Smiley

Nervously, the 6 tourists on the airboat scanned the pond in front of us, fringed as it was by the thick mangrove vegetation of the Florida Everglades. The sun shone bright and it was a cozy morning, despite this being the end of November, a luxury of being in the South. But we had a little something on our minds right then. We were on the lookout for the big 'un.

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An airboat is a very low, very flat bottomed and very fast boat with an enclosed aircraft-style propellor tagged to its rear end, a machine designed for navigating the swampy shallow terrain of the 'Glades. Trouble was, our captain (pilot?) had killed the motor and we were lazily drifting along in the water. He didn't look like he wanted to get away quick just in case things got hairy.

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If things got... scaly would be a better word, I guess. For if you know of the Everglades, you know of their most obvious residents. We had already seen a momma alligator from a safe distance away basking on the banks and shielding her young ones, 20-25 of them. All of 7 feet in length, she was lethargic enough to provide ample photo opportunities, without giving us cause for worry, by moving towards us. But now we were in open water.

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As if in tune with a communal sixth sense, we turned around to check on the one place beyond our collectively scanning eyes had missed and sure enough, a member of a species which had stay unchanged in shape since the day of the dinosaurs was silently sneaking up on us. It was with a mix of fear and awe that we realized such a massive animal could swim perfectly soundlessly. With that peculiarly reptilian crawl often times seen on TV wildlife documentaries, he came cruising right alongside our boat.

At this point, all the 6 non-Floridans on the boat including yours truly shrank towards the centre of the vessel, instinctive self preservation, I guess. The captain was hardly re-assuring in his 'assurances'. Sitting high on his seat in the middle of the boat, the farthest away from the creature, he pronounced "That's Smiley. Almost 11 feet long. If he wanted to, he could leap clear of the water and land on my lap." Having a nickname for a huge alligator might earn our captain some brownie points in the regional macho-man competition but we were not eager to have some particular aspects of Smiley's physical abilities on display.

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11 feet is hardly a record breaker, especially if you think of how other big crocodilians like the estuarine crocodiles can get, but 11 feet of scales, teeth and muscle circling our boat with an interested eye was alligator plenty for me. At about 450 menacing pounds in weight, and with 55-60 years of hunting experience (Fast fact: Alligators grow a foot a year for the 6 years of their life and from then on, their length increases only by an inch a year!), Smiley wasn't quite ideal company to have when out boating. A swamp creature of my nightmares was now within biting distance of me and there was no telling what was going on in the pea-shaped brain of his as he evaluated our boat and its passengers.

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We joked and laughed about dangling fingers in front of Smiley and about this being a especially bad place to fall into the water, for the most part, to stifle that queasy feeling generated when a large predator is encircling you quite casually, in his own domain. This was the cliched tourist experience we had come for, wasn't it? The whole "Been to the 'Glades, seen a gator" photo-op deal to boast about when we got back home. Only for that pesky voice inside to pipe up and say that is a real big ALLIGATOR and that we were on WATER and if he wanted to, there really was NOTHING stopping Smiley from making that humans equal to meat connection.

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It's been centuries since we have moved out of the food chain which sustains the rest of the natural world. We have devised our own fancy but safe ways of obtaining food for ourselves. A little reminder once in a while does help a lot to appreciate this privilege. Out there in the REAL real world, we are not at the top of the chain. No. Most definitely not.

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[http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2012/12/smiley.html]

Racist

[Re-worked... to make it a little less of an angry rant] 
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Anger. My only reaction to the comic strip above, published on the Dilbert website for 31st October 2011. How callous and insulting the use of a short line "I grew up in India" at the right (wrong?) place could be, I hadn't realized before this. 

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The comments below the strip weren't helping. Quite a few geniuses had commented to the tune of "I am an Indian and I laughed along with this joke. It needs to be enjoyed in the right spirit."

