How to Train an Ink Pen

A letter is due.

It has been for a long while now. It has been promised for a while. And it lives, with its honest intentions and desire to be alive. Yet, it does not “be-come.” The recipient of the letter is special. The letter, therefore deserves to be special. In this need of mapping, it lives a ghostly life. It exists, but it does not. It is true in spirit but it is unable to manifest itself on paper.

And paper it shall be. For this one letter is supposed to be tangible. The rough-smooth texture of paper, the blot of ink on it. When I write it, it has to drag at the tissue of the paper, as I pull ink through it – with curved lines that form the words.

The words that form the sentences.

The sentences that form the paragraphs.

The paragraphs that form the body.

The body that holds in itself the world of the emotions that I experience at this moment – that only you are privy to, my friend. How, shall I do that? How shall I make the dance happen? Because it is not just any letter that I want to write – it is a letter that I want to write to you.

My feelings have dried more than the ink in my pen. They are flakes I dare not touch for they will crumble. In their marginal existence – they carry a semblance of expression. Yet, today, I worked with the dried ink. The basin, water, and some help from me – and I have my Camlin screw-top working. I cleaned it well, water, cloth rags and all. I got out my letter-writing pad and I started writing.

Today is not the day – was the first thought that came to my mind. I was to pre-occupied with my ink-pen. Will it stay true like the other times I had written a letter to my friend? Will it participate in the symphony of my thoughts and the ink on paper? Will it move as effortlessly as my thoughts, once I get started? Does the pen remember how we used to write? Will it allow our usual flourish of the strokes and the tails of the letters? Strong stems and sharp corners? Sharp apices and beautiful bowls?

After the training I realise that it is not just my pen that needs training.

Us and Our Online Ethos

The Prologue

This post was originally published a couple of days ago. I got some of my most interesting, thoughtful comments on that post. However, I deleted that post. I was not happy with what I had written. When I started to write the post, I was quite clear about what I wanted to write. I realised, however, that as the post progressed, it was bouncing randomly all over the place and it ended up being a staccato rant than anything else. Not that rants aren’t acceptable – but when rants run over the original thought, the thought is stuck in the mud.

I have, at the end of this post, added the three comments that I received on the deleted post. They refer to sections in the deleted post, so they are decontextualised to an extent – yet, by themselves they are very valuable thoughts and have their rightful place in this post.

*

The Post

Last Saturday, Rayo, a good friend – who I regret not meeting as often as I want to – asked (said?) this on Facebook:

You know what’s the most interesting thing on FB? It’s you. Not what you read on the Washington Post Social Reader, what games you played courtesy Zynga, what videos on cool things in advertising/marketing/whatever you watched or food you ate. (Well, maybe the food you ate.)

Instead, how about you talk about the most wonderful person you know? Yourself. What you’re thinking, what you’re feeling. What’s happening in your life. Be open. Be personal. Share. Make it interesting. Make it count. Be yourself. Break down your limited profiles. Dare to be the same person to everyone. It’s a social network. So be social. Can you?

I re-posted this status as the “Facebook Manifesto”; he seemed to agree to the title that I had given his status. Facebook themselves would dismiss this caption for obvious reasons.

A while ago, I had posted a thought about Genuine Interest. And I meant every word in the post. The two comments I received were one-word comments – which said a lot. When you get certain one-word comments, from certain people – they are more meaningful: it is proof that you have expressed very well.

As much as I agree with Rayo about what we should do on Facebook, I know we are losing it. There was a time when I wrote about what was happening in my life, what I felt — broadcasting it to my friends. There was a time when Facebook was about friends – it wasn’t about networking. Rayo posted his status update on Saturday. Sunday, I posted a photograph that I had taken early in January. I have been posting many photographs from my archives to Facebook. A friend asked me, if I had quit “working” (The inherent thought being – where do you get the time to travel so much – implying – you don’t have to work, do you?) I took a long time to digest that comment. What did she mean?

It is obvious that she meant it in jest. It did bring to fore the thought, however, of the possibility that this could well be the beginning of the conversion of a perception to belief.

