artist

The Mitr

Escher on Escher

Recently (read some years back) I read Escher on Escher – Exploring the Infinite. This book gives an insight on how Escher viewed himself and his work. How were his social relations with his family, friends and admirers. Fame and appreciation of his work by a wide circle of people came late to Escher, when he was past his 50s. Escher was a perfectionist, he had almost perfected his craft of making woodcuts, taking it to its limits
as far as his hands and eyes could take. But that was the mere mechanical part of his work, the real part was the idea of the graphic print. The ideas it seems struggled a lot in his mind, making the print itself was the easier part. The ideas came to him, but later he strived for something entirely new, and succeeded.

On of the part of the book “Lectures That Were Never Given” has notes from the talks that Escher was supposed to give in the US of Amerika, but could not because of health reasons. Other include translations of his articles that appear in many of the art magazines and journals. These articles tell us how Escher looked at the work he was doing, and his feelings about other artists works. But he was the most critical about his own work.

This is what he had to say about the ancient cave-painters:

# 12
But his will and his capacity to produce pictorial images were at the least just as strong as ours. Perhaps even stronger because he was in direct contact with nature, which we usually approach by the way of a cultural and educational system that, if not barring the was, certainly obstructs it for us.
# 13
Illustrations are consequently for the graphic artists (mostly) an indispensable link in the chain of activities, but never his goal. That is probably the reason why a graphic artists cannot suppress a feeling of dissatisfaction when presented with an illustration as end result. You see, I don’t give reasons, only statements.
# 15
The above-mentioned elements of repetition and multiplication is /not/ in conflict with this. On the contrary, order is repetition of units; chaos is multiplicity without rhythm.

Escher also talks about the influence Bach’s music had on his work. He says after hearing Bach’s Goldberg variation in a concert (this is from the acceptance address for an award which he gave to city of Hilversum):

# 20
That was to Bach to whom I have pledged my heart and my intellect at the same time. Such beauty, of composition as well as of execution, cannot be possibly expressed in words.

Maybe same is also true of Escher’s own work. And the inspiration that he got from Bach was at a deep level, maybe if Bach was a contemporary, Escher wouldn’t have felt that lonely in his life. He says:

# 20
Bach’s music may perhaps provide the occasion to say a few words about my work. I had better not expound on the affinity I seem to have discovered between the canon in polyphonic music and the regular division of a plane into figures with identical forms, no matter how striking it is to me that the Baroque composers have performed manipulations with sounds similar to the ones I love to do with visual images.

Allow me to say only that Father Bach has been a strong inspiration to me, and that many a print reached definite form in my mind while I was listening to lucid, logical language he speaks, while I was drinking the clear wine he pours.

And this is what he has to say about his own work:

# 21
I can’t keep fooling around with our irrefutable uncertainties. It is, for example. a pleasure knowingly to mix up two- and three-dimensionalities, flat and spatial, and to make fun of gravity. Are you really sure that a floor can’t also be a ceiling? Are you definitely convinced that you will be on a higher plane when you walk up a staircase? Is it a fact as far as you are concerned that half an egg isn’t also half an empty shell?
Such apparently silly questions I pose first to myself (because I am my own first observer), and then to others who are kind enough to come and observe my work. It is satisfying to note that quite a few people enjoy this kind of playfulness, and that they aren’t afraid to modify their thinking about rock-solid realities.

And about art itself and the feelings that it manifests in us he says:

# 21
To tell you the truth, I find the concept of “art” a bit of dilemma. What one person calls “art” is often not “art” for another. “Beautiful” and “ugly” are old-fashioned concepts that are only rarely brought into the picture nowadays – maybe rightfully so, who is to say? Something repellant, something that gives you a moral hangover, something that hurts your eyes and ear can still be art!

And he says about himself:

# 21
So I am a graphic artist with heart and soul, but the rating “artist” makes me a feel a little embarrassed.

Next in the book are the “Lectures That Were Never Given”. These are the notes accompanying the slides, the text tells us about the technique and thought and thinking about the work. Escher has interesting way of putting thoughts about his work and the creatures it contains. He suggests to us that the creatures have ideas and behavior of their own.

# 30
On Horsemen and Symmetry Work 67 (glide reflection) The left horsemen, as a creature, was exceptionally obliging and willing. It happens rarely that my subjects so meekly allow themselves to be portrayed in detail.

# 31
While drawing, I feel as if I were a spiritualistic medium, controlled by creatures that I am conjuring up, and it is as if they themselves decide on the shape in which they like to appear.

And the regular division of the plane is a theme which he calls “unusual mania” and its origins.

# 30
I often have wondered at this, for an artist, unusual mania of mine to design periodic drawings. Over the years I made about a hundred fifty of them. In the beginning, that was some forty years ago, I puzzled quite instinctively, apparently without any well-defined purpose. I was simply driven by the irresistible pleasure I felt in repeating the same figures on a piece of paper. I had not yet seen the tile decorations in Al-hambara and never heard of crystallography; so I did not even know that my game was based on rules that have been
scientifically investigated.

