Questions

Iam having new questions in my head. What is  "individuality"/ "self reliability"/ "Extent of mutual dependability" in human relationships . The amount of individuality needed for survival, self respect and equality among the sexes in a relationship ?
Modern working woman, is she there where she ought to be or is she still evolving? What does it take to share equal respect among the sexes despite the fact that world is unfair and biased ? How tightly bound are self respect and self reliance in such a skewed scenario such as ours in the current world and times? The assurance or self realization that she can survive on her own like men? What defines your Independability ?
This is a very insightful article about self reliance and relationships. http://theconfidenceguyonline.com/2008/06/solo-lifers-why-successful-women-remain-single/
Take a  housewife, should she on the basis that she is not self financed be eternally bonded to the 'earning' independent husband in a master-subject relationship, and submit to "earner heads the home"? The husband might not collapse immediately without his wife, but the wife certainly would, atleast in this skewed world, where the fairersex is almost always disadvantaged for a number of reasons, chances are she wont even last the night on her own without the husband, forget about striving to find a job to support herself. So then, earning money alone is not enough to wield power over the family, ability to keep self safe, secured and financed is. Only then can there be a demand to equal power, as you share no extra vulnerabilities than your male in the relationship and both can share power and co-exist . Well this is getting too confusing a track, the basic question is if i stop earning should i compromise my freedom and independence, is "independence" really possible in this society and there by "freedom" ? If i am a woman, i should compromise with the extent of freedom I can enjoy? Whether or not i am earning, i have to atleast rely on someone for my security, there are things a woman cannot do, like fight with someone for safety, or run to police for protection or walk alone in the night safely. Does it make the male a facilitator if he enables her to do things she cant on her own, like escort her and keep her safe? Should she be thankful to the "facilitator"? similarly should she be thankful to the 33% reservation? is it enough, if so, why can i not go on my own without risking my security? having availed the 33% and yet why do i  find myself disadvantaged? can the gap be plugged by numbers such as these?

Like the last time, i wanted to attend a social function and my dad was not ready to drop me because it didnt amuse him. Only option i had was to hire a auto at the risk of my security. The risk is only because iam a female. where is my self reliability. Now is my dad a facilitator ? he was not willing to drive me, i was at his mercy and had no free choice in whether i should attend the function. How fair is it? What does equality stand for here , should my dad go an extra mile and ensure my security because society fails ? It offsets my inequality, my dads sacrifice of his choice to remain at home. Can men be arroganct about this "given" independence and refuse to help offset the inequality for the opposite sex ? Replace the function with any destination or place you want to be and cannot because the male person you depend upon doesnt agree for it.

You can see a detrioration in chivalry among men for women since women began to fight for their self reliance and freedom and individuality, the chivalry which was devised to offset the decreased freedom of living and power among the sexes  for the 18th century woman. Doesnt chivalry sound archiac now, should it ? are we there yet to throw it away?

But unfairness is everywhere, in racism, in economy, everywhere.  But why shouldnt my father, or for that matter any male in my life bother to offset the unfairness for me??  What is  mutuality in a relationship then??  should it not also include getting the two parties to equal footing? making the unfairness void by going an extramile for another as a balancing act ? Isnt it understood? should the female in turn feel gratitude for the fairness that is insured by the opposite sex or should it be her right for being born a female and for the male a duty for being born a man?? where is the fairness then if its not given as my right and accepted as a duty towards me that they are obliged to as males and protectors ? Does it compromise my feminity and self respect? Should it, should I act as if it were so in a meek submission and gratitude?

Bird Watching

yes, my latest preoccupation! Bird Watching.
I never knew my hometown, more known for its draught conditions, had so much of 'Bird Watching' to offer! A little more reading about it and i came to know that deserts are one of the worlds most richest bird treasures. India has got a national bird reserve in, Jaisalmer (located in the central thar desert region) No wonder the ever so arid climate of the poor Anantapur too attracts varied bird species.

Flower Shower

Inspired by the mood lifting , heart warming flower carpets adoring the huge conopies, elaborately decorated  with  labyrinthine branches of  trees on the Bangalore's congested  roads ( giving an increased feeling of congestion if you happen to be claustrophobic)  iam taking home a Jacaranda sapling to plant at my home in Anantapur . Hope it survives the hardy drought climate.

more about Bangalore's avenue tree varieties : http://www.thehindu.com/mp/2009/06/08/stories/2009060851080300.htm

July 2010: It is still going strong :) Successfully surviving one summer and one long vacation, left completely to my maids care!

