Go(o)danDevil

“We are all puppets, Laurie. I’m just the puppet who can see the strings.” – Dr. Manhattan in the movie Watchmen

“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist” – Keiser Soze in movie The Usual Suspects

G’ bye MJ!

Seeing the shows where the stars paying tribute to MJ, I remember those good ol’ times when he was really the King of Pop. However, I can’t help wishing that the world had treated him better during the last years of his life. He definitely deserved better.

Tribute to a genius

Baradwaj Rangan pays tribute to A.R.Rahman, listing some of the favourites that have haunted us through the past fifteen years.  I am very positive that almost all the songs would feature in the favourites list of any ardent ARR fan. Going through the list was like riding a wave of nostalgia and the descriptions bringing out a smile every now and then as they exactly describe how you yourself feel about it. Talking about the song Dating from Boys, he says:

“every single sound seems to have been piped out of machines yet to be invented.”

and then about Ae Hairathe from Guru, he says:

“. . . it brings back a long-ago era where passion meant poetry, poetry meant passion. Full of inspired touches like a very local dam tara chorus exchanging notes with a free-flowing Euro-accordion, this is Rahman’s contribution to the contention that few things in life are as satisfying as a beautifully composed love song.“

Genius.

Paradox

Recently came across this excellent example ascribed to the sophist philosopher Protagoras (c.490-420 BC).

A lawyer teaches law to a student without fee on condition that the student will pay him when he qualifies and wins his first case.

However, when the student qualifies he takes up another profession. The lawyer sues him for his fees, on the grounds that if he wins, he is paid and if he loses, the student has won and so must pay by the agreement.

The student is unperturbed because if he wins he need not pay the fees, and if he loses he does not owe them.

Faith or mechanics ?

Two days and lots of ’sannidhi’¹ worshipping later, I have a made a few observations/introspections.
I have been observing people praying at the temples. Sometimes I see people with so much religious fervour it makes me feel guilty(?!). Many a time, when I was standing at a place with a nice view of the ‘vigraha’² I wanted to move away and give the place to the person behind me, who probably deserved it more, or who’d rather have a better use of the darshan. All along, in all the temples, through countless idols, I never could actually evoke any kind of religious reverence or even some kind of respect for what I was seeing. All that did was try and appreciate the sculpting, the architecture, the decorations, etc., but nothing whatsoever, to do with God, worship or faith. And sometimes, I even was really angry when I saw people worshipping. For instance, it’s understandable to suddenly become really all worked up (like lifting their joined hands up over one’s heads and shouting out the Lord’s name) when an ‘abhishekam’³ is being done on the idol (although i fail to understand, how that particular instance is more sanctimonius than when there is just the idol..although it’s supposedly the same God with the same powers!!!). But what really ticked me off was it’s been done so many countless times over that they fail to actually see what’s happening. So they do it mechanically as soon as they see the poojari⁴ is doing something to the idol. So when the abhishekam is over and the poojari is just washing away the ghee, or milk or whatever that’s been used, again the people start of with the whole hulla!

The next gripe that I have is with people chanting the mantras/shloka. To me, anything that’s been said without knowing/understanding the meaning is useless/pointless. So when I see people trying to keep up with the ’shastrigal’⁴ in saying the shlokas, I really get irritated; irritated, because, even knowing whatever little sanskrit i know, i can clearly make out that they are horrendously mispronouncing the words that they have just mindlessly memorised. And even when pronounced correctly, they wouldn’t know what they are praying about. For instance, I have asked many people the meaning of verse in ‘Kanda shasti kavasam’⁵: ‘Dagu dagu digu digu dangu dingugu, vindhu vindhu mayilon vindhu” (I kid you not, those are the exact words), but i still havn’t got a satisfactory answer. And to me then, a “dagu dagu digu digu dangu dingugu’ has the same significance as a “laalakku dol dappima”⁶ !

To top it all, there is this commercialization of worship! Chidambaram Natarajar temple is something that i have been wanting to visit for a really long time. And so, it was quite shocking , that when i actually went there, i just couldn’t wait to get out of there. I certainly had my expectations right: I was not so religious, so i didn’t expect an out-of-this-world experience. In fact, the rule about asking men folk to enter the sanctum sanctorum bare-chested actually lent a spirit of something really important about to happen upon entry. But, with the crowd and all those sweaty bodies, I was happy to take a single glance at the idol (which anyway was not visible, partly due to the crowds and mostly due to the really dim lighting inside the altar) and make a quick getaway. But what really left a bad taste was the “kovil pattars’⁴ marketing the prasadams and selling the blessings. It is quite understandable that the temple is run completely by a family of ‘Gurukkals’⁴ residing at the temple premises and money is hard to come by! But it should not be done at the expense of taking away the devotees from what they actually came to place for: praying. After a point of time, I was feeling like a deer being stalked by hungry predators. I am actually feeling sad that i really could not appreciate the place, the architecture, the history and the mythology. All that I would think of, when somebody mentions the temple, is not Mr. Natarajar but the face of the sweet talking pattar who tried to get me to pay a whole lot of money to get ’special’ blessings from God couriered fortnightly to my home!

