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Taramati: The Legend of an Artist

Recently I had the opportunity to witness a performance of that oft-mentioned Hyderabadi play; Taramati: the legend of an Artist. After reading about it far too many times in the papers, I thought what the hell, may as well check it out.

The play relates a rather romanticized (ie, questionable) version of the tale of Taramati and her affairs with the penultimate Qutub Shahi king, Abdullah. The play itself was OK... I didn't really care for the performances, good though they were. The language was high falutin Urdu, even for me. Which bothered me: Why use north Indian style Urdu in a play about the birth of Hyderabadi tehzeeb? Hyderabadi Urdu, or Dakkani, is as ancient as the northern variant, and a literary language for longer. So it would seem logical to employ Dakkani here, would it not? Intelligibility for a wider audience certainly wasn't a consideration, that's for sure.

P.S: My posts will probably be bite sized for a while now... I blame my short attention span on Web 2.0.

The Return

Finally after far too long, I have decided to return to the blogsphere. Hopefully it shall be far more regular than the past many months.

Armchair cultural studies: Mortality and the search for 'something real'

Yesterday night, as I was settling in to an hour's commute back, I spotted a crowd on the opposite side of the road. Curious, I peered out the window.

Through the throng of people, I noticed a pair of legs on the road, uncomfortably angled. Sneakers and jeans, just like me. He must be face down on the road, and wasn't moving. I couldn't make out any blood on the road, in that sodium street light. It took a moment to realise what had happened, just as I heard someone say, "Oh my God!". I searched the faces of the crowd, looking for an identifiable expression. There was fear, but something else... what it was, I don't know.

The rest of the night I thought about death, and what it meant. This post is not about that.

There I was, a well meaning idiot, recycling some artificial ideas about anxiety that I had taken on for no good reason.

My anxiety was about my own speculative mortality, not about anything
resembling actual experience with mortality, which is something that the majority of young people in my social segment don't experience. Just
those pangs of "OMG, I'm, like, 25, maybe I'm not going to live
forever? Whatever, off to the gym!"

Odd, in a sense, that my generation has to force itself to feel anything akin to real emotions. We watch soppy movies over and over again, give ourselves an imaginary pat on the back for being so sensitive and kind, yet would shirk the idea of hugging a friend who's hurting inside. The kid on the street with tears running down his grimy face and torn t shirt gets a "Chalte bano!" and a retort of "It's all a scam!".

I would say more, but hey, whatever, I'm off to the gym!

Harry Potter and the Deus ex Machina

It's done. The end of the Harry Potter saga. Whatever you may make of the Potter mania that swept the globe, Harry Potter is Harry Potter. There is no doubting the permanent effect it has had on the popular imagination.

I have personally been a Potterhead for the past 6 years. Coming as I did from from a LotR background, I found Potter relatively childish... still, there is something to be said for the breathless pacing and whodunnit format.

Now that the entire Potter saga lays bare before us, there are things that strike me as odd. JKR had always seemingly maintained a coherent narrative, and her constant utilization of the Chekhov's gun and foreshadowing, provided ample ground for conspiracy theories. I am not ashamed to admit I have read a good number of those theories :) (for a while after HBP came out, dumbledoreisnotdead.com was on my bookmarks). Now that we finally know, where do the conspiracy theories stand, and what of the book that everyone had waited for?

For those that haven't read the book, beware..... for here there be spoilers!!



You've been warned. Proceed at your own risk.

Now that I have had sufficient time to absorb and soak in Potter 7, I must say I am disappointed by certain aspects of the core narrative. One thing that I appreciated about JKR's writing was adherence to the internal logic of the Potter-verse. Previously held beliefs may be modified by new information, but they were not outright violated, as I feel has happened in this book.

Take, for instance, the matter of the Elder wand. The facts, as they stand:

1. Wandlore has it that a wand chooses it's master.
2. A wizard can bend a vanquished opponent's wand to their will.
3. Ollivander points out that murder is not the only way to defeat an opponent.

Given these facts, Harry's statement that he is the Master of the Elder Wand seems plausible. However, it seems contrary to the internal logic of the Potter-verse. As Potter claims, since Draco disarmed Dumbledore, mastery of the Elder Wand passed to him. Draco was subsequently defeated by Potter, and his original wand taken. However, does this imply that the Elder Wand, which Draco had never touched, also passed to Potter in that moment? It's seems counterintuitive.

