coldSpark

2008-02-24T00:16:00.000-08:00

Three days and a book.
- Remebering Aarohan 2K3.

It was cold, the mornings blue, as one watched the moist droplets fade away and the day grow with the embrace of the shimmering light, there was expectancy in the air. The campus was brooding with a quiet intensity. There’s always a romance, a mystery, trepidation, with the first dabble, the conceived newness; for Aarohan-1 was just days from being a mere dream. Even as February was drawing to a close, finishing touches were being put to our own brain child and Aarohan 2003 was soon to see the light of the day.

I had just paid a visit to the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Calcutta. I was going to do a project on neural network there. Amid the other small things I noticed, it was the bit in the museum and the old photographs that drew my attention.

Einstein and Nehru was the starters, it was the bit about the founder which intrigued me. ISI after all, was founded by P.C. Mahalanabish, the eminent mathematician, scientist. And his wife, in the old photographs, looked distinctly like some one whom I have read about but forgotten. Her name was Nirmal Kumari Mahalanabish. On myriad occasions, when the mind goes through those rare and perfectly thought less patches, listening to Eagles or Metallica and watching the horizon sparkle and flash, I thought about the rather old and vague photograph, but memory it seemed, was intent on giving me the miss.

While such a big event as Aarohan is surely a team sport and a confluence of the commitment of countless souls, I still perceive Shofiqul Islam and Mohd Arif as the visionaries and the torch bearers. Especially there was something in Shofiqul’s calm which was all the reassurance you ever needed about the event’s uncertain facets.

The preparation for Aarohan was spot on and I must say rather studied. Technical fares in IIT Kharagpur , Jadavpur and Shivpur were obediently studied and others which merit notable mention also didn’t go unnoticed. There was a conscious attempt to learn from them. Every minor detail like the look and feel of the pen they gave you along with the badge as you registered was thoroughly marked as well as the nature of food and the chairs you sat on.

I remember some guys in our batch too, who were deeply motivated and involved. Ullas, Aditya Antao would be just to name a few.

Often three days in ones life are unrecognizable and eventless, more so in the life of an engineering college. But the three days that followed were sheer exception even if we accept the rule without an argument.

There were many firsts. Like the involvement of ISRO and Microsoft; the competition in the overnight programming contest or circuit design. Even I was taking part, I had a paper to present, on Quantum computing and holography.
But my paper was not selected for the main draw and it only remained at the top of the waiting list and I did not think the wait would end in the course of the three days. As much as I believed in the potential and the impact of the paper,
I could not get the seniors who were in the selection panel to agree on the same.
I could not understand their point even as, visibly they could not understand that of mine.

I had prepared with unabashed joy and craze, believing my paper would win the first prize. That it was just about getting the chance and getting the prize. But life alas, is not always a linear equation.

As Aarohan was basking in its glory, my Mamaji chose the occasion to come visiting. In showing him the class rooms, the quintessential jhoops, the REC Oval, even I was rediscovering the memories of the days gone by. It was as if all the dust and the green covers were lifted from the yellowish frames and I fast tracked through my two years in college. The ragging was over, so was the initial infatuation with the college, three semesters and countless class tests. Probably what remained was an impalpable and yet, an indelible mark. Often, the best memories are the ones you don’t remember.

I and my friend Shubhadeep were sitting disappointedly in the convention hall as one presentation after another was going on. I heard, I missed, I forgot and then I clapped. Midway through the rituals, Shubhadeep suggested we had enough. We indeed had enough and we sat in the oval. Nobody was there to be seen. For everybody was in the main building. We had accepted the fact that, our paper would indeed remain not presented. However, our folders remained back in the convention hall and after around ten minutes, we finally decided to call it a day and go and fetch the folders and get going. Destiny some times, has strange ways of calling. Even as we were picking up the folders, two seniors approached us and told that one of the team’s floppy’s were not opening and they would have to go back to hall 1 to rewrite the stuff. The time had to be made up and hence we present our paper. It was unbelievable, a bolt out of the blues and we had less than a minute to go.

The next ten minutes passed as if I was in a trance. I vaguely remember the audience, the pauses in the sounds and the final sound of claps. We’ve presented our paper.

It was the last day of the Aarohan 2003. My chhoto Mama would return in the night to Calcutta. He wanted to see Shantiniketan. It was early morning. Not yet seven. And we were racing down in a state bus. As we approached Shanti Niketan, as Bolpur started, I saw the first real bullock cart of my life!

We walked through the corridors of the fine arts building, we saw the out door classes on the grass. The statues showed us the vision that Ram Kinkar Bedge had once seen. Nandalal’s Padmini spoke.

The greenery and the serenity of Shanti niketan and Sri Niketan had cleared the mind. After almost a day of Tagore’s touches, we entered the museum as the final stop before we leave for Durgapur again. Tagore and museum could be the stuff of a thousand page novel and I was already exasperated with an overdose of dates and events in the last few hours. Even as I ventured aimlessly through the museum and had cursory looks here and there, I got an answer I had long forgotten. It was a most fascinating story; A story of mankind of the most unusual sort. It was the story of a victor who didn’t want to win.

In 1913, when Rabindra Nath Tagore was leaving for the foreign trip to United Kingdom and America, he did not originally intend to carry a diary which later turned into a book which rewrote history books world wide.

