a mARTIAN dIARY

Recently I was privileged enough to attend a 2 day course on Indian Art History conducted by Benoy K. Behl , the famous art historian. The history of Indian art from the ancient period, including the Indus Valley Civilisation onward spanning the medieval period was very quickly but effectively reviewed in a span of 2 days. Of course 2 days is too short for a subject for which a lifetime is not enough but I enjoyed the exposure to some key concepts that made me feel closer to my India heritage, something that my education in science has left me feeling alien about.

That Mr Behl is a very learned and well respected man is something that came across in first half an hour thorough the insightful incisions he was already making to our fertile minds. It was attended by around 80 inquisitive minds and was held at the Vicarage Lodge at Delhi University North Campus. The skeletal framework of this course was set in around 26 documentaries that were commissioned by Doordarshan pertaining to Indian art history and had come as a weekly program in around 2003 (not sure). More than the actual technical discussion of the painting the focus was expectably on Indian history and some controversies related to it. But refreshingly Mr Behl  was also able to redraw what could have been some of the ethical guidelines of Ancient India from very seemingly innocuous traditions that he observed across paintings. As a student of management and life this is what made by 2 days worthwhile. I will try to list them out there for posterity.

The well known (to others at least) concept of Chitrasutra – a kind of bible for painting –of the Vishudharmottarra Purana tells us about an highly developed and formalized knowledge of art in India and an understanding of painting which is comparable to what was the best in the world at that point of time. His viewpoint that “God” , as a powerful entity outside our being is a concept was given to us by the westerners and that we have always had deities rather than god is a very interesting and to me, a very intuitive concept. So what’s the difference? Deities are more of a representation of a quality within you that want to bring out. Here is where he brings in the folly of our understanding of another word/concept. The word puja according to him is more adoration rather than prayer. And when you do puja, we by adoring a representative personification of a combination of virtue (and vice?), are trying to open our inner treasure chest to release these qualities onto the word though our being. And from this new perspective, if we take a closer look at it a lot of our seemingly inane traditions they suddenly start making sense. For example our oft ridiculed pantheon of 33 crore gods (read deities) seem more purposeful as representative of different sets of virtues and vices.

From a technical viewpoint as he traced the evolution of Indian art from ancient to medieval to modern times we moved from a “infinite softness or tenderness” to “dynamism of intellect” finally to a more “materialistic” view point (attributed to colonial styles) and then back to an evolved state of understanding as revived by the Bengal school under Tagore, Nadlal Bose etc.

Again the ethical undertones that he brought about from different paintings were beautiful and I’ll try to illustrate the same by some examples. His perspective that the eternal dance of Shiva is not complete without his loved one Shivkami standing and looking at him dancing gives us a peek into Indian viewpoint on the sacred bond of love and the gratification of completeness that comes with it. The representation of moods and facial expression to everything in the pictures from men, women, and animals tells us about the oneness of the universe that we Indians believed and believe in. The complete absence of name of kings and others who commissioned the work is indicative of the collective civic sense of belonging that people had. We also traced the evolution of buddisum, jainisum etc though art particularly the idea behind the emergence of the bodhisatva as a simplification of the concepts of buddisum as a means to reach the common man thru the jataka tales etc. The common technical heritage across different religions helped pointed toward a culture of guilds of artists that helped create beautiful art and also codify and improve the various techniques by them through the patronage of general society from the kings to housewives to fishermen.

The interpretation of stupas as a representation of different levels of self realization as clearly evidenced by a stupa in Indonesia (since they were wrongly interpreted as burial stones by the colonial historians) was of particular interest to the management student in me due to its close similarly with Maslow’s triangle. I saw traces of other management concepts underlying a lot of the observations and it possibly merits deeper study at some point. On a side note, our faculty Mala Sinha at FMS, Delhi is one of the foremost researchers in this field of understanding linkages between management concepts and Indian mythology and its different undertones. Having got a starting nudge in the same I am now looking forward to the results of such explorations that I can apply in my managerial career.

