I discovered Ira Glass’s “This American Life” from Chicago Public Radio as a podcast a couple of year’s back and immediately fell in love with the human stories that the program covers. Then a few months back I stumbled on a channel on my car radio, North Carolina Public radio, which had a lot of National Public Radio programming, and I have not changed the channel ever since. Though my daily commute is not too long I have fallen in love with the programs like “The Story”, “All Things Considered” and “This I believe”. All of these, like “This American Life” has stories of common people and their every day lives, seemingly ordinary, but each one fascinating in its own way.

I am not a big music lover, though I do like a handful of slow quiet soulful songs. It’s almost like looking only for one mood in music, pathos. Anyways, I used to wonder what to listen to in the car, since music wasn’t my thing. Then I started copying podcasts as audio files on my blackberry and listen to those in the car, but soon I was fast running out of them. Then of course I discovered and started listening to the public radio programming by chance and now I cannot stop. Sometimes if I am listening to a story segment and have reached home, or wherever else I am going, I find myself unable to leave the car until the segment has ended. So I switch off the engine, and listen to the radio till the story ends.

I was wondering the other day, what is it that is holding me back? Why am I so drawn to these programs? For example the other day there was a story was about Liz Lovely and her husband Dan’s story about their cookie business and how they survived through the recession and in the process strengthened their personal relationship as well. Nothing extraordinary, but I sat in the car outside the grocery, listening with rapt attention, until the story was over.

And then it hit me, I am a sucker for stories.

Ordinary stories. Human Stories. Maybe that is why I love the movies so much. That is why I love to read fiction and possibly explains my love for history. And I like to write stories, or at least I think I do. Not that I go to extremes in any of these pursuits. But there is a trend. Take for example my love for history. For a while I could not explain why I loved history more that other subjects, even in school as a kid. But I reckon it’s the same love for stories. History is a huge volume of interconnected and continuous stories. It’s not that I read huge volumes of history, but if hear of some historical figure in some conversation or a TV program, I tend to search them up on the internet and read about their lives, where were they from, what did they do, what kind of lives did they lead. At least I manage to get some basic inkling of what their lives were like. Lately I have tended, almost without realizing the pattern, to buy more non fiction as well, like history of the Gulag, history of the CIA, beginning of Al Qaeda and their top tier of terrorists.

I love very boring slow movies, maybe called the drama genre, and hate horror, sci fi and action movies. This too perhaps is connected to my love for stories. Sci Fi is not and does not seem real; less said about the pure bam bam action movies and the gory horror movies the better. One could say the ‘drama’ movies are not real either but at least those stories have some inherent basis in reality, in what could possibly happen in our own lives.

Lately I have been trying to write and I know I would like to and I want to. I dream up scores of story ideas and sometimes type in a few lines of the story idea in a word file, but mostly I just ruminate on them in my head and then they are lost, gone for ever. I have lacked the discipline and the pure drive to write. Then I thought why not write a blog, that could be easier, less taxing. Over the years when blogging has exploded as a phenomenon, I stayed away not sure why it never interested me. Maybe I thought that a lot of it was about tech, politics and sports, the things that really did not interest me. I have since discovered blogs are about much wider range of things and people write all sorts of blogs about all sorts of interesting topics. Still if it is not intensely personal and does not connect at an honest and visceral level I loose interest immediately.

So I started this blog, and though this website is intentionally not structured as a blog, I did write a few posts, as I am writing this as well. Though I have tried to be honest and put my beliefs and convictions out there, it is not really gripping, it is still like a chore. But I am slowly coming to the realization that if I love to read, hear and watch stories, maybe I would like to write stories, rather than blogs. So if you don’t find another post for a while, you can assume I am trying to, in my own little way weave my own little story that hopefully someone might like to read one day.

I am not sure I have any ability to actually write good stories, but I am going to try. Give it my best shot. And If I am not able to, it won’t be so bad. I can always go back to reading, hearing and watching stories. The world is full of wonderful story tellers and they have fascinating and wonderful material to work with. Ordinary human everyday existence.