Tagore had a minor dabble at English poetry. He used to amuse himself by translating some of his own poems into English from Gitanjali from time to time. He didn’t think seriously about any of these. He never wrote them for any purpose other than for reading them out routinely to his first audience of his English poems. It was a little girl, a Shantiniketan student. Even as Tagore was about to leave for his English sojourn, the small girl came to his palki and gave him the diary with the English poems, lest the goraas do not get to know that the "daariwala" was a poet after all.

Rothstein and W.B.Yeats had a quiet discussion after they happened to read a few pages of the diary in the presence of an absent minded Tagore. Tagore had left for the states, and Rothstein and Yeats had written the prologue. As Tagore got down from the ship and the Indian shores welcomed him back with open arms, history was still being written on the other side of the globe. Rabindra Nath Tagore had become the first Nobel laureate in literature in Asia. Gitanjali with the prologue by two of Europe’s crown jewels of literature had become the book which was hitherto the manuscript in the form of the diary that Tagore carried; And all this, without Tagore’s mere knowledge and acceptance.

As Tagore came back to Shanti Niketan, he searched up and down for the little girl; the first audience of his minor English poems. The ones, which have won him a nobel overnight and the ones that he never intended to carry.

As he met the small girl in the frock, he could realize for the first time, the true feeling of his achievements. The small girl that day, was later to become the photograph that I saw in ISI Calcutta, Nirmal Kumari Mahalanabish,

As the last rays of the sun dazzled in the cut mirror, I looked at the bronze medal. This is supposedly the highest award of merit in this world. The nobel often choses its owner and it is always in the magnanimity of the winner that its true pride really resides.

I had known it when we had started in the morning for Shantiniketan. Shofiqul had told me as I stood by in the empty corridor. I had won the first prize for technical paper presentation. But here, as I stood amid the spoils of a century gone by, as we were rushing through the highways back to the college, the medal in the bronze for the first time gave me a purpose and a belief that I had often lacked.

Aarohan 2003 was over, and as I was sitting in Black Diamond express abound Kolkata accompanying my Mamaji, an Aarohan participant from VIT who knew me asked, “What’s your aim in life”?

“To win” I said.

2007-06-20T23:42:00.000-07:00

Think Different, Think Apple.
Why Apple means so much to "The rest of us".

While introducing Apple iPhone in the Macworld expo SanFrancisco earlier this year Apple CEO Steve Jobs said –“When we introduced Apple 1 in 1977, you had to be different to buy it. 30 years down the lane, you still have to be different to buy an apple.”

That in compactness is all, that apple means and apple stands for. In 1984 Apple was “For the rest of us.” It still remains, deservedly, for the rest of us.

What is it that has made Apple into this iconic brand? Is it mere coolness factor, the aesthetic edge, technological superiority or the continuity of revolutionary rather than evolutionary products?

In fine it’s a combination of all that and much more. Apple stands for a certain liberty, the reverberating theme of its product line is an ambitious attempt at capturing the limitless human soul that has unbounded capacity for joy and the infinite.

Be it in the ambitiousness of Macintosh or the leap frog adventure of iPhone, Apple has stayed true to its rules. Rules that don’t obey any rules . If you can’t invent it, reinvent it.
That’s the Apple spirit. Every product category apple has entered, it has either created the category or recreated it. We saw it with iPod and iPhone.

What’s Apple’s cardinal secret? Is it Steve Job’s steadfast tryst with romanticism, his emotional touch or is it his bid to immortality? Apple has time and again caused a fusion, fusion of technology and art. Of beauty and minimality of art and brutality of science’s prowess. If you have ever used an iPod or browsed the net on safari you would know what I am talking about. It’s this minimalism and the austerity of black and white that defines the apple design.

Apple as the core and differentiating asset has its legendary product line to fall to. There have been some land mark products. Products that have changed the market for ever. Products, that has made the entire competition change, change the entire stand point from where we see technology. We saw it first with the Mac in 1984, with iPod in 2001 and it readies to repeat the magic with iPhone again this June. In a world where Microsoft has dominated and IBM has marginalized any other vendor, where is it that Apple has remained Pristine and cult like to transcend to a philosophy and way of life?

It remains in Apple’s products and the visionary behind them. Apple has always understood the user and understood the needs and wants of the user. An apple product does not have a user interface, the product itself is an user interface. Apple user experience is a concept that all its products have stayed true to.

All Apple products have mirrored the spirit of one individual, Steve Jobs.
Jobs has cast Apple and its products in his own personality. As a result the products have been a reference point in terms of aesthetics and technical excellence.

All Apple products have been ahead of its time by at least 5 years. 7 years into iPod, Sony or Philips still doesn’t have a product of the same finesse or pull.

Five years of development and piracy later, Windows Vista still fails to capture the spirit of Mac OS X. And by a huge margin at that. 5 years back, OS X was a thing of the future. It still is. And with Leopard Apple is going farther to the future.

In a world that’s full of sky scrapers, concrete structures and same looking Sedans, it’s Macbook pros and iMacs that give you that much needed and elusive alternative reality.
The lost city of Atlantis. It’s a refuge of the artist and a delightful companion for the creative spirit.

Just how significant is Apple today? If the industry patterns are any indicator to look at, it seems Apple is set for a titanic stint. With iPhone, and an overwhelming possibility of Mac OS X getting licensed to all platforms, Apple could very well be the Microsoft of 90s or IBM of 90s or Google of this decade. Only, a far better Microsoft or a far better IBM at that.

