Wherein I whine. A lot.

On the EDX course Flight Vehicle Aerodynamics

2014-06-07T02:04:00.001-07:00

I was recently helping somebody with school physics. It was horrible. The way school teachers are destroying this beautiful subject, reducing it to a series of formulae is soul crushing.

Which brought me back to this course. I did various aerodynamics courses in college. And its a miracle that I kept my love of the subject through all those courses. They were again a bunch of formulae each more complicated than the previous culminating in quizzes, exams requiring memory and application of them. I guess working on practical problems during projects kept my sanity intact just as Feynman's lectures did it in school.

I joined this course thinking that its MIT. There must be something better. Please teach us a better version. And it has been a slog for two months with incessant questions requiring search skills for searching formula and their applications. I am yet to learn something that goes beyond new soul crushing formulae.

To me aerodynamics is a subject that explains the beauty of the physics of air. I realize that lift is produced because the local air has a circulation but this is broken at the trailing edge by viscosity, which is a wonderful intricacy. Then I look at various theories which reduce it to (rho*v*gamma) formula or some other such formula. I think that making a sharp leading edge will reduce drag, but then see that flow separates at moderate angle of attack because of near infinite acceleration at the leading edge precisely because it is sharp.

I slogged and slogged thinking of getting a certificate. I had to produce accuracy of three significant digits using equations that are themselves an approximation. I thought at some point of time there will be abstraction built in. Where we learn abstraction at a higher level and then come down to the equations and the approximations applicable.

And I became a drone. Like back in college. Going on a straight path with algorithmic efficiency. And now that I am helping teach someone physics I realize how similar this course is to the way school physics is being taught to so many children and I realize, unlike them, I have a choice. I go back to thinking about the wonderful intricacies and model them the best way I see fit.

This post is not supposed to some sort of insult to anyone here. The course in its own way is sincerely done and handled with lots of effort. But I guess that aerodynamics the world over has been reduced to a shell with no pulp. No fluid can go in or out.

Course url
https://www.edx.org/course/mitx/mitx-16-110x-flight-vehicle-aerodynamics-871

Where did you go?

2012-07-09T11:36:00.003-07:00

I am running on a road
In search of something
I see a distant light
A shining star, receding

I stop and take a breath
But the light goes on
I want to reach it
Before it moves on

I am scared now
And angry too
Why, why does it have to go?
Will it not take me too?

I look around
Emptiness everywhere
The light is gone
I still stare

The world does not care
But I am not weary
Because there is still something left
Its called memory

It doesn't add up to Zero

2012-04-22T01:37:00.001-07:00

I once had an irrational liking for google. Google was like Superman, fighting the good fight against all the evil corporations. They even had a tagline "Don't be evil". I don't like google so much anymore for a variety of reasons which essentially boils down to me finally realizing that they are a corporation themselves. From giving up the censorship fight to setting new privacy rules that brings them up to Facebook, it has become the beast that I did not want it to be. But corporations don't work on principles. They work for profit. Once upon a time I would have been rooting for google in Google vs Oracle in the battle for Android but today I don't care. They are just fighting for money, no matter how much Sergey Brin wants us to believe otherwise.

That was a kind of introduction to why I rooted for Google+ when it initially arrived. I was happy to join and think that finally I won't use Facebook anymore. But apart from all of Facebook's problems, a large reason why I actually use Facebook on the occasions I do is that everybody else is on Facebook. And all the others did not come over. So today, as I was wondering what to do, I thought about Facebook. And I browsed through the occasional "Motivational Photos" or the "Joke Photos" or the "Boys vs Girls Photos" and the ridiculous amount of memes. And there's just nothing worthwhile. I mean that is what it is supposed to be but I still can't believe that so many people want to be on Facebook just for those reasons. And so I briefly went to Google+ and its like a link reservoir because of the Science circle I had added. The simple concept of circle made it possible and since it is possible I can go browsing all over the web and read stuff and bust my monthly NYTimes quota and blah blah. Doesn't mean I am spending the 6+ minutes or whatever that measures how viable the site actually is, but it means that it is a viable piece of my life unlike Orkut which one fine day just vanished out of my life to be replaced by Facebook.

So does Google+ have a future?

I think it depends on who you are asking.

My eyes, my eyes.................

2012-04-14T06:35:00.001-07:00

I sometimes do coding. No actually I often have to do coding but I sometimes do coding. Its not as if I don't like it. There are times when I can get so lost in coding that everything else is like a very quiet buzzing sound. Loud enough for you to know its there, but not loud enough for you to really care. I have a job in which I have to sit in front of the computer and figure out what to do with it? In short I like coding and I have a computer, so what's the problem?

The problem is pretty simple. I am really, really, really lazy. And I did that only three times because you get the point, not because it is proportional to how lazy I am. Believe me, I am really lazy. And yet I feel that I have written quite a few lines of code. Not proportional to a computer science person, but certainly enough to say I did classes at IIT. So how did that happen?

I remember that back when I started working on my MTech problem, I had to write a subroutine to do something with B Splines. I say subroutine not function, because it was Fortran and you can do subroutines in Fortran. Now there was another guy who I was supposed to do this together with, so one morning we talked this over and he said that he had a class and we would do it after class. So after he went I thought it over. Till then I had done most of my coding for assignments etc. in Matlab. I had done courses before in C++, JAVA but it had been quite a few years. And Matlab was really easy. Remember lazy.

So here's a new problem. And a new programming language. So I did what I always do (These days I try to control this urge). I wrote a whole program with a few subroutines before lunch. So the other guy comes back after lunch, and I told him that I wrote it. And he just stared at me. You see, he could not believe that I wrote it in such a small period of time. He needn't have. Seasoned professionals will tell you to not do what I did. They'll tell you to break it down into modules (no Fortran pun intended but that will work too). Write. Test. Repeat.

I believe I spent 3 months fixing that code. It was one of the most frustrating periods of life at IIT. The problem refused to divulge itself. Ultimately I figured out that it was not a coding problem. It just so happened that one of the algorithms that I used just did not work the way it was supposed to work. Doesn't mean I was not guilty. If I had used it the "Write.Test.Repeat" way, I would have spent those 3 months on doing pioneering work. (As the song goes "Dream On")

So here I am on a hot Bangalore Saturday afternoon, still trying to live that dream. Of writing working code. Somewhere in the middle I told Fortran that I had moved on, but it still occasionally rears itself into my life, scaring me even more than before because its usually the deadlier cousin Fortran77. But I do most of my coding in Python these days. But today I was doing C++. With all the scary classes and inheritance and parsing stuff. And I am still pretty lazy. But I have a deadline to meet. And I am staring at the screen. It says

g++ -c main.cpp
main.cpp: In function ‘int main()’:
main.cpp:19:2: error: ‘DataStuc’ was not declared in this scope

And here's the code

#include "structure.h"

using namespace std;

int main()

{

DataStuc strucObj;

}

And here's structure.h

class DataStruc
{
public:
double *a, b, c, d;
};

Obviously I have simplified everything so that people don't run away and if you still don't want to look at the code, don't worry. The point I am trying to make has nothing to do with the code but certainly applies everywhere.

