India, Don't Lose the Sense-of-Humour Medal Too

If someone ever did a per-capita Olympic medal calculation, India would be at the bottom of the heap.  [Update 01/08/2012: There is one, and India is at the bottom of the heap.] In some ways, that's a no-win situation. Winning medals at international events takes serious investment, and only rich countries (or communist countries who make it a matter of pride) can afford to spend that kind of money. So either India gets ridiculed for not winning medals, or it gets criticised for wasting money on sports when there are "so many starving millions", as the critics will be quick to scream.

Fair enough, but Indians can at least maintain a sense of humour, can't they?

At the opening ceremony of the London Olympics, a young Indian woman in a red top and blue trousers joined the athletes and marched at the head of the Indian delegation.

Three cheers for Madhura Nagendra!

Indian officialdom reacted in the way it knows best.

The head of the Indian delegation, P K M Raja, said the woman had "embarrassed us in front of the world". (There are far more embarrassing things about India, Mr. Raja. Where do we start? Corruption? The complete non-governance of the government? The loser mentality?)

Calling the incident "bizarre", he said the Indian team would be demanding an apology. (From whom? Nobody owes you any apology. Stop taking yourselves so bloody seriously and learn to laugh at the ridiculous.)

"The Indian contingent was shown for just 10 seconds and to think this lady hogged all the limelight," said Mr Raja. ("Boo hoo! Because these 10 seconds are the only chance our athletes have of being in the limelight.")

Me, I had a hearty laugh. Indians have arrived at last, I thought. We can play practical jokes with the best of them. Here are two of my personal heroes of the art of gatecrashing:

Chas Licciardello of The Chasers penetrating deep into the security cordon surrounding George W Bush during the APEC meet, -- dressed as Osama bin Laden!

Claude Khazizian (with the red handkerchief), a distinguished-looking betting shop employee, who loved to bluff his way past security and pose with heads of state

Do these people not deserve our applause and adulation? Breathes there a man with soul so dead, who never to himself hath said, "This is a joke, a hilarious riot"?

Fortunately, the disgracefully humourless behaviour of the Indian official was somewhat mitigated by that bulwark of sanity, the cartoonist. This is a sample.

(Now somebody is going to take offence at the Indian flag being shown upside-down)

Thanks to that cartoon, India, you've barely managed to win the Bronze for humour. We expect better the next time.

My Lady Mondegreen

Wikipedia tells us that a mondegreen is "the mis-hearing or misinterpretation of a phrase as a result of near-homophony, in a way that gives it a new meaning." It comes from the misinterpretation of part of the poem "The Bonny Earl O'Moray":

What someone heard:

They hae slain the Earl O'Moray
And Lady Mondegreen.

What the poem actually says:

They hae slain the Earl O'Moray
And laid him on the green.

I had my own Lady Mondegreen moment over the weekend when I was listening to an old childhood favourite, the Carpenters song "Only Yesterday".

The song goes:

You showed me the way to leave the past
And all its tears behind me.

I then realised I had spent my entire life until last weekend thinking it was:

You showed me the way to leave the past
And now it steals behind me.

How creepy to have your past steal behind you just when you thought you had left it!

The Greatest Indian Since Gandhi

CNN-IBN have recently run an opinion poll to select "The Greatest Indian After Mahatma Gandhi".

I voted in that poll myself, and my choice was Dr BR Ambedkar. 

While Gandhi was obviously not one of the candidates, I'm not sure I would have rated him the highest even if he had been. Many of Gandhi's ideas were good, his principles were admirable, and the independence of India a spectacular achievement, but greatness is subjective, and the perception of the relative greatness of people varies with the passage of time. Gandhi today is not the colossus he once was. Many of us today see him as a good human being with his share of flaws.

I can't vote for Sardar Patel, not now anyway. I used to admire him until the BJP and allied parties adopted him as some sort of right-wing hero. I don't know if Patel himself subscribed to the ideology of the Hindutva movement, but their support of him makes him tainted goods, in my opinion. That's unfortunate.

I guess I could have voted for Nehru. Nehru's commitment to both secularism and socialism have come under fire (but not from me!) Nehru did some amazing things to make India what it is today (just think about the directions in which his peers Nkrumah, Tito, Nasser and Sukarno took their countries). His pro-technology, agnostic world-view also mirrors mine.

Ultimately, I decided on Ambedkar because we of the non-Dalit elite have simply not understood what life as a Dalit must have been like, and it is time we acknowledged this. India will be great only when the evil of caste is wiped out from its society, and Ambedkar symbolises the fact that a Dalit is no lower than anyone else, and can be as great as the greatest of them. The odds that Dr Ambedkar had to surmount to become a lawyer (studying at Columbia and the LSE, no less) and ultimately lead the team that drafted the Indian constitution, probably match the long and difficult journey of Barack Obama from a single-parent home to the White House. When reading his biography, I'm happy to read that he did receive encouragement from people of nominally "higher" castes, such as his Brahmin teacher. This parallels the support Dr Abdul Kalam received in his childhood from a few Brahmins, even though society as a whole segregated Brahmins from non-Brahmins, especially Muslims. (These examples show that even in the worst of times, there is hope for India because humanity never completely deserts its people.)