I love the movies. I love the movie awards.

It’s a shame for me to admit myself, but it gives me a compass of the movies that I should like. Let me explain. I’m a Bengali, AKA the biggest cultural snobs in India. Traditionally a very cultural community, it does though tend over do the love of culture shtick. I’m therefore by birth somewhat of a cultural snob myself, if I do say so myself, rather shamelessly. I tended to like only ‘artsy’ movies growing up in India, which generally were shot in low light, with a lot of realism and poverty thrown in for good measure. And I watched a lot of ‘foreign’ movies i.e. Oscar winning Hollywood movies and a fair sprinkling of French and Italian movies as well. Though I would like to convince myself I really liked those movies, I am not sure whether it was because they were critically acclaimed or won a fistful of awards.

I have had arguments with friends, big movie lovers themselves, about choice of movies and found them sometimes to have a far more open mind. Let me give an example – True Romance. It had a stellar supporting cast, though it won no awards and got mixed reviews. I loathed the movie. On the other hand “Pulp Fiction”, which one might say was in the same vicinity in terms of genre, but it won rave reviews and awards. I loved Pulp Fiction. Further confounding my choice of movies is that I love romantic comedies, I am a sucker for emotional ‘the underdog finally triumphs’ kind of movies and get misty eyed without fail in such situations. I love comedies, regardless of critical appreciation, especially if it is smart, verbal and not overly slapstick.

So one could conclude that my choice in movies is suspect, snobbish and all over the place, which brings us to the Oscars 2008 and the current crop of movies. The whole world (at least the ones paying attention) seems to love Slumdog Millionaire, and even though I was proud at the attention it was getting as a Hindi (partly) movie in a theatre in the middle of the American South (Durham, North Carolina), it left me distinctly underwhelmed. The screenplay centered more around ten questions (rather than the love story) woven around the lead characters life, seemed rather forced, the acting stilted (especially when India actors spoke English and British actors spoke Indian English) and the Mumbai underworld don enactment downright childish.

I left the theatre wondering why I couldn’t like the movie when everyone else is ready to do cartwheels and break into a Bollywood song and dance routine to celebrate the movie. I can think of scores of things that I can find wrong with the movie, but am still left with the nagging suspicion that perhaps I am too snooty to enjoy it since it is too close to the song and dance Bollywood masala movie that I love to loathe.

But I’m still rooting for it on Oscar night. If “Gladiator” and “Departed” (sorry I didn’t like it, especially not over “Letters from Iwo Jima”) can get the nod, surely Slumdog should win over the twice warmed Forest Gump masquerading under the alias of Benjamin Button. 

But no one should confuse the movie with its character and should not assume Slumdog Millionaire despite its name and lineage is an underdog and that should hardly be the basis to root for it on Oscar night. Fox Searchlight is a past master at promoting movies for Oscar trophies, which over the years have increasingly morphed from an artistic exercise in rewarding the best movies of the year (if it was ever that), to a full fledged campaign. Millions of dollars are spent in promoting these movies for the Oscars, often crossing the budget for the movie itself and of the box office proceeds as well.

It is hardly a democratic campaign though, with only the film industry’s version of the House of Lords (the Academy members) voting for it. So every year the Academy bemoans the fact the interest in Oscar are dwindling but still its modus operandi for choosing the winners remains distinctly bourgeois. The most well known India film award (Filmware Awards) in comparison is selected by both the public and a committee of experts. That is hardly foolproof either since the movies that win the Filmware Awards are generally the big budget blockbuster bollywood masala movies while the small indie movies are methodically shut out.

So this leaves us with a conundrum, much like my own personal choice of movies. So what should we do? Does one go with the mass or the class. In politics we are told we get the government we deserve. So in terms of our movie awards should go with the popular awards that we ‘deserve’ or with go with the ones we are told we are supposed to like.

You decide.

