The Importance of (now and then) Being (slightly) Unwell

A protagonist who is seriously ill and dying is a shop worn cliche of commercial Hollywood and Bollywood movies. Being seriously ill makes this already beauteous person even more beautiful. Even more alluring. Even more wise. You get the picture.

Like most movie cliches this one is also preposterous and requires a willing suspension of disbelief to endure.
However like most cliches, this one too has a grain of truth.

While being seriously ill is a physical and mental train wreck with no redeeming qualities, I believe being just that little unwell to be guiltlessly bed-ridden for a day or two is beneficial to both the body and the soul.
I am not talking about malingering, sick leave pretensions or hypochondria. A genuine mild fever where the good doctor prescribes paracetamol and rest is great. A prescription of mild pain killers and of course, rest for a twisted ankle is also good. A stomach upset is a bit messy, not ideal but in a crunch will do.

The extra day or two of rest, besides ridding you of the mild illness, does your body a whale of good. It is like well-spent maintenance down time. But isn't a good vacation also greatly restful, some of you who are perhaps perennially healthy might ask. No my friend. Modern vacations and even weekends are stressful. Running around in strange places, engaging in strange activities. And the overeating which is usually the result of stress or boredom or both.

At home in bed with a mild illness, eating right, returning the solicitousness of your caregiver with solicitousness, the quiet all round as everyone is out working and the happy contemplation of all the stresses that your colleagues at the office are at the moment undergoing. This is rest at its supreme, replenishing best.

And the soul? How is a day or two in bed with a mild illness good for the soul, you may ask.                      
Consider this. When did you last contemplate your life at leisure? Evaluated where your life is going and
whether you want to go there? Certainly not on the vacation in Europe last summer when you were evaluating the cost of the Euro and where you need to be next day. Certainly not last weekend while spending Saturday and Sunday helping your wife shop for dinner party on Sunday evening and certainly not during that Sunday dinner party.

But in bed with a mild illness in the familiar surroundings of your home there are no distractions. It is almost as if your life is sitting on the bed next to you  having a nice, friendly conversation with you. If that is not good for the soul, tell me what is?

The next day when you get back to work and your colleagues enviously and somewhat suspiciously remark on how well you look, give them a wan smile just like that crinkly eyed hero in the terminal phase of cancer did in last year's super hit.  

     

The Bubble of Power

You are the dramatic victor  of an astonishing election. You are now among the world's most powerful people. You are brimming with enthusiasm and resolve. 
And then it envelopes you. The bubble of power. 
You still see the world and hear it but through the bubble. The bubble seeps reality of it's edge. 
If you are the secure kind it adds a pink hue to everything you see and hear leading you to believe all is right with everything and everyone loves you.
If you are the insecure kind it adds a red hue adding everyday to your paranoia and you scheme and plot your little plots to set everyone and everything right.
And then one day the bubble bursts with a loud plop. And as you step out of it after years trapped within it, the very air seems to hurt you. As you stagger and struggle hark what is that you hear? Sniggers? But you thought they all loved you! The sharpening of knives? But you thought you had put your enemies permanently away!
I have never tasted power so the above is just me imagining what it is to gain great power all of a sudden. And what it is to lose it as suddenly.
Power is great drama.
 I avidly watch the Narendra Modi show unfold. Not just because what he does has import on the lives of all of us Indians. But because it is such a great narrative.
Will his genius overcome the transition from Gandhinagar to Lutyen's Delhi? Will he be the rare individual who manages to prick the bubble of power while he remains in power? Will he write history or be one of history's numerous footnotes?
It is going to be a great story. And you might be excused to think you can watch it unfold for free. But in reality there is no free lunch. Remember as the story unfolds it is also the story of our aspirations and dreams unfolding.

  
   
  

