The Roads Less Travelled …

Imagine living in an alternate universe where Hitler and Imperialist Japan had won the second world war. Stretch your imagination to the limit. Can you imagine California as a Japanese colony and New York the centre of German domination in North America? Philip K. Dick does exactly that, in this above mentioned book.

Normally science fiction relies on a setting far ahead in time and often in space - a vision of the future to fire reader's imagination and pique his curiosity. "The Man in the High Castle" (TMitHC) does not rely on such tools - instead giving him an alternate vision for the present. Hence the classification of Dick's writings as science fiction does not go well with me. I would rather label his writings as alternative socio-political fiction, especially this one.

The book is set in a cold war scenario; Japan and Germany, allies in the past, are currently at loggerheads in almost all matters under the sun. Hitler is gone as is his successor Bormann. Herr Goebels is the new German chancellor after a short campaign literally out-orating his opponents, And the new government in Berlin seems to in no mood to allow any further insolence from its past ally and now greatest enemy, Japan.

Though he is an American and not from a country with a colonial legacy, Dick manages to capture all the essential traits of the both stereotype colonizer and colonized in his characters. Mr. Childan, Juliana, Frank Frink all paint the canvas of the colonized in their different hues while the Kasouras and Tagomis cover the spectrum of the colonizers. It is in fact humorous for someone like me to see Americans like Mr. Childan portrayed as mere servile creatures, besotted with whims and fancies of their colonial masters. Also interesting is the continual usage of the I-Ching by all characters, showing how certain aspects of the culture of the colonizers pervades the very fabric of the colonized society (for a real world example, think of the role of English language in India).

However the book is not about the colonization of the world by Fascists or its consequences. The main subject of the book is another book The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, that gives the characters the vision of a world if the Allies had been victorious in the great war. Also central to the story of TMitHC is fate and luck, as is evident from the numerous usages of I Ching or The Book of Changes, by disparate characters. I Ching seems to be some philosophical treatise which allows one to look at what the future holds; but the entirety of whose prophecies can be gauged only with hindsight. Reading this book, questions with "What if …" start becoming louder in the reader's head. Also at the same time the realization dawns that, many crucial events in history could have turned the opposite way but for some quirk of fate. In the end when we meet the author of Grasshopper …, one realizes that the book is as much a truth as reality, showing us how thin is the line between visions and harsh realities.

This book is probably not for the hardcore sci-fi fans - but if you are interested in the future of the society or alternates to the existing one, then as James Bond would say "Nobody does it better than Dick". And TMitHC would probably be counted amongst his better works.

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What is a perfect human? Or should the question be, who is the perfect human? Every time I am confronted with such questions Kipling's If comes to my mind. In that short poem Kipling defines the essence what a perfect man (feminists please don't crib &hellip should be like and what every human should endeavor to be like. Jorgen Leth's short film "The perfect human" and the five obstructions to it proposed by Lars Von Trier try to answer the very same questions.

The original clip made in 1967 shows the perfect human, his actions and his thoughts and mainly caters to the first question. It tells us how the perfect human should look like, how it dances, how it falls and how it broods. In his short movie Leth explores the psyche of humankind from its days in paradise with Adam and Eve, to their fall and to the current day where each of the species spends its time not doing what it is apparently doing but pondering over the capricious nature of its existence. It does not tell if anyone is the perfect human, it shows that probably amongst each one of us there is a perfect human. When he shows the perfect human ear, immediately questions arise regarding the veracity of his claims and almost immediately realization hits us that it could be any else's ear instead.

The Five Obstructions is more in the spirit of Kipling's poem. It defines who the perfect human is. And the protagonist is none of those characters in the perfect human, but Jorgen Leth himself who takes each of the challenges thrown at him by Von Trier (think life) and makes something good out of it.

First Obstruction: Von Trier gives Leth rigid technical obstructions - less than 12 frames in an edit, no sets, a new place. This is fact corresponds to the daily difficulties each one of us faces in his jobs - writing code, laying bricks or making movies. And yet 9 out of 10 times we come with a solution that satisfies us and the setter of the constraints. Often these constraints allow us to think beyond what is normal and everyday and come up with answers which are truly original. Thus a perfect human twists around the restraints of his fate to his own advantage.