Our social networking has been reduced to sharing the already shared – news that has little connection to who we are. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. That is the case of links – the currency of the web. We are trading in that currency, in the guise of networking. It is now easy for us to have a thousand “friends” but not know our “friends.” There is granular control to partially or completely block people, or know everything they do on Facebook. We can control what we want to know and see, about our friends. For every person we block completely or partially, someday we will have to wonder why they are on our friends’ list. Not to discredit online social networking: it has been useful. I have met some of the most interesting people online through Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter (and of course through this blog). One, who I now count as one of my best friends, even if we have met just five times, so far. And, make no mistake, I still stand by what Rayo said – we are missing out on getting to know each other, online. The advantage of being online is to overcome the constraints of time and geography rather than posting news, videos, guilt updates, and disturbing photos.

Facebook is the new Orkut.

We more or less do the same thing on Linkedin that we do on Facebook – but we call the people in our network – connections. To my mind, that makes more sense. We are only connected online.

When we can never know ourselves completely in this lifetime, for sure, we will never know others completely. We may not even agree with what others think or believe, all the time. The point of Genuine Interest is not to know everything about a person, nor is it to like everything about another person. It is mutual, and has inherent objective acceptance. My peeve and therefore my agreement with Rayo’s status was that we tend to become different online. Facebook being more personal than Linkedin (for example) leads us to believe something about a person that may not be true. Folks who are most prolific online, suddenly have nothing to say when you meet them, and vice versa. To their credit, I also know (very few) people who are the same – online and offline.

When you discuss people, personalities and perceptions – subjectivity will rule. The “both-sides-of-the-coin” will crowd the conversation. There is no one answer. (as I was reminded in one of the comments). And I wasn’t looking for one. Earlier, I used to enjoy being on Facebook, the noise, however, has got to me and I see no signs of it abating. The more I am on Facebook, the more I feel I should be off it.

In any case, after I have unsubscribed partially or completely to all the noise, there won’t be any writing on the wall.

*

The Epilogue

Three comments were posted on the previously deleted post. They may not make much sense now, given that this post has now changed form – to an extent. But these comments, which are posts in themselves are ones that I treasure for the unravelling of thoughts on friendship, online-ness and genuine interest.

By batulm:

Very thought-provoking post, Atul. In fact, you put together several thoughts that were nebulous in my own mind. These are the reasons why I hardly use FB. Or any other social networking platform for that matter.

But then, the idea of really knowing, really being interested in another person, has also faded away with age and other considerations. It is something that I am re-learning.

By asuph

I read this in the morning, while still juggling breakfast, kid’s morning rituals, and wife’s looks. Okay I made the last thing up, but, the point is, I read it without full attention that it deserves. And if I wait for eternity to find time and attention to comment, I’d probably not, just the way I haven’t to your few posts that I really wanted to comment on. So, at the risk of sounding like I haven’t read the post at all, or have confused it with some other post, I’m going to offload thoughts that the one, inattentive, reading has originated in my mind. I know you’d forgive that, so won’t ask for forgiveness. Silence would have been more inconsiderate I believe.

Trivial: I’m ashamed that I couldn’t even come up with different one word reaction for that post and the manifesto.

Reciprocation: I have a slightly different take on this, and I think you know it, but just for completeness. If I am interested in knowing ‘everything’ about a person, I will try to do that. It would not matter to me if the other person wants to know ‘everything’ about me. Reciprocation is fraught with dangers, and I can be happier by letting go that requirement, and being the selfish person that I am, I chose that over the other, hard, requirement for reciprocation. In fact, with offline friends, I have always insisted on non-reciprocation. I do what I can, because it makes me happy. I don’t expect others to reciprocate. And in the so called ‘real’ life, I’ve been lucky enough to have had people take more interest in my life/well being, than I’ve been able to. It makes me feel a little guilty — because that’s not what I had bargained for, rather the opposite — but then I don’t mend my philosophy.