Inexplicable

Did you ever feel that what just happened had happened before too, but somehow in different time or in somekind of a parallel universe, somebody said the same thing they said before to the same situation you experienced before ? iam sure most of us have come across this feeling and most of know this as dejavu( with a tilde ; ) )

Compare this with,
Did you ever feel while writing a word and contemplating on the spelling so long that it actually appears that such a word never existed. And this happens with even the most commonplace spellings such as "word" itself?
Do you feel as if something that your reason says cannot be true, but you feel as if you have never seen it before, like it came out of a total oblivion.

Try this and iam sure you will feel it to. But you must be free of any selfmanipulation while doing it and do it with open mind.

Take a piece of paper, start writing "word" continuously for 10 to 15 times.
Now at the end of writing the last time, you would feel that the spelling isnt correct and that it cant be "word" as you perceive it.

They have a word for it like Dejavu , see the wiki entry for this .
Often described as the opposite of déjà vu, jamais vu involves a sense of eeriness and the observer's impression of seeing the situation for the first time, despite rationally knowing that he or she has been in the situation before Jamais vu is more commonly explained as when a person momentarily does not recognize a word, person, or place that they already know.

Chris Moulin, of the University of Leeds, asked 92 volunteers to write out "door" 30 times in 60 seconds. At the International Conference on Memory in Sydney last week he reported that 68 per cent of the volunteers showed symptoms of jamais vu, such as beginning to doubt that "door" was a real word. It has also been said that a similar brain fatigue underlies a phenomenon observed in some schizophrenia patients: that a familiar person has been replaced by an impostor, they could be suffering from chronic jamais vu.

see this below explanation for this. ( wiki excerpt)

From a linguistic perspective, the phenomenon that a word after frequent repetition seems to lose its meaning is connected with the very nature of words. A word as a unit of language has three characteristics:

• It has form, i.e. it is shaped out of sounds or, in the case of written language, out of letters (characters).
• It has function, which (among other things) means that it operates in a meaningful sentence.
• It has meaning, which implies that it refers to a certain unit of thought (a concept or an idea) within a context.

However, when a word is repeated over and over again, it is in fact only the form which is repeated. There is no sentence, so the function of the word is eliminated. Its meaning, too, is effectively eliminated, because there is no context. A few repetitions will leave the language user's memory and expectation intact: he remembers the meaning and expects a meaningful reference. Continued repetition, however, will more and more foreground the word form to the exclusion of function and meaning, until the word literally "makes no sense". It is not the word that is being repeated, but only one of its aspects: the word form.

Interesting isnt it ?

Witty

pic: The Hindu 'cartoonscape'
Labour union doing social work , saving AI ;)
No wonder jet is so anti to creating a NAG (National Aviators Guild) :)

Art - Why Abstract ?

Some how today i stumbled upon M F Hussain . ( i cannot retrace how i got here) .
Something about his paintings stirred me into writing this post. This in context with all the controversies surrounding his paintings. Well, that( the controversy) is not the point of my interest, but merely an input point as to why an 80 year old artist should endure so much resistance and still do what he wants to do. why is it imperative to him to be this rebellion and why is it important for his art. And thereby arrive at why does he do "art" in the particular way he does. And is there not any other aimless reason to do art? ( apologies, but I am not against or for him, i don't see any need to make either of the choices, i just want to look at the reason for this) Or probably to answer my question about, whether art could get boring, could i get bored of doing paintings and leave it ? hmm fancy thought.

If you see, well the first links i got to his paintings were all the controversial paintings( though i did'nt find them controversial , well that was'nt my aim, to get offended by looking at his paintings, also they didnt seem to be intensional to me. ) They were good, different, not the type i have been seeing so far. They were "expressionistic", well, i had wikied and googled impressionist style ( especially Monet, coz he was the pioneer of this style ) quite a lot and do have my own fair idea of what it is and that all it has to do is with how a thing "looks" , or how it impresses upon ur eye and eye alone . These type of paintings strictly stick to your visual senses. While expressionistic, come a lot further from this and attempt to "express feelings" in an abstract way. Like all the words put together to express your feelings, cut short by a bizarre spread of colors and abstraction of things to depict your feelings as art form. While the Monet impressionist did the same, it was restricted to only "visual" feelings. Not abstract feelings in your mind. Like thoughts.

Grainstacks in the Sunlight, Morning Effect, 1890. Oil on canvas. Private collection.

Haystacks, (Midday), 1890-91, National Gallery of Australia

Wheatstacks (End of Summer), 1890-91. Oil on canvas. Art Institute of Chicago

Wheatstacks, 1890-91. Oil on canvas. Art Institute of Chicago.

