The wife pointed me to overstated.net, a blog by a Bay Area software engineer. I realize how exciting that sounds, but there’s more. The guy has listed, for every SF neighbourhood (left), a counterpart in NYC (right). For instance:

Financial District	Midtown
North Beach	Little Italy
Union Square	Soho
Soma	Tribeca
Haight Ashbury	East Village
Castro	West Village
Mission	Williamsburg

[link]

This is just a selection, and I’m sure some of you would take issue to even some of these. Many people have left extended comments at the original post so I’m not even going to go there. You can check out all of the comments yourself.

But there was one interesting comment that I’d like to point out. An observation about the whole comparison by a “Bay Area Native”:

As a Bay Area native (exact location withheld to protect the innocent) who permanently moved to NYC 8 years ago, it always amazes me how people around the country compare/contrast their cities with NYC (and other places). But in NYC itself, no one really does that. I guess if you live in the greatest city in the world, you don?t have to define your home in terms of someplace else (e.g., ?Buenos Aires is the Paris of Latin America?). [link]

And (s)he follows that up with another comment:

Years ago, a woman was bragging to me about some special university program she was accepted into, and she described it as ?the Harvard of the South.? It just struck me that, if you have to define yourself by reference to something else, you ain?t all that. I mean, do people at Harvard run around saying ?We?re the [fill in the blank university] of the Northeast?? I doubt it. Harvard is Harvard. Period. No need to associate Harvard with anything else. It stands quite nicely on its own. [link]

An interesting observation. One that my old philosophy professor from school would find interesting to analyze, I’m sure.

…or “the puckish humor of Pop Art [combined] with the serene and cerebral qualities of Minimalism” [link] depending on your point of view.

Stingel’s Buddha

An article in last Sunday’s Times talks about Italian artist Rudolf Stingel and his association with Buddha and India:

Mr. Stingel?s associations with Buddha are longstanding. As a boy in northern Italy, he played with the Buddha figurines that his father, who traveled to India for work, brought home as souvenirs. As a rebellious young man in the early ?70s, it was mandatory, he said, to profess an affinity for Buddhist practices: namely, to have a little shrine and practice meditation.

?You had to do it if you wanted to be cool,? he said. ?But we all faked it. It was all a lie ? no one ever really meditated.?

And, he added, ?I have a problem sitting cross-legged, anyway.? [link]

To lampoon those pseudo-Buddhists or “elite Buddhists” (a term coined by prominent Buddhologist Charles S. Prebish) Stingel created a series of east-meets-east sculptures:

…that blended the meditative Buddha with many-armed Hindu deities like Siva or Vishnu. In this new deity?s six hands, Mr. Stingel placed the implements he cited in his earlier D.I.Y. manual: a brush, a squeegee, a scissors, a mixer and so on. Cast in rubber and made in 24 candy-bright colors, these gods of Stingelian creation became themselves an instant style-set collectible. [link]

I’ve talked about this kind of thing before, and the jury is still out on this one. I can’t seem to decide whether appropriating these images and modifying them to suit one’s purpose (whatever it may be) is disrespectful or not. In the U.S., showing irreverence to age-old concepts is applauded and thus, encouraged. However, in eastern countries, that is not the case. This is not to say that Indians couldn’t do with a little irreverence, but at what point is it all right to get outraged?

This doesn’t come from nowhere. I have an amateur artist friend who has a few paintings similar to Stingel’s art and, knowing him as well as I do, I know that he has little or no understanding of the significance of what he’s appropriating other than “Hey! This would look good over here”. Even I myself have dabbled in the arts and freely used Indian images from time to time in my own (somewhat limited) creations. And of course, I have appropriated the name of my favorite deity.

The answer, I suppose, lies in Stingel’s Buddha or specifically, Buddhism’s middle way. It’s ok to appropriate these images as long as it is done with a reasonable intent, and with a certain amount of understanding and respect. Now, what constitutes “reasonable intent” and “certain amount of understanding and respect”? Well, the answer to that depends on the situation and this brings us back to square one.

In my earlier posting, I quoted from Subhamoy Das‘ About.com article on the subject. I think he answers the question well, so to end this posting, I’ll quote him again:

…the entire concept of judging works of art is quite relative… [I]s it morally right to reap creative benefits at the cost of maligning the cultural and religious sentiments of another sect? [I]t remains an open debate… But the bottom line is that it’s not as easy to understand the culture, symbols and essence of Hinduism as finding them colourful enough for use in films or fashion. [link]

?It?s just the most fantastic thing to be free. It was an appalling experience…occasionally quite terrifying.?

