In the later context, i.e. to those when they need it most, comes the aspect of Insurance. Getting insurance to those who need it most, to those who are most affected by any changes, is always the toughest. This is because on the demand side, those who need it most may not have the resources or knowledge or time to access the same and on the Supply side, it can sometimes be very expensive to make it available at all places and times, as then the cost of insurance itself could be higher than the cost of what is insured.

But this is where the marriage of technology & finance, sprinkled with a good dose of innovation, can and will make a huge difference.   This excellent article from a blog on the NY Times highlights how the use of technology in both agricultue & telecommunication has made it possible for crop insurance to reach small farmers in kenya, who need it most.

An excellent acheivement – kudos to all who made it happen!  Hopefully we will see more such innovations in the coming age.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/09/doing-more-than-praying-for-rain/?nl=opinion&emc=tya2

But all superheros are not equal when it comes to responsibility:  it would seem that Batman leads the most tragic & ironic life of them all. 

Firstly, life deals him a cruel blow at start- despite being born with a silver spoon, he loses his parents at a very early age and is left to fend for himself as a rich but young heir in a greedy world.

Secondly, he really doesn’t have any “conventional” super powers (if any are conventional!).  He can’t fly, can’t see through objects and doesn’t have super human strength.  Why he can’t even climb buildings!   So what he does, is based on his innate skills & intelligence – creating “accessories” and leveraging his skills to use them.

Thirdly & most interestingly as it is also the most ironic & complicated of reasons:   Most other superheros battle clearly evil villains (typically bent on either ruling or destroying the world, depending on how manic or greedy they are!).  Most live in nice, sweet towns, where people cheer the superhero and are generally good natured. 

But not Batman!  Firstly, he lives in crime ridden Gotham City, where good is not necessarily the order of the day.  Secondly & tragically, he ends up battling villains who are or were at some point of time  also sympathetic, in their own twisted ways, to the cause of good. 

Take the case of his mentor group, the Ra’s al Ghul, who were responsible for training him in fighting skills.  They are actually a vigilante group, much like Batman himself.  And Batman ends up  fighting them because they want to destroy Gotham City, which they feel has turned too evil to redeem.  The second example is that of the District Attorney, Harvey Dent, who starts out as a stronger & more principled hero than Batman but tragedy turns him into the villain ”Two Face” and Batman has to fight him.   Thirdly, the Joker himself – such a complicated character.  Dont think so?  Evil he maybe but there is always an undercurrent of inconsistency in the Joker’s motivations.  Take the classic & chilling experiment the Joker performs – giving the trigger to kill each other to two ships of people, one ship containing regular citizens and the other filled with criminals.  By doing so, he forces either of them to make a choice to pull the trigger on the other group before the other does the same to them i.e. to save themselves by destroying others.  By putting both in such a dillema, he may have been seeking to prove that even common people are lawless if it comes to survival -  its not a matter of principle but of situation.  Thankfully the best scenario prevails: neither party of people pulls the trigger and humanity is saved, in more ways than one.  But this does prove that the Joker himself, while clearly ‘evil’,  was a very complicated villain.

In all, poor batman has a lot stacked against him at different levels, unlike a “normal”(!) superhero.  And he comes out strong against all odds.  If the reverse is also true, i.e. “With great responsibility, comes great power”, then Batman is surely the most powerful of  all superheros.

In the previous two  posts, we had touched upon the brain being analogous to a hard drive.  Lets extend that to a comparison of humans to computers.  So you have the usual components of a computer and their human counterparts – CPU – Brain Neurons, Hard Disk – Brain again, Keyboard/Mouse/ webcam - Our hands/skin/ eyes (our senses basically).  So there we have it, it’s all linked. 

But that’s just the hardware.  It gets really interesting when we get to what makes it all come to life – in a computer or in humans.  In computers we have two that immediately come to mind (!) - Software: Programs/Interface for various activities/ functions; Programming: The words/rules that guide the software.

Do we have something like this for humans?  Yes, I would think so, but it’s not quite that simple (at least to me).  Some types of software/programming is fairly easily to correlate – any form of Learning, be it from our parents, from social experiences, peers, books, videos etc, gets internalized as some form of program that can be brought up when reacting to a situation. 

