Plato On Love

Over the weekend, my friend Parvez has given me a treat by recommending me to the work of Plato which has a particularly non-platonic exposition on the matter of "Love". The work is titled Phaedrus and is a free form conversation between the fabulist Phaedrus and the greek philosopher Socrates. To gain a flavor of the work, consider the following statement on the definition of love by Socrates before he goes on to express anything related to it :

"Every one sees that love is a desire, and we know also that non-lovers desire the beautiful and good. Now in what way is the lover to be distinguished from the non-lover? Let us note that in every one of us there are two guiding and ruling principles which lead us whither they will; one is the natural desire of pleasure, the other is an acquired opinion which aspires after the best; and these two are sometimes in harmony and then again at war, and sometimes the one, sometimes the other conquers. When opinion by the help of reason leads us to the best, the conquering principle is called temperance; but when desire, which is devoid of reason, rules in us and drags us to pleasure, that power of misrule is called excess. Now excess has many names, and many members, and many forms, and any of these forms when very marked gives a name, neither honourable nor creditable, to the bearer of the name. The desire of eating, for example, which gets the better of the higher reason and the other desires, is called gluttony, and he who is possessed by it is called a glutton-I the tyrannical desire of drink, which inclines the possessor of the desire to drink, has a name which is only too obvious, and there can be as little doubt by what name any other appetite of the same family would be called;-it will be the name of that which happens to be eluminant. And now I think that you will perceive the drift of my discourse; but as every spoken word is in a manner plainer than the unspoken, I had better say further that the irrational desire which overcomes the tendency of opinion towards right, and is led away to the enjoyment of beauty, and especially of personal beauty, by the desires which are her own kindred-that supreme desire, I say, which by leading conquers and by the force of passion is reinforced, from this very force, receiving a name, is called love."

Of course he later even concedes that certain forms are madness are a heavenly blessing and it is better to be in that state than make sense. If this whets your appetite, please consider reading the full text.

This definitely requires 2 dictionaries and a bottle of scotch :)

Admiration of Joyce

Came across this today written by Borges in his admiration towards James Joyce

What does my lost generation matter
That lovely mirror
If it was justified by your books
I am the others. I am all those
That your obstinate rigor rescues
I am those you do not know and those you save

Curiously enough,. Umberto Eco remarks that whats common to both these authors is the fact that the universal culture is their playing field(for their salvation or damnation).

Bharat GanaRajya

Thats what the text beneath the Sarnath emblem on my passport says. (literally means Union of India). Its one of those days where I peruse each of the pages in it.That reminds me to renew it as it expires this October.Being removed by a couple of oceans from your homeland can do wonders.

I called up my pop to greet him greetings and I gather he wasnt so happy to be a recepient of my I-Day wishes. In fact he seemed to be disillusioned.He quoted an incident where a local MLA was ambushed by so called Maosits in that area and asked me how what the heck do my wishes mean?

Our family history is a nightmare that I have woken up from but I guess it still stuck to him. My grandpa was a Pearl trader headquartered at 7 Thambuchettiar St, Chennapatnam(Chennai).Then the clarion call for Independence struggle was given by whoever that resonated something in him. He left his primary occupation and took to the road.(Of course the fact that he studies "tarka-sastra" for quite a while in Benares doesnt seem to help here)Now there was no Companies Act in those days that limited your liability in case of liquidation and this fella had to forefit everything he acquired. Local contacts or head honchos had to pull strings to yank him out of the occasional jail.Promptly he came back to the Coromandel Coast and settled down as a clerk at a temple writing satirical plays and a 3-volume magnum opus on The History of Kalinga ( Modern day Orissa where my granny is from).A few heirlooms that were passed on to my childhoos were a mahagony bed and a mirror made in belgium.(my dad used it as an aid for shaving, I guess). So that was in short how the stakes were played out w.r.t to my family. Yeah! The Nation gained independence but the net worth of a fella like my grandpa went to zero. I am glad he did what he did. Its kind of liberating to know that there are some folks out there who follow Mark Twain's sayin "Always Do Right! This will gratify some and astonish the rest". I guess I am among the astonished.

