Mindfullness

Your mind does not need you.

You need it.

Without you, it still goes on with thoughts. That is why seeing yourself as your mind will be dangerous.

Dissociating yourself from it helps you to direct it to the right things.

So what sort of things you want your mind to do?

That is why you need a goal.

You can bring the wanderer (your mind) to go behind the goal.

The issue is when your mind is chasing the goal most of the time you become the mind.

So you need to be always other than the mind even when it is chasing the goal.

It is like you and your genie which does the work for you.

A goal invariably has a outcome

The outcome affects the mind that is pursuing the goal.

Your job is to see the mind doing the goal and not be on the outcome.

Do you see how difficult this is ?

It is easy to be your mind. And let it be your master.

It takes time to be the master and let the mind work for you.

Being the master is ultimate Freedom.

Freedom is the ultimate goal!

Thoongavanam

What if being a cop your son is kidnapped by the drug mafia in return for a bag of cocaine you got from them in a under cover operation? It definitely reads similar to a news item you may read sipping your morning coffee.

So what it takes to convert this simple thing into a watch-able story on screen ? That's what is all about thoongavanam the latest movie by Kamal Haasan and team.

It is a remake of a (some say without much alteration) French movie Nuit Blanche.

So this fact hangs in the back of my head while I watch it leaving me just to enjoy the movie as is than looking into it as a original creative piece.

I read the English translation of War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. It is undoubtedly in the top of my best reads. Not reading it in Russian did not in any way come in the way of enjoying the novel. It may be because whoever did the translation did full justice to it. The flow, the sequence, the narration, the dialogues all looked engrossing and natural.

So it does not matter whether you see the original or the duplicate as long as the essence of the original which could be the story, the screen play, the characters, visuals or action do not drop from what the original did. In fact if you can add subtle things that can make it more interesting then you have achieved your job of a remake.

The humour interlaced in the movie throughout , the people in the kitchen , the villain Prakash Raj, his assistant and the movie producer in the bar, all of them seem to add mild humour to the otherwise fast paced and a bit serious action and screen play. May be on a different note, if this humour was let off, the thrill element would have been little more.

So if you forget the fact that it is a remake and Kamal Haasan who gave some classics like Thevar Magan, Virumandi, Hey Ram is in here in a borrowed theme, you will thoroughly enjoy this movie.

The movie is definitely fast paced, no songs, no romances, very straight in what it is trying to say as a story, no need to break your head in complex non-linear narration, all happening over a night in a pub between a drug mafia, cops (good and bad), a little boy and a bag of cocaine.

It is not a movie that you will rave about definitely, say like a Hey Ram. All I can say is it has the finesse and is quite well executed without any rough edges. The background score is amazing.

Personally, I always like creativity and seeing it come alive in execution. It would be difficult for me to code on a project that I did not conceive of except for money. I guess that is what the makers of this film also would be aiming for. Execute cleanly and rapidly on a well established theme and make quick bucks. So we can only appreciate the execution which is crisp and professional.

Let Others Live

I keep reading about the death row convicts, their last days, their last hour before they are hanged. Recently it was the Memon in India for the Bombay bomb blasts and some time ago it was Mayuran Sukumaran and others in an island in Indonesia where they were executed by a firing squad for drug trafficking. A great deal of news gets generated from relatives, friends, humanitarians, activists, government, former judges and so on. 

What I fail to understand is this. Whenever a relative or friend or some one known dies, I see people around me feeling sorry for it. They feel bad that such and such person being so young or so talented or so kind hearted has passed away. Clearly such emotions bury the fact that they themselves will pass away some day. People waiting in the gallows are no different from people outside the jail in their homes. There are several old men and women among us who are waiting to die only by other means than hanging. Some naturally by ageing, some by ailments and some by unforeseen accidents. Many a time the young ones are not spared as well.

It can be argued that the execution of those in the gallows are forced upon them without their will. But if we see, it is the same case for people living in this world, you and me as well where the death is inevitable. No one can escape it. The big difference I see is that for those living outside the gallows, they are allowed to live until death happens to them by some means. While for those waiting to be hanged, they are not allowed to live and death is forced on them. 