But where is the “program” written?  In the maze of neural connections?  And more importantly – who /what is the “Programmer”?  Is it the Mind, the Soul or our Consciousness?  And if so, what is the Mind.. & who controls/ guides it? 

Or one more theory – Is our DNA the only core program that is embedded in us at birth – from then on all our learning is assimilated into complex learning patterns, all due to the DNA that was given to us.  Think of something like a neural network, that has a starter / base program and after that it goes on spreading into a much larger program based on other learnings that get assimilated into its system.   So how you turn out/ react/ is a combination of experiences/ learnings and your DNA’s reactions to the way those experiences are assimilated. 

Is that it?  Because if that is it – then its like a random number generator with a seed input.  Outcomes are purely random and possibly unchangeable.  Or is there a controller in between – our old friend, the Mind?  Yes, I wold think so.   And what is this Mind/Consciousness exactly?  Is it in our control or by someone else (think God, maybe)? 

Anyway that mind or consciousness may be exactly what differentiates us from machines.  Or so we think.

I know … I have this annoying habit of jumping away to another train of thought and then jumping back to the same old train.  Annoying to you, but not to me, it serves my purpose very well! 

Ahem… coming back to the connection of the two posts.  As I had mentioned earlier, the way I see the process of learning in a medium, say newspapers, is   1. Scanning (quick/ cursory refresh of articles at a glance); followed by    2. Reading (going through in considerable detail the contents of specific articles);   then followed by   3. Analyzing the article to assess its authenticity, accuracy, quality, conclusions etc.    Hmmm… how many people have fallen by the wayside at Step 2?    Wait… there’s one more step,   4. Assimilation.   I really like to call it Reflection, but Assimilation is a more holistic word for it.  It’s about reflecting on the analysis and fitting/ integrating all the learnings from it into your own knowledge set, into your intelligence framework.  Assimilation is the most important step, because it’s the only step that will actually imbibe the learning from your analysis into your own life, actions, thoughts – it is possibly true learning. 

Now coming back to some “Assimilation” for this and the previous post -  in today’s fast paced world, how many people do you think are actually getting the time to analyse & assimilate much of what they read?  Not many?   I would think so.  So if there is lesser time for analysing & assimilating – then how likely do you think it is that the human brain’s processing power, on the average, is actually improving?   Think about it… actually assimilate it – how much do you actually reflect on your reading. 

A rather worrying corollary to the above:  A research article apparently talks about the process how humans actually believe what’s true and what’s not in news they hear/ read. (See http://www.eyeofsiva.com/2010/12/28/ready-to-believe-anything/). 

To summarize, it’s a two stage process, First stage – Accept as true on face value, Second stage – Analyse now & then re-accept or reject.   Now if people don’t have the time to get to the second stage, where does that leave them?  On stage 1 – Accept; and that would be better put as “Blindly Accept”.   If you think a little more, you would realize what a dangerous situation that puts us all in.  As someone would put it… “whatever”!

Such conclusions/headlines (along with many other such headlines nowadays), are possibly more dramatic than accurate.  And that is sad because it’s probable that in todays “overdose of information” age, people “scan” information more than they actually “read”; and of course even much less “analyse” information (more on this topic later in another post). 

Coming back to the conclusion linking brain size & dumbness.  The human brain, among other roles, is also a combination of a processor and storage.  In computer terms, that would be a CPU and a Hard disk respectively. Yes, its one of those All-in-One Desktops that are in vogue nowadays. 

So when brain size is getting smaller, it’s very much possible that this is because it’s just the storage component that’s getting smaller.  And why is that possibly getting smaller?   Because taking a contemporary technological analogy, our brains are getting more & more reliant on an external cloud based knowledge network.   Thanks to the internet, data & information is now available to us “as and when” we need it, so we really don’t have the need to store the information inside our heads anymore. 

If you find that doesn’t make sense, let me try to put it across differently.  Think of great scholars in the ancient world (think Pythagoras, Chanakya, Aristotle), who in all probability, only had access to just one copy of a particular book at just one great university/library where they studied (think Alexandria, Nalanda) in their younger days.  Imagine further that the only access they really had was a teacher/guru reciting/ discussing aspects from that one precious book.   How do you think they survived when they left the university/library and went about… well, whatever they did?  They had to retain as much knowledge as they could in their head – there was no other way to quickly pull up that information when they really needed it later in their life.  

