A Wrong Number is Never Busy?

"Ever wonder why a wrong number is never busy?" goes a question in a chain mail. It immediately strikes a chord in you. You feel, "Really! How true!"

You hear this sob story. "Whenever I miss a call from an unknown number and call back, I find it to be a guy who called a wrong number". That strikes a chord too. "Happens all the time".

He got an engaged wrong number didn't he? You know what I mean?

Two Art Exhibitions

I had been to two art exhibitions recently. One was, of course, that of Prabha Narayanan that I had already blogged about.

Here is she is, between two of her paintings. Large canvasses, acrylic colour portraits of people from the Kumaon region. She called it the drip series. You will know why, when you see the paintings. (See below) These paintings were very different from the line drawings and watercolours of hers that I have seen. Completely new and in unchartered territory for her. In order not to sound too much like an art critic, let me say, I enjoyed and admired her works!

The other exhibition was that of Amrish Malvankar's abstract paintings. I am not a great fan of abstract art. So, I was surprised that I liked his paintings. Even at the risk of sounding like an art critic, I would say that the colurs are bright, many or most of his paintings exude optimism and serenity, I felt. Or was I biased by the three Buddha images at the very beginning of the rows of paintings?

It really does not matter. As for me, I enjoyed my time watching the paintings.

Prabha Narayanan's First Solo Show

A fellow Pencil Jam member (Pencil Jammer), Prabha Narayanan, is holding the first solo show of her art in Chitrakala Parishat, starting tomorrow.

I admire her art a lot.

I am sure you do too. Please do visit the show!

Murder

What do you want,

by burning books?

The glory that covered

the perpetrators of "Kristallnacht"?

The cloud off the flames -

the book's truth to permeate the world.

The dust that falls - a culture's ashes

that saw in a book, Saraswathi herself.

The pile you burn,

her funeral pyre, nude or not.

No Comments

There are 365 days in a year.

That means there are 365 X 24 = 8760 Hrs in a year.

It amounts to 8760 X 60 = 525600 Minutes a year.

In 30 Years there are 525600 X 30 = 15, 768, 000 minutes.

Mata Amritanandamayi is supposed to have hugged 29 million devotees in 30 years, according to a news report.

That amounts to 1.84 (~2) hugs a minute, every living minute of the last 30 years. No sleep, no food, no travel and no other engagements.

In lieu of in lieu of in view of

Does the title of this post look as if there is a typo?

Actually not. It can be parsed to mean something.

The reason for the title is this.

"An architectural milestone in lieu of the Commonwealth Games" declares a headline.

What it means is in view of. This seems to have become a very common mistake.

Atheists Better at Religion

Here is a news item I read on Spiegel Online and translated for my own pleasure and thought others might be interested in it too.

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Non-believers Know Religions Best

Where was Christ born? What is the first book of the Bible called? People who do not believe in god are most likely to answer such questions. A survey in the US showed that atheists and agnostics knew all about religion.

Washington: According to a recent survey in the US, non-believers know the most about world religions. In a survey of the renowned opinion survey institute PEW about religious knowledge confessed atheists and agnostics the averaged best.

The researchers interviewed 3412 adults in the US about world religions. On an average, atheists could answer correctly 21 out of 32 questions about beliefs, history and representatives of world religions. Protestants knew, on an average 16 correct answers, Catholics only 14.7. Jews came up, on an average, with 20.5 and Mormons with 20.3 correct answers.

Even with questions about Christianity the non-believers averaged better than Catholics and Protestants. In this case, only the Mormons were ahead of agnostics and atheists.

Among the residents of the US, the majority of who identify themselves as Christians, was the lack of knowledge about their own religion clearly noticeable. Only 71 percent of the surveyed knew that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Only 63 percent were in a position to name Genesis as the first book of the bible.

If you are interested, you can see some of the questions of the survey here.

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Interestingly I, an atheist, answered 13 out of 15 questions right. 87% and I was rated to be at 93 percentile. I knew that I would be marked wrong on one answer but the official correct answer is disputable. A catholic colleague of mine answered 13 questions right too. So, it is neither here nor there!