But one should remember that in both cases death is inevitable for both the parties. Only the time, mode and place can change. If this broader truth is understood by one and all no one would bother to end the life of another. The person waiting to be hanged can stop killing others and the person in the society can stop hanging a convict. 

Life is something beautiful that has happened to all of us. Since we all, rich or poor, tall or short, great or average meet the same end, it would be only prudent for us to stop hatred in any form and let others live the same way we live. Or in other words, just mind  your own life without affecting others as much as possible. Even if we do not love others, just remain silent and let them live their own lives. That seem to be the sanest way out for humanity.

Automate my desire

Maddy was late to office. He knew his boss would have by now circled his cube several times like a eagle for its prey. He deliberately tried to give him a miss on seeing him at a distance, getting into Niranjan’s cubicle.

Niranjan had his head inside the monitor in front of him. Maddy knocked on the cubicle frame and ducked in to sit. He did not want his boss to see him.

Niranjan turned around. ‘Hey man! long time’. 

Yes..In Internet time it is indeed long. We just met yesterday over lunch, right?

Is it? Niranjan was one of those deep thinking types. When he goes deep into his thought it will take few minutes before he can see the person in front of him and answer. Lunch? He was searching himself for what he had for lunch the previous day. He could see himself in the cafeteria with a plate full of  …ah he got it. It was those special parotas that got introduced yesterday. Hmm…Now he looked back at Maddy having touched the vision of lunch. 

‘Yes man..just the thought of yesterday looks so far away’

See I told you. You live in Internet time. You are like many plugged into the web and consuming every bit of news, every quora question, every chat. A boat capsizing in China is what is in your head now right?

Whoa yes man..I was just reading about it..

OK..step back a little and it would have been Anushka Sharma’s tweet on Abdul Kalam spelling his name wrong? 

Yes man..

See I can go on like this…In between you would have looked at Hacker News and read that trending article around How Artificial Intelligence is Inhuman…

Man! you are getting everything as if you were inside my head.

Maddy was happy that all what he said to Niranjan was resonating.

Thats why I told you live in Internet time. You are a slice between the real physical YOU sitting here and the virtual online YOU. So many things happen to you sitting here, the news, the Facebook feed, the mails…now your lunch is just a very small event that crossed you and since you do it every day its not exciting.

Niranjan could not agree more. He was suddenly lighted up by this conversation. He felt he should move around a bit. 

Why don’t we go have coffee?

Both walked silently for a while as they entered the cafeteria. 

Cafetaria was almost empty as it was just after the first phase in the morning. Everyone was busy in their desk. 

A person was vacuuming the floor at the far end of the Cafetaria.

Maddy went to get something.

***

Niranjan’s vision suddenly escaped the current. It expanded into another space. 

He and his wife were walking into a popular consumer products service centre. The service reps scattered there enquired his problem. He pointed to a broken tube. He was asked to go further and enter a room at the far end to get it fixed. He walked passed several rooms which had crammed cubicles filled with youngsters fixed on their monitors and phones. He got into the last room on the right and some one saw the tube, took it to a corner, cut it and fixed the remaining into the sucking end. It was done in five minutes.

While walking back to his car, Niranjan told his wife…there’s something wrong about this whole thing.

His wife was following him closely, with cars whizzing past on the road. She could not hear him completely. Back in the car she asked “What did you say?”

“There’s something wrong with this..? don’t you see?”

“With what?”

“This whole Vacuum cleaning stuff?”

“Yes, of course, we have been postponing fixing the tube and it all got done in five minutes”

“No, I did not mean this fixing”

“Then what did you mean?”

Niranjan was now on the road. “Let me ask you something. What did you see in the service centre?”

“What?” his wife was wondering where he is going not getting the context.

“What did you see there as we got in and walked past?”

“We saw a bunch of folks trying to help us”

“OK as we walked further?”

“…Hmm..we entered the room on the far right”

“right..but before that?”

“A bunch of folks on computers”

“Yes. Now you are right there. That’s what is wrong”

“What’s wrong with that?”

Niranjan was silent now. He felt he was not looking at the road for a while. The road had curved to the left and then to the right and become narrower. Several bikes went past. It was quite trafficky.

He took left in the signal and went into the more broader highway. Now he could again slip back to where he left.