I am not sure if I am being very critical because I am losing my faith or if it’s this constant exposure to such blind faith/unfounded beliefs/touting that has made me lose any respect for the Almighty, or atleast for the ‘messengers’ of the Almighty.

Footnotes: 

1. place where the idol has been installed/consecrated; an altar

2. idol

3. ceremony of ablutions and symbolic offerings

4. temple priest

5. a prayer to Lord Muruga asking for his blessings

6. the starting words from a Tamil movie song

Game over for Xbox?

Looks like the dominant player in the Gaming console arena and one of the biggest products to come out of Redmond is struggling to keep it’s neck above the water. If trying to ward off serious threats of being sidelined by competitors PS3 and Wii was not enough, now Microsoft is facing serious trouble fixing up the bugs in their Xbox 360 hardware. Apparently, the Red Ring of death is going to cost Microsoft about $1.15Billion! Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s entertainment and devices division (which apparently reported an operating loss of $315 million on $929 million in revenue for the three-month period that ended in March), says there have been an “unacceptable high number of repairs.”  Surprising, then that NPD still rates XBox as the highest selling gaming console. This, yet another case of equating the US to the world.

Inside Out

A really closer look at the iPhone.

Movie Collection

I have made a rough list of movies that i want to watch/buy. Most of these movies, I have not watched yet, but some i have seen only in parts and others so long ago that i don’t remember. But i sure would like to make all of these a part of my collection. There are so many other movies that’d make the list but I have not included, either because i already have the DVD or I have seen it too recently to watch it in the near future.

Pulp Fiction (1994)
Amelie (2001)
American History X (1998)
The Pianist (2002)
Trainspotting (1996)
Love Actually (2003)
Groundhog Day (1993)
Dogville (2003)
Taxi Driver (1976)
The Notebook (2004)
Dead man walking (1995)
Twelve Angry Men (1957)
Before Sunrise (1995)
Before Sunset (2004)
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
My Life without me (2003)
Lost in Translation (2003)
Cinema Paradiso (1988)
When Harry met Sally (1989)
Reservoir Dogs (1992)
Se7en (1995)
Requiem for a dream (2000)
Sleepless in Seattle (1993)
Mystic River (2003)
Run Lola Run (1998)
The usual suspects (1995)
Goodbye Lenin (2003)

This list is by no means exhaustive. I will probably keep adding here, so that it could be useful to me later, and maybe to others too!

‘Ghajini’ better than ‘Memento’ ?!!!

Actor Aamir Khan has his own blog, and it really is an interesting read, as one gets an insider’s perspective of things. But one thing that really bothered me was his take on Memento.

“I got to know how the story came about. Murgadoss (Director of ‘Ghajini’) had heard about a film called MOMENTO and the concept had really fasinated him. Without having seen the film he went ahead and wrote his own version of the script and screenplay. Having finished his script he then saw MOMENTO, found it very different from what he had written, and went ahead and made GHAJINI. I had not seen MOMENTO myself untill then and was very curious to see it. On seeing it I thanked my stars that he had not seen MOMENTO before having written his script. I preffered GHAJINI any day. Momento I just couldn’t understand. For those of you who have asked me why I don’t have any problems doing a remake of a Hollywood film…, its NOT a remake. Watch both films and see for yourself. In my opinion this is a GENUIN case of ‘inspired from’, and nothing beyond that.”

Now, two things irk me. First of all, even a cursory look at the plot outline of Memento, is enough to convince anyone that Ghajini’s storyline is a shameless rip off of Memento. Secondly and more importantly, calling Ghajini better than Memento is sacrilegious! It’s like saying Sarkar is a much better movie than God Father or claiming Kaante to be better than it’a English original, Reservoir Dogs. Shudder!!!

But all the same, i’d really like to continue reading his post, if only to know more about what goes into making films!

IPhone – not the most perfect, but certainly lives up to the hype

Two days to go before Iphone fans can get their hands on the much awaited, much talked about mobile phone, there’s been a lot of guesses, predictions, extrapolations about how the phone would fare out in the market. But there have been a selected few, who actually got to have a hands on experience of the Iphone, like WSJ’s Walt Mossberg and NYTimes’ David Pogue. But Lev Grossman of Time sums up precisely what iphone is all about.

“It’s not quite right to call the iPhone revolutionary. It won’t create a new market, or change the entertainment industry, the way the iPod did. When you get right down to it, the device doesn’t even have that many new features—it’s not like Jobs invented voicemail, or text messaging, or conference calling, or mobile Web browsing. He just noticed that they were broken, and he fixed them.

But that’s important. When our tools don’t work, we tend to blame ourselves, for being too stupid or not reading the manual or having too-fat fingers. “I think there’s almost a belligerence—people are frustrated with their manufactured environment,” says Ive (Jonathan Ive, Designer, Iphone). “We tend to assume the problem is with us, and not with the products we’re trying to use.” In other words, when our tools are broken, we feel broken. And when somebody fixes one, we feel a tiny bit more whole. “

All said and done, IPhone is going to do to the mobile market what Ipod did to the music world. It is going to totally revamp the way the mobile manufacturers target their users.

So, if you are all set to go and wait outside your mobile shop and be among the first to lay hands on the iphone, i suggest you take a look at this .