If you look at the error and then at the code and think everything is all right, then you are a kindred spirit. But I am invested in the problem because I have to solve it. So I stare at the screen for a fantasy movie period of time, occasionally have murderous feelings both at my laptop and the whole code. At one point I decide g++ is broken and think of giving up. But I want to fix this. So I believe everybody's sane, including alt+tab on Unity, which it is not. I copy paste to a different folder, strip everything down, and then I discover that instead of DataStruc, I have used DataStuc.

And all those mails come back to me about broken up words we could read because we see the first and last word and blah, blah. And I realize that I need to be AI assisted. Not SIRI level, but actual working AI. On the other hand, what if the AI I find was coded by somebody like me. Be scared. Be very scared.

The Guitar sings to me

2011-11-03T05:23:00.001-07:00

The guitar sings to me

Those strings have a voice

All it needs is a stare

Perhaps even a glance

Walking through the streets of music

I cannot understand the language

But I can feel the rhythm

There's something electric in the air

I try to catch it before it sings my hair

Time beats slow

It senses the rhythms

Looks at the ripples

The string is its god

Infinite dimensions against the one

I run, chasing after a glimpse, a vanishing memory

But even thoughts cannot beat receding time

I hold onto a chord on the side of the road

What is left, what has it not showed?

On through the corridors of sound I stumble

On the fringes of discovery I stumble

There is some magic still left

Waves guide me

Waves I cannot see but feel

Echoes pierce through time

They want to reach me

With them I will create a still point in time

And the guitar will always be in its prime

Discovering Discovery

2011-10-25T02:36:00.000-07:00

Watching the Discovery channel on TV is one of the better ways of piercing through the idle minutes you may have. Its often simplistic but at most times you get to know something new. I have often felt that the average Discovery producer would be smarter than the average journalist who purports to be knowledgeable about whatever topic she/he's covering. Trust TV people to shatter your trust.

I was watching a show called Future Cars today. Cars are always exciting and in this period of constant worry as soon as you park at the petrol pum, cars that try to remove those worries are even more exciting. So there was all this talk about solar cars, hydrogen cars, ethanol cars, bio-diesel cars. Stuff we have been hearing for years, but for some reason or another never actually seen on the roads. If they are seen, they are rare enough to be not counted. So, another show about the possibilities. But there's always hope.

And then we came to the last concept. Cars that run on air. I continued watching the show because of this very segment. How do you run a car on air? Turns out its pretty simple. You create a mechanism that converts the energy stored in pressurized air into useful work. You know, the way cartoon characters escape on balloons with the gas coming out of the back. Ok, maybe slightly different. Theoretically nothing new, but their mechanism maybe innovative. On the other hand, the energy pressurizing the air is coming from somewhere else. The grid, probably. So it would be a trade-off between the cost needed to make the car, the cost needed to pressurize the air, the amount of fuel needed for each Km etc...

But thats just accounting. What was really incredulous was what the presenter mentioned right at the very end. I would think this would be something they would cross-check with the many scientists that were being shown on the air. On the other hand if these specialists were complicit in creating the halo, then there's some serious stink being created.

The statement was the that the people creating the air powered cars had developed a machine to pressurize the air. Ok. They use power to pressurize. Very innovative isn't it. And the presenter says that this machine can be put on the vehicle so that air coming out of the exhaust would be compressed by this other machine and then the compressed air would power the drive-train and on and on.

Really. Second Law of Thermodynamics anyone. From school. Yeah, school. Physics class. Chemistry class. Anyone remember. Certainly not the presenter. Not the producer either. And again, if they know and have chosen to hide it, then its mind-boggling.

Next time you watch Discovery. Put your skeptic hat on. On the other hand, watching Discovery with that hat would certainly be better than watching Star Plus. Or Zee Tv. Or Sony TV. Or India TV.

You get the picture.

Kraken

2011-10-08T10:27:00.000-07:00

China Mieville

I don't like China Mieville. But without context, that's not fair.

A long time ago, in a country far away, I had taken a couple of books. Now that had happened because I knew that I wouldn't have access to my usual sources of time pass for a relatively long time, so it would be good strategy to take more than one book. I had gone to my usual source for such needs, Blossoms.

As usual I was stuck on the book. That is, the selection of the book. Browsing around the endless list of books, I remembered one name that I had seen around. China Mieville. The only book available that was written by him was King Rat. I took it. There were two other books that I took along with it. Two much better books, although their merit needs to be examined separately to regard them. But still, much better books.

I would think it took me less time to finish King Rat than most other books that I have read since I started reading actively again. One of the aims I had in this new version of me who reads books was that I would read more difficult books. Maybe difficult is not that good a word. Maybe there's no proper word for what I aim to say. King Rat was certainly not that book. It was one seemingly clever idea stretched to the length of an entire book. Kind of horror, kind of fantasy. No big ideas.

I later read a short story by China Mieville on The Guardian website. It was an interesting idea. Written well. I though King Rat was his first book. Maybe it was just a way to get out there. So I decided to take another crack at him. In hindsight, it would have been better if I took a crack at one of the writers I already had read good books from. But I just wanted to be fair.

Lets not be fair anymore. Kraken is again a kind of fantasy, kind of horror. It has more seemingly clever ideas. More than one actually. But again, no big ones. It reads pretty fast. The writing is more interesting certainly. But the benchmark is pretty low, so better is not really good in an absolute sense. There are often spots when it seems when it seems that the writing is switching to something much better but that is just too occasional. In the end its a book by an author who has not gone much farther than King Rat. Maybe he doesn't need to. He's certainly popular. On the other hand maybe he's just not capable enough.

Next time..... Nahh. No more next time for China Mieville.

Waiting for Tomorrow

2011-09-18T04:23:00.000-07:00

I get this feeling occasionally. Its bound to pass but it often brings up questions that I find hard to answer. I recently finished Ulysses and part of the reason why this happens occasionally is that I often choose books that take up a lot of time, like Ulysses.