Knowing all: Consciously/subconsciously, in (I’ll drop so called henceforth) real life, we project selectively. Most of us that is. We’re taught to do that by bitter experience. The child that we were, naturally shared everything. Growing up was learning to protect, project, to balance hurt/disappointment with joy/excitement, to become closed — to various degree to different people, to be aware of circles of concerns and their intersections. How would our online ethos escape that baggage? How would they be very disjoint from ethos offline? And I wouldn’t expect it from other people for sure. About me, I don’t know yet. I stayed away from google+ because somewhere I DO want to be same person to everyone. I DON’T want to think ‘should I share this with him/her’. But that doesn’t mean I’m ready to share everything with everyone. So then the FB-me becomes the least common denominator of all those me’s I’d have been with different people. And I grant you, it will be boring compared to the me you’d have got if only you and I were on FB. I don’t have an easy solution.

Do I want to only know you (not you you, but anyone) that I like? Not really. In real life I like people as a whole, or don’t as a whole. It’s not fair sometimes, especially to the latter group. But without loss of generality, the scheme works. I rarely let the people in latter group hurt me, because they don’t have access to the ‘core’ me. The former group, on the other hand holds tremendous power to hurt me, and rarely do they use it. And when they do, it hurts worse than it would have if I had not being doing the liking in a packaged deal way. I’ve been told I don’t judge people correctly. It’s actually wrong. I know I’m taking a risk, knowing that I’m giving away that power, and I’m ready for that hurt, for the rewards are so rich. But then that’s not the point. Point is this: since I do the package deal sort of thing, I actually do not mind knowing things about someone I like that I don’t like. If they’re close enough, I actually let them know it. Sometimes that doesn’t work as I expected because I had judged the ‘closeness’ wrongly. But I don’t change much. And sometimes, I like those things later, I even internalize them. For the I that I am (rhyme with ‘the sam that I am — Dr. Seuss) changes too, and I have to be open to that possibility.

The question is “do I have time to know ‘everything’ about you”. I sure wish I had. And there are some people, you’re definitely one of them, for whom I’d strive to make that time. But god knows I fall short. I don’t have answers for that either.

And finally, people rarely think about activities like FB, like some of us do. Online ethos is an oxymoron for them. If I cleaned my FB contacts off these people, I’d be left with very few. That might not necessarily be a bad thing. But so far, among the noise, there are still some signals. There is still some connection which I’m not sure I want to lose as of now. For, for those few people, I don’t need FB. I can pick up my phone. And so I live with FB as it has become. The day I won’t I’ll just go back to the phone.

PS: two of my ‘best’ friends are on FB for namesake. They rarely share anything there. And yet I know more about their lives than I do about most of my FB friends.

Sigh! Sorry for pedantic reply. I’m still hoping it’s better than no reply.

By Mahendra Palsule:

You say “I will not, in this post, question your social networking ethos” but I think you’ve proceeded to question others’ ethos towards the end of your post.

As asuph points out above, I think most of what you’ve written springs from and applies equally to offline ethos. How much of oneself one is willing to share, with whom, and how, differs from person to person. Even the core idea of ‘friendship’ differs from person to person. Every person has different ways of thinking about friendship. Giving others space to be themselves is a way of respecting their individuality, freedom, and privacy. This includes the way they use phones to communicate or use or don’t use social networks in whatever fashion they choose. The concept of a single manifesto for one social network that should apply to all is abhorrent to my mind. Forget social networks, there can’t even be a single manifesto about friendship!

“My Question: Are you willing to accept a person for who he or she is?”Not sure what you mean by ‘accept’ – I don’t think we have a choice. Other people are who they are irrespective of whether we accept it or not. Even acceptance can mean different things to different people. For example, in a group of three friends A, B and C, A being a smoker may be ‘accepted’ differently by B and C where B criticizes it and C doesn’t. C’s acceptance is in not criticizing it, B’s acceptance is in continuing to be a good friend despite it.Lastly, ‘acceptance’ can also include the acceptance of how the person uses different social networks, and asking or expecting others to use a social network in any particular way reveals a lack of acceptance to my mind.

“Or will you colour your opinions of their personality with your limited understanding of their limited online expression?”Our understanding of others is always limited, whether online or offline. Our understanding of others is always colored by their expressions, online or offline. This is normal, human behavior. Any pretense to the contrary is a sham. What is important to me personally is the awareness that my understanding is limited, and being open to enhance that understanding.

