Friendly Living, High Thinking

Last weekend I went for my first play ever, to Sophia college in Breach Candy, (the eye candy for southies, its a girls' college). I was already late for the play, reached right spot on when the bell rung, with the 8 books I bought from fort an hour earlier, for a mere 600 bucks. (Including the Unarmed Victory, by Bertrand Russell which is a banned book here)

I was already very happy throughout the day, I had watched Dasvidanya with Sheru and Shama, and liked it, also we had met after a really long time.

The play was ok. Lots of sexual comedy. And we were embarrassed that we had invited Archit and his sister for the play. Anyways, they were quite cool with it. When we came out, I just saw how beautiful the place is. The buildings were all with the old British feel. The roads were sloping and curvy, (as they were when I was in Paris, at Luv's university, and we had to walk down at least 400m to get to the sea level. ) There was graffitti on the walls, with the teenage one liners like, 'Suicide, I've already died'. The whole ambience felt very homely.

When I finished up dinner and was in a cab with pooja and gaurav, I realized something. We are changing. I, who never cared for how much we spent, on at least friends and outings. I had told Pooja how much money she owed me. That had never happened. Now, I felt like telling her, ' have we ever done a hisaab, ditch maar'. But I didn't, unconsciously, either not to make her feel bad, or just that others might feel odd.

Anyways, will feel so nice...it is just another feeling.. to be friends who dont care about money.. saying - we will be the same as always no matter what.. we are strong, carefree people with our own rules..Let the world go down.. Yessss.. truly.. we will live life kingsize as suits us, and we will believe in simple living, high thinking.. Suddenly my thoughts changed to a line which I shaama had told me earlier that day when we were discussing about body building, "Kitna mast lagta hoga, khud ko dekhkar roj bolte honge " Main kitna awesome hoon!" "

In the long confused version of life we are living where we are so netted by all the constraints we put on ourselves, not living as freely as we used to, we tend to 'mature', becoming more individualistic, having certain principles and making rules of behaviour for our mates. Which tends to kill all the fun. Too much sentimental abstraction, but considering it objectively, not.

Just remember the old saying,
"Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow.
Don't walk behind me, I may not lead.
Walk beside me and be my friend."
- Albert Camus

The Inscrutable Americans

A good book. described what i think i have already read a lot about, I think most of us have. but anyways a funny enough story.. A book I want my mom to read.

The Romantics - Pankaj Mishra

I'm reminded of Pink Floyd. It goes so much beyond logic, it beats all logic, by the sheer simplicity and the flow. A very chilled book, it reminds me of my Gang in Chemical, IIT Bombay. We used to fantasize about how we would leave everything, go to North, read up stay in Manali, smoke up and live a simple life with high thinking. He has taken it forward. later story. How he fails and finds what he thought he would, how hs journey in the untold confusion of certainty and nihilism, ends up with him experiencing emotions which he hadn't expected to, and he moves on in the same way. The story doesn't end with the book. A very soothing story. The phrases he uses to describe the usual situations, suit so aptly. He uses the English language so perfectly.

Unbearable Lightness of Being - Q2-Q4

Continuing from where I left off, the book is quite on a different level than the others which I read. My friend had said, 'it is not a quite a fiction, it has so many explanations that it tends to get a wee boring', which is not quite unacceptable, but then I didn't feel the same way when I read it. Maybe it appealed to me in a very different way. It was like i didn't want to imagine with the writer while reading the book,i wanted explanations as and when I was in that situation and that is why I was reading the book. I didn't want to imagine, as my friend wanted to do in a novel, in a fiction.

And so, the explanations which he gives, are so apt, so logically sound and rational, He redefines the whole base of reason and certainty. The sexual fears, its relations to everyday life and the relation ship fears and the various phases a person goes through, are written down well. philosophically, it is a wonderful book. it might not appeal to someone who would assume to be in a culture shock on reading a book with so many infidelities, passages and metaphors about shit, being in a toilet and vomiting compared with sex. It might get too much. But the whole description of it all is very nicely done.