Haystacks at the End of Summer, Morning Effect, 1891. Oil on canvas. Louvre, Paris, France.

But why did they do this, why did art had to evolve and has to evolve further ? For this lets take three paintings which belong to different periods of art. Check this link it might help in understanding what I am trying to say and give a brief background to the point. http://www.harley.com/art/abstract-art/index.html#hahn
Please read the above link before going any further.

First , (coz i cannot trace back art beyond this, well thats the scope of my post and i decide it :D ) the photographic "representative art" , something like da Vinci's Last Supper or Monalisa or imagine anyother "portrait type" photographic art which were replaced by Photos during the modern era. The general need then was to reproduce visual input as it is as it was lacking then and was not easy as it was made in the later years by "cameras".

The next period of painting, the passage of time, or the Monet. Take the Monet Lillies, the main aim of the artist, as gathered by various accounts of great analysts, is to depict the changing light on the subject or rather the "time effect on the subject". It still stuck to the visual aspects of the subject. Could it be because of the lacking of an easier way to capture the "passage of time" like as in a "movie" ? This type of art persisted like untill the late 19th century, precisely the time the "movies" came and the ability to capture "passage of time", motion picture was invented. The general public and the artists lost interest in this aspect of capturing "passage of time" and this type of art form became boring.

Then the new need came. The need to capture "feelings", so far as i am concerned there is no "visual" media to capture feelings and express it (1). Like it was with how things look and how things are perceived to look visually by the artist. But "feelings" alone were never expressed visually. or could be captured visually. This great medium is only possible through the mind, no gadget could make this possible. Atleast till now. So hence evolved the "abstract expressionism" . Depiction of feelings.

Vincent's Starry Night was one such,

stuck in transition of two periods of painting, i could not understand what the artist wants to express, but clearly it was'nt a Monet, it was'nt impressionist, it wasnt expressing the visual impression of a subject, but something else. Then there is this more evolved, "scream" painting, expressing the feeling precisely.

Artist	Edvard Munch

Coming back to MF Hussain, why was he obsessed with Indian Gods in the first place, even after so much resistance? what was its importance in his life, the dominant hindu community in which he lives ( India) could not have escaped him though he was a muslim. So the fact that he is mocking Hinduism for his own religious agenda as an outsider has no weight. He is as intrigued by the whole Hindu culture as any nonfundamentalist, objective, not blinkered by bigotry, Hindu would be. His art wouldnt be any different if he was a Hindu. It merely is his feelings and the countless stories he heard about the culture during his life which did not escape him though he was a muslim, and that depicts the uniqueness he portrays of India, the authority with which he painted about core Indian culture icons, of Gods and Ramayana and the like, as if he was part of this culture and has a right to absorb this into him and not merely be an outsider. or be bound by the religious borders. I refuse to attribute anyother reason for his art and more importantly refuse to just stick to the visual offense ( of nudity and the like) and color it with religion bias, if there was any, in the first place.
Clearly, if you understand abstract art you can see that it was not the aim of the artist either!
"Blue #1" [2000] by Harley Hahn. Perfect "abtract", if you see what i mean ;)

Its fun to watch how painting as an art form has evolved so "obviously" :) . My aim of the post was to try drawing a parallel to the need of the change and the corresponding ability of the humanbeing to "capture" things and give it to another sentient being. The complexity of what the artist wants to pass, evolved overtime, it was pure visual to feelings of visual sense, to pure feelings alone. Could a parallel be brought to the evolution of gadgets to achieve the same? no still images to still images to moving images ?!... so keep musing on what is yet to come....

Please pardon the digression if any, somehow it cannot escape me :( ( i could write a whole new post as to why digression is inescapable ! ;) )

It might sound totally crazy and un-understandable to some, but i enjoy it, so please dnt mind the "rubbish" if u so think ! FYI the analysis is not exhaustive and only superficial. :D ( oh yeah! I am protective and defensive about myself even before you comment :D )

P.S : 1) well you might argue, the movies could do it, express the feeling of the director . But is it efficient? 3 long hours to express, compared to a very personal medium of expression which takes hardly a moment to be passed on to anther being unlike the movies ?

funny

P.S: Inflation and Fuel Prices

Terror here refere in the "terrorists" context. This was immediately after 2007 mumbai attacks, coincidentally the same time around skyhigh fuel prices came down due to less demand on oil in the oil producing companies.
It was the beginning of the coming of 2008 economic depression and one of the factors along with the housing bubble in the US.