I never realized I had inadvertently admired this phenomenal woman, a woman of substance, Benazir Bhutto, subtly wanting her to win the looming elections again in Pakistan. Having achieved what is seemingly impossible - a leadership in the extremely male-chauvinistic and now-fanatical Pakistan, she was not only a visionary but also a revolutionary...braving the odds and having the soul to face any eventuality. Her assassination has exposed the level of political unrest prevailing in Pakistan now. It's only at times like this, we feel the whip-lash of extremism, a pungent reminder that our world is still so full of hatred. Her paternal grand-father's roots are in Haryana, India, before the partition. So, do the brave have to sacrifice themselves for being the front-runners of revolutionary change? Or do they have to lie low for fear of the back-lash that's ever-present in non-progressive societies? Maybe this is an ode to a woman of strength and true courage which millions of men lack in today's world to stand up for our rights. An unsung obituary...to an unsung leader. (pic courtesy: indiaabroad)
Can this ever happen? Although it seems like it's wishful thinking now, I think there is a possibility of that happening maybe two or three generations down. Well, I'm not saying this outta the blue, but look at the Yahoo article as on Dec.21st, 2007.
Nine mainly ex-East bloc countries on Friday tore down their borders to join a European zone allowing 400 million people to travel from Estonia in the east to Portugal in the west without showing a passport. "The free movement of people is one of the main rights of human beings," European Commission president Jose Manuel Barrosso said as he hailed the addition of the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia to 15 other states already in the Schengen Treaty zone. Many European leaders have welcomed the pulling down of internal frontiers as a new sign of the continent overcoming its Cold War division.
When one part of the world can tear down their boundaries like this, why can't other parts of the world be like it too. And I'm not just talking about India and Pakistan here, that was just to illustrate a point. Ofcourse it comes with its own fears and insecurities, but a belief and hope is all what we need to make it happen.
Germany's GdP police union warned Thursday that the extension of the Schengen zone eastwards could unleash a crime wave. The lifting of border controls with Poland and the Czech Republic in particular was "an invitation to criminals," union chief Josef Scheuring said. Many Austrians also fear higher crime, according to a poll released by ORF public television poll which said 75 percent of Austrians opposed the lifting of barriers. In Warsaw, the head of the EU's border watchdog, Frontex, Ilkka Laitinen, warned that illegal immigration would be the price Europe paid for Schengen expansion. Once people enter the zone, whether legally or otherwise, they would be free to move across all member states, he said.
Check out the response, where it's clear that people truly want to give peace, trust and understanding a chance.
Nevertheless, political leaders were eager to play down such fears. Schengen "is not about criminality, it is not about insecurity or fear. It is a bigger zone of peace, security and stability," the Austrian chancellor said. The expansion has taken years of preparation, with newcomers obliged to join the Schengen Information System (SIS), which provides police and customs officers with information about people, vehicles or goods. The 15 older signatories to the treaty were: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Sweden.
This is a very simple video of how you can be the change and do something about a situation instead of complaining and doing nothing about it. Anyone can be our teacher...so what are we waiting for??
Articipatory Music and other weird thingsby Jessica Corey-Butler
Last weekend Articipatory Music happened at the Olympia Community Free School during “A giant party for a better world,” the Love, Imagine, Network, Kindness (LINK) Symposium, an extension of “A World Beyond Capitalism,” The Third Annual International Multiracial Alliance Building Peace Conference. An activist folk music collective called Riotfolk performed and a Secret Café fund raiser was held, benefiting a residential permaculture project. And eight people created compositions, but not made out of notes and played on flutes and guitars.
Huh?
Articipatory Music was an idea originally born when it’s facilitator (and creator) Michael Gaiuranos attended a summer session with the School for Designing a Society, held on Patch Adam’s Gesundheit! Institute in West Virginia.
Initially, Gaiuranos thought he was going there to compose music with the experimental musicians associated with cybernetics.
The second time he attended the school, he recalls, “I knew I was aiming for something else.” He credits the school for “encouraging me to do weird things.”
As such, he feels his extrapolation of one exercise he had learned where participants composed responses, one inane and one an elaborate ideal, and then negotiated within larger groups.
“That was the really really really interesting part,” Gaiuranos remembers, adding, “How do you negotiate your Utopia?”
