The manifestation of argument in the great political debate

• Argument as government: In all, and especially, the industrial democracies of this world, the implementation of the decisions of the state as a discernible body on the functioning of the society is essentially a product of the great political debate. Even though a party has been elected to power, the basis of the presence of argument during the triumphant party’s tenure is contained in the fact that democracy does not halt at granting the citizen his vote, but at crediting him with having influenced the making of a decision in the senate. In fact, in a colloquial sense, democracy would indeed be perceived as the protection of the powers of the citizen on a national level at the very least. However, the strength of democracy lies not completely in the strength of this protection, but in the manifestation of these powers that have been safeguarded by it. As a result, in my opinion, democracy is not the modus operandi of a state post-polity, but the documented encouragement of debate and contention between different leaders and, eventually, different responsibilities. The face of the governing party is only the face of the nation for other states, but within, it is the citizen and rightly so. Argument, even a non-ideal one, dutifully fosters the inculcation of discipline and morality amongst the most narrow-minded amongst us, and when it is that the future of a burgeoning nation of a billion depends on the decisions of a volatile oligarchy, agreement and opposition are both equally essential in the making of a decision. One cannot afford to pin all of one’s hopes on the mindset of one man.

• Argument as representation of the voter:

The big picture

Drawn above is a simple representation of the electoral process in India. Voters from all over the nation vote to elect the central government, which may be a single party which manages to secure the minimum majority of 272 seats (out of a total of 543) in the lower house, Lok Sabha, or multiple parties that coalesce under the umbrella of a common goal. Once a party has been lofted to the center, a ministry is formed that manages the various portfolios. As I stated earlier, the decision of the citizenry in electing such and such a government is questioned in the senate when argument is used as a tool for decision-making. If the ruling party wins the argument, the investment of the voting populace is vindicated. If the ruling party (or parties) meets with formidable opposition that it cannot quell with sufficient conviction, we the people will have made a mistake, nay wronged.

• What the good arguer has: In his ‘Language and Responsibility’ (1977), noted linguist Noam Chomsky asks only the following from any man who has an opinion:

1. 1. The capability of facing the facts objectively,
   2. The usage of a rational line of common sense,
   3. A Cartesian sense of argument, per se, and
   4. A little skepticism.

Whenever there is some “breaking news” in the air, the various components of the mass media, especially the news channels on the television, turn to professionals in fields pertaining to the content of the news in order to extricate an opinion that is either valuable by itself or is made so by repeated broadcasts. Why this esotericism? Why can’t the chap behind the desk ask you and me if the country has to intervene in Angola? When the above factors suffice to define the good arguer, why is it that I must be in possession of compatible certification to but profess a one-line opinion? What must be discussed is the content and not my right to discuss it!

• Isolation of power by conserving argument: Arguments can be brought to life by interpreting information, and information is nothing but the lingual interpretation of an event, the interpretation being performed in order to transmit and convey it to people who are unaware of the occurrence of it. The information we assess and digest everyday is proportional as well as dependent on the ideals of the local government, which governs the information that it thinks its people need to come into contact with, and the ideas and opinions of the people around us that constitute the populace in general. With a democratic government ruling the central aspects of the Indian economy, finance, industry, society and other aspects of living and development, the interests of each individual vested in it demands productive work day in and day out. On the other hand, the ruling government, to carry out its wishes, needs people other than those who control its functions to fall in line with their solutions. Due to the embedding of this fundamental rule, as it were, in the roots of the structure of every democratic state, information can only play a greater role in the lives of the people of the state every day. The conveyance of this information happens through the media, viz. print, audio, and audiovisual. The print media includes newspapers, magazines, newsletters, articles, essays, stories and others; the audio media includes, prominently, radio channels; video comprises of information delivered via telebroadcasting, movies, etc. The radio and the television are two modern techniques that have stolen the limelight of sorts from the print media. Owing to advancements in technology, of these two, the audiovisual media is growing steadily as well as quickly, borrowing from the inherently faster conveyance of data, the greater accessibility, and, with the incorporation of a sense of personality, the notion of originality and being specific to a given set of peoples with respect to their ethnicity involved is also born. Therefore, keeping in mind the importance of such a medium, its regulation has to be handled with care and finesse in order to get across your message while maintaining the original intensity of the purpose and the frequency of conveying it. But in a large, immensely populous, and democratic nation like India, apart from the already very many number of television channels, there are many more being operated by political parties. Although this does not constitute any violation of any rule for that matter, using the medium as a method of propaganda is not something I would suggest. You can not initiate and run programs just because it’s there for you to. In a way, it violates the right to information. How? Information is only when it is factual and wholly interpretative in a neutral manner. When you tamper and mess with it in order to get across a message that has been interpreted in a biased manner, it is a misrepresentation of the event that has occurred. You are now putting specific ideas in the minds of the people, ideas that can invariably lead only to a single conclusion. Furthermore, but in a partly trivial way, political propaganda must always begin and end during the time of elections for the local or national government, and must be nonexistent at all other times unless it is being projected via the deeds of those elected to office. Telebroadcasting can not be considered as a deed because it is propaganda itself, and parties that use this as a tool to brainwash the plebian and proletarian population in their favour is wrong. You will notice that now, with everyone around you being highly opinionated about some political party or the other, the ability to think freely and objectively will be on the decline.