Now the problem is the selection of the next book. I am reading China Mieville's Kraken right now, but it is obvious to me that this one is going to take far lesser time than Ulysses. So as usual I have been researching what book to choose next. Which took me on a self retrospective.

I had for some time, given up fiction reading altogether during my last years at IITK. I was a voracious reader for the first two years, almost obsessed with reading fiction. It seems hard to put into words now. I feel like I had been given a freedom that I had never experienced before, and during that time, there was both opportunity and the means to exercise that freedom. People who knew me in those days would certify these tendencies. I would often be locked into a reading position for hours before I let go of a book. And weirdly I would often do the maths to figure out how much time it would take for me to finish a particular book. It was a matter of pride. This speed. I would boast of the time it took me to finish books.

In later years, I was similarly obsessed with reading comics. I can still distinctly remember that one moment. Now, I am not sure of the timeline, the position or anything else. I can just remember that feeling I had when I had thought about reading every comic in existence. It was both a kind of desire as well as a burden that I felt necessary to fulfill. Now, at this present time, looking back I can easily categorize my 5 years into 2 years of fiction obsession, 2 years of comics obsession and 1 year of recovery. Hi, my name is Vikram Singh and I have been sober for 3 years. As a side-note there was a film obsession as well, but markedly less severe than the others.

After coming to Bangalore, I still had this waning interest in the "following" mindset. This was one of the things that is ubiquitous in probably all youth. You hook onto a series, say a TV series, a comic series, a sport, and you just keep on following. Its often satisfactory, but mostly just a force of habit. But my increasing tendencies of self-analysis wherein I minutely examine every aspect of my life including how I interact with other things, including so called entertainment meant that I was rapidly giving up lots of TV shows, comic series, genre movies. But in the midst of this I was also becoming a more and more voracious reader zooming over the interwebs in search of things to consume. But it also had a side-effect. I wanted to read fiction again.

A long time ago, in a blog post far away I had made this post. That was around the time I read my first book here in Bangalore. I wanted to read something different. Something... more.... Its difficult to paraphrase, but if I had to spell it out today, I wanted to read something with more ambition. A criteria I seem to increasingly put on everything. And among life's infinite sources of magic, this was the one I came into contact with. More than a year and a half later, I marvel at the fact that I have read so many great books. There were some missteps but those missteps were much better than some of the things I consumed in the past. If I had to attempt to make a chronology of the books I have read it would be something like this.

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
King Rat by China Mieville
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
Ulysses by James Joyce

Looking back, that's a grand list. But as I was thinking about them, I though about how some of those books felt much more than the others. And remarkably, I realize now that in the above list, the books that I recall with the fondest memories are the first three. And as I search for more books to read, those three stick out the most in my quest for finding the next great read.

Also, since my last attempts to search for books I have found a pretty good site, called very literally GoodReads. I have been checking out the recommendations and if nothing else, it will be a good way to track the books I have read, and the ones I want to read.

Who says they can't copy from Comics

2011-09-09T11:04:00.000-07:00

I would think the photos would make my point obvious. On the right is one of the more famous Superman covers. I believe this particular composition has been copied so many times, its a motif now. And I think it in turn was copied from a famous scuplture.

Ulysses

2011-09-05T11:27:00.001-07:00

James Joyce

I was thinking of placeholders while I was thinking of what to do with this post since I had not thought the whole thing through unmindful of the foolishness of attempting to do anything related to what I was trying to do and yet the sheer need to do is overpowering and your senses push you while you are scared as you are not really sure that you can make an attempt at doing something you really want to do but may not be capable of doing with the capacity you have built up but maybe this will be a step towards building that capacity which will allow you to do it.

What was that. I believe an attempt to do something different. I would certainly not call it a homage to this incredibly complex book that I just finished since the comparison would be an insult to that act of comparison. If you ever actually get to read Ulysses you may actually understand what I am trying to do. Or just laugh at the utter stupidity of it.

Its a book difficult to write about. I see so many parallels between this and Gravity's Rainbow that I want to really be able to figure out and put into words just what it is I want to say about these books. But every time I want to talk about them, I feel lost.

I think all I can say is that these books are something that have to be experienced.

A Strange Rush of Ideas

2011-09-04T07:49:00.000-07:00

Another Sunday coming to a close. Its remarkable that I watched an episode of a favorite TV show as well as one whole movie, both of which were pretty good, and yet I feel that as usual, it was tough passing time. And as I am surfing the interwebs, searching for meaning and blah, blah, blah I came across a couple of articles that made me stop and think, just a little bit.

First as I was browsing around a site called Brain Pickings, another of those sites that are increasingly becoming a part of the eclectic mix of sites I love to visit, I came across an article. Below is a video that puts across the point.

There's a sort of implication in the whole thing that can easily lead to paranoia and I was partially caught in it when I was browsing through another article in the NYTimes. Now the New York Times spreads out a lot of suggested article links on its page as you read through their article and just for a short time I was worried why it was suggesting me to look at an article called What Girls Watch. Paranoid or harmless?

On the other hand the actual meat of the second article got me thinking. Its been a remarkable year of protests across the globe, but as far as I can recall this is the only one happening in an actual developed nation. I had a hard time understanding that but the article clearly suggested that the protests were raging based on a simple need. Prices. A need that is universal. And one would think something a developed country must have tackled on its way to development. Clearly not. And it was enough to bring as much as 5% of the population out to protest. Which is a big number in itself. And remarkably it was lead by students, not figureheads.

Its much more food for thought than what a single blog post can accommodate but just the act of writing can make those complicated strands of thought a little more structured. After all, isn't that what meaning's all about.

Boring: The Sequel

2011-08-23T07:48:00.000-07:00

In continuation of my last post, I came across an article. Here's a link to it. Either this is synchronicity or the fact is that people are genuinely concerned for the future of the human race. After those big apocalyptic words lets come back to the article. While it is genuinely quotable all over, I have put some choice quotes for you to savor.

"This has yielded all kinds of fascinating insights—for instance, that when forced to multitask, the overloaded brain shifts its processing from the hippocampus (responsible for memory) to the striatum (responsible for rote tasks), making it hard to learn a task or even recall what you’ve been doing once you’re done."

"brain processes different kinds of information on a variety of separate “channels”—a language channel, a visual channel, an auditory channel, and so on—each of which can process only one stream of information at a time."

Till the next post, sayo nara.