And as and when that happens, it would be a befitting end to an epic battle between the vision and originality of Jobs over the shrewdness of Gates, which should have been a no contest in the first place.

Will Apple make it or will Apple again be the Apple of the 90s is a question only to be answered by time. But here’s hoping that the colorful and joyous dream that’s Apple, continues to remain so.

2007 -08 is going to rewrite the future history of IT and technology and it’s going to be insanely great for any company to do an Apple act. There are some things that money can’t buy, but if it’s an Apple that you are planning to buy, then you could as well belie Master Card’s age old punch line.

2007-06-19T10:55:00.000-07:00

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2007-05-30T04:11:00.000-07:00

Brian Lara -- An epitaphe for future reference.

Will we ever see any batsman use the crease so effectively and mesmerisingly, once Lara throws away his magic wand? Can anybody wield a willow with such a flourish, and yet look as gentle and pristine as a poet? Will any player ever be blessed with the touch of a jeweller and the force of a butcher?
Lara, for this writer, is even more unique because he brings in a fourth dimension to batting: he not only uses the crease horizontally but also vertically, rising on his ballerina-ic toes to smother a bouncer or to pull or cut it even more sublimely. As smooth as a cold-blooded killer.

2006-11-27T06:37:00.000-08:00

Rahimananda
This could be the story of a man who set out to find the answers to the questions that we stop asking as every new day gets added to our own story. This could also be a minor anecdote of a boy who managed to become a man after all. But in hind sight, I think this, at best goes down as an inadequate attempt, to capture in flashes, the spirit of a man who embodied freedom and in whose spirit, remains in fragments, the cold spark of man's eternal quest for adventure.

The story begins as Khokan, a school boy of just ten took his first shot at a mango tree with his band of overzealous boys. The old woman who was witnessing another eventless day fade out in the wilderness of Kumilla, east Pakistan would have been less shocked by the knock of her own impending death, than she was, by the knock out punch of Khokan's earth bound projectile that missed the mango by some distance!

What followed was in perfect obedience of the norms of typical east Pakistan social values of the bygone era.
Even as all other boys managed to disappear in the golden sunset, Khokan, frightened out of his wits by the scent of danger, got caught by the house owner.

In a matter of less than fifteen minutes, he found himself shackled and bound to the same mango tree trunk.
Although there was an initial sense of circumspection among the men who held him captive because "He belongs to that Brahmin 'thakurbadi'", the constant flow of blood from the old lady's forehead ensured that anger, at least for once got the better of casteism!

The fact that Khokan was rescued and he managed a grin after two days did not wipe out the reminiscences of the old lady who survived not only to tell this tail but also to remember the care that she got from her own people who had long since ceased to take notice of her presence both in their house and heart.

Khokan was in class eight when he had his first tryst with the judiciary. Those days, the small time thieves had made quite a big impact on the rural life of Kumilla. So much so, that to ensure that the common people slept at night, the youth of the 'para's had decided to keep a patrolling party every night. By this time Khokan has become used to taking responsibility in the so called social causes. So, it came as no surprise as Khokan was seen once again in the fore front of this patrolling campaign.

It was one of those nights when at about the first signs of dawn, Khokan and his friends after a full night's duty decided to get themselves some thing to eat.Every body in the team was quite young and quite poor too.Nobody would get up so early in the morning to receive them at home or cook for them. Nor was there any shop to go or money to buy.

So they decided to go to the only rich man in the locality, Dhiren babu's house and rip a few coconuts off his trees. Khokan was right in the middle of cutting a coconut off the tree when Dhiren babu came out with his pipe gun. All other boys had once again left and Khokan was right there, hanging at the top of the tree. "Come down right now, or You shall have the bullet".

What followed was hardly different than what had followed earlier. But this time the local police inspector came to his rescue and he was also given medical attention for the injuries that Dhiren babu and his domestic help had inflicted upon him.

To make matters worse Khokan's father was a man of inordinate temper, who treated Khokan no better than Dhiren babu himself. Times were changing as more and more people were joining the Swadesi campaign.

The local police took note of the incident and called up a meeting with all the parents in that locality.
"Had the boy fallen from the tree in fear of the bullet, do you expect him to be still alive? Honestly Dhiren babu, didn't you know these boys were the patrolling party?
I can frame you for an attempted murder if I want. But instead I'll just cancel your gun’s license."

When Khokan was born, the much revered “Thakur Badi” of Kumilla was already in its last legs. The shine was gone, just as the money was and post partition of Bengal in 1905,the Thakur-Badi remained to remind people of the grandeur of their not so grand past. Khokan’s father earned just enough to have enough trouble with even Khokan’s school fees.

Khokan’s results for class 9th had just come out and he had expectedly failed. Khokan knew how much money his father had borrowed; he remembered vividly the tears in his father’s eyes when the head master had told him two months back that Khokan would not be allowed to sit for the final exams if the seven months outstanding school fees were not immediately paid. And what did Khokan do for his father? He failed the final exams.

He had already made the decision. He would not go back home. The next morning Khokan got down from the train in Akhaura junction, in the erstwhile princely state of Tripura. He slept there for the next three nights too. On the fourth morning the station master called him. Khokan saw the same police officer who had saved him from Dhiren Babu earlier, was sitting opposite to the guy who was apparently the station master.