Welcome to the city

When you look at a city, it’s like reading the hopes, aspirations and pride of everyone who built it.

– Hugh Newell Jacobsen

There are two opposing schools of thought popular amongst philosophers called teleology and metaphysical naturalism. While the former dictates that we have eyes just to we can fulfill the purpose of sight, the latter has us believe that we can see because we have eyes. If one were to disregard both and instead notice the importance paid to the relationship between cause of effect, one will consequently observe that cannot exist without the occurrence of the other. It is the same with the wishes of mind and the desire it manifests in out actions. Whether or not we choose to understand it, has been present for eons and will inevitably persist. This has been evident ever since mankind, as we understand it be in form and function today, began to group itself into small communities that soon proved to be the fundamental and formative units of civilization. In what can only be termed as a systemic progression that involved man utilizing the natural resources around him, similar communities, which evidenced the possibility (or, to be more optimistic, the presence) of a common purpose of humanity itself, began to get drawn toward each other because of a few reasons. One of these included the fact that since each community had its own set of requirements in terms of the quantity and quality of those natural resources, those with similar demands had similar patterns of migration and settlement. This pattern was also the basis of the formation of little villages, towns and, eventually, large cities.

In India, the four largest cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata are prime examples of such regionalistic concentrations. The population within these cities is very high, especially since the last three are coastal settlements. But once you step outside their limits, the density drops drastically. Although this drop in numbers could have been more gradual earlier on, the high slope indicates that people settling in such hotspots began to fare better economically and, thus, socially, which in turn led to a steady migration from rural to such urban settlements, which in turn led to an unnatural distribution of natural resources. For example, suppose a 1,000 nomads are looking for a suitable place to settle, when they chance upon a large lake. They decide to settle at one point, say Point A. At another point B, at the opposite side of the lake, there is a mountain range at the feet of which flourishes a herd of cows. The community chief decides to send a group of 200 people to B to hunt down the animals, skin them and put them up for trade. The 200 then proceed to settle down at B since it is a more convenient option. Now, there is a possibility of there emerging a propensity amongst those at B to trade their valuables from B itself instead of sending them down to A and then waiting for the return of the caravans. Such a decision seeming a logistically enhanced one, the settlement at B will now exhibit greater and perhaps accelerated growth rates. At this point, those from A will abandon their homes in favor of moving to B. As the settlement grows larger, the group will now, as a second step, seek to minimize the amount of inconvenience tolerated in the procurement of resources. Sitting at B, the people will now travel a particular distance from B, gather the resources and then return home. Since traveling longer distances entailed a greater number of inconveniences, the density of a particular resource will decrease exponentially along a radially outward direction beginning from the heart of the settlement.

Graph depicting density of resources

(The curve will climb up again, exponentially or not, once the distance from a particular settlement is large enough to ensure that no inhabitant will have ventured in those parts.)

Now, points A and B can be compared in real life to any one of the following pairs:

1. Rural and urban settlements: With the onset of industrialization, almost everything that man used – from the tools in manufacturing to the vehicles in procurement – leaped a giant leap from singular primitivism to a point where he could now put together different tools to make one ‘supertool’ that handled more than one job. With the forerunners being the automotive and shipping industries, other smaller manufacturers and, subsequently, their competitors were forced to switch to machine-labor. In the example above, the lake can be compared to the factories and warehouses that enhanced the availability of these machine parts.
2. Developing and developed nations: Similar to the first case, a developed nation has more resources – whether in terms of money or otherwise – to offer anyone who wants a shot at them. One good example would be how skilled software engineers from south India migrate to the Silicon Valley: the Indian has the skill, and the US has the resource.
3. At a simpler level, points A and B can be alternatively compared to summer and winter capitals of some states.

