A large Soma on the rocks

I'm undertaking a pretty daunting task. It begins with these words:

agním īḷe puróhitaṃ
yajñásya devám r̥tvíjam
hótāraṃ ratnadhā́tamam

Read them out loud. Congratulations, you have just read something that was composed over three and a half thousand years ago, in a language from the Bronze Age. How does that make you feel? In the common tongue of today, they say:

I Laud Agni, the chosen Priest,
God, minister of sacrifice,
The hotar, lavishest of wealth.

Yep, I'm reading the Rig Veda. Specifically, I'm using Ralph T.H. Griffith's 1896 translation, simply because it’s well-organized and easy to find on Wikisource. If anyone knows a better version to refer to, well you can see the comments section below and know what to do.

This is not the first time I'm attempting to read the Vedas. I have read bits of them before, you know. I introduce myself on Twitter and other places with a rather lovely quote that describes, in equal measures, me or the creation of the universe:

Whence this creation has arisen
Perhaps it formed itself, perhaps it did not
The one who looks down on it, in the highest heaven, only he knows
Or perhaps he does not.
- Mandala 10, Hymn 129, Verses 6 & 7

But these were nothing more than random excursions born out of passionate coitus between curiosity and boredom, and an interest in reading one of the oldest extant works of literature currently at our disposal. I’d browse through fragments of it while at work, largely to relieve the monotony of reading or, indeed writing, such Orwellian new-speak as: “It is important to holistically incorporate disparate elements of sustainable development into a single paradigm-altering framework that ratifies the goals committed to at Rio 1992 while also integrating current economic inputs to create a systematic agenda that can overcome North-South divides and accelerate consensus.”

This time, however, I've decided to incorporate my own paradigm-shifting methodology, and am reading the transliterated Sanskrit version alongside it. While many people will contest these claims, I know Hindi and Telugu; and theoretically, should be able to follow a few words here and there. The opening verse was encouraging as I could understand around 60% of the verse in Sanskrit

agním = Agni = God of fire, or fire itself
puróhitaṃ = Purohit = Priest
yajñásya = Yajna = Sacrifice, or generally speaking, a religious ritual
devám = Deva = God
ratnadhā́tamam = Ratna-something = Jewel-something

I think I need to clarify that this is not a precursor to a story involving me re-discovering my religious heritage and becoming a born-again Hindoo. My interest in the Vedas derive from my love for history and literature, and am treating them as an unique and exciting opportunity to read something that was first composed sometime between 3,000 and 4,000 years ago.

While it mostly consists of praises of Agni, Indra, and most importantly, of the Soma drink; there is the palpable presence of a story in the Rig Veda. The first 20-odd hymns of the first Mandala describe a journey away from their homelands, preparations for some sort of battle, and victory in the said battle. I have to say I am even more surprised at the pig-headedness of Out-of-India theorists now. If archaeological and linguistic evidence aren’t enough, there is evidence of a migration in the Vedas themselves. The landscape describes hills and mountains filled with gushing streams, ridges, and regions of aridity interspaced with lush, fertile pastures. Not much mention is made of agriculture so far, and one gets the distinct feeling that these people are a warrior race of heavy Soma-drinking, meat-eating, horse-riding, cattle grazers. When they praise the land, they praise qualities that would appeal to a nomadic culture rather than a sedentary one. But this is just the first 30 hymns. There are nearly a thousand in the Rig Veda alone.

"But why are you doing this?", my non-existent readership asks. Well, apart from the reasons mentioned above, what really motivates me is the prospect of figuring out what all those shlokas I had to listen to while being forced to sit at (and even conduct) religious rituals meant. The pandits at these rituals never answered my questions (“Do not ask such questions! Pour more ghee in the fire! Yes, the smoke is holy! Yes, I know the smoke’s burning your eyes; your tears please the Gods! Yes, they are vindictive bastards!”), and I have a well-formed hatred of religious people who took my parents money and ruined my holidays only to burn some wood, sacrifice some fruits, and eat a bunch of free food, before driving away in their 20-year old beaten-up Bajaj scooters. So it is time I take matters into my own hands. For all I know, the priest didn’t know what he was saying either. Perhaps he didn’t know that Verse 5, Hymn 29, Mandala 1:

sám indra gardabhám mr̥ṇa
nuvántam pāpáyāmuyā

Translates to:

Destroy this ass, O Indra,
Who in tones discordant brays to thee

Of course, Indra never did. Pity.

