Colors of man

I finally caught up with two movies that I had wanted to watch for a long time. And they left me thoroughly impressed. They had nothing to do with each other. The context was different. Set in different continents. Different cultures. But I was impressed for the same reasons. Excellent acting, ensemble cast, powerful screenplay.

Rang De Basanti begins in a solemn sepia tone. Indian freedom fighters on the throes of death. The depiction of a hanging. Of three people, no less. But neither the abruptness nor the brutal act disturbs you. In fact, the inner cynic smiles and says, how many times do I have to go through this, move on please. But then, right before the noose tightens, music kicks in. Not the type of music associated with a tragic situation. It is the type reserved for blissful happiness. And that is when you begin to wonder. Did Rahman make a mistake, or, a disturbing thought arises, is this intentional? As if the screenwriter knew exactly what you were thinking at that moment and decided to twist the plot in response. Rang De is filled with several such moments of surrealism and treads the untreaded path in Indian cinema. One has to applaud the makers as Rang De has one of the most complex screenplays witnessed in a mainstream Bollywood project.

The movie takes you back and forth between a world populated by generation Y and one from the past that looks disconnected, unreal. The nonlinear narrative, though disconcerting for the average viewer, is poetic in places. When Aslam gets frustrated, walks upstairs and throws open the door to his room... in he walks, minus beard and long hair, into a sepia-toned past where people mouth dialogues that get more and more quaint as we go along. So you say, whats the point? Before you know, one of the characters says, whats the point? Tricked, again.

The infectious laughter and good natured camaraderie the group enjoys slowly sinks into you and you go along for the ride. It seems harmless, and you're curious to see what the heck is going on. Slowly but surely, the people in the sepia toned past make more and more sense, not by what they say, but by the subtle undertone of what you feel the character in the movie is thinking while playing the character he is playing in the movie within the movie. I just felt fulfilled at that point. For a movie to inspire this kind of thought into the subtext of its characters, is simply mind-blowing.

Then the movie picks up speed and things start happening, and it also begins to falter. Because, now you can predict exactly what's going to happen. The sepia toned characters start sounding corny again. There is a lot of repetition. And by the end, you really feel insulted. The characters end up being caricatures of themselves. And boy, do they look stupid. Still, I can give the benefit of doubt to the screenwriter, for he seems to have faithfully adhered to tying the parallel narratives together up until the end. You could suspect if the real excuse is to dumb the movie down for mass consumption, like Shankar from the south does in every other movie where he has a "message". The comparison is unfair, since Rang De is leaps and bounds ahead by way of using subtely to say what it has to say that even the sincere Swades looks corny in comparison.

Definitely worth a watch, especially for generations X, Y and Z.

Now, did I say two movies? The other one left me dumbfounded for it fixed the exact problem that Rang De suffers from. And it stretches parallel narratives to the limit without affecting credulity likewise. If you watched the Oscars this year, you know the movie I'm talking about. It won 3 oscars, including best picture. Crash. An awesomely unpredictable screenplay with enough twists to keep you hooked, a stunning sub-text of racism and clash of cultures and simple situations tied to powerful implications, an ensemble cast to die for but used sparingly to perfection (Sandra Bullock appears in 7 frames total), and a tagline that sounds corny before and deep after... Crash is clever, deep, and powerful without being overtly so at any point. Subtely is king all the way through. For all the twists, not one seems contrived, which in itself is magical.

The thread of the subtext is held meticulously all the way through, even the last frame is funny and sad at the same time.

So where did Rang De falter? In Crash, the characters never get out of character, but they do things you dont expect them to do. From a storytelling standpoint, it is beautiful.

One nation, under God.

A strange moment today.

I am giving my pre-schooler daughter a bath. Suddenly, she places her hand on her chest and starts speaking perfect legalese, in impeccable law-school English with an accent and all. I am stupefied for a moment, but catch the words "allegiance" and "flag". Then I hear the phrase "one nation under God". Ha! That rings a bell. The pledge of allegiance is what it is. She must have picked it up at the pre-school.

Though I've lived in this country for almost 7 years now, I still identify myself as an Indian. In all fairness, the feeling is mutual, since the US government identifies me as an alien. For a moment, I feel removed from my own daughter, almost wanting to stop her from saying the pledge. But then, if being Indian is my identity, then being American is hers. Who am I to deny her that liberty?