As the best takeaway to the whole course, to my often dismay at the thought that unless I understand a lot more about art my experience of it will be unfinished, Mr Behl  had the perfect panacea. His view point that art (Indian art at least) was a means – and this being its intended purpose than anything else – to at least temporally achieve bhramanadandam – the eternal bliss itself – and that does not require technical knowledge. This makes perfect sense to me as art is art for it speaks without you knowing the language and there is something special that art can give you whatever your proficiency levels in the technical details of it are.  To sum it all up, of course too many things were covered for me to list out but the general ethical framework that invisibly was woven into completion by the end of the 12 hours across 2 days left me richer and closer to my Indian heritage and am looking forward to Mr Behl ’s book on the same when it comes out.

Endnote : For people interested in knowing more about Mr Behl’s work, I am, with permission posting some links of articles written by him which traverse the same annals of history

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/2008-01/india-ancient-art/interactive-map.html

Article 1:  ”Eternal India”  (General and Indus Valley)

http://www.flonnet.com/fl2416/stories/20070824507606600.htm

Article 2:  ”Birth of Classic Form” (Maurya period + Bharhut)

http://www.flonnet.com/fl2417/stories/20070907505406400.htm

Article 3:  ”Harmony Set in Stone” (Sanchi)

http://www.flonnet.com/fl2418/stories/20070921505506600.htm

Article 4:  “Grandeur in caves” (Early Western Indian Caves)

http://www.flonnet.com/fl2419/stories/20071005505506600.htm

Article 5:  “Of divine forms” (Kushana period)

http://www.flonnet.com/fl2420/stories/20071019505206400.htm

Article 6:  “Valley of stupas” (Krishna Valley, Andhra Pradesh)

http://www.flonnet.com/fl2421/stories/20071102504206400.htm

Article 7:  “Mind over Matter” (Gupta period)
http://www.flonnet.com/fl2422/stories/20071116504306400.htm

Article 8:  “Simply Grand” (Later caves of Western India)

http://www.flonnet.com/fl2423/stories/20071207505906600.htm

Article 9:  “Early Perfection” (Chalukya period)

http://www.flonnet.com/fl2424/stories/20071221505406500.htm

Article 10:  “Living rocks” (Mamallapuram)

http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2425/stories/20080104242506600.htm

Article 11:  ” Royal shrines” (Kanchipuram and Kalugumalai)

http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2501/stories/20080118504906500.htm

Article 12:  “Miniature cosmos” (Development of the temple and Central India)

http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2502/stories/20080201505906500.htm

Article 13:  “Soaring spirit” (Ellora)

http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2503/stories/20080215250306500.htm

Article 14:  “Tradition of grace” (Orissa and Shravanabelagola)

http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2504/stories/20080229503906500.htm

Article 15:  “Thought and images” (Pala period, Nalanda and Vikramasila)                            

http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2505/stories/20080314250506600.htm

Article 16:  “Chola marvels” (Chola temples)

http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2506/stories/20080328250606500.htm

Article 17:  “Tradition in bronze” (Chola bronzes)

http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2507/stories/20080411250706800.htm

Article 18:  “Mountain magic” (Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh)

http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2508/stories/20080425250806300.htm

Article 19:  “Colour of peace” (Ladakh, Kinnaur and Spiti)

http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2509/stories/20080509250906400.htm

Article 20:  “Beauty of devotion” (Khajuraho)

http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2510/stories/20080523251006400.htm

Article 21:  “Glorious blend” (Hoysala temples)

http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2511/stories/20080606251106600.htm

Article 22:  “Tallest of them all” (Sun temple, Konark)

http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2512/stories/20080620251206600.htm

Article 23:  “Images of change” (Hampi)

http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2513/stories/20080704251306500.htm

Article 24:  “Sacred spaces” (Later temples of Tamilnadu)

http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2514/stories/20080718251406500.htm

Article 25: “ Temples of Peace” (Gujarat and Rajasthan Jaina temples)

http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2515/stories/20080801251506600.htm

…Words that wouldn’t make any sense to any but some imaginary people living in the realms of the world of infinite possibilities that is my mind. Of course to them it would herald the coming of their one and only saviour Cracker Boy, dressed in red suite with a blue cape to match. And if those trees and plants that I so bravely fought in those countless fits of imaginative role-playing had a memory they would also probably remember how that red and blue saviour helped show them the error of their ways for which they repented at the edge of his stick sword, and have henceforth grown in trees’ with fully satisfying lives that most trees ought to have.

