Hussain's Pain India's Gain

A section of the intelligentsia is troubled by M F Hussain's acceptance of Qatari citizenship, a situation supposedly aggravated by our government's disinterest to bring him back. They feel we have lost a great artist. Whether Hussain deserved the kind of backlash for his paintings, and whether the methods of the protesters were legitimate is not the point of this post. My point is rather pragmatic. What did we lose?

So Hussain will continue to paint from wherever he is, and if he is the master painter they proclaim him to be, he is sure to attract attention and awards and whatever it is that painters are honored with. With the threat of the so-called Hindu fundamentalists out of the window, he can confidently push his envelope and paint Gods, Goddesses, Demons, Angels, maybe even humans in whatever manner, and by the simple rule of probability, one of them is bound to hit the bullseye. Should that happen, our media will promptly claim credit highlighting his Indian association, for he learnt and practiced the art here. This is more than what can be said about certain other artistes in whose success we brazenly bask. The most recent instance being a website that has proclaimed that Desis have taken international TV by storm. Notwithstanding that "Desi" is generally used in derogatory sense, none of the actors featured in this list have ever lived or practiced in India, to the best of my knowledge. Its not too far fetched to imagine that the media will claim credit for a novelist, who on a flight from Shanghai to SF, happened to scratch his behind at the precise moment that the flight entered the Indian airspace, and went on to write a bestseller. If thats a stretch, what about the coverage of Amla's Gujju connections following his brilliant performance in the test series?

The way I see it, Hussain will now paint all he wants, and by extension, will come up that one odd monstrosity which will thrill the art world while we will sit back and rejoice that India has produced a master painter. What am I missing?

The Great Indian Laughter Challenge

Even as you thought that the race for the best comedy show was between Star and Sony, the real battle was brewing between Hindi and English news channels. The Aaj Taks and India TVs raced ahead and have become synonymous with wholesome humor. The English news channels were groping for direction though, which was definitively provided by one Mr. Rajdeep Sardesai, and ably carried forward by the likes of Arnab Goswami and Barkha Dutt. I have been followingthe latter two recently, and their shows are a blast. Their brand of humor is as different as chalk and cheese, but the effect is undeniable. Thanks to a fortunate coincidence of ad slots and the fact that the two channels are next to one another, I was treated to a non-stop hour of their performance last night, and my stomach still hurts.

Arnab is clearly after a world record. He wants to host a debate where no panelist gets a word in. In fact, he already has the record for not allowing any panelist to complete a single sentence. His acts have me rolling on the floor laughing. Be it his frustration at not getting a straight response or his repeated assertion that India tunes into his show for answers, he is a blast. And I thought he was the definite numero uno until I stumbled upon Barkha Dutt.

Barkha’s humor is more subtle and situational. She patiently lets her guests finish their sentences, and sincerely follows up with a question, which is inevitably the same as her first one, or in the case that it is not, then totally irrelevant to the topic at hand. The poor panelist falls into the trap of repeating his stance, which only encourages Barkha repeat her question one more time. After two or three such rounds, she is bored and moves on to repeat this game with the next panelist. When she is done playing with all the panelists, she returns to the first one and, of course, poses the exact question she had begun the show with. You could see some panelists visibly struggle to kill their sense of déjà vu.

News channels were last on the list of my TV-viewing preference list and God knows I have missed on some fun. It’s time to undo the damage.

Right, Wrong and Correct

Before the deluge of budget news yesterday, all eyes were on the meeting of foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan. Our nation has a certain view and position on issues ranging from the arrest of 26/11 perpetrators to what is the best and lasting solution to the Kashmir problem. It must have been plenty obvious by now that Pakistan doesn't see things the same way as we do. So to expect that Pakistan will be overawed by our gesture to talk and will change its views overnight is sheer insanity. If our ability to persuade was so magical, and if Pakistan was willing to objectively approach matters, then the impasse would have been resolved long ago. As the editor of The Dawn pointed out on Newshour, we are sitting on the opposite sides of the table, for God's sake!

It is now too late to sit in judgement and say who's right and who's wrong. 50 years back maybe that was an option, but not anymore. To even make an attempt to try and get Pak to see our side of the story is a waste of time and resources. The only way forward is to acknowledge the current situation and evaluate options as alternatives to status quo and not the originally stated positions of the two countries. Agreeing to LoC as the international border must not be evaluated against whether Kashmir rightfully belonged to us or Pakistan; rather, it should be compared to the constant firing that currently takes place, and will continue if no resolution is reached. Some concessions have to be made by both sides.