Boring

2011-08-15T04:10:00.000-07:00

There's a movement going across the world. Slowly but surely, its a phenomenon that has taken over. I believe that the last time a similar phenomenon took place was when the word "like" started being used as a replacement for nearly all words in the English language, sometimes even taking over the whole language. I am of course speaking about the phenomenon called "boring". Now at the face of it, its an innocuous little word. Rhymes with exciting, but is much smaller, and probably assimilated into the vocabulary earlier as well.

As I read through articles on topics ranging from tv to movies to books etc etc etc, I see an unusual amount of repetition. The sheer ubiquity of it seems to indicate that it is the new "like". I guess Facebook will have to add a new button. Its even got a four letter shorter version similar to like and poke. Although the sheer hilarity of being "poked" cannot be matched if somebody just did a "bored". You will certainly not be amused, but neither will anybody else.

When I think of the relevance of such things as "Stairway to Heaven", "Once Upon a Time in the West", "1984" or "The Watchmen", I feel that these are something that will just fade away. Granted that it may seem unbelievable since so many people seem to suggest that these are dearly loved. The actual truth is that often, people say that they love them out of a simple need to fit in. Surely if so many people love these things then it must be good and I must go through it and just say I like it.

There was a recent series of skirmishes online about the same fact. Here's a link to an article in the New York Times that tries to justify the boring. An estimable effort but I question the very existence of the whole phenomenon. Surely movies like "Once Upon a Time in the West", or our home grown answer "Sholay" use time as a character with as much importance as any other part of the process. Or is it that a generation who has grown up on Michael Bay can appreciate nothing else. Surely you can take only so much Michael Bay before yearning for release.

Or has Twenty-20 proven that there's no future for something that demands your time for satisfaction rather than melting your brain.

The first rule of Saturday is...

2011-05-27T20:14:00.000-07:00

...you don't wake up early morning on a Saturday. And here I am blogging, because so early in the morning, what else is there to do?

I recall that in my early days(not that I am in my late days now, but you understand right?), I was forced to wake up early in the morning, and had to go on jogs with my dad. Who wakes up early in the morning to go on jogs? Certainly not the guy who is fat and has asthma, right? Happy days, those.

Nostlagia is like the averaging operator. You know what the averaging operator does apart from averaging you out. It smooths functions. Ironic, since if you really get average marks, you'll find it tough to smooth the mood of your parents, teachers and whoever else has an interest in your marks. But, the point is it smooths functions. As I was saying, nostalgia acts like an averaging operator. You remember most of your past as a much happier time than it actually was, back then. Say, for example, when you meet old friends, you recall all the happier moments. And even if you do recall the not so happy moments, you recall them in a much more benign, even amused manner. Thats how the mathematical libraries of your brain is setup. And boy, whoever coded that must have been one good coder.

The point is, here I am awake on a Saturday morning, and the first thing I recall, foodie that I kinda am, is the breakfast we used to have on weekends. This is of course after the jogs, in Kolkata(back when we used to be there). Now Kolkata has a great culture of food. I am not talking about healthy food, I am talking about tasty, delicious, mouth watering, dripping with oil, sugar, salt food. And since Kolkata has a thriving Marwari community, there's a culture of jalebis, kachoris, samosas and whatever else comes to your mind right now, available in shops across the city, for your satisfactory consumption. So, that is what we used to spend mornings on weekends, usually. Jog, shop and eat. For the brief intervals of times that I was at Varanasi, there was an equally thriving culture of dahi jalebi, while lassi with rabdi was optional. By optional I mean, later. You notice that jalebis are common. I am partial to them myself.

So, up on a Saturday morning, with most of the others asleep, and I keep thinking of those days. On the other hand I must admit that my innards keep playing a screaming sad song, reminding me that I am hungry. Its a miracle that I was not dreaming of food before I woke up. Or was it an 'INCEPTION'. After all I am up early on a Saturday morning blogging about food. Suspicious.

Also, this blog post was a marker for history, so that when future history books are published, they remember this day as the day when both Anurag Bhatt and Vikram Singh, present in the same house, woke up before 8 on a Saturday morning. Worthy of a national holiday, I would think. Oh wait......

The Internet is out there

2011-05-21T04:01:00.000-07:00

Its the weekend again. And as usual, the weather prevents e from trying to venture outside. So, I am stuck here, on this rather old laptop thinking of stuff to do with it. Granted, the days of the personal computer are at an end, as numerous technology oracles would have you believe, this outdated piece of technology, the laptop still has some options when it comes to keeping the typer of these words occupied. I think its rather ironic that I am writing about keeping myself occupied when the writing itself is obviously taking up my time, but as people with any kind of writing would know, writing is something you do in between stuff. On the other hand people who actually do write for purposes other than occupying their time would not like that statement while cursing me for revealing their secrets.

That was a long and meandering statement comprising of zero content, but I rather do enjoy the feel of the rubber membranes under the keys of my keyboard. Which, being the basis of my on and off presence on this blog, is reminding me that I am making that statement while looking at the fact that my last blog post here was about 4 months ago. Short time for someone who loves writing, I suppose. Now, for the matter at hand.

As I was saying, or at least I hope I was somewhere at the beginning of this rather self mocking post, its a Saturday and I have nothing to do. As usual I am on this computer that sends these letters and words and posts out there on the INTERNET. And I am on the INTERNET. And as usual I am flummoxed. Without researching on the statistics since I am of the lazy kind, I would gather that the internet is of the rather big kind, certainly capable of keeping everyone occupied for the rest of their lives, whatever be your needs. But again, as I recall, from another of those things that I read on the INTERNET, which I will again not try to find because I am of the lazy kind, I gathered that for most, if not all people, its a very small place. Considering that more people talk of facebook, or twitter interchangeably with the internet, I don't doubt that statistic.

I on the other hand probably go to two other websites, so my INTERNET room is bigger. Nah, I am joking(Believe that at your own peril). I go to at least ten more. But that is still very finite. And every time a weekend arrives, I dread the finiteness of my visitations, because the time to content ration is pretty much optimized for weekends and thus completely useless for weekends. Part of the problem is the lack of worthy websites. And by worthy I mean worthy of my attention. Now, worthy of my attention is a pretty lose definition, since it depends on my definition of the term as a function of time. And that my dear readers, is an infinitely complex mathematical function, which I challenge you to formulate.