Second Obstruction: The past. There are parts in one' life that one does not wish to revisit again. However each of us in those imprisoned moments locks away some part of our humanity. And it is not possible to recover these bits without going back again. Leth in this goes back to the scene of his most horrific experience and he comes out triumphant as should a perfect human, not ruled by his past but with promise of the future guiding his actions.

Third Obstruction: What if you were given the freedom to do what you want to do? Not be bound by any constraints. In our lives these constraints gives us the bulwark on which base our actions on. They give stability and sense of control to us mortals. Take away those. We are left to create out of nothingness - you are the God in your universe, but then one did not say that playing God will be easy. The perfect human then creates his own world, one neatly ensconced in reality and yet of his own creation.

Fourth Obstruction: How many times have been told to do something that you detested? Parents telling to be back before 9 in the evening, boss telling you to file those papers in triplicate. That is a part and parcel of being human. We spend some (maybe lot of) time doing what we wouldn't want to do. The perfect human does what we all do. Do the job. But he gets involved. From that inescapable agony he creates something which gives him joy and makes him feels that the time and effort put into it was well spent.

Fifth Obstruction: The most difficult thing for a human. Probably to take criticism constructively. Leth is challenged exactly to do the same when Von Trier gives him a letter to read - one which he himself has written to him. This probably is the most emotionally moving part of the entire exercise - an exercise out of which emotions had been kept out till now. For emotions, feelings are what makes us human. As the perfect human says in loose translation, "I felt something new today. I will understand it in a day or two".

The movie is technically awesome, with Leth showing off his mastery of the medium - in putting the translucent scene in second obstruction to freeze moving background or in cartoon filming sequence or in the 3rd obstructions where he makes a movie to his own liking. But this movie for all its coldness and perfection went beyond exposing to us what it means to be human. And I left the theatre with words ".. and then you'll be a true man." ringing in my head.

One: Adobe and Macromedia to merge

The $3.4 bn buyout of Macromedia by Adobe, raised a few initial questions. First of which is where is the synergy going to come from? And, the second what are two of the least web-friendly companies together going to do?

After some research it is evident why atleast for macromedia this seems to be a win situation. It has for long been trying to push Flash/Dreamweaver combine as a authoring tool for websites. Integration with Adobe products, clearly will be able to leverage these brands - considering that Adobe has a huge presence in the personal information(documents, images, graphs etc) viewing and manipulation space. The above mentioned suite and Adobe products thus are in complete synergy giving the user an almost end-to-end product in terms of development, transformation and publishing their personal information.

I said almost , because publishing and sharing information is a forte of neither of these corporations. And this brings us to my second question , and to the fact that to successfully and seamlessly achieve the above operations one needs to be web friendly. Desktop computing is still here and will be there to stay for some time. But its days are running out. Players like Google, Yahoo and numerous others are trying each day to get user experience on the web as close to that of the desktop experience. It is here I believe that the new conglomerate will face its real challenge.

Two: Google unveils personalised search and saved searches.

I have never remembered any urls. All I need is the Google search keyword. And with this latest offering I do not have to remember those either. Google saves up all my searches and allows me to search on them, refine my future searches on these saved queries and generally freeing my (costly !!) memory space for better things. Indeed a very cool offering but again this might backfire on Google, as sometime back GMail threatened to do.

As Google brings the web closer to an average user , they seem to be largely ignoring issues of privacy and security which is so dear to the advanced user. For example, since all my searches are saved on the Google servers, what stops me from imagining that all this data is replicated on a CIA server. This is literally the main course for conspiracy theorists who started on GMail. Google already is turning into the Big Brother . In fact I haven't yet found out how to turn off the search saving in case I turned it on just for curiosity.

There is I believe a more fundamental problem with this. The engine gives backs the search results based on my past search history . In order to control the effect of my past on my present queries, I have learn a few more gestures which takes somewhat the basic simplicity of Google. More gestures are definitely unavoidable with the introduction of so many new features but the simplicity of the user experience is what got Google its admirers in the first place and under no circumstances should they lose it.

The real challenge to Google is today probably will be getting along what Sergei Brin thinks "is not evil" and what the world thinks is not evil.

John Caird's article blows away the excuses England have been giving for their absymal form in internationals - "If only Ryan Giggs had played for England" aka the "Left sided problem".