“I clearly remember you Khokan. I love you too. I know you failed your exams but what I also know is that your father is very sad. This time though, not because you failed but because you ran away”.

“I did not run away. I just came far. Far away enough I thought.”
“I had a son, Khokan, all of eleven years. He died in a communal riot. Three years back. And I was not around at that time you see. However, I’ll tell you, go home. And have this money from me. No, no, it’s ok, pay me back when you grow up.”

Khokan had his first real food in almost four days. Watching the sun rise next day atop the lovely hill, Khokan decided not to return home. The return can wait, but money! The only way Khokan could help his father was by earning whatever little he could and if he went home, his father would never allow that. He sent home the two twenty rupee notes that the police officer gave him and he started for Agartala, the capital of Tripura.

Khokan worked in a hotel, then he worked in another hotel and then, guess what? Yet another hotel! Four years had past. He kept saving and sending money home.

At the age of nineteen Khokan left for Himalayas. The grandeur of the white was like a balm for his sore feet and soul. For two years he remained there as a disciple to a middle aged monk who was a man of extra-ordinary education. He learnt geometry, he read Byron in the nights. Himalayas introduced him to the freedom of art. Soon Khokan realized he had a morbid fascination for art and he spent days giving colours to his imagination. Khokan studied nature’s engineering and built a house made of rocks for the monk as a parting gesture.

Khokan came to Kashmir and the finality of beauty instilled in him a lasting feeling of calm that had eluded him all his short but dense life. Khokan learnt the tricks of road magic from a fakir and earned decent money by enthralling diverse audiences for some time. Khokan sporadically kept sending money to his home. The denominations constantly changed and so did the senders address.

Khokan learnt calligraphy and worked in a primitive kind of a newspaper as a hand-writer. The distress of the news items hurt his soul. He left the job and started to work in a quarry instead. With every blow of metal over rock he tried to cleanse his soul but the mind would not reconcile to the world. The struggle for freedom was in its peak but so were the communal riots that threatened to divide India into two, with all due or undue political provocation.
Khokan went to a pir and became his disciple. Being a hindu Brahmin and growing up in a Thakur-badi he knew the basics of Hinduism. But now he wanted to know what was different in Islam. He wondered, how could the gods be different.

He literally loved Koran and he realized the god probably if he ever existed, would definitely be the same person.
The pir taught him the basic scriptures and named him Rahim. One day when Khokan was taking bath, the pir realized he was a Brahmin. When Khokan was leaving the pir, the pir asked him to change his name to Rahimananda.
“Khokan, I respect Vivekananda.
But I don’t think it will be too big an insult to his name if you call yourself Rahimananda. After all we all are fighting the same battle.”
“Surely pir baba, I will call myself Rahimananda. But how does it matter anyway, you still call me Khokan and I haven’t even asked your name.”

Khokan’s mind was set with fire as he heard about people killing each other in the name of religion that they didn’t understand themselves. Khokan set out for his home, Kumilla. He met hundreds of beggars along the way whom he tried to convince to work.
“Do anything you can. Don’t beg. Don’t beg money, food, freedom. If need be, kill, even if kill yourself. But don’t kill yourself everyday.”

Khokan reached home. It was deserted. His family has long since left. His family house, grand at one time, was now given by the British Raj to the courtesans who performed for British Raj’s high ranking officials. Khokan tried to buy the house back with the money he had been sending home and was unattended. But when all his attempts failed, in the middle of the night, with the help of local rogues he freed all the captive courtesans who was mostly forcefully coaxed to take up the job. Before the sun rose the house was ablaze and a small footnote read in the deputy magistrate’s table “From a native Indian, an attempt at your kind of art”.

For over a decade he evaded capture as he has done all throughout his life. He taught the youth how to stitch clothes, prepare herbal medicine for the ailing, make bombs for the followers of INA, harvest rainwater for better yield.

Days before independence, in an interview to a local news paper he said “I don’t know where my parents are today. I don’t know if they are alive. But then I talk to you, I see these beautiful children playing in my garden, one of these days they are all going to be free. That’s what I read in your paper. But how does a population of a whole country become free in a day. Are you free? Why have you come here to take my interview? Would you not have come if my country was free? You might still come but I’m obliged to none to stay here one moment more. I promised a beggar in Udaypur I’ll attend his daughter’s marriage provided he stopped begging and actually managed to arrange his own daughter’s marriage. Why do people spend money in marriage? Anyways, he’s kept his word, what about me?”

Whether he kept his promise or not we’ll never know, just as we’ll never know why he was never seen after independence or for that matter never know whether we are even free.

-Subhasish Chakraborty.
It's my interpretation of my Dadu's(Mihir Chakraborty) story "RamRahimananda".

2006-09-22T04:35:00.000-07:00

The Fountainhead and looking ahead.
Changing Man – In 20 difficult years.

I’ve thought about it before also but somehow never thought enough to reach a definite conclusion and an end. When I was in my engineering then also I thought about it at length and I was convinced that the answer lied in the man himself. I’ve studied a lot of them including myself since then and the process itself assumed an independent direction than the purpose. Infinitesimally small and yet infinitely large number of events or experiences throughout the path has served as a spectacle so wide and varied and magnificent in itself that the perplex of it has taken its own toll and for almost six years I never realized the purpose which had necessitated the entire process. I’ve ended up admiring a man beyond all human boundaries and even tried a failed attempt at a movie on him. But probably man always manages to outgrow everything, even him-self.