That being said I am glad that things look bright atleast from my perspective. I see a progressive evolution in the country's attitude and I am not half bit as disillusioned as my pater-familias would. I am sure it could always be asked as "Kahan Hain Kahan Hain Mohafiz Khudi ke, Jinhe Naaz hain Hind par woh kaha hain.." and my answer would be that they are there where we left them and they are there where we look for them.

ps: BTW I am truly shameless to come back after calling it quits. Its something like you can take x out of y but you cant take out y out of x where x=me and y=blogging.

pps: I guess this also underscores how far I have travelled from my last year. I love August.

Over and Out

Its been a heck of ride but I guess I am running out of steam. As some of my readers might have observed the quality of my posts has been exponentially dropping close to zero. Its a nice point of inflexion to hang up my boots before I start hitting the negative values.( I have just confirmed this for a fact with an objective third party observer).I started out with a Fugue but I guess I ended with a Toccata with a bit of Allegro thrown in occasionally.

Adios!

Accounting

You dont need to take a Management Accounting class to understand the terms "Profit Center" and "Cost Center". Your organization could be broken down into business units that either are revenue generators or revenue sinks. For example Sales is always a profit center since they solely focus on their quotas to generate revenue ( as a side effect commisions) whereas HR is always a cost center because they dont generate any revebue but cost the organization some revenue to do whatever it is that they do.(While it is interesting to compare the mentalities of people working in either center, I shall refrain from that digression - for example cost center folks are usually content, laid back , easy going versus hectic, hungry, aggressive profit folks)

In a recent internal company meeting one of the directors nailed me as a "non revenue generator",( that translates into not being one of his folks, who are consultants billed at an hourly rate). I was doing Sales Consulting in my previous life and I do understand the luxuries of being one of them. At the end of the day given the pressure to meet targets, some things would be sacrificed. While this sacrifice is Okay to some and are very happy as to what comes with that territory, I couldnt actually come to terms to a job partially done. Something essential to the work-well-done-feeling is taken away, thanks to the negotiations on the deal.Sorry. I cannot be one of them and Hence my move to this new job where I could do what I want to, to my heart's concern.I have become an accidental engineer because I could not become a scientist or a mathematician :(

Half a dozen retorts came to mind but I resisted ( My favorite one was that we are a profit center with a profit target of zero and we are consistent with that.Beat That!). Luckily to my rescue one of his own team called him their "pimp" (there's a certain element of truth to that :) and we'll lay matters to rest here.

Thinking about this on my way back, I could picture my economics instructor at high school explaining me an isomorphic (read: similar) concept of certain profit and cost curves and their intersection. This was in those days when whiteboards and sketches werent common and good old chalk piece with a blackboard was the standard display medium in schools. While the economics teacher rambled on, I could see the chalk particles from the writing slowly come off.
Have you ever seen that the fall of chalk particles observes a certain parabolic trajectory? ( Incidentally she was talking about the breakeven point of some sort). The particles at the vertex of the parabola take the most air-time. Similarly there seems to be some other "____ center" which could be defined as neither profit nor cost but nevertheless gives us the best of both worlds. Till I figure out that part, I'll have to carry this cross.

Bliss

is to do nothing
on a sunday afternoon

watching clouds move
leaves waving
paper flapping

a plane glides through
a fig incense burning
my favorite song playing

book open and unread


-Anonymous

Kalakshepa a.k.a Timepass

Hurrah! Long Weekend is here.After days of chasing bugs, playing heck of a lot more sports than I am used to and constantly being occupied by something or the other, I finally find some time for myself. Feels like paradise.Sleeping at 4:00 am in the morn, waking up and walking to starbucks followed by a "tiffin" (as desis are wont to call it) and having a dip in the pool just makes the cut.

Now I am suddenly at a loss to do something.Nature abhors a vaccum,right? But then wait, rushing myself to do something is only gonna take away the flavor of a vacation.Having offloaded something like 300 odd Hindi MP3s to the Pod, my mind wanders at a time when none of the things I am used to in this world were around (like pools, chaat bandis, iPod, etc).Wonder what people used to do..Lets see what my mind seems to dig on that score

(a) Recitation of Stories, Some peccadilloes of certain gods followed by some eccentric sages cursing the crap out these immortal gods and their opponents trying to get the throne,etc

(b) Some Music possibly with some earthy tones.

