Month: January 2010

Avatar cultural equations & Biblical lift offs

Nay I may not have like Avatar as a movie but I liked the concept of resistance of the natives against the invading marauders, and in my previous post I viewed it as the huge corporate machines decimating the simple traders and businessmen.  LINK

The people of  China are flocking towards AVATAR since they see a reflection of what happens in their own society in the movie.  Its an irony that a communist country is dominated by powerful capitalists in disguise who mow down housing localities ruthlessly in the name of development.  The poor and affected are rendered homeless with no recourse to justice and not even allowed to protest or picket.

Then came this fantastic explanation from the Biblical point of view by Kwok Pui-lan for Religion Dispatches … read on

“The blockbuster movie Avatar has garnered critical and commercial success, netting $760,000,000 in two weeks. The 3-D effects have mesmerized many critics, as viewers were transported to the hanging mountains and dreamscape of flora and fauna of planet Pandora. Others, such as Annalee Newitz, have criticized this sci-fi movie as rehashing white fantasy about race, since the white man eventually became the leader of the natives.

I saw the movie on New Year’s Day and found it offers much food for thought on an anti-imperial reading of the Bible. The movie retells Rahab’s story in the book of Joshua with an interesting twist. In that familiar story, Joshua sends two spies to search out the city of Jericho. The spies enter a Canaanite prostitute Rahab’s house. When the king of Jericho orders Rahab to surrender them, Rahab hides them and saves their lives. Rahab makes a pact with the spies and asks them to spare her and her family when Jericho falls.

In Avatar, planet Pandora is not only a land of milk and honey, but also has a large reserve of a precious metal unobtanium. The avatar of Jake is sent as a messenger to ask the natives to relocate so that the humans can mine the unobtanium. Jake learns the native ways, falls in love with one of them, and becomes so identified with the natives such that he helps them to fight against the colonizers. The movie invites us to look at the world from the point of the indigenous people—to see the beauty of their interconnected way of life and learn about their culture. By doing so, it invites us to look at the Bible from the side of Canaanites.”

Passing the Baton

Not very often that you have this privilege of being invited and set our minds on the future particularly when the challenges of today seem really huge and insurmountable.  But thanks to Richard Samuel we did.  Few of us huddled in a room and discussed the course of action we need to take to make sure that the next generation of youngsters do a work that makes the world a better place.

The tone of the day was that we must not hesitate to LOOK CHALLENGE IN THE EYE.  So we moved towards the most fascinating idea.

The youth of today, like citizen journalists, will pick up their gadgets and meet up with the current crop of leaders and ask questions and share the answers with others.  This will bring in Transparency, the only  danger would be it should not get into activism like the ones you see on TV.

The key will be to train mature individuals committed to life and society

My trip to Ariyalur -Trichy- Madurai

The usual journey, just that the train was a bit crowded because of the Pongal season, Vijay Benjamin and Deepak Verma were there with me… Vijay and me spoke through the journey and towards the end I had an interesting conversation with Kennedy who was going to Sabarimala for the 11th time. I was quite surprised to know that he was coming all the way from Canada.  I have promised to get in touch with him.

Ariyalur was quite as ever, there were fewer frogs this time so did not hear much of croaking.  Got a separate room for the second time, spent some time in reading and rested.  Day one was good the training session went on well,but I had stop it since it was too challenging for the participants.  Day two, my first session was a continuation… did not quite enjoy it. Photo link

Then post lunch decided to leave for Trichy.  Waited in the bus stand at Arialur, not exactly Ariyalur  but a village near Ariyalur.   Arrived at Trichy to meet up with Arul for a fantastic time of fellowship  and then off to Madurai, reached the hotel at 1 am

16th Jan at the Richard Sam office to conduct a workshop on how to view the next 10 years.. had a great time.. lots of learnings.  Have a lot of work to do.

He is running to empower……

Emmanuel David will be  running, for the 4th time, for the Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon on 17th January 2010.  Nazarene, his wife and he ran and raised funds for a charity in Hyderabad

This year he has chosen to run for Prajwala an NGO located at Hyderabad who are doing a commendable job in rehabilitating children and adults rescued from human trafficking.