I don’t understand the world of finance. I can’t even keep my own expenses straight, which is not much of a problem because I don’t make much and I don’t save much. This is to the eternal chagrin of my sister who has tirelessly nagged me through the years to grow up and plan for the future.

And I did pay for it dearly too.

Besides some meager savings in mutual funds (again made at being threatened at gun point by sis), all I had was a bunch of stock and stock options for the company I work for. In the past few months a massive fraud has been discovered in my company and its stock has lost 95% of its value, wiping out that part of my savings.

So when I say I do not understand finance I am not being merely rhetorical. I really do not. Even though I majored in business management in grad school, I never showed more than a passing interest to economics and finance, just enough to score the necessary grades in those papers. I did not follow much of financial news, never updated my financial records even my sister created it in the first place. All I did was refreshed, few times a day, the stock price ticker of my company’s stock, till it crashed due to the fraud revelations.

But these are scary times.

Not just because the threat of joblessness is very real, but because nothing is sacred anymore. Venerable institutions like Merril Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Bear and Stearns getting sold or closed down, the biggest banks and financial institutions all over the world are getting bailed out and still there are no signs of being able to survive without a respirator, entire countries (Iceland) are being led down the path of bankruptcy. There is rampant joblessness and record government deficits. One is left with no option but to sit up and take notice. 

But if one does not understand what is going on, one looks up to economists, heads of governments, captains of industry to tell us what is going on. It is apparent to all that this crisis will not be solved in a hurry, but populations of entire countries are looking up at their political, thought and business leaders to step up and say - “Yes we understand the problem, these the steps, and these will work”. But all we have seen for the last 6 months are a series of seemingly confused and bungled steps and very real palpable fear, helplessness and confusion in the eyes of these leaders. They have lurched from the “Japanese” solution of the 90s (which of course did not work), Swedish Bank Nationalization, to the job creation philosophies of Keynes.

But what is different this time. Everybody say’s “This is not your grandfather’s depression”.

But why is that. What is different this time?

1. Complex Financial Markets - I do not just mean that it is difficult for a lay man to understand. This world of derivatives, credit-default swaps, packaged and repackaged mortgages is beyond anyone’s comprehension and difficult to regulate and hence rampant in fraud, corruption and reckless suicidal risk taking. The ‘drunk with bonuses’ financial markets perhaps overlooked the fact that there is fine line between judicious risk taking and recklessness.
2. Global Economy - We are no longer national economies, largely self dependent and doing some amount of trading. Now we are global economy, so intertwined and interconnected, we are like a cat with a ball of wool, caught in our own trap. We’re all connected and no one is in control.
3. Spending Binge - Though things have changed over the last few decades it is still true that the United States (and maybe a few Western European countries as well) consumes and rest of the world produces to keep up with that insatiable demand. With fall of the Soviet Union and the victory of capitalism, the whole world too is moving in that direction as well. Everyone wants to replicate the American Dream. What is ironic is that in America itself the American Dream is a fallacy. The perpetual image that has been perpetrated that every American deserves a home of their own and it was seen as a birth right even though many cannot afford them. They even went a step further and overdosed on credit card debts, easy mortgages, ‘pay it later’ loans and home equity loans. People in developing economies have been known to be much more prudent and conservative in terms of credit based consumption and adhered to a much higher level of saving. That too has changed somewhat in the last decade in India and China in terms of higher consumption and living recklessly on easy credit.

So what now? 

Thomas Friedman writes “I have a friend who regularly reminds me that if you jump off the top of an 80-story building, for 79 stories you can actually think you’re flying. It’s the sudden stop at the end that always gets you”.

Is that going to be our end as well? As you must have figured, I don’t think I have any inkling. But the scary thing is I don’t think anybody does either.

Religion.

There are things which I don’t understand and it is a rather long list.

E=MC², Quantum Physics, Theory of Relativity, why the hell Germans in love are screaming sweet nothings on Valentine ’s Day, what kind of morons would see American Idol and Dancing with the Stars, you get the drift. What might have also have been shining through above is my love for humanity and my natural gift for endearing my fellow human beings. Tongue firmly in cheek.