?It became hard to imagine normal life. I dreamed several times of being free, but always woke up in that room.? [link]

It’s from BBC journalist Alan Johnston who was recently released by terrorists after being kidnapped in Gaza and held for nearly four months.

If you are one of those souls who’s “nearly done” (this could mean up to two years before your defense) with his doctoral research, then no other phrase sums it up better. You lose track of normalcy. Day in and day out, all you think about is your research, which has now slowed down to a crawl because you’re almost at the end. There’s mounting pressure, both internal and external to get out. And you actually begin to believe -quite strongly, I should add- that it’s never going to end. This last thing, I think, can only be understood if you go through something similar yourself.

Let me tell you – when it finally happens, it’s like you’ve been released from captivity and can now experience life as you should. Of course, you’re permanently screwed up in the head, but it’s great to be free!

I’m a big fan of Emmanuel Derman. Both he and I are in the same field (quantitative finance) and he’s a much accomplished and widely published academic and quant, who’s at the top of his field. He gives good reason to us young ‘uns to look up to him.

Regardless of that though, I was reading his blog this morning and came across an interesting post entitled ’10cc of H2O’. He says:

I have a hard time dealing with these kinds of contradictions, when someone tells you something that is both half-true and half-nonsense. …. I like things and people to be clear cut; people should be either obviously smart or clearly bullshit artists. [link]

This got me thinking. I have rarely come across anything in my life that has been so clear-cut. The only exception to that is (possibly) my work, which is purely theoretical mathematics, but that exists only in one’s imagination, so I’m not sure if it really counts.

While it would be nice to have the world neatly divided into black and white, it has never been that simple for me. Take, for example, the US. When I first got here, I was a teenager, and pretty much everything about this country looked nice, shiny and bright. But beneath that gleaming surface (a consequence of the image it exports) were things that were neither gleaming nor bright. People were ignorant. Sometimes, more ignorant than those I had encountered back home. Life was fairly individualistic, which is nice for a while, but has its negative consequences (isolation, a spiritual void). And, from time to time, I was discriminated against. Nothing serious, but enough to remind me -when I was aware of it- that I didn’t quite belong here.

My point is that the country, while once The Best Place In The World for me, suddenly was no longer so great. Don’t get me wrong, the US has a lot to offer, but nothing in life is so black and white. Everything has its pros and cons.

Derman also talks about the movie, The Lives of Others, where a Stasi (the then-East German equivalent of the KGB) agent starts off being clear-cut about his role in the agency, and his purpose in life. He’s an up-and-coming agent at the top of his game and has few questions about what he’s doing. Life, for him, is black and white. Either you are a dissident or you’re not. There’s no gray area. That is, until he’s assigned to spy on a so-called dissident writer whom, the Stasi agent quickly realizes, is not quite a dissident. And that the entire assignment originated in the selfish motives of a senior officer, and not the so-called ‘good of the country’. His realization that life is not so black and white is what the movie is all about, and he pays for this realization dearly.

If there’s one thing that’s clear-cut, it’s that life, people and things are never black and white. In the Economics courses that I’ve both, taken and taught, the mantra “There’s no such thing as a free lunch” gets repeated endlessly. So perhaps life is something like that – you can’t have the good without the bad. You can’t have the pros without the cons. And anything that’s too good is, at the cost of writing a cliche, too good to be true.

When you come to the end of all the light you know, and it’s time to step into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things shall happen: Either you will be given something solid to stand on or you will be taught to fly. -Edward Teller.

For the last half-decade or so, a slow but steady transition has been taking place: A part of the internet has been moving from the confines of the static webpage to the freedom of a dynamic, interactive medium. Blogging has been at the forefront of these changes, as bloggers catalogue the changes and blogs showcase them, venturing into a heretofore unknown medium. While it is true that blogging is in its embryonic stages and has not defined itself yet, it is also the case that it is several things all at once and so defies categorization. Its etymological roots are easy to explain: It is short for weblog. Some early bloggers split the word ‘weblog’ unconventionally into ‘we blog’, and a new word entered into the English language lexicon. A word, incidentally, that was Merriam-Webster’s word of the year for 2004. So by definition, a blog is an online log, a diary, a catalogue of one’s thoughts. And not unlike our thoughts, the types of blogs run the gamut from the political to the poetic; and from the perverse to the picturesque.