Now, at this point, cities employ the basis they have in the availability of resources and begin to flourish as economic hotbeds. By this, I mean that cities as a whole begin to realize the fluency its people will begin to have in terms of trading in resources other than the ones with which they established themselves. Up until this point in time, the inhabitants will have concentrated on developmental activities. Once it becomes evident that the resources circulating within the city have become self-sustainable, the limits of the settlement will begin to expand – in terms of size, population and, most importantly, as a new source of resources. Now, what will happen is something like ripples on water. This city will now behave like the lake, drawing skilled people towards it, simultaneously rejecting those who seem incapable of surviving in its environs (like the abandonment of A).

So, we have seen how a community is born, how it grows to become a city, and how a city itself begins to attract people from different parts of the nation. However, ultimately, what does a city represent in a non-utilitarian sense? How does it contribute to humanity as a whole instead of just to the nation that harbors it? If you go through the previous paragraph, you will find that the answer is simple. A city contributes to humanity as a whole not by giving away something that belongs to itself, but by manifesting the triumph that nestles silently in the nudges that it gives us when we think we have lost. In other words, a city is the first image that comes to mind when you might speak to me of humanity as a whole. When you might tell me that there are always some people who will find it in them to help me selflessly, I will think of a city first. In fact, when you live in a city, you will realize that it is just more than the shelter it first took form as. It transforms itself, blind to the eye and shielded from the piercing gaze of the mind, gradually consuming our sorrows for nutrition and purifying the air around us. We ignore it as it speaks of a mind of its own, and we shun it when it rains the day we leave for a different city, when the roads are bad, when we almost miss the flight we’ve to catch, when we finally board the flight and find that the journey has been delayed for an hour due to bad weather, when we land in a strange place later to find no friendliness lingering the air as it once did…

Do Communists really have no class?: Some clarifications.

Yesterday night, after I put up the post questioning the possible fallacies of Communism, I had a small chat online with a friend of mine who was studying law. He had a few questions for me, the answers to which I thought I had mentioned in the post itself. Once I give it a comprehensive read, I realised I had taken some concepts and ideas for granted. Here are the clarifications:

1. In the flowchart, I have not taken a just and an absolutely meritorious law for granted. I have only assumed it to be the origin of my arguments. If I were to give you a physical representation, a sheet of graph paper would be apt. To me, the origin {0,0} is out of focus; the “law” point rests at a different point {x,y}, the point at which law as a concept in life becomes necessary.
2. I have taken the law to be just and fair, the (possibly necessary) precursor to the birth of society as it exists today. What I mean is the ‘law’ which I have taken to be the embryo of equality and justice is a just law, if necessary in an absolutist sense.
3. The metaphor of the smoke against the white skies I have used to detail the relationship between equality and freedom must be noted when reading about an individual’s rights being “endowed”. Here, I am not refuting the naturalist who says individuals are born with rights; I am saying the rights as we know them, the rights as we seem to be able to invoke them in the halls of justice, are endowed with. In other words, the rights I am referring to are those with the law as a backdrop, and not those that exist simply from, say, an idealistic existentialist’s point of view.
4. And, yes, I am a positivist. 🙂

(Refer to ‘Some useful links‘ for further information.)

On service & duty

One needs to be slow to form convictions, but once formed they must be defended against the heaviest odds.

– Mahatma Gandhi

To begin nonchalantly on such a broad issue is a momentous task. To spare myself the trouble and the reader all the verbal nimiety, let me begin by asking myself: what is service? A service is work done by the individual as substitution for the duty that is due another individual. When you exercise your right or perform your duty, it does not constitute service because both of them are for you to do so. It is when you offer to help someone or to give up some time of your own in order to do someone else’s work does it become service. At a restaurant, the waiters perform a service when they deliver the food to your tables. The price it comes at is money. On the warfront, when a soldier fires his gun and kills a terrorist, he performs a service for his nation. In both cases, it is not their duty to do so. The waiter earns money in the bargain, and the soldier does it out of either the need for survival or in gratitude of his nation’s gifts. The world around you and me would indeed be drab and devoid of any humanity were it not for the services of those around us. Self-sustenance in this scenario is a highly impossible state of living. We can hope to progress only by standing on the shoulders of giants.