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Right spirit? Right spirit, my a**. The joke was not only offensive for us who have had the privilege of a very blessed & protected childhood in India but twice as offensive for the unfortunate fellow citizens of our country who have very real issues with drinking water & health. Not a joking matter at all, for whatsoever reason.
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Asok, the intern character from India, is a simpleton targeted for laughs with his nauseating diligence and his eager-to-please attitude, a counterweight to the scheming work-shirking Wally. That much I accept is a necessary aid to keep the story flowing.
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But this wasn't humour or even if it was, it didn't seem like it. Humour presents an opportunity to cross the line of Political Correctness. But it matters, it really does, how it is put across and who does it. I have been a frequent reader of Dilbert myself and though the quality wavers a lot, it had never stooped to the level of racial mud-slinging like this before.

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As a cartoonist, Scott Adams reserves full right to say what he wants to. What I find very unfortunate is that a mainstream and popular artist like him didn't think twice about portraying such an unacceptable point of view, normally the preserve of white supremacist websites and such like. 
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Yes, there are comedians like Russell Peters who consistently make fun of  the cliched Indian qualities, but his Indian origins help him to be a more suitable man to make jokes about Indians. A smart insider's self-criticisms can be superbly funny. An over-smart outsider's unwarranted comments come off as ugly and racist.

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[http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2012/11/anger.html]

I-Sheep v/s Fandroid

Image via CrunchBase

Screeching my car into a Vassar Street parking slot, I looked around for the McNair Building where I was supposed to have been in around half an hour ago. There was not a pedestrian in sight, a rare scenario on the afternoon streets of Cambridge, in and around the MIT area. There was always someone. Finally there he was, that one person, strolling down the street, who seemed like the type to ask directions from. I hailed him with an "Excuse me!", enough to be greeted with a look of mild irritation of having to look away from the magic of the 3.5 inch I-phone screen in his hands.

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"Yes?" he asked.

"Would you know where the McNair building might be?" I ventured forth.

"Don't you have a phone?" said Mr. Mildly Irritated

"I do." I answered, more than a little puzzled, struggling to bring out my phone from my pocket.

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Seeing an Android phone pop out in my hand was the tipping point for my reluctant guide. "Oh! It's not an I-Phone!" he rationalized aloud, justifying to himself the obvious lack of intelligence and sophistication that he seemed to have pre-sensed in me. I would have told him that my smart phone loyalties were not iron-clad, that I wasn't allied to the 'enemy'. It was only because I was getting the Samsung Galaxy S for free with my plan that I had one. Didn't seem like he would believe me, so I didn't bother either.

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Swift as the wind, he pulled up an app on his piece of technological perfection and punched in 'McNair Building'. What the phone told him, I do not know. All I got was a broad sweep of his arms which I think covered for 50% of the MIT campus in view, as he announced with surety "My phone says this building is somewhere over there."

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"Thanks!" I said, with force-of-habit politeness. Then almost eclipsed by his triumphant face, I saw the stencilled name McNair on the wall of the building about 1o feet behind him. I would have pointed that out to him too, but then who was I to endlessly, hopelessly deny the future. Using them things called eyes would be too much work and accessing that messy gadget called a brain would mean total under-utilization of that monthly 3G data limit.

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[http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2012/11/i-sheep-vs-fandroid.html]

Bounce back?

It was quite like being poked in the eye, over and over again. Even the sombre settings of the 9/11 Memorial in lower Manhattan and the quiet introspection that came along with it were not sacred enough for some, it would seem. 

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On an August Sunday morning, hundreds of visitors walked through the area where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center stood before September 11, 2001, now cleared of debris and open to the public, developed as a memorial to that horrifying day of violence and to bring peace & reconciliation to the limited extent possible. The footprints of the North and South Towers were now fountains pouring into pools on the ground and rising again. The names of the 2983 victims killed in an earlier 1993 bombing of the buildings, the subsequent 2001 plane hijackings, the Pentagon crash and the buildings themselves were engraved on the black marble surrounding them. 