For it was childhood that brought with it freedom that I could not even imagine for a while in my life, a sense of anything being possible and also a inherent want for something larger than life manifesting itself in various stories entwined with whatever I picked from my world around – my comics and my father’s bed time stories the prime culprits. Yes, I wanted to be a super hero, an innocent want to be special, to be larger than life, a common human want? But as time has passed I have been fed to believe that I am not special. But we are special aren’t we?

What is special but a word with a vague enough definition for people to satisfy the minimum criterion and enjoy the vicarious pleasures of the max. For me this flight of fancy has taken different forms from my want, no, need to be a superhero and then to my belief that I am a alien. And alien I truly am in some level of its definition but more so by my inabilities than by my abilities. But then the trees that tasted the edge of my sword were aliens themselves who were forced to become human and lead the least judged path.

Ah Yes..the least judged path , as our society has shown us is the path of least resistance and hence the right path. But isn’t this contradictory for a society extols the hard work & creativity and resistance to the path of least resistance, at least in its overt overtones?

As for me, I have and will remain an alien, abet one which has learnt to put the human mask as and when necessary

Logged in today to my blog account to find that I have been TAGGED!!! ???

I don’t know how to explain it, but to get your first tag is something that keeps a smile on your face which lasts the whole day

I was tagged by angel-doc who in her own words is a woman-doc-friend, a blogger with a strong affection for hyphenated words and someone who’s posts I have always found to be excellent reads. Having been fed on a regular dose of Scrubs, ER and Robin cook its nice to get to know the person inside the while coat.

Ahem…enough soapfying of my tagger…and getting down to business

The subject of the tag is “Human Nature” which is one of the things I think I am weak at. Be it judging people or dealing with people or anything with the root anthro in it.

Being an engineer (not to lean too much into the cliché) I like things that are logical. I mean, I like it when a=b and b=c follows with `a=c`. I like it, my mind likes it. But in case of human beings `a` can be any range of values from b-z and might borrow something from other scripts as well. But then again, being human (I would want you to believe that wouldn’t I? ) I, at some level like this unpredictability, chaotic-ness ….for a lack of a better word….humanness. It is the same factor that mystifies and at the same time excites me.

(Disclaimer: the nature of the tag is such that once you read it there is HEAVY chance that you get influenced by it…that’s Heisenberg at work for u there….but still I shall try to be as unbiased as “Humanly” possible )

First To Name The people I want to Tag

Being my first tag I wish to limit it to just my best friend Zubin aka Madnezz aka crazy_guy

The second part of the tag is about the "Kinds of People I Judge"

I do not believe in “earth is flat” type of judgments and believe that most people are just products of their upbringings. While I do give this due consideration while judging people, still for getting a reference point from which to see the outer world, to introspect myself and make decisions I judge people. But to draw a list would be hard but here goes

I judge people who are born with the silver spoon and act as though they are the only people who should be living in the world. And on the opposite side if a person with the same background shows humility, I value it a lot.

As with most people, I dislike sycophants. While I do believe that you need to be in the favor of the powerful, you should have a stand of your own and that stand should have some driving force other than mere sycophancy.

I can accept a certain level of Hypocrisy, since at times I have felt that I am a hypocrite and with this the set of all hypocrites’ changes from “them” to “we”. And True to my human nature I have tried to justify it and the justification I could couture up is pretty straight forward. Your views change and when it does a lot of associated ideas change. For example, in my school I used to proudly declare that I won’t drive a polluting vehicle and I was vehemently against my parents for buying a car. But now I can’t live without my little Unicorn. I think it can be attributed to naivety than hypocrisy but then again I cant be impartial in judging me . But oscillatory or totally contradicting morals with in a small temporal space is something I would despise
 
Maybe I will add more here later

The third part of the tag is about "People and Things I admire"

I admire a lot of people. Recently I have been doing a lot of Find + Replace of Envy with admire in my lil book of emotions.