And on interpretations of his work, in which people find what they want, religious, spiritualistic and philosophical messages he says this:

# 47 (Reptiles)
I never had any moralizing or symbolizing intention with this print, but some years later one of learned customers told me that it is a striking illustration of the doctrine of reincarnation. So it appears that one can even be symbolizing without knowing it.

And on the self-portraits that he has something to say to us regarding ourselves, ( involving a bit of narcissism, I think) :

# 60 (Hand with Reflecting Sphere, Three Spheres II)
Your own head, or more exactly the point between your eyes, is the center. No matter how you turn or twist yourself, you can’t get out of that central point. You are immovably the focus of your world.

# 61 (Eye)
I choose the features of Good Man Bones, with whom we are all confronted whether we like it or not.

And on Print Gallery, (one of my personal favourites) he says:

# 67 (Print Gallery)
Thus having let our eyes rove in a circular tour around the blank center, we come to the logical conclusion that the young man himself also must be part of print he is looking at. He actually sees himself as a detail of the picture; reality and image are one and the same.

This is something that I can relate to. The life we observe is ultimately the print and we are actually observing ourselves in life as in young man in the Print Gallery. And on perspectives and absurdities of logical opposites he says:

# 73 (Another World)
It may seem absurd to unite nadir, horizon and zenith in one construction, and yet if forms a logical whole.

In form and function the idea of logical opposites forms, much of the basis for Escher’s work. Visit to Al-hambara had a special significance for Escher. Here he found that the Moorish artists had explored the regular division of
the plane, but he lamented that they restricted themselves to abstract geometric forms and not to the anything that is present in nature which he himself felt an urge for.

# 83
After that first Spanish trip in 1922, I became more and more intrigued by the fitting together of congruent figures according to the above-mentioned definition and by the effort to shape this figures in such a way that they would evoke in the observer an association with an object or a living form of nature. (emphasis in original)

# 88
With regard to my present work, this proves to what extent I feel liberated from the graphic arts simply for the sake of graphic arts.

About the graphic artist with which he identified:

# 90
The graphic artist, however, is like a blackbird that sings in the treetop. Again and again he repeats the song, complete in every copy he makes. The more copies people ask him to make, the better he likes it. He hopes the wind will spread his leaves over the Earth, the farther the better – not like the dry leaves in autumn but like feather-light seeds capable of germinating.

And I think Escher has attained this goal which he describes above very well. His works have germinated into new ideas to a new era of graphic artists and others. And on the old techniques of graphic art:

# 90
Consequently, the emphasis falls unjustifiably on process, and one hardly takes into account the actual goal of all that drudgery. No matter how much joy the exercise of a noble craft can bestow, let us not forget that it is a means of repeating and multiplying. Repetition and multiplication – two simple words. The entire world perceivable with the senses will fall apart into meaningless chaos if we could not cling to these two concepts.

On him being called an “expert.”

# 92
A feeling of helplessness comes over me now that I am faced with describing what is meant by this designation. To my unending amazement, however, this is apparently so unusual and in a sense so new that I am unable to identify any “expert” in addition to myself who is sufficiently comfortable with it to give a written explanation.

 

# 93
By doing this they have opened the gate that gives access to a vast domain, but they themselves have not entered. Their nature is such that they are more interested in the way the gate is opened than in the garden that lies behind it. Sometimes I think I have covered the entire domain and trod all the paths and admired all the views. Then all of a sudden I find another new way, and I taste a new delight.

On his explorations of the plane and its drawings

Because what fascinates me, and what I experience as beauty, is apparently considered dull and dry by others. A plane which one must imagine as extending without boundaries in all directions, can be filled or divided into infinity, according to a limited number of systems, with similar geometric figures that are contiguous on all sides without leaving “empty spaces.”

We don’t to master everything required to construct something in order to appreaciate it.

# 94
Just as I do not consider it necessary to know all the tricks of the graphic trade in order to appreciate prints, neither do I believe that one must master in detail the theoretical fundaments of division of planes in order to learn to value this and to accept that it can exert an inspiring influence, as I have experienced.

On the unending nature of many of creations.

# 95
I see it as a means of representing timelessness, the dimensionlessness, that existed before life commenced and that will return when life again ceases.

On the dynamic nature of his drawings and comparison to film and reading of a book.

# 98
The series of static representations achieved a dynamic character due to the time span that was needed to follow the whole story. In contrast to this cinematographically projected images of a film which appear one in the after the other on an immovable place, onto which viewer’s eye remains directed without moving. In the case of both the medieval story in images and the developing pattern of a regular filling of a plane, the images are located next to each other, and timing becomes a factor in the movements made by viewer’s eye as it follows the story from image to image. In this way, holding a strip of film in hand, one observes it image by image, reading a book is also done more or less in the same manner.

