Fundamentalist Hindutva

Sounds like an irony to me. Hindutva and fundamentalism, doesn't seem right. From what I've experienced all through my life - Hinduism is an epitome of love and harmony. It's more a 'faith following' than a religion. The crux of Vedas, Upanishads and the Gita reveal nothing but love. Yet, time and again - fundamentalism finds it's way into the religion. I fail to understand, what drives these fundamentalists a.k.a 'soldiers of the religion' who wear saffron robes and conduct such heinous activities that make me cringe. I mean, do these guys even know the significance of the saffron color ? The recent incident at a Mangalore pub Amnesia is a testimony of this fundamentalism. What made these guys attack young innocent women at this pub and molest them, that too in the pretext of protecting Hindutva?

Adi Shankaracharya trekked all over the country in the 8th century, unified Hindus and established the core Hindutva principles, not knowing that his followers some day will resort to such acts of violence. Had he known, perhaps he wouldn't have gone that far and for all we know Hinduism as a religion wouldn't have existed.The Amnesia incident is not he first depiction of Hindu fundamentalist behavior. Enough has been said and written about the various 'Hindu-Muslim' riots and killings. However, all those incidents were acts of revenge or jealousy. What motive did the attackers have against the women at Amnesia? In a country filled with degraded morale and absolute lack of respect for women and children, such incidents do more harm than just generating publicity (assuming that was the motive). To top it all, the so called 'leader' of this activist gang 'Sri Rama sene' (what an ironical name btw) gives extremely foolish, immature and ludicrous statements to the press, justifying the attack.

Is hinduism being Talibanized or what ?

Head fake, once more

To say am a movie buff would be an understatement. However the quality of movies coming out of Hollywood these days are making me realize how worthless it is to spend money on any of them. That being said, I was pleasantly surprised by this movie Take the lead.

Anyone familiar with ballroom dance will recognize this movie instantly. The movie is one of the greatest examples of a head fake I've ever seen on the screen. (The movie is based on a real story). In New York City, A ballroom dance teacher takes up the initiative of teaching poor African American kids, ballroom dance, in a detention center. The movie isn't great, but there are some subtle lessons that can be learned from the movie. The intention of 'Pierre' (played by Antonio Banderas) to teach dance to the extremely poor African American kids is completely morphed by this 'element' of learning dance.He manages to teach dignity, respect and discipline to these stubborn kids who live in a society filled with apathy and violence. He accomplishes this by a 'head fake', by enticing the kids to ballroom dancing.In fact there is even a lesson of leadership one can learn from the 'lead-follow' concept of ballroom/latin dance. It's so subtly displayed that the lead dancer can lead only to the extent allowed by the follow dancer. The lead dancer can only proceed to lead and unless the follow lets him lead he can't do so. This holds true in almost every walk of life and emulates the 'power of following'.

As the society evolves and becomes more 'team oriented' the concept of leadership will also evolve and we can see this happening today. Leaders are only as powerful as the followers will let them be.

The movie depicted these concept in a very nice, subtle and enjoyable manner.

The karate kid and The 'head fake'

What does a movie and football have in common. Head fake is a popular technique employed in football where in the QB points the head in one direction but throws the ball in a different direction. So football coaches teach the offensive line up to focus on the torso movement of the QB and not the facial or eye movement,in order to not get deceived. In plain simple words, head fake is just a deceptive technique. Those who are aware of Randy Pausch and his 'last lecture' and those who have seen the movie 'The karate kid' will quickly discern the similarity between the essence of the movie and the technique.

When it comes to learning, there can be no other technique as deceptively efficient as a 'head fake'. Randy Pausch talks very nicely about how he incorporated head fake techniques in virtual reality and came up with very interesting techniques of teaching computer programming to kids. By using simulation and virtual reality, Randy's technique makes the students believe that they are doing something playful, where as in reality they'll be learning a programming technique. That's exactly what the Japanese plumber does in the movie Karate kid. He makes the kid do some elementary house work, such as painting the wall, cleaning the floor etc but in reality he will be teaching the kid karate techniques. By faking the method of teaching, the teacher essentially provides a new perspective of understanding the basics of karate. It's quite natural for anyone to ignore the basics and jump to the 'cool stuff'. For instance in Karate - the key is balance and concentration. It's very likely that as soon as one gets into learning karate - the first thing they want to learn is how to punch, because that's the appeal of karate - to punch. By eliminating that appeal and by bringing in a new perspective that deceives the students to learn the basics, the 'head fake' technique essentially makes the students master the basics without even knowing they are doing so. Now that's creativity.

Creativity in teaching is a rarity. For kids, learning in a classroom is no fun. It always seems boring (as a kid, I felt terribly bored in a classroom) and the homework is no fun either. It's always seen as a 'serious' affair to do well in studies. Well on the contrary, kids always want to play. It's in their nature. The mind is ever exploring new things and has a tendency to look for new and exciting things every moment. What a boon it would be to kids if they could just enjoy learning programming or math as much as they would enjoy playing games. Wouldn't it be so nice if the same creativity that the Japanese master employed in the movie could be employed to teach some of the arduous subjects to kids. It definitely would be and I'm quite certain this technique is employed in many schools today. I just wish every parent understood this and used it effectively to teach discipline, morals and all the good stuff to the kids, in a 'cool way'.

Oh and The karate kid is a must watch movie - for anyone.

The dreamer in me

I dream a lot, and I dream the big, the impossible. Be it romancing the most beautiful girl or be it floating in space. I had once blogged about a dream in which I was in space and had forgotten to take my camera to take the picture of earth from space. Someone had commented and said 'Even if you had a camera, would it have been possible to take a picture of Earth" and my answer was "possibly yes". A few years after this incident, I got an email from my friend which contained images of earth from space shot by Kalpana Chawla. I had no way of testing the authenticity of the images but they did look authentic and for sure they were taken from a camera. What I had dreamed of, someone had accomplished. I just smiled when I looked at those images. Here is one of the images.



I not only dream when I sleep, but also dream when I'm awake, when I see something innovative, when I'm talking. It's very easy for me to get distracted on a particular topic and 'zone out'. The land of dreams always seems to be a magical world to be in. No matter how tired I am or how stressed I am, the dreamer in me never gets tired, never gets stressed. Recently, I was quite tired and had to go to my friend's house for lunch. Despite the tiredness, I went and we started talking about food - which is our favorite topic always. During the conversation, we started wondering about a concept of 'Indo-mexican fast food'. It might sound quirky, but no sooner had the conversation begun, I had started dreaming about relishing this non existent food in a non existent fast food restaurant somewhere near my hometown. I had 'zoned out'. My friend kept talking and after a while, having realized that I had zoned out, brought me back to my senses.

I guess, I'm such a dreamer because it's so easy. There's absolutely no effort involved, whatsoever in imagining and dreaming. One of these days, I'll try to turn one of my dreams to reality. I just wish I dream something simple and easy to accomplish :).