Then it becomes August 2006 and I have to take a 15 day leave for dental treatments and I have to go home. On the day of my departure, I just read the first 15 pages of an e-book downloaded three months back. I always knew I would read this book. I didn’t know why. Only this, that I had to read it. Like I always knew when I first saw him that the movie had to come. But something had made me wait. Wait till that moment.
Outgrow the sense of life, to start questioning it. To wonder if life ever had the so called higher purpose! And then I read, only the first 15 pages, “The Fountainhead” by Ayn Rand and all was white.

I couldn’t read it on my journey home. Couldn’t read at home, either I or the dentist was busy! And I couldn’t wait to come back. It was like waiting for Pete Sampras to win the last four points of a grand-slam, like the title of RDB appear on the black silver screen with the wild madness of the beats of Rehman, My journey was a journey towards a dream, through a dream and I was back with the book in my hand.

I cried at places, but they were tears of the profoundest of happiness one can only think of. The sort of happiness you can’t contain inside you, which flows through every drop of blood that fills your heart. And at times I chocked. I was happy and I could not contain it, couldn’t prevent others from seeing it in me. Every word of the eloquent silence of Howard Roark and every brick over the other in the shaping felt like the music in the foggy sky of the blue morning. At nights I couldn’t sleep, so sad I became, at Roark’s fate. I prayed if the author never wrote beyond the first fifty pages. I couldn’t believe that the book could have been any more beautiful. I had read “The Alchemist” in College and I felt cheated. All the words and all the sentences I would ever write. The story I lived for four happy years and here they were written on paper by someone long ago. And I felt the same thing happening, all over again.
But this time I was wrong. The book only started getting better and better all along, with every fresh page it became more beautiful. And I realized in the moment of truth that if it was never written beyond those fifty pages I would not be writing this today, or I would have never believed that anybody actually could write beyond those fifty pages; that man is God.

Man has never seen God. I don’t think any body will ever. But here in Roark, Ayn Rand gave us public rights to not only see, but meet, know, appreciate and learn from God. I think it’s the most tangible feeling of God or for that matter, man that man has ever got.

It’s quite funny but after I finished the book I asked myself what would one do if God was granting him a meet? Reverence? It puts the worshipped above and us below. Pity? That puts us above and the other below. How a man of Fountainhead meets God could be best illustrated by the fable of Alexander the Great and Puru the emperor. After the victory of the battle as Alexander asks, “How do you expect me to treat you?” “Like an emperor would treat another” was Puru’s defiant answer.
It’s that answer that “The Fountainhead” teaches you to give when you ever happen to meet him. There are only few things that are selfish; thinking, working, breathing, eating, digesting etc. Because here, you need the self, yourself. All other things like ruling or being a gangster are selfless. Because that’s secondhand. You need the other first and you then. To rule, you need the citizen, to commit an act of violence, you need the victim. It’s always the other first and you then and hence secondhand. Ten brains can never think together. Ten brains can come to a common decision, but that’s an average, a compromise or a victory of the majority. Every new step of a thought process is essentially selfish, confined within a single head. We can only use the product of such processes. Like we can inherit wheel but not the hundred thousands of thoughts going on its inventors mind. A lot of what I wrote in the above paragraph is plain paraphrasing of Rand’s content.

Originality and the will of the soul is the principle behind all ingeniousness. Isn’t it pure madness to not step out of your home and still want to know what’s happening in Antarctica? But it’s the will behind it and the lack of judging, whether it’s reasonable or sheer blasphemy that makes it reasonable today or going to moon for that matter. Roark’s statement “ I inherit nothing from anybody, I don’t stand at the end of any tradition, in fact I might be standing at the beginning of one” is a confirmation of the same.

The fact that the justification and the purpose of an action starts and ends inside the action is probably the most forgotten one. “The work is its own reward”, probably anybody reading the book will realize that the above sentence was never meant to be the cliché it’s become. Probably to do justice to the essence of this statement, the person who said it should never have said it. Roark’s statement that “ I want you to know that I don’t exist for you” is probably the only way to stop the same essence from becoming a cliché.

A particular conversation that I don’t think I’ll ever forget is when Troohey asks Roark “ What do you think of me?” and Roark answers “But I don’t think of you”. That’s the indifference, the detachment that we have learnt over the years to be known as ‘spirituality’ and yet never understood it.

“I am a selfish person”. Roark probably illustrates whatever was left with his defense argument in the courtroom when he said “ Defense rests”.

The most tearful moment that I experienced in the book is the following paragraph when Dominique stands in front of the under construction ‘Wynand Building’ and sees that one thing.