 

# 99
Is it possible to make a representation of recognizable figures that has no background? To see only a “figure” is not conceivable because something that manifests itself as a figure, that is, as “thing to be seen,” is limited, whether it is real or not. A limitation also means a separation with regard to something else. That “something else” is the background from which the figure (or object sensation) frees itself.

 

# 100

Imagination and inventiveness, not to mention tenacity, are indispensable for this work. They come to us from “somewhere out there” but we can facilitate their path to us and encourage and
cultivate them in various ways. Among others I found one in writings of Leonardo da Vinchi. This is
the fragment, translated as best I can:

“When you have to represent an image, observe some walls that are besmeared with stains or composed of stones of varying substances. You can discover in them resemblances to a variety of mountainous landscapes, rivers, rocks, trees, vast plains and hills. You can also seen in them battles and human figures, strange facial features and items of clothing, and an infinite number of other things whose forms you can straighten out and improve. It is the same with crumbling walls as it is with the sound of church bells, in which you can discover every name and every word you want.”

Despite all this conscious and personal effort the illustrator still gets the feeling that some kind of magic action is taking place as he moves his lead pencil over the paper. It seems as if it isn’t he who determines the shapes but rather that the simple, flat stain is guiding or impeding the movements of the hand that draws, as if the illustrator were a spiritualistic medium. In fact, he is amazed, not to say taken aback, at what he sees appearing under his hand, and he experiences with regard to his creations a humble feeling of gratitude or of resignation depending on whether they behave willingly or reluctantly.

 

The Mitr

Cosmetic Intellectuals (+ IYI)

In the last few years, the very connotation of the term intellectual has seen a downward slope. Such are the times that we are living in that calling someone an “intellectual” has become more like an insult rather than a compliment: it means an idiot who doesn’t understand or see things clearly. Now as the title of the post suggests it is this meaning, not the other meaning intellectuals who know about cosmetics. Almost two decades back Alan Sokal wrote a book titled Intellectual Impostures, which described quite a few of them. In this book, Sokal exposed the posturing done by people of certain academic disciplines who were attacking science from a radical postmodernist perspective. What Sokal showed convincingly through his famous hoax, is that many of these disciplines are peddling out bullshit with no control over the meaning contained. Only the form was important not the meaning. And in the book, he takes it a step forward, showing that this was not an isolated case. He exposes the misuse of the technical terms (which often have precise and operational meanings) as loose metaphors or even worse completely neglecting the accepted meaning of those terms. The examples given are typical, and you cannot make sense of what is being written. You can read, but cannot understand. It makes no sensible meaning. At this point, you start to doubt your own intelligence and intellectual competence, perhaps you have not read enough to understand this complex piece of knowledge. It was after all written by an intellectual. Perhaps you are not aware of the meaning of the jargon or their context, hence you are not able to understand it. After all there are university departments and journals dedicated to such topics. Does it not legitimise such disciplines as academic and its proponents/followers as intellectuals? Sokal answered it empirically by testing if presented with nonsense whether it makes any difference to the discipline. You are not able to make sense of these texts because they are indeed nonsensical. To expect any semblance of logic and rationality in them is to expect too much.
Nassim Taleb has devised the term Intellectual Yet Idiots (the IYI in the title) in his Incerto series. He minces no words and takes no bullshit. Sokal appears very charitable in comparison. Taleb sets the bar even higher. Sokal made a point to attack mostly the postmodernists, but Taleb bells the cats who by some are even considered proper academics, for example, Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker. He considers entire disciplines as shams, which are otherwise considered academic, like economics, but has equal if not more disdain to several others also, for example, psychology and gender studies. Taleb has at times extreme views on several issues and he is not afraid to speak of his mind on matters that matter to him. His writings are arrogant, but his content is rigorous and mathematically sound.

they aren’t intelligent enough to define intelligence, hence fall into circularities—their main skill is a capacity to pass exams written by people like them, or to write papers read by people like them.
But there are people who are like IYIs, but don’t even have the depth of the content or knowledge of IYIs. They are wannabe IYIs, all form no conent. They are a level below IYIs. I term such people as cosmetic intellectuals (cosint). We have met them before: they are the envious mediocre and the ones who excel in meetings. The term cosmetic is used in two senses both as adjectives. The first sense is the Loreal/Lakme/Revlon fashion sense as given from the dictionary entry below:

cosmetic

  • relating to treatment intended to restore or improve a person’s appearance
  • affecting only the appearance of something rather than its substance

It is the second sense that I mean in this post. It is rather the substance of these individuals that is only present in the appearance. And as we know appearance can be deceiving. Cosints appear intellectuals, but only in appearance, hence the term cosmetic. So how does one become a Cosint? Here is a non-exhaustive list that can be an indicator (learn here is not used in the deeper sense of the word, but more like as in rote-learn):