Mad Men

The brash boutique SC&P has sold itself to the establishment as represented by staid old McCann. Will Don Draper now get his mojo and life back? Darn! To know the answer to this and other gripping questions we will have to impatiently wait till the American spring of 2015. That is when the second part of the seventh and final (as of now) season of the seminal American TV series 'Mad Men' airs.
Why has 'Mad Men' garnered so much popular and critical acclaim?  In the US, a large part of the success could be attributed to the period it is set in and the meleiu it explores. Mad Men is set among advertising people in America in the sixties.The sixties were both the apogee and the nadir of the post-war American experience. The agony and ecstasy of being American, so to speak. As the post-war economic boom washed into the homes of every American, advertising and it's denizens on Madison Avenue came to represent the increasing servility of the avant garde to the popular.
A set of clever but unscrupulous people inveigled and then distorted anything out of the ordinary to serve the cause of the mundane and the ordinary. To showcase the sizzle to sell the steak. The fascination of today's American public with the lives of the men and women who populated Madison Avenue in its heydays is perhaps a fascination of tracing the beginnings of the consumer culture that is perhaps the central leitmotif of modern American society.
But then what about Mad Men's worldwide popularity? I believe Mad Men will be considered a landmark in television in decades from now because it will be the foremost representative of the era when the TV series became an art form to be ranked almond literature, music, dance, the theater and cinema. Mad Men is perhaps the first mainstream big-budget television series that gets into the he heads of its characters and, dare I say, it's viewers to create a stream-of-consciousness experience that goes deeper and beyond the specifics of the narrative. In doing so Mad Men transcends the limitation of the primitive stimulus-response-stimulus structure of the usual TV drama (as so painfully evident in Indian TV series) and gets into realm  of the full-bodied flavor of high quality literature, theater or cinema. Mad Men is not alone. Breaking Bad, a TV series set in New Mexico about a upstanding chemistry teacher's transformation into a ruthless criminal mastermind is mesmerizing and deeply affecting. I am sure there are quite a few more out there that I am yet to savor..
One final thing. I have worked in large advertising agencies, have been the founding promoter ofa small one and over the  past few years have been an adviser for a couple of mid-size others. How does the meleiu in Indian advertising compare to the one depicted in Mad Men? Well the human frailties and egos on display there are very much evident here. However the drama inherent in the process of creating and selling advertising here is only a pale imitation of that shown in Mad Men. That is partly due to the fact that in a TV series the mundane is hidden. And partly because the Indian economy is where it is. Still largely imitative, still largely stuck in the basics. I am sure as we, as a nation, find our own economic voice and realize our own potential for innovation  so will Indian advertising discover its very own voice, it's very own creative heat and drama. And perhaps one day it's very own 'Mad Men'

&

I followed the 2008 US Presidential elections very closely and in the process became a keen student of Obama's speaking style.

The one word he uses most frequently and with the greatest of emphasis is "and". He uses it not as an conjunction that appeared mid-sentence but the beginning of a new sentence, a new thought that is not so much a conjunction with the previous thought but an extension or an expansion into another idea sphere.

He was therefore not saying "&" but "and". Let me explain.

Children in traditional schools in England recite "&" as the 27th letter in the alphabet and it is the belief that the representation "ampersand" is a corruption of what they would say "and per se  &" with "per se" being the phrase that signified that a letter can, like A and I, form a word on its won.

The Americans, more specifically Hollywood (when I was much younger I used to feel that instead of Hollywood being an American institution, America was a Hollywood institution. In fact I got into trouble for opining thus to a big shot from the US head office of the ad agency that I worked in. But I digress) has given "&" a much greater significance. In Hollywood an "&" between two collaborators signified a close partnership while the verbosity of an "and" signified an at-a-distance almost cold working relationship. So it is Laurel & Hardy and perhaps it should have been "Charlie and Chaplin" given the man's schizophrenic nature.

Therefore if one where to transcribe say George Bush's speeches (uh?) one would surely write "&" every single time he spoke the word "and". Given that the man was congenitally incapable of any extension and expansion of thought.

In the late nineties, I with another partner started an ad agency. We wanted to name it AB&U with A and B standing for the two of us and U standing for the consumer. A reputed astrologer and numerologist who was a good friend of the other partner persuaded us that it was in our interest to be a bit more verbose and the agency ended up being called ABandU. The agency did reasonably well for many years but the "and" in the name had it's say in the end, alienating the agency from it's marketplace ( I must add that my ex-partner continues to flourish in advertising and I continue to make a living in a related field).

And.. finally let me conclude with a deeper observation. To me the difference between "&" and "and"  is further illuminated by two creative processes. "&" is the "stream of consciousness" process where the artist or the writer flows with her consciousness to create. And "and" is the process of "second attention" when the artist or writer stands at a distance from his consciousness and observes it. I could go on about "streams of consciousness" and "second attention" (or is it "streams of consciousness" & "second attention") but that is material for another post. Au revoir.

