Once there was a God,
And once there was a fire,
God looked upon the fire,
Burning and searing,
And then there was a Man, who yelped,
“O God! Help! There is a fire!
God cried,
“Let there be water”, He said,
And Man received water,
But the man complained,
“O Lord, you are merciful,”
“But what good will water do? ”
“The fire belongs to a different Man,”
“A vile Man,”
“A foreign Man,”
“I want fire too!”
God laughed,
And then all Men received fire.
An eagle soared in the blue sky,
Unhindered and mightily he rose and fell,
With the soiled humanity below his feet,
Looked down upon and called him King.
A glint of metal broke his reverie,
Flustered he called, Who goes there?,
Don’t you know this kingdom belongs to me,
Speak and say, Who sent thee?
My father, the missile man, raised me,
I am just passing through, My Lord,
But I can’t stop and talk, pardon me,
For my watery home beckons me.
A missile, snickered the eagle,
Pain, poverty and dirt is your stead,
Peace and food is what they need,
Your father sends you instead.
Though my form is ruthless steel,
I am a kindred spirit like thee,
For a billion souls look upon me,
Envy for you but hope from me.
Now they look at the skies,
Again and dream to fly,
With a courage of thee,
For this, my father sends me.
Dirt. Metal. Water. War…thump…thump…thump. Blood. Grime…Guitar. Drums…dum..dum…dum. Human.Inhuman.God.Monster. Hope…survive…survive…survive!
It’s a metal rock show in an apocalyptic wasteland masquerading as a movie. And I am not saying that only because of the humongous guitar mounted on an armored truck.
It starts with a far off beat when the protagonist is suddenly made aware of being hunted. A two-headed lizard scampers up and the protagonist chomps it’s heads off, chewing while the tail is still squiggling about. In those ten seconds we are told of a dastardly man in a post apocalyptic radioactive wasteland, whose only remaining human construct is to survive at all costs.
And that sets the pace for the movie. The characters are all hurled together in a riveting sandstorm of crazy vehicle chases and frequent explosions and surprisingly a plot surfaces. The taut editing doesn’t let you off the hook whilst the stage is set on fire.
The dialogue is splattered with pre-apocalyptic pop-culture references mashed up violently to relay a morbid sense of inversion where good is abnormal and bad is the status quo. The insanity of the characters which stems from the survivalist theme seems to be the way of life and therefore doesn’t seem to be insane at all after the few initial shocks.
In this world, true insanity would be to not survive as long, to not run as far you could, to not to extract every single ounce of breath. It would be madness in this world to turn back.
Hence. Mad…Max.
You know how we like to stay away from shallow, simplified criticism of ideas, but then in our lowest moments, we descend to it anyways? Well, this is me, descending. Not my first time.
So let’s take software products/ideas as a non-specific-random example:
a) App X doesn’t have minuscule feature Y. But they are fools! Fools! Y is the real feature! They are too thick to recognize that.
b) App X has big feature Y. Y is really complex. Let’s just redact feature Y to make it a simpler and cuter feature Z, OK. No one likes complex things. What are we ? Enterprise?
c) App X has features R, Q, P in that order. Idiots. We all know how it works. P, Q….wait for it…R.
d) Apps X, Y, Z have features P, Q, R respectively. Well Duh. Ever heard of a swiss knife? Symphony yo! Let’s just symphonize this beauty of an app which can do everything. Everrryyything!
e) App X can do U for V. Ok how about we try P for Q, Q for R and hold on…I have got something here: It’s P for P. Get it? NO? Well that’s why I am the smart one and you are just a nameless little guy with a job.
f) App X plays horse whinnies. Our app records them. We have ambient noise cancellation and everything. Didn’t think of that did you.
g) App X applies filter to your photo and uploads them. Our app does that and downloads photo and applies filter and uploads them again. We are calling it either, “ColorVice” or “My Gentle Lady of the Tortugas”. The name really doesn’t matter you know, because the UI is just so Stevey-Jobsy. We may even raise about 40 million dollars for it.