He had the opportunity to visit Prajwala at Christmas time as a family along with a few friends and their families. He found that Dr. Sunitha Krishnan have given all their inmates a sense of both emotional and physical  security and their able to lead dignified lives. http://www.prajwalaindia.com/home.html Pl see this link for more inputs on Prajwala.

It is his endeavor to support this cause especially as they  need a new shelter in 10 months time.I appeal to you once again to support this cause. Kindly make your  cheques favoring ” United Way of Mumbai” The receipts given by United Way would enable to get tax benefits as per current Income Tax rules.

Listen  Dr. Sunitha Krishnan at TED, Mysore in Nov 2009. thi s would give you perspectives of the  issues at hand and the actioin we can collectively take, you can contact Emmanuel David at +919177714455 / emmydavid@gmail.com

Avatar
The Avatar, the much trumpeted movie, is in my pocket.  Like it? Dint like it?  Phew its a tough call to make.  Liked because I had spent time with my friends… don want to say the other part.

To me it was a metaphor of the big time MNCs trying to pummel the small retailers  who work with their heart.  If these corporate machines get the message will they back off?  No certainly not, and personally think they shouldn't too. They need to move forward aggressively to their doom.

Thats what made me happy about the move..  The 3 D stuff was fine.

Actually it was simple and regular story, that we get to see so often, but with some imagination thrown.  I like the way the the Pantdorites, Navis, choosing  their vehicle – rather being chose by the vehicle, and the plugin in (USB style) with the vehicle was a neat little piece of imagination.  There were some more, surely not worth writing about.

Yes it sends u back with nothing to talk about or write about.  So I would say I liked it. (cant get more wishy washy right?)

The Landmark Debate – Civil services

I met this bright young lass, who is also a DJ in a FM channel, rummaging through some books at the Landmark, helped her move away from the usual section and pick up Milan Kundera.  Then met up some people and watched the platform being set at the landmark book store  (the last minute works)  The setting was fantastic, with books staring at you and a Grand debate was expected.

What a let down I must say.  The topic was an interesting one, “Is civil services losing its charm?” Its started out with Radhakrishanan of the Hindu, spewing fire even as  the moderator, Sanjay Pinto, needs to carry the ‘can’ for introducing the topic with some really frivolous quotes and jokes. Dr Santosh Babu, the IAS officer, had to defend, and he did a very fine job but moved into the subjective side and then came Vivek HariNarayanan responding with some definitions and wry humor, finally Rajesh Das pinned it with some display of emotions and brought a bit of cheer to the audience.

Well by this time the debate had moved into the red hot zone, it was slugfest time.. But fun.  Just that I could not personally take it, let me explain why.

My expectations were very high.  Landmark was contextually primed to discuss the future of Civil Services, and I realized that a super topic as this was being discussed the way Harbajan slapgate or the 3 idiots’ get discussed in TV channels.

The discussion of the changing social climate and the influence of the information era and the changes it ushers in was completely set aside.

Well I guess the social media revolution, driven by the world wide web, has empowered the private citizen and facilitated connectivity with like minded people to form social groups that can handle issues collectively.  The Estonia clean up model as the prime example.

If that be so, the withering away of the traditional governance framework becomes inevitable. We will all become Politicians and Bureaucrats while they become ordinary citizens – a social leveling is bound to happen with the knowledge explosion.

As of now we, in India, are straddling the Industrial and Information age, the Biotech era is on the doorstep when computing technologies will achieve unimaginable levels.

There was this steel and plasticity tack being discussed quite elaborately.  Bureaucracy was considered to be the steel frame for the country (J Nehru)  so today’s malleability of the officers was criticized.  Well personally I think it’s the rigidity that is harmful,  at least at this stage of development.  The steel must be replaced with some self correcting, self healing and self performing substance, when even the destructive cells in their destructiveness will help in progress of mankind.

Looking forward….