Therefore, and yes I am coming to the point, I was pretty surprised that in the past couple of days I have found sites other than the the few comics, movies, gadgets sites that I regularly visit, worthy of my notice. But before I get to the point, lets have some more history. Now, one of my favorite site on the net is . Its quirky, often informative but always enjoyable. I rue the fact that there is no Indian equivalent. Even apart from that I like to read articles on various topics, for no other reason than to understand the world better. Sites like the nytimes are excellent for that purpose. Again, equivalent Indian websites don't exist. And if anybody even tries to answer that rag called times of india, I am literally going to put the power of INTERNET against you. Journalism of the quality of nytimes seems sorely missing. So it was a pleasant surprise to find two websites that for now seem interesting. Obviously they need to undergo the test of time but right now I am holding out hope. As for the websites, they are the

Open Magazine

Himal Mag

So until next time, adios amigos. Nah, that seems contrived. Lets go with Namaskar.

Happy reading. (To me as well)

The Best Movies of 2010

2011-01-29T12:38:00.000-08:00

At this juncture this seems to be nothing more than writing for completeness' sake. That is since there was one for last year, there should be one for this year as well. After all we are almost past the first month of the year. Still, there's some fun to be had in compiling these lists, if for nothing else but looking back from some future point of time.

Small caveat. No cancel that statement. Big caveat. This list was compiled before I watched Winter's Bone. Technically the list is supposed to be of the movies I watched in the year, but Winter's Bone itself is technically a 2010 movie, so there's that. Therefore this list can be called the best movies which are not Winter's Bone. Because that is by far my favorite movie I have seen in quite some time. Now lets get the list out.

We are doing a top 5. English only. If I actually list out the movies I watched in Hindi, and then take a ratio of the ones actually good, it would not be a great list. Anyway, since that movie that we are not talking about anymore since that long rant, I have reduced my hopes for a lot of talents in general. That may change once the next Vishal Bhardwaj movie comes out. He hasn't disappointed me yet.

5. Shutter Island The list starts out with a movie that came out pretty early in the year. It was a departure for Scorsese. A high budget thriller. With a supposedly supernatural tinge to it. Di Caprio though seems to have setup a big reputation for himself as a star with a great eye for scripts. And this one didn't disappoint. Scorsese, known for his realistic take on mob movies delivered a Hitchcockian movie rarely seen anymore.

4. Inception This movie was definitely up there in the most anticipated movies that I must have made up in my mind at some point. As I went through this list, I realized this was the only one which existed on such a list. Plus I can't even remember what the other movies on the list were, which shows how useful such lists are. And how often they disappoint. Chris Nolan showed exactly what you do with a big budget. Deliver an original story that challenges the audience as much as it satisfies. No small credit must go to the haunting music. A big reason why its not higher up in the list is the fact that in retrospect, as you go through Mr. Nolan's career you realize the obsessiveness with non-linearity as a result of which it loses its sheen. It makes you think that it may just have been a much more straightforward movie without whatever formula he uses to cut it up and jumble together.

But one thing's proven. That Di Caprio fellow sure seems to do some great movies.

And now, middle of the list.

3. How to Train Your Dragon At the beginning of the year, and I am assuming that what I am remembering is actually true and not an assumption of what I must have been thinking, I didn't think this year would provide a truly great animated movie. After two tremendous years, (which includes what is definitely my favorite animated movie) Wall E and then Up, Pixar was going to give us a sequel to Toy Story 2, itself a sequel, details of either one of which I can hardly remember. The Toy Story seems to always have been the least appealing movies to me, and a lot of reading on it, as I am always baffled by the extraordinarily great reviews these movies get, has lead me to conclude that these movies seem to be iked by parents a whole lot. Sorry, I don't get it.

Therefore with a Pixar movie I wasn't expecting much out of, I decided to give this one a try. Now a point to note would be that this movie too had garnered great reviews, and Dreamworks had also delivered Kung Fu Panda previously which may not be Pixar level but certainly was much better than the Shrek franchise. And in comes a movie about Dragons. You cannot go more conventional. The story, that is. A teenage boy grows up by taming a wild animal. That is a theme possibly as common as boy meets girl. And yet this movie combined a great visual palette, choreography and music to deliver a movie worthy of Pixar. And believe me, that is high praise.

Next on the list is

2. The Social Network I am not sure what anybody's expectations would be from a list I made but putting this on number 2 would certainly beg the question, what's at 1. We'll get there, but a hint. You'll never guess.

So 2 on the list is the story of facebook. From the controversies surrounding it, no one can be sure how much of it is actually real, but it is a great story. Particularly for people for whom the website has become such an important part of their lives. But more importantly for people who realize how ambiguous the whole movie was. If you go by reviews, they seem to paint Mark Zuckerberg as a villain. But watching the movie made me think how gray everything was. Nothing was clearly black and white. Sure he comes out naive at times, juvenile at others, but he just seems to act like a teenager. In a rapidly changing world. Establishing himself on the internet, where the same old rules don't apply anymore.

I suppose it won't get too meta if this is discussed on facebook. Would it?

And the winner is

1. Scott Pilgrim I am pretty sure very few people would have actually had a chance to watch this movie. And even fewer would expect this to top such a list. But it is as it is. This is one of the most uniquely constructed movies that I have ever watched. Granted the comic books it is based on are unique themselves, but I never seemed as taken by them as I am here.

It was clear as soon as the 8 bit music came on for the customized Universal opening. This was going to be one hell of a ride. I realized what the comic sorely lacked, was music. And maybe colour. The mishmash of video games, pop culture and a wonderful use of the camera was just a background for another of those boy-girl stories, even though very different from all those other ones, but all together they mixed to produce a product, the like of which hasn't been made and I doubt will ever be made again.

Winter's Bone

2011-01-26T00:51:00.000-08:00

Its night. A boat slowly moves across the water. Two old women are rowing. There's a teenage girl sitting in the middle. She has the baby fat to prove her age. But she has to do something no human being should ever have to do. The boat comes to a stop. They are where he is. The girl's father. The old woman tells her to fish for him, in the frigid water below them. There's no music. None to mold your emotions, to deceive them, shock them. This is what you have been waiting for. This is the moment that the girl has been waiting for. She has shown very little emotion. Just determinism. There have been very few moments where she has allowed herself to feel something. But there have been words. Words she spoke to her father's brother. Words she said about blood. And through those stolen moments you try to picture the father. And you wait for what she does next.