   

  

                    

Memory, Deja Vu and the Objective Correlative

Memory you know is the key to all our emotions.
As you grow older while memory weakens in the domain of the immediate present, it becomes strangely persistent regarding the past. 
I say strangely because the persistence is insidious and seems to originate from the sub-conscious. 
The most commonplace of these calling cards from the past is the phenomenon know as Deja vu.(more correctly Déjà vu). 
Deja vu in French means "already seen" an is defined as "a strong sensation that an event or experience currently being experienced has been experienced in the past, whether is has actually been so experienced in the past or not". Somewhat like the unending reflections in a hall of mirrors.       
As I grow older my  Deja vu moments, have not only become more frequent but have changed texture.
Deja Vu these days for me has changed from the sensation of a repeated experience to a repeated emotional landscape. 
For example when I take a particular turn on my way home with the sun shining at a particular angle I experience the same identical sense of eager anticipation about the future. The sight of a railway platform at dusk invokes a fleeting but deep sense of despair. Such triggers are not restricted to the domain of sight but also related to other senses like smell, touch and taste.
Psychology textbooks explain Deja vu as the brain reacting prematurely to a particular object by creating a sub-conscious picture of the entire experience before it is consciously registered, thus fooling the conscious into believing that it is a repeat of an experience in the past.
The textbook explanation of a premature ejaculation (so to speak) of the sub-conscious might hold true for Deja vu that is situation related. However, I think, there is more than what meets the eye when Deja vu triggers a set of emotions.
I believe, the explanation for this phenomenon comes not from the science of psychology but from the domain of art. The "objective correlative" is a tool that writers use to evoke emotion int heir readers. The term was first used by the poet TS Elliot in his essay "Hamlet and His Problems". Eliot wrote "The only way of expressing emotion is in the form of an art is to finding an "objective correlative", in other words a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula for that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in a sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked"
Elliot's insight can perhaps explain the difference between popular art and the avant garde. Popular art uses already established formula for evoking a set of acceptable emotions while the avant garde creates not just new formulations for the existing set of acceptable emotions but formulations that create a new palette of emotions.
So what am I saying? That I am becoming, as I growing older, a set of formulas evoking a set of emotions? A row of buttons that get pressed in a set sequence? Perhaps there is a life lesson to be learnt here. That you are in the danger of becoming the prisoner of a set pattern of behavior (habits) and evoked emotions (gratifications) as you grow older. If you have to break free you have to do what the avant garde does in any walk of life: take risks and overcome the fear of failure. Not for the lure of success but simply to better express life's joy.
Remember even the dying flame struggles to flare brighter.

                 

The Rational and The Spiritual

One of the earliest memories of my childhood is of the reveries I used to lose myself in, triggered by a snatch of music, the sight of a new landscape and even while staring at myself in a mirror. These reveries where a state that was above and beyond the everyday concerns and desires of a child and quite pleasurable. As an adult as I look back they seem to have been in the spiritual realm.
And then I got an education and these reveries disappeared only to come back of late as I begin to pay as much attention to unlearning as I do to learning.
One of the primary aims of modern education is to inculcate rational thinking. And quite rightly. The modern world runs on rationality. Like they say you cannot eat spirituality.
But is it an either or world when it comes to the rational and the spiritual?
Lets compare this dichotomy to the dichotomy between classical and quantum physics.
Classical physics, at whose core are the three laws of Newton, is sufficient to explain the world that we directly observe and underpins most of the rational domains of science and engineering that create the modern reality that we all live in.
Einstein's theory of relativity takes classical physics to the extremes of the observable universe in terms of speed and distance and give us a glimpse of the what lies at the edges of commonplace rationality.
But it is quantum physics, the physics that tries to penetrate the deepest of nature's mysteries to get to the very core fundamentals of reality, that everyday rationality goes only thus far and no further.
I believe quantum physics is the deepest manifestation yet of human thought. Roger Penrose's book "The Road to Reality" will give you a comprehensive introduction of what it is. It is the most entertaining read especially if you give up trying to understand what he is saying and just flow along that mighty river of mathematical genius that has been the evolution of quantum physics (I love reading books written by physicists and cosmologists that explore, for lay readers like me, the deeper reaches of modern physics. Perhaps they are the pleasurable adult counterparts of my childhood reveries).
Sample this from quantum physics. It is the act of observation of a reality that makes reality happens. That is reality is a wave function of probabilities that collapses to particular version of reality upon the act of observation! And why does the probability function collapse to a particular reality? Because it is entangled (or as the quantum physicists call it, quantangled) with another reality that has already been observed in some other part of the space-time. Delicious isn't it?            
It is my contention that even a hard-core, stick-in-the-mud rationalist muggle upon reading a well-written account of quantum physics will experience a fleeting glimpse of the spiritual and the untold delights it has to offer. It is because the rationalist cannot deny the strong mathematical and scientific credentials of  quantum physics and thus leaves his mind open for the first intimations of the spiritual world to sneak in.
Einstein spent the last years of life struggling and failing to arrive at the Grand Unified Theory that would combine classical and relativistic physics with quantum physics. The struggle continues till date.
Similarly humanity is yet to reconcile fully rationality and spirituality.
However, to my mind, Roger Penrose in "The Road to Reality"  shows us a way to reconcile the two (though the reconciliation of the spiritual and rational is not a concern of  the book). I had written about this in a post on this blog dated February 1, 2010.
The post is reproduced below:
http://www.hardrainindia.com/2010/02/road-to-reality.html

The Road to Reality

Roger Penrose is Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford.