This is a part of the collection of articles under the title READINGS THAT MATTER TO ME which was suggested by the School for Designing a Society. This excerpt is from the article Designing Freedom by Stafford Beer 1. The Real Threat to “All We Hold Most Dear” The little house where I have come to live alone for a few weeks sits on the edge of a steep hill in a quiet village on the western coast of Chile. Huge majestic waves roll into the bay and crash magnificently over the rocks, sparkling white against the green sea under a winter sun. It is for me a time of peace, a time to clear the head, a time to treasure. For after all, such times are rare events for today’s civilized man. We spend our days boxed in our houses, swarming in and out of office blocks like tribes of ants, crammed into trains, canned in aeroplanes, locked solid in traffic jams on the freeway. Our unbiblical concern for what we shall eat, what we shall drink, and what we shall put on is amplified and made obsessional by the pressure to consume—way, way beyond the natural need. All this is demanded by the way we have arranged our economy. And the institutions we have built to operate that economy, to safeguard ourselves, protect our homes, care for and educate our families, have all grown into large and powerful pieces of social machinery which suddenly seem not so much protective as actually threatening. Mankind has always been in battle with his environment. But until quite recently in history his battles were on a reasonable scale, a human scale. For more on Designing Freedom click here.
After ages, I had an opportunity to step into a college and that too in a place where the culture, environment and people very different from what I was exposed to, almost a decade ago. Recollecting those old days of my college I went searching for the class room in the City college or New York, NYC, where our documentary film Wings of Evolution by Accessible Horizon Films was screened for the students pursuing their studies in Urban education in the U.S.
The response was very good as there were a lot of students who raised a lot a questions. Although addressing a group of people was very much new for me, handling the questions seemed to be easy because I had to explain what I did, unlike struggling to answer for curriculum based educational system.
One of the question that interested very much was "Would you make sequel for the documentary after 4 or 5 years?" I look forward to revisiting the school after few years and know how the students and the school evolved in the mean time.
Our special thanks to Carol for screening the documentary.
First of all, this is not a movie review although I'll write a little about the film itself as part of the film watching experience. Surprising and intriguing - are the words that best describe what I felt. Being an indie film fanatic myself, I couldn't bear some reactions to 'Evano Oruvan'. Context: Matinee show of the film in Pondicherry, 3rd day from release. Tons of people arrived at the almost 1000-seated theater, say about 95% of the seats had butts in them. Multiple reasons for the crowd - Sunday afternoon, Madhavan starrer, etc. Personally, I went because the director Nishikant Kamat is a friend of mine whom I had met at Los Angeles at IFFLA when our film 'Men of Burden - Pedaling Towards a Horizon' had its world premiere in April 2006. And also because I had seen the Marathi version of the film(Dombivli Fast) which had garnered several international awards and wanted to see how the Tamil version had shaped up. The film was pretty much the same in terms of its delivery like its Marathi version but I felt it a little lacking in the narrative and the dialogue was a little less audible with the other dominating sounds. (btw, Sangeetha's hot as hell) One of the thoughts that struck me was the reaction of the regular Tamil-movie-going population that made me think as the movie went along. For the fact that it was a break from the regular song-and-dance movie, I wanted the people to love the film because I personally believe in the power of the indie film to make one think as opposed to the factory churned movies by the Tamil/Hindi film industry. I wanted the indie filmmaker to succeed commercially, so bad. Every scene I wanted people to sit back quietly and listen to the dialogue and think, and look at the lighting and enjoy the subtleties of the scene and the composition. Those things never happened. But most of my expectations were shattered when many in the audience were jeering at the 'monotony' of the film. People were talking on cell phones, letting their phones ring, not paying attention to the meaning of the film, some even chatting and shouting that they were gonna get out, because there were no songs and fights and 'slow-mo' intros of the hero. For a few moments, I was irritated at their indifference to such a film but what could I do, the minority that I am, in the world where people go to the movies to fulfill their escapist fantasies. So I'm still wondering what is the world that I am living in, that is, with my sensibilities as an indie filmmaker and supporter with international cinema as my study guide...I'm left thinking where is that balance between art and commercial cinema. Ahh, the cliched question. And this, especially at a stage where I'm leaning towards commercial viability but still can't tear away from the indie scene. It's a tough road to be on.