If an expelliarmus/stunning/body binding spell was enough to vanquish someone, then the entire DA should have lost mastery over their wands (since they practiced against each other), Harry included. However, this seems not to be the case. Then how does it hold good in the case of Harry and Draco? It might be said that since the DA members didn't try to claim the wands, they were not truly vanquished. In that case, then Draco shouldn't be Master of the Elder wand either, since he is never consciously aware of it.

Which brings me to another matter. Why should Voldermort's final AK spell fail? Many people believe this is because Harry actively blocks the spell, and since he is master of the Elder Wand, it refuses to kill him. Well, as we know, nothing can block an AK... nothing. Certainly not an expelliarmus. As for the Elder Wand refusing to kill it's true master, it certainly had no problem casting a full blown AK at him just an hour prior, in the forest. The fact that it kills Voldy's horcrux is a different matter... but the AK itself was fully formed.

I do not imply these are loopholes. An author of JKR's calibre and formidable backing (ie, dozens of editors), will not make such obviously glaring plot holes. If anything, I consider these to be serious deviations from the magical lore established in the previous books... deviations that will be explained away, I'm sure. If anything, I applaud JKR for inflaming the passion of her fans yet again, one way or another.

Harry Potter and the end of the Saga

'tis done. :(

Potter update

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Harry Potter update update

So, I've spent another day, reading the book, as slowly as I can manage. It seems unbelievable. The very last book... an end to the saga.... noooooo! :(

Today I have barely advanced 40 pages... the prospect of reaching the end fills me with dread.

Potter update

Rowling sure weaves a clever yarn, that's for sure. I'm trying to read as slowly as I can, to enjoy the LAST Potter book ever...

... unless of course the money convinces her to write a series of prequels! :)

On page 338... quite a few deaths so far.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Yes, the rumours were true. The Harry Potter has indeed been... err... 'acquired' by certain persons who have decided to share their good luck with the rest of mankind... and early adopter that I am, plunged in head first (Stop sniggering, Tam).

I admit it, I've spent all day reading the better part of the book, and I'm hooked. Will let you know how the book turns out, and to the best of my abilities, will keep this space spoiler free.

Return of the King and the Inflammed Tonsils

I've been down with tonsilitis all this week... which means I've been sleeping in, passing in and out of troubled sleep, and basically bored out of my skull. Just my luck that all the movies I have on hand at the moment are pure piss.... so I've been digging deep and pulling out old films I wouldn't mind watching again.

This way, I saw Return of the King a few days ago. Due to my limited attention span and propensity for headaches, the film stretched over three days... at the end of which I was all teary eyed.

Even after all these years, it gets to me. Frodo and Sam... Merry and Pippin... Gandalf, Aragorn... regardless of what people may make of the films, to me at least the stories came across, and that's what counts. A lot of people are aghast at the changes in the films, but well... I'm too teary eyed to care!! Boo hoo!! Araaaaagorn!!

A few things I noticed (or rather, re-noticed) from the films:

1. Why oh why are the Elves blond? Apart from Galadriel, there is no mention of any blond elves in Middle Earth. Elrond and his children are dark haired due to their part Edain heritage. What of the other elves? After all, most Elves in Middle Earth are probably of Telerin/Sindarin heritage. So shouldn't they have silver hair (like Cirdan)?

2. I have always felt a bit iffy about Aragorn's legal claim to the throne of Gondor. There's a lot to be said about it, one way or another.... though I still feel his claim was quite shakey.

3. The charge of the Haradrim... reminded me of the Persians from 300.... though not as much slo-mo.

4. There seems to be no internal logic about the use of Cirth/Tengwar. Cirth should normally be preferred for stonework/metalwork, and Tengwar for pensmanship, but again... no logic seems to be in place. While the stone door of Moria has Tegwar, Anduril and the helmet of the Mouth of Sauron have Cirth. Hell, even the Ring has Tengwar.

I rule!! Woo hoo!

Another lazy weekend, and more tests on Tickle.com...

I have an IQ of 138. Boo hoo!