That he is one of the world’s greatest scientists, does not stop him from being a skilled writer who has to his credit lucid books that take the lay person into the fascinating realms of high physics and metaphysics.

His book “The Road to Reality : A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe” lives up to the title while being within the reach of the intelligent and interested lay reader.

His two earlier books:”The Emperor’s New Mind” and “Shadows of the Mind” vividly bring alive the road that Penrose traveled before he could bring himself to write the complete guide to the laws of the universe.

There is a concept in “The Road to Reality” that continues to fascinate me and I go back to it often.

Penrose calls the concept “Three worlds and three deep mysteries”.

The concept is that mathematical existence is different not only from physical existence but also from an existence that is assigned by our mental perceptions.

And yet there are deep and mysterious connections between the three worlds.

Only a small part of mathematics has relevance to the physical world.

The vast preponderance of the activities of mathematicians today has no connection to physics or to any other science.

Implied, I think, in Penrose’s visualization of this connection as reproduced in this post is that the world of mathematics can explain the whole of the physical world.

The second mysterious connection is that the Mental World comes about in certain physical structures that are a small-subset of the physical world (most specifically, healthy, wakeful human brains- and to smaller extent the “brains” of other living things).

Think about the above two mysteries in conjunction with the third mystery which is that the Mathematics World is only a small sub-set of the Mental World and you get a cycle that folds on to itself and gives me, when I meditate on it, a deeper glimpse of reality.

If you don’t hate thinking, take the time to think about it. It could be worth your while.                  
                

Modi the Meme

Last week my post "The Unhappy Election" was about a bitter, enervating campaign that had the whole nation on a boil.
This week we have emerged out of the tunnel and it smells like new beginnings.
I am a left-leaning, English medium type who voted Congress in all previous elections but this.
According to a whole host of gurus - political, marketing, branding etc- and a whole lot of general gas bags currently pontificating on TV screens and newspapers, I was persuaded to vote against all my inclinations and past affiliations because "brand Modi" was "marketed" so well.
That I think is just the kind of glib, mindless analysis that is so common in our media on any issue that requires even scratching below the surface, forget about doing a deep dive,
I am sure that we will over the next few months and years have serious, well-researched analysis of what happened during this astonishing election and of the phenomenon called Narendra Modi.
One strand of analysis will be about the changing nature of the Indian electorate. The obvious one is of course the demographics - the 100 million first time voters and the total of around 500 million below the age of 30. Going beyond the demographics and perhaps related to it, there could be lurking a deeper change. Ironically among the first spotters of this trend, at least among those who get widely quoted in media - was P. Chidambaram, the outgoing Finance Minister. Indian society has rapidly moved away from being a petitioning society to being an society driven by aspirations -simply put even the poor and the disadvantaged in India do not want handouts they want jobs and a better quality of life. In other words they want the opportunity to fish for themselves not just be handed small portions of rotting fish.In that sense it was India's first middle-class election.
The second strand of analysis will be about for what made for winners and losers in this election.
In my post dated November 20th 2013 titled "Memes and the Coming General Elections"  I had written about how memes are much more powerful entities and brands and what role memes are likely to play in elections. To my mind the landslide nature of the results of this election is a sure shot sign that what was operating in this election was a  powerful force that was not a brand but a meme. Brands create markets and market shares, memes create civilizations, societies and revolutions.
The thesis could be that Modi is much beyond a brand, he is a newly-made meme.A meme that digs as deep and resonates with the generic timeless memes of "Change", "Success" and "Youth". The harnessing of the power and promise of Change, Success and Youth is the result of a conscious strategy brilliantly executed by Team Modi. However that alone would not have lead to the astounding results but for a happy accident: Modi evoked across a wide swathe of the electorate the meme "Indian". It is my hunch that every Indian, except for perhaps among the most Westernized of us, recognized in him a kin. In his scraggly appearance, in his earthy idiom, in his unfettered aggression all of saw a personification of the Indian gestalt - of a tough life faced with courage, forbearance and innovation.
Well the above are just thoughts and perhaps just as glib as the ones I was complaining about. Let me end by wishing the man well before I go back to contemplating what my stock portfolio will be worth a couple of years from now.