The girl finds her father's hands. There's a stifled cry. But the old woman will have none of that. No. They are here for a purpose. They are here because this old woman and whoever she's affiliated with. They are showing pity to this girl. Because pity demands that after you kill the girl's father, and beat her up to within an inch of her life just to show her who's boss, well pity demands that when the girl tells her that she will be left homeless for the winter with a mother who has no sanity in her, and two much smaller siblings, she decides to get her proof that the father is dead. And what proof it is. She asks the girl to cut off her father's arms. "She can't do it", says that other woman. And so the woman showing pity switches on the electric axe, and the girl. Well, the girl holds the arm as it is cut. She stifles screams. And then she lets go. Overwhelmed. But the job is not over. "Why did you let go?", says the axe wielder. The police won't believe that the man is dead with just one arm. Its a trick that has been done before. So the girl fishes her father out again, and sits there holding the other arm, as the cutting resumes.

She does not cry anymore. Maybe she is in shock, or she's just exhausted. It is impossible that there's anything left in her. And it is impossible that there's anything left in us. This is just a small town in some part of America. A lost town. Where there are no jobs, but growing weed. Where there's no future but drugs or the army. Where honor is defined by snitching or not snitching. Where a woman is defined by who her man is. It is in this town that there's a girl, 17 years of age, named Ree, who takes care of her mother, her small brother and sister, and who is determined to keep her home and her woods before winter comes and nulls out their lives completely.

Its not often that you watch a movie of this oeuvre. Its not often that you watch a young actress essaying a role with this much grit and maturity. And its not often that you forget about such a movie.

On the edge of Oblivion

2010-12-15T05:36:00.000-08:00

Gravity's Rainbow
Thomas Pynchon

If I was being truly honest to this book I would go through my credit card bills and find out exactly which day I bought this book. That will give me a good idea of when I started reading this book, but since I am of the lazy kind, I decided to go through my former posts. I noticed that the last review I did was back in April. Therefore that is far this goes. The point being that I started reading Gravity's Rainbow sometime in April, or maybe May. And I finally finished it last night.

In itself that may not be an important fact. But it counts a whole lot in my case. I have been known to be the worst kind of readaholic, wasting days at a time racereading some random book without stopping. That, I suppose is what I am good at. There have been a few books, and by few I mean very few, that I have started and left. And that is also something that seems to be inbuilt. I burn through pages very, very quickly, but if I put down something to take a break, I don't finish it. So, in short, this thing that happened, where I kept at a book for months, is remarkable. For me at least.

Gravity's Rainbow, is bar none, the most difficult fiction book I have ever read. And having gone through some comments on the net, after finishing it, it seems a lot of people seem to share that opinion. It is complex, meandering, at times pointless, but what it is above all, is the most singular piece of fiction I have ever read. I remember that at the very start I would be chained to the number 14. It seemed that whatever I did I could not read more than 14 pages at a stretch. Why that number 14, I have no idea, but it seemed to become almost like a defined constraint on my reading abilities.

The book starts out in some sort of traditional manner, but in probably the most precisely thought out language usage I have ever read. Pynchon uses words in a manner that I wouldn't even have thought possible. Its incredibly rich and yet incredibly hard. And that's just the beginning. The narrative structure rapidly fragments, until you have doubts whether there is any at all. In mathematics, partial differential equations have three solution based on certain constraints. Hyperbolic, parabolic and elliptic. Now hyperbolic and parabolic are well defined, where you find lines and just march along them to find solutions, while elliptic is the most complex. Everything depends on everything else. And this story is like that. Fragmented stories, all contributing to each other. Its weird to mention elliptic when all through the story, the parabola seemed to have so much importance.

But even through the story there were times when everything seemed to be pointless, as in, what is the point of reading it, when Pynchon seems to make it so tough. The fact is that through his unique writing style, which are at most times very difficult, he could convey relationships in a way that is unparalleled. The fact remains that most of those relationships were tragic, but his ability to express emotions, events leading in and out of those emotions, cannot be matched. Those lines can only be experienced by reading the book. I doubt that there's any other writer who is as powerful at conjuring words than Pynchon, and I certainly hope that if there are, I get to read them.

An Insane weekend

2010-06-20T08:37:00.000-07:00

When I woke up on Friday, I was going to have a calm, regular day. But turns out my weekend wasn't. Well, the weekend didn't begin on Friday, but when I woke up on Friday, I didn't remember that I had to do something on Saturday. So right in the middle of the day, Pratyush calls me, and it hits me. I lie that I remembered but I didn't. So I had to rapidly rethink my plans of not doing anything in the weekend, as usual. Exciting me.

Well thats not true. Every weekend since the last two I had been thinking of taking my Rockrider for the scheduled 3 month maintenance but I kept putting it off, thinking about the long journey alone on a cycle, even though the cycle was supposed to be a Rockrider. 5.2. As usual my small mind, which usually panics on strange matters calculated the fact that if I did not deliver it to Decathlon this weekend, the next one would be the last weekend to have the free maintenance, since the week after that, I am going home. Woohoo. And yet I had to do it this weekend, despite what I had to do.

Now here's the part, where I tell you what I had to do. I was supposed to cycle 25 Kms. For fun. Yes. Who cooked up that idea? Fun=25 Kms. I sound sarcastic because even though I love cycling, I don't think I have ever cycled more than 15 Kms at a stretch. And that 15 Km stretch was the distance between Decathlon and my home that I had traversed on adrenaline, pumped up after buying a great bike. And here was the kicker. Pratyush had originally told me that we would ride on gearless bikes. Wow. Now if you have ever tried to go 25 Kms without gears, I salute you, but I can't think of cycling that long without gears. Even the distance I have to travel to the office everyday would be much, much harder if I had no gears, and thats hardly 5-6 Kms.

So there it is. I woke up at 12 on Saturday, after having woken up multiple times in between for opening the door for all the people who suddenly seemed to descend on our home. I was supposed to leave at 3:30 PM, so as is wont of me, I watched a whole movie between waking up and hurriedly getting ready to leave. I hardly had the chance to eat anything so that when I did reach Pratyush's home, and then left for the pickup point with him, Rajeev, Rajeev's brother and colleague, I felt hungry. And the bus which was supposed to take us to the starting point was late. And there was traffic. On the way we crossed SBA, where I used to live once upon a time. I hardly knew that place.

And by the way, the cycles turned out to be actually geared. There were quite a bunch of people. A few couples as well. We cycled together at the start, but very quickly separated. Some went ahead, some were left back. It was a great experience, although if I could clearly see the scenery all around me, it would have been much more exciting. The trail was full of great downhill bends, which were there for the sole purpose of enjoying the trip down, while stealing looks on either side of the great scenes on either side. We stopped a few times. There were even warnings of elephants, but the only ones we got to saw were the ones on boards. At the very end, there were two very tough uphill stretches which taxed us the most, but after that, when we finally ended the trip, it seemed we had just toned up for an even longer trip. Nevertheless, a great trip, spent in great company, which ended with us having dinner on steps of a small building in a small town while all the townsfolk were gathered around just a small distance away watching a musical play with beautiful costumes and a great set. Wish I could understand what was going on. We got to Pratyush's place after a fair deal o walking, and the night ended with us watching Harbhajan's antics.