Now lets cut to the recent past… If you are a 40-50+ person, you probably had your own textbook in college and whenever you wanted to refer to something later (till 10 years back) you could easily pull that textbook off a shelf somewhere (printing technology made things easier for you than Pythagoras!).  Now lets cut to present times… the change curve on this aspect has gotten even sharper.  In the last ten years, how many of you (I’m broadening the audience here to include 25+s) have even had to get that easily available textbook… you probably went straight to the internet with google, Wikipedia et al.   So how much do we really have to retain in our heads nowadays?  Not much.

So a decreasing brain size need not mean a dumber brain.  It could be just the storage space.  Though it must be said that observation period for a decreasing brain size is probably much longer than the period for the evolution curve of knowledge access.  There may be many more factors -  this is just one that is food for thought.

However, one piece of information would definitely be interesting & possibly conclusive.  It would be more interesting to see if neuron activity has increased in humans over the last few years, possibly indicating a faster & more active brain – i.e. faster processor, “dual” core etc!

Credits:  Eye of Siva blog article by Sivakumar that got me thinking.  http://www.eyeofsiva.com/2010/12/31/two-bits-of-science/

While the last post was largely about the new breed of writers in the world of fiction, another very interesting approach/ theme that some authors have tried to depict or more really grapple with, is the interlinkage of the three elements of Fantasy, Fiction and Faith. 

One, I have already mentioned – Rick Riordan’s ancient civillization related series linked to the Greek and Egyptian mythologies.  What makes this so interesting, is the attempt by the author to bring down to earth, literally, ancient Gods (or really present Gods, apologies to them!).  The Gods are brought in with an earthly character, placing them squarely on the sides of good/bad and also highlight the politics & insecurities of their world.   

The second is an older piece of writing (relatively) - Terry Brook’s work.  In some of them, the author brings out the concept of “Ages”.  Some readers may be familiar with the concept of the cycle of time and repetition of “Ages” which are the basis of both Hindu myhthology as well, ahem, the epic series “Wheel of Time” by Robert Jordan.  What makes Brooks literature unique is that firstly, “Magic” is in some way alluded throughout some of the series as Technology which is left behind from a previous “Age”.  This is quite true if you look at it - what people can understand, is typically called science/technology and what they cannot  is called “Magic”.  When you do understand what causes “Magic”, I guess it ceases to be… well, magical. 

Secondly, what I found to be quite unique is the placement of the “Age”. Most takes on “Magic”, look as if it was an ancient art/capability, that is lost in today’s  modern world.  However, Brook’s narration places the sequence of events in a “Magic”al world wherein Technology belonged to an ancient Age and it is Technology that is lost in that Magical age.  Quite a reversal of views depending on which point of the cycle of time you enter!  

The third example is the writing of David Eddings, which rivals Tolkiens writing many times, with a lighter vein & take on life!   There is a lot that can be praised in the writing, but the aspect relevant to this article, is the author’s concept of Gods, their followers, their power which is apparently linked to the number of the followers and the internal fights (not really subtle politics here between these Gods!) that they have amongst themselves. 

All interesting ways to intertwine faith, fantasy and fiction… like they say there is always some truth in all fiction… or is it the other way around?  Hmmm…

Thanks to the Harry Potter series, magic has come back in vogue for greater part of the last decade.  And there have been a number of writers who have tried to emulate the success of the series. 

In most of these cases, the writers have seem to relied upon the same old formula – “A clear Good v/s bad”, “Familiar magical species” and of course, “Unexplainable” magic!  Of course, Harry Potter has been ahead on that curve for quite some time, and has even added “Romance” to the formula - possibly with motion picture dynamics in mind!

So its quite refreshing to see a few writers provide a different take on “magic”, as I am sure anyone who is familiar with the world of magic, can confirm, that things are never quite as straightfowrard.  Well, more on that confirmation later, but I would like to bring these few mentions to notice for having stretched one’s boundaries of the magical world:

1) Bartimaeus Trilogy:  Brilliant – in one word.  And far above any of the rest in new thinking.  The trilogy explores the rather refreshing relationship between the protaginist and his unwilling djinn through a series of rather interesting adventures and cynical humor.  Also interesting is the creation a whole classification system of djinns by the author Jonathan Stroud.   