Andrew Sullivan – a now-famous political blogger and journalist for Time magazine – describes a blog as “somewhere between writing a column and talk radio.” A blog could be as base as daytime television or as stimulating as an in-depth PBS documentary. A blog is a journalistic report of an event, a well-thought-out opinion piece, the errant ramblings of an old man, and the dull journaling of a teenager’s daily activities. While it is easy to label blogs as extensions of newspaper or other journalistic media, this is falling prey to shaping the unknown into what is familiar. Yes, there are several similarities, but there are more differences. This categorization also partly follows from the fact that it is mainly the political blogs which have transcended from the underground into the mainstream media. But it is the ones that go unnoticed by the mainstream that are the most intriguing. There are photo blogs, on which amateur photographers post some of the most beautiful images; there are audio blogs where people post audio (also known as podcasts); there are blogs in which people who can barely speak English write the most lyrical prose, in English no less; and there are blogs focused on particular topics, usually started by people who are experts (sometimes real, at other times, self-imagined) in the field. The only universal statement that one can make about blogs is about their format: dated entries which are reverse-chronologically ordered and have a space for readers to comment on them.

At its best, blogging is an art. And just like any work of art, be it Nabokov’s Lolita or Cartier-Bresson’s The Decisive Moment, it can be subtle and expressive at once. A good blog post can stir up anger, elation and grief. It appeals to everyone and incites passionate discussion. It can create trends or destroy them. Like art, a blog post has its roots in the banalities of everyday existence. A good blogger can elevate the mundane to the resplendent, and can debase the divine to the unholy. A good blogger must create his own personal villains, orchestrate conflict, and through that, drama. A good blog post can be fiction, non-fiction or somewhere in between. A good blog post is like a well-written op-ed piece, but written in less time and with less thought. No, that’s not a typo – less thinking is one of the things that sets blogging apart from any of the traditional media. The technology-enabled facility of quick publishing gives blog posts (and their responses) what can be loosely described as a stream of consciousness style. The immediateness creates a sense of intimacy with the audience, and motivates them to interact with the blogger.

This interactive aspect of a blog is another unique characteristic of this medium. A blog post is not only incomplete without its comments but they are an integral part of it. Comments allow a blogger to clarify, argue, converse or just observe his audience. Unlike traditional works of art, this enables a blogger to look inside his audience’s minds and digest and internalize what they are saying. This knowledge will, in turn, show up in the next post, where readers can comment again, and the cycle continues. The interaction makes blogging a largely synergistic activity and makes blogger and audience interdependent on one other, in a more explicit way. Of course, there is interaction between artist and audience in other media as well, but it is not nearly as intimate, and is not incorporated into the artist’s work as quickly as with a blog.

By giving people the freedom to write about what they want, when they want, along with a more-or-less automatic readership, countless souls (including myself) have found their ‘inner writer’. Inherent to its very nature as a new medium, blogging is allowing people to create a new style of writing, with its own set of rules. As more and more people join the blogging bandwagon, it is increasingly difficult to ignore it, and as it gains more exposure, it is increasingly difficult to ignore the fact that blogging, at its best, is indeed a new art form.

My family has some close ties with Gandhi, as I’ve written about in an earlier post. The matriarch of my family, my surrogate great-grandmother was a staunch Gandhian and heavily involved with many activities for our freedom struggle. Gandhi met her fairly often when he was in Bombay. She was even on the boat that went out to sprinkle his ashes in the confluence of the three holy rivers.

Notwithstanding Munnabhai‘s light take on it which, if nothing else, puts his message in an easy-to-digest package, I also believe quite strongly that several aspects of his philosophy are alive and well today, if interpreted correctly.

On an unrelated note, it’s interesting that Gandhi never received the Nobel Peace Prize, although he was nominated five times between 1937 and 1948. Here’s what Wikipedia had to say about that.

Decades later, the Nobel Committee publicly declared its regret for the omission, and admitted to deeply divided nationalistic opinion denying the award. The Prize was not awarded in 1948, the year of Gandhi’s death, on the grounds that “there was no suitable living candidate” that year, and when the Dalai Lama was awarded the Prize in 1989, the chairman of the committee said that this was “in part a tribute to the memory of Mahatma Gandhi”. [link]

As Einstein said, “I believe that Gandhi’s views were the most enlightened of all the political men in our time. We should strive to do things in his spirit: not to use violence in fighting for our cause, but by non-participation in anything you believe is evil.”

Hear, hear. Here’s to Gandhigiri for at least another 137 years.

