Brown Motion

D.G. Phalke is considered the father of Indian cinema.  As a middle class, hard working Maharashtrian fella in south Bombay under British rule he was fascinated by things that were breaking new ground.  In his era it was a short silent film, shot in black and white and shown in a dimly lit canvas tent as the latest attraction from the other continent. Not wanting to continue a life of mediocrity and somewhat frustrated by the status quo, Phalke with unequivocal support of his family, wife and two boys embarks on a crazy adventure the likes of which might compare to Edison's innovations with lighting systems or Tesla's research with designing alternating current. Harischandrachi Factory was the first (silent) movie that Phalke created, directed and released to audiences in India in 1913.  The DVD I (finally) watched with the same name (gifted by a cousin a while ago) is a biopic showcasing the tireless efforts Phalke undertook to bring cinema to the Indian masses and ...

Notice it is not about any cultural influence on or of anything.  Rather I refer to this general epidemic of having a mental bias about some nationality or what they represent. Case in point where in America anyone from the continent aka Europe is considered a novelty more so if they happen to speak one of the Romantic languages.  On further investigation it is evident that it has nothing to do with the how the language sounds - romantic to some - but rather had to do with the antics of the Romans.  As in derived from the language used in erstwhile Roma, which is Latin. In America an Italian restaurant gets off with super over pricing pasta based on this mental notion Americans have about freshness and the fact that Italian is a romantic language and anything from that region has to be out of this (cookie cutter) world.  Far from it. Pasta in a restaurant to me is the biggest marketing scam.  Most places ranked in the high echelons of dining simply get aw...

I remember my dad getting temporarily laid off as an unwilling victim of a walk out by the then popular worker's right activist union.  As a counter point to the capitalist ideology there has been the socialist or communist movement and it led to significant wars in recent history. At the heart of the communist movement is the notion of a Union; that of securing the vote of the downtrodden and giving them a fair share of the available pie.  To an extent that philosophy works to ensure that the greedy have a check point on what they can amass.  Today in the western world the gap between executive pay and the average worker is often used as a metric to highlight that point.  In America it is the worst with approx ratio of 450 times. That said free enterprise thrives when there is a chance of maximum reward.  To that degree any artificial restriction on the flow of money either through taxation or social policies that hinder progress are an anathema to the ent...

Today marketers world over are urging their citizenry to remember the father in their lives.  Amazing right?  We are now reliant on profit hungry, shareholder driven corporations to provide relationship advice in our lives.  It has been since Kotler and his likes wrote the Marketing 101 study guides for MBA courses in said subject. From McGraw Hill to Pepsi to Gap to Ford Motor the possibilities of what a father needs and should deserve are endless.  And the high fructose to high octane purveying entities are happy to oblige. It is a shame when the humans decided to leave their common sense at the doorstep of vanity and jumped headlong into the entitlement well to find that they cannot really come back up for oxygen.  Drowning in debt, sorrow, and ultimately finding that when it was crunch time there was not a son or daughter that remembered them is now more a global reality of all the made up holidays and celebrations. Remembrance for any one or an...

It is said that opposites attract meaning people with contrary viewpoint sometimes find chemistry to be together.  But I'm referring to a modern twist where people are merely attracted towards a common place because their uber communication device aka smart phone is about to die.  The charging station. From airports to hotel lobbies or even bathrooms, when in need they are attracted to this power outlet like moths to a flame or a junkie to a needle. A whole new business of supplying these hyper connected folks is now born whose lifesaver product is a backup charge. Asian tourists perpetually carry a phone sized battery pack stuck to their latest Apple phone updating their status to folks in Hong Kong or Shanghai or Bangalore as they pose for selfies with weird facial expressions and fingers pointed out in a letter V. Vain? PS:  I dis'charged' my blogger duties making this insightful observation as my phone is about to breathe it's last and my flight gets call...

Over the top glitz. Money sucking leaches. Skimpily clad is business as usual. Botox, Eye Lashes, Face Paint and other body shaping and altering ideas are par for the course. Smoke wherever - doobie included. Stoned, hazed, loud, rowdy, glazed is a constant state of mind. Las Vegas!  Many properties owned by Jewish multi billionaires and sometimes by Trump.  Food so so regardless of their stars and reviews.  Did I mention over priced? Spent a work week in LV, trying to stay cool and productive during the beyond hot and dry summer day time while stepping out for the evening frivolities and strolls when the desert wind kicked in. The Greenbacks hanging out with their money Loud and in your face interior decor is de rigeur to fill the larger than large spaces decorated with red and velvet carpets amidst a sea of marble tiles and silk drapes and chandeliers.  Mosaic artwork along walls including some paintings chosen by th...