Aim for a Post-Scarcity Economy, we will achieve a Green one

Perhaps it is a consequence of living in a world where the pace of growth has accelerated to such an extent that technologies less than half a decade old are seen as irredeemably obsolete; but I believe that society has appeared to have lost its ability to plan for the long-term. Even those among us who are trying to prevent the catastrophes of climate change, bred from an almost cannibalistic avarice for economic "development", are looking for solutions that can be implemented in the next decade or so, and would be quite pleased if their impacts would continue for the next century. I would like to advocate something far more radical; and while it may be appear to be an almost impossible request, we must remember that the last century has been identified by the ability of humanity to achieve tasks that were considered impossible in the not-so-recent past.

One of my favorite books of all-time is the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov. For the sake of brevity, I will try to contain the highly complex plot to a few, brief sentences. In the far future, humanity has spread itself across the galaxy. Sociology and economics reach their zenith under the care of Hari Seldon, creator of the science of "Psychohistory" (a sort of kinetic theory of gases for sociology). Using the principles of this science, he predicts the inevitable collapse of the millennia-spanning 'Galactic Empire', followed by an even longer period of anarchy and intellectual darkness, before a new system can evolve to restore order. To stem the societal rot and decay that would follow in the interregnum, Hari Seldon advocates a radical plan which (and this is the nub of the matter) would be executed over the span of a thousand years.

Now, I do not claim to have invented such a new science, nor do I have a thousand-year plan to address the problems of climate change and sustainable development. Instead, all I wish to advocate is the idea that we can have a grandiose, extremely long-term goal, and work together as a single society towards achieving it. And the goal should be, quite simply, eliminating scarcity of any kind. The ultimate green economy would be no economy; a singular human civilization, completely capable of sustaining itself, and devoid of any resource imbalance.

The Soviet astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev devised a handy scale with which we could measure the progress of our civilization, and chart our future path. According to this scale, humanity is currently a Type 0.7 civilization, which I think is pretty much the ceiling of growth that is possible using existing energy technology. In order to ascend to a Type I civilization, it would be essential for us to be able to harness renewable energy on a massive scale. These were not the goals in mind while the technology we use today, or have been using for the last few centuries, were being made. In order for humanity to be able to - in the imminent future - achieve energy self-sufficiency to the extent that we can advance to a Type I Kardashev Civilization; and in order for us to eventually eliminate all scarcity completely, it would require, from all stakeholders (i.e. governments, corporations, bilateral and multilateral institutions, and even us common folk), a change in the approach we take to development. The scope of technological, social, and economic progress must be global; we must learn to view ourselves as equal users of a single common resource - the Earth.

This would, of course, require a change in mindset that is unprecedented. Yet, almost everything that has happened within my lifetime has been unprecedented; thus, I do not believe these goals are too daunting a challenge.

Enough with the kolaveri already!

I'm in an irate mood, and I'm taking it out on you. Sometime last evening, I went to an ATM to get some money to buy food. Turns out the ATM was hungrier than me, and proceeded to eat my fucking ATM card. To compound matters, despite being a staunch Atheist I am supposed to attend a religious function at my uncle's house in a couple of hours. Oh, and I happen to owe this uncle A LOT of money, which I currently do not have; and which even if I did, I cannot give because I have no ATM card or cheque-book.

Now that you know that I'm merely venting out the frustrations and anger brought about by my own repeated stupidity, I shall direct my mountain-dew infused venom at you for something trivial. There's no shortage of insignificant acts of stupidity on the internet. There isn't even a paucity of substantial acts of gut-numbing, mind-wrenching stupidity on the internet. But I am going to focus on perhaps the first video to go properly viral in India: 'Why This Kolaveri Di'; a satirical song about love and loss, written and sung by Rajnikanth's son-in-law, and featuring Kamal Hasan's daughter trying to act all cool in the mixing room.



Of course, some might argue that the first Indian viral video was "How could she slap?" or perhaps the DPS-RKP mms. If you are one of those people, I'd like to tell you that the notion is cute, BUT WROOOOONG! 'How could she slap?' and its ilk were popular almost exclusively amongst the nation's netizens/netirati/net-working yuppies (What's the current phrase used by people who don't use the internet to describe people who do?).

What sets Kolaveri apart is how insanely popular it has become amongst people who still think that the only way to log on to the internet is through IE 6. Even the mainstream media in this land of golden soil which sprouts diamonds and pearls has taken notice of its popularity, and it takes a lot to get Indian mainstream media outlets to take notice of something that isn't related to Bollywood and/or Big Boss.

I'll be honest; the first time I saw the song, I loved it. I instantly downloaded it and made it my ringtone. That was last Saturday. By Tuesday, I was getting tired of it; and by Thursday I could pretty much wretch at the sight of anything even remotely connected to the word 'kolaveri'.