The picture’s of a young Gandhi circa 1906 when he was in London. Source: mkgandhi.org.

Perhaps I’m getting soft in my old age, but as I was walking to the library today, I was hit in the face with this dash of red. Appropriately, the sign said ‘Stop’. And so I did.

my mind is… (XXV)
my mind is
a big hunk of irrevocable nothing which touch and taste and smell
and hearing and sight keep hitting and chipping with sharp fatal
tools
in an agony of sensual chisels i perform squirms of chrome and ex
-ecute strides of cobalt
nevertheless i
feel that i cleverly am being altered that i slightly am becoming
something a little different, in fact
myself
Hereupon helpless i utter lilac shrieks and scarlet bellowings.

E.E. Cummings

Here’s to the profound religious experience that comes from doing a job well and being grossly underpaid.

Having successfully survived another meeting with a couple of my committee members, one of whom routinely strips me naked and flogs me, while the other idly stands by and watches with a smile, I decided to finish up some errands and take the rest of the day to myself.

Getting home early, I switched on the TV, expecting to be thoroughly bored but was pleasantly surprised to see The Big Kahuna playing on IFC. A young moi saw and enjoyed this movie several years ago, but the movie still resonated with the older, jaded version. Depending on your mood, the movie can be at worst, a pleasant viewing experience, and at best, moving.

The movie was #54 on ‘The 2005 Top 100 Spiritually Significant Films (TM)‘, right above Dogville (which, incidentally, happens to be one of the best movies that I have seen) which was at #55, but below the Apu Trilogy which came in at #39. And, in case you’re wondering (I was), The Passion of the Christ was at #35. That the list exists is not surprising. That they’ve actually trademarked the phrase ‘Spritually Significant’, is. The irony of that notwithstanding, a movie, a really good movie, can undoubtedly be a spiritual experience. I’m certainly not the first to compare the movie theater with the church and the movie screen with the pulpit. Back in the day, the silent movies were screened in churches. For practical reasons, of course, but it was a church, nonetheless. And the organ music you hear in the background of all those Charlie Chaplin films you saw as a child, was actually played live by the church organist. Not that I’m a Christian or a church-goer. In fact, I’m an atheist. But that does not prevent me from considering a movie to be a religious experience. How an atheist can find a movie to be a religious experience, I leave you to figure out in your spare time.

But I digress. The Big Kahuna is about three industrial lubricant salesmen stuck in a motel room at a sales conference in Wichita, Kansas. One is a cynic and a husband (Kevin Spacey), equally dedicated to both occupations, the other is world-weary and recently-divorced (Danny DeVito) and the third (Peter Facinelli) is a newly married, wide-eyed, naive youngster who is a devout Christian. Almost the entire movie is shot in a mid-level motel suite, where the three are waiting (directly or indirectly) for the big kahuna or “the biggest manufacturer in the Midwest” to show up so they can make their sales pitch, clinch the deal and leave flush with money. While they are waiting, they talk about life, love, God, business, marriage and more. The Spacey character’s cynicism frequently clashes with the kid’s devout sensibilities, while the DeVito character constantly tries to intervene to keep Spacey in check, or to patiently teach Junior a lesson or two. Through these two extremes of faith, as it were, and DeVito’s man-in-the-middle, some very interesting and witty conversations ensue. For instance,

“Do I strike you as a particularly religious man, Phil?,” says the Spacey character.

“Not even the slightest.” replies DeVito.

“Then why am I seized with a sudden overwhelming desire to pray?”

The film is loosely based around Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, but is unfortunately, neither as absurd and comical, nor is it as universally appealing. Like the play, the movie could be viewed as a metaphor for life, with the big manufacturer as God, reflecting how most people wait their entire lives for the big kahuna to arrive in some form or the other. In fact, the word kahuna is Hawaiian for shaman or godman. The metaphor is furthered by the fact that the Spacey and DeVito characters, who are both older and either cynical or world-weary, have little reason to believe in God’s existence. In the movie, they neither see the big kahuna nor do they know if or when he’s in the room because, as we find out later, he didn’t write his real name on his name-tag (a metaphor for the apparent superficiality of those who need scientific proof for the existence of God, perhaps?). The only one who speaks with him is the young ‘un, a devout Christian. However, Junior’s naivete and religiosity, prevents him from fully appreciating this opportunity. At first, he doesn’t realize he’s talking with him. And later, when he does, instead of pitching their product, all the novice talks about is Jesus. Spacey, upon learning about this, remarks sarcastically,

“Did you mention perhaps what line of industrial lubricants Jesus would have endorsed?”