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It was quiet as would befit the location, with people gazing in silence at the pools or sitting on the benches surrounding them, submerged in deep thought. I couldn't have been the only one noticing the odd behaviour of the couple clicking pictures by the North Tower pool. They were busy trying to get an appropriately grey image given the location but it was the fact that they were setting it up to look real that gave me a sick feeling. The female half of the partnership was being directed by the male half to turn this way and that way, to hold 'that thoughtful gaze'. In between the shots, there was laughing and smiling by the gallons, indicating a disgusting mission to look it, rather than to feel it.

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I guess it will stay that way, the simplest of narratives for millions of people. Here they were, the good guys with not a care in the world living in the greatest nation on the planet. Then came these bad guys (from a different religion and region of the world, it'll be whispered) and killed so many innocent folk in their country. The good guys got our own back though, went into their countries and bombed their evil souls to hell and beyond. End of story. The complications and realities of geo-politics and history will permanently be side-stepped by these folk. 

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Who were these people and who got them going on their path to murderous madness? [Hint: Which secret agency first funded Osama bin Laden's radical Islam agenda, back when he was fighting the Russians in Afghanistan?] Were all the innocent lives lost and the irreparable destruction caused in retaliation based solely on the aim of defeating terrorism or were there other factors at play? What, if anything, can be done to prevent future games of international chess using the governments and people of weak countries as pawns?

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It is criminal to justify the murder of nearly 3000 people and the numbing sadness that it caused to a people happily leading their daily lives completely uninvolved in the schemes and ploys of realpolitik by saying that they had it coming. The perpetrators of such an heinous act have, will and should meet the fate that they deserve, a less than pleasant one, I might add. 

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But what is also criminal is to reduce this to a comic book level of simplicity where the bad guys are the bad guys tarred with a paint brush on basis of their ethnicity, the god they worship and their geographic location while the good guys are all sunshine and roses. The need is to keep is keep our eyes and ears open, to understand that in this imperfect world, everything is linked to everything else and that it takes two hands to clap.

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9/11 was a terrible day in the history of humanity, an awful culmination of blind hatred towards a religion/nation/people. It'll be impossible to put behind and in many ways, it should not be. Lives will be re-built, losses will be absorbed in the folds of time but what should stay is a conscious effort to smile a little less (the self-absorbed vacuous variety) and think a little more. What may seem too irrelevant and far away to be of concern should matter to all. Wilful ignorance is too dangerous a disease to let infect our species. We are capable of engaging our thoughts and actions towards issues beyond our immediate environment and we should. 

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9/11 and the dark depths of its tragedy should never be reduced to a mere photo op.

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[http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2012/09/bounce-back.html]

Canis lupus

Like most other cliches, the one about the zoo and the wild is grounded in truth. At the zoo, the wildlife are caged visitors in the world of humans and in the wild, the humans are in theirs, caged or otherwise. My first visit to a wildlife sanctuary after decades of devoted wildlife documentary viewing bore hard proof of that [http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2010/11/real-deal.html]. To expect animals to behave like animals was the whole point of entering their natural domains. Unfortunately it does mean reduced chances of seeing them, especially the sly ones.

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But this was Alaska, proving an exception to that rule. I was on a shuttle bus which made its way to the Eielson Visitor Centre at the heart of the Denali National Park and back out again. On my first day, the 7th of June 2012, I had already seen 7 grizzly bears, two moms (sows) with pairs of cubs and a lone male bear (boar), numerous Dall sheep lounging lazily at the edge of sheer cliffs hundreds of feet high, moose and caribou in the 6 odd hours I had spent on the bus. I was already in sixth heaven of my animal besotted life. But only sixth. As I was telling the couple right behind me, "If only..."

