Tagged: culture

Mother’s Day


Yesterday was Mother’s day. Although this and many such more ‘occassions’ are largely Hallmarks’ creations, sometimes I feel that they do serve a useful purpose. For instance, I sent my mom flowers yesterday. Now it is true that she would have been happy to get flowers from me on any day of the year, but the fact that it was Mother’s day, made it extra special for her.

Its kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy I guess. And as with many other things, anything like this needs a certain amount of critical mass to take off. For instance, if no one acknowledges Mother’s day, it wouldn’t be special anymore. Conversely, if it isn’t special, then no one will acknowledge it. That is where a big company like Hallmark can use its muscle to push things into limelight, make an ordinary day special.

On a related note, I find it quite ironic that I can send a nice bouquet of fresh flowers from here to anywhere in India for less than 10 dollars, while the same costs more than 30 within the US.

Cryptonomicon


{{ http://members.iquest.net/~jswartz/jks/humor/command/cryptonomicon.jpg?200×150|Cryptonomicon}}

I have finished the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptonomicon|legendary]] [[http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0380973464/102-0182508-4635362|Cryptonomicon]]. Enough has been said about it by a lot of really smart people, so I won’t waste my time writing yet another review. But I would like to list some of the things I really liked about the book:

* Truly engaging plot. I couldn’t put all of the pieces together until almost at the end.
* Neal Stephenson knows what he’s talking about. Unlike many other authors, when he writes something about crypto or email or laptops or Unix, it feels real.
* The best business plan template EVER written!
* Loooooooooong. Its fun :)
* Visionary. I’m sure this book inspired a lot of entrepreneurs out there!

Highly recommended! And now I have to start on the the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baroque_Cycle|Baroque Cycle]]

The amorous male


What is it with men and sex? I’m sure all you guys out there have heard the ever familiar jaunt from all the girls out there — “all men are like” or “all men want the same thing” or “men can’t think of anything else”.

Sitting on the bus this morning, I was wondering what is the deal with this obsession with sex? After much contemplation, I concluded that all said and done, we men are just left in a very very confused state. On one hand, there is the biological urge hard wired into our brains. It makes sense that Nature would have wanted men to be wanton in their sexual adventures so as to ensure the greatest diversity in the off-springs. On the other hand, men are tied down by the rules of civilization, confined to the boundaries of marriages or other relationships.

Before I proceed, I must make it clear that I am **not** against any of socities institutions, marriage in particular. Nor am I endorsing amorous acts that are counter productive to the society (eve teasing, for example).

This post is just exploring the confusion that I’m sure a lot of men experience with their amorous desires. So, there we are, fighting against the opposing forces of nature and society. What are we to do? Apart from our personal ambitions, one might also consider the long term future of mankind itself. Societies change over time, and so do their rules. But in the long run, for man-kind’s survival, is it not advisable that we ensure the greatest diversity in our offsprings. On the other hand, human population is no where close to extinction, and certainly not due to lack in “variety”.

Given this, does it make more sense to stick to the rules of contemporary society and try to find satisfaction in our relationships? Thus, perhaps, leading to greater peace and prosperity? I don’t know, but I sure do wonder.

Reverse cultural shock


My friends and I have had this thought cross our minds several times during the past few months, everytime the topic of visiting comes up: are we going to get a reverse cultural shock when we go back? I know that people have been bored to death with discussion on the impact of US culture on India and how fast Indians are catching up and so on. While the debate is certainly old, its visibility is not.

Till about a few years back, except for some niche “cosmopolitan” pockets, most of India was “safe” from the so-called perverse invasion of the Western culture. But now, with the proliferation of mass media and the Internet right into the heartlands of India (I mean jungles and villages), things are changing. The changes are much more visible than they were before; but this time, the invasion is not from the outside, its from the **inside**. And the West is hardly to blame.

Consider this: my grandmother’s house is in a small village called “Chhoti Baroni” about 20 kms away from a small district called Datia (smallest in Madhya Pradesh actually) located in the dry, arid interior of MP. Its an ordinary village, with its share of ruins, farms, dried up rivers, and of course, pigs. Last time I was visiting, I was pleasantly surprised to see a shopkeeper advertising internet access in his small shop in the village market. Not that its was popular or anything, but it was a beginning atleast.

But much more shocking was the conversation I overheard between some young kids playing around our courtyard — these were little 7-8 year olds, no knowledge of English (or Hindi for that matter) except that picked up from all the TV serials (oh yes, cable has been around in the village for quite a while now). And they were talking about love and boyfriend-girlfriend games (where previously we had the every popular mummy-papa games) etc.

Of course, one could easily dismiss this as regular, cute, meaningless chatter of youngsters. But there was something in the way of their manner that seemed almost… sinister. Well thats probably too strong a word to use, but it certainly didn’t look innocent to me. I mean with the whole country hooked onto Ekta Kapoor’s K-legacy, what can we expect really? On one hand these serials try to emphasize the “strong moral foundation” of the Indian culture, and on the other hand the stories all revolve around husbands cheating, wives having affairs, unmarried girls getting pregnant, rapes and suicides.