The famous historian Ramachandra Guha (author of the seminal tome "India After Gandhi") has written a brilliant article on the poll, concluding that "This anointing of the Singular and Unique goes against the plural ethos of a democratic Republic" and that "one might choose hundred great Indians, or fifty, or ten, or even, as I have ended by doing here, three. But not just One."

Dr Ramachandra Guha's points are very well-argued, and I cannot do justice to his piece by summarising it here. It deserves to be read in full.

He contrasts the popular vote in this contest against the vote of a panel of experts, and criticises the aam aadmi's (the common man's) vote on two counts - one of ignoring Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya and the other of elevating Dr APJ Abdul Kalam. He says the aam aadmi, in contrast to the expert panel, has got it "spectacularly wrong" on both these counts. I am ashamed to admit I had never even heard of Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya until I read his piece, so on behalf of the aam aadmi, I am happy to accept Dr Guha's rebuke.

I must, however, raise a point in favour of the aam aadmi's choice of Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam as the greatest Indian since Gandhi. It's not just that Dr Kalam is a decent and good man or "The Good Muslim" as he put it. It's that Dr Kalam as President has allowed Indians to feel better about their country as a State. Corrupt and cynical politicians have besmirched this country's reputation. The common man is ashamed of the Indian state. The greatest contribution of Dr Kalam's has been to make the highest office in the land an outpost of decency, if only for 5 years. Dr Guha has sadly ignored the symbolic power of cleansing that Dr Kalam's single term as President has had on the Indian psyche. We have been uplifted by those 5 years. Even the most cynical Indian would not call Dr Kalam a "rubber stamp", the derogatory epithet we apply to all other Presidents. Think about this, Dr Guha. The aam aadmi is not "spectacularly wrong".

I should quote Gerald W Johnson from his book "Communism - A Study of Revolution":

Although any one man you may point out may be a foolish fellow, all the people, taken together, have a political wisdom that in the long run is superior to that of any one man.

That's how I would rest my case. While my personal choice remains Dr. Ambedkar, the people have spoken, and the Greatest Indian since Gandhi is therefore Dr APJ Abdul Kalam.

The Beginning of the End for FaceBook

The mask has dropped from the face of FaceBook. Greed has got the better of FaceBook's owners and since the IPO, we've started seeing how the business model now works. That's their prerogative, but it doesn't augur well for the longevity of the company, though.

It started with business pages. It turns out that customers who 'like' a business's page will not automatically see all posts by that business, contrary to what one would expect. Only 8-10% of the business's customers will actually get to see those posts. If a business wants to reach all of its customers, that can of course be arranged. FaceBook wants businesses to 'promote' their posts (on payment of an extra something, of course) to reach all of their customers. That 'extra something' is estimated to be $500 per customer. Sound like greed?

Well, maybe it's reasonable to expect for-profit organisations to pay their way instead of getting a free ride, but now the virus is hitting non-commercial users also. This is probably just a couple of days old. Post something that you think might be of interest to your friends, and FaceBook helpfully suggests that you 'announce' it.

OK, so 'announced' posts are seen by twice as many friends. I see. So applying some rough arithmetic tells me that a regular post will only be made visible to half my friends by default. A slightly more generous proportion than that afforded to businesses. Oh well! Might as well 'announce' it, then. So you click the "Announce" button, and you get this:

Ah, 2.34 GBP so all your friends can see what you have to say. But shouldn't your friends already see what you post? Isn't that the definition of 'friend'?

No, this is the new FaceBook. They reckon they've got enough eyeballs, now they can start gouging (that makes for particularly gruesome imagery).

My prediction? FaceBook will be gone in a year if they don't back-pedal. We like social media, but we don't really need it with the shackles added. Bye-bye, FaceBook!

Celsius-Fahrenheit Conversion Lite

I was talking to an American at QCon about how cold Sydney gets in "winter", and I realised I didn't know how to readily express 5 degrees Celsius in Fahrenheit, which is what the Americans understand (to go with their other antediluvian measures like gallons, pounds and miles). Of course, I know that you multiply by 9, divide by 5 and add 32, but it's not an operation you can do when you're talking ("in clickstream", to use an expression I learnt at the conference).

This guy told me an approximation that works pretty well:

Celsius to Fahrenheit: Double the value and add 30.

Fahrenheit to Celsius: Subtract 30 and halve.

So 5 degrees Celsius is approximately 40 degrees Fahrenheit ((5 x 2) + 30), which is close to the actual number, which is 41 degrees Fahrenheit.

Sometimes, "timely and close enough" are better than "accurate but too late".

A Immigrant's Discovery of Australian Movies

Australian movies - Is that even a category?