A Z Ranjit 60

As you can see, from the badge "I wear on my blog page", I am a member of a sketch club - Pencil Jam.

One of the distinguished members of the club is Mr. A Z Ranjit, a great artist and a great human being. He is turning sixty on 19th of this month. He has organised an exhibition of his works in Chennai starting 20September 2010. Please see the invitation and the poster attached below.

If you are from Chennai, or you are in Chennai during the week starting 20 September, 2010. Please do visit the exhibition and wish him and support him. I am sure it will be a rewarding experience.

You may read a little more about him here.

Here is a brief resume of A Z Ranjit.

This and That

It has been a long time since I blogged. I was spending most of my free time sketching and hence the hiatus in the blog. I took a break from such furious 'artistic' pursuits and hence this post. (After reading this post, you may wish that I had not taken a break, but that is your privilege)

You may see the results of my artistic efforts here. Please scroll down almost to the bottom of the page and see the slide show.

I had never read a Perry Mason mystery. No idea why. I thought it was time to change it and read one. The Case of the Phantom Fortune, it is called. Now that I have broken the jinx, I might read a few more.

Some other things caught my attention once in a while.

I was amused by the advertisement for a water purifier. Kent, to be specific. The "punch line" delivered by an erstwhile Bollywood diva turned politician and member of Rajya Sabha is that the water purified by it is 100 percent pure! Gimmeabreak! Isn't there something called truth in advertising? Or is it an oxymoron?

Another ad that caught my attention is that of Fair and Handsome. (The very idea of the product and its feminine twin appears to me Unfair and Ugly) It is a real funny one. I wonder if there is any difference between the fair and lovely and the male version. If there is, what the difference is. Or is it that only the name has undergone a sex change operation? Further, the ad says that you can become fair and handsome in just 5 rupees. How many five rupees is not mentioned. I think the ad says that if you use the cream for three weeks, you can notice the difference. Does it mean that the 5 rupee packet or sachet is enough for three weeks?

It is said that a shampoo maker (Chik?) started producing sachets of shampoo that catered to the bottom of the pyramid customers. Win-win proposition. The company made money and the hygiene of the poor improved was the management speak. I wonder what benefit the bottom of the pyramid customer derives from this product. Go nearer the bottom of the pyramid, I guess.

That's it for now. The safe_t_valve has done its job, I have let off steam.

Joseph Henry - A tribute

On July 3, 2010, Wing Cmdr (Retd) Joseph Henry passed away leaving a large void in many people's lives.

How does one describe Henry, as we called him, even though we should actually have called him Joseph? A friend, philosopher, conscience keeper, one man social service organsiation, patriot, straight shooting critic of anything he found worthy of criticism and at the same time capable of large hearted, generous praise when something or someone deserved it? He was all that and more. He was someone most people would be proud to call a friend and eventually thankful that he was their friend.

When Henry joined our team, his name facinated me. What better name for an electrical engineer, I wondered.

When I met him first, his tall straight lean figure, excellent manners, wonderful smile attracted me to him right away. I thought that he looked like Omar Sheriff. I was, however, disappointed that the he did not respond warmly to my friendly overtures. He was distant and that disturbed me. I make friends easily and here was someone who was not willing. I left it at that. Later, I realised that it was a key to his personality.

I was at that time in some kind of managerial role in our team. I had no fancy title or anything. Henry, however, viewed me with suspicion or he did not want to be seen as being close to the management figure! Either way it was a key to what he was. He thawed and became a good friend later, when I no longer had that role. Then on, he was a whole hearted friend.

We spent many a coffee break together - on an average two a day. The conversation was always warm and interesting, thanks to him. He was deeply fascinated by Hindu mythology and philosophy. He was full of questions about it and trying to answer and satisfy his curiosity I learnt a lot more about it than I would otherwise have.

I said that he was a one man social service organisation. He was always at hand at occasions related to innumerable people - good, bad, sad - whatever the occasion may be. All the retired air force officers in Bangalore were practically his extended family. He would unhesitatingly go all out to help them in their hour of need. In his typical way he often referred to "vishwakutumbam" and in that spirit he was a citizen of the world.

He was a patriot in the larger sense of the word. Not the jingoistic kind. Petty regionalism elicited utter contempt from him. So did petty religious divisions and false claims of superiority because of caste and such. If he called someone a "fraaaaaud" you knew where the man stood in Henry's estimate.

He was a proud Malayalee proud of his non malayalee_ness - never wore lungis, for instance.

This is an unfulfilling attempt at describing and mourning a friend, a colleague and a good man. The last is a description that Henry richly deserved and would be truly happy and proud about.

In Appreciation of a Brave Bird

I was on my usual post-prandial at 10 last night. As I passed under a tree, I got a call. I stopped on the footpath and took the call. As I did so a small owl flew from a tree branch right above me and perched atop a telephone pole. I watched it as I talked.

I was engrossed in the talk and was also watching the beautiful bird and the fascinating way it turns its head around. Suddenly, out of the blue something hit me on the head. I gave out a cry of surprise and I saw another owl fly over me and perch on an electric wire. Did I really see it glaring at me or was it only my imagination? Perhaps it was staring at me since there was no movement of the head that I so love.

I beat a fairly hasty retreat and watched the birds from a distance, feeling my practically hairless scalp. It did feel wet but no blood. Apparently it was sweat.

As I walked away driven by a bird just larger than my fist, I could do nothing but admire its courage. It had deemed it fit to attack an opponent perhaps a hundred times its own weight and had successfully driven him away.

I have walked under the same rain tree a thousand times. Never saw an owl before. Perhaps it had recently built a nest and has a clutch and was protecting it from this invader! How powerful the instinct to protect it's off spring! Or, really, was it a friendly pat on the head with an unuttered “Hello mate”? The profile picture of mine at www.penciljam.ning.com is a thumbnail picture of a painting of an owl I did some years ago. (As an aside, do go to that site to see my pencil sketches). Have the owls too become net savvy and are welcoming me to their fold? Or were they insulted that a mere human had dared to use the picture of one of their species so?

Courage is perhaps the wrong word. It is perhaps the result of the "selfishness" of the gene that drove it to attack me. I am not proverbially scratching my head in awe and wonder. Its talons have left two inch-long scratches on my bald head. I am yet to consult a doctor to find out if I need an antibiotic to prevent an infection. After all it is a bird of prey not in the habit of washing its "hands" after a meal.

Once bitten twice shy - I was once bitten on the head by a wasp. I had ignored it after the stinging pain subsided but the wound got infected.

Godly E-mails

Among the many e-mail forwards one gets, there are many celebrating the greatness of god. I treat them as propaganda material. Atheists of all hues and intensities are often asked, "why don't you keep your ideas to yourself? Why do you impose your ideas on others?" But the question does not seem to apply to the mails referred above. No, I am not cribbing. I am amused and am stating a fact.

One such questioner asked the question of Richard Dawkins about his book "The God Delusion" after having bought the book and read it!

My reaction to such mails varies from quick read > delete to pointing out a fallacy in it, as gently as I can to an angry cutting retort.

The last mail I got was actually a good joke. It ran something like this. An atheist is walking in the woods and enjoying the beauty of nature. A bear attacks him and he tries to run but falls. As he is about to be bitten by the bear, he exclaims "Oh my god!". Time stands still and god appears and challenges him. "When you are in deep danger you want to cry for my help having denied my existence all the while?"

The atheist thinks a while and asks god to make the bear a Christian. Hey presto, the bear christian.

The bear starts, "Bless this food which I am about to partake..."

Now, that is very unfair of god, don't you think? He would have really known what the atheist meant. God let a christian become a man eater? Did he do that to teach a lesson to an atheist and was sure that other christians would not be watching?

This is why Richard Dawkins says, “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

In this case, I replied to the mail, pointing out that someone calls him "a capriciously malevolent bully” for exactly these kinds of actions.

Now, people who know what religion I was born into may still think that I am targetting another religion. So, let me cushion that with another anecdote.

A friend of my father was invited to a "satyanaaraayana pUje". The myth around this pUje is that you do not even need an invitation to attend. If you come to know that the pUje is happening someplace you must attend. Otherwise the particular god would be angry and do unspeakable things. A part of the rituals is the telling of stories about this god who punished those who were not true to him or broke promises made to him.

When invited, the man said, "I do not want to attend the pUje and listen to the stories about that cruel, vindictive god. I will attend the lunch that follows, though, since I have no quarrels with that!" and did exactly that.

This man, to the best of my knowledge, cannot be classified an atheist. If he believes in any god at all, he expects him to be above such petty vindictiveness and cruelty. If god be like the local loan shark who wreaks havoc with a borrower that does not return a loan, why have gods at all?

Atheists Want the Pope Arrested

Richard Dawkins and other atheists thinkers are trying to make one sensitised to the fact that many of us automatically defer to things religious. I have seen this phenomenon first hand, being an atheist myself. People have no qualms about making snide remarks about my world view. But people with a religious world view are handled like eggs. (That figure of speech makes me wonder if it is because they are as fragile?)

Dawkins himself talks of actions that raise our consciousness, such as the women's liberation movement.

In this direction he and another prominent atheist Christopher Hitchens have hired prominent British lawyers to move the courts to issue orders to arrest the pope when he visits England later this year. Interesting action. Even if they fail, they would have made some people think about it.

I read the original article in German. The original article can be read here.

I have attached my translation.

You may read it here

Balderdash

Dhoni* says that the Dalai Lama's blessings made his team win in IPL, perhaps.

The last word in the sentence is the saving grace.

If Dalai Lama's blessings had such powers, Tibet would be free.

No, I am not making light of the Tibetans' plight.

The owner of CSK* is supposed to have invoked Vaastu and other hocus pocus, according to the papers. Dhoni says that many (all?) cricketers are superstitious and do "little things". Amazing that only one team wins! Isn't it?

One of these little things I was close to was that a classmate of mine wore the same set of clothes for all papers of engineering examinations, if he did well in the first paper. He could do that because he came by car and I went by bicycle. (I imagine that if I did any such thing, I would have got thrown out of the examination hall for being "a public nuisance" I guess.) He invariably did well in the first paper. He was placed either first or second in the University ranking and yours truly was way down below.

So, the difference between his 1st or 2nd ranks and I was a car - the late unlamented Standard Herald at that. How unfair. The fact that he studied some sixteen hours a day and I, sixteen hours a week, for the last four weeks, favoured him just a little perhaps.

* For those apologies for human beings from the large majority of nations that do not know Cricket, and who Dhoni is or what CSK is, here is something to set the scene: Dhoni is the captain of a Cricket team called Chennai Super Kings in a tournament, of a game called Cricket, called Indian Premier League (IPL)

Anand and IPL

Good start for the morning. Saw that Anand has won his second game against Topalov.

I watched the streamed version of the second for a while. I thought that Anand looked confident and Topalov looked tense. I am not sure if it was wishful thinking.

I watched the IPL final too till 11. I wanted CSK to win. Someone asked me why I wanted it to win. My answer? Because Dhoni is from Ranchi. I have a soft corner for Ranchi and that is a long story.

The contrast between the game of chess and IPL finals was striking.

The glamour, glitz and the bling of IPL. The deafening noise and physical energy of all involved. The colours, the lasers and lights and the dancing girls and the endless discussions about the nuances of the game. Even the murky happenings behind the scenes appeared to be erased.

The chess? Two immobile figures. One dressed as if he is attending a board meeting and the other looking almost ridiculously informal, in a formal shirt, in contrast. The display of the board on the screen in black and white. For those who do not have a deep understanding of the game, which includes me, the affair must appear incredibly boring.

The match itself does not lack drama. An Icelandic volcano erupts. Air traffic is cut off. The defender of the title reaches the venue by road. 22 hours in a bus. Three day postponement of the start requested. One granted. Defender loses the first game against a well rested challenger playing before his home crowd. The word crowd sounds almost irreverent and inappropriate. Does "the challenger playing in front of his countrymen" or some such thing sound better?

But! Imagine the happenings in the brains of the contestants. Neurons firing. Memory being accessed. Patterns being compared. Moves being evaluated. Imagining patterns that would emerge with a certain course of the game. Steely wills. Controlling the emotions and the thought processes.

The "fireworks" in their combined brains will perhaps put to shame the wildest creations of the pyrotechnic artists.

Coming down to the results, CSK won. Anand won. I feel happy.

I hope Anand wins and retains the title.

Ten Good Reasons to Learn German

I came across an article called “Zehn gute Gründe, Deutsch zu lernen” - Ten Good Reasons to Learn German, by Sebastian Sick, a columnist for the German Magazine Der Spiegel. He writes regularly about the German language. He is passionate about his mother tongue (Muttersprache). Interestingly, the Germans have a father land (Vaterland) but, a mother tongue.

I admire his passion, sense of humour and concern for the language. I wish we Kannadigas have our own Bastian Sick. Our language is sick and looks terminally ill when you look at the way it is used, misused and abused.

I have attached my translation of the article here. It is not a translation that would get me a first class in a German course or in a translation course. But, it conveys the meaning and humour at least a little bit. I hope you enjoy it.

Clerihew

I won a book "The Dord the Diglot and an Avocado or Two" by Anu Garg sometime ago and finally got down to reading it seriously. I came across the word Clerihew in it and Wikipedia defines it as:

A clerihew is a whimsical, four-line biographical poem invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley. The lines are comically irregular in length, and the rhymes, often contrived, are structured AABB. One of his best known is this (1905):

Sir Christopher Wren
Went to dine with some men
He said, "If anyone calls,
Say I'm designing Saint Paul's."

The sub-rule seems to be that the name of the person whose (purported) biographical work it is, appears in the first line.

So I cooked up the following Clerihew.

Mr Shashi Tharoor
Was shown the door
When he played on an unfamiliar wicket,
A game that does not sound quite cricket.

But, one more rule seems to be that it is not satirical. Perhaps mine does not qualify.

Catch 22 Inverse

A friend told me that RC (Oh no, not Royal Challengers (nor Rum n' Cola), you dummy, it's Roman Catholicism) does not allow divorce.

However, (Ah! How I love that word!) if one of the partners is mad, RC allows divorce.

In that case any marriage could be declared null and void.

Isn't getting married proof enough?

Celebration Time!

I wrote a short piece on British Chiropractic Association vs Dr. Simon Singh libel case. I wrote that piece being elated about the news that Simon Singh had won a case in which the judegment was that he could defend himself on the ground that what he had written was opinion and not a statement of fact.

Now the good news is that BCA has dropped its case against Simon. You may read all you want (and a lot more) here.

24 Hour Classical Music Channel

Yesterday, I attended a concert, a violin - Mohana veena jugalbandi, of Mysore Manjunath and Viswamohan Bhat. This was at the 72nd Ramasevamandali concerts held in the grounds of the Fort High school Bangalore. Before the start of the concert Bhat took the microphone and started talking. I usually do not take such talks seriously and only half listen to them (Don't ask me how that is done!!!). You may call me a cynic, but such talk is usually all about how the artist "loves" the audience of Bangalore (or Mysore or Pune or Timbuktoo where you happen to be and he or she happens to be performing)

But, this speech jolted me to attention with the second sentence. Here is a transcript of it as far as I can remember it.

"Good evening. I thank you all for coming to this concert. pause.... ignoring the two hundred TV channels ..... and IPL. I wish we had at least one channel devoted to Indian classical music. Even animals have three channels. (Said with a beautifully self deprecating smile)

In this place of Sri Vijay Mallyaji, I would like say that it will cost about 0.5 percent of his expenditure on IPL and Force India to run a channel like that. So I request Sri Vijay Mallyaji to ....."

I felt like crying. Now that World Space has been shot into deep outer space, this plea sounded more poignant.

As for me, if I have a 24 hr music channel on the air I will unsubscribe from the cable and will watch the four Tennis grand slam finals in some friend's house!

Are the Mallyas of the world listening?