Finally, Find Photos on Facebook

 

So, I was asked, how I was doing. Recent radical changes have got people worried about me. And every time I am asked how I am, I feel I should be worried too. I am just taking things a bit easy for a while, but most folks, knowing me the way they know me, are worried. It’s always nice to know that people care. Deep down, you feel very happy about the life within you and around you.

We talked of being confused and that’s when I said – I have no idea what to do with my photographs. I joined Flickr in May 2005 and have uploaded consistently since then. This April, I chose not to renew my Pro account on Flickr. Since then, I have uploaded to about nine different photo sharing sites; tried all of them. One of the advantages of being confused – is that you discover a lot of new things. Not one came close to what I was looking for. The big problem of social sharing is that you are a part of multiple networks, and have made friends and acquaintances in different networks. So, when you choose to upload your photos in one location, there’s a good chance that many, in other networks will not be able to see your work. Yes, most networks will allow you to publish to other networks, but more often than not – it’s quite clumsy. (We’ll just mark WordPress.com as an exception here).

The other thing about Flickr, was that it has not changed much in the last five-odd years since I have been a member. There is also some high-handedness in ‘curating’ photographs, as I have seen happening with a few Flickr members. I’ll admit, my photographs were never ‘force-curated.’ And for various reasons, my photos were getting good exposure. My favourite feature on Flickr, was the stats. It’s always nice to know which of your photographs are popular – and for what reason. But I was bored. Utterly. Five years is a very long time for a network not to do anything interesting.

In the meanwhile, I tried 500px, which has very good presentation. I felt however, it is too early and too basic, but I might reconsider it in a year or so; I don’t mind paying the slightly costly $50, when uploading/sharing becomes easier. There was always Facebook – but the photos were exposed to a limited audience (yes, I know I can make them public and share them outside of Facebook). Then, I looked at Saatchi Online – which is good for selling your work – and has a decent presentation too. Of course, I have been trying Google+, which has a cool presentation, but that’s about it. With very few ‘friends’ wanting to make the switch to G+, it didn’t make sense for me. However, G+ has been able to garner a very vibrant photographer community. That makes you wonder.

Click to visit the Facebook Page

I finally have now decided to move my portfolio to a Facebook Page @ If I Could See Better.

It is nowhere close to what I would look for in a photo-sharing site, for instance, the presentation style is not the best of what is available out there (Facebook is surely capable of much more), geo-tagging is manual and there is no smart way for uploading (have to go through a file uploader – no native app).

Yet, it’s a nice place to have a single location to keep all your photos, build a community around them, share to Facebook and Twitter, and get stats about your work. So, till such time something really smart comes up, a Facebook Page it is.

I’ve just started, so in time, you will see more, soon.

Like, No More

Someday, we will have to wonder what the “Like” button across social media, did to us.

Recently, I was reading a post regarding comments on our blogs. It was a post titled, Are You Making It Hard for People to Comment? by Joanna Paterson on the Confident Writing blog. Some interesting points there, if you wonder why the interaction on the blog isn’t what you expect. If not, don’t bother.

I had a thought about it. I wrote:

I am not sure about this, but I wonder whether all the “sharing links” and the “liking links” are equal culprits. If the end of the post is pretty busy with sharing buttons, folks would rather share (or just *like* the post) rather than adding a comment.

The reader acknowledges your post, but does not leave a footprint on the blog.

Recently, I have been adding quite a few photos on Facebook, and while I am glad that people “Like” my photos, I do get irritated by the constant notifications of people who like stuff that I post. When you think hard about it, a like doesn’t mean much! I am searching for a way that Facebook doesn’t notify me of the likes. Hopefully, I’ll find it.

And even if I cannot do that on Facebook, I am definitely doing it on my blog. The ratings, the shares, the like buttons – will all go away. One thing about blogging that I have enjoyed for a long time, is the interaction — the conversation (though, nothing beats a talk over a coffee or a beer). I have little, but I hope this will rekindle some conversation on my blog. Of course, this doesn’t stop the reader from sharing my posts.