Today's HT has a piece by Gopalkrishna Gandhi on Prez K R Narayanan, who once asked the Mahatma that the struggle often faced by humans is not so much to choose between the right and the wrong, the truth and the untruth, but rather to choose between one right and another right, and one truth and another truth. Apparently, he did not receive a direct answer, even from the Mahatma. It is easy to distinguish the right from the wrong, but the right option is not always the correct one.

Google cant Foundem

A recent lawsuit against Google questions the legitimacy of its blockbuster algorithm that ranks search results, and whether there is any human intervention at all in how results are displayed. There are suggestions that Google has, and uses, a system to penalize or blacklist certain sites, which are then relegated beyond the 3rd or 4th page, thus drying up virtually all traffic. When such sites happen to be search engines themselves, things get murkier. The recent accusation of Foundem may be an isolated incident, but there are certain developments that do appear ominous.

Google's innocuous Universal Search that not only returns websites based on search phrases, but also retrieves relevant images, maps, blogs etc., may have put websites such as labnol or mapquest out of business. When searching for a city or town, I remember Google showing links to Mapquest and yahoo maps, but not anymore. The feature is definitely convenient to the user, in the same manner that bundling Internet Explorer free with Windows was.

Players like Google and Apple have been making noises forever about Microsoft's unfair practices, but some of their own actions are disturbingly similar. I cant recall the last time I typed a URL in my address bar directly. Even when I know the URL, it's easier to google half the website name and click through to the website. Thats laziness, of course, but it also shows my trust in Google - that it will fetch me what I am looking for, and usually as the first result. I doubt if I am alone in reposing complete trust in Google. So when more than three-quarters of the world uses Google to search, the results displayed can potentially influence people's actions, including purchase decisions, which means money. And there's the rub. With iPods having the insane marketshare that they do, and their ability to communicate only with iTunes, what is available for purchase, and prominently displayed, on iTunes can affect purchases. Apple's recent decision to take down inappropriate software from its iPhone app store is another example. Amazon can drive or kill book sales simply by adding or deleting a "keyword" to the book description.

This is not a new phenomenon limited to websites. This is true of large players in other industries, and is akin to what Toyota is going through. In an open economy, you are allowed to make defective and dubious products. Its not a crime; customers will simply dump you and switch for better ones. But once you establish certain quality standards and gain customer trust, you automatically take on the responsibility to maintain that. The GEs, Boeings and Cokes of the world cant make the kind of mistakes that a mom-and-pop business can. It may seem unfair, but as the saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility.

Emotional Accidents

Please do not read this post if you are easily offended.

The death of a 10-day old in a stone pelting incident in Baramulla is definitely disturbing. No doubt, it was an accident, but the media coverage would make one wonder whether the protesters meant to commit a cold-blooded murder. We have all seen and been in situations, where the rush of adrenalin makes us lose our bearings. A great office party with one witty joke after another might suddenly turn sour when someone goes overboard with a risque comment. Or a game of cricket where the batsman tries to hit one too many ball out of the park and gets out. We all get carried away. But there was a cold-blooded murder in the valley recently. Although the matter was as widely publicized, the sympathy appeared muted, even polite, in comparison to the current outrage. I refer to the BSF's killing of a 16-year old schoolboy. If you detach yourself from the emotions, the reaction is devoid of logic.

A youth or a middle-aged person has responsibilities toward parents, spouse and children. Having lived much longer in the world, he is bound to have stronger emotional ties with people around him. The loss of such a life often leaves a humongous void within the family that is often impossible to fill. Sometimes, the family simply crumbles after such an incident. Whereas a 10-day old has hardly spent any time here and is free of any emotional connects. The damage is limited to the parents, and the immediate family to an extent. Every other factor - be it shattered dreams, parental love, loss of innocent life - applies to both cases. Logically, the magnitude of loss has to be much smaller compared to losing a 10-year old child and even smaller compared to losing 20-year child and so on (a bell curve, with the magnitude of loss falling after 50 or 60 I guess). I am not even talking about selling this logic to the young couple who lost their kid. With their expectations and dreams shattered, to them, it might as well be the end of the world. I am only questioning our reaction - people not directly impacted by such incidents.

So why does our emotion run high when infants and kids are robbed of their lives? Why do accidents involving school buses evoke an outrage, but a bus with a marriage party, albeit overloaded, that falls into a ravine doesnt evoke the same sense of shock? I can only conjecture that when we see helpless people hurt or killed, we react much more strongly because we see the situation as completely unfair. When the people involved are grown up adults, we assume they have some control of the situation regardless of how helpless they actually might be. Subconsciously, we patronize the weak and detest the strong.

Say a truck has run over an animal on the highway. Will we feel more sorry if it was a cat than if it were a tiger? I'd say yes.