Just the other day I got back to my Keyboard...not that I regularly play music...(though I listen to music a lot)...I was trying to play something I had composed a few months ago...I just couldn't remember the notes...so I kept trying to think of the tune...though I had vaguely caught the tune...I still couldn't play it...and.. and amazing thing happened...I closed my eyes and kept my fingers on the keyboard...expecting to just play it...and my fingers did the magic...the muscles remembered the tune...actually...how strange is the co-ordination...between the soul and the physical self... and so does the mind remember all the tiny details of an encounter...this always puts things in place for me that there is some underlying unifying connection... what can i say?? i am happy to be given this opportunity...of sensing this and integrating it with my perceptions...
If you have ever been to temples in South India, you might have bumped into(even literally) this magnificent creature of Indian mythology. The Yali, the lesser known protector of the Gods and the temples that house them. Even me, in spite of my countless visits to temples since birth, have never really paid attention to this mythical creation, that adorns almost every pillar, roof and corners of the fantastical world of temple architecture - an integral part of Hindu sculptural antiquity. They say the Yali protects the temples, roaming the rock confines of darkness and light. Although they look it, they are neither the Lion nor the Elephant - a potent combination of the two, the invincible dual-soul that makes the spine of every human tremble. The eerie-ness of its appearance can itself fascinate and shake your inner soul.
Yali (pronounced yaali) Tamil: யாளி is a mythical creature seen in many Hindu temples. These are also known as Vyalam or Sarabham, in Sanskrit. Yalis are often sculpted on the pillars of Hindu temples. Yali is a mythical lion, and it has been widely used in south Indiansculpture. Description and references to yalis is very old, but its depiction in the south Indian sculpture became prominent from the 16th century. Yalis are believed to be more powerful than the lion or the elephant.
These shots of the Yali were taken at the Aayiram Kaal Mandapam(The Thousand Pillar Hall) at the Meenakshi Amman Temple in Madurai, which was a frontrunner in the election for the modern seven wonders of the world for its architectural importance. By the way, in spite of its significance and wondrous appearance, the Hall has not been maintained by the authorities very well. Dusty sculptures and cobwebs galore. Damn the *&%king bureaucracy (partial source - wiki).
Whoa, the above is a picture of one of the first few firecrackers that I lit after a twelve-year hiatus from the festival of lights, Diwali, in Pondicherry. Even since I went to college, I was never at home to celebrate it. And every year, the memory of the festival was kinda ebbing away, until this year on Nov.9th. One big difference that I notice over the years is that, the Pre and Post-Diwali days are pretty quiet now, compared to those days when firecrackers were heard even a month before/after the fest. Dunno what created this change. At least, it's somewhat a relief that now child labor is banned...because manufacturing fireworks in the 90s were largely done by children working in the factories. Anyway, this Diwali day, we did burst quite a number and kids from my street were all jubilant about it. After I inhaled the smoke from the firecrackers, I was transported back to those days where we used to wait without sleep to light the first Lakshmi Vedi (big fat firecracker). Man, how I wish! Sigh... Pondicherry has changed a lot. Well, more on that later.
Living takes place in the now, in the moment in which it is taking place. Living is a dynamics that disappears as it takes place. Living takes place in no time, without past or future. Past, present and future are notions that we human beings, we observers, invent as we explain our ocurrence in the now. We invent past as a source of the now or present, and we invent future as a dimension that arises as an extrapolation of the features of our living now, in the present. As past, present and future, are invented to explain our living now, time is invented as a background in which past, present and future can take place. But life, living, takes place as now, as a flow of changing processes. To say this, of course, is a manner of explaining the experience being now in which we find ourselves as we ask for the explanation of our living, of time, . . . Language I have maintained, and I think shown, in other publications, that language is a manner of flowing in living together in recursive consensual coordinations of behavior, and that languaging consists in operating in a network of consensual coordinations of consensual coordinations of behaviors, in a relational dynamics of consensual coordinations of behaviors that is constitutively open to endless recursions1. Moreover, we are, as living systems, structure determined systems, and nothing external to us can determine or specify what happens in us. So, the external agents that at any instant impinge upon us can only trigger in us structural changes determined in us by our structure at that instant. As a result, all that we do at any instant arises in us determined in us by our structure in that instant, either as a result of our closed internal structural dynamics, or as a result of the modulation of that internal structural dynamics by the structural changes triggered in us by the interactions in which we participate. In these circumstances, we would have to say that we are constitutively ”blind” to the intrinsic features of the medium as an independent reality , if to speak about the intrinsic features of an independent reality had any sense. This situation has the following basic consequences for understanding what we do and for more click here
Hey everybody...we will be having two consecutive screenings of WINGS OF EVOLUTION, one on Dec 5th (Wednesday) and one on 6th (Thursday) in one of the classes of the City University of New York...and this is through a friend of mine Carol Huang who teaches there (the screenings will be in her class and we will have a Q&A session after that)...this week with Carol's help, we will be visiting one of the directors of the Asian American/Asian Research Institute to request for another screening of Wings of Evolution... We need to spread the word so that humans all over the world are somehow inspired to take children off the streets and care for them and give them the education they deserve! Let us unite the children of the World!