I admire 

• People  who are polite and courteous even when they gain nothing from it
• People who are dedicated for a cause and work tirelessly for it (Its something I really cant do)
• People who are able to take bold decisions against the flow due to right reasons
• People who are brave enough to speak out the truth how ever hard it is
• People who can understand people much better than me (that would include a large percentage of the world’s population )
• People who can live life as it comes
• People whose writing moves me (songs/poems/prose).
• Music and people who can sing from their hearts…and who can enjoy music

My freedom is important to me. I say this knowing that freedom is, in itself , an illusion.

At first sight there might seem to be a contradiction, but, I feel, there is none. The conflict lies in the first sentence which can, at worst, be called vague. It only talks of freedom but does not talk about the level of abstraction at which this freedom is defined. The second statement just does the opposite by bringing in the idea of different levels freedom. Since freedom itself is an abstract idea, when one calls it an illusion, one is invariably introducing a lot of level`s` of abstraction. So, redefining freedom for both the sentences should obviate the contradiction that seemed to exist initially.

When I say my freedom is important to me, I talk about freedom from that what I perceive as threats to my “freedom” at that moment in time and space in my life. This freedom and its inhibitor’s definition are strongly influenced by not only my perception of the world and also the price my sub-conscious mind is willing to pay for that freedom. If the price is perceived, by my mind, to be too high, more often than not, it will not been seen as shackle by my conscious mind. But once it is identified as a chain by my conscious mind, my ego would not rest till at some level I break the chain or at least convince my self that I have broken it. This is why it is important to me and how I fructify this importance

In the second sentence, freedom is to be taken in its most absolute terms that you can imagine for it. But the image that you conjure up will still be limited by the very facets that make you human. So to imagine it as an un-imaginable thing is the best way to imagine it, much like the concept of infinity. And it is this concept that’s an illusion.

Contradiction Solved?

And to round it off on a sober note, I asked one of my friends after *making* him read this give me his definition of freedom. He retorted “Your freedom is to ask me that question, mine, to choose not to answer and, ours, to understand each other on this”
 

Recently there is a lot of talk about converting the 5 day work week to 6 days to offset the strengthening in Rupee against the Dollar. Rupee gaining strength in the international market always invokes a lot of conflicting emotions. As an Indian the strengthening of the rupee can been seen as a matter of pride, even though I am pretty sure that they might teach that it’s not something to be too proud about in an economics class, if I ever cared to attend one.  On the other hand I am faced with the daunting prospect of having to think about sacrificing one of my precious off-days

This whole 6 day work week issue reminds me of one of the countless forwards I had got looong back. I have dug it up here. In that article the author openly argues for shorter working hours. Back when I read it, I had just got into the industry and barely come to terms with the Indian work culture. I thought, even with 42.5 hours + countless late nights + weekends that I am putting in and I see other people put in; my work is not taking any noticeable steps towards the word called completion. And true to my human nature, I assumed the problem is with “them”, that all Europeans are lazy twats and they do lesser work than us Indians and are even more lazy that they have the audacity to actually ask for lesser working hours. Now me, I was proud of my work, proud of the extra hours I put in, even though my seniors warned me that, the pride will soon wane away but you would still end up at office on odd hours to cope up with the work.

And then UK onsite happened.

One of the first things that I noticed there was that people were VERY strict about their working hours. Unless something VERY important, they came in at 9 o clock and left at 5. Again I thought…no wonder they need to outsource their work, they are lazy to the core. Me and my colleagues would run up by 10 and work till 7-8 which was “real” work in my eyes. But as my work their progressed, I noticed something very different about their work culture. Unlike us, if a personal call came to them during office they would not chatter on endlessly and when they came to work in the morning, the first place they went were not their Gmail or Yahoo inbox but rather to their official mail box to check official mails (I cant really say that with 100% surely but still). Again most of the time I went to the coffee-vending machine, which was a common occurrence since I used to get orange juice FREE! , it would more often be my colleagues sitting around chatting rather than the “native” workers and after 5 again we would, at least  most of the time, be the only people still working.