One really looks forward to some days. I have been a serious follower of Tamilzh Maiyam for long, relished on the music at the Annanagar Tower park last year and feasted on the Venu Biryani and Karandi Omlette at the Virugambakkam park… I always used to wonder how Fr. Jagath Gasper’s team pulled off this multi location events with some superb performers and mind blowing food and events. Finally today I met the man, in flesh and blood, along with Kiruba. I got to understand that such things can be done with a cool head… and thats what I saw – a really cool head.
Few of my friends have already decided to take a long break starting with the Margalizhi season and ending with Tamilzh Maiyam… Now after some exhilarating six days at Natyakala’09 Iam really looking forward to the Tamilzh Maiyam...

What the heck? Is the alien stuff really true?

Television can be a neat little window for you to see the world, to get to actually see the wild beasts snarling at you, the hissing snake ready to strike, that sparkling Porshe parked on your doorstep and bikini clad beaus loitering all around home.  What more do you want?  Well  if its true to life, you had it, can you choose to have the beaus and not have the snakes around?  Its impossible.

So sitting on the couch, you call and order a truck load of salt and dump it on these eye popping scenes that you see on TV and scream within yourself ‘This can never be true’ and then u switch the channels and continue doing the same thing over and over again.  And finally you philosophize and murmur “what a frickin waste of time” (WAFWOT)

This damn WAFWOT’ing continues every day… we all live in a world of illusion.

So when I came across this website ET WOW,  what actually fascinated me was that its going to be a LIVE SHOW OF AMAZING ACTIONS… that often gets pickled in salt as untrue and unbelievable .  But it promises to be a – No tantra, no mantra show displaying  sheer skill… WOW indeed.

Jerome Murat is a mime artist from France.. who promises to bring statues to life.. this will be my favorite show… if at all I am fortunate to be in Chennai ( I better be) when the ET WOW happens from 3rd feb to 7th feb in Music Academy in Chennai.

I might like this  Laser Man too, but my next pick will be this dude, rather two dudes,Sandor Vlah and Gyula Takacs  the handstanders… they look like one man dancing on a mirror..mind blowing stuff indeed.

Whats my take on all this?.. its 75 minutes of enthralling time, not like  the heart weakening Twenty20, or the deceptive light projection on a movie screen… its going to be different.. I really am groping for words..have not seen such things before in an exclusive live form…  Will it make me drop my jaws, stun my mind, numb my senses… ??????

It will a worth while research for a HR manager to send a huge contingent to this show, probably for two shows.. and measure how the ET WOW has enhanced the performance of the employees…And perchance  if it has helped (its surely will) the only reason would be that they have understood that –NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE .

Of Pearls and Shiny Froth

I was watching this interview of Ananda Shankar Jayant on Youtube….courtesy D Murali of Pitstop performers… Why should Music & Dance (not the popular variety) become part of an education is being discussed. I thought I need to give my perspective on this. Our education system is based on ‘Memory’ building, which is good. Unfortunately the brain is not a bucket but a tinder box that needs to be ignited. I remember a kind of study conducted on Indian school children that proved that the memory capacity of an Indian child is nearly 5 times more that of an average American Child. How does it help? No it does not help at all, in fact a large memory size can only affect the processing speed (it happens with computers too). The Brain is not linear to be compared with the computer. However the  Processing ability is as important as Memory or Attention so is the ability to  Sequence.

Our children need all these four skills in order to be good in studies and in life.

I believe good classical music is the best way to acquire ‘Processing and Sequencing’ skills and during the recent ‘Natyakala09 conference’ I got to understand that Dance is a fantastic way too.

While music can help listening skills, Dance helps develop Body Kinesthetic Intelligence… very necessary for modern day children who are fed and nurtured on a ‘kurkure’ lifestyle. The classical or ‘traditional’ forms are very important since t learning them requires a time investment and helps the child move away the instant gratification mindset and traverse depths at ease, which in turn gets transferred to studies too.

Contrast it to the current day forms of music and dance, I would not like to deride it, I am a sort of guitarist myself, but I wish I had learnt playing guitar the proper way instead of strumming and singing some songs. It makes a lot of difference.I would want to agree with Maryanne Wolf “We are not only what we read. We are how we read.” how we learn is very important.. the HOW?

I realize that the humongous amount of knowledge available today makes many ‘skate or surf’ but the pearls of success is for deep sea divers. Lest we mistake the shining froth for pearls.