Warriors Parade into a Cave

Last night, an architecture student friend of mine, Pratu was talking to me about her Urban Renewal assignment in Mylapore. Apparently, this is just for their study and any suggestion they make will remain in files because no has the money to change anything. More interestingly, she said, "Even if there is public will we need political will to do something."

Today, I am watching Marley & Me. In one scene, the Florida beaches are shining clean. It's because dogs or anyone are strictly not allowed to poop and pee out there. If you do, then the police come in, fine and close down the beach. Hmmm... Okay it is a movie. Nothing to throw a tantrum about. 

What I am finding hard to understand or actually stumped that I do understand is this...If the police or the government want the people to behave, they have to ban. If the people want the government to do something, they have to protest. Both ways it only has to be a fight. Bans, protest, under-the-table creation of illegal activities... The government will ban alcohol and then start selling state liquor creating bigger revenue. All of this is sick. The entire world is a whole lot of garbage.

We have finished the first month of work on our magazine. It is out, everyone likes the look, and everyone wants to read the next issue. Very happy! It can be read here: http://www.issuu.com/chaikadai/docs/cuttingchai-stuck

                                   Open publication - Free publishing - More art

The Superhero Blanket Around My Shoulders

I will not be alone when I shout from the rooftops, before trying to fly: "I LOVE SUPERHEROES." Going to start digging into the history of who brought out this concept soon. Stan Lee, according to me is God in this area. The day I saw him (on TV) flying down on a spider to receive his Scream Award, I fell all over again for him. However, I've always had the reservation of making my sister jealous if I agree I love superheroes or Stan Lee as much as her. This is her thing. I've sat with her in book shops where she has blown her entire month savings on comics and series. She is mad about them. I take them as a sweet ride of ecstasy. It is Energy.

Expecting this, I went to watch Iron Man 2. Back home, I am confidently writing this: "it is one of the most intelligent superhero movies ever." Why? I spent most of my childhood wanting to be a physicist, it was the closest I could have gotten to understanding the world and conquering it. No. 1: Tony Stark is a physicist. Van Con is a physicist. Even, Hammer is a physicist. When the time came to choose my subjects of specialization I chose to study the human race more than the world. If I was going to conquer anything at all in my life, it was going to be me.


More than the first part, Iron Man 2 exceeds it brilliance. Tony Stark was first only a technically bad man, a mass murderer, who invents something for himself and then turns it into a good man's weapon. This is the initial story of Iron Man. But, this sequel digs deeper and adds darker shades, with even the touch of romance and glamour. It is a packed, entertaining ride to the sky.

In the sequel, Tony Stark is a narcissistic rich man, with a self-created super power, who is threatened by death and personal longings. He is a human-being, battled by other human-beings. James Rhodes is that same patriotic commander and the man who stands against his friend thinking he might save the country. And yes, the Russian is the villain, with his own share of personal history triggering revenge. The best man of all, the creator of Stark Industries, is Howard Stark. Just like expected, he talks out of an old taped recording and reveals to his son that death is not going to stop him and that he is here for a bigger purpose.

There are all these and more stereotypes. Even, if you haven't read the comic book, one can guess who is the lover and who is the sexy one. I am back here and haven't forgotten a single character, a single scene, or a single turn in the story. Does this make it a good movie? I guess so. 

It's true I went there wanting to enjoy it and I am back satisfied, exhilarated, and happy.  My textbook on 'Writing on Film' tells me strictly that I cannot go to a movie with the intention of enjoying and then criticizing it. Defying this, I think the intention is precisely why the mind stays open enough for flaws to tape themselves in my mind.

I haven't done anything wrong by wanting to enjoy this movie. I simply let it take me on a ride, and it did a pretty good job, probably the best. The last few superhero movies terribly disappointed me - yes, Watchmen being one of them. Kudos to Iron Man 2. 

It's not keeping me waiting to watch more, but has put me on the most brilliant energy rush with the simple story it told me today. Be a superhero or a normal person, there is fear that's going to hit you and you are going to have to deal with it in your own way.

Here's a small peak into my childhood superhero:
"Sun rose in her dreams, and sun flowers lived beneath the thick black blanket. In the dark sunny abode lived a paradise. Swarna turned around restlessly, distracted what the day had been. She should have been kissed by him. She should have caught the bus in time. She should have seen the sitcom episode completely. She should have talked for hours to her boyfriend. She hadn’t done any of this. She had been on this mattress with a cobra.
Every morning, it coils itself around her, pulling her plump self in to the mattress. Tied and worn out in struggle  the cobra suffocates itself to life. The black cotton cobra would hiss into her ears: a hundred love stories and mystic hymns. Then she would pull him over her head and close her eyes.
Tonight, she told herself about the magnificent cobra. She read the bed time story about his crawling love. Under the cobra evils are not seen. Under the cobra everything is protected from unknown things. Blankets are super heroes."

[written long ago]

It's late in the night, but come back tomorrow for a nice look into the History of Superheroes.

The Habitual Freak

Picking a nice goblet full of Golconda wine, I felt the days of Pondicherry with family. I smell the wine. It's in the name itself, the worst wine. I preferred, even, the Vino I drank in Cafe Mondegar (where I was strictly kept in the hands of elegance and expected to follow a tradition of wine drinkers) I sip it. I rotate the glass and let its flavour flow out of the glass rims. I let it flow, fall, and tell me a story. It takes a second. Then, I pace my eyes watching the room. I am the spectacle of habitual manners. I gulp the wine down and let it burn down my throat. And I feel the taste in my belly. Liquor goes down. Only in one way. Straight down, where it belongs.

the wine lover

Does the Horizon End?