After all nations are created by mankind, I like to think, out of habit. It is embedded in our genes right from the hunter-gatherer days when we marked our territories. There was this side discussion on an NPR piece on the fate of the Neanderthal man. Apparently, early man migrated from Africa to Europe and the rest of the world. Why did he migrate? What forced this primitive being to move across mountains, plains and deserts? What was he in search of? According to the guest on the show, early man lived in small tribes, and each tribe had its own, well, you guessed it right, territorial borders. These tribes constantly fought against each other, guessed right again, for land. And its not only man, tigers, birds, you name it... the territorial gene was programmed and embedded into life long before mankind evolved, by the quantum computer called the universe. Suffice to say, territory, land, borders, identity, and migration are as old as the Neanderthals, er... hills.

I hope my daughter takes pride in her identity. And I fervently hope she learns enough about the rest of the world and the history of mankind to look beyond borders, beyond territories, beyond identities, to look at the fundamental truth - one nation, under God (God here being said quantum computer).

Blink-Freak-onomics

Yes I read the book that everyone I know and don't know is reading. Freakonomics. The book has a graphic on the cover - an apple, with a slice cut out. Hmmm. So? Look closely. The slice actually looks like an orange in the flesh. Steven Lewitt, a prof in the Univ. of Chicago, starts from that premise and delves into many things accepted as conventional wisdom, explores them, comes up with seemingly weird explanations. Only problem is, the unconventional wisdoms are supported by empirical data. The authors seem to enjoy playing the role of devil's advocate, street smart Davids against the establishment/system Goliaths, and the book makes for compulsive reading (I finished three quarters of the book in one sitting). Even funny at some places. But I was kind of hoping that the book would take the discussion to the next level at some point from simply picking holes in generally accepted theories. A disappointment in that regard. I.e. the cover tells the whole story, and the authors could be held guilty of playing to the gallery. Otherwise, I found a few things I learned in the Econ class - principal agent problems, asymmetry of information, and incentives, incentives, incentives - and some real world application of multivariate regression analysis (now I'm glad I killed myself taking that adv. stats course).

By queer coincidence, I read Blink by Malcolm Gladwell during the same time, which makes a pitch for thin-slicing - the first impressions we form about people, places, things, experiences - and on how to make proper use of this sixth, or seventh if you like, sense that humans seem to be endowed with. Very many anecdotal examples, some supported by statistical studies. My take on the book is that it reinforced something that my intution tells me all the time - intuition is, more often that not, right.

The two books merged into one in my mind somehow and I cannot tell where I found which example. And the fundamental philosophy evolved into this - conventional wisdom be screwed, the butterflies in your stomach may have a point.

Rain rain come again

There is something about playing a sport in the rain that is unique. May be the fact that you are drenched completely, which makes the body feel that you sweated a lot and therefore got a good workout. Maybe the athelete's high that comes from keeping at it and pushing your limits, despite the rain, depite the environment. Maybe its just that the world looks more greener, more serene, more beautiful than ever in the rain. Well, at least in my mind.

We played an exhilarating game of Ultimate Frizbee in pouring rain today. People were dropping wet disks all the time, sliding intentionally and unintentionally, throwing the disc in crazy arcs et. al. But there was a particular moment that was strangely satisfying. I was breathing heavily and my eyes were clouded with a mix of sweat and rainwater. And I felt a drop of water begin its journey. Started from the forehead, pushed straight down to the nose, took that narrow bridge to tortuously hang from the tip of of my nose till I decided to let it drop with a shake of my head. I looked up, still breathing heavily, inadvertently taking in the surroundings. The lush green field as beautiful as ever, clouds hanging on the hillsides all around, the rain plopping down like tiny rocks... it was serene. Beautiful.

The thought bubble vanished when somewhere behind me, someone yelled "Uuuullltimate!". I turned around, took a deep breath, and ran like a madman into the rain....

The MBA application

If you are an MBA student and you have a blog, you got to write about this. Its a rite of passage, so to speak. I'm by no means an expert, since I applied to exactly one school, and that too for its fully employed aka part-time program. But this is what I did. And I think it should work for any school. For any one.