Chelsea's Joe Cole is the new guinea pig for that role after Paul Scholes and Steven Gerrard. However Cole is best suited for a wide role in a 4-3-3 formation rather than a 4-4-2, where he would probably relish sitting in the hole. Englands dependence on 4-4-2 is probably rooted in more reasons than just lack Sven Goran Eriksson's tactical nous.

English game has been evolving from the standard long ball games to a more continental style of play. I base these observations on the emergence of players, who today are ranked amongst the best and will be suited to any club and league viz. the Lampards, Gerrards and Ferdinands. However one role in which English lack the continental flair, is that of the centre forward. Even today in the Premiership the centre forward's main role seems to collecting long balls and bulldozing past the opposite defenders. Their ability at controlling the game by dropping deeper, splitting defences with short passes and positioning in front of the goal remains suspect.

In the English national team, that role is occupied by Michael Owen. Owen is a good but limited player and to play him as centre forward in 4-3-3 will be suicidal for the team. He thrives on long passes, an attribute which necessiates the 4-4-2 formation. Any other formations will imply playing not to the strengths of your main goalscoring threat. England today I think need a complete centre forward much in the mold of Shevchenko or Eto to really display their full abilities and to win something.

My second reading of this book took more time than the first one. When I read this book 5 years back, I read the book only as a murder mystery and hence rushed past the various interludes that the narrative takes. In my last reading I realized that the book's true worth lay in the parts that I had previously paid scant attention to.

"The Name of the Rose" (TNotR) is a palimpsest. On the top it can be, as I initially did, read as only a murder mystery ala Sherlock Holmes. With its Holmesian undertones (the main protagonist is Brother William of Baskerville), the story can be seen as a reworking of the "Hound of Baskervilles" wherein the desolate moor is replaced by the labyrinth that the library of the monastery is.

But TNotR is also a treatise about the life in Middle Ages in Europe. And most of all it is a book about books and knowledge. And the power and possessiveness that access to knowledge gives.

The backdrop of the main narrative has the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor at loggerheads over the issue of whether monks and clerics should follow Christ's ideal of poverty. But as the protagonist said the fight was really over whether church should be allowed to wield secular powers. The opposing parties are set to meet at the unknown monastery to resolve these differences when the deaths start. Brother William with a reputation for logical deduction and ability to observe things minutely, who happens to be in the place as delegate for the forthcoming conference, is called upon to solve the mystery of the monks death.

From the protagonist's discussion with his apprentice Adso, the narrator, and other characters we learn of the nature of the church, kingdoms and practices in those days. One thing which stands out in my mind is William's rumination on the nature of the heretical movements - how they are different and hence cannot be clubbed together and yet each feeding and deriving momentum from others. Also interesting are William's meditations on good magic that can be used to make things to improve general lives, which tells us a great deal about how science was perceived than.

I never really understood why Gutenberg publishing the Bible is always heralded as such a big milestone in the history of mankind. TNotR gives some answers. Books are storehouses of knowledge, that can be used for good or evil depending on the bearer. The unknown monastery was renowned not for the piousness of its inhabitants but for the library it housed. Going forward in the book we realize that the deaths are over access to a certain book. Someone wants it hidden, while others are willing to do anything to lay their hands on it. Access to the library - and knowledge - is the bulwark on which all power games are based in our unnamed monastery.

Not surprisingly therefore , the majority of the book's volume is taken up by the various philosophical interludes our main characters take. This with the generous use of Latin in the text can make reading the book an onerous task - atleast in the initial stages. But once the reader gets in the flow of these discussions and becomes comfortable with the context, he will not be disappointed with it.

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As a piece of writing, the novel "Women" probably conforms the greatest, to the precept of the protagonist Henry Chinaski, 'Everybody lives their lives, I just remember a something and write it down'.

The first thing I noticed about the book was how auto-biographical it sounded. It was as if the author was recording the life he was leading, which he later at leisure transcribed into prose. Not only was the main protagonist a writer by trade, he was born in Germany like Bukowski but also enjoyed the same kind of reputation, of a bohemian psycho, that the author himself must have endured at some point of his life. The novel revolves around Chinaski's (or is it actually Bukowski, even the names sound similar !!) various liaisons (sexual or otherwise) with women after a celibate period of 4 years.