You are Here

So this girl journalist, miss. Reddy has written a book named You are Here. Having read the blog, I was of the opinion that it would be a whiny, extremely emotional, full-of-sex, break ups and mushy relationships, painful boyfriends, judgements passed, a glimpse of high society who smoke coke, the cool lingo and the trivialities which affect them. It is EXACTLY this. It is full of SHIT. Literary Pleasure to chhodo, a not so horrible storyline is also not defendable. It feels like a mixture of one of Sidney Sheldons and some mushy type of a girly story and it brings you to the point of Yuk. It might have appealed to the general public, who have never read a classic love story, a mushy love story, a pornographic novel, mills n boon, penthouse, sidney sheldon, erich segal, or the likewise. Its just an indian copy of a mixture of it all.
It is just a conglomerate of Indian ways of defining 'Cool and Hep' in the new generation. Some may argue it is bold, it represents Indian Youth, the Fuckoff Generation, and the coolness associated with it which lets pulses running and the desperate junta gets a hard on reading such a piece of work, but then No. 1? Is Indian literary public actually literary? Is it worth even publishing such a book other than this type for them then? Will Intellect be awarded ever then?
It was a horrible attempt for a kitsch. Better are those Mumbai Mirror Writers who gossip about the Bollywood likes and dislikes and relationships and boob jobs. Let us not elevate the status of the writing and the book because it reflects Youth of India and the SMS generation.

Ess Muss Sein. It Must be.

The life of Galileo

A play on the later life of Galileo, when he was already famous for his thoughts and theories. He wants some time for his own research and wants people to believe what they see, rather than what they believe through texts. Preachings. Repeated judgements have been made against the Church, rational reasoning. The fear of the masses to change their beliefs, their faith in the church and hence, avoid a panic stricken social order is the arguement given to disallow him to preach his findings. He is threatened to be killed for this, when he as a normal human, submits that he doesn't believe what he proved and works within the shackles of the kingdom, and carries his own research. 'Better work with cowardice than die.' finally, he hands over his work to his disciple at the age of 80 when he is almost blind.

A good play. The dialogues are power packed. It is almost on the edge of being ironic. The arguements make us symphathize with Galileo. Nice, 85 pages. The point of view of a scientist, disciples, his family life and his conflicts with everything are very well potrayed.

The Art of Mathematics

Nice book. A little more attached to mathematics than the philosophy and the dying need of being a mathematician. Gets a little drab for a layman, in the middle. Covers more concepts than 'A Mathematician's Apology'. It is almost a Part 2 of the latter. It is more about numbers. Talks about the beauty of mathematics. The other book talked about the beauty of mathematics in the mind of mathematicians and their pleasure and inevitable need to do so. The earlier one was a better book for laymen and for thought, while this one appeals to a more mathematical frame of mind.

Impressions

Delhi. When I first visited Delhi, I was 12 years old, and with my family. You know how it is. You don't know whats happening. People are taking you everywhere, to see this that, and you somehow have to find fun in everything that is happening, trying to find some games/ice cream.. There was terrible heat, we were in old Delhi which was crowded like people waiting to get to heaven. The roads were full, with vehicles of all kinds, auto rickshaws, cycle rickshaws, buses, bullock carts, etc. and no traffic signals. You can't imagine.

6 months ago, I went to Delhi to go to Ladakh. Stayed there for 4 days at a friends place in New Delhi. This time it was quite different. It wasn't that hot. It wasn't that crowded. It was with rules. Traffic Rules. Was with the University Road. The One with the Janpath. With Chandni Chowk. My My. What a place. The whole feel was different. There was a feel.
The article I wrote about it 6 months ago.. (http://sagar-gujju.blogspot.com/2008/06/dilli-durbar-so-having-listened.html)

A Mathematician's Apology

A very surprising titled book, by Mr. Hardy, confesses his life, his subject, and his group's inevitable way of life and viewpoints. Sarcastically, it may seem, it is a very heartily written essay, and sheds new light on what precision means.