h) App X eliminates the use of paper. Let’s bring back paper. Because frankly Sir, you aren’t a real designer unless you have smelt the intoxicating aroma of real paper and felt the sensuous texture on your wrinkly fingers.
i) App X lets you post geotagged fun comments with your personal accounts. Creeps! The right way to do that kids is to do it anonymous.
j) App X lets you post geotagged fun comments anonymously. Luddites! The right way to do that kids is to do it with personal accounts.
k) App X is a single tap solution to do feature P. Well we have 4 single tap apps for each P/4 th. And we plan to go down to the turtles after Series A funding. Don’t mess with us.
l) App X has expert curated features. Our app has “user curated” features. “You can’t stop the hive-mind, man. Everything goes somewhere and the hive-mind goes everywhere“.
m) App X let’s you build deep meaningful relationships. No! Humans aren’t meant to form meaningful relationships. Let’s just have a fling shall we.
n) App X is an anti-virus. Hmm. Everyone wants that.
o) App X is an email client. Email, my illustrious friend, is a task. It’s not a communication! It’s a measly to-do. We should treat it with the disdain and the procrastination it deserves.
p) App X sets incredibly hard technical interviews. Our app sets impossibly hard technical interviews. “Listen O Corporate Lord we help you to identify the candidates who can send out the strongest signal” or as we fondly call it, “Wheat-Chaff Separator”.
q) App X is game to connect two dots. Guess what? Three dots. Sucker.
r) App X let’s you rent verified rooms. Seriously? That’s not backpacking. Where is the sense of danger? The hint of unexpected turn of events. The imminent threat of your booking getting canceled at the last moment. One word: serendipity. You don’t got it. And we do.
s) App X is an IOT platform. We are so much more. We are IONEST: Internet of Non Essential Silly Things.
t) App X tells you the direction and distance where the ladies at. But we give you the exact latitude and longitude upto six significant digits. We care for you and don’t take the chance of missing out on the extra ladies who were standing at the exact same coordinates.
u) App X sends “Oy” on a single tap to anyone on your contact list. We are localizing it. Now you can say, “Abbey”(Hindi) and in other 163 supported languages. Looking to hire community managers.
v) App X tracks click events on a web page. We track every damn event ever event-ed including the customer’s, “What the shit is this?” event. We also love you very much.
w) App X is an API to do payments. We are an API for App X.
x) App X has 140 characters limit. We are not sure what’s it going to be, but it’s got to have a 140 character limit. We adhere to the KISS principle.
y) App X lets you do video of activity P. We do JIFS?… GIFS? for the same activity. And it’s on a loop so you don’t miss a single frame. Literally. Yes we know what literally means.
z) App X is an aggregator of useful product demos. We are a list of shitty product demos where we pass terrible judgement and make the creators cry. We do it for the users, for the user experience and for Steve.
Wait did they do the last one yet.
Heh.
6:45 pm, Nov 30, 2014.
– Coffee shop. Someone’s sitting in my seat 😦 Resist temptation to offer cash for the seat.
– Checked out scikit tutorials. Lots of text devoted about library itself(obviously). I can do implementation or figure it out. I realise I want to learn the concepts before I jump into code. Code. I can handle.
– More diversion. Same friend suggests the book “Collective Intelligence” by Toby Sebaran. Bought it for kindle. Again lots of text devoted to implementation. I get it Andrew, I get it.
– Prodigal son returns. Octave it is.
– Golden rule: Prototype first.
Nov 29, 2014
– Coffee shop. Love the incomprehensible noise. Relaxing.
– Idea: Let’s apply ML on accelerometer data from everyone’s phone and predict. Predict what? Git stash Idea.
– Scikit first. Octave second.(sorry again andrew)
Nov 28, 2014
– Alright back to learning the basics. What do you know, I have an account at Coursera too. Heh.