The kid cannot understand why Spacey is so angry at his actions, since to him Jesus is infinitely more important than industrial lubricants. Finally with arguments leading to fisticuffs blamed on “the lateness of things,” Spacey leaves the room. And after a fairly intense monologue by DeVito, the neophyte has some kind of epiphany.

As is evident in the language and the setting, the film is quite American in spirit, and that makes it somewhat specific in its appeal. This is not entirely a bad thing, in my opinion, since if you can understand the cultural references, then through them, the universal themes the writer was trying to touch upon become clear. And I think very few people are spared exposure to American culture these days. Some might view “American culture” as an oxymoron, but that’s for another post.

A nice bonus to movie, I thought, is the soundtrack to the closing credits. This, it turns out, is read verbatim by Lee Perry from a column written in the Chicago Trbune by Mary Schmich, and mixed and put to a beat by none other than Baz Lurhmann (of Moulin Rouge! and Romeo+Juliet fame). The result is a song called Everybody’s Free (to wear sunscreen) and it starts off with:

Ladies and gentleman of the Class of ’97. Wear sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.

What’s the advice? Well, it includes things like:

Don’t waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long and, in the end, it’s only with yourself.

And:

Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else’s.

Well, perhaps it’s because it’s one in the a.m., or because I’m a sucker for these kinds of things, but I thoroughly enjoyed them. If you’re interested, the entire lyrics can be found here and the story behind the song is here.

Apart from the closing credits, the movie is filled with some excellent quotations, including the one at the top of this post – a mantra for grad students, perhaps. More movie quotes can be found here. I’ll end with something that Danny DeVito tells Peter Facinelli (the kid) towards the end of the movie:

“It doesn’t matter whether you’re selling Jesus or Buddha or civil rights or ‘How to Make Money in Real Estate With No Money Down.’ That doesn’t make you a human being; it makes you a marketing rep. If you want to talk to somebody honestly, as a human being, ask him about his kids. Find out what his dreams are – just to find out, for no other reason. Because as soon as you lay your hands on a conversation to steer it, it’s not a conversation anymore; it’s a pitch. And you’re not a human being; you’re a marketing rep.”

The marketing rep in me is telling you to watch the movie.

I am by no means a sports fanatic, and I can’t provide in-depth analysis of a player’s game, nor can I give you detailed statistics. I’m just a regular guy who likes to watch a game of Grand Slam tennis once in a while, with a particular fondness for Wimbledon. So when I first saw Agassi on the Wimbledon courts with his long hair, earring, designer stubble and patches of color on his T-shirt, he was -to me- the quintessential rebel. So many of my friends hated him for his American looks and his “lack of respect” for the institution. I, on the other hand, identified with him immediately. Perhaps it was because everyone else hated him. Perhaps it was because I was usually the odd one out myself. Most likely, it was both. Whatever the reason, the fact that this strange guy who dared to wear rock star hair could play some pretty mean tennis gave me hope.

He wasn’t McEnroe (whom he did manage to win against) with the tantrums and the overt sulking. His was a quieter, gentler rebellion. Losing with dignity, he fought back with his hard work; and his rage at losing came out only through his game. I recently learned that after losing to Leconte in the first round in his first game ever on the grass courts, he refused to play Wimbledon for three years. He returned after playing Courier in the French Open final, to reach the quarter-finals, and win the Wimbledon in the following year. As one fan put it, “He was a real showman and now he is a real ambassador for the game of tennis.” [link]

Of Armenian heritage, he is the offspring of sports royalty – his father represented Iran for boxing in the Olympics twice. There is little doubt that Agassi himself is a product of his father’s stellar coaching, which began with tennis balls hung over his crib to develop eye coordination. His childhood was spent hitting 3,000-5,000 tennis balls a day, and he was practicing with Jimmy Connors and Roscoe Tanner by the time he was just five. He won the grass court title only once, but he dazzled with his lycra tees, his perseverance and his baseline shots. And after a tumultuous, but brief, marriage to a beautiful movie star (Brooke Shields), several Grand Slam titles, being the world’s top-ranked tennis player and being the only tennis player to be in the top ten in three different decades, he’s still winning Grand Slam matches.

