Bread and Circuses

Hi!

Hi!! How have you been? (Was that overeager?)

Nothing much - just family stuff. Went traveling as well - Thailand is pretty incredible. The water is really as clear as it looks in the pictures.

It’s been some time, right? Nearly a year. (Seven months and if you ask, no, I haven’t been counting)

Yeah. Just came back from a trip home. The niece is growing up so quickly, I totally miscalculated what she’d want.

And then you took her out shopping? (I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know. I don’t.)

Well I had to, didn’t I? Anyway, how’s work? Travelling?

Work is work. Banking is all screwed up. We are all going to be replaced by machine learning and credit scores soon. Travelled a bit. Nothing spectacular. How’s work going for you?

It’s okay. It a balancing act, but managing it. Let’s see how the review next year goes. This boss is not a complete monster, so fingers crossed.

That’s good news. I had been meaning to message you today actually. So, happy…

Sorry. Someone’s calling. Got to run.

…sure.

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Often, the only way to survive is to keep your head down and the volume high. A good song helps, with syncopated beats perhaps, lyrics be damned. I have learnt to believe in the process. Of clearing your head of all noise and just going blank – focusing simply on the evenness of breath and the fact that the tips of your fingers are a little cooler than usual. Just don’t react, because this too will pass.

And talking of things that pass, we come to the fact that 2018 is coming to an end. I will try to put in my thoughts on that, on another year that passes all too soon, doing too much and showing too little at the end of it. There are a couple of weeks of holidays coming up, leaves not taken, so I will put pen to paper (or finger to the keyboard as it were) to jot things down. Till then, so long.

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Will keep it short. Couple of songs, like I am supposed to:

1.     TV on the Radio - Trouble. Catchy yes, but lyrical as well (Oh, I've changed my number| Wore disguises and went undercover just to| Just to hide away from you| Oh, my ghost came a-calling| Making noises 'bout a promise I had broken| Oh, I'm gonna be lonely soon)

2.   Dandy Warhols - Bohemian Like You. Very American, jangly guitars and that delicious voice. Became interested in them after watching Dig! - a rockumentary about their rivalry/friendship with Brian Jonestown Massacre. Similarities to Jesus & Mary Chain and to Sonic Youth can be easily found (all pretty decent bands btw).

 

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The reference is to what we, as citizens, remain solely interested in. And Stephen Fry is still the coolest.

Elseworlds

I remember reading a book once (and by now you know that most of my memories begin like this). It was a G.I. Joe book, and you played a character in it – started off as Hawk and then became Beach Head and so on. As the story moved forward, you changed characters and were required to make decisions at the end of every chapter which changed how the story panned out (quite a few decisions resulted in getting stuck in a falling helicopter and the poison gas being released). But you made the choices always knowing that you could go back to the previous chapter, knowing that there was a right way and the choices could be undone and you could finally save the city (and maybe get the girl? That’s not a G.I. Joe story then, but whatever).

Quite similarly, but in a very different fashion, you get to make choices quite a few times in your life. The stakes are usually not so high (at least for the world) and I would argue that, let’s say, an Einstein would find his way to being Einstein, but there are often choices and the ones we make give form and narrative to the story of our lives. And sometimes you can’t help but wonder how it would have all played out if you had chosen differently in the things you had choice over – in terms of education and a career - arts instead of the sciences, engineering instead of physics, a Ph.D, instead of an MBA or even working in a manufacturing setup instead of a bank, decisions taken at various stages of life. Choosing not to break some promises, speaking my mind earlier, choices made and unmade. Who knows what I’d be doing right now? I kind of hope that I’d still be writing, if a little less iterant, a little more creative, maybe a different medium and perhaps a different language. Maybe I would have other inspirations and more hopeless muses. Maybe I would be living in a different city, a different life in all possible ways. Maybe I would not even be alive right now (a true engineer practices a dangerous trade after all). All I can be is thankful to have had the opportunity to make my own mistakes, knowing that often the choices are made for us and I would rather have the chaos of choice rather than live under a hollow illusion of certainty and no choice. An ordinary you can’t influence the bigger things anyway, an individual with the shadow of a grain of sand. So, you might as well be happy instead, making mistakes, crossing fingers, falling in love and welling up at unhappy endings.

And a life lived and all those unlived, a tangle of wishes and memories, pocket universes that recycle constantly, each time with a different outcome. All stories waiting to be written, creator made universes, willed into existing, each with a happy ending.

That’s it for today.  I travelled a bit, Goa and then a week in the mothership. The quality of life that people overseas take for granted is a serious lure. But for now, India is home. Watched a couple of Oscar winners (well they were nominees when I watched them) – Darkest Hour (not a great cinematic achievement, but Gary Oldman and his make-up artist really deserved their Oscars – you are actually watching one guy act his ass off for a couple of hours and it talks to the quality of the performance that you don’t wish for it to stop) and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (a less accessible film perhaps in that it doesn’t offer a normal antagonist or indeed a proper resolution, but again Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell both were superlative – Rockwell perhaps owing his award to the fact that Woody Harrelson’s surprisingly restrained and frankly terrific performance doesn’t last the entire film). Apart from that I did watch Black Panther and it was good but I will admit that the trailers had put the expectations so high that they were barely met – the acting was good, the CGI was barely passable though and I don’t think the action spectacles were indeed that spectacular. Some definite strong beats though, including the museum heist and the Bangkok (?) car chase.

A couple of songs to end. Jazz again.

1. Dave Brubeck - Take Five. A song of whimsy with plaintive and curious notes. Makes me think of a black and white movie somehow.

2. John Coltrane -Blue Train. A classic, almost a stripped down solo. Again quite melancholic :)

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So long, lonesome.

P.S. Shubho noboborsho...