I think, the like and share buttons have become replacements for good expression. They have also become the means of being lazy without sounding so. Clicking these buttons allows us to make our presence felt. But it ends there. And like Amit says, it has become “too commonplace” — too commonplace to mean anything meaningful.

So, therefore.

More: The Life of a Blog

Of the last ten posts on Gaizabonts, five are about blogging. This one is too. So, you could also score it as 6/11.

There has been an obvious drought of good posts on this blog for a while now; and it seems that writing about not writing on a blog is what you do when you aren’t writing very well about other things. You run the risk of converting your blog into a blog about blogs and blogging, but at least that’s a drizzle, if not a bountiful rainfall.

C’est la vie.

Mahendra added Skeptic Dope today, talking about the Influencer. It couldn’t have come at a better time and a better source. He is an influencer himself.

This post is just to explain his post better:

• The Continuing Death of a Blog, posted 30 Jun 2010, 1325hrs
• Post shared by Mahendra on Google Reader, 01 Jul 2010, 0954 hrs
• Mahendra’s Google shared Item, tweeted by @rawmeet, 01 Jul 2010, 1035hrs
• Post tweeted by Mahendra, 01 Jul 2010, 1050hrs

Usually, my posts get posted to Facebook and Twitter via Friendfeed, but for this instance, Friendfeed decided not to. No idea why.

And this is the result:

The Inflencer's Effect

The first arrow, is when I posted “Poet of the Moment (12 Jun)”, the second arrow is when I posted “The Continuing Death of a Blog (30 Jun)”. The next spike is when all this sharing and tweeting happened.

Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

Time Travel

And I continue to look for words. (Scroll, to see the length of the post – long one!)

A quest that will forever be unfulfilled, not because I don’t have words, but because I have no idea which one makes sense, when it is most demanded.

owe |əʊ|verb [ trans. ] have an obligation to pay or repay (something, esp. money) in return for something received : they have denied they owe money to the company | [with two objs. ] I owe you 25 cents.

• owe something, esp. money, to (someone) : I owe you for the taxi.

• be under a moral obligation to give someone (gratitude, respect, etc.) : I owe it to him to explain what’s happened | [with two objs. ] I owe you an apology.

• ( owe something to) have something because of (someone or something) : he owed his success not to chance but to insight.

• be indebted to someone or something for (something) : I owe my life to you.

And I have Jack Johnson singing Belle/Banana Pancakes on my left. And a while ago I just finished watching Shikshanachya Aaicha Gho (SAG, hereafter). The first thing that pierced my head was that children, students, should not watch this film. This should have an A certificate. This is one Adult film, if I have seen one. Mahesh Manjrekar has a great capacity to touch you where it matters with most of his movies. The one thing that, I feel, he cannot control, is the Dus Kahaniayan syndrome. Somehow he feels compelled to tell a detailed story of every peripheral factor in the movie. Except for this fetish of his, I think he makes good movies. SAG, is one of them. I will not be reviewing that movie here, but will be talking about it. Obviously, I will talk about it, so risk the rest of the post at the cost of spoilers. But, be also aware, this post isn’t about the movie as such. Yet it will talk of SAG.

indebted |ɪnˈdɛtɪd|
adjective
owing money : heavily indebted countries.

• owing gratitude for a service or favor : I am indebted to her for her help in indexing my book.

I was looking for words. Before I saw the movie. After, I was exasperatedly looking for words. Because, as much as less you have them, they are the only ones capable of saying what you exactly want to say. I am a slave of words in that sense – because I prefer expressing as close as I can get to what I mean, think, and feel. I had no words. They refused to join my party. I offered them an Indian wine that’s winning awards, to no avail. I wondered why. Then I realised, I can be a slave to words, but words are slave to no one. They are open, free and available, but you have to deserve them; unless you deserve them, they don’t come to you.

debt |dɛt|noun
something, typically money, that is owed or due : I paid off my debts | a way to reduce Third World debt.

• the state of owing money : the firm is heavily in debt.