Today, I woke up at 10, weirdly, because I had the insane urge to actually go to Decathlon. It seemed that I wanted to do more cycling. So I got back home and then went out again, doing 15 Kms more, but alone, and in a slightly warmer climate. It was fun, if a little boring, and when I came back, it was even weirder that I had any energy let to go with Mittal and do some shopping. Although a lot of the time, I just wanted to go to the shops and just sit down.

Well, nothing a good night's sleep won't fix. Sucks that I have to wait till Tuesday to get back my bike.

And yeah, chicken at KFC seemed to be a good epilogue to the weekend. I must have more of these.

Rajneeti - An Utter Failure

2010-06-12T07:04:00.000-07:00

It feels strange to talk about this movie in the terms I am going to. Rajneeti was one of those movies that I believe plenty of people were looking forward to in this drought of good movies. Prakash Jha, that talented director of movies like Gangajal, Ranbir Kapoor on the back of brilliant movies, a great cast, and the feeling that it may touch upon contemporary events such as the life of Sonia Gandhi. On the back of all this, the fact that so many people seem to actually like it. Well, then I would have to make a very reasonable argument about why it is a failure.

The strongest feeling I had after leaving the theater was how morally dishonest everyone involved in the movie were. No, I am not talking about the morality in the movie, which is of course, illogically constructed, but the fact that the movie makers seemed to have no idea what they were doing. The movie starts with narration. And music. The most overbearing, Michael Bay-ish opening music that I have had to endure in a Hindi movie. It was obvious that the filmmakers were going for a big budget feel, and thus were following the Hollywood model of overpowering with bland but loud music, thus, trying to distract you from the fact that some of the worst acting and direction was going on in the actual movie.

The movie starts with what is a ridiculous performance by the mother figure, while a narrator goes about talking stuff. And by statistics alone, I can tell you that narration is resorted to, when the film is out of ideas, and creativity. And then the scene. Yes, the kissing scene. I have never, ever in my life seen lesser chemistry leading up to a kiss. Ever. Poor Naseeruddin Shah. No scratch that. What the hell was he even doing here. A short role as Surya dev. Yes thats the other thing, you know. This movie is not very subtly, Mahabharata. And if you start thinking about the fact that it took a lot of years, with a lot of Sundays to make a tv series that is highly regarded by people to make that epic, which here is made in just under 3 hours, you can guess what the pacing was like.

Possibly, that fact can account for almost all problems in the movie. Mahabharata as opposed to Ramayana had a higher proportion of grayness, and yet that grayness couldn't be simply defined. Yudhisthir was supposed to be a paragon, and yet he gambled away his wife, but the subtleties of the events couldn't be depicted in mere moments. Here, Arjun Rampal kills a cop with a baseball bat, molests and kills a woman and in the very next scene is sleeping in a sofa because he doesn't want to do anything his wife doesn't want. And two such scenes later his wife is completely transformed to a loving, devoted wife, followed by the man professing his love, even though how it went from 0 to 100 is never shown.

The movie is full of such scenes, where events happen at insane pace, without bothering to honestly evolve characters for each event. And the love scenes. Wow . Honestly, I would request Prakash Jha to never tackle love. Ever. As like everything in the movie, the scenes are just dropped in, as if the editor was given a jigsaw puzzle with huge pieces missing and then told, "Now fit". One scene in particular is memorable in this random editing, when the suddenly manipulative Arjun aka Ranbir Kapoor (who had actually asked his father to leave, lest he create a traffic jam, and suddenly starts murderous manipulations like a step function) tells Katrina Kaif (stunningly miscast, as if that was even up for questioning) that he loves her, and lo, behold, out of nowhere, for half a minute we are thrust into a disco and then back, to the exact moment after.

How a bunch of great actors decided to sign on to this insanely irrational movie is beyond me? Maybe they were just told "Prakash Jha"+"Mahabharata" and they said yes. Perhaps they actually read the script and though it was a good read, even though the script had to be ridiculous. Perhaps they were just given too much money. Ranbir Kapoor tried hard. He's a great actor, but honestly put, his character had to be top of the pile in terms of ridiculousness. Ajay Devgan impresses in a very, very short role and the others have even lesser parts. Nana Patekar it seems, wasn't sure whether he was playing Bhishm or Krishna, and that uncertainty clearly shows.

All in all, a very dishonest movie, in terms of its aim, versus its achievement.

And yeah, if you thought you were the only one, the whole theater laughed when the melodramatic scene arrives where Kunti tells Karna "Jyeshtha Putra". Truly laughable if not pitiable.

Now, if only Vishal Bhardwaj had made this movie.

A Film about the First Film

2010-05-17T09:01:00.000-07:00

An entry into the Oscars always piques your interest. Even though it may only be an entry from a country for the foreign film category and not an actual nominee, you still want to know that in a country that makes the most number of films, what goes into the competition. And in that way, its kind of fascinating to know that a film that tells the story of the inception of this industry is the entry.

Harishchandrachi Factory is a simple movie. There's no grand vision, budget or chutzpah on display here. Its a very simple film telling the grand tale of Dadasaheb Phalke, the father of Indian cinema. A parallel here is interesting that the film's director was a theater artist who graduates to cinema through this movie and the movie is about going to the next step, from theater to films in India. Mr. Paresh Mokashi makes an interesting choice while making this movie. A lot of the movie is told through moving pictures, without dialogue. Although there's great background music accompanying the pictures.

Its the story of a man, quite like Harishchandra himself, adhering to his principles and living in poverty. He sets about trying to make a movie and his determination to get over all obstacles is the meat of the story. But it is all told in a light manner that you often wonder whether the gravitas of the achievement is passed through to the audience. And yet, it is an endearing movie in a kind of universe of its own, very rarely showing the situation India was at the time, but still highlighting some of the idiosyncrasies of the period.

There are scenes you remember lovingly, like the scene when Mr. Phalke, after selling his cupboard in order to finance his passion, reaches his home to find people mourning. He's shocked, and is not sure what to expect. He tentatively enters his home hoping nothing has happened to his wife. He sees her, and hopes nothing has happened to his kids. Then one of his neighbours approaches him and tells him they are mourning the loss of the cupboard.