It is not a grotesque sequel to Ramayana set to 'Papa don't Preach'.  It is not a Hollywood thriller either.  Rather these names are part of the identity of the venue we visited this crisp Sunday summer morning. Mount Madonna is a hilltop about 30 miles south of San Jose aka Silicon Valley.  It sits amidst redwoods and eucalyptus forests with a cloak of fog that burns off by 9 am.  We made it to the mount earlier than that around 7'ish.  It was cool and breezy and given there were no visitors/traffic at the summit at that impossibly early hour (even for the devout) we drove all the way till road's end. At the corner is a gate that opens into a new (being) built monastery.  A 20' tall white marble smiling Buddha sits staring calmly, the sun glinting of his cheek, with his legs folded under him and hands in his lap.  There is no one around but some cawing of peacocks that shatters the calm. There are other deities or forms of the Buddha being m...

How much celebration is too much?  I ponder this as our child graduated from middle school to begin life as a high schooler.  There was pomp during the circumstance - that of a rigorous three year period of classwork, prep and exams, standardized tests, track and field events and extra curricular speech writing and contests near and far. All of this with a desire to build a foundation that can support the mental infrastructure needed to gain wisdom and guide this child of ours toward it's place in the universe.   Or so we hope. Every child is precious to its parent and rightly so.  It is their physical manifestation of unfulfilled wants or desire,  or in some cases a vicarious aspiration to achieve glory for themselves but certainly for all an intangible feeling of sheer joy to see this young mind climb another step in their ladder of life. In india I remember the fanfare limited to the immediate household to celebrate a grade or passage through them. ...

In global news the primate has been busy.  No I do not mean Trump.  I mean real versions that are a step below the Homo Sapiens kind.  Monkeys. There was national (as in America) debate when a mother (human kind) visiting a local zoo, distracted for a moment found her four year old had pulled a Houdini and escaped, landing straight into a Gorilla enclosure.  Said Gorilla was likely confused with the turn of events and decided to take matters (as in the said child) into his own hands. Once there it was perhaps going to sit and ask him 20 questions about his kind peering over the walls on a daily basis with stupid looks on their faces.  But the officials could not let that happen.  So they too took matters (as in a gun) into their hands and shot him.  The Gorilla.  Killed him. Saved the human species.  Or the child of the species.  Net result - uproar.  Twitter.  Facebook Big Media, Small Media et al. Then there was the mo...

Not to be confused with a super fast rail service in Northern Europe.  That is Thalys.  The affair I'm about to narrate is that of a Thali (plural Thalis - very similar pronunciation as Thalys).  Or more correctly of enjoying a good one. Thali in Indian lexicon is a food platter.  Technically it simply means platter, usually reserved to receive food on it.  It is the equivalent of a plate. Now the more commercial version of that definition is a dinner platter, usually made of recyclable stainless steel, adorned by a necklace of of small steel bowls that hold a variety of food preparations as to not mix them up, letting the consumer enjoy each item in its unique flavored glory. Imagine this arrangement.  You have a melange of foods from spicy moist curries with lentils in one bowl to dry vegetable curry in another while yet another hosts a cool cucumber salad and another a dairy product like a yogurt based sauce and then simultaneously gawk ...

First some basics -  it was an opportunity to go listen to Pandit Hridaynath Mangeshkar in the Bay Area - live.  I mean for a guy who has some amazing music composition and singing to his credit, still doing the latter at the ripe age of 80 it was something - when I say live. He and the voice of a younger Marathi speaking generation in the form of Dr.Salil Kulkarni are touring the affluent suburbs of America the past few weeks.  This was their penultimate stop before Los Angeles and final leg home to India. Being a largely Maharashtrian gathering it was a relatively quiet affair in terms of the crowd who was their for the music and some social mingling without too much fanfare and commotion commonly associated with our brethren from North India (which was the case during a Pankaj Udhas concert few years back). However the execution for the Punk affair was more formal than how the Marathi manoos (guy from western Indian state) does it.  Pankaj sang in a formal ...