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My co-passengers were in a similar state of euphoria. We were all on the 'lucky bus', we insisted. More than a few of us were enthusiastic eagle-eyed lookouts for every minute of the ride and quite often managed to pick out something in the brush that didn't quite look like a rock. That would turn out to be another animal. In the seat just ahead of me were a couple of French speaking teenagers who looked like they had just stepped out of an anime movie with electric blue dyed hair and more piercings than I could care to count. They yapped incessantly, as would be expected of two girl pals irrespective of nationality. I wondered, without making much headway, what might have brought them here. This corner of Alaskan backcountry, decidedly not gritty urban chic, didn't seem like where their scene was at.

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We were already winding our way back to the borders of the park to the Wilderness Access Centre from where we had started. Alaska had already made my day, year and life for everything it had shown me on this trip, the breathtaking beauty of its landscapes and the lives of its residents, animal and human. I was simply being greedy when I wished for that one last thing. Everyone knew that 'they' were the ultimate team, smart, tenacious and fearsome - all attributes that would make them really unlikely to come posing in front of a busload of humans.

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In the powerful final chapter of "The Call of the Wild", after the human master he loved with heart and soul is murdered by the Yeehat Indians, Buck the massive sled dog, hero of the story breaks his final bonds with civilization, running out into the forests of Alaska, never to return to the warmth of human protection, turning into a creature of legend, stalking and terrorizing the Indians. He answers the 'call of the wild', becoming the leader of a pack of his wild brothers. It was his brothers that I was on an as-yet-futile lookout for.

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The Alaskan tundra in summer is a feast for the eyes by itself. The many hues of natural colours and the short stubby bushes that stretch out on undulating land before rising into snow clad gigantic mountains in the distance could easily put a paint company's shade card to shame. To know that it also hold such an abundance of wildlife made it twice as scan worthy for my hungry touristy vision. But it was some other excited voice in our bus which shouted "STOP! 3'o'clock! 3'o'clock". The bus stopped abruptly and its passengers looked sharply to the right out of its windows.

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"There they are. Five of them!" said someone else as I scrambled to my knees, scrabbling around in excitement on my seat for my binoculars. I was sure of what I would see because it had indeed been that kind of a glorious day for me so far, yet I wanted to look closer. The anime sisters in front of me went super ballistic with their French chatter in excitement as they planted their faces on the bus window. All I could distinctly hear was "Loup! Loup! Loup!" 

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A smile of intense happiness broke across their faces and one of them went as far to clarify for those who didn't understand French or hadn't spotted the five powerful grey shapes playfully gambolling across the grass yet. One of the brochures for Denali referred to it quite accurately as the 'signature sound of the wild'. Against the backdrop of a large full moon, it would bring a chill down the spine or a smile on your face depending on the kind of person you were or how adventurous you might be feeling right then. Pursing her lips, she howled to no one in particular "Aaaoooo...aaoo...aaoooo" Wolf. Wolf. Wolf.

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[ https://bit.ly/spirit-of-the-wild ]

24 spokes

There was an idiot up on stage at the Hatchshell on the banks of the Charles. "People claim that we have abandoned the country. I say we are more patriotic than any of them." He continued "I asked my friends back home if they knew how many spokes the Ashok Chakra on the Indian tricolour had. None of them had the right answer. 24 spokes!" I couldn't decide whether to laugh at his less-than-bright theorem or cry tears of embarassment at being his fellow countryman.

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Thus he rested his shaky case of being more patriotic than the rest of India combined. By his urgent attempts to prove his allegiance to his home nation, he gave away his recent date of arrival to the USA. All this being part of the annual celebration of the Indian Independence Day in faraway Boston, Massachusetts, quite understandably shifted to the nearest Sunday, the 14th of August 2011 (co-incidentally the I-Day of a country whose name starts with a P).

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Maybe I was being a little too harsh in my judgement of him. At least he was here, on a day when rain was predicted and I had myself almost skipped the event but for some guilt inducing statements from a cousin born and brought up in North America. The last time I remembered celebrating Independence Day was when I was in school, a celebration in terms of the joy of having a day off. The Indian Association of Greater Boston had been putting together this event for decades now and getting hundreds to come to it for that many years was no mean feat.