– Andrew Ng is good.
– Ok I have a confession. Maths is boring. I am not bad it. But I just find it boring. I just can’t see the flair. Unlike Physics. What is mathematics equivalent of a black hole or a super nova? I don’t know. I am sure there are equivalent phenomenons in Math too. But I don’t know. How sad is that? One day I will find my super nova in Math. Sigh. So little time.
– Getting boring. Need to buckle down go through it.
– Octave or Scikit. Andrew says, “Trust me on this one”. He insists. My idiot mind is fighting back. “But imagine the things you could do with Python”, it says. Ok I need another opinion(sorry Andrew).
– Called a friend who has experience in working with ML. Says “Scikit is way easier”. Easy is good.
– And again I have managed to start a flame war in my mind about which tool to use. Stop it guys. Same team remember.
– Fine. I will try both.
– Installed octave, scipy,scikit.
Nov 26, 2014
– Downloaded and built Vowpal Wabbit. Read through the introduction example. OKAY. Need to learn some basics. But wait let’s install VW on my 512 mb Digitalocean server for which I pay 5$/month for no reason.
– Fails to build. Too less RAM. What else did you expect? Naive ass.
– Mate in office mentions scikit.
Nov 25, 2014
-Somehow stumbled upon Kaggle(again). Also have an account there. Machine learning looks interesting. Let’s do it.
– Click Rate Prediction for Mobile banners. Ok. Google-oogle.
– Someone else attempted it. Vowpal Wabbit. Funny.
Beautiful lazy shots of cream laden berries, multi-textured saucy pork’s, pasta’s from which dreams are woven off, slices of golden tostones and heavenly fingers of yucca. And yet Chef has nothing to do with food. It’s a story of simple pleasures, of passion of passions and the art of companionship.
It’s not that gorgeous food is missing. In fact the movie is replete with recipes both elite and common. But the creators did not intend to present food voyeurism(Though watching Scarlett Johansson make passionate love to good looking food belies that argument).
It’s a story about a man, the “Chef” who has lost his way in the pursuit of his passion. It’s an everyday story of us who forget the things which bring true happiness. Through culinary instruments the movie tells the recipe of creating rich life experiences and make each moment taste better.
The best part is that it’s not some fantasy tale with improbable characters. It’s a story of real people handled with almost a nuanced touch. I say almost because lots of stylizations and forced gags are used. On the other hand such frills are what separates the movie from a cooking show(except Hell’s Kitchen of course). And since I liked these stylized scenes I will leave it for criticism to some other day.
The movie is a sampling of a life we all want to live. The creators have attempted to show that true passion can survive amidst the crassness and mediocrity of daily life. Now to end this review with an expected food pun : Chef is delicious.
“Shillo”, “Shil-lo is what my friends call me”.
“O wow, that’s a beautiful name. Incidentally we are also in Shillong. Did your parents love Shillong so much that they named you after it? Though, I don’t question the beauty of either.”
“May be. May be”, she smiled.
“Or maybe that’s a fake name you tell me”
“Shillo is what I would like to be called and what my friends call me. So the real question is, Are you my friend?”, she said with a teasing wink in her eye.
“And I fell in love”, murmured Arun while looking out the rusted bars on the window of a train moving at a caterpillar pace. That was seven years ago and six years from today she vanished from an apartment in Delhi. After that he looked for her in every hill, every mountain, riversides, beaches and artist dens in of India. She was a painter and a nomad.
“I am a girl for the hills Aruu. They are calling me”, she said while flicking her coffee cup in the Le Meridian cafe. The next morning she was gone. Just like that.
Arun’s reverie of thought was disturbed by a chain of little green hills. They looked like dwarfs holding hands together hiding something behind their rugged bodies.