1. Go to the info session. I went to a few info sessions. You get a glimpse of the quality and culture of the school during the info session. You get to see how hard they work to sell the school to you. That says something. If the school is worth that much, it should show without anyone referring to it overtly. I went to 3 different info sessions and picked the one that my gut felt strongly about. Blink, anyone? I got hooked when the dean in one of the schools made a fairly simple argument - "You have absolutely no idea about what you're getting into. But trust me. Its worth it." He sounded genuine. Honest. Credible. He had that fire in his eyes. If you know the school I go to, you know who I'm talking about. And trust me. He really is that good.

2. Dont spend more than 4 weeks preparing for the GMAT. It only takes you so far. It's not exactly a piece of cake, but there is only one thing you need to do. Actually, three things. Practice, practice, practice.

3. This was the hardest part for me. The application essays. I struggled with it. I read a couple of books on dos and donts. I thought a lot about figuring out what the adcom would like to hear. But then, I hit the writer's block. I just couldn't sit down and write BS. After a month's procrastination, I decided to do it. My only mantra - be true to yourself, honest. I answered the questions truthfully, as honestly as I could without being incomprehensible, even stating my doubts, ambivalence and naive expectations.

4. The interview was a walk in the park. I was kinda nervous, but the interviewer was pretty casual and put me at ease. He seemed to be impressed with my geek resume, and my answers to behavioral questions were spot on. I had met enough characters with rough edges and had had enough experience dealing with conflict to spend the day talking. Dropped a couple of hints that said I'd done some research about the school. 20 mins and we were through.

I knew I was in at two points. When I finished writing my essays, and when I walked out after the interview.

The friendly alien

I am an alien. Officially. According to the Department of State, United States of America. It doesn't matter if I'm a non-resident alien or a resident alien. Alien is alien. It has that negative connotation that says, at the very least, that I'm different. In my mind, even foreigner has a friendly tone to it. But alien, it takes xenophobia to a whole different level. Hollywood thinks aliens look ghoulish, have extraordinary powers, have devices that display James-Bond-like properties, fly around, kill. Well, look at me. A poor, helpless, powerless organism. Nonetheless, alien I am.

To add insult to injury, I'm a non-resident alien, on a visa with intent to immigrate to the US. Not as serious as intent to commit a crime, but pretty close. No small matter that I've been living in the United States, legally, paying taxes, abiding by the law, making a living, you know, making my .0002c contribution to the economy. As a consequence of being alien, I'm one of those unfortunate beings that got caught in the 2000-2005 backlog of immigrant visa petitions.

For no apparent fault of mine. It just turned out that Uncle Sam was super busy with something else (handling kindred beings from south of the border) and decided to put my trans-species-migration application in the cupboard, where it remained till the DoS took notice in March 2005. And what did they do? They sent it to a Backlog Elimination Center, which seems to be on the way to elimination itself without eliminating any of the backlog.

And so the alien invasion continues. Me. Myself. Alien.

Life moves on... quarter to quarter

Ever since I started on my FEMBA (Fully Employed MBA, the politically correct expression for part-time MBA) program at UCLA Anderson, life seems to move ahead in chunks of time. In quarters to be precise. A quarter lasts exactly 10 weeks. And there is a certain predictability to your mental state over those 10 weeks. Week 1 begins with some level of euphoria and positive energy, that seems to ebb and settle by weeks 2 and 3. By week 4, multi-tasking (more on that and time management later) reaches a nadir, week 5 is desperate and involves at least one all-nighter, week 6 and 7 are spent recovering from exhaustion and catching up with everything else that was put on hold, week 8 starts with a mix of fatigue and disciplined effort to move on, week 9 is a blur, multiple allnighters in week 10 that ends with a sense of relief mixed with foreboding for the quarter to begin. One chapter closes and the next opens. The cycle continues.

Thankfully, FEMBA students don't care as much about grades as the fulltimers do. Probably because the fulltimers take a bigger risk when they leave a job to go fulltime, and they like to ensure that they have the one thing that they have control over to be in their grasp - grades. But then every professor I've seen so far has insisted that grades don't matter in any MBA program, every alumnus I've talked to so far has insisted that the curriculum or the academic side doesn't matter as much as the people you meet and the friends you make. The only question that crops up in my mind - then why does the program have to cost so much?