Analogy time! A good joke is like a good South-Indian spice; sprinkle a bit to add flavor to the otherwise drab and dull dish that we call life. Use too much, and that same dish will burn your living soul and result in you having to defecate every last organ in your body over the next few days. And this post is an example of that very defecation. By posting the video on Facebook NOW or making 'Why this kolaveri' jokes about EVERYTHING makes you like one of those annoying mofos who hear a good joke and subsequently proceed to ruin it completely by repeating its punchline all the time; specifically on occasions where it doesn't even make sense in context. You guys are like Steve Carrell in the US version of 'The Office', and kolaveri is your "That's what she said!". But even those morons didn't overuse a gag that was a gag about a moron overusing a gag as much as you morons are overusing this gag on places like 9Gag. Don't kill the joke, mama.

In any case, this post is little more than an ill-researched rambling rancorous rant reeking with resent, resplendent with repetition, raving for a rostrum of respectability by reducing itself to reiterating rehashed ideas through the rancid and rank act of regurgitating rhetoric written on a rarely-read but raring to be riveting web-rag by a ragged, rife-stricken bit of riffraff. I would direct your attention HERE, if you want to get a better idea of what I am trying to express (or a good laugh). Cracked is always better at this kind of stuff. Then again, it should be! If I was paid to spend my entire work-day thinking of the right simile to describe why I hate some unimportant bit of pop-culture... Man, I'd be the happiest person alive.

I'd also like to take this moment to coin a neologism which I think succinctly communicates the internet's obsession with a dead meme: Netrophilia. Whatever humor 'Kolaveri' had is dead, dude. Humping it's rotting carcass is not going to bring it back to life, it's just going to give you zombie-herpes.

God's Final Message To His Creation

The Carina Nebula is a cloud of gas, hydrogen, helium, dust, and other assorted nonsense that surrounds an open cluster of stars. (An open cluster is a whole bunch of stars formed by the gravitational collapse of the same molecular cloud. It’s a bit like how monozygotic twins are born, if that helps.) The nebula features Eta Carinae, one of my favorite stars. Of course, my all-time favorite star is Sol. Another star I like is IK Pegasi, because it is only 150 light years away and is a barely detectable white dwarf star that, at any minute now, can go supernova. This would release so much gamma radiation that it would cause the nitrogen in the Earth’s atmosphere to oxidize into Nitrogen Oxide (NO₂), which would summarily rip the ozone layer to shreds; of course, that really won’t matter because before the NO₂ does any of that, it would mix with water vapor to form Nitric Acid, which would rain from the sky. That also won’t matter because we’ll all be dead by that point, either from radiation or from being in an atmosphere that’s 80% NO₂.

Where was I? Ah, yes. Eta Carinae. It’s 8,000 light years away, 150 times more massive than the sun, and five million times as bright. It is, and I cannot tell you how proud I am of this pun, a stellar badass. In April 1843, astronomers noticed that this star had become really, really bright. Aboriginals in Australia said it was the wife of War. For a while it was the 2^nd brightest star in the night sky in the Southern Hemisphere. That burst of brightness was because Eta Carinae had gone supernova. A supernova, to the uninitiated, is the single most powerful explosion that can ever happen. Think of it this way: If you take ALL the energy that the sun has ever released in its 4.6-billion-year lifespan, and release that energy in 1 second, you get a Supernova. If you like numbers, there's a nifty table for you.

Event:	Amount of energy released (approx.):
Sachin Tendulkar hitting a six	100 J
Tsar Bomba, the world’s most powerful thermonuclear weapon ever tested	100,000,000,000,000,000 Joules (1017 J)
A Supernova	10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Joules (1046 J)

And it survived. That’s right; Eta Carinae survived the most powerful explosion possible within the laws of physics. It still glows there (or doesn't; we'll know in the next 8000 years if it collapsed into a black hole, or went supernova again and died, or even went supernova again and survived again). But this story of Eta Carinae is a favorite of mine. I like looking at photos of it. Unfortunately, you can only see it from the Southern Hemisphere, so I’ll have to wait until my Antarctic expedition before I can see it in the night sky. Eta Carinae is inside the Carina Nebula; which was extensively photographed in 1999 by the Hubble Space Telescope.