  1. Learn the buzzwords: Basically they rote learn the buzzwords or the jargon of the field that they are in. One doesn’t need to understand the deeper significance or meaning of such words, in many cases just knowing the words works. In the case of education, some of these are (non-comprehensive): constructivism, teaching-learning process, milieu, constructivist approaches, behaviorism, classroom setting, 21st-century skills, discovery method, inquiry method, student-centered, blended learning, assessments, holistic, organic, ethnography, pedagogy, curriculum, TLMs. ZPD, TPD, NCF, RTE, (the more complicated the acronyms, the better). More complicated it sounds the better. They learn by association that certain buzzwords have a positive value (for example, constructivism) and other a negative one (for example, behaviorism) in the social spaces where they usually operate in, for example, in education departments of universities and colleges. Not that the Cosints are aware of the deeper meaning of there concepts, still they make a point of using them whenever possible. They make a buzz using the buzzwords. If you ask them about Piaget, they know the very rudimentary stuff, anything deeper and they are like rabbits in front of flashlight. They may talk about p-values, 𝛘2 tests, 98.5 % statistical significances, but when asked will not be able to distinguish between dependent and independent variables.
  2. Learn the people: The CosInts are also aware of the names of the people in their trade. And they associate the name to a concept or of a classic work. They are good associating. For example, (bad) behaviorism with Burrhus F. Skinner or Watson, hence Skinner bad. Or Jean Piaget with constructivism and stages (good). Vygotsky: social constructivism, ZPD. Or John Dewey and his work. So they have a list of people and concepts. Gandhi: Nayi Taleem.  Macauley: brought the English academic slavery on India (bad).
  3. Learn the classics: They will know by heart all the titles of the relevant classics and some modern ones (you have to appear well-read after all). Here just remembering the names is enough. No one is going to ask you what was said in section 1.2 of Kothari Commission. Similarly, they will rote learn the names of all the books that you are supposed to have read, better still carry a copy of these books and show off in a class. Rote learn a few sentences, and spew it out like a magic trick in front of awestruck students. Items #1 through #3 don’t work very well when they have real intellectual in front of them. A person with a good understanding of basics will immediately discover the fishiness of the facade they put up. But that doesn’t matter most of the time, as we see in the next point.
  4. Know the (local) powerful and the famous: This is an absolute must to thrive with these limitations. Elaborated earlier.
  5. Learn the language aka Appear academic (literally not metaphorically): There is a stereotype of academic individuals. They will dress in a particular manner (FabIndia?, pyor cotton wonly, put a big Bindi, wear a Bongali kurta etc, carry ethnic items, conference bags (especially the international ones), even conference stationery), carry themselves in a particular manner, talk in a particular manner (academese). This is also true of wannabe CosInt who are still students, they learn to imitate as soon as they enter The Matrix. Somehow they will find ways of using names and concepts from #1 #2 #3 in their talk, even if they are not needed. Show off in front of the students, especially in front of the students. With little practice one can make an entire classroom full of students believe that you are indeed learned, very learned. Any untoward questions should be shooed off, or given so tangential an answer that students are more confused than they were earlier.
  6. Attend conferences, seminars and lectures: The primary purpose is network building and making sure that others register you as an academic. Also, make sure that you ask a question or better make a tangential comment after the seminar so that everyone notices you. Ask the question for the sake of asking the question (even especially if you don’t have any real questions). Sometimes the questions devolve into verbal diarrhea and don’t remain questions and don’t also have any meaning that can be derived from them (I don’t have a proper word to describe this state of affairs, but it is like those things which you know when you see it). But you have to open your mouth at these events, especially when you have nothing substantial/meaningful to say. This is how you get recognition. Over a decade of attending various conferences on education in India, I have come to realise that it is akin to a cartel. You go to any conference, you will see a fixed set of people who are common to these conferences. Many of these participants are the cosints (both the established and the wannabes). After spending some time in the system they become organisers of such conferences, seminars and lectures definitely get other CosInts to these conferences. These are physical citation rings, I call you to my conference you call me to yours. Year after year, I see the same patterns, so much so I can predict, like while watching a badly written and cliche movie, what is going to happen when they are around. That person has to ask a question and must use a particular buzzword. (I myself don’t ask or comment, unless I think I have something substantial to add. Perhaps they think in same manner, just that their definition of substantial is different than mine.) Also, see #5, use the terms in #1, #2 and #3. Make sure to make a personal connection with all the powerful and famous you find there, also see #4.
  7. Pedigree matters: Over the years, I have seen the same type of cosints coming from particular institutions. Just like you can predict certain traits of a dog when you know its breed, similarly one can predict certain traits of individuals coming from certain institutions. Almost without exception, one can do this, but certain institutions have a greater frequency of cosints. Perhaps because the teachers who are in those places are themselves IYI+cosints. Teaching strictly from a  prescribed curriculum and rote-learning the jargon: most students just repeat what they see and the cycle continues. Sometimes I think these are the very institutions that are responsible for the sorry state of affairs in the country. They are filled to the brim with IYIs, who do not have any skin in the game and hence it doesn’t matter what they do. Also, being stamped as a product of certain institution gives you some credibility automatically, “She must be talking some sense, after all he is from DU/IIT/IIM/JNU/”
  8. Quantity not quality: Most of us are not going to create work which will be recognised the world over (Claude Shannon published very infrequently, but when he did it changed the world). Yet were are in publish or perish world. CosInts know this, so they publish a lot. It doesn’t matter what is the quality is (also #4 and #5 help a lot). They truly are environmentalists. They will recycle/reuse the same material with slight changes for different papers and conferences, and surprisingly they also get it there (also #4 and #5 help a lot). So, at times, you will find a publication list which even a toilet paper roll may not be able to contain. Pages after pages of publications! Taleb’s thoughts regarding this are somewhat reassuring, so is the Sokal’s hoax, that just when someone has publications (a lot of them) it is not automatic that they are meaningful.
  9. Empathisers and hypocrites: Cosints are excellent pseudo-emphatisers. They will find something to emphathise with. Maybe a class of people, a class of gender (dog only knows how many). Top of the list are marginalised, poor low socio-economic status, underprivileged, rural schools, government students, school teachers, etc. You get the picture.  They will use the buzz words in the context of these entities they emphathise with. Perhaps, once in their lifetimes, they might have visited those whom they want to give their empathy, but otherwise, it is just an abstract entity/concept.(I somehow can’t shake image of Arshad Warsi in MunnaBhai MBBS “Poor hungry people” while writing about this.) It is easier to work with abstract entities than with real ones, you don’t have to get your hands (or other body parts) dirty. The abstract teacher will do this, will behave in this way: they will write a 2000 word assignment on a terse subject. This is all good when designing things because abstract concepts don’t react in unwanted ways. But when things don’t go as planned in real world, teachers don’t react at all! The blame is on everyone else except the cosints. Perhaps they are too dumb to understand that it is they are at fault. Also, since they don’t have skin in the game, they will tell and advise whatever they have heard or think to be good, when it is implemented on others. For example, if you talk to people especially from villages, they will want to learn English as it is seen as the language which will give them upward mobility. But cosints, typically in IYI style, some researchers found that it is indeed the mother tongue which is better for students to learn, it should be implemented everywhere. The desires and hopes of those who will be learning be damned, they are too “uneducated” to understand what they need. It is the tyranny of fake experts at work here.