For a long time, growing up as I did in India, I only knew of two kinds of movies, - English and Indian. (Being South Indian, I knew that Bollywood/Hindi movies weren't the only Indian ones!). But it took a few years for me to realise that English-language movies themselves were not a monolithic group. British movies were different from American ones, and the discovery came as a pleasant surprise. I learnt to enjoy both.

I repeatedly rediscover the truth expressed by author Aatish Taseer, that "the world is richer in its hybrids." A world with only one genre of anything would be bland indeed, and it's as true for movies as it is for anything else. It's with a fresh thrill that I have discovered a third category of English-language movies. It turns out my adopted country makes some pretty awesome movies too, and they have their own distinct flavour to them.

An Australian friend first introduced me to "The Castle" (Thanks, David Urquhart!). This was hilarious. I found myself gasping with surprised laughter at the unexpected lines ("I pay cash" "What is it with you wogs and cash, anyway?") and some of the most sloppy legal arguments ever made ("It's the vibe").

I recently watched "Kenny", which is the portrait of the perfect Aussie bloke, an unassuming man in the most er, mundane job one can imagine, yet facing every difficult situation and difficult person with patience, humour and a philosophical attitude. I haven't yet read anything of Dostoevsky's novel "The Idiot", but a blurb said it was a "portrait of the perfect man". "Kenny" is exactly that. It too has hilariously funny lines delivered deadpan ("I can't advise you on what marriage will be like, mate. If you were to marry my ex-wife, I could tell you a fair bit, but you'll be marrying someone else, mate.") 

On the flight to NY, I decided to watch Australian movies after I finished watching "John Carter of Mars". Since I was flying Qantas, this was an opportunity that normally doesn't come my way.

The first one I saw was "Swerve", a low-budget action-thriller set in a small outback town. Lots of violence and killing, but also the trademark Aussie humour throughout. The scenes of criminal activity taking place right when the police band is marching through town and when policemen are having tea in a train's restaurant car are wickedly funny. It's an irreverent Aussie poke at their cops. After this movie, I long to see the Outback for myself and travel on the Indian-Pacific Railway from coast to coast.

I then saw the romantic comedy "Any Questions for Ben?", a story of a highly-paid twenty-something "brand strategy manager", whose life is a meaningless sequence of parties, drinking and sex. The protagonist is quite a jerk and never managed to gain my empathy. He didn't deserve to get the girl. In fact, he didn't deserve to get any girl, in my opinion. From a certain perspective, this movie was pointless. But it was absolutely thrilling for me to see an Australian city (Melbourne) picturised so brilliantly. I never realised Melbourne was such a beautiful and happening world-class city.

The male lead was a jerk, but the female lead didn't really have a lot of character depth either. I didn't really understand what made her tick or what she stood for. But man, is Rachael Taylor a looker! I consider her the best-looking movie star since Jacqueline Bisset.

It's weird that the movie billed as a comedy wasn't really funny, but the action/thriller was the one with the wicked humour.

At any rate, I've discovered one more reason to be proud of being Aussie. We've got some great movies with a flavour all their own!

Review of "John Carter of Mars"

I watched three movies on the flight to NY. One of them was "John Carter of Mars".

Everyone knows Tarzan of course, but I have always been fascinated with Edgar Rice Burroughs's other creation. His series of stories about John Carter and Barsoom (Mars) simply weren't talked about much. I did come across the odd comic when I was a kid, and this only enhanced the air of suspense and mystery about John Carter's Mars. One of my comics ended on a cliff-hanger when the princess Dejah Thoris, having despatched four armour-wearing "instructoresses" in the arena, now faced a much more formidable challenger - a Green Martian. "And she stood with a smile on her lips to face death, as befits the daughter of ten thousand Jeddaks..." I never got to read the sequel.

That's why I could barely suppress my delight when I saw "John Carter of Mars" listed among the movies on Qantas's entertainment system, and that was the very first one I watched.

Well, what can I say? This was a fantastic movie, a real classic. I wonder why it didn't click in the theatres. Perhaps a combination of inadequate promotion and having the oxygen sucked out of the entertainment world by The Avengers contributed to the commercial flop.

But seriously, see it, people. This reviewer shares my enthusiasm.

This movie has everything, - adventure, fantasy, action, romance, a hero with courage and heart but a tragic past, a beautiful and strong warrior-princess (who is also a scientist - ticks all my boxes!), a hyper-cute dog-like monster, and the most chilling set of villains to come along in a while. It's very scary to think there can be a bunch of people older than all our civilisations who can manipulate us (Earthmen or Martians) into destroying ourselves - but gratifying that they too can be beaten.  

This is the second time Mars has re-entered my consciousness in a fortnight. Ray Bradbury's passing made me reflect on The Martian Chronicles, the red dust and the glass cities with their brittle spires. And now Edgar Rice Burroughs has deliciously assaulted my senses with this classic. (Mild spoiler: I simply loved the scene when John Carter first realises that Mars's low gravity effectively gives him super-strength.)

The best tribute to both these writers would be to describe "John Carter of Mars" with the title of one of Ray Bradbury's stories - "Mars is Heaven".

Oh, Barsoom!