As a 20 year-old, service does not usually take on such magnified proportions for me. I live in a small world around me. My duties, from day to night, include washing the plate I have eaten in and dusting the mattress I have lept on. The food I eat is prepared in the kitchen by my mother. the water I drink seems ready available when I open the taps. However, what I do does not seem like any service to me. It seems a frail triviality as soon as I step outside my door and begin to walk the busy streets outside my house. The either sides of the streets are lined with tens of shops and what seem like small malls, and the floating population on the road at any time of day stand between 5,000-10,000. With no regard for, at the very least, the cleaners who sweep the road at night, garbage lies strewn all over the place. Now, would you imagine me walking up to a stranger outside a saree shop who just threw down a plastic bag full of emptied food packets, and asking her to pick the bag up and put it in the garbage bin? That is what I did, and the woman turned around and ran. She thought I was mad.

Suppose 5,000 such men, and 5,000 such women. Petitions to the local municipal councils don’t help – all I did was ask for them to impose a fine upon those who littered. Their reply: “All that garbage is inevitable. Do you expect each and every one of them to find a garbage bin and throw their stuff in there?” Yes, I do. I replied so, and the counselor looked away. What is wrong in expecting such behaviour? If I can do it, why can’t you? If I could wake up to the day when each and every one of those individuals on the street uses the garbage bins provided, I will be a happy man, for that will be true service. The support you can provide the nation with does not stop at finding work within the country and boosting up its economy. In fact, that is not service at all if you don’t live in gratitude of what the country seems capable of giving you day after day, free of charge. It is like your house; rather, it is your house. Keep it clean. Would you litter your bedroom with rotten vegetables just because the maid cleans it for a fee everyday? I am sure you wouldn’t. It is for this reason that I would, if given the chance, enter into politics. I would like to impart this objectivity in thought, this simplicity of cause, to everyone around me. When Mahatma Gandhi called out for all “brothers and sisters to enter politics, to better this nation”, our nation, the likes of Lal Bahadur Shastri and Chakravarti Rajagopalachari came together. Of course, I can go on about corruption in the form of bribes and what not, but what I want to stress is the dereliction of duty. Glaring in contrast to the glory of days past, what irks me most is that, today, the performance of one’s duty happens to be the rendition of a service. That is a shame.

Many of us look to a service as optional. It is not, but neither is it obligatory. Today, it is required. Like in a game that involves no luck, when a point is lost to the opponent, a lead can only be established when all players put in some extra effort. Similarly, looking at the state of the nation in terms of one’s recognition of one’s duties and responsibilities, a difference can be effected only when we step out of our way, only when we put in some extra effort. The preparedness to do so manifests as true hope, and the will of action manifests as the vision. As a 20 year-old, I believe I should hope, and this is one of the many paths that seem to readily open its gates. Switch off all unnecessary electronic appliances when you leave a room. We don’t need a ‘World Earth Day’ or a ‘World Energy Day’ to make us do that for one hour in a year. They do that to make us aware. If you want to respond, don’t mimick. Act. When you walk the streets, don’t litter. If you see someone littering, do not ignore. That is where you make the real difference. With all the intelligence we boast of at the places where we study and work, we don’t seem to have to put any of it into action. We look to win the Nobel, we look to make money. If that is what you ultimately seek above all else, then you will have come into this world and left without a sign of gratitude.

The Change Of Guard

Recently, I had an interesting conversation with a few friends of mine. We were talking about those things that 20 year olds usually talk about when suddenly the talks turned sober. Someone from some corner had brought up the issue of paedophilia, and immediately, small political arguments began to pop up from around the table. While we were engrossed in it, Benjamin made a quirky comment when asked by Niaz if he was willing to start an awareness campaign in college about it. This is what he said: “I’m not worried man! Oprah Winfrey will take care of it. She is one of the most powerful women in the world, she’s not gonna sit quiet in her studio and let paedophilia take over!” Although all that he said was right, it was not enough. I began to wonder if this was the mentality we had all begun to assume, that of complacence in favour of letting the lobbyists take care of everything. Where is democracy today? People think that once they’ve voted, their job is done. It is not! Democracy has a meaning, a very fundamental underlying principle that makes it the most efficient way to rule a country. It gives power to the people, we the people, not only during the elections but also after it. How many of us know that in India there quite a few methods to impeach our own MLA when he is in power? I’m sure the US also has something along the same lines. How many of us actually realise that while all the ministers sit in their chambers of ‘power’ and discuss ‘national issues’, they can only discuss the questions we have asked? For if it is money they are after, no minister would bother to open his mouth once the elections are done with. Our government runs the country, but WE run the government itself! We forget that chain of command and drown in cheap self-pity, an emotion that ultimately cascades into surrendering to the ways of the corrupt. If you think the sewage dump stinks, it’s only because you’ve dumped your garbage there. If we think it’s too late to change anything, we’re wrong. It’s never too late but I agree that it’s easier said than done. Let’s make a change today. All we need is belief. All we need to change is the small things around us. We need to be able to believe that one day, things will be different.