Well anyways, if you weighed things I did understand and things I did not, well, it would be just too lopsided. And let’s not even get started about things I think I understand, but actually do not because even as I write this I am constantly under the delusion that I am smarter than I actually am.

Dimwit I maybe, but I do realize that none of the other things that I do not understand have not caused such untold human suffering as my favorite pet peeve - Religion. Or to be precise organized religion. Sure, maybe E=MC² (and the atom bomb, get it?) falls in that category, but there are important distinctions, and I must not digress.

I also must make perfectly clear is that I am not comfortable with the label of atheists or a long winded discussion on whether god exists or not. For me that is a rather simple question. I do not know and I am not going to spend my paltry grey matter on something that no one can possibly know. So even if someone wants to argue with me till they are blue in the face, it’s going to be a one sided debate, because I simply have no arguments about the matter. Especially since my ignorance is due to not having met the Gentleman (or to be politically correct - Lady, and because we have to avoid lawsuits from PETA - Animal), yet. “Yet” because I don’t want to be accused of having a closed mind either.

Same goes for the other big bugaboo - ’soul’. I once met a gentleman once (retired recently from NASA) who kept a group of us up till 3 Am in the morning trying to drill into us that the important part of our body is the soul, from which he deduced the befuddling concept that we must not have sex till we are 18, among other noble notions.

Also I do not wish to include spirituality, faith or belief in this brief tete-a-tete. Even though my thick skull cannot fathom those profound concepts, I do not think they do very much harm in isolation. So let me put it as succinctly as I can, I do not grudge, argue with, or make fun of, ridicule another person’s faith, beliefs or spirituality.

So all we are talking about here is organized religion. I am sure there are countless lengthy theoretical treatises dealing with the subject and copious amount of dribble written to counter that as well. This is not my point by point damning evidence to prove my point (sic), but simply my belief, as I am frequently told that I must believe in something. So this is simply my belief. And not totally unsubstantiated either. Let us briefly look at the havoc organized religion has caused over centuries, if not millenniums. It has divided people, caused wars, justified planned genocide, led to hundreds of years of disputes and bloodshed over tiny tracts of ‘holy’ land. It has justified murder of non believers, discrimination against different classes and races of people (including women, widows, lower castes, gays, non whites), been used a means of controlling power, money and influence in multiple instances, over centuries.

This is not to say wars do not happen otherwise and there would not be discrimination and persecution without organized religion. But those instances are demonized (like Nazism) like they should be. But everyone is afraid to touch the lightening rod of religion. But for those who believe in a higher power, a God, is it not for them to realize these atrocities are being done in God’s name, the god they love. That their collective silence or cooperation or coercion is being used to perpetrate these crimes on humanity.

I also realize that various religions do undertake various charitable and philanthropic activities and I do not mean to discount those. It is important however to note the main reason for much of these activities are the spread of the concerned organized religion.

I do realize that my words would hurt my friends and family who might think this is a personal attack on their religion, on their god or on their belief. This is not intended to be an attack. It’s my interpretation, things that I believe and also that things that are baffling to me that I cannot understand what so many billions of people seemingly understand and live their lives by it.

Some might say it is not merely enough to tear down these social walls built and reinforced through the ages, but one must proffer their solution. What must be done? I must submit I don’t have any answers that apply to all. Nor can there be ONE answer. But if I might share my view, perhaps one could look at it this way. Spirituality, beliefs and faith are very personal. Could it not remain that way? Is it absolutely essential that must we build a pack like wolves with everyone from our belief’? Must we build these packs and attack another pack with another belief. I know as long as human kind roam this earth wars, discrimination against fellow human beings, injustice towards the weak and poor will go on. But can we take god out of the equation and not blame God for what causes us to act this way - Our own basic primal animal (sorry again PETA) instincts.

So this is what I believe and you are welcome to yours.