The Middle Class

This post is partly inspired by the usage of the term "Middle Class" by a friend of mine who is now at Microsoft. I guess he must have forgotten this by now.

One of the perks of being a Computer Science student is understanding the process of Abstraction. Well simply put abstraction is knowing something on a need to know basis. One of the best examples is a light switch. We all know that if we turn on the switch, the bulb glows. We certainly don't have to know what processes are triggered when we turn on the switch or how the electrons flow from one place to another or the so.

My definition of talent is sometimes abstracted to only two levels : 1)The middle class, 2)The Wunderkind. The Wunderkind is an enigma. He can be the basis of the theist rebuttal argument to the atheist. He can achieve what he wants and the achievement will come as no surprise to anybody. His successes are awe-inspiring. Everyone aspires to be him, but it ain't that easy. The crests and troughs in his brain are wired for greatness. Add a few qualities like hard work, discipline and commitment and hey presto! you have a machine whose output is always correct. Talking about him is only redundant for you all have seen him somewhere in your life.

I now go to The Middle Class. In the line PQ, if point P is dull and point Q is genius, our hero will stand at the mid point, i.e (P+Q)/2. He is at a certain advantage here. He surely knows that he has to move forward thereby increase his proximity to genius. He also knows where a fall back would lead him. Surprisingly enough! you would see that in life it is Middle class that struggles much harder than anyone. Nothing is given on a platter to him. He needs to work hard and even harder. The Law of Equivalent Exchange is only for Physics and Chemistry. Life does not work that way. He faces constant failures but his endeavor to succeed never ceases. By Hook or Crook he shall try to move a rung up in the ladder of success. The Wunderkind has genius in him, but the Middle Class has fortitude in him. It is this fortitude that carries him forward. It is this fortitude that allows him to scale heights. It is this fortitude that inspires his fellow Middle Class to work harder. He looks in awe at The Wunderkind and tailors the ethics to suit his needs. In life he has a higher percentage of survival and success thanThe Wunderkind. Oh! if you look around you would see that he is not affected by any criticisms. He has a sound mechanism to block it and carry on with his work.

Now why did I write this post? It is because I also came across What it takes to be great?. Oh yeah I guess I must have posted this long ago somewhere else too, but then one shouldn’t forget the article, not because it gives the hope to an otherwise dull mind, that it has all the ingredients in it to aspire for greatness, but because it motivates the same dull brain to come with, at least a percentage of work that is considered better than ordinary :-).

Ressurecting myself from the Rubble of that Past...

Finally I got a new PC. My third machine and yeah this time my kid bro assembled it himself. Specs are not important. It just made me realize the value of my lovely Flinstone aged P4 PC. My kind bro did not delete anything from that PC and so one of the first things I did was to take a backup of all my resources. Well of course a 1TB external hard disk comes in handy :D. So going through the ruins of that PC I found a curious text note called links and I was momentarily stunned!!!. It brought back fond memories of a day when I never knew how to operate a machine and how to grapple up terms like C/C++ and Java. Looking back in retrospect I feel that I had a greater sense of direction then than I ever had in my entire life. Life had a purpose then. The goal of learning for learning's sake and not for achievement was imbibed in my veins. Each and every vein responded in sync to that single desire of learning something new. Achievements never mattered. Hell who cares whether I win or not? Is it not the fact that I learnt that I could use pointers to traverse arrays today when I was using subscripts yesterday more gratifying?.

Thank goodness I found that out. Waking to life is the most important thing that was required for me. From a stress filled day to think about what I achieved!!!,is it not better if I start piecing the links and go ahead. At least I shall cover some ground instead of sitting tight :-). Thank you my dear old PC, you have truly woken me up :-). It was then I realized that in pursuit of something called success I truly forgot what was more important. Self realization dawns and Longfellow comes to my rescue.

Not for enjoyment,Not for sorrow
Is our destined end or way
But to act that each tomorrow
Finds us farther than today..