I’m sure you would have heard all of this some thousand times, but have you ever wondered why people keep talking about it?  

My Totalitarian Society

I am falling in quality. The writer in me is dead. I don’t know when or how he died. He just did. And I miss him. I spend time these days listening to music. My sleep cycle has been distorted. I am losing more and more classes by the week. I thought it would get better, but it is only getting worse. I can no longer wake up in the mornings. It is as though I am beginning to abhor the rays of the sun itself. I spend more time with a smaller and smaller group of people. Unlike before, I don’t want to run around in large groups all the time. I am liking being alone. Especially in my room, with my books and my food. I shouln’t have purchased food. I shouldn’t in the future. I have been listening to the same song for the past 10 minutes. I like the song. I don’t know what half the words mean. I once had a friend. He taught me how to listen to the lyrics of a song along with its music. Since then, even though the music was bad, I would listen to a few songs because I liked their lyrics. But now, again, I’ve lost my interest in the lyrics. Only the music. My old collection of good-music songs is lost. It happened when my laptop broke down. I am now spending useful time these days trying to find new-music. I found one a few days back, the one I am listening to. It is surprising how music can affect your thoughts. It tells you what to think and how. It gives you a cinematic feel. It raises the curtains without so much as a whisper. The actors tumble out onto the stage, with the only promise of a good exit. That too if only they put up a good show. And that they do! I like it when a movie plays in my head. I can be in a big, fancy theatre, with the whole room to myself. Or probably someone else with me. Not a girl, not someone to hold hands with. Only to see what his or her reaction would be to being alone in a big, fancy theatre. With a nice and mushy movie playing. My dreams in the night are like this. Or not my dreams. The few minutes I spend awake just before falling asleep, thinking of something to send me to sleep. I like the big, fancy theatre. Maybe it is my demise. I spend so much time awake in the theatre watching a movie that does not exist, I spend my mornings sleeping. It doesn’t matter how many alarms ring – I switch them all off – or how many people bang on my door – I tell them I am already awake and getting ready – I always sleep till noon. I have no time to write my book these days. It was all going well till my laptop crashed. I lost 200 pages then and there. It is not a good feeling to start anew on the dream of your life. 200 pages is no small thing. Two of my friends helped me get back on track. One of them said shit happens, the other said it was what I deserved. One encouraged, one discouraged. It was a perfect combination. I like having challenges that others can’t solve. I had a  Sanskrit teacher at school who once told me about a devotee of Krishna. The devotee, he said, prayed to the Lord everyday, asking Him for all the challenges one could face in life, and along with it, the mind to tackle them. That is a perfect prayer because it is not selfish. It is deserving of a devotee to be blessed like that. The challenges and the mind to tackle them. I only wish the rest of my classmates had listened to him, the Sanskrit professor, with more interest and sincerety. I listened to him with interest and sincerely so. Those words became my prayer. But, at some point, you lose track of what is a challenge and what is not. Everything becomes a challenge, and your belief in Go becomes fanatical. You become a religious zealot. You think God is touch with always, and he is testing you always. You begin to think you are special, one of a kind, while you are only becoming more and more mad. In the end, which is I think the beginning of this madness itself, you become shunned. Your mind collapses into your body. You become a materialist. Your faith in God is saturated with meaningless prayers. You look for pleasure, for entertainment. When that happens, you negate the existence of God. You call him a scoundrel for screening all these pleasures of life away from you. You ask him why it is your apparent duty to worship Him when he has done nothing for you. He, obviously, will not seem to answer. You will look for newer and newer faiths. Newer realms of pleasure. To err is human, and therein lies the end to this tale. To err. We err. I do. I know you do. I know he does, and I know she does. Everyone does. It is natural to do so. Which is why we have given perfection the title of godliness. It is a surrender. Society, today, is a growing farce. When everyone who is part of it is a fake, how can the society itself be real? Would you call a zoo full of plastic animals a real zoo? Isn’t it a toy zoo? I think it is. The society is fake, a duplicate. It has become a simulation. You can only use it to see Utopia. But the real Utopia can only exist when there are real people in the world. As long as there are no real people, there will only be a fake Utopia. Fake politicians will fight for fake governments. Fake diplomats will argue over fake agreements. Fake soldiers will wage fake wars. Fake teachers will teach fake subjects, and fake students will take down fake notes. Fake people will have sex and give birth to fake babies. Yes, I do ask you not to dispute the innocence of a just born child. but, if a child is destined to be brough up in a fake society, I do not believe in the fake innocence the child will come to bear. Sometimes, people deserve to know the truth. So many movies are made. Good movies. These movies have such strong messages against totalitarianism. But they fail at one point. It is not governments that are totalitarian. It is the society. It is a fake society that knows it is fake. It is a deliberate debauchery. The people know they are not for real. It is not a totalitarian government we should be afraid of. The threat is the totalitarian society.  