(b) Lectures on Metaphysics , pondering over philosophical questions and solving them by adding a layer of metaphysics to justify them and playin with some imaginary structures

(c) Possible some time studying the cattle and other miscellaneous domestic animals or in the course of domesticating some other wild animals

(d) Alchemy : Assuming some metalheads were present in the ancient society, somebody trying to convert somebody's gold to dust.(Later it was supposedly reverse)

(e) Finally among other unimaginable pleasures probably there's a place for a hearty roll-in-the hay sex.

Anyways there's one particular form of entertainment that struck my fancy in my childhood. That being called "HariKatha". In this particular medium you need to write your own narrative based on some popular story, have some music, make people laugh, make sure the lyrics carry with the music, etc to completely engage the audience with the performers' own creativity.Ok.Here I go to get my Violin to do something like that..Till then you folks have a wonderful and a fun-tastic weekend.

Recommendations

Since so many folks out here were bibiliophiles, just wanted to pass on a couple of titles that I have found to be of extremely high caliber with some outrageous wit and subtle sarcasm.

• The Late Mr. Shakespeare by Robert Nye
• Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

Monsoon

Last weekend over the usual call home, pop used the word "monsoon". A shot of vodka later, the word began revolving in my head. (Still cant get it out and hence this vent).

There is something very distinctive about Monsoons back home. Something haunting. Something very tied down to the place. I did visit Southwest US (Arizona, New Mexico) to catch the same phenomenon, its just not the same. Home is Home.

Meanwhile my pop rambled on saying that if we dont get the monsoons on time, the city will have water problems which in turn would result in power cuts and so on. I believe C.V. Raman once said that "Indian Economy is a gamble in the monsoon rain". How true!

Tag, You're It

I have been introduced to the concept of of memes through programming lessons and later in viral spamming campaigns like if you done send this devotional email to another bunch of 5 people, God is personally gonna strike you down or something like that.But this one's appealing because it's about books. I was tagged by a GeeBaby on writing about books as per a set template. I didnt know about this till this morning but anyways let me take a stab at it.

Total Number of Books I Own: Never counted. Approximately 1,000 or so geogrphically distributed over the places I have been living or travelling. In my last move to CA the only 4 cartons I relocated were 5 boxes of books.Currently have only 100 odd books with me.

Last Book I Bought: Wandered into a book store before Dinner yesterday. I bought Sum Of Our Discontent by David Boyle. The book deals with the fact that sometimes in the process of counting and measuring we miss out on some important facts about the thing itself. (Just like the previous section about volume of books says nothing about the quality of the importance). Just done with the first chapter but sounds like a very promising read.

Last Book I Read: Been more than 3 months since I finished my last book "The Mammaries Of the Welfare State" . Wait a minute. Thats wrong. Actually the last one I read was Andy Kessler's "How We Got Here"

One Book I Couldn't Finish:- Ulysses by Joyce. Just wasnt mentally prepared nor had enough perspective to understand it. I also couldnt finish "You Shall Know Our Velocity" because I forgot it in the plane seat in Canada.

Five Books That Mean a Lot to Me: Only five? Beware, the smaller the sample size, the greater the need to be selective and thats so tough.Anyway let me take a dive (nowhere representative of the entire spectrum but popping off my head at this moment)

• All About H. Hatterr: A Novel by Govindas Vishnoodas Desani
  
• English, August by Upamanyu Chatterjee
  
• Samskara by UR Ananthamurthy
• When the Kissing Had to Stop: Cult Studs, Khmer Newts, Langley Spooks, Techno-Geeks, Video Drones, Author Gods, Serial Killers, Vampire Media, Alien Sperm-Suckers, Satanic Therapists, and Those of Us Who Hold a Left-Wing Grudge in the Post Toasties New World Hip-Hop

• FlatLand by Edwin Abbott Abbott

Phew! I am hungry now, so let me grab some grub. Oops! I got to spread the disease by naming five innocent souls whom I wish to harass. So here is the ist of Honors : Hirak and Sumedha ( You knew that was a no brainer, right?) , Priyanka,Venu and Bonnie. All the best to you guys

ps: If you seriously wanna know how cool tagging is, try http://del.icio.us