Inner Metamorphosis

“ Be like a garland maker, O king; not like a charcoal burner. ” --Mahabharata [It asks the king to preserve and protect diversity, in a coherent way. The metaphor used is that of a garland, in which flowers of many colors and forms are strung together for a pleasing effect. The contrast is given against charcoal, which is the result of burning all kinds of wood and reducing diversity to homogeneous dead matter. The charcoal burner is reductionist and destroys diversity, whereas the garland maker celebrates diversity.] Unification of Germany and Italy populated by similar people was achieved by huge armies spanning across decades. In sharp contrast, India under Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel managed to unite a much larger area divided by culture & languages within few years. The European experience where new nations were carved over little differences in identity, made the Indian experiment appear poised for a breakup sooner than later. Yet, India managed to stay...

Writing this as I am reminded that I named this blog “Inner Metamorphosis” as a tribute to Nietzsche’s concept of “three metamorphoses”. According to Nietzsche there are three stages of progress for man to transform into overman. I feel this holds true for progress in any discipline and of life itself (we shall not probe Nietzsche’s specific context here). Three Metamorphoses Every student of an art/ discipline has to go through these stages: Camel, Lion & Child. Initially, one is a beast of burden ( camel ) – one must intake as much information as possible from as many sources available. At this stage, one must not desire freedom – they should relentlessly pursue their ambition, get rid of their ego, work under capable men to get experience and learn the “craft” and do whatever it takes to achieve greater finesse in their chosen field. Next, its time you express your “art” (vision, philosophy, ideas) boldly like a lion , through the craf...

Truth & beauty: these comprise the goal of art. Few works of art do justice to either. Rarer still do justice to both. Sekhar Kammula is one among the finest directors in Telugu with the penchant for weaving ordinary incidents in middle-class people’s life with extraordinary finesse and sensibility – combining truth & beauty. He is the directorial equivalent of R.K. Narayan. Telugu movies by and large do not trust audiences’ intelligence. Experimenting is a taboo and the advertised novelty is confined to bringing in freshness to the routine formula stories. It is in this context, Kammula stands apart from the rest in truthfully portraying the middle-class sentiments and life and sketching them in detail. The underlying theme of Kammula’s movies has always been – Life is Beautiful – despite the problems, failures, disappointments, rejections, humiliations etc. “Life is Beautiful” (LIB) is a nostalgic tour down the memory lane and will surely evoke the beautiful memories...

I often used to wonder how Indians with little prior access to computers became a global player in IT industry within a short span. There were multiple forces – the combined effect of which led to the explosion of IT market in India. Here I approach this from a different perspective based on my understanding of Indian culture. Artificial Language Computers run on artificial (i.e. fully man-made) languages developed from scratch. There is a mathematical certainty about them – they’re supposed to be used in particular ways though there’s scope of creativity within the framework. One may notice that beyond the root terminologies, there is nothing arbitrary in the grammar of artificial languages. On the contrary, in English we’re given to understand many arbitrary assumptions which shouldn’t be probed further. Pronunciation often varies widely with written word. So in the history of mankind, we always had natural languages that evolved over a period of time with certain ar...