Photography is a funny thing, and astronomical photography is not that dissimilar to terrestrial photography. One afternoon in New York City, Joel Brodsky was taking photographs of a rock group. After a few group shots, he started to take individual photographs. He knew that the group’s lead singer was going to be the focus of this, so Joel decided to save the individual shots of the singer for the end of the session, and was taking photos of the other guys instead. Bored, the singer began to drink. By the time it was his turn, the singer was plastered and Joel didn’t get as many photos as he would’ve liked. It didn’t matter though, because he took one photograph that would go on to define what it means to be a rock-star, and inspire me to grow my hair long when I was 15.

Like all the other great photo-shoots of human history, no one at the time knew that one of the photographs taken by the Hubble Space Telescope was going to be one of most defining images of human history, and has almost made me recant my atheism and start believing in God. It’s not the “landscape” photo of the Carina Nebula, which is an astonishing photograph in itself; you can’t look at it without Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ playing in your head.

THE picture (the one for which I've used nearly a thousand words, 3 photographs, a table, references to chemistry, rock music, photography, and -in my first draft- politics, to build up...) is a close-up of a portion of the Carina Nebula known as the Keyhole Nebula. This photograph has made me susceptible to believing in God again simply because it proves that the only way I feel it is possible to reconcile the reality of the universe we live in and the idea that it’s all the creation of an omnipotent deity is that the deity is apathetic. Or to put it mildly, it proves my belief that if God exists, he’s a fucking asshole.

(Look to the top-left to see what I'm on about)

This is an experiment

I have a very strong feeling that Time Magazine's Man of the Year 2011 is going to "The Revolutionary". You had Tahrir Square, then the Bahrain thing, then Anna Hazare (not to be confused with the awesomer Vijay Hazare), followed by Tea Baggers, and now Occupy Wall Street.

It seems that protest is "IN", because hipsters around the world are now saying, "Yeah, I was revolutionary BEFORE it was cool. Fucking mainstream media..." (By 'hipsters', of course, I mean Nimish.)

Anyway, *Seinfeld voice* What is the DEAL with these protestors? Standing around with banners never changes squat. There always have been and always will be 2 ways to change the system:

1. The parasite method. Exploit the system from inside. In a move of Machiavellian brilliance, you make your way into the belly of the beast. Sell your soul, convictions, ethics, morals, and other abstract concepts to the highest bidder. I understand that this is easier for some people. Those of you asking, "What's ethics?", please consider a career as a corporate lawyer. Or prostitute. Actually, forget the prostitute part. A drug-addled DVDA whore wouldn't do the kinda things your average energy company lawyer does before lunch.

2. The Robespierre method. The parasite method has one major disadvantage: The parasitical spy can sell-out midway and stop giving a shit about "the cause". Or it could turn out the person never cared at all in the first place. Basically, the method involves so much shady dealing that motivations are reduced to that hazy black blur that covers your monitor when it's on and showing a large black screen (similes are not my strong suit). The Robespierre method's advantages are the fact that it's fast, entertaining, cleanly divides the issue of which side you're on, and cleanly divides your head from your torso if you're on the wrong side. Named after childhood hero (yes, my IRCTC password!) and French revolutionary Maximilien Robespierre (the single most badass name ever?), it involves a purge of guilty people, innocent people, your rivals, your friends, and finally yourself. This will probably lead to rivers of blood on the streets, war, rape, rap, low property prices, an unstable series of republics, a king who fancies himself Alexander the Great v.2, and the ironic reputation of being sissies 200 years later. This can only work on the condition that I get to be Robespierre up to the July 1794 part of his life. I can go from bad-ass to Barras after that.



Above: Maximilien Robespierre. He compensated for the "whiny little bitch" look with an amazing name, and being responsible for a period of history called "The Reign of Terror". And I mean a 'period' in history; it was a bloody mess. Plus, he killed King Louis XVI with the words, "I pronounce this fatal truth: Louis must die so that the nation might live!"

Anyway, bugger all this. This was largely a... what's the phrase... stream-of-consciousness bit of writing as part of a larger experiment to see if this blog has magick (sic.) powers. By the way, why don't people spell magic with a k anymore? Or so many other words which earlier involved k's and f's. Guha would have an explanation, if he could get away from grading papers of students who look like Dinesh Kapur.

Why my blog is better than Facebook

Today I realized why blogging beats Facebook. This post was originally intended to be a status update; but I could not fit it into 500 characters. I guess it would explain the curt, inexpressive style. The problem with Facebook and Twitter is that they kill the fun of exposition. Rather than droning on about this topic, I guess I will just say that social networking updates have, in a certain sense, affected the way everyone in the developed world writes. Metaphors, similes, non sequiturs, sesquipedalian loquaciousness (used either seriously, or ironically); the things that define good writing, are lost in the editing scramble to fit one's composition into the stifling restraint of 140 or 500 characters; much like how low budgets prevent pornographic movies from having good production values, a sensible storyline, and special effects.

