing and dying - the strength of each avatar  being proportional to the aggregate test scores of the students - a concept whose mix of zany and brilliant reminds NF of the great Ra, who sadly, blogs only once a year. It seems to have come from someone with an imagination as wonderful and as warped as his. NF has no hesitation in claiming that the two thirteen episode (each) seasons of Baka and Test: Summon the Beasts, were the funniest he's seen since the inimitable Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei series. 

Heartily recommended. 

The Near Future

He was a lesbian.

The Power of Moé

Ouran High School Host Club starts off as an uproariously funny anime series about a bunch of boys in a somewhat Japanese Harvard or Princeton type institute (with the distinction of the said institute being a school as opposed to a university) whose sole aim is to bring joy and happiness to the life of the girls attending the Ouran High School Academy. The jokes, however, become somewhat monotonous and repetitive by the middle (this effect is especially prominent if you watch twenty odd episodes on one day) and the ending is somewhat schmaltzy for NF's taste but overall, NF has to concede that its gags are very, very funny - often in an over-the-top, silly way that animes have become so good at delivering. NF also suspects that had he not been in a rush to finish the series off in such a short time, he wouldn't have kvetched about, in fact would have scarcely noticed the said monotony/repetitiveness. NF's quest for funny animes will now lead him to watch Hetalia: Axis Powers - another comedy epic he's heard very good things about. Wish him luck!