Perchance to dream (a.k.a. technicolour sunrises)

We were talking, so very long ago, in the callow languor of youth (call me a tyro perhaps? And I should not be hearing giggles at that) and a not-quite legal high, swinging our knees from the top of the third water tank (the one at the back and in the shade of a gulmohar canopy) and conversation fell, as it sometimes does, to figuring out the loss of which of our senses would we most struggle with. Now, this is a question I do not have too much trouble figuring because I know that I would absolutely hate to lose my sight. I love my food and I can tolerate talking but I know that if matters came to a cinch, I would probably be okay without tasting my food and on most days, I don’t care to talk anyway. What remains? Smell and hearing again are critical inputs to re-constructing our surroundings, but sight and all that it entails - colour, the perception of depth, the separation and delineation of entities – is so very essential to getting the complete picture if you will. I might be biased of course, with my wonky eyesight and my occasional nightmares of being blind, rendered exquisitely in blacks and purples and reds of course, but our inputs are so overwhelmingly visual during our interactions with the physical world and while we do supplement visual data with other sensory information, the foundation (be it for a session of imaginary world building or in a simple dream) of our thoughts is mostly visual. It doesn’t hurt that our eyes are probably the most sophisticated of our sensory organs and our brain has succeeded in optimising the inputs it receives through adding presumptions and can adapt in a multitude of surroundings (one recommended reading here, Steven Pinker – How the Mind Works). I remember making kaleidoscopes and periscopes when I was around 10 or 12, mirrors and broken bangle bits and tape and plastic and cardboard boxes – one creating new worlds through light and chance and the other bringing things nearer. I would while away hours just turning the kaleidoscope this way and that, often glimpsing an absolutely beautiful design for a second’s fraction, before momentum took it away for ever. And what remained were snatched reminiscences, backgrounding dreams and half-hearted tries to recapture a lost moment.

A pretty long-winded way of coming around to the matter of dreams. They used to say that dreams portend future. Which is likely another way of hosanna-ing human imagination and willpower. Doesn’t lessen the power of it though. I do not understand the science of it, however they seem to be stories we tell ourselves, processed from a thousand inputs received while wide awake and asleep, solving problems, inspiring us. Do they help retain memories? Or perhaps create stories that help connect dots, subconscious distilling cogency from fractured realities? I remember but a few of my dreams. Probably that’s for the best. There are enough regrets remembered anyway. I half-remember a dream from my childhood, which involved a car on a mountain road and a big balloon (the kind you’d see in Cappadocia, not that I had heard of it then) and there being a race of utmost importance – I think was I was through my nth reading of Boy’s Choice (a beautiful Hamlyn hardbound with gorgeous illustrations that I/Dad would have probably bought from my usual second hand bookshop) at that time. I do believe that dreams help focus in on solutions because I remember being 10 and waking up with drool on my chin and just knowing the solution to the puzzle that I had been staring at as I had fallen asleep. I was insanely pleased and smug and then (as is my wont) I started worrying – did the solution remain true when I was wide awake and did I need to fall asleep just so for the dreams to come? My dreams these days, those that I remember somewhat, are mostly about me falling and I remember looking up at blue skies and white clouds and red earth before I jerk awake, curling inwards and feeling safe. They are on an itinerant loop, these dreams, been over years now, I guess reflecting the relative stasis and ordinary worry of life as I go through years. I wish it were possible, to dream at will, neurons firing away with the staccato cadence of REM sleep, nudging and shaping half-formed ideas that you weren’t even aware of. Waking up to pen and paper, writing them down and making them real.

So, dreams can be prophetic, mystical, physiological (the order is Homeric, Platonic and then Herodotic(?) broadly I think) or an imagined reality that offers refuge or even a promise of how things can be. And while reality is there and its inescapable and it is to what we must eventually return, it is good to dream, if only for a while.
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The awards season is underway. I haven’t watched many of the contenders this year – I did catch The Shape of Water recently and thought it was quite good. It is definitely different to see a mute girl as the protagonist and Sally Hawkins is terrific in the role. Michael Shannon is such a brooding, physical presence – though I didn’t quite get his motivation, he seemed to be patriot itching to get out of a boondocks town but that doesn’t really explain his cruelty and viciousness, arresting as it is. Guillermo Del Toro is a visual wizard and the palette of greens and browns and blues beautifully re-creates 1970s Americana (as I know from my reading and shit). It’s a sexy movie too. I have also watched Get Out and probably would consider that a better, sharper picture than The Shape of Water – and Allison Williams is possibly a creepier villain.

Talking about nostalgia, I finally got to around watching season 1 of Stranger Things and I enjoyed it greatly. Definitely some Enid Blyton vibes which amps up the nostalgia factor some, accompanied by a killer instrumental background track and some very strong performances (including from Winona Ryder and David Harbour, apart from the set of incredibly precocious kids). And talking about connections, Harbour’s gonna play Hellboy next and of course, Del Toro did direct the first couple of Hellboys. And the Merman in The Shape of Water is basically Abe Sapien.

A couple of interesting articles for your perusal, about a couple of inspiring people – Laura Hillenbrand, the author and Edmund Hillary. I am currently reading Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman and finished a one-shot called God Country – can’t recommend it enough.

P.S. Yes, I have watched Padmaavat and yes, I do wish I hadn’t.

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A couple of songs to close out. Jazz today.

1. Miles Davis -  So What. One of the best songs ever.

2. John Coltrane - My Favorite Things. A traditional song made mysterious and new.

I could listen to them for hours.

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The year has ended. Ended on a sad note actually – an untimely loss in the family. Its weird to have a definite beginning and a sudden end to relationships – we usually drift apart, don’t we? Winter is going away now, it did make its presence felt a bit more this year, even in Bombay.

I wish just that I could know if someone was alright :)