    He thinks people should act according to their best interests and he knows their interests… When plebeians do something that makes sense to themselves, but not to him, the IYI uses the term “uneducated.” (SITG Taleb)
    Now one would naturally want to know under what conditions that research was done? was there any ideological bias of the researchers? whether it is applicable in as diverse a country as India? What do we do of local “dialects”? But they don’t do any of this. Instead, they will attack anyone who raises these doubts, especially in #6. They want to work only with the government schools: poor kids, poor teachers no infrastructure. But ask them where their own children study: they do in private schools! But their medium must be their mother tongue right? No way, it is completely English medium, they even learn Hindi in English. But at least the state board? No CBSE, or still better ICSE. Thus we see the hypocrisy of the cosint, when they have the skin in the game. But do they see it themselves? Perhaps not, hence they don’t feel any conflict in what they do.

So we see that IYI /cosint are not what they seem or consider themselves. Over the last decade or so, with the rise of the right across the world is indicating to everyone that something is wrong when cosints tell us what to do. The tyranny of pseudo-experts has to go.  But why it has come to that the “intellectuals” who are supposed to be the cream of the human civilisation, the thinkers, the ideators, so why the downfall? Let us first look at the meaning of the term, so as to be not wrong about that:

 The intellectual person is one who applies critical thinking and reason in either a professional or a personal capacity, and so has authority in the public sphere of their society; the term intellectual identifies three types of person, one who:

  1. is erudite, and develops abstract ideas and theories;
  2. a professional who produces cultural capital, as in philosophy, literary criticism, sociology, law, medicine, science; and
  3. an artist who writes, composes, paints and so on.