Environmental Economics, at first seemed like a dry land to pace through, but soon certain concepts caught my ear and now my words. Cowboy Economy to Spaceship Earth is an interesting, well known concept among economists and environmentalists. I have been reading quite a few articles and there are some intriguing debates to think of when talking about the so-called super heroes SAVING THE WORLD. Here, I have basically put together some interesting quotes, extracts, and links.

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The “cowboy economy” is a phrase used to describe the American ethic employed when land was plentiful and the cry across the land was 'westward ho.' Noted economist Kenneth Boulding coined the phrase in the 1960s while he was a member of the UM faculty. The cowboy metaphor symbolized the “illimitable plains” and the “reckless and exploitative” behavior of American economic activity. At the same time Boulding was predicting the consequences of the cowboy economy, Buckminster Fuller was encouraging humanity to think of the earth as a spaceship with a limited amount of life support. Despite these warnings, a frontier mentality that continues to allow strip mining, overgrazing, and woodland clear cutting still prevails. http://www.tcaup.umich.edu/urp/cowboyeconomy.html

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In 1966 the well known economist Kenneth Boulding published an important book with the title: The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth. Corporate Cowboys are still trotting across lands with one pure ideal - prudence at home, profligacy abroad. Developing countries, with its exploited resources are further being exploited by these reckless hungry souls who are focused on one objective - economic growth. The core to this problem is that 'development' is now focused on this narrow concept of 'growth'. And this 'growth' is seen as a product of a market.

Basically, Boulding had pointed out quite early in the 20th Century that Earth is a closed system. Though, Deep Ecologists and Spiritual Ecologists might have a justification to call it an open system of inner energy, I will have to say that looking at the World as a closed system helps. However, the Cowboy Economy is not only a concept but a widespread attitude. It is the attitude of Globalization. A paradigm that is willing to open up this system further, and attempting to reach further horizons.

One could poetically agree and empathize, ‘yet all experience is an arch wherethro', as Tennyson tells us all in Ulysses. We should move beyond horizons. In a globe, geographically there is no end to this horizon. But, the horizon does have an end. Prudence, as such may not be the actual attitude to be propagated but something of higher intelligence.

A recent UNEP report stated that, a responsible development in those countries where a majority of the global population is loving and a majority of the majority is living at or below the existence line, will require that the industrialized countries over the next few decades reduce its resource consumption not with but to 1/10 of current levels. It calls for an intellectual lifestyle challenge- a community with a new intellectual culture, a new consumption culture, and a new technological culture; a life of ecological intelligence.

Albert Einstein warned us almost 50 years ago by stating: The world we have created through our way of thinking has serious problems which cannot be solved by continuing to think as we always have.

World scientists published on unprecedented warning to humanity: “A great challenge in our stewardship of the Earth and the life on it is required if vast human misery is to be avoided and our global home on this planet is not to be irretrievably mutilated”.

The Spaceship Earth is similar to the Gaia theory. In the Gaia theory, Earth is looked as a single organism balancing its own self, but it has thresholds, which humans have evidently crossed. We have to respect the Earth as one living system; we are but a part of it, which will have to work towards the well-being of the organism than grow as a parasite. Well, this is just a brief in my words. However, Spaceship Earth combines Modernity, Stewardship, and Gaia. It says that we all live in this one spaceship with limited resources, and there in nowhere to go and restock anytime soon, and that humans are to efficiently allocate these resources and develop according to the present needs. It may have been derived from a passage in Henry George's best known work, Progress and Poverty1 (1879). From book IV, chapter 2: "It is a well-provisioned ship, this on which we sail through space. If the bread and beef above decks seem to grow scarce, we but open a hatch and there is a new supply, of which before we never dreamed. And very great command over the services of others comes to those who as the hatches are opened are permitted to say, 'This is mine!'" This concept also pacifies some superficial philosophers, or even maybe the deeper thinkers. It is just sometimes good to deal with problems by indicating metaphors. Many psychologists deal with a variety of emotional troubles using the metaphor as a tool. One may visualize their anger as a fire and then work towards extinguishing it. Interpretation of dreams works a lot around these visualizations and hidden desires one possesses in one's own id. When looking at an environmental problem, trying to visualize the Earth as a spaceship provides as a helpful tool for many theories presented by environmentalists and economists. It advocates the simple fact that intelligent prudence everywhere and link of development with equity has to be established. Therefore, the link between development and environment will finally be traced in a justifiable manner. However, a spaceship may not work under the circumstance where the simple connection between claiming rights and innate responsibilities are missed. The Earth is formed on various links and the conscience plays a large role. Transporting exploitation to another arena does not help in anyway. The United Nations is not the best captain for this ship. It has variety of similar weaknesses possessed by the League of Nations. The fact that its wide-based word on human rights is really amazing, does not hide the on the environmental arena (the larger concept of development) many links are being missed. The Horizon ended a long time ago. People continue to see it, but are under the blind hope that there are no full stops in human's capacity and that we dominate the commas. The world still continues to be a podium dominated by Corporate Cowboys.