• [usu. in sing. ] a feeling of gratitude for a service or favor : we owe them a debt of thanks.
PHRASES
be in someone’s debt owe gratitude to someone for a service or favor.

SAG is a good film – that could have been 30mins shorter than the editor imagined it to be worth. What’s it about? Good Q. I can’t really say. It comes across as a criticism of the (apparently harsh) education system that prevails in India. That (apparently) shouldn’t have been in parentheses. It does prevail; the education system. Yes, we have problems. Yes students commit suicides because they are under immense pressures. There must be however, something good about this education system. There must be some reason that the IITians and the IIMians (are they called that?) are successful in a walk of life that you can put a finger on. Three years ago I talked of a dance that wasn’t hugely entertaining. In my personal opinion, we have an education system that is unparalleled; the only thing we are missing is acknowledgement of aptitude.There are careers apart from engineering, medical and accounting & finance. And people can excel in fields other than these three contrived ones. Sports – Sachin Tendulkar. Social Services – Medha Patkar. Fashion – Manish Malhotra. Politics (Pick your name, or leave it blank, who cares?). Point is, if we choose to be successful, we can be.

gratitude |ˈgratɪtjuːd| noun

the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness : she expressed her gratitude to the committee for their support.

ORIGIN late Middle English : from Old French, or from medieval Latin gratitudo, from Latin gratus ‘pleasing, thankful.’

But coming back to SAG, to my mind, it has got nothing to do with the problems of education system that is prevalent in this country. We aren’t missing the content – we are missing the context. There is a repetitive dialogue in the movie about the multiplication of 17×7. It’s 119, by the way. Why is 17×7 important or not? What’s the context of the date of the first fort that C. Shivaji captured? Nothing really, if you are anyways going to leave the country and work for an Enron-like-company in the US. You would be better off knowing facts about the Civil War, if at all.

Why?

appreciation |əpriːʃɪˈeɪʃ(ə)n| |-sɪ-|
noun
1 the recognition and enjoyment of the good qualities of someone or something : I smiled in appreciation | she shows a fine appreciation of obscure thinkers.

• gratitude for something : they would be the first to show their appreciation.

• a piece of writing in which the qualities of a person or the person’s work are discussed and assessed.

• sensitive understanding of the aesthetic value of something : courses in music appreciation.

2 a full understanding of a situation : they have an appreciation of the needs of users | the bank’s lack of appreciation of their problems.

3 increase in monetary value : the appreciation of the franc against the dollar.

It’s always about context. Content, you see, is a eunuch, if not in context. Context gives content balls. So what’s the problem of knowing the ATP cycle by heart? I didn’t know why. Let us say I had a choice in choosing what I learnt. Here’s what I would choose: Process of making an FIR at a police station and the fact that an FIR is made in the local language, always; that when my car is dead and people are pushing it, I need to move it in the second gear; co-operative society laws; how to apply for a passport; content law, so that I wouldn’t buy a PS3 that discriminates against Indian buyers; and a million more things that make sense.

acknowledgment |əkˈnɒlɪdʒm(ə)nt| (also acknowledgement)
noun

1 acceptance of the truth or existence of something : there was no acknowledgment of the family’s trauma.

2 the action of expressing or displaying gratitude or appreciation for something : he received an award in acknowledgment of his work.

• the action of showing that one has noticed someone or something : he touched his hat in acknowledgment of the salute.

• a letter confirming receipt of something : I received an acknowledgment of my application.

3 (usu. acknowledgments) an author’s or publisher’s statement of indebtedness to others, typically one printed at the beginning of a book.

But, really, lets come back to SAG. Mahesh Manjrekar wanted this to be a movie bout the ills of the education system that permeate and allegedly threaten our future. While he may have wanted to to also talk of the implications that these have on our society; he probably succeeded with an audience like me.

As people who learn – whatever – we have only one [insert the word that I am yet to find; which is close to but not "obligation"] to the system.

To the parent.

Not to teachers or to the system; but to the parent; if you haven’t realised it as yet; the tallest pillar of the education system in India, at least, is the parent. It doesn’t matter if you have become what your parent(s) wished you to be.