Intellectual (emphasis mine)

Now, see in the light of the above definition, it indeed seems that it must be requiring someone to be intelligent and/or well-cultured individual. So why the change in the tones now? The reasons are that the actual intellectual class has degraded and cosints have replaced them, also too much theory and no connect with the real world has made them live in a simulacrum which is inhabited and endorsed by other cosints. And as we have seen above it is a perpetuating cycle, running especially in the universities (remember Taleb’s qualification). They theorize and jargonise (remember the buzzwords) simple concepts so much that no one who has got that special glossary will understand it). And cosints think it is how things should be. They write papers in education, supposedly for the betterment of the classroom teaching by the teachers, in such a manner that if you give it to a teacher, they will not be able to make any sense of it, leave alone finding something useful. Why? Because other cosints/IYI demand it! If you don’t write a paper in a prescribed format it is rejected, if it doesnt have enough statistics it is rejected, if it doesn’t give enough jargon in the form of theoretical review, and back scratching in the form of citations it is rejected. So what good are such papers which don’t lead to practice? And why should the teachers listen to you if you don’t have anything meaningful to tell them or something they don’t know already?
The noun to describe them:
sciolist – (noun) – One who engages in pretentious display of superficial knowledge.

The Mitr

Free Press and Democracy

A free press is an essential part of a democratic system. In a society like ours, with its stark inequalities, only a media free of government and corporate pressures can ensure that the voiceless are heard. What we are seeing currently is not just blatant collusion between the media and big business but also a deliberate obliteration of much of what happens to the millions who live on the margins.
via Economic and Political Weekly

This is what Media Lens has to say about the BBC which is supposed to be in public interest and impartial.

Instead of providing responsible, public-service journalism, the BBC acts as a conduit for government propaganda. It is particularly noxious that the organisation relentlessly channels the state’s supposedly benign intentions abroad. This is the diet of daily bias and distortion we are all fed. When will BBC heads roll for that?

But isn’t this true of the media in India also? Or elsewhere in the world for that matter. Tehelka reports that many of the barons of power also control the local media in newly formed state of Chattisgad. And what is the use of controlling media when they are not used for gains. When the so called free media becomes a part of the political parties we cannot be sure of what they report.

If the Congress has Naveen Jindal, the BJP has Ajay Sancheti. If the Congress has the Lokmat, the BJP has the Hari Bhoomi. Barring coal, in which both the Centre and the states had their hands in the till, in the case of other mineral resources, the real corruption lies in the states.

It is not that people do not use media for their own gain, media is used for spreading ideology, there are many mouthpiece outlets for political parties and others which propagate the ideas. But what is worst is that the masquerade that many media houses put on themselves claiming to be honest and working in public interest, and people at large believe them, being obliviousto the fact that these very media houses are the ones who are power brokers and very much in the filth as corporates and politicians. A recent example of this was the Radia tapes.

The complete blackout of the Niira Radia tapes by the entire broadcast media and most of the major English newspapers paints a truer picture of corruption in the country than the talk shows in the various news channels and the breast-beating in all the newspapers about the 2G, CWG, Adarsh, and other scams.
via|G. Sampath – DNA

It was not until the non-main-stream media began to show up too much, there was some coverage given. But the very fact that the accused are in complete denial of what happened is what is disturbing. We usually held names like Barkha Dutt, Vir Sanghvi well but these tapes just show how much they are in the filth of what they pretend to expose. From then on, I have given up on NDTV as a reliable source, which earlier I thought it was. But then what do you trust?

At the same time, it is worth noting that neither Barkha nor any of the other journalists whose names have come up have denied that those conversations took place. So why not let the reader or TV viewer read or listen to the transcripts and decide whether Dutt and Sanghvi’s conversations with Radia are a part of “normal journalistic duties” or amount to pimping for politicians and business houses? Or perhaps they were doing social service for the Congress? Play the tapes on your show, na, Ms Dutt, instead of tweeting about them? Why not let ‘We, The People’ decide, instead of you deciding for us all?
via|G. Sampath – DNA

The media blackout of particular events is what I find disturbing. What it shows the kind of camaraderie that exists between different media houses and their corporate and political cronies. That basically means that the news, sorry the Breaking News that you see is like a managed play, with directors and writers deciding what people see, hear and think. In Marathi novel (Ithink it was Swami (स्वामी) by Ranjit Desai) I had read a sentence which fits these situations well, it reads:

मी मारल्या सारखे करतो, तु रडल्या सारखे कर.
( I will feign to hit, you feign to cry.)

This creates an illusion about real problems. Most of the News channels that are beamed in India follow this line. Put all the focus on some non-issues, or twist them from certain angles so that why all this happens remains oblivious to the viewers. If our media was after all serious about the issues that they present, they would have seen to it that things are done.
Many a times what I have also found reading reports on various different news services is that they are same. I mean many a times they are word to word same, as if the reports have been written at one place and distributed. I do not have links right now, but will update this post when I do. This again creates a picture that what news we see is heavily filtered, and sometimes flavours are added to create sensationalism. And the icing is that we all think this is genuine, with “Free Press in A Democracy”. Orwell had a foresight about this as well:

Of course, print will continue to be used, and it is interesting to speculate what kinds of reading matter would survive in a rigidly totalitarian society. Newspapers will presumably continue until television technique reaches a higher level, but apart from newspapers it is doubtful even now whether the great mass of people in the industrialized countries feel the need for any kind of literature. They are unwilling, at any rate, to spend anywhere near as much on reading matter as they spend on several other recreations. Probably novels and stories will be completely superseded by film and radio productions. Or perhaps some kind of low grade sensational fiction will survive, produced by a sort of conveyor-belt process that reduces human initiative to the minimum.
via The Prevention of Literature | George Orwell

The only reason I see that India is feudal and corrupt is that the so called Free Press was never able to take up the challenge to the nexus, and ultimately now has become a part of it.