...........................................................................





You're a Visionary Philosopher!


The Classic IQ Test

Brought to you by Tickle

The Downloader's Prayer

Our Ripper, who art on mininova,
aXXo be thy name.
Thy torrents come.
Seeding will be done,
Here as it was on supernova.
Give us this day our latest rips.
And forgive us our leeching,
As we forgive those that leech from us.
And lead us not on to private trackers;
But deliver us from the MPAA:
For thine is the ripping, the seeding, and the glory,
For ever and ever.

aXXo.

A No Brainer!

One lazy afternoon... yawn... and an online test to determine my Brain type.

Turns out I have a dominant Right hemisphere. Err... Great!

I paste below my test result.

....................................................................................................

you are Right-brained, which means that the right hemisphere of your brain is dominant over your left.



Typically, right-brained individuals like you are creative, imaginative, and particularly attuned to their surroundings, whether catching the nuances of music, discerning artistic elements, or noticing spatial relationships between different forms. We know this because researchers notice increased activity in the right hemisphere of the brain in individuals hooked up to monitors when they play music or ask them to complete a task involving spatial relationships.

In addition to isolating the ways in which your brain processes information, your right brain also controls the left side of your body. If you are strongly right-brained, you will find that your natural tendency is to be left-handed — though with some skills, you may find that you are right-handed if a right-handed person taught you how to complete a certain task.

Right-brained people tend to be seen as messier than others. It's not that you're necessarily disorganized, it's just that you are likely to have different systems of organization (by theme, by subject, by color) than straight alphabetization or rigidly ordered folders.

You probably have a willingness to entertain experimental treatments and Eastern philosophies more so than others. This is in part because those philosophies mesh with the right brain's strength — taking things in as a whole instead of focusing on the daily minutia.

Though thinking logically might be something you have to do sometimes, you are also good at stream of consciousness thinking and making tangential jumps in logic or reasoning. You are more intuitive than many. And when it comes to pleasure reading, you might have a stronger preference for creative or fiction writing than nonfiction.

For the most part, you think more in terms of symbolism and abstraction instead of things that are more practical and straightforward. You are also likely to look at the whole of a situation instead of seeing it as a series of component parts. You probably tend to be more subjective than objective, allowing for context to color how you interpret a given situation. For you, there are likely very few definites in life, other than the fact that there is almost always more than one way to accomplish and think about things.

That's how your brain processes information. And while your dominant brain hemisphere certainly contributes to the way you process information, there is also a style of learning, unrelated to your dominant hemisphere, that determines the ways in which you are best able to pick up information. When you're learning something new, your dominant brain hemisphere will want to take over. But there are times when the information being presented is not well suited to your dominant hemisphere's abilities.

That's why, in addition to your hemispheric dominance, you also have a style of learning that is dominant for you. Whether you know it or not, you are naturally predisposed to learning things visually, aurally, or through a combination of the two.

Your test results show that you are a visual learner.

Other right-brained people who are also visual learners are Albert Einstein, the painter Vincent Van Gogh, and Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

A walk to remember

After many years, I was back in Delhi for an extended period of time.
I walked down the roads of my colony, and there were memories everywhere.

The crack in the road where I fell off my bike and busted my knee... everybody told me what a brave boy I was for not crying... by the time my dad got there, I had a proud grin and sneakers full of blood.

The stairs were I spent half the night as a 7 year old, standing between two puppies and a wolf.

The night I saw Flight of the Navigator, and looked up at the stars in awe.

The road where I would walk my German Shepherd on a foggy winter morning, in my shorts.

The house where my sister's best friend used to live... and her sister who tried to kiss me.

The park were I walked in the rain after having my heart broken.

Playing favourites...

You know how it goes... you ask someone a question, and then they ask
you the same thing, and so on. Social flip-flopping, I like to think.

Someone said they liked movies, and I asked the fairly obvious question...
"Your favourite movies?"

"Blah blah blah..... yours?"

Here was the sticky bit. I couldn't name any. I think I've seen more
movies than most people within a 40 km radius, yet I couldn't come up
with five movies I liked the most. Why was it so difficult?