Pseudologia, Psychedelia, Pareidolia & Phantasmagoria

(The intriguing Ps, and why they shaped the world – not how.)

Where can I find you?

Pseudologia fantastica is the scientific term for compulsive lying. The person who suffers from it (suffers? or enjoys?) tends to encapsulate himself in a fictional world where he finds his greatest dreams fulfilled. For example, someone devoid of care and love from birth will invent fantastic tales about his heroic exploits: he will make sure he stays in the centre of all this, and he will make sure he receives all the attention. Pseudologia is a harmless little way to stay alive. Pseudologia is a harmless little way to go farther and farther away from suicide. Pseudologia is a harmless little way to face the truth and still be not ashamed of it. It’s a psychological compensation for all the downfalls and betrayals of your life, unless of course you decide to take it a step further and break the shell for yourself. Even then, it’s a good thing because, now, you’re exposed to the truth, you’re handed a pardon, and given the chance once more to learn for yourself about life and how bland it really is. In my opinion, compulsive lying shouldn’t be given a scientific name and be termed a ‘disease’ or whatever it is. It should be left alone to dominate the psyche of the little man to such an extent that he himself chooses to discard it in favour of the reality. Escapism works only when you want to escape, not when you’re dragged to the other side of the fence by a piece of rope that got hitched to your pants by mistake. And if you’re thinking what I’m thinking, the answer is yes.

Mati Klarwein's cover art for Santana's 'Abraxas'.

The 70s saw an obsession with the psychedelic genre of everything, although it was most prominently observed in the music of that period. Psychedelia is a state of mind wherein it is trapped in the pursuit of a perception it has not experienced before, and at the end of which is the ‘release’ of the mind from its overbearingly common environs. Many art works, especially those by Mati Klarwein, marked this change through vivid imagery and apparently meaningless depictions of everyday objects. I really don’t know how one describes a change in experience. If I had had any previous experiences of this sort, I could have done a comparative study to bring out the finer points of both. So, how do you describe a new experience? It has no precedence, it has no cause. It stems from a change in the ways of living of those around you, as well as a change in the times of the nation. In the 1970s, there were a few wars raging around the globe. AIDS was yet to be discovered. Apartheid was coming to a melodramatic close, apart from a few bremstrahlungg events. Women began to awaken to the true meaning of feminism, and why it was important for them to speak up for their rights. The Cold War isolated the north of Asia from the rest of the world. Cuba, by now under the firm grip of Fidel Castro and Marxism, became trapped in its past with mounting economic sanctions from the USA. As the world assumed a unipolar way of existence, so also the people living in it. The rigidity of trust collapsed into a wall of questions. You either had to belong or defect. And since everyone either belonged or defected, the society itself assumed a polarity: men and women began to look at everything from a newer perspective, one that involved more than just the personality of others, one that involved political ideologies as well. As they drifted more and more from what was, till then, normal, a new order was formed that had each one of us questioning our selves as to who we are. The obsession we had towards being in touch with our peoples, albeit in changing times, saw the birth of psychedelia.

Up is down is up is down!