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Down by the sides of the rectangle that comprised Boston's Hatchshell arena, there were NGO stalls by the dozens seeking donations and attention. The causes were plentiful and each of them equally worthy. Manned by second generation Americans, Indian in appearance, American in speech, the so-called ABCDs seemed sincerely worried about what was evidently lacking in the country of their parents' birth. The not-so-pretty truth of hunger, ignorance and lack of opportunity seemed to have affected them more severely than many 'Indian' Indians like me. What they were trying to do, in my opinion, was significantly better than making self-promoting speeches off the dais.

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A little guy, around 10 years old, was darting about amongst the milling crowds of families who had made it out to the grounds on the day. He was ferrying information for a NGO called Akshaya Patra which had partnered with the state governments in quite a few Indian states to run a very efficient school meals programme. He handed me a brochure and was gone in the blink of an eye. Another young 'un, I thought, working in his own way for a land two oceans away which he might visit once in a while but would probably never want to stay in for too long.

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All assumptions of mine, it must be said. Culpable of being too absorbed in the progress of my life than my nation's struggles, I may view any attempt to think beyond oneself with rose-tinted glasses. Yes, I read the news about India like a hound on a scent. Yes, I worry, truly worry about who would and how would the myriad issues be fixed. Do I do anything about it? A feeble no. I want to, like the nameless thousands who were involved in the laborious process of building up or clearing out, long before Hazare sat down in a fog of Facebook 'Likes' and will continue to do so long after the last of his dwindling Twitterati supporters fade away. On the ground, because I belong there. Because I cannot claim, with a clear conscience, to be impossibly addicted to a first world lifestyle in the minute fraction of my life that I have lived it.

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But it is clear that being on the ground is not the only way to contribute. That's confusing because it is also hard to ignore the fact that unless you are living the dusty and grimy reality of a country making chaotic progress, day in and day out, you cannot really be the 'real deal', the much needed agent of change. Is swearing loyalty to the country as important as actually doing something for it? Does accent and place of birth mean more than intent and genuine concern? The questions swirl unanswered as the cultural programme continues on stage. The longest queues are to be found, as expected, outside the stalls selling Indian food.

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[ http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2012/07/24-spokes.html ]

Prayer

The Dark Knight Rises (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What does it mean if I want to watch a movie on the first day of its release, yet have very low expectations from it? I look forward to it enough to buy a midnight show on the first day of its release but the crass self-promotion of the trailers put me off all the same.

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"The epic conclusion to the Dark Knight trilogy"... any movie that refers to itself as epic long before its launch should normally be a dead ringer for its 'un-epicness'. The audience has the right to posthumously deem a film an epic, not some suited honcho in a big Hollywood studio.

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Chris Nolan's movies have been known for letting very few secrets of the plot out through their pre-launch publicity. "Inception", "The Dark Knight", "The Prestige" and "Batman begins" had little more than a collection of mysterious images and ominous sounds in their trailers. One can only hope that this tradition of "The trailer means nothing" continues for "The Dark Knight rises".

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The 'villain in a superhero movie' bar was raised and launched into outer space by the last movie and expecting Bane to outdo Heath Ledger's Joker from the last movie is a lost hope. But at least, there is the stunning Anne Hathaway to look forward to as a semi-heroine Catwoman in this movie, the first time Chris Nolan has managed to get a female lead worthy enough of the great Batman movies he has churned out so far. May she be the icing on the cake on this one.

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The grey world of Gotham City, its guardians and its ill-wishers inspires a steadfast fandom who have to go out and check out what's happening in the latest vision of that universe. Cribbing and complaining aside, it has its captive audience amongst whom yours truly is included. Consider this post to be some kind of a prayer. Prove me wrong about my negative expectations, o demi-god of creativity. Prove me wrong, Christopher Nolan.

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[ http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2012/07/prayer.html ]