2) Artemis Fowl:  While possibly not at the same level of the above, in terms of maturity / age group it appeals to, Artemis has slightly different take with a hero who is not quite on the right side of things.  I have to confess I have not read the full series – initial impressions only.

3) Rick Rordan:  The reason I have chosen the author, rather than the series is that the author’s creativity is linked across series.  The author has his own formula for linking ancient civillizations with modern magic.  So far he has chosen the Greek and Egyptian mythologies as a foundation, with both providing ample characters to create quite a plot.  Keeping that  in mind, it may only be a matter of time before (if you have read my earlier post on ancient civillizations), a Hindu culture based series appeared.

Lets hope we get to see more complex & immersing novels from these writers, especiallyJonathan Stroud/ Bartimaeus, from whom we havent heard of late… but then again commercial sense  may prevail to just keep it simple.

This photograph, if my memory serves me correctly, was from a giant float/exhibit at Thailand’s Suvarnabhoomi airport.  Its a scene from Indian/Hindu mythology of the very ancient legend of the churning of the Ocean by the Devas & Asuras in search of the nectar of the gods, “Amrita” (possibly Ambrosia in other mythologies).

It is quite common to see similarities between Indian legends and those from other South East Asian countries (Sri lanka, Indonesia, Thailand).  References to Gods with similar descriptions & names and Legends such as Ramayana & Mahabaratha are very common and are in fact, directly linked.

What is however more intriguing to me is the significant commonality between Hindu & Greek mythology.

To start with, in contrast to other religions, the presence of multiple gods in both Hindu and Greek mythology is in itself a common foundation.  In terms of themes, the constant fight between the two factions of Gods – Asuras v/s Devas and Gods v/s Titans, is a strong thread running across both.

And then the similarities in personalities:  the Sea God – Poseidon/Varuna;  Sky & Overlord – Zeus/Indira,  Weapons – Zeus’s Thunderbolt /Indira’s Vajra;   Underworld&Death – Hades/ Yama;  Sun God – Helios/Surya;  Creatures -  “Erymanthian” boar /the Varaha.  There is also a reference to Greek history being split into four ages, much the same as the four yugas of the Hindu world.

It must be noted that while many elements are significantly similar, in some cases, while appearing superficially to be the same, they are however mismatched in terms of either time or role.

Having said that, there seem to be far too many common threads for this to be a case of reading too much between the lines!

Let me end this with the other end of the story… while the picture on top is that of the Deva’s churning the ocean holding the tail of the snake, the one below completes the scene with the Asuras holding the other end, the head of the serpent.

We ran into these lovely St Bernards at Gornergrat, Zermatt in the Swiss Alps. … no other dog probably exudes as much serenity as a St Bernard.

Imagine my surprise when I saw one of our good friends strolling down a small lane near our home in Mumbai… and this St Bernard was being led by a frail old lady who was probably half his size (in volume!)! Top add to that our chap was actually wearing doggy shoes… nice shiny red ones!

Folks, check out Lushoo’s blogspot at http://the-magic-box.blogspot.com/

And she writes very well too…  so please do watch that space…

Marks the end of the road for consumer film photography, I guess…  no more “Kodak moments”!   Only “Sony Smiles”!! 

And oh… while the earlier post was the on the view from my desired bedroom in the mountains… this one above is what I’d like from from my beach villa…

And…  hmmm… would be very content to walk along on the beach with this view below… aaw, i wish…  :)

During my teenage days, I was always puzzled as to what was so enchanting about rennaissance paintings, like for example the mona lisa… they seemed like just colour pictures.  What was the fuss about?!

I finally got my answer at an art gallery in Chicago.  One look and I realized that photos can never capture art.  Paintings by the masters need to be seen in real life to experience their beauty… so gloriously colourful, vivid & lifelike!

Many years later, they still fascinate me.  This is one of the ‘flower vase’ genre that caught my eye… so many vivid colours but still manages to mantain the delicate balance of ‘detail without clutter’.

…now who could I give those lovely flowers to?   hmmm… …i think i know just the person!  :)

Saw this at a small dock near Daman…

Firstly, the old scooter against the boat seemed strangely out of place…

But more of an anachronism is the flag fluttering on the old boat…

…I would have thought the English Armada had long left our shores!