I think I know where perception comes from, and I think I know what a change in our perception is capable of. I can go mad, or I can go genius. And how does that happen? Well, I think it all begins from a change in they way we see things (and no, perception is different). We perceive them when we establish a relationship with them and, in order to be able to revisit that moment in space and time again, we give the relationship a name. But once we have perceived something, the way we see them is a response to the stimuli of perception. We suddenly lose track of how could respond to what we see or hear. For example, we all know what craters are. And we all know what and where the moon is. But who is ‘the man on the moon’? It’s just a large crater on the moon’s one face, and we have perceived it to be a crater when we found out what craters were. But ‘the man on the moon’ still continues to interest us. We choose to go against the norm and change our perception in order to satisfy ourselves, sometimes our hidden desires. You have perceived your wife as having said something, and you have understood the meaning of it also. But you don’t like her, and you want your softcore revenge. So you take offense from what she said, you choose to understand it in a different way in order to try and score a victory. And that’s pareidolia. If perception is the sight and hearing of our minds, then pareidolia is the voice. It’s your subconscious rhetoric, it’s your utmost degree of expressionism. Pareidolia is the first step towards reformation. No one can simply take things on this lonely planet for granted. Most of them need reason, most of them need a meaning. These are the people afraid of change. But there are some of us who believe in ourselves more than anyone, and these are the people who are indifferent to change: they will always continue to be who they were, because that is their true self. However, there are a few who don’t know what to do. They are stuck in the pages of a paradox, and for them, the grass is always greener on the other side of the field. Like Jack Sparrow says, “A dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest”. For these few people, pareidolia is a tool to change direction. In other words, pareidolia is the birth of revolution.

Phantoms!

Phantasmagoria, my favourite! Although it is more widely attributed to be a precinema cinematographic technique, phantasmagoria is simply the creation of illusions by controlling the direction and amount of light in a point in space. Light, a simple but important part of physics, is what gives us sight, and sight is our primary judge of the truth. Seeing is believing, isn’t it? Have you heard anyone say “hearing is believing”? Or “smelling is believing”? Even if you’re listening to a song over the radio or walking into a confectionery, seeing remains the only way of believing. It has been branded into the pages of our history. A puppet show comes to life only when you forget that they are wooden dolls suspended on strings. You have to stop thinking for yourself if you want to see, for sight is the oldest instrument to perceive the truth. Nothing can get in its way, and nothing should if you want to see what you want to see. But if I were to want to corrupt your beliefs on some things, I would first go for your sight. I would have you see ghosts, I would have you see spirits. I would have you base your beliefs in a new world, a world you know exists just by your sight. Phantasmagoria is but a device I could use to have think as me. Phantasmagoria is propaganda. You want to do something, I want to do something else. I am not interested in why you want to do it that way; all I want is for you to join me. And phantasmagoria is a projection of my truth on your wall of dreams. You decide next.

***

Pseudologia, psychedelia, pareidolia and phantasmagoria all work on the mind. They have evoked the greatest revolutions in art and lifestyle, and they have invoked the most significant changes in our lives.

They call upon us to identify and recognise changes in ourselves, the society and the world. For, without change, the right would remain right, the wrong would remain wrong, and life will wither and rot into death and decay. As much as anyone longs for happiness, and as much as the happiness is imminent and momentary, I will never want to stay stuck in such times. I can know happiness only when I have known sadness, and those elements of life capable of giving me them are always welcome. The only thing I will still always want to ask for is the mind to tolerate and live with them. Only then is it life.

And what I’ve written is something very metaphorical. The semiotics involved is limited, but inside my mind played a movie while I was writing all of this. These four aspects have always intrigued me, aroused my interest in a number of ways. Perhaps, after everything, this is just a madman’s outburst!

What say you?

Tensions escalate between India and Pakistan

TENSIONS ESCALATE BETWEEN INDIA & PAKISTAN

2nd December

A blast has been reported in Assam, in the Lumbing-Tinsukhia passenger train. As of now, 3 have died and 30, injured.

Update: After the pivotal CWC meeting, Maharashtra CM Vilasrao Deshmukh has agreed to step down after overwhelming doubts pertaining to the recent 26/11 Mumbai blasts. The front runner for the post is now Ashok Chavan, the Revenue Minister and son of veteran Congressman S.B. Chavan. This comes after the Cabinet Minister of Power, Sushil Kumar Shinde, fell out of the contest.

Also, the Shiv Sena has begun to demand the President’s rule in Maharashtra.

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WHAT ELSE DO PEOPLE SAY? LET’S SEE.