Movies have always been in my life. They hinted at a bigger world
beyond my grasp. Different people, different places... acting skills
or cinematographic prowess didn't seem to matter. As long as there was
a tale to tell, I was hooked. Every film, good or bad, was a glimpse
into the mind of another person, and I was hungry for that.

Every once in a while there would be a film that resonated with me, in
a way that had nothing to do with how good it was. They meant
something to me at that point of time in my life, which if I saw now I
would probably classify as drivel. So do I consider them my favourite
films? Or do I consider films I thought to be especially good? Most
films I found to be especially good, and works of art, meant nothing
to me personally, and were forgotten a week later. So that can't be a
favourite, right? What justifies the designation of "favourite film"?

Is it possible to play favourites?

Redrawing the Middle East

The Armed Forces Journal has this to say about redrawing the boundaries of the Middle East. American armchair ethnology. Look into it.

Nobody in their right mind could believe that redrawing International Boundaries in modern times could be anything but bloody. It does, however, reinterate just how fluid national (and individual) identities can be. The creation of National myths seeks to reinforce the collective identity, and gives citizens something to believe. For example, during the Iran-Iraq war, the Iraqi government hired actors to grant 'visions' of the Twelfth Imam to troops, boosting morale. Soldiers on both sides were Shia.

Wahhabi Islam emanating from Saudi Arabia is changing traditional muslim identities the world over. Hajjis returning to their homelands bring with them ideas and concepts from the Holy Lands, acting as 'memetic fountains'. Traditional Islam in Indonesia and Malaysia is gradually being eroded by Meccan Islam. In Pakistan and India, Sufism is being denounced as too soft and theologically shaky, and the swift adoption of Wahabism. In Kashmir, where the purdah was restricted to upper class urban muslims AND hindus, the hijab has made swift inroads.

Petro dollars will do that to you.

Addendum: Steve Pinkler of Harvard on the evolutionary psychology of religion. Gene Expression also has something to say on the matter.

The Silence of the Lambs Genes

Gene Silencers get something to shout about! RNA Silencing has won the 2006 Nobel Prize for Medicine!!

The discovery of the RNAi machinery has been revolutionary in the field of genetics, and was expected to win a Nobel soon. For an overview of the RNAi mechanism, read this post on one of my favourite blogs, Gene Expression.
For an animated tour of the RNAi mechanism, see here.
A documentary on the world of RNA silencing can be seen here.

P.S: Jyoti, if you're reading this.... TREAT TREAT!!

Activators or Stabilizers?

The Daily Transcript reports on a new study that indicates Eukaryotic transcription may occurs in bursts. Transcription factors (regulators of when a gene is "on" or "off") are often characterized as 'activators' or repressors. The paper suggests activators may instead be stabilizers. Genes are always flipping back and forth between different levels of on and off states and when transcription factors bind they can hold one state steady. When upregulation happens a gene isn't 'turned on', it is just kept on.

This paper seems to indicate that cells (at least eukaryotic cells) have varied systems to regulate transcription. Even within prokaryotic cells, the initial 'jiggly' association of RNA polymerase and the promoter seems to be stabilized by Transcription factors. Once RNAP is associated with DNA, it was very stable. Could stabilizers be 'uncoupling' the initial weak RNAP-DNA binding? Could this be related to the phenomenon of abortive transcription seen in vitro?

Osman Sagar and its predatory denizens

Decided to go for a jog/run this sunday evening, to Osman Sagar and back.
Miscalculated. There's far too much traffic on that road on weekends to jog, so I walked most of the way. I sorta expected that, but I was NOT prepared for the wierdness. People stare. It's a common enough habit in South India, so I'm used to that. But guys driving by, going " Wooo Hoooo!" was new to me. I even got a "Kya baat hai!".
Huh.

Osman Sagar's pretty in the evenings. From the Tank Bund, the sun sets over the surprisingly blue water, as you can see here ... it's the blue one on the left. (The colour in the satellite photo is probably an artifact of the angle at which it was taken, though.)


This picture was taken on another occasion.

There are signs warning about crocodiles in the water, and I'm rather psyched about seeing one. Fingers crossed.
The views are amazing. In the evening you can see the lights of Hightech city in the distance, and even ISB, home of the Elastic Retreat.

I hope the jog/run materialises into a regular thing.