Just a week ago it seemed that the Indian elections were going to be a numbers game, with each party working the math required for power… but it proved quite simplistic in the end.

However our IPL is turning out to be quite a pot boiler… thanks to some up & down performance, the fight for the last four spots is seeing a close contest in the final phase – the numbers being points & net run rate.  Each team is depending on not just their victories but on various outcomes from other games to make it to the last four!

Looks like at least our elections are more decisive than cricket when it comes to numbers!

Through the arch... and beyond

This was from a trip to a ancient buddhist monastery in Sri Lanka…

Wouldn’t it be fantastic to wake up in the morning and look on from my luxurious bed at a beautiful lily pond & the hills beyond…  …perfect tranquility to start a lovely day!

And yes, there are some beautiful lilies there… as you can see from the picture below.

A purple lily in a sea of green

Under the overhang of that massive & delicately balanced rock, are two small children sitting peacefully enjoying the shade, oblivious to the weight hanging over them…  Quite amazing isn’t it!

Path to Karnala

Once again, I was prodded to write… Note that this time it was not a sweet request but definitely a prod…  I was clearly told in no uncertain terms to make better use of my fingers than just twiddle my thumbs!

Thinking about my hiking experiences, limited though they are, I remembered my old friend, Crab No. 32…

It all started with a simple thought, that we, the younger generation, with all our multiple recreational avenues of movies, parties and vacations, had forgotten a simple event our parents probably enjoyed… the picnic!   C’mon… the last picnic most of us may have gone to was probably that low budget school picnic to the local park!   So we (My sis, Bro-In Law, Trips and yours truly) set off on a “picnic” to the lovely bird sanctuary of Karnala…  I had suggested we lounge, relax and have a lovely walk up the moderate Karnala hill – well, we definitely made quite a mountain of that hill, but I’m getting ahead of myself!

So there we were on a cool Mumbai day at Karnala.  My sister decided to dress to the occasion, in a lovely pink outfit, all dolled up – all she lacked was a parasol.   We did have an umbrella but as you will see it proved to be not quite enough.  There we were, all finely dressed – what a fine sight… alas, if only we know what we were in for!

After lazing around for a bit, we decided to climb and explore the woods…  It was truly beautiful – green, peaceful and lovely!  We must have climbed for 30 min when it sinking in that this was not quite the leisurely stroll promised by me… but thankfully all of us (with the exception of me &  my sis), which basically means only Trips and my BIL were of the adventurous kind and pressed for pushing on.

And then it started… first with a trickle.  It’s like the famous “frog in boiling water experiment”.   Throw a frog in a pot of boiling water and he will promptly jump out, but put him in a pot of normal water and heat it slowly – he won’t jump even when it starts to boil.  (P.S. Please don’t try this stunt at home.  Though it may not be dangerous to your health, it will definitely be for the frog!).   Well, much like the experiment,  we were huffing & climbing when it started as a trickle and before we realized it became a downpour… the rain, of course!   And like the rather wet frog, we tadpoles continued to labour upwards on that hill…

As anyone who has climbed a forest track in the rains will tell you (go find someone!), it gets very very slippery & messy.   Also while I was describing my sister’s fashion statement, there were a few mistakes of mine I neglected to mention earlier (obviously intentionally)…  One, I had on my slip-on sneakers that even on normal surfaces lets me slide & glide… On this slimy surface, it was like walking on ice.   Two, this was a bird sanctuary, remember? I had, in all genuine enthusiasm, brought along my new DSLR backpack with full camera gear… that weighed well over 10 kgs (though it felt like 50).  So while all the others scrambling for footholds, I was literally, most of the time climbing on all fours!  Not one of my better days!  Aah.. but I made one good choice of equipment and that gave me the edge in the end, but once again am getting ahead of things!

So there I was lagging behind all of them… but there was more salt to be rubbed in my (very sore) wounds.  My  “well built” BIL ( I would use the term portly, but he spies on my blog occasionally and may not take too kindly to it) was leading the charge and seemed to be doing so by quite a margin!   Now I was ‘handicapped’ but even then this was quite unacceptable – imagine in front of two of the most important ladies in my life, Trips and my sis!  Well… sigh… there was not much I could do than continue to climb on…

Well the one very good thing about the rain was that if it was lovely earlier, this was heaven itself…  the smell of the earth, the green leaves, the beautiful moss, cute crabs scuttling around – we were drenched and loving it!   We finally came upon a small plain stretch en route to the top and the view from there was awesome!  The world was windy and green!  And when you took all this into your senses after so much effort, it was just sweet!