“See, why do we use a Vacuum cleaner?”

“Obviously to get rid of the dirt”, his Wife was curious to know where he was going.

“Before these Vacuum cleaners, how did we do it?”

“We did it with a broom. You mean why we need to use gadgets?” She tried to latch on to where he would go next.

“Yes, sort of..what is the reason you use a Vacuum cleaner instead of a broom stick?”

“It saves time obviously. It makes it easy to clean. It is quick”

“Right. It saved your time. But what about the time of those folks you saw stuck to the monitors or those service reps?”

“They are just doing their jobs”

“But to save your time? Then how is their time saved?”

The wife was perplexed. For a moment it was quite amusing for her. She chuckled.

“You see what we are up to? All this automation stuff. We brought machines to free us from the mundanity. Sure they freed up our time a lot. But it ended up adding time for others. Now if I expand this, every piece of thing I use in my life has 100s or 1000s of people behind it losing their time to make another 1000 or 1 million save time.

And I go to office to write code which saves the time for a travel agent and the travellers. But my time is saved by the 1000s of folks at Honda to make me drive the car. The TV, the mobile phone, the WhatsApp and all are invented to save the time for some one and free him to spend it on some other. But we end up spending it to save the time of other.

So effectively none of us get benefitted by this time saving. We are constantly in a tight loop helping each other, each other’s desire while none of us have time to pursue our own desire”

Niranjan paused. He was not sure if he still got this right. But he said what was sticking on his mind and now he could see the road. 

They had already come closer to their house.

***

Maddy got back from the counter with two tender coconuts with straws in them. 

“Oh…you again got into the thought loop? What is it now?”

Niranjan nodded..”Nah, just that why we want to automate things and stuff” He just briefed the whole thing to Maddy.

Maddy started laughing.

"You are the craziest person I have seen on this planet. It is definitely interesting. But you know what, I have a theory on why we got into this”

Niranjan looked up to Maddy. 

“As you said, everyone is looking up to the other to save his time. Though a machine can help me to save time, it has to be maintained, it has to be evolved and therefore you have 1000s behind it to keep it running. The car you use has 1000s behind keeping it maintained, evolved and so on. The worker fitting engine of that car wants to go back and watch TV and there comes your escape route. You shipping that code to far away land wants to escape into a family vacation in Kenya. So it looks like if you want to escape you need to be caught. This is a catch22. The ones that want to do the greatest escape, say own a island or a luxury yacht gets caught the most. The simple worker fitting at that assembly line has a simple escape of watching a TV show. 

If you did not want to escape, you wouldn’t be at someone’s service”.

Niranjan nodded. “How can you not escape? I mean how can you not have desires?”

“Guess you cannot NOT have any desires. It is impossible. As thats what you are wired with. But your little vision on how we humans collectively fail at saving someones time by automating is a classic example of the fall out of having such desires. 

To fulfil your desire you work to fulfil some one else’s desire and it goes on. Its a cycle cleverly crafted to keep moving on thinking that we humans did really get somewhere when we look back. But am I any different from my great grand father? Not at all. Underlying this skin, I am exactly the same. I have not changed one bit. 

Lord Ram had the thought if Sita was safe when Hanuman returned burning Lanka and it is the same thought every father has when he waits for his daughter returning back or a husband waiting for his wife to return from work. All this automation has helped us track things better, instantly and we are going on getting better at that. But fundamentally we are not any better than that pre-historic man. The instincts are pretty much the same. The wiring within is the same”.

Niranjan kept the emptied coconut on the table. The water was a bit sour.

His vision now went to that first Neanderthal Man who had felt the same taste drinking tender coconut’s water.

Utthama Villain

Any reasonable human being born in this planet will think about death how much ever he is engrossed in living this life. Many a time the possibility of death staring at you in some form, may be some sort of a terminal disease or some ailment that is slowly killing you or even a heart attack from which you escaped brings that JOLT provided you are that type of person who notices it and think about it.