--------------------------- The Fountainhead --------------------------------------

ON A spring day, eighteen months later, Dominique walked to the construction site of the Wynand Building.
She looked at the skyscrapers of the city. They rose from unexpected spots, out of the low roof lines. They had a kind of startling suddenness, as if they had sprung up the second before she saw them and she had caught the last thrust of the motion; as if, were she to turn away and look again fast enough, she would catch them in the act of springing.
She turned a corner of Hell’s Kitchen and came to the vast cleared tract.
Machines were crawling over the torn earth, grading the future park. From its center, the skeleton of the Wynand Building rose, completed, to the sky. The top part of the frame still hung naked, an intercrossed cage of steel. Glass and masonry had followed its rise, covering the rest of the long streak slashed through space. She thought: They say the heart of the earth is made of fire. It is held imprisoned and silent. But at times it breaks through the clay, the iron, the granite, and shoots out to freedom. Then it becomes a thing like this. She walked to the building. A wooden fence surrounded its lower stories. The fence was bright with large signs advertising the names of the firms who had supplied materials for the tallest structure in the world. "Steel by National Steel, Inc." "Glass by Ludlow." "Electrical Equipment by Wells-Clairmont."
"Elevators by Kessler, Inc." "Nash & Dunning, Contractors."

She stopped. She saw an object she had never noticed before. The sight was like the touch of a hand on her forehead, the hand of those figures in legend who had the power to heal. She had not known Henry Cameron and she had not heard him say it, but what she felt now was as if she were hearing it: "And I know that if you carry these words through to the end, it will be a victory, Howard, not just for you, but for something that should win, that moves the world--and never wins acknowledgment. It will vindicate so many who have fallen before you, who have suffered as you will suffer."
She saw, on the fence surrounding New York’s greatest building, a small tin plate bearing the words:
"Howard Roark, Architect"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And I feel I can’t write anything about the book after this anymore, it’s there for anyone who wants to read it.

So long, six years and 1635 words later, I come back to the original quest that has necessitated all the above words. Why did I need in the first place to tell you about the book? Well, it’s because unless you read it you won’t know what I’m telling, or for that matter, what I want. If I were to answer the last two questions, I would require to write a book at least as good as the one I’m referring and I honestly believe it’s quite beyond my faculties.

If we have to change the mankind what’s required is every possible child that takes admission in a school comes out being a Howard Roark.
You don’t have to do anything else. You don’t have to change the system.
The system will change itself. All you got to ensure is you keep pumping more Roark s in the system. Two of the strongest social systems that have ruled this planet are Capitalism and Communism or socialism or any of its variants. But you got to understand that the basis of all these social systems is essentially the same – money, or the disproportional of it. What’s money I ask, and the answer is a tool. Is it omnipotent? Well, almost, that’s why it has succeeded so long . But alas there’s one glaring inadequacy about it. The fact that the initial condition exists. A question, what’s the use of the tool if it’s not self replicating in the initial condition? Money is a commodity that reproduces itself only after it attains a critical mass. Money gives you the right buoyancy once it reaches that critical mass. But what do you get if you fail to attain that critical mass? That’s why so many people drown in India, or for that matter in any under-developed country.

So we arrive at the question that if money also seems not to be the alchemic tool then is there any? And the answer thankfully, oh I wonder how truly blissfully is that yes, such a truly obscene tool exists. Million dollar question, what is it? Education, it’s a free answer for you, just as the tool is free. Even free from that initial condition problem, for unlike money it’s free. Don’t you realize how strong it is? Money touched everything and there’s a MRP to everything there’s in this universe. Water, air, space, public transport. But education? Yes may be just like they never give you a Ferrari for free, they won’t give you Ferrari equivalent education for free too. But boy, you will attain the required critical mass riding on a public transport and then one day you can own a Ferrari, only if you cared to.

Then why education couldn’t establish itself as the true basis of the society? The answer is that the number of people who crossed the critical mass on education starting from initial condition is so voluminously outnumbered by the number of people who didn’t, it’s a skewed matrix.
So, what can be done to change the status quo? Somehow a very high number of people have to be made to cross the critical mass. That’s the chief motive of the new social structure that I want to build in another two decades. By ensuring the critical mass is getting attained, the basic flaw of the system will be overcome. Then, the education system will be requiring a soul change. An initiative more potent than any freedom struggle ever witnessed, better managed than IBM, Microsoft or the erstwhile Soviet Union – has to be actualized. I envision a very big chain of schools, say “The Fountainhead Institution” which will put highest attention to igniting the students and make them understand and practice the value system of the institution, which are essentially same as the name of it. Every student admitted in the chain of the schools has to be turned into a Roark and nothing less.

So, here I want to formulate the new foundation of a new society. I call it the Fountainhead society, and its tool thankfully is education and not money for a change.

There needs to be a very big chain of schools in India, which will have excellent quality of education. But along with conventional systematic education it’ll also have special faculty whose lives are governed by the philosophy of “The Fountainhead”. They will teach the students literature and they will be the ones who will play the pivotal role of the institute.
For a start every teacher will attend dramas or screening of the films aligned with our philosophy.
The teachers along with the students will be a part of the continuous spiritual enlightenment. In the process we will get more and more aligned people.

In ten years time the first batch from our school will come out being Fountainhead citizens.

We also need to have our own universities which will have the best faculty and career prospects. It’s important our students get a chance to change the systems at the highest paying mediocre places.
In the college years, our special faculty will play the most crucial role in bringing out fearless, true individuals.

I envision a silent revolution in the system twenty years from the implementation of our plan. A revolution of such impact that entire society will experience a holistic change. We have to ensure that we provide the continuous supply for the first ten batches coming out of our system. Once that’s done, we can sit back and enjoy. The supply will be self replicating.

To conclude, I’ll assert that I really believe that all I wrote is achievable and a step by step roadmap to reach the goal does exist. It might take us a decade to reach there I know, but I also know that we’ll be there right in time.