Take a look at http://www.flickr.com/photos/anandgiridhar/sets/72157601744502789/

The three of my companions had realized that my slow progress was a great opportunity to take me down a peg or two… the superior being that I naturally am (ahem), they rarely get such opportunities.  So they gleefully seized it to take many a dig at me!  But little did they know it was to be short-lived due to two factors (hee hee, rubbing hands).

When we were just 10 minutes to the top, we looked back to see, very very far away some school kids climbing up… we thought who would bring some small kids on this dangerous (well, it seemed treacherous to us) climb.  And while we were debating that, in five minutes, this bunch of 30-40 school kids came like a rapidly approaching swarm and in a matter of seconds, with an agility well beyond our capabilities, overtook us!   It was over even before we could say, “excuse me,  but we were here first…”.   Needless to say, while I was already on a climbing low, my companions were rapidly demoralized to my level!  (hee hee! Evil laugh!)

With the wind taken out of our sails, we had had enough and decided to make our way back.  Now, anyone will tell you that a climb down a hill is always the more tricky one and with this rain and slippery surface, this was a nightmare.   Now this where my trump card of came in!  I had for reasons, that even I fail to understand, put on a very thick and baggy track-pant.

How did that help?  Well, while the others were delicately and carefully climbing down, I had no chance of that with my footwear…  …after a few slips I soon figured out, quite unintentionally, that I was very adept at gliding down the mud on my backside!   Needless to say it was fast, comfortable and excellent exercise for my butt (sorry, no photos here, this is a family blog!)   And moreover I reached the bottom (of the hill, of course!) much faster than the others! Yes I had finally triumphed – I was no longer the butt of their jokes! 

Finally after some five grueling hours, four very exhausted people tumbled into the car, padded with newspapers to protect it from its very filthy occupants, and drove home.  Five minutes into the trip, I looked back to see how the others were… I have seen many friends drunk after a night out, but never have I seen three people so knocked out!

And am I forgetting someone… nope never… We saw many crabs of varying sizes on our climb but one caught my eye… That’s him, Crab No. 32 – pictured here (probably 132 but I like calling him 32)…  Cheers 32, hope you had a good laugh at our expense!  We’ll be back to see you again!

Crab No. 32

I was just thinking… how can I capture in my blog all those myriad wonky (and often fairly censor-able!) random thoughts entering my mind…

And then one possible source occurred to me…  its often that one is struck by similar thoughts (though in this case, much more inspiring and beautiful thoughts), when one is on the right side of a camera.  While in the case of many pretty women that right side would be in front of the lens, in my case that would be behind the camera!

So since I love photography why not see if I can recollect any thoughts worth penning about my snaps! Here goes one for starters…

I chose this one because there’s a story behind this… a 3 hour long story!  No, this isn’t taken from the top of some nice touristy machan that one can drive upto…  we actually had to climb up a moderate hill to get there!

We were on our offsite at Koh Samui, when in the middle of a lazy afternoon on one of those isolated beaches, I suggested we try to climb a trail… Given the alternatives available, (beer, sun, sleep and women… not necessarily in that order!) the volunteer rate was dismal!  So a fairly disparate bunch of four (or was it five?) of us set off up the path… ok, so now I (as usual, but that’s for another story) had positioned this as an afternoon walk… well, it was anything but that!  So some 2-3 hours later, a few very tired, sweaty and very smelly travellers, clambered, slobbered, grappled whatever and finally reached the top of that not so modest hill!   And this with my slr camera backpack on my back…  trust me the things I do for these photos…

And there you are…   the resultant view!  Its breathtaking isnt it?  Trust me, after that climb, the view was all the more beautiful!   Truly felt like paradise!    

Discovered another new word today – “Prosopagnosia” meaning the inability to recognize familiar faces. Clearly Anushka Shankar in “Rab ne bana di jodi” was suffering from it!

Did you also know there is actually a word for the musty smell of the earth just after it has rained a bit… its ” Petrichor”… well, doesnt’ seem like a word for that, much less smell! But heck, I just love that smell!