When you know you no longer can ignore time on this planet and every passing moment is important, you start to wonder what exactly are you here for. It is obviously not what you have been doing all along. Because if you look back why you went to school or why you got married or why you built that house or why you had kids or why you even got into friendship with some one, the deeper you think about them, the more empty they appear. Everything has just passed by and you have been a part of it. Looking back on life they bring this question of who you are who has been part of all that yet sitting pretty now and doing something completely disconnected with those past events ? Seriously who is this person? Why was he after all that as if he was possessed? Who is that who is sitting here and typing all this? Why does he do it? 

Without knowing who I am , it is very difficult to even associate anything that has been done. May be most times you were asleep so it all passed by without your knowledge. And that is truly the case with most of us. All our past happened without us being there fully. Can you recollect one instance where you were completely there ? If I say my body and mind was there in all the events that I came across, then it is also true that by the very fickle nature of the mind you were not there really. It was some wave of thoughts which was there all the time. The thoughts may not necessarily be reflective of the activity you were involved at any point in time. For example, I may type this and my mind is still flashing various images unrelated to what I am doing. I may recollect my son’s first year birthday in my mind now but I was probably half there. Remaining half I do not know. The meaninglessness and futility of this existence strikes you hard. The fact that I created my own meanings of my actions looks stupid. Yet we cannot ignore our desires. The ones we had relentlessly chased. That gave me the illusion that this person is so real. But death? 

When I am confronted with the possibility of dying in some form and it engulfs me, my senses suddenly become more clear. It is no longer the sleepy go ahead no matter what types. There is a lot more clarity on who this person is. It is no longer the unclear, sleepy me. The nonsense suddenly stops. You no longer kid yourself. You become straight. Your path is clear. You have finite time and not the imagined unlimited time in your hands. There is no more luxury in postponing stuff. Internally you are a lot focused. If you had wasted time thinking this and that about yourself, about others, about yourself as seen by others and so on all that confusion drops. The clearer YOU emerges. 

When this happens, living life is easy. You no longer start feeling that you are different from this life. You and Living become one. You are that. It is a irony that the possibility of death makes you live life better. But that is the truth. Even if you are not dying any time soon, the constant awareness of leaving this planet any moment makes you focus on things that matter. Unwanted noise gets filtered.

Uttama Villain is a movie by Kamal Haasan - A must watch if you are some one who has thought about death at some point in time in your life, would like to pause in the midst of your race and take a clean look, question things and bring focus and meaning to this life. Very rarely does a subject like this gets shown in movies with the level of all round performance by all actors, the colourful art forms, the heaviness and the humour, the poignant and thought provoking dialogues, great background score and visuals. 

Go watch it to get that JOLT.

Shankar's I movie

The main thing about this movie is its grandeur and opulence. Rich sets, locales, make up, stunts, choreography, visuals, cinematography, music, costumes.

The story is all about how one’s desire to do things out of reach can gain enemies and in the process spoil the original objective itself. Vikram’s desire to become a super model driven by the love for Amy earns him enemies and eventually spoils his only asset which is his physique and face. How he gets out of it and gets back his lady love in the process taking revenge on people who spoilt him is the story in brief.

I will try the onion-peel approach to de-construct or reverse engineer to reach the kernel of this magnum opus of Shankar.

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD. DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE MOVIE.

The stunts and songs are extravagant and meant to please a section of the audience. So let us ignore it no matter how high octane and beautiful they are. I will not harp on the fact that they are unrealistic etc. I can assume that for example the roof top stunt with bi-cycles in China in reality could be something like the crew which is doing the ad shoot is able to call the police or public rushes to help Vikram and he escapes unhurt. So the artistic liberty taken by directors can be easily admired and crossed over without dwelling on it and wasting time as to it being illogical etc.

If you like rich visuals, gravity defying stunt sequences, then you can watch the movie only for that. It is so rich and colourful and it definitely brings a section of audience to watch the movie.


OK, with the songs and stunts behind our back, let us look at the comedy scenes. Santhanam has a similar role played by Vivek in Anniyan, that being the friend of Vikram. Not just cracking jokes some of which makes you laugh but beyond that helping the hunch back Vikram to come out of his depression and start to take revenge on his tormentors. So, he moves Vikram around inside a cart as an ice cream seller. So if you feel the comedy is a misfit to look at the kernel of what the story is, Santhanam serves as the side kick giving the necessary logistics support or filling the gaps for the hero to carry on his job either in the initial days when he is going after Amy Jackson or when he is into modelling assignments and in later part when he is after his enemies.