A hilarious scene, if ever there was one. I am not sure that people may have held cupboards so high up in their mourning hierarchy, but it feels absolutely natural in between neighbours who believe everything is black magic, and that he's mentally insane for even attempting such a thing as making a movie.

You leave the movie thinking about Phalke, his tenacity and his intelligence. Here was a man out to do something no one did before him and accomplishing it. Housefuls, live shows, lucky draws, and movie making. He did it all.

First.

Training Day

2010-05-16T07:24:00.000-07:00

That was the name of a movie I did not like as much. But I use that title merely to tell you that today I watched what I think is the best movie of the year. On par right up there with Pixar's best. How to Train Your Dragon. A proper review of the movie is difficult because its not easy for me to review movies like the way I can talk about books. Because movie is a medium that has to be absorbed at their pace, unlike a book. So, a lot of things cannot be looked at in detail and you end up with only a vague feeling at the end of what the movie comprised of.

Yesterday, after having Iron Man 2, I realized that the improvised way of making the first movie could not sustain this movie because it wasn't just about Robert Downey Jr. this time. There were other great actors and the patchy screenplay meant that most of their talents were wasted in moving the story along. Still, Downey Jr. still gets to deliver his part in the witty manner he did in the first part, and manages to carry the movie to its end.

On the other hand, today I watched a movie that seemed to never let up in terms of great storytelling. Frankly, animation is hard to talk about in the conventional sense because in conventional movies you rely a lot on traditional acting. In animation its obvious that dialogues and dialgoue delivery have to pick up a lot of the slack, but more importantly storytelling has to do the heavy lifting. How to Train Your Dragon has a beautifully realized world which is immediately engrossing because of the central premise of vikings and dragons and one little kid in the middle. That eternal theme of growing up is always a potent theme, and here its the story of growing up through the help of friends. The bonding between the boy and the dragon is the center of the movie while everything else revolves around it. A wonderfully paced story with some really good "Oh yeah" moments give this movie that quality which movies and movie makers aspire for. Timelessness.

Watch it. And remember to thank me.

Words

2010-05-12T01:38:00.000-07:00

As many of you may know, I like words. But words alone are just constructs. They mean something, but they won't tell you anything. Words need to have companions to make sense. Phrases, sentences, paragraphs, chapters and they tell a story. That is raw power. And words build it.

I read a lot. I think I always have, at least since I realized what books are supposed to be. I can't recall whether I diligently read my ABCD book but I do remember that as a child I used to love all the books that had stories. Enid Blyton, Amar Chitra Katha, Tintin, everything. I have kept it up, and I still read a lot, but I realize that the way those words combine to tell me something has changed drastically.

I was reading Harry Potter for no reason other than to find out how exactly those words combine. I recall that when I read Harry Potter in IIT, I was in the habit of finishing books in hours. In fact it was something I was proud of, even though I wouldn't recommend it to anyone now. And I like those books. Because as I recall, plot was about the only consideration I ever had. JK Rowling's words came together to tell me a story about a world very similar to our own, but with a secret other side and there was so much imagination in there that I could not wait to go through each of those books. But now that I looked over it again, for the simple reason of looking at how she constructed those stories, I realize that there's repetitiveness, but thats all right. I guess for a younger audience, a whole magical world is enough. And the words too. They barely try. They are there for nothing other than putting across the story. You don't want to linger, because there's no beauty in them.

And I realize that there are a lot of things that distinguish talents. While going through those words, I recalled there was another book that I had wanted to read. Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, since I had read the first part but never finished it on account of never finding all of it at the Book Club. It never had the raving imagination of Harry Potter but I still remembered it as a good book. So I decided that I should try it again.

What immediately makes it different from other books is the fact that its a very realistic treatment of what a child's life would be. While Harry Potter relies heavily on melodrama constructed out of placing characters precisely so that those moments pass, Pullman here decides to flesh out a world and characters with the kind of idiosyncrasies that make them recognizable as more than one lined caricatures. There are prejudices in this world and the very obvious atheism of Pullman on display but there's also imagination as he constructs a very engaging story on what seems to be a very spiritual theme, which is the soul. And here's the best part. He knows how to play with them words. Each character seems to have their own way of speaking and Pullman puts some thought into those words. You linger at them sometimes, because it does not just document something, but evokes a kind of feeling that only them words can.

I like them words and I like Philip Pullman's writing. Try it.

How about you try some

2010-04-23T10:14:00.000-07:00

I often talk about comics. Its like an obsession. But the fact is, it used to be. At one point of time. Now, not so much. On the other hand I have to admit that I have never tried to push an easily accessible comic to people who may, occasionally, for whatever reason, pass through here.

How about I link to an actual comic, that you can read without moving from your computer screen. An actual, good comic for which you won't have to feel guilty about because you are reading a pirated version.

So then, get to reading a comic called Sin Titulo by Cameron Stewart, a very good comic artist, trying his writing chops. And he does write well.

Stories

2010-04-18T09:00:00.001-07:00

I had an epiphany today. Not the earth shattering kind. Just the kind where you realize it was always in front of you, but you just never put it into words. In other words exactly what education is. I should get a degree. Or at least a grade.

We have a TV in our apartment. While not a very significant thing, it does mean that often times when somebody starts a conversation about a particular new ad, many people have no idea what is being talked about. Because a lot of people I know don't have one. Its simple really. A TV is not necessary. Unlike the internet. Well at least for most of us. And I keep thinking about there minor things. But what I realized is that there's so much fiction going around.

Take the latest Samsung ad. It creates a whole world and then tells the stories of that world, while making the phone an integral part of it. Or those Airtel ads which you know happen in the same world, not just because the same actor is in them, but in two different ads you see the same name being his girlfriend. Its as if somebody is trying to maintain continuity like comic books.

Thats the thing. There's so much though going around that I think there are an awful lot of outlets for storytellers than ever before. Not just movies and television and the obvious books and comics, but ads. Or for that matter speculative fiction in newspapers. Or news channels. After all what else is Reality TV.

The more you think about the bombardment of storytelling that is ubiquitous, the more Reality TV makes sense to me. There's so much fiction to sift through, how do you choose entertainment. You obviously choose the most unique one. Wherein there's the slightest chance you yourself could have been part of the story. And you get to imagine what you would have done instead of the slob on the other side of the screen.

What's next? Personalized fiction? I believe there's some comic book company in India which lets you become the hero in their story for something like Rs 999. Maybe the next time I speak about the company, it won't just be "some company".

On the other hand, writing this blog post makes me think about just how much free time I have.