Favourite clips from Pangea Day

These are some of my personal favorites from Pangea Day :

Pangea Day Opening

A Thousand Words
Ted Chung

Dancing Queen
Sumit Roy

Elevator Music
Serdar Ferit

I Remember Lebanon
Zeina Aboul Hosn

J'Attendrai Le Suivant (I'll Wait for the Next One)
Philippe Orreindy

L'Homme Sans Tete (The Man Without a Head)
Juan Solanas

More
Mark Osborne

Mutual Recognition
Jehane Noujaim

Operation Homecoming: Road Work
Richard E. Robbins

Pale Blue Dot
(Carl Sagan ++)

Papiroflexia
Joaquin Baldwin

Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars
Zach Niles and Banker White

Stille Post (Telephone Game)
Oliver Rauch

The Americana Project: Cuba
Topaz Adizes

Walleyball
Brent Hoff

Speakers:

Assaad Chaftari

Ali Abu Awwad

Carolyn Porco

Muhieddine Chehab

There are a few videos on the site that weren't relayed. Will check and put those up later.

Going to Gondwanaland : Pangea Day

Hmmm, half past seven on a Sunday morning, and my fingertips slur these words on the keyboard... Am a spot sleepy, a spot tired, a spot hungry, a spot woozy... and yet, the predominant emotion in my head is a pleasant high... a light optimism.
I lucky to have been part of a truly remarkable experience last night... one that made me think, feel, and more importantly, lose some of my cynicism at us descendants of the primordial soup and our foibles, large and small. When P alerted me about Pangea day, I was pleasantly surprised to read about the whole project, and what it set out to do. My mind drew parallels to Live Aid and Live 8, but this was even more phenomenal. It had started from scratch and is a testament to the vision and perseverance of Jehane Noujaim. [No disrespect to Bob Geldof :-) ]. Out here, at ground zero / Bangalore, the folk who organised this event did so at extremely short notice, and pulled off a resounding success.(Check the Indian Pangea day site for details of the people, the place etc). Thoughtworks hosted the event, and also pampered us folk through the course of the event... I also joined a couple of folk to make some vague attempts at music before the event began... Ah, there, now that I've gotten all that out of the way, time to get down to brass tacks.
The event itself... sitting with a hundred odd people, looking at a program a few million people around the world were watching simultaneously, cant help but set a tiny tingle in your spine. The night was a magical swirl of images that danced in my eyes, in my thoughts, in my awareness, in my conscience. The movies screened were snippets that ranged from the whimsical, the hilarious, the stunning to the shocking, the disturbing, the confusing... but almost all of them were thought provoking and in some ways profoundly moving. The simplicity of the concept that was the undercurrent of the project, and the clips screened- reaching out to and understanding people- belied the profound impact of doing so. I won't enumerate the movies here, you'll find more accurate and complete listings at the Pangea Day site. Instead, here, I guess it's more pertinent to recount how each movie-ette, each insight, each moment captured there held us and carried us along on a wonderful journey of thought. A majority of us who had assembled were touched in some way, big or small, by what happened last night. It really was an experience worth remembering. To an extent, we cannot look at the news of the strife or suffering among strangers with the same dispassionate apathy anymore. We have a fragile, ephemeral existence, on an individual level, as a people, as a species, as a planet... will we make something significant of our co(s)mic insignificance? Hmmm, after last night, I realise that there still is hope...
A lot of it was exemplified by the attitude of some of the people present yesterday. After a rather fun breakfast at Capitol with some of the folk, and an awesome solitary ramble through Lalbagh... I couldn't help but feel, yes, there is hope. Not easy, not even clearly visible, but can't help but hope. Here's to dawn!

D-uh!

[ANT] The mechanical waltz

Life resembles a chaotic dance of people and things. The dancers each swirl their way through the space provided by the others. They dance because they have to... with a few actually enjoying the dance and the way they dance... This is a chaotic, passionate waltz, much like Brownian movement.