Now we see two big threads. One is the characters and their interactions. Other is the plot on which the characters travel. There is a question as to whether the characters make the plot or the plot is independent of the characters. We will try to figure this out as we move on.

Vikram’s character is fairly well sketched. He is the typical north madras lower middle class resident , innocent , running a gym and has two broad objectives. One to become Mr. Tamilnadu and the other slightly lesser interest following Amy as a model in all the ads she appears. It is not love. It is a sort of admiration or being a fan of a celebrity. He eats, sleeps and drinks Amy when he is not pumping iron. A chance meeting with Amy happens which is the story part that helps Amy to rope in Vikram for a modelling assignment in China due to a problem that Amy faces. So this is all going reasonably OK. No big issues in terms of the way the story moves or the characters tying into the story.

Amy is kind of the single parent brought up kid as only the mother is shown. She is more pampered and beautiful and grows up to do modelling assignments out of her choice. She likes her profession and is sincere in giving it her 100%. She is not doing it for the sake of money as she does not fall for Upen who is a co-actor in the modelling she does. She has her morals in spite of being in a industry where slipping is easy.

Upen’s advances and her refusal to fall for him moves the story into a position where she is kept out of modelling assignments due to the influence wielded by Upen on the modelling company executives and owner. She finds Vikram with the help of her mentor Suresh Gopi. Suresh is a family doctor of Amy and a friend as well since her child hood. Suresh also goes to the Gym run by Vikram and he sort of helps Amy to rope in Vikram for the modelling assignment as he knows both. He has influence on Vikram by sponsoring his Mr.Tamilnadu competition entry.

The story now moves into a path of establishing real love between Amy and Vikram while in China. The character of Vikram slowly changes from being an admirer or a fan to a lover and Amy from seeing Vikram as a junior brought up by her in the field to her lover with turn of events.  These are shown very gradually and convincingly.

There are 4 enemies created in the process of transformation of Vikram from a body builder to a super model. Upen who wants Amy is jealous of Amy moving around with Vikram as well as his own modelling going for a toss because Vikram - Amy combination becomes a big hit. Vikram’s make up man-woman who has a crush on Vikram also becomes jealous of him moving with Amy. This is a bit unbelievable, but it is a very small part of the story.

Vikram also shoots down a cola modelling assignment as it has pesticides apart from openly talking about it in the media which results in a big let down for that product and this irks the big boss of the modelling company. His earlier Mr.Tamilnadu contestant who loses to Vikram becomes a enemy.

Now by themselves all these four would have been quite harmless and mostly be fuming within themselves. It is actually the fifth person Suresh who is portrayed as a family friend and doctor who also has an eye for Amy since her child hood becomes the main catalyst to the whole group making them go for the kill. Sorry not killing per se, but they want something more than that (in Tamil Adhukum mela). They want to disfigure him. They inject a virus into him and Vikram thus turns into a hunchback with a ugly face and body.

Thus the plot is quite linear so far. The characters are fairly well essayed and the interconnections between the characters and the way the plot moves are straight and believable as well.

The other big thread of the movie involves the hunchback character of Vikram who goes through depression, keeps away from Amy, in fact goes to the extent of proving he is dead by a fake accident and then learns how Suresh has duped him for getting Amy along with the others and conspired to disfigure him. Thus the hunchback’s only purpose is to disfigure badly all the 5 villains and goes about it clinically. The layer of how each of the five get disfigured is an extra detail and can be imagined in different ways. This takes a lot of cue from Anniyan’s Garuda puranam episodes.

The key point is that the story revolves around people, their desire, lust and the vengeance they wreck on each other. Also another layer of story revolves around the concept of ‘true love’. True love is not physical only. It transcends beyond physical into the soul. This happens to Amy who asks Vikram what he would have done had she been disfigured. It is a very defining moment of the whole story. I feel this is the pivot around which everything else is constructed. This is the main theme. This is the kernel of this movie. If you see a story as a pure love story then it is very normal. A lot has been done in movies around it. Now if you add a layer of platonic love transcending physical aspects, then the hunchback with the ugly face comes in. If you ask how he came to become a hunchback, then the rest of the plot falls in.