Over a decade and a half after I first saw him, he played what was to be his last match on the grass courts against Rafael Nadal. His life has certainly come full circle, I thought to myself. There he was, completely (voluntarily) bald now, playing against a long-haired youth who just won the French Open. And now, like me, he’s older, settled down, and he even has two kids with his wife and fellow “golden age” tennis player, Steffi Graf. Yet, he’s still fighting, still playing and still winning. And he still continues to inspire me with his game, his demeanour and his chutzpah for taking on an opponent who was all of one year old when he himself set foot on the Wimbledon courts for the first time. His exit will certainly be the end of a golden age. He will be sorely missed…

Photo credit: AP/Anja Niedringhaus

As I quickly discovered, many of the main heroes of the book – the often isolated officials in the Kennedy administration who called repeatedly for the President to mount a much more aggressive assault on racial segregation in the American south – all spent formative portions of their careers in India.They were committed Indophiles – or more accurately, Gandhiphiles.

And that includes Chester Bowles, the Deputy Secretary of State in the Kennedy administration who was ambassador to India and Nepal in the 1950s. The recently deceased and controversial economist John Kenneth Galbraith who was also ambassador to India during the Kennedy era and, in fact, was in Delhi when the race riots broke out in the US in 1963. Harris Wofford, JFK's short-lived chief civil rights adviser, visited India in the late 40s, and even published a book India Afire with his wife, Clare. And, of course, Martin Luther King, Jr. who made his respect for the teachings of Gandhi quite well-known, made the trip to India in 1959.

"To other countries I may go as a tourist," he declared on touching down at Delhi airport, "but to India I come as a pilgrim."

It's good to know that the repercussions of Gandhi's philosophy still continue even now. The average American, hearing that you are from India (I speak from personal experience here), will ask you either about snake-charming, the caste system or about Gandhi, depending on his social status and education level. Notwithstanding the first two, it is at least somewhat comforting to know that at least one Indian has had this much of a positive impact at the global level and still continues to do so, decades after his death.

Gandhi had a special significance in my life. The matriarch of my family (my surrogate great-grandmother) was a staunch Gandhian and whenever Gandhi came to Bombay he used to visit her. She was even on the boat that went out to sprinkle his ashes at the confluence of the three holy rivers. Because of her, most of my family members have small vials of Gandhi's ashes (with authentification certificates, no less). She never consumed a drop of coffee or tea in her life, she never ate meat, she spun the yarn that she used to make her khadi sarees and she started her day at 4am every morning for most of her adult life. She lived until the ripe old age of 87, outliving several of her younger relatives. She used to go regularly to villages in India helping set up schools, wells and advocating women's rights. Like Gandhi, she only traveled by second class, unreserved. Unlike Gandhi, however, she did not have the entire coach reserved for her. If you have ever traveled by Indian Railways, you will have an idea of how rough that is. She did it until she was close to 84 when her health started getting in the way. Her name was Maniben Nanavati. Check out the link – it's unfortunate that that is her only online presence and certainly, I am going to try and change that. And if you are from Vile Parle in Bombay, it's the same Maniben Nanavati after whom the Women's College is named.

Needless to say, with women like that bringing up my family's elders, Gandhian principles were drilled into our heads from a very young age. And because of it (or perhaps, in spite of it) I strongly believe that his philosophy is still valid today. Certainly, I am not advocating the lifestyle that my great-grandmother lived (admirable as it was), and neither am I advocating total non-violence, but there are several aspects of his philosophy which are still quite applicable. The principles by which he lived and those he advocated are certainly valid. Those include self-reliance, religious tolerance and in certain situations, yes, non-violence. Hey, from this quote (from the eight-volume biography by Dinanath Tendulkar), we can even guess what his views on intellectual property and blogging were:

Writings in the journals which I have the privilege of editing must be common property.

Gandhi was a complicated man and an ambitious one. His ultimate goal was to rid India of British rule and influence politics without becoming a politician himself. He left that to Nehru, Patel and Jinnah, to name a few. The control he had over the people of India was tremendous and I seriously doubt that he could have achieved that by becoming a politico. He was at best, a spiritual leader and, at worst, a religious (but non-violent and tolerant) extremist. To achieve his goals, he shrewdly did what he had to do. If that involved preaching by example, then that included living his life the way he lived it. Perhaps, that is a tad extreme for you and me living today's 21st century lifestyle (hell, I don't want to give up my laptop!). But I do believe that the principles behind that life still ring true. Evidence of that is all around us, including the article I talked about above.

Although Gandhi was certainly made in India, I think that he would have been quick to remind us that his principles were anything but that. They were universal.