The Connection factor

Last week I was at it again: hopping from one blog to another, sifting through streams of consciousness emerging from hyperlinked text bound to anonymous identities, searching for nuggets of gold, for literary gems that will not embrace print and find glory, and yet, in their own small world will entertain and edify.

After wandering a while without much success, I encountered Unratiosenatic, where, after reading a few engaging pieces I stumbled upon this one.

The beginning, addressed as a letter to another blogger, conveyed the promise of something novel: a form within a form, a genre within a genre – in this case, a missive within a journal.

I read on, intrigued by the writer’s openness, and even though the postscript clarified some things, my curiosity to know what prompted the letter made me turn towards the blogger to whom it was addressed. A few more engaging reads later I found the post that triggered the letter.

The posts that stood alone were good, but these two had something special about them – they talked to each other, they connected two disparate threads of existence in a way that gave new meaning to each. And for the reader, observing this connection from a detached frame of reference was a bit like watching, with fascination, a conversation between two strangers revealing their innermost thoughts to one another.

It made me think about the beauty of this medium, the elegance with which it lends itself to enable connections between independent sources of thought. I also thought about the power of TrackBack, a technology that would, by permitting connections in the reverse direction, allow a reader who came first to the post in RandomRiting to navigate backwards to the letter in Unratiosenatic.

And then there was the epistolary angle.

Like journals, letters reveal subliminal elements of existence that are difficult to grasp from day-to-day conversations, but they go beyond journals in portraying an intimate picture of a relationship. Take for instance Franz Kafka, in Letters to Felice:

Just look, how many impossibilities there are in our letters. Can I remove the flavour of nauseating false generosity from my request that you write me only five lines? That is impossible. And is my request not sincere? Certainly it is sincere. And is it not perhaps also insincere? Of course it is insincere, and how insincere it is!

If we read because what we can experience first hand is limited, then reading letters would fill, partially, the void created by relationships we cannot have in our lives. And like online journals, letters exchanged online would give glimpses of lives that can reveal and instruct.

So there I was, on a working day in the middle of a busy week, sitting up well past midnight poring into this exchange between two people who were strangers until they ‘met’ on the web, thinking about how the confluence of technology and open-cultures made all this possible, when I heard my wife call out.

“What are you doing, so late?!” she asked.

“Er..well..browsing.” I replied. Somehow, the word – browsing – seemed too casual to be associated with the activity I was indulging in.

“What are you browsing?” She persisted.

“Connections.” I replied. “Connections between people.”

That sounded more appropriate; it was about connections, after all.

A Question of Pain

Some days back I read an article about a girl who had a rare genetic condition that prevented her from feeling any pain. As I read the first few lines, I found myself thinking, “Lucky Girl, isn’t she?” It turned out the opposite. Lack of painful sensation meant she would do really harmful things to her body without realizing it: she had scratched one of her eyes so badly that it now has to be surgically removed. Pain, the article echoed, is something that is good for us; it protects us, and we seldom realize this. How true, I thought.

Today, on my walk back from work, I found myself thinking about this article again. What the girl could not feel was “physical pain” – pain as a result of some bodily harm. How would it be, I wondered, if there were a condition that would result in a human feeling no “mental pain” at all?

Continue reading “A Question of Pain” →

Teen Deewaren

Three prisoners facing death penalty for committing murder, a documentary filmmaker interviewing them within the walls of a “self-sustaining” prison, slowly bringing out bits and pieces of their story and getting involved herself. A theme absorbing enough to keep you glued to the screen, wondering what will happen next.

In Teen Deewaren Nagesh Kukunoor has come of age as a director. The movie is a big improvement over Hyderabad Blues – his first movie – and one sees this in many facets, notably editing, screenplay and direction. My only complaint is with the ending. Although satisfying when I watched it – especially after the gloom of impending death that casts a shadow for most of the movie – the dramatic turn of events at the end is something I could not accept fully. Happy endings such as the one portrayed are rare; reality is harsher than that. The film would have left us with a deeper message – about the helplessness of the common man in his fight against a corrupt and convoluted system of justice – had it taken the more probable course and ended in a tragedy, taking the gloom to its climax with the death of all three.

An older Nagesh Kukunoor would have scripted his story differently, perhaps. Let us wait and see what this talented young filmmaker has in store for us.

Democracy at work

Some days back I saw an interview with Tony Blair on the BBC. There were about a dozen people in the audience, who, along with the interviewer had one element in common : an anti-war stance. So we had Mr. Blair on one side, trying his best to defend his stance against Iraq, and a handful of fierce opponents to that stance on the other side.

It was a gripping hour – we were glued to our seats throughout – and Mr.Blair, with his lightning responses detailing the reasons behind every decision that was made, conveyed a sense of belief in his actions that was incomprehensible to some members of the audience. To them, logic and reason seemed unimportant – any act of war was unjustifiable.

What emerged out of the interview was Mr. Blair’s firm belief in the urgency of the moment to take some preemptive action against Mr. Hussein – if Iraq did not co-operate with the inspectors – before the rest of the world faced the consequences of not doing so. While the audience held the view that war was not the solution to the current crisis, the Prime Minister seemed convinced that the world must get rid of this potential threat as early as possible, and avoiding war now would only be a postponement of the inevitable.

Although some important questions – like the long term consequences of the war, the post-war image of the UK & the US in the eyes of Muslim communities all over world – were not probed much, the interview was still significant from a symbolic point of view, as an example of democracy at work. The premier of a democratic country was ‘grilled’ by a group of citizens on an important decision that mattered to everyone in the country, and even though this did not represent a ballot for making the decision, it played a role in the ongoing debate on the war by bringing the Prime Minister in direct contact with the thoughts and feelings of the common man of his country.

Later, I found more examples of such interviews with Mr. Blair – one was the BBC Breakfast With Frost interview, and another was a transcript of an interview where Mr. Blair answered questions sent by BBC News Online users and BBC World Service listeners. I could not find anything similar involving George Bush, however.