I recently got the book of collected poems by Bella Dizhur from STRAND. The intense words immediately drew me into the poet's world! How many humans have to struggle to make their voices heard? Some of them do succeed... while a vast number of them are pushed to the obscurity by the cruel winds of humans' prejudiced judgments...or...you-know-what... Well, the introduction was given by Vasily Aksyonov... Bella Dizhur for many years, a member of the Sverdlovsk branch of the USSR's Writer's Union, and she published several collections of Poems. From the outside, all of this appears to be an absolutely normal. privileged, professional literary life. But actually, and i know this from personal experience, this life consisted of a multitude of petty insults, nasty carping; and sometimes, a truly "endless number of humiliations" unfolded before the poet. Many of Dizhur's poems were unpublished in the Soviet Union. She was denounced so much for her poetry and lived seven years in Yurmala as a refusnik, a person denied an exit visa. She was finally allowed to emigrate to the U.S. in 1987, at the age of 84. I would like to share some of her poems which were translated in English with you all...
From the Notebook - URBAN DESERT Lie for now, notebook, deep inside the desk; Lie pretend to be without tongue. My journey is long - I am not looking for a short one. So keep safe my truthful voice!
In a large universe a small world. Not a room; just a corner. A book by the window, a view of half-sky, A crust of bread, a glass of wine And solitude. Such is the lot Of someone who keeps to himself.
But this is a fate I do not fear. Another stands with an outstretched hand And from my window, a view of half-sky, bread, a book and a glass of wine. And all of the universe moves towards me.
There is a saying in Tamil..."Yaam petra inbam, peruga ivvaiyagam!" meaning... "Sharing the happiness I experienced, with the Universe!"
Autumn is here... you might just mistake this piece of Naure's art for a disastrous forest fire!! Take some time out and enjoy the art...instead of sitting amidst four walls of your house or office!! and for the humans who have evergreen trees around them...well, i will fill you in with the moments as much as i can!
hello my dear friends...i know it has been a lonnnnngggggg time...well, i was not gone completely...i kept you all in my thoughts...while still feeding my procrastination and laziness...and then finally got tired of it...and here i am! You must be wondering what I have been doing for all this time? I was busy doing all these... Reading and writing Shayari (which means poetry in Hindi) Watching a lot of movies... Thinking endless thoughtless repeatedly... Enjoying the Sunset and the river view... Hiking... Climbing mountains... Trying some adventure sports... and lots more... but i have missed coming to this space... and now that i am back...i promise to share a lot more...a lot more than i did before!!!
Well, in spite of the film's theme, we've waited too long to put this up on Youtube. But never mind. This is a short film that we shot towards the end of 2006(actually around the end of October) and finished it too. It didn't really make the festival circuit but it's kind of a little pet project just for kicks. The lead actress is Ragini Parmar who I'm sure you'd admit is a little too cute. She was tireless in her efforts, we made her walk like a million times across the streets. The peanut peddler is Patrick Fernicola who kinda fit the role like a lock and key. We shot the film in one day from 5:30 a.m till 4:30p.m in Hoboken. It was freakin' cold. Cute little city(for non-north-east folks) along the Hudson, kinda a substitute for NYC I must say, at least for this theme. Enjoy! Logline Wait no more is about you and your psyche and how your "worldly self" ignores the simple intentions of the "self within". If you don't take chances with the self within, what would be at stake? Your raison d'etre or life itself?
I never realized I had inadvertently admired this phenomenal woman, a woman of substance, Benazir Bhutto, subtly wanting her to win the looming elections again in Pakistan. Having achieved what is seemingly impossible - a leadership in the extremely male-chauvinistic and now-fanatical Pakistan, she was not only a visionary but also a revolutionary...braving the odds and having the soul to face any eventuality.
