The trip goes on

A recent attempt by me at an animated short film.



This one started on a whim. i created an image, then another and kept on going wherever the whim of the moment took me. Hence 'a trip'. I intend to continue this project as long as i can. I will keep on adding continuation in the trip as times goes by. lets see what i end up with.
hopefully, it will be entertaining enough.

Busyness is the opium of the cubicle-class - I

My laptop is crowded with many unfinished projects. By some miraculous grace of god some are beginning slowly to take some form of completion.This one is a little litany about life in cubicles. No, its no where close to the genius/ insightful/ funny of Dilbert. I didn't intend it to be that any ways. It was more an outlet to what i felt fleetingly at times in my previous job. A little snapshot of the thoughts that crowd around in a moment of frustration. But this frustration had hope, it contemplated the many possibilities. its the frustration of the young. :-)

 
To be continued.. hopefully soon enough. (the first two pages happened in a weekend a year back. The next two pages were done today. :P I shall persevere. i must. :) ) 

windows in the sky

In the twilight blue, a light shines through,

a portal opens, and adventures ensue...

The shoe

The artist and his echo chamber

Have you ever shouted out in a valley and laughed out in incredibly playful happiness?
The marvel that is echo. (umberto, go sit down in that corner :P)
Isn't it beautiful? to hear yourself. louder. bigger. from unknown corners. delayed, almost leisurely. Whatever age you may be, the moment you do it, you turn 6 year old faster than the speed of sound. You may try to hide yourself, but don't you for that moment become that annoying little kid who gives you creases on your forehead in annoyance and ripples of laughter in your heart?

But this echo is temporary. after the 10th echo, you will start getting tired. (it actually involves physical efforts you know? yeah. really. the very concept of any real physical effort outside of a gym will soon become extinct, i know. hmmm.. whatever ) There is no more novelty to it as well. The echo is going to come out exactly the way it has been coming all this while. There is no more mystery left to it.

But, there is another magical echo too. much more permanent. and much more uncertain. It can die quickly or it can go on and on and on. The echos here even have shadows and mutations. And when a whole lot of people join in the echo chamber, its a beautiful cacophony of names. Everyone keenly interested in hearing his/her own name coming out through the din.

This magical echo chamber is the social media.

It has put a spell on us. In front of it we become  toddlers. the ones who, when growing up point out any new exciting thing they see and run to their mom saying 'look at me mom, i found this/ i did this', with a beaming face. They expect a 'appreciative comment' from the mom.
This magical echo chamber is where we yell out all our 'discoveries', our amazement, our self-pity,  our 'wins' and where we dare not say things that will earn us a 'facepalm'.
The mom in this case is the facebook notification window. The faster it ticks, the giddier we get.
We are all peter pans in the wonderland of facebook, blogs and 'my photography' albums on flickr. We are boastful, blissfully unaware of the world beyond, judgmental and often quite selfish. Nevertheless, just like peter, we also have a strong sense of justice and would raise our fists collectively at any great threat (as long as it only asks us for 'that' action).

This echo chamber is a world by itself. and the amazing nature of its distributed togetherness causes it to be personal and at the same time universal.
Every person is a world unto himself. and he has every right to it and all its opinions. He paints this world with his own colors, his own biases. In this world he can don the hat of an activist, an artist or a smart funny guy. (why does everