Tayzwi

Richard Feynman was fond of giving the following advice on how to be a genius. You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say, “How did he do it? He must be a genius!”

Labels: computer science, research, theory

Color, Pathos, Neon, Blood, Helplessness, Orgasmic, Irredeemability, Red, Anguish, Nods, Honesty, As-is, Succumbing, Delirium, Insecurity, Psychedelia, Skin, Sigh, Bitter-as-coffee, Physical catharsis, Uncontrollable-lust, Random, Wanton, Appreciation-hierarchy, Feeling, Denim, Masochism, Yellow, Numb, Lonely, Cold, Vivid, Very vivid color.

Do not influence others. Especially subliminally. Especially with ideals which you have internalized after prolong profound pondering. That's what Nath Devlalikar does. He makes his life an experiment in ideology, and lives to live the tragic consequences. Walking out of Prithvi Theater, I felt an almost biological urge to wail out the anguish I felt for the fallen hero.

Vijay Tendulkar's Kanyadaan is the most hard-hitting play I have seen. Tragedy and irony have never come together so well. The motif of victim morphing to victimizer is brought in a brilliant fractal like way. Son-in-law torturing the daughter to victimize the 'other' society. Daughter comparing her ideological upbringing to a kind of crippling that she can never revert out of. The former acknowledged, the latter acted out brilliantly.

Adding to all the motifs and superb acting - is the strikingly powerful overarching theme itself. The inability to live a life the one preaches, and live it to completion, at whatever cost -- that's what hit me. I remain hit.

And so.....don't preach.

Labels: life, theater

If you have been waiting for a film for a while, watching it alone in a theater is probably most satisfying. For various reasons, but the most important being - I don't have to justify why the film is worth someone else's time. It would have been a very tough sell in There Will Be Blood's case.

I am not sure if it was Raja Sen's review on Rediff that tipped it for me, or the bulging veins on Daniel Day-Lewis's forehead in some best actor award nomination preview - I had to watch this one.

What's my verdict? I am not sure. Morally corrupt love has always perturbed me. Oxymoron?

There are moments in this film, or vignettes, if you will, that showcase this very corrupt kind of love that elevate it above your usual saga. Love for what you stand for, what goes through your veins, on one side - and on the other side, you have love for another person whom you have internalized as your extension.

ps: I walked out of the theater feeling somewhat like this.

Here's what Nabokov said at the end of his literature-appreciation course:

"In this course I have tried to reveal the mechanism of those wonderful toys -- literary masterpieces. I have tried to make of you good readers who read books not for the infantile purpose of identifying oneself with the characters, and not for the adolescent purpose of learning to live, and not for the academic purpose of indulging in generalizations. I have tried to teach you to read books for the sake of their form, their visions, their art. I have tried to teach you to feel a shiver of artistic satisfaction, to share not the emotions of the people in the book but the emotions of its author -- the joys and difficulties of creation. We did not talk around books, about books; we went to the center of this or that masterpiece, to the live heart of the matter."

Is this true? When I heard about Lolita, or more so, its purported story's theme, I didn't know that the book was about something else. But I know now. What if I didn't? Or couldn't? Would I have dismissed the book as a cheap attempt at erotica that's not even there? Maybe.

The point is - When I write, I think of a certain type of reader who will get my allusions, and more importantly, whose appreciation hierarchy matches mine. The hope is to create something whose unravelling would thrill a reader - give that shiver of artistic satisfaction. I must also admit that, in retrospect, my posts from the past have given me more cringes than shivers.

Is that you? Not being able to believe that you could've written this? You should read some of the other stuff you've written.

"A Zugzwang!" - exclaimed Grandpa.

"So it seems" mused the other old man. He laid his over-sized black-framed glasses down on the floor and turned to me with a grandfatherly smile. "Your Grandpa will be stuck for a while." He turned towards the old chess board again and gazed at it for a while before smiling back at me. "Do you know what a Zugzwang is?"

I nodded my ignorance. His grin became wider, and those stained yellow teeth, by themselves, were grinning at me now.

Grandpa seemed to come back to this world with a sigh - "Am resigning myself to resign today." Before I could smile at the pun, he went on "I need a tea now. Yes, I think I need a tea now."

I made them both some tea. These tea requests were always special to me. Grandpa loved the special Darjeeling flavor. His friend seemed to not mind. They sipped on it and the game continued.

Their chess was legendary in this part of the world. Grandpa was himself a national level player; FIDE rated players didn't take his old school defensive game lightly. These days, he had picked up some of the newer styles and was runner up in the 80+ category last year.

Surprisingly, his friend had kept up somehow. Loans, deaths, and disease seemed to have not affected him; or at least, not his chess. He was here everyday morning; and Grandpa started each game with his old rival with a keenness that bordered on obsession.

The games went on. Grandpa won some, but lost many. Tea was served always.

Both of them are now dead. When grandpa's rival died, I had gone there to pay my last respects. Few dusty books were lying around. I hadn't known that he could read. A worn out chess book caught my attention and as I was going through it, I could see his wife smiling at me through similar stained teeth. She looked at the book in my hand and grimaced a little - "He hated chess. But he loved your tea."

Labels: short story

1 - Suprabhata Coffee Kendra: This won't get figured in any top-list (other than mine, of course). They serve the best coffee in town, and probably the best sambhar as well. It's one of those pre-darshini-age standing hotels, and is very popular among our auto rickshaw drivers. It's on the diagonal road connecting Sajjan Rao Circle and Minerva Circle; just before the second hand two wheeler market starts. The good thing about this place is - you get coffee in the afternoons.

2 - Brahmins' Coffee Bar: Idli, vaDe, khara bath, and kesari bath - not to mention the chutney. Don't be too demanding at the counter; you might just have to deal with some polite rudeness from either of the Adiga brothers who serve the food. But the food is worth it - so worth it.

3 - Vidyarthi Bhavan: The story goes that it was started to cater to National College students in the early 50's and some of those students still make it a point to come back (and in some cases like mine, very frequently). The trick to getting serviced here quickly is to know their static dose routing algorithm. Here's how it works: You need to walk up to the kitchen and see which of the servers is getting ready for the next batch, and try to find a seat in his serving territory. If that's not possible, the next-in-line server's territory. Another tip would be to ask for 'less oil' - brilliant dose (crisp on the outside and soft on the inside), and that uddin beLe chutney makes me forgive all of Bangalore's traffic woes. If you can't handle the crowd, just walk down DVG Road to Mahalakshmi Tiffin Room, and you'll do just fine.

4 - Hotel Dwaraka - It's a pity they had to change their location from Bull Temple Road to Tyagarajanagara now, and become a semi-Darshini (of all things!!). But the khali dose still remains as soft and as tasty as ever. I would recommend some palya as well - just to make it a set. Enough has been said about their 'yeraDu dosege mooru baari chutney koDalaguvudilla' notices - and now that those notices are gone :( they do serve chutney thrice :)

5 - Upahara Darshini - Shavige bath, with it's unique chutney.

Before Bangalore became the restaurant city that it is now, it used to have hotels - and I am glad that most of the classic hotels have survived, and thrived. I will write more on this when I cover the Majestic area and Malleshwaram hotels.

Labels: food