Will meet you some day.

Subhasish Chakraborty.

2006-09-22T04:18:00.000-07:00

DOR --- Celebrating A Film of A Life Time.

M.K.Gandhi once famously quoted “My life is my philosophy”. Well, love him or hate him, there can be no denying that this is how our life should be, a reflection and instantiation of our faith, our belief. How many of us live our lives this way? If it feels like a tall order then, at least we can let our work bear the proof of our thinking. But it’s with even fewer people that their work and they themselves speak the same language.

For one, Nagesh KuKunoor is an exception to this near obvious rule.
I had seen his films before. I had liked Iqbal and Tin Deewarein. But the filmmaker in the man has never really stood upto the man in him. His life has been a realization of the words of Paulo Coelho. Like the protagonist in Coelho’s ‘The Alchemist’ Kukunoor leaves his job in the US, draws out all his money and returns to India to become a filmmaker. Very few in his shoes would have survived to do a ‘Hyderabad Blues’, but for the man possessed, it was just a precursor of the things to come.

While I have absolute happiness for the way he has led his life, for his previous films I didn’t feel an equivalent admiration. But as art imitates life, it was just a matter of time before Kukunoor produced his masterpiece. The signs were visible in Iqbal and as I saw the first promos of ‘Dor’ I knew that Kukunoor has finally made it.

I saw ‘Dor’, and with the movie, he has taken mainstream Hindi cinema where it has never been before. Watching ‘Dor’ is an exhilarating experience. It’s one movie that Hollywood can’t make. Like Roark’s buildings in ‘The Fountainhead’ it doesn’t have one scene less or a single scene more. The movie is an absolute perfection, right from cinematography, to music, acting or direction. Cinematography, breathtakingly beautiful and colors in sync with the story. The music, so incalculably soulful, that the music alone can bring tears of happiness.
Ayesha Takya produces the best performance by a lead lady in Hindi cinema for a very long time. Gul Panag is so naturally convincing that I can’t believe she’s not the same way in her real life. The casting is irreplaceable and there’s not a single weak link in the whole movie.
Finally the story! What starts out to be a story in the lines of ‘The Alchemist’ and ‘The Zahir’ soon turns out to be a truly original and exulting story. The story is so bighearted and positive that even the most skeptic and discerning will end up in tears. The story is so engrossing that you forget that celluloid is a medium and you live the story to the full length and much beyond.

Dor is a movie of human relations; it’s a story of our heart. I do not want to write about any scene because I would much rather you unravel the peerless movie yourself but I must mention this that it’s end is the best ever that I have seen in Hollywood and Bollywood alike. And I would do grievous injustice to Shreyas Tapas who has beaten his own performance in his earlier movie Iqbal if I didn’t mention what an unbelievable performance he has put up in this movie.

Finally congratulations to Mr.Kukunoor, the narrative of the movie is simplicity exemplified. The one movie I unconditionally remembered after watching this movie was ‘Cast Away’. Kukunoor’s take on love as he portrays through Shreyas in the movie, though just a couple of liners, but says much more and for the first time expresses liberatingly love in it’s truest and rarest form. How I wonder, how even after four Karan Johar candy floss (or absolute mental torture in the name of love), I could still acknowledge this as I saw it.

So my parting remarks, book yourself a ticket for a movie of a life time.

Rating - ***** (Typical Filmy Review Style.)

Subhasish Chakraborty.

2006-08-01T06:11:00.000-07:00

First Step,Second Floor

The drops were dull and the sky.. leaky,

The colours sucked out

And the mind .. freaky.

Continuity and the purple patch,

Loneliness and satire's catch.

I looked around and the sprinkles kiss,

The blue mornings and ethereal bliss.

The hazy mist and darkness,

You spoke and as I confess,

Like a lily, blue and moist,

Like cold's soft that's morning's best.

Like an angel's tears as time went,

Like a forgotten tune over the time's tent.

Two strangers, two decades

Two vast ,different skies.

Green folliage, bright crescent

Amidst jeers and the smiles.

I look forward to the future,

The unknown that remains unspoke,

Amidst the colours, in the presence

Of the evanescent hope.

An unseen passage, an untold story

A soft music and a closed door.

Amidst symphony, charms carnatic,

First step and second floor.

2006-07-17T10:46:00.000-07:00

Remi

As I scraped through the airs of sulk,

Through the haze of the mist and the memoir's bulk.

Through the green, that green waters often so cold.

My mind though unbounded but still on hold.

One small cat and the laughters

Amidst the grim anguish of thy.

The dear dogs and thy actions

And the amazament of mine.

The vision cleared and the haze went,

And went away the glass,

The cold brook, the blue sky

And the daily hours of class.

The metro rail and the autorickshaw,

The lonely walks and the ice creams.

The bangla-band, west side,

Cell phone recharges and Your dreams.

Ran up the stairs,

I caught the flights,

And thought of You and the silly nights.

The days went and the end came,

As bade good bye to the college ways,

Your soft touch, Your child talks,

The feel good smile and the short walks.

The silent spring and the cold spray,

Misty nights and my mind away.

I dreamt days would just go like these,

I prayed just for once if You like me.

The days are now over,

As I look at the silence of the tree.

Through the myriad stars in the dark blue night,

Just one smile, Remi.