Overall, it is a clean story telling tying all the knots starting from a very simple outline. With the imagination pulling this basic kernel of a story into different directions, it becomes a magnum opus. This is the magic you can do on a big screen with the technology and Shankar has spared nothing to see its maximum potential.

Short story - What is in a name?

He was annoyed by the happenings. Reading a newspaper in the morning made him heavy. It is no longer the cursory glance at the happenings around. So many wrongs were reported. Of different kinds. May be that people were more diligent in reporting things than ever before. But still it worried him a lot. Robbery, Corruption, Terror, Accidents, Rape, Bigotry and countless such things, you name it , it is there. Or are all these different names for one common thing called ‘Bad’?. Not that it is there once in a while, it is there every day. Only the names, places and time have to be replaced.

“Where are we headed?” he was stuck internally with that question.

“Appa, I brushed my teeth myself today” his 5 year old kid came towards him.

It took a while for him to register the change in context. He switched to look at his son.

“Wow, its so nice” he beamed at his son and moved forward to hug him.

He could feel the morning warmth of his son. His thoughts flashed for a moment “What kind of place are we creating for this kid?”.

For the next half hour both were running around the house. He was chasing his son and vice-versa.

Another hour went in Yoga and meditation.

Mind calmed down. He almost forgot the thoughts he started the day with.

“Today I have to get those bugs fixed and see that working” he thought about yesterday night’s work and his mind now wandered deep into work.

Sita called him for breakfast and he had it. It was tasting good. “Without some sort of exercise in the morning, I will be doomed” he thought to himself.

“We need to get that compliance certificate for our site” Sita reminded him.

Compliance certificate was a way to correct the original non-compliance by the Government which issued approvals to purchase agricultural land for building houses. He got this site from the housing society of his company which had paid a tidy sum to get that land earlier. The new Government found the treasury empty and decided to regularise the non-compliance by asking all house owners to get it regularised. The company’s housing society no longer existed.

“The Government always wins. And people form Governments. So it is always the people who win, no matter what, Yes I win” he was loud.

Sita looked at him a little puzzled. “What? why don’t you get the documents” She said and went ahead to finish her work without waiting for him to respond. 

“Oops..I completely missed that one” he said and went on to get the documents needed.

He was not feeling comfortable with the thought of meeting this Officer in the Sub-registrar office. He was sure he had to dole out some cash to get things done. It was not something pleasant. He was tossing with the idea of ‘to comply or not to comply’ inside.

***********

The Sub-registrar office was flooded with people. Peons, brokers, officers, clerks all walked up and down the multi-storeyed building. Overall it looked jaded and dirty. Walls had pan streaks while walking up the stairs.

“Hello", the officer looked up.

He handed over the documents.

“Can we walk outside. It is too noisy here” the Officer stood up and moved outside his desk.

He followed the Officer.

Outside they came under a tree. Lots of people moving in various directions. It was like the way gas molecules move in a container randomly. Sita who waited outside joined him.

The Officer looked at him and said “You see, there are a lot of issues in your case”.

He kind of knew what was coming. So he looked at him without much reaction.

“The land has a history of disputes. Everything earlier has been settled with money by your company. Unless you pay ‘X’ it will be very difficult to move the papers”.

He told “See, we just bought it from our housing society. I was handed over the site. There was nothing beyond that. Asking me for money now is not correct”.

“OK, then you make a decision to wait for years to get it regularised. Your choice” the Officer said and started to move away.

***********

He stood there. “I was born into this mess. It was not my choice. I am a minority here to stay clean” he was mumbling to himself.

“What are you thinking so much?” Sita asked.

“Am not going to pay him money” he said.

“Then are we going to suffer without water and sanitary connections” Sita was looking at him helplessly.

"Yes. if that is what we need to pay for staying clean”.

************

As the Officer entered the building, his boss saw him. “Ram, did you talk to that fellow …who was supposed to meet you today?”

“Yes. he is not the type. He will not budge”. Ram told his boss.

“What was his name?” the boss asked.

“Ah..his name ?..Ravan” Ram told.