“Bet I can sell that painting for a million”, he mused. He had done well as an art’s dealer. Paris, New York, New Delhi. You name it. The year long frantic search for Shillo first turned into a love for the liquid kind, but finally he was able to move on. His acute sense for artistic flair had left mark on tens of art galleries and collectors. And just when he was forgetting her, a call from an old friend put him on a flight from Paris to Delhi, then on a train to a remote village in the foothills of the Himalayas.
It was not he didn’t try hard enough. But it was asking too much when you are to find a girl with a fake name. In the six months they roamed about in North-East India and the six months in Delhi, Arun must have asked her a thousand times about her name, about her family. At first, she would laugh it off and then become defensive and distanced.
“Why won’t you tell me your name? Please just tell me your name”, shouted Arun.
“It’s this place. It’s this horrible place”, she cried.
“Why, you can’t tell me another fake name? Is Delhi not good enough for you”, snickered Arun.
“I have no name!”, she shrieked with wild eyes so much in pain that it broke his heart.
After she left, he was not surprised. And for a moment, even relieved to have got rid of such craziness from his life. But only for a moment. And here he was, on a lazy train feeling like a hero to a damsel in distress ready to rescue her from what ever trouble she was into.
“What am I going to say to her. What is she going to say to me. It has been so long. Maybe I should turn back”, brooded Arun while the train chugged to a halt on a dingy tiny station.
He took trembling steps out of the station fearing his every step.
“How far to the Village and which way?” asked Arun.
The frail old villager looked up from his steaming pot of tea and pointed towards a turn.
“10 kilometers”
” Can I get a taxi maybe?”
The villager smiled weakly and went back to sipping his tea. Arun pulled up his hand bag and sauntered along towards the road.
He could see the far stretching Himalayas opening up their arms invitingly. Now and then a villager would pass him while the overhead sun was burning on his neck.Distant notes of music could be heard. A flute. He looked around for a source but could only see some sheep grazing around a rock.Maybe a shepherd, he thought and walked on. The monotony of the walk was suddenly broken by a low buzz of his cellphone.
“What do you want, Jean?”, huffed Arun.
“It’s not what I want, its what you want.”
“And what do I want”, said Arun irritatingly.
“The Lost Girl. It’s up for sale”
“You must be joking!”
The Lost Girl was a world renowned painting . Art connoisseurs have been going gaga over it since it displayed five years ago in Paris. A modern day “A starry night”, they said. “An artist paralleled to Van Gogh” said another. It was claimed to be the sole work of an elusive artist named Bansi Kiri as signed on the painting. He was there in Paris when they revealed it. And he instantly fell in love. That painting was to Arun what a candle is to a moth.
“Don’t even think about it, they are asking ten million euros. Just letting you know that you can’t have it”, teased Jean and hung up.
“Only ten million euros. They are low balling it. It’s all the money I have. If I buy it I would be penniless”, thought Arun while looking up the clear blue skies and blindingly bumped into someone.
“Ah. Sorry. Are you hurt?, pleaded Arun while trying to get his footing.
“Could you point me to this address”, said Arun pushing a note to what looked like a shabbily dressed post man.
“Yes. It’s just over that mound”.
Arun looked towards the mound and saw a small hill. Guess people living in the foothills of Himalayas have a different perspective about size, he thought. His heart was beating like a butterfly’s wings when he got to the top. Almost out of breath, he looked down on a house made of red kiln bricks with a dried grass roofing. A few children were playing in the courtyard. Two more were trying to pull water from a well, which from a distance looked like quite a work. It seemed his heart would give up. The skies seemed below his feet. It felt that whole of the universe was closing down with him at the center. He decided to take a breather and looked around for a place to sit. Out of the corner of the eye something caught his attention. He turned around and gazed far into the distance and could now see where the mountains where meeting the plains. And then he closed his eyes.
“I know this place. I have seen this place before. Where. Where!”, thought Arun pressing his eye lids as hard as he could, trying to remember as if his life depended on it.
“What are you doing?” said someone from behind, startling him and bringing him back to the world.