The book starts with Chinaski hitting upon Lydia, from his initial infatuation to his gradual disenchantment with her. For opposites might attract initially , but rarely do they sustain any long close contact. The reader then follows this Bohemian writer in his search for women, constantly amazed at his ability to bed females almost half his age. What is the protagonist searching for?? Definitely not some concept like true love or the eternal life partner. Probably he is just testing the waters, always scared to dive in, yet unable to restrain himself from wetting his feet - to know how it feels like. Chinaski's nature can probably be extrapolated to every man on this planet, definitely not in terms of direct action, but at more conceptual level.

Bukowski in this tale manages to cut open incisively, both the male and the female psyches. If someone has to be convinced 'Men are from Mars, Women from Venus', I would hand him this book. The most interesting character for me was Lydia, Chinaski's first lover in the book. Lydia loves to go out, party and flirt (and may be occasionally get into the sack) with general public but cannot tolerate her lover talking about another woman. Initially one might term the emotion as jealousy but it is more inclined towards possessiveness. Chinaski on the other hand though continuously suspicious of her actions, never lends himself to the kind of violent outbursts which characterize Lydia. Similarly quite a few of the women following her displayed similar traits though not to her extent.

The satire in the book is another of its strong points. It never becomes overbearing. The reader generally get the feeling the world portrayed, is full of cribbers who can see no good in anything. But as with his psychological prognosis, Bukowski here is at his incisive best. But the book does tend to linger on. As the main character meets another women, or gets a letter from one of his female fans, the reader can almost predict what is going to happen. The basic storyline remains the same - 'Wham bang, kaam tamaam' (translates literally to job done). There is so little variation of the whole theme that apart from the wisecracks in between one tends to get bored. Also though Bukowski brilliantly portrays the type of persons he wants to, he conveniently skips the question of what exactly does Chinaski want. Maybe this ambiguity is by choice so as to allow readers to draw theie own conclusions but this approach definitely leaves a lot unexplained.

Overall the book was for me an unique experience for it was first sampling of Bukowski's work, but both the content and style tend to be slightly repetitive and do not see myself as a huge Bukowski fan unless his other works differ in their basic approach.

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Vibhanshus' blog had this interesting link posted …

http://www.gigaom.com/2005/03/26/how-yahoo-got-its-mojo-back/

What the author says about the Google hyper-publicity and the relative anonymity of Yahoo's achievments in its comparisons is more or less true. What however is the USP of Google's offerings is the fact that Google aims to change the way we as users of their solutions do things. Before Gmail the only way to organize your mail was to put them in the folder. Gmails' initial publicity might have been due to the 1Gb gimmick but it was threading of mails and the ability to search rather than organize which would have bought over most of people into the Google camp.

Googles' paradigm is that every piece of information in this world should be searchable. To this end they try to change user behaviors, user expectations via their apps. This need not always however be successful. But Googles' main thrust area still remains basic search over which everything seems to be built. What is a similar core area for Yahoo? Whatever headstart it had in the search market it has already lost it to Google. It is now constantly playing a catching up game. It is in this respect that the companies differ. While Google leads on its core areas, Yahoo follows. And of course market sees the leader, especially if they come with as motley a crew as Google has.

There would be nothing (forget great) in this book if one does not have the right context. And if one has the context right the book turns into a hilarious juxtaposition of the greatest influences on the Indian psyche - the Independence movement and the grand epic Mahabharata. Every Indian invariably grows learning of the deeds of our leaders of independence in school and of the heroes of the Mahabharata from grandparents and parents at home.

Incidentally both of these sources are rich in politics - a passion with the Indian populace matched only by its infatuation with cricket. Full credit however must go to the author, for bringing in these two episodes so far removed in time, space and characteristics in one narrative. So Gandhi becomes Bheeshma, the elder statesman who has the last say in any decision. Nehru becomes Dhritarashtra, learned and wise, but whose propensity to be correct often blinds him from the correct path to be taken. Bose is Pandu, the lost son of India, its martial face, one who dared to challenge the conventions. And Jinnah, the eternal villain in our textbooks, is Karna, a soul whose ambition and drive matched his unwillingness to toe anyone elses' but his own line. In this tale of intrigue and passion the hundred sons of Dhritarashtra are replaced by one daughter, who as the stars had said would be equal to a hundred sons.