Some of his ideas mix up with philosophy and make a stronger point than the latter. There is but an issue to be tackled. There is an inclination to believe from the essay, that philosophy is a lighter subject, lacking logic, which gives rise to many theories, and all of them being 'right' simultaneously. There are too many words being used to describe a concept/feeling. A whole book written which can be summarized in a paragraph. :)
While, Mathematics is purely, uniquely, and ubiquitously Right. There cannot be an ambiguity. Its is Exact. It doesn't use more than is required.

The reasons of pursuit of Maths is purely because of simple choices life presents. There is no higher purpose than others' occupations. He clearly states the reasons of a man's work, viz.:
1. Investigation of the Truth.
2. Professional Pride.
3. Ambition.

Everything else is derived from one or the combination of these. Any social Service for that matter is not because you want to do good to humanity, but rather you want to find the real reasons for the inequality, and your inner ambition is appreciation of yourself and satisfying your ego, at some level, be it in public, or with yourself when you are alone, justifying your good nature.

Another Statement which hits you is : 'There are very few people in this planet who can do one work extremely well, there are even fewer people who can do many things well, and there is probably no one who can do exactly two things nicely'.

He doesn't justify the mathematicians way of living, alone, pondering in a room, immersed in the same old book/paper for days on end. Though he does glorify the intellectual greatness that mathematicians HAVE to possess to continue with their careers. The aeshetics of Maths, is brought out in the light. Maths can't be felt by anyone, but a select few, and these people are doomed to life, and can't do anything else for good. Also, pure maths, which we are dealing with is unreal for the real world, it is not for Application, it is too pure to be applied to the real world. Too Succinct without any approximations of Engineers who kill the beauty.

It is humble, and proud at the same instant, flirts with the line of being sarcastic, but then its a mathematicians' work, it is as accurate as it can get, and laymen like me are unable to comprehend exactly what he means to describe.

Hey Milan

So Am in the middle of Unbearable Lightness Of Being. Milan Kundera. Czech Setting. Till now, it has revolved around infidelity, and meaning of decision making. It has tinges of some revolution (I have little idea of Czech History, which leads to my ignorance in regards to the setting), some music detours, usage and explanations of colloquial phrases and a deeper and personal understanding of them in context of the story. The Consciousness is taken in a very binary fashion, the concept of lightness and heaviness, both becoming burdens eventually, is tackled very delicately. As in, it has been revisited at regular intervals of time, but the author doesn't force his thoughts, he recreates the perplex his mind abodes in.

I had read the Laughable Loves by the same author, and had found it to be pretty interesting, wierd but interesting.

Sexuality is handled very intricately, on the verge of wierdness. The politics involved, and the various insecurities. The lead character assumes a certain superiority, which is difficult for me to accept. The whole Czech society is difficult to understand. Maybe its because of the history, the revolution, the whole situation that the people behave this way.

There are peculiar interpretatons of the love he develops, at a very deep level of consciousness.
He doesn't try to justify it. He tries to find its meaning. The possibilities, the biases, the whole clarity he develops is believable.

It has other peculiar paragraphs.
For Example, a particular paragraph I liked:

'She shot roll after roll and gave them to foriegn Journalists (). Many of her photographs turned up in the Western Press. They were pictures of tanks, of threatening fists, of houses destroyed, of corpses covered with bloodstained red white and blue Czech flags, of young men on motorcycles racing full speed around the tanks and waving Czech flags on long staffs, of young girls in unbelievably short skirts provoking the miserably sexually famished Russian Soldiers by kissing random passersby before their eyes. As I have said before, the Russian Invasion was not only a tragedy; it was a carnival of hate filled with a curious and no longer explicable euphoria. '

It sums up so much in so less words.

Anyways, I think I will add to this as I proceed along. I really like the book till now.