It was a little girl. Ten or eleven years old with a sharp pony tail and a twig between her teeth which she was slowly chewing on.
“I came to meet a friend. Do you know the woman who lives in that house?”, said Arun pointing.
“Yes. She is my teacher! And don’t you tell her I am out of school. I hate school. Teacher get’s angry when I bunk school. Not that she is always angry with me. She is nice to me. And she makes my hair. And her son is my friend and her baby daughter would only come to my arms. And no one else, I tell you. She also taught me how to whistle. Really loud! And she taught me how to draw a cow when before all I could make was a rat which looked like a cat. Oh my god! She must be looking for me. I must go. Wait! don’t tell her I was out. Promise!”, she blabbered in one breath and started skipping on the narrow track down the hill.
“I won’t. I promise”, replied Arun in a barely audible voice.
“Hey, hold on, What’s your name?” quipped Arun and immediately found himself surprised for doing that.
The girl turned back, all the while still running down the track, and shouted back.
“Bansi…Bansi Kiri”
Arun stood there stupefied, looking at the thatched house and the children playing. After what seemed to be a lifetime, he turned around facing the foothills and dialed his cellphone.
“Jean, buy that painting”, and began his walk towards the railway station.
Somewhere to Belong
In a place the wind sways,
Is a meadow to fritter away,
Has a flower to hold tears,
And a shade until the sky clears.
Lives a heart to hide a hurt,
In the saint of the heart.
Somewhere way way back,
Near the river of the song,
Says a tree of a home,
To here you belong.
-Adnaan
The slight tickle off the face,
The fierce knock in subtle grace,
The quickest rumble in the race,
The enemies did, bow and brace.
The wildest tornado in the calmest sea,
The orbs of fire in a gentle spree,
The lord of wind in the mountain’s lee,
The knights did, scrum yet flee.
The Demon of dreams of fearsome deed,
The God of one and ruler of all creed,
The kindest voice in the bloodiest field,
The warriors did, pray indeed.
-An Ode to Sachin Tendulkar, Adnaan.
An Ant Hill is a masterpiece of nature. Hidden from the human eye it grows intricate, complex and deep. It’s a beautiful structure crafted by one of the most humble creatures. But in the world of Colosseum’s and Eiffel’s tower it is generally overlooked. How do we define creativity in such a context? Is creativity about grandeur and sublime beauty? Or it’s about incremental slight of hands spread across generations?
Does every painting needs to project the emotions like the Monalisa or represent the raw beauty of nature as in a Van Gogh’s? It’s a common conception that being creative is unnatural in humans and people like Mozart or Bach are freaks of nature. The task of being creative seems daunting for most of us. Master’s say that creativity happens when you let the river in your heart meet the ocean in your mind. If it’s all in our minds and there is nothing biological which impedes creativity, why is that so few of us can actually be creative ?
The answer lies in the perception of creativity. A creative idea or art is hardly conceived so unless it can be measured on a scale. Is it grand? Is it useful? Is it complex? And, Is it beautiful? Any of such ideas are executed with great perseverance of it’s practitioners over a long period of time. Another observation here is that it seems to us that the practitioners always seem to have a final goal to achieve. In such a world an Ant-Hill might be complex and intricate but it has no final goal. It spreads without a plan.
Though it might seem to us that all creative things have a grand plan behind them, it’s hardly true in nature. The most creative camouflage techniques of organisms have come into place through trials and errors over millions and millions of years of random evolution. Creativity in nature has never tried to be efficient, beautiful, grand or even useful.
For those of us who have a hard time being creative, it’s important to understand that creativity is any physical stimuli (grand or ordinary) our mind executes in response to fresh sprouts of ideas which spring up in our fertile minds. Creativity is as much about the epitome of beauty as it’s about the epitome of labor. Creativity is not only about creating Taj Mahals but is also about creating ant-hills.
Honest Musings 