In our age, the idea of intellectual liberty is under attack from two directions. On the one side are its theoretical enemies, the apologists of totalitarianism, and on the other its immediate, practical enemies, monopoly and bureaucracy.
via The Prevention of Literature | George Orwell

Though there are dissidents here and there, this now has become global phenomena, with the Indian media people just following the suit. And if this is the case, what difference does it make whether you are living in a democracy or a totalitarian state?
And Orwell wraps it up thus:

A totalitarian society which succeeded in perpetuating itself would probably set up a schizophrenic system of thought, in which the laws of common sense held good in everyday life and in certain exact sciences, but could be disregarded by the politician, the historian, and the sociologist. Already there are countless people who would think it scandalous to falsify a scientific textbook, but would see nothing wrong in falsifying an historical fact. It is at the point where literature and politics cross that totalitarianism exerts its greatest pressure on the intellectual.
via The Prevention of Literature | George Orwell

 

The Mitr

Humble hovel or Palace

How slowly one advances in a boat that does not float along with the stream in a specific direction! How much easier it is when one can connect with the work of great predecessors whose value is not doubted by anyone. A personal experiment, a construction whose foundations one must dig himself and whose walls one must erect himself, runs a real risk of becoming a humble hovel. But perhaps one prefers to live there rather than in a palace that has been built by others.
– M. C. Escher | Escher on Escher – Exploring the Infinite

Most of us would have already made the choice. For me the choice is somewhat both maybe the garden of the palace and living space of the hovel. I may try to give up the palace garden sometime in the future but for now it is so. What about you?

The Mitr

Kabuki

Kabuki is a comic series from artist and writer David Mack. It is about an assassin who struggles with her identity in near future Japan.
Kabuki is one of the 8 eight assassin in the Noh, a secret Government agency which balances the power in Japan’s underworld.
As far as the storyline is concerned one can trace a lot of influences on the art and the characters of the story [at least the ones I am familiar with]. Not to mention the industrial style that we see in Blade Runner.
The first Volume Circle of Blood tell us about the origins of Kabuki. The art form in this Volume is black and white. Some of the other volumes are in color. In this volume there is a strong influence from Lewis Caroll’s Alice in Wonderland.Especially in the Issue where Kai is killed by Kabuki the entire setup of the Mad Hatter’s tea party has been taken. When Kai takes Kabuki to visit his collections, the book that she picks up is Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
The passage she reads is this :

‘But I don’t want to go among mad people,’ Alice remarked.
‘Oh, you can’t help that,’ said the Cat: ‘we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.’
‘How do you know I’m mad?’ said Alice.
‘You must be,’ said the Cat, ‘or you wouldn’t have come here.’

And I think I can relate very well to the quote of Kai on books [who has a formidable collection], when he compares the paper books with those that are digital :

But I love the intimacy of books. I love the physical act of turning
the pages and the tactile sensations of fine rice paper contrasting
with an embossed hardcover in my hand.

Influence from Carroll can also be found in other as pack of cards.

We are only faces, yet we are faceless… nothing but a pack of cards
in wonderland.

And in case of Kabuki when she says

I am a reflection, trapped in the world of a little girl.

It seems that David Mack has a fascination for M. C. Escher like I do. There are many influences of Escher in the later Volumes of Kabuki and especially in Metamorphosis. Incidentally metamorphosis is the theme in numerous Escher’s drawings, in which one thing transforms into another. Similarly in all the Metamorphosis issues the theme is of transformation. Also one of the characters is named M. C. Square which I think is a sort of tribute to Escher.
Also there is one quote in Skin Deep # 1 from Escher, which is quoted below.

The crossing of the divide between abstract and concrete,
representations between `mute’ and `speaking’ figures leads us to the
heart of what fascinated me. – M. C. Escher

In the later Volumes when Kabuki is in the reformation center, one cannot but help to think that there is an influence of Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta and thus indirectly of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four. Somehow I a find myself bumping into Orwell every now and then, is there a deep connection, or is this theory ladenness of data on my part?  Particularly the character of Akemi the way she builds up the morale of Kabuki has very strong resemblance in which ‘V’ builds up Evey’s mental state

 If it can be taken from you, it was never you to begin with.
After they take away all they can what remains is you.
Only in these situations, we truly know who we are.