1. Fox News (Richard Miller)
   
2. New York Times (Suketu Mehta) – a personal and inspiring read.
   
3. Reuters (Bryson Hull)
   

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30th November

Reports have come out that the captured terrorist has begun to leak the details of the 26/11 Mumbai attack plans. For more information, visit: IBN Breaking News – Video. Moving on, at the recent Congress Workers’ Committee (CWC) meet earlier today, Home Minister Shivraj Patil faced all the heat as the party’s slumber ended with Sonia Gandhi saying “We will not tolerate terrorism anymore”. Consequently, Patil has stepped down claiming “moral obligations” for the crisis. Finance Minister P. Chidambaram has now been offered the additional charge of the Home Ministry. It is believed that even Manmohan Singh was not satisfied with Patil’s work in the cabinet.

Also facing the heat was Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, who claimed that their Police were stretched for strength and resources. The most glaring lapse now happens to be that the Mumbai Police and, even more specifically, the Taj administration, had been informed of the attacks two days prior to its occurrence by dead ATS Chief Hemant Karkare. The meeting concluded with the PM stressing the need for the modernisation of India’s police forces, tougher laws and greater cooperation.

An all-party meeting has been called for in the coming week. Terrorism stands to be the prominent issue again; however, the BJP and the Shiv Sena have issued statements saying they will not attend the meeting.

My opinion? The BJP, in their stead, will also call for everyone to stand together in the face of a crisis such as this, but how can they hope to make any difference when they don’t come together for an all-party meet? The Congress must not be bothered about the opposition’s ideas and whatever they decision they make, it must be an independent, conclusive and responsible one.

Update: CM Vilasrao Deshmukh may be asked to quit.

Update: Pakistan has also, for the first time, called for an all-party meeting to fight terror. The Pak government is now irked because of the possibility of another war-like situation between the two nations, whose relationship already stands stressed because of the recent happenings. The many internal strifes and the insurgency from Afghanistan are the principal occupations of the Pakistani Army, but a government official, who selectively briefed the Pak media ealrier today evening, has said that 1,00,000 troops are being moved east to the Indo-Pak border from the Pak-Afghan border.

29th November

The 60 hour terror rampage in Mumbai has just been ended, leaving 217 dead and more than 500 injured. The Maharashtra government has announced that 9 terrorists were killed, with 1 captured alive. The terrorists apparently wanted to go down in history as the perpetrators of India’s ‘9/11’.

Update: The arrested terrorist has been remanded to police custody till December 11.

Earlier, after the NSG and the ATS announced that the landmark Taj hotel, next to the Gateway of India, had been cleared of all miscreants and sanitised, it was found that 3 terrorists were still lurking inside. A bystander was also hit when they began firing and lobbing grenades from the windows. A resweep of the location was conducted earlier today and the three remnants were killed. However, the events at Nariman House were a bleak affair when the 2 terrorists inside killed their 5 hostages, including a Rabbi and his wife, before they were slain by the NSG. One commando, Gajraj Singh, lost his life in this operation.

As the Taj awaits a lot of impending renovation, the picture is beginning to get enlarged after it was revealed that the port which the terrorists used to set sail from Pakistan was controlled by Dawood Ibrahim, who is now hiding there. Furthermore, the boats seized off Juhu Chowpatti bore a Karachi registration. The ISI Chief, General Pasha, has been invited to India; Pakistan did consent to this requested, but has now denied it. The Indian External Affairs Minister, Pranab Mukherjee, has already issued a statement to his Pakistani counterpart that the “peace process will be affected”.

’11/26′ or ’26/11′, whatsoever it may be referred to hence forth, is but the Black Wednesday India will now have to bear on the pages of her history. The Deccan Mujahideen, a previously unknown outfit, had claimed responsibility for the attacks via emails sent to the various newspapers. Now, however, instead of seeming like an act of a separate terrorist outfit, the rampage in Mumbai appears to be part of a greater conspiracy. Even the USA has purportedly sent FBI investigators to resolve this issue.

Update: The Pakistani Foreign Minister has issued a statement saying “Pakistan not involved in Mumbai attacks“.

Narendra Modi, in a separate interview, has claimed that he had been breaching the topic of Gujarati fishermen being caught off the coast of Pakistan by their Coast Guard, but it was never taken as seriously as it should have been. The boats, he claims, were retained by the authorities there and can now be seen ferrying terrorists to India.

The Taj

(Photo courtesy: Arun Shanbhag. For more pictures, visit: Arun Shanbhag on WordPress.)