Tharoor maps out the entire modern history of India from the days when Mahatma Gandhi started out on his first satyagraha marches in Champaran to the days dark days of emergency under Mrs. Gandhi to the subsequent chaos under the Janata government. . "The Great Indian Novel" (TGIN) is a not tale of good versus evil as are both of its sources often portrayed simplistically - Pandavas are good and Kauravas are evil, Britishers are evil while Indians are good, Indira Gandhi is devil incarnate while JP is a godsend. Tharoor understands that in Indian politics as in Mahabharata things run much deeper than what is evident on the surface. And therefore he carefully tries not to fall into the trap of notional classification of characters into camps of black and white. He chooses to paint the canvas rather in shades of grey with more than an ounce of satire for taste (or as some purists of Indian culture might say, for the lack of it).

All things said and done, what will intrigue the most any reader is the role that Krishna assumes in this tale. As in the original epic Krishna is somewhat a reticent god, one who carries the burden of divinity with such lightness that he appears almost human but at the same time at right moments is not afraid to show the world his actual divine form to literally awe them into submission. The Krishna in this tale probably is Kamraj, once described by my father, as probably the most brilliant political mind that India has produced after Chanakya. And history is proof that this great political mind chose to restrict himself in his state and his locality rather than stand up and be counted amongst the pantheon of great Indian leaders. Where would India be today if he had taken his stand in the great war. Tharoor manages with his wit to ask such tough questions to the reader.

But TGIN is not a biography of the major characters in freedom struggle. It is more than anything else the tale of India. It is an account of the decisions and intrigues which have shaped up the country as it is today. And that it manages to do with more than dash of humour so as not let one feel that he is reading his history textbook of class ninth, is probably the greatest achievement of this book.

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"Spanning four generations, Isabel alienates magnificent family saga …" said the back cover of the book. I was immediately reminded of the Marquez's classic epic on the Buendas of Macondo, "One Hundred Years of Solitude"(OHYoS). OHYoS has since become the flagbearer for magic realism and Marquez has taken his place, rightly so, amongst the greats of the 20th century literature. I could therefore not help comparing "The House of Spirits" (THoS), with its more critically illustrious counterpart.

The initial comparisons were, to say the least, not very flattering. The book seemed a pale copy of the OHYoS. It was imitation of style, form and content but not doing justice to either of them, never reaching the levels set by Marquez. The description of the old houses, character traits (Rosa's beauty or Clara's premonitions) and events ,primarily deaths, seemed watered and tasteless, as if somebody has taken a juicy kebab, poured some water over it and given it to you.

However as the scene of action shifts to Tres Marias, the author finds her own bearings. Her forte clearly lies not in the finding the supernatural in the ordinary but a more straightforward style of narrative, much on the lines of Vargas Llosa. But as long as Clara stayed alive, one could not escape from description of three legged tables, of pendulums and other esoteric gadgets and adventures in the other world. But with progress of the story Clara's interference with the story started reducing considerably. Other characters with much more transparent psyches came into the fore. Also the canvas gradually shifted from the happenings in the "house at the corner" to the affairs of the estate of Tres Marias and finally the entire country.

The transition of Esteban into politics, his rise and fall and also the rise and fall of his party before Chile descended into the grips of a military dictatorship forms the bulwark for the later part of the novel. Here Allende displays her talent for connecting the everyday lives of the characters we have come to know in the course of the novel to the fortunes of the country in a seamless manner. Her description of the military dictatorship was so vivid that I could almost see the streets of Santiago, wide and clean, with walls as a boundary to keep out the poor and unfortunate so as not to spoil the picture perfect image. I do not know why but from what I have read, India during the Emergency would probably have looked the same. Here Allende can probably be compared to Saramago who so beautifully weaves in the flow of history in his novels. But whereas Saramago's protagonists though affected by the flow of events rarely contribute to it, alienates characters play a significant role in the unfolding of the events.

In entirety, THoS can be read as a metaphor for the descent of a society and country from being innocent and magical to being corrupt and earthy. That the narrator is someone young, who probably has just sensed whiffs of the old magic and clearly wants to go back to the old times, adds to this idea.

Regardless of its obvious failings, THoS is book which one should read for gaining some insights into the turbulent political scene in South America - trying to understand how countries, where street kids weave patterns with a football that even professional footballers in Europe can only dream of, cannot have a stable government for a couple of years.

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