2006-07-17T10:35:00.000-07:00

Remi And I

Sweet, as the sweetness of the dainty scent,

As if like the small drops of mist,

In the mornings so blue.

You came and the light went,

As if I in reminiscence.

Your laughters and Your pranks,

The sweetness and afrank,

So trustful, so pure, so simple thou are.

And I stand here , looking at You,

Alone in this lonely world.

No whispers, no voices,

Amidst the silence unbroke.

You came and the light went

And I still in search of You.

But You do not know,

What it meant,

And You don't know,

That I stand alone.

In a corner, over a lonely cliff,

With the small drops of mist,

In the mornings that are so blue.

2006-07-17T09:19:00.000-07:00

Solitude
As I met someone, I was left with the feeling that
My entire world has become,
A culmination of music,
As if a storm of fragrance,
Whimsical has become my directionality
Even the winds have lost themelves.
As if it's an everlasting spell on my mannerism.

My enthusiasm for life is suddenly on a high,
As my heart is beating faster and faster.
Lyrics finds its spontinity through my lips,
As my eyes are filled with dreams,
Dreams, full of those moments passed by.

When someone had come,
My eyes lost the sight everything else,
How could I narrate what an eternal bliss
The moment offered!

The shining black hair, spread over
The exuberant face ,
As if like a glistening lily,
Through the haze of mist,
As if a moon, hidden behind the clouds,
And she's looking at You;
Like a fresh dawn, on the background of mystic darkness,
An ocean of dreams spread in front of my eyes,
Smiling and spreeing were those lively waves.

As if a tinker of a silver anklebell,

As if a glass vase falls and splinters fly away,

With a beautiful noise.

As if someone sings in a moon lit night,

As if someone just plays the guitar when all is quiet.

As if someone calls You from darkness.

How sweet were those words,

How magical were those meetings,

When I got to know how does the moon come down to ground,

If heaven were anywhere,

It must have been there.

It was she who told me,

It was she that made me understand,

The way we have met, we were to meet just in this fashion.

The way flowers have bloomed, they were designed to bloom so.

These are what, relations of a lifetime and beyond it

Are all about.

Whenever we would meet,

It were to be such a meeting.

My ears tasted the sweetness of necter,

My eyes found a colourful canvas.

When I opened my eyes,

When I found my consciousness,

I saw, I found and realised,

That, that charm, that delight ,

Was all but gone,

And my heart is again all alone.

Now no more do I find that added enthusiasm,

Nor do I wish for anything more.

Now the days and all my nights,

They are filled with pain,

An inexplicable sorrow.

Now I don't find anybody close,

I just have myself and my lost delight.

2006-05-24T06:04:00.000-07:00

Thy Magic.
It's been for a thousand years,
That I have been wandering,
Across this prosaic world of Yours!

From the deep blue Atlantic,
To the chasms of the Marina.
I've travelled a lot,
Along the Atlantis,
And the beaches of South Africa.

I'm tired to my spirit,
Unto the blue waves and white foam of life.
For a moment,
My heart found the realm of rhythm of peace,
In her green eyes,
That I've never ceased to please.

Her hair,
Like the darkness of eternity,
Her face,
As if the aesthetics of Ajanta,
Makes You feel,
Like the boatman,
Who, after an endless tiring blue,
Finally sees a patch of green.
I found her in the darkness,
As she asked,
"Where were You for such a long time?"

As the entire day is over,
Like the music of the drops of mist,
Arrives darkness.
The skylark brushes of the scent of Sun, from its wings.

As all the earthly lights are shut,
Here comes, the offing of the manuscript.
And then, as though for the saga and the sun,
The horizon flashes off ,
With the sparkles and the firefly.

As all the birds come back home,
All the rivers end this business of this life,
Arrives darkness and the magic,
The melody and her.

2006-05-24T05:54:00.000-07:00

Life Eternal.

Life oh, iternal,

Stop thy whimsical poetry.

Now thrash the hammer of prose ,

Over the so called prosaicity.

The charm of poetry,

Is hardly relevant now.

So dear poetry,

I bid good bye to You.

The world is prosaic,

With the inferno of hunger.

The milky moon ever so romantic,

Now looks like blistered chapati.

2006-05-24T05:42:00.000-07:00

You & Me.

I've read only one poem without a single word,

I've enjoyed soft music ,

While the going was so real hard.

In Your eyes did I find,

The magic undefined.

In Your smile did I see,

The dreams so surreal.

Your presence to my heart,

Sparks a flame so ethereal.

I've twisted, just a few logics

And the reasons are long lost,

But to long, for a lost reason,

Is also now but lost.

Many a times have I laughed,

Over the silly sublimity,

Sometimes though angry,

But so much sincerety.

I look back astounded,

Though far from standard,

Farther away from the classic though.

Yet somehow, I like the charm,

The delight is yet unlost.

And yet I looked into tomorrow,

Where I had to be alone.

And yet the future spoke,

In the presence of the present hope.

Both You and I,

With our minds opened and eyes closed.

Looked at the stars.

The sparkles and the foam,

And I found You,

to be never to be found,

Across the galaxies of innumerable flashes.

And yet, I stand here, amid darkness.

Thy memories, though fresh and green,

Your smile, still as heavenly bliss.

To remain the one single poem,

That I read without a word,

And sound a soft, so soft a music,

While the going was so real hard.