One thing that was becoming clearer to me was that they might be spending lesser hours than us at office, but the actual amount of “work” minutes they put in seems to be the same. Hence “lazy” prejudice that I associated with them got replaced by efficient and towards the end of the 3 months I spent there, I could see the benefits of that.

But coming back, it didn’t take me long to fall back into the old routine of staying late without realizing it. But then certain things like appraisals have a way of forcing you to introspect your life and ask questions like “Am I prioritizing things properly?” it is then I realized that I had unknowingly slipped back into my night shifts and inefficient work patterns

At that moment everything seemed clear. I was able to see something really wrong with the work culture. She would later tell me that it is something She has been telling all along but I still would credit the root cause analysis to moua.

Root cause analysis By Sabarinath K

A large chunk of the IT industry is normally freshers (read as fresh out of college and fresh into industry from academics). A lot of them come from different backgrounds from the bullock-cart village to the extremely urbane. Of this most of them do not have the luxury of getting a job at their native place and are hence are also fresher into a new city and probably “living” in a city with bright lights for the first time.

Being in the IT sector most of them must be computer savvy and would possibly swear by Gmail, Yahoo and Orkut or at the very least hooked to the internet in general. Even though I would not bitch about pay, but I have to say that the cost of living in Bangalore is one thing that’s proudly kept pace (and sometimes even overtaken) with the pay hike that the IT sector has been experiencing. And being bachelors their lifestyle would be…well…let’s stop with the word “bachelor-like”.

Looking at the big picture, what do you have at your hand? You have a huge set of young boys/girls living outside their parent’s aegis with a limited amount of financial freedom. They are getting free internet and air conditioned workplace with freedom to stay till they drop at their office compare this with their “unconnected” home , subject to the whim and fancy of brother weather ( not AC’ed I mean) , what would they choose? This leads to a lot of them staying back at office for no particular reasons or at least official reasons. Add to that, misguided corporate policies giving web mail access only in the night, and more and more people are drawn to stay late.

Once this sets in work will be slowly put off till the dark due to various reasons (maybe cuz the hot chick in the next cabin wont be available to flirt after 6:30? Or maybe you will not get into the mode to work till its night or maybe your PM saw you sitting late and night and just assumed you would love to work then too). Once this happens, habits for a life time are sowed. Since the current seniors would also have been subject to this same cycle, it would be seen unnatural and would probably go un-noticed.

Not only are we learning to stay late, we are also learning to expand the work (Murphy’s law? Work expands to fill time given), that could be easily done in 8 hours, to fill 10-12 hours. From a bachelors point of view it is not very relevant, but moving such a habit into a married life can be disastrous and by that time (that a IT person get married) this would be in-grained in us to be easily fixed.

Coming back to the crux of the issue. The reasoning behind the 6 day workweek is to bill the customer more rt? I feel that the customer is not myopic to not understand that 6 day workweeks would decrease the productivity increase errors and we would end up spending more man hours for the same work, in turn costing the customer more but getting possibly more shabby work.

I feel it’s the duty of the Indian management to understand/convey this vision, and coupled with the issue of margins and try to take the hit themselves or pass it on to the customer ,by convincing them that it’s in their best interests.

One thing that you might think that I have ignored is the competition from companies like Accenture, EDS etc who have a lot of their workforce outside India. Well, from where I stand (ideological zenith and practical nadir) , the cost factor was going to be just the spark for the engine that’s is the services industry, the fuel needs to come from differentiation in other more important things like say quality of work!.

Time to look at that maybe eh?

( A HHHUUUGGEEE thanks to Nikhil or rather he should thank me for giving him the opportunity to proof read the draft )