Sunday Musing 13/01/14

I am waiting expectantly for the next AAP feat. And I don't mean another breathtaking electoral performance in the coming general elections. Much before that AAP needs to govern Delhi for the next three months if not brilliantly than at least credibly. if that happens I believe that the paradigm shift to take root in Indian politics. Talking about paradigm shifts, do you notice paradigm shifts in the people you love, admire or just know well? I have begun to notice quite a few. Probably because I accumulated a lot more data as I grow older - lot more people observed over a lot more years. In one individual case the paradigm shift in character has been both subtle and startling. I have admired him for more than two decades for being a 'big small man'. Diminutive in stature and modest in term of intellectual pitch, he was a true leader and friend - fearless, insightful and generous. And then success waylaid him. The paradigm shifted and from a "big small man' he transformed into a "small big man". The spirit of generousness that so defined him earlier is now polluted by a pompous preening that only highlights an incipient sense of insecurity. Have you noticed how insecurity is almost always a by product of success? You would think success would nurture security but quite to the contrary. The only state that predicates security seems to be the state of 'nothing to lose but our chains'. That's why perhaps the greatest and most difficult yoga to practice is the yoga of non-attachment. 'Looking for Sugarman' is an award-winning documentary on a songwriter singer named Rodrigues who lived in obscurity and genteel poverty in Detroit while his music, unknown to him, found almost anthem like success among two generations in South Africa. Later in life Rodrigues got to savor his success in South Africa with successive sold-out concert tours. "Looking for Sugarman" in a meditation on the nature of success and fame as it brilliantly captures Rodrigues poise as he contently sinks back into his life of obscurity in the US after tours of screaming celebrity in South Africa. The rise of the Australian team from the ashes of last year is a happy development for those of us who love Test Match Cricket as it promises the excitement of five more-or-less evenly matched teams - South Africa, India, Australia, England and Pakistan. Among my fellow followers of Test Match Cricket the above assertion will be a subject of much debate but I am ready with a vigorous defense! The Oscar season is upon us and there is a surfeit of potential Oscar winners on my hard drive. "Dallas Buyers Club" starts from the left-field with a destructive drug-abusing oversexed AIDS-infected protagonist who then in a pleasantly surprising turn half-way through the movie finds redemption and a measure of happiness springing from the depths of his gathering despair. Worth a watch. My iBooks shelf is overflowing as my reading took a backseat to an intense learning engagement with a field completely new to me. I have just begun to dip into 'Humboldt's Gift' by Saul Bellow. Waiting in the wings are Kate Atkinson's Life After a Life, Tenth of December by George Saunders and Americanah by Ngozi ( a Nigerian American). Let me conclude this Sunday musing with a word about the joys of continuous learning. I spent the last week engaged in learning the basics of a craft entirely new to me and way out of my professional field and I am glad to report that it is a most invigorating experience. Something to do with, I guess, getting long dormant neural connectionfiring again. Highly recommended. Signing off with a piece of poetry that can give some cold comfort on the days one despairs about the human condition (and may they be increasingly few). <i>Hollow Men We are the hollow men/ We are the stuffed men/ Leaning together/ Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!/ Our dried voices, when/ We whisper together/ Are quiet and meaningless/ As wind in dry grass/ Or rats' feet over broken glass/ In our dry cellar/ Shape without form, shade without colour,/ Paralysed force, gesture without motion;/ Those who have crossed/ With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom/ Remember us—if at all—not as lost/ Violent souls, but only/ As the hollow men/ The stuffed men./ - excerpted from 'The Hollow Men' by TS Eliot