The passing of notes on Origami constructions of different animals also reminds us of the same modus operandi in case of Evey’s build up by the Actress in V for Vendetta.
Though the masks form an integral part of the style of the Kabuki dancers in Japan, the kind of attachment that our lead female Kabuki has with the mask resembles the character of V. Under their masks both have scars on their face, but as one the characters in Kabuki puts it

 I think your scars are far deeper than the eyes can see.

Which I think is true in both cases of V and Kabuki. There is a trauma attached to the scar behind the mask, which they cannot forget, they do not want to forget. What they remember is revenge which RGV quoting in Rakhtacharitra [Blood History]  from Gita says:

Revenge is the purest form of emotion.

The masks gives them a new identity, which they can relate to. The masks that they were have become them. They cannot be separated from them. They have become their identity, which they cannot forsake, at any costs.
This post is not complete, will update it when time permits.
* Quotes
** Circle of blood
# 3
One must aim beyond the target. One must aim a long way. Our whole
life, our whole spirit travels with the arrow. And when the arrow has
been fired, it is never the end.
# 4
When in the company of deceptive hearts, be only honest, and your
opponents will fool themselves.
I am a reflection, trapped in the world of a little girl.
# 5
I am invisible, untraceable… like tears in the rain.
But I love the intimacy of books. I love the physical act of turning
the pages and the tactile sensations of fine rice paper contrasting
with an embossed hardcover in my hand.
But then, everybody has their own ghosts, don’t they?
Kai, is life a straight line or a circle?
Both and neither. It’s a spiral like your DNA.
There is no morality in virtual reality. What kind of person will he
grow up to be?
#6
She is going to break your heart into two.
Its true.
Its not hard to realize.
She is going to smile to make you frown,
what a clown.
‘Cause everybody knows
She’s a femme fatale
The things she does to please
she’s just a little tease.
It is time to master duality of your nature you must decide who you
really are.
I play my games, but the hand of fate is much quicker than the lie.
Just as the locusts cloak the sun, my perceptions blinded me.
The warrior unencumbered and willing to go further than his opponent
would always win.
I swallowed the locusts, and with it my fear
Look at the swan skimming the water. Angel wings of ivory feathers, its
eyes veiled in a mask of black. Its beauty rivaled only by its very
own reflection. Ghostly and regal, it seems to glide effortlessly on
the ponds surface, but below the surface… its feed are peddling like
hell…
We are faceless pawns.
Funny thing about pawns. If they make it to the other side, they
become the most powerful player on the board. That is where I am
going. The other side.
I am armed only with the power that my physical presence commands.
I feel the burning of their gaze and it keeps me warm.
A voice in my head tells me the bullet had my name on it.
I tell the voice that they misspelled my name.
# Fear the Reaper
A city whose technology has surpassed its humanity.
If you gaze into eyes of the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.
Sometimes there is no comedy, there is no tragedy only a closing
curtain. Sometimes the curtain falls slowly, sometimes it just falls.
We are only faces, yet we are faceless… nothing but a pack of cards
in wonderland.
I am drifting in the dark halfway between the Sun and the Moon.
** Masks of the Noh
#1
Crying and laughter… pain and desire are sisters.
#2
Time always catches up with you.
Never in words had I experienced the chilling satisfaction of words.
#4
Nothing is black and white anymore, it all blurs together.
** Skin Deep
#1
I used to get lost in the shuffle, now I just shuffle along with the
lost.
I think your scars are far deeper than the eyes can see.
The crossing of the divide between abstract and concrete,
representations between `mute’ and `speaking’ figures leads us to the
heart of what fascinated me. – M C Escher
The transformation takes place within our minds.
The only way to define your own identity is to be completely alone.
I don’t seek to find myself.
I seek to loose myself.
Escape is a burning hope.
If horror is not your friend it is your enemy.
** Metamorphosis
#2
You have an interesting way of putting things. And interesting places
to put them.
If it can be taken from you, it was never you to begin with.
After they take away all they can what remains is you.
Only in these situations, we truly know who we are.
#6
Your yesterday is about to collide with your tomorrow.
Your environment reflects your internal disposition.
You can’t face the future until you resolve the past.
 

The Mitr

Some thing from this book needs no title…

I love the artist or scholar whose activity is like the bee
pursuing the delicious nectar of the flowers. The bee has no
mind to become a renowned authority on which flowers
contain the best nectar; the bee simply loves nectar. In all
probability, the bee, through his actual experience will soon
have a fantastic knowledge of the flower geography of his
neighborhood-as good perhaps as any human scholar who
“studies” botany. And I say the bee really knows the flower
much better than the botanist. The botanist merely knows
about the flower; the bee knows the flower directly. The more
analytically minded reader might well ask, at this point, just
what I mean by “knowing about something” versus “knowing it
directly.” I wish I could answer him! The distinction is so
difficult to explain rationally, and yet it is of such vital
importance.