What matters is that they thought that you were the one who would change the world. It doesn’t quite matter if you aren’t the Einstein that they imagined. What matters is the height of their belief. What matters is that we have to achieve only a few inches of the height that they imagined. You see, I have come to believe that they only thought of the ultimate success that we could achieve. Unfortunately they could only think in the limited context that was available to them. It was our problem – that we were pulled into that narrow context. We may not be the doctor or the engineer or the IFS officer that they saw in us. But the day we forget and become blind to the star that they saw in us; we have committed injustice to the purest of dreams and sacrifices.

Have you reached here (in the post)? I commend you. This is the kind of post that never is read. Just like the dream of a parent. Never mind the profession your parent wanted to be in; deep down; only because your parent did not know better, all he (or she) wanted you to be is happy an successful.

respect |rɪˈspɛkt|
noun

1 a feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities, or achievements : the director had a lot of respect for Douglas as an actor.

• the state of being admired in such a way : his first chance in over fifteen years to regain respect in the business.

• due regard for the feelings, wishes, rights, or traditions of others : respect for human rights.

• ( respects) a person’s polite greetings : give my respects to your parents.

2 a particular aspect, point, or detail : the government’s record in this respect is a mixed one.

Talk to them if they are alive or pay homage, if they aren’t. Tell them, that their dreams and yours have become one, and they are on their way. Tell them that their dreams and yours – have understood each other. The content of the dream isn’t important, the context is – and given that they were a generation before you; they will understand.

Some messages travel at the speed of light; and they traverse universes. Say it, today.

The Blog is Dead!

I remember those days.

I used to torment everyone I knew who could blog, to blog. I have been even called a bully, in that sense. About three years ago. Now, I cajole, very rarely, not to friends, however.

But blogging, as we knew it then, doesn’t really exist. It’s called publishing now. It is called publishing now because we only transmit on to a medium that has expanded enormously. And we transmit at a very high frequency. And, perhaps, because we transmit with such high frequency, we transmit in very small amounts. We micro-blog, we update statuses. In essence, we publish. We publish without context and we publish with mistakes. We publish abstract and we use SMSese (Text-speak for those outside India).

If the blog dies, does the blogger die with it? Are their lives interdependent? I don’t think so. Bloggers immigrate. They become law-abiding citizens of another world, where their ambitions and skills can be put to some use. And the blog had to die. Anything that is difficult is easily overcome by that which is simple. That is the truth by which this world has evolved.

But simple and trivial aren’t the same things. But now, they are often mistaken for one and the same. I have a list of an A-list of bloggers on my RSS feed, which over a period has become the folder with least number of bloggers. And like Paul Simon said, it applies to this list:

Some have died
Some have fled from themselves
Or struggled from here to get there

I made a very strong case (read excuse) of a writers’ block today to a friend and a fellow-blogger. I was reminded, creatively, that there isn’t such a thing – she asked – which other profession has a block?

It was interesting to think about that. A policemen’s’ block. Or perhaps a soldiers’ block. It would be real fun for the kids if they experienced a teachers’ block. A pilots’ block would be real dangerous. You get the point. It all really boils down to impatience. We deny context to what we write, we wring the entire message to a limit of characters; play to a comment and like count; post a photo to substitute a thousand words; and enslave ourselves to URL shortening statistics.

And, continuing with Paul’s Obvious Child:

Well I’m accustomed to a smoother ride
Maybe I’m a dog that’s lost his bite

The blog is dead, long live the blog.

A Six-year Non-ceremony

The day of the ceremonial post is past. Or, so I think. I had once written about the fancy of well rounded numbers like one, three, five and ten. Unlike four and six. Earlier I had called it the classic rounding-off trap.

There isn’t much to celebrate this year. I have written only fifty-six posts this year, which is quite pathetic by my earlier standards. When you consider all the thoughts I thought were blogworthy, it is really pathetic. Like when I magically reached the five-hundredth post on the day I completed five years of this blog, the average was a hundred posts a year. I have obviously not been maintaining standards.