Is this a renaissance of blogging? I have announced too many false dawns to go down that route again. Keep in mind, however, that in order to frequent a website from your home PC, all you need to do is bookmark the page, and ensure that it opens in one of your tabs whenever you open your web browser. Which I have done.

Weirdly enough, what I originally wanted to put up on Facebook will now look completely out of context to the last few paragraphs. C'est la vie. For your viewing pleasure, a video of Steve Jobs from January, 1984. He's announcing the launch of the Apple Macintosh; a computer so important that it ought to be called the Adam and Eve of all modern PCs. Hell, to this day Apple PCs are called Macs. 27 years. The Macintosh would be going through a quarter-life crisis right now...



Things that amazed me in this video:

1. People were going apeshit over applications that look ludicrously crude by modern standards. That made me think, "Well, duh! This video was made back when the Cold War was still going on!" (except for the "Well duh!" bit; my brain does not talk like a valley girl). That led me to... (stealth pun!)

2. The fundamentals of those applications are still the same even today in 2011. Word 2010 follows the same basic design as the word processing software shown in the video. 27 years and the same basic structure... that's pretty much immortality in the tech world.

3. All of this was the first time anyone had ever seen a word-processing software, a paint software, and basically the PC as we know it. We in India wouldn't see something like this until the mid-to-late 1990s!

4. While this was happening, Bill Gates was a nobody stealing Jobs' ideas and secretly shipping his new "Windows" operating system to Japan. Whether Jobs was an idiot, or Scully was idiot, or Gates was an evil mastermind / crook / business genius is irrelevant. This moment was to remain Steve Jobs' peak until 20 years later.

5. Noah Wyle, the guy who played Steve Jobs in Pirates of Silicon Valley, looks eerily like him. He even managed to duplicate the same mannerisms. That is some bloody brilliant research for an acting role!

Kotta blog post

The people of AP (and Telangana and Rayalseema etc.) were amongst the first generation of Indians to make it big in the knowledge business in the US. This came from an ant-like sense of perseverance, an instinctive ability to sacrifice immediate gains for long-term objectives, and eating gongoora pacchadee (don't ask me how that helped. I'm a bit of a fake-Andhra, myself). But that generation's sucessulu has stunted the ethical growth of this generation. *My* generation. Burdened with the expectations of following in their shoesulu, the current Hyderabadi's desire to win seems to have led to his forgetting how to play the game.

What is about Hyderabad and Ayn Rand? I bet Rand-garu is revered over there. As a sorta, kinda, native Andhra, I know for a fact that today, the great people of my state value individual achievement without the least bit consideration towards how that milestone was achieved. The era of VVS Laxman and Pullela Gopichand; people who maintained a sense of dignity and sportsmanship while still being extremely competitive, is all but over. The Hyderabadi achiever of today would not give a flying dengoo whether he circumvented rules, ruthlessly abused his advantages, actively disadvantaged his rivals, cheated, copied, stole or broke the law in his pursuit for success and a respectable price on the arranged marriage market.

Any questions about morality are dealt with that most irritating of Hyderabadi traits, the grimacing smile, the shrug of the shoulders and the extended, "Kyaaaaaaaaaaa reeeeee!" While this attitude has led to a successful generation of Telugu-valu, both in India and the US, I fear the long-term repercussions of this ethical bankruptcy. Humanity and civilization moves forward from coöperation and acknowledging the rights of others. The ridiculously Fountainhead-ian levels of individualism being exhibited by the modern Hyderabadi is in the end, going to turn out to be counter-productive.

So, what do we do? Do we begin to live like Bengalis? A hive mind with epicenters in Kolkata, Oxford and Moscow? Probably not. Like Gujaratis? Yeah, we’re more MNC employee material as opposed to SME owners. How about Tamilians? Annoyingly conservative, anal-neurotic intellectuals? Wait, I thought we covered Bengalis. Hmm...

Nevermind. AP, keep going. Apply to top US universities with doctored letters of recommendation and fictional anecdotes in your essays. Force your children into studying engineering and/or medicine and continue chastising the child who wants to grow up to be something other than a B.Tech-MBA working in the US.

What was the point of all this? Was it that a community bereft of morality produces people who complain about my work to my bosses while assuring me that everything is fine? Or was it that as a Bangalorean, I find the average Hyderabadi to be a pretty annoying drag. I don't know what the moral. Perhaps there is no moral. Morality is like cutlery.

Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it. ~ Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.