Another (extremely) troublesome case in point is Bollywood. Just take a look at the kind of movies released over the past few months — “hits” like Hawas, Murder, Julie, Girlfriend, Masti and numerous others that I don’t care to mention here. There are two things that bother me the most about these movies. The first is that the sole USP of these movies was skinshow. None, I repeat **none** of them had anything in the name of originality (either in terms of script or production or acting or whatever). Its remarkable how two movies with the **exact** same plot (Hawas and Murder) can both be released within days of one another and still make good money.

The other thing that worries me is that these movies are actually popular with the vast majority of the Indian mass. I am a bit old-fashioned, but I can proudly say that I share a very open relationship with my family. But even I would feel uncomfortable at watching some of these movies with my family. And they’re all being advertised as family movies. I mean, who are they kidding?? And the fact that all this is just sinking down as “routine” into mainstream Indian cinema just means that its sinking down as “routine” into the mindsets of the people as well.

The isolated eaves-dropping incident I mentioned above (well its not isolated actually, there are plenty of more “colorful” examples that I chose to leave out here) is nothing compared to whats happening in towns and cities. Especially those that are popular with students — like Pune and Bangalore. The stories that I’ve heard about these places are nothing short of spectacularly ridiculous and lust-infested in most cases. But you know what the saddest part in all this cultural exchange business is? It seems to me that this is an eventuality, and that there is little we can do to prevent it.

As I mentioned in a [[http://floatingsun.net/blog/2004/07/14/182/| previous post]], IMHO the world is eventually going to converge towards a global culture in another 5-10 years, and not surprisingly this culture is going to be nothing like the Indian culture that you and I know. I’m not saying its good or bad, I’m just saying its sad, because atleast I love whatever little tradition we have left. [sigh]

Heroes by choice?


I’ve been reading up a whole lot of comics lately — Batman mostly, and some special issues like the Watchmen. And spending the day at Comic Con and reading the Watchmen specially set me thinking about this whole concept of “heroes”. In particular, Watchmen raises out a lot of relevant questions — both sociological and philosphical — about heroes, their motives, their existence (or lack thereof). There are a whole lot of things that I want to talk about on this topic, and I’ll try to address them one at a time.

For this post, I shall be focusing on just one question — how many heroes (let us leave aside the “definition” for now, and just work with whatever general notion people usually have about heroes) become who they are **by choice**. I thought long and I thought hard, and I was able to come with very very few answers. I mean just look at the history behind any character (real or fictional) and try to figure out why they became what they did. In most cases, the protagonist usually goes through some tragedy in his/her life, or at the least some “defining moment” which leaves an indelible impression upon his/her heart.

However, in most cases, I found that these “defining moments” were seldom “happy moments” — usually some sort of tragedy or irony was attached to them; which seems reasonable in the sense that you don’t really expect normal (happy) incidents to make a strong impression anyways because thats the way things are //supposed to be//.

I started out with comic book characters — with the exception of Superman (well, he did too), almost everyone else has a very strong tragic history. Of course, it goes without saying that there was always **some** choice exerted in making that conscious decision to go out and do something about it; something out of the ordinary. I mean Bruce Wayne could have just as well chosen to get along with his life and not worry about making Gotham a safer place at all. With Superman, this choice was excercised in the decision to make use of his powers (which were inherent in him, no choice there) for a humanitarian cause.

Then I started looking at some of the real life examples (now here the definition of hero makes things very subjective — Hilter might be a hero to some, but most certainly not to me, But still, just bear with me, for the point I’m making applies in either case). Naturally my first inclination was to look at figureheads from the Indian freedom struggle, and then some of the numerous great men and women that history has seen. Again and again, I found that people who did something “heroic” usually went through some traumatic experience, and then excercised that choice to do something about it.

However, I was not able to find convincing examples of situations where regular, average people whose lives were just “ordinary” had decided to do something like that; though there’s no compelling reason for not doing so — I mean who wouldn’t want to be a hero? Depending on what your definition of a “hero” is, Alexander the Great or other kings like him might fall into the Superman type of category — where the “power” was inherent, and no tragedy was needed to drive them.

So then, the question that I’m driving at really is, where does that leave the average man? Does all this mean that an average man can never hope to achieve something heroic (please, there are always exceptions. I’m just trying to look at the general case here) without having to forego a tragedy first? How effective is simply the “desire” to do something great? Does that generate enough motivation and drive to carry you through? If not, then why don’t we see a lot many “heroes” around us? (I know many ordinary people are “personal” heroes in their own right, but I’ll come to the definition of a hero later on. Right now I’m talking about the stereotypical image of a hero) Why don’t we see our average regular man inspiring and leading men and women to glory?

It seems to me that either an ordinary person just can not do something heroic unless he/she experiences something extra-ordinary (that “defining moment”), or worse yet, that we simply just do not have the need for heroes. Now thats another very very intersting question to think about — what exactly, is, society’s dependence on hero-like figures? Can we ever have a hero-less society, where everyone is just ordinary? Too many questions. I’ll talk about this more soon. Next on line is going to be, who decides a hero? What makes a hero? What are people’s definitions of a hero?