I could blame it on Twitter, but, Mahendra, wrote recently wrote about “Blogging Highlights of 2009, Challenges & Thoughts for 2010”, in which he puts me in a list of folks who are “fairly regular at blogging as well as online social networking in one form or another.” Notwithstanding what I think, I trust his opinion.

Twitter apart, I have been all over the place doing this mega-yatra of everything Web 2.0. I think that took a lot of time away from me this year. If it was launched, I signed up. Towards the end of the year, the carpenter in me said, “Great, you have all the possible tools a carpenter can have. Where’s the wood?”

If the last month is any indicator, I have not been doing well at any of the social places. But then I was away for a while and my mind has been away for a while longer. Blogging remains the only one thing which makes continues to make sense.

2009 has been a very good year for me. I went through significant turmoil on pretty much everything in my life – in a good way. I found time for myself after a very long time and am quite excited and happy about that.

In summary, not much to celebrate here for the sixth year as such, so head out and do your thing for the long weekend. Ours is 4-day long!

You’ll be seeing me.

Remains of the Day: 003

The idea was to crunch every month in a claustrophobic post. Last time I did it, it was in May. And I have done only one before the one in May this year.

There’s a problem.

If you try hard, use a magnifying glass to see the divider between two months, you may not find any.

And in any case, if that’s the idea, these posts should be called Remains of the Month. But, I have often being accused of being a rebel against structure. I have never known how to react to that accusation; for often I have been accused of being a slave to structure.

It amuses me to no end.

Signature of an Artist

I saw a few films in this lifetime, and I will see more.

I liked some and and I didn’t some. I never, however, understood, how films are made. Then, along comes a spider. Well, not a spider, but Shaurya, really. But, underestimate not, his web of thought.

He talks of movies with such passion that it is impossible to ignore. I have usually loved movies for what they were. But when he and I get into “discussions” about movies, I see all the films in a different light.

Friends do that to you.

Friends do a lot of things to you. They change the way you look at life. They stand with and behind you when difficult questions come up. They sit in front of you, look into you eyes and speak their heart out.

I live my life with an artist and I am a reluctant artist myself. But, the mind — the mind of an artist is such a complex world — it needs a signature, a triplicate clearance, which includes a retina-scan, to permeate this world. I am the audience who is an artist himself. And, I have endlessly struggled to know if the art and the artist have a relationship that is true and consistent in thought and how art is peceived.

I saw, Before the Rains, e.g. And I thought, that here was an artist, showing off only one art form that he is capable of. Cinematography.

What is good storytelling? Ask the grandmother. She was the best storyteller, ever. And if I ever make films, I will tell stories that she would. She’d rapture you with her oration. You would enter a world that transcended time, geography and space. How did she achieve it? It was not technique, nor presentation.

She had the x that tele-ported us worlds apart. She never gave the details on backgrounds or the social composition of the characters in the story. She didn’t paint a picture with colours, lines and fills. She ignited the fire in imagination that we were willing as grandchildren.

Back to the artist.

Anant Mane, a director of yore, has recently captured my imagination. He has made quite a few Marathi films, so, if you haven’t seen some of his work, that’s fine. I haven’t seen all of his movies, either. Of the ones I have seen, he seems to use backgrounds to good effect, amazing effect, in fact, given the context of the story.

Question.

Is this a deliberate use of backgrounds to define the story or is it default? I am talking of co-incidences here. How far is a co-incidence a co-incidence? My friend Shaurya, says that it is always a deliberate act.

What does an artist’s deliberation mean? How does she define what she does — what is the signature that defines her? Subhash Ghai, for example, uses a very crude signature — he makes a minute appearance in all his films. Significantly so, how do you identify an artist’s “signature” in an artwork, unless he uses it consistently and without variation? Subhash Ghai signatures are so obvious, it is one thing.

Then, the question arises: is your signature obvious? What is the Clint Eastwood directorial signature, for example? If I didn’t tell you about it, would you be able to identify a Clint Eastwood film?

Why?
How?
What basis?

I have come to love this almost sneaking quality of an artist. Sneaking in a way that they may never tell you the intent, yet present to you a story that touches your heart. It is a tease.

Make your own meaning, for you shall never know what I really meant.