For me, it's easy to think of life while on the mechanical waltz to work. Yes, this is my wonderful city's traffic I'm talking about. Come morning, and the metal beasts of burden yank their lords to their destinations, in a dizzying, swirling, absurd dance that defies attempts at logic. And the dancers can sometimes be typecast! There are the auto-rickshaws with an identity crisis: They think they are two wheelers, but alas, fate has other things in store for them. The thing to be admired is their spirit, they carry on like two wheelers, regardless, more a caprice than a waltz...
And what about the two wheelers themselves! The two wheelers dance to a Presto while the rest are at Largo. Any remote air vent between 2 other vehicles shall do, and they shalt make their way, firmly convinced of their immortality. There again is their wonderful belief that theonly true world is the one in front of their front wheel, all else is maya! Hence they undertake lateral spatial transitions as well, in total bliss. And the blaring horns and screamed invective... hmph, mere trifles! If anything, they add flavour to the sounds of the symphony, and the waltz continues...
And the buses and trucks, the mastodons on the tarmac, the last bastion of stability in a sea of the volatile? Naah, not quite. Like any heavily built dancer, they like to imagine they are light on their feet, and add many a whimsical twist in the tapestry of the waltz! This, coupled with their almost-real immortality, allows them to throw their weight around! And the cars, poor creatures, are forever frustrated by the cruel world that does not allow them to move in freedom. "I mean, other vehicles on the road should be illegal, how dare the bike in front of me go at 40 when I want to floor the pedal!". And of course, no one follows lane discipline, so the cars have to make their way through, around, along or against the traffic. And there's always the odd bike they may have to nudge, but it's all a part of the dance...

Note: This post is dedicated to all the dancers that fit in this category. There are the specialists I may have ignored, and my apologies go out to them, but I felt they were beyond words! This includes: cab drivers, mobile-phone-addict drivers, female drivers {yeah, go ahead, flame me on that}, underage drivers, adrenaline junkies...

[ANT] Eyespeak

(This is the first in a series of some meandering essays I've been meaning to write for a while now, but haven't gotten around to. For all I know, I may enter limbo again and not write another, but this is a start...)

I have lately come to notice the joy of almost telepathic communication... when only eyes meet, and the communication is more an acknowledgement or understanding. It's somewhat funny, the joy of the instance of communication, especially with the unknown!
When something noteworthy happens in cricket, for instance, while viewing in the cafeteria, stranger's eyes meet, and there is that nod without nodding, that mutual acknowledgement,which is vaguely satisfying! You're stuck in a traffic jam, and fellow drivers look across, with a mutual resignation+annoyance+frustration++++... And what about when we see someone attractive, and, in the remote possibility that their radar locks in to your gaze, and in the even more remote possibility that they acknowledge, and the infinitesmal probablity that they do so positively....

It's intriguing, the intangible bliss of the ephemeral contact! I guess it is the comfort in knowing another human being thinks the way you do. There's also a certain abstract elegance to such a communication that words or form would destroy. When an aquaintance is rambling on and making a general ass of himself, and you look across at a f(r)iend, the muted smile speaks volumes more than a later analysis ever could! And the obfuscated haze of mutual confusion, the unision of flaming irises when in ire, the condescending disdain, the shocked horror, the pleading exhortation... you name it, the eyes have it...
May the silent stories play out their evanescent scenes!

Boredomination

I guess all of us have had one of those moments when sudden, all pervasive boredom and inertia strikes us, and strikes hard! All will is lost, and we enter a state of limbo, and our head feels like it’s full of sawdust, and we ponder the irrelevance of existence! I entered one of those state a few minutes back, and have now for some obscure reason, decided to write nonsense rhyme!
If you ask how this differs from any other poetry/lyric I write, they don't rhyme! :p

Got a bee in my bonnet, buzzing bumble bee
Or maybe two, or maybe even three
’Cos my head feels like a heavy hive, where bees thrive, nine to five

Rows of neatly ordered little hexagons
Forgotten words, quips and lowly puns
Oh, how they blur and dance , twist and prance, sharpen and lance

Staring at screens of words obnubilated
A sudden noise and I feel defibrillated
Trapped in a silent scream, from a hazy dream, meandering stream

Faraway clattering sounds drift to my ears
Know no seconds, minutes, months, years
In my torpid heavy head, filled with lead, so gratefully dead

Inertia carries me, my magic carpet
Lassitude soothes me, my string quartet
Am the king at the helm, an empty realm that does overwhelm

-Ananth

The leaning tower of Paper-cup-isa

I was clearing some files from my comp, when I tumbled across this photo. This happened sometime last year, and I'd sent this accompanying mail:
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Check the attachment to see what happens when I have time (and paper cups) on my hand. One of my friends wanted to see if I could build the leaning tower of Pisa using paper cups, so I did! :-) For ideas on how to absolutely waste time, you may contact me. Abnormal charges apply.