Yeah he was right :-). Life is not always about that success. It is about that experience. It is about living for the right things, for living without hurting others and for helping when they need your hands and not regretting it later. It is about going forward as a underachieved human being than a successful monster. It is about cherishing those wonderful moments from which we learn and piece together an entirely new puzzle in this amazing world. And finally it is about the joy that comes out of Learning for learning's sake.

Of Indian Movies and that thing called originality!!!

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will

-George Bernard Shaw

I recently saw the trailer of a yet to be released so called action flick named Luck. What I saw in one of the trailer scenes told my brain that I am not going to watch this movie,come what may. That one of my favorite hero's kid is playing a part does not add any value to the movie. Indian Cinema has some very very good film makers like Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Shyam Benegal, Govind Nihalani, Mani Ratnam, K.Balachandar, Adoor Gopalakrishnan and these days Kamal Hassan. Their cinemas had a distinct charm and of course that thing called imagination and originality. Sadly it is not the same with all the movies that come out. Most of the movies usually rehash the ideas of a very well known Hollywood movie and package it to the Indian audience. Now I am not against remakes. As Kamal Hassan says even the writing of Ramcharitamanas is a blatant remake. :D. But then in that case we call it Tulsi's Ramayana or Valmiki's Ramayana or Kamban's Ramayana. Whereas in this case the film maker who creates the remake doesn't even make a single mention about the person from whose movie he has blatantly copied.

Coming back to the movie Luck.It talks about a betting syndicate being run by Sanjay Dutt and how lady luck smiles on different folks. Well the trailer scene showed me a picture which is something similar to the pic below

This pic is from a French movie named 13 Tzameti 13 Tzameti is a wonderful French movie which even has a English remake in the progress titled as 13. The previews of Luck never attribute this fact. The director does not even mention any name of this movie. I really don't understand what the director is trying to achieve? Does he think the entire Indian population is so dumb that they don't notice his blatant copy? This trend with Indian Cinema is wide and deep rooted. Some of the remake movies never do well. For instance take the example of a Bollywood movie Chocolate. Very badly ripped of from the classic movie The usual Suspects, this movie was so badly done that it never had a decent run in the box office. Even the latest movie Kambaqt Ishq is a remake of the Tamil superhit Kamal Hassan movie Pammal K Sambandam. The packaging has been good in the bollywood movie. Bring in two Hollywood biggies. Even ask a rapper to sing a song for you and that's it. The movie would be hailed in all the news channels with interviews to foreign actors asking them how good Akshay or Bebo is in the movie. :D. Aah some of them don't even know the names of the Bollywood movies. Ohh here I forget to mention movies like God Tussi Great Ho, Partner which were blatantly ripped off from Bruce Almighty and Hitch. This makes me wonder,"What is wrong with our industry?". Is the talent pool short? Definitely not. Think of a great movie like A Wednesday. That defined how a movie should be taken. It was so wonderful that it prompted Malayalam superstar Mohanlal to ask Kamal Hassan to direct a remake.

Now this trend of rehashes is not going to affect the large Indian population as most of them would not have seen the movie 13 Tzameti. But definitely it brings a slur on Indian Cinemas. The world will look at us as a copycat nation when it comes to original cinema. A nation which has no new ideas and no new scripts.This is definitely not true. We as a nation should stand up to them saying we can bring up more creative movies than them. I think it is time that we start promoting those beautiful movies in regional languages like Malayalam which have produced quality movies. Even Tamil cinema these days is moving towards originality in script. The world should know that Indian Cinema is just not Bollywood but much more than that. After all A.R Rahman and Mani Ratnam are not from Bollywood.. are they?Aren't there many like them who never get the recognition they deserve? Kamal Hassan? Mohanlal? Ohh both these heroes are versatile geniuses. Two folks whose most beautiful movies go un-noticed by most of Indian Media. I also am sad that A Wednesday which was such a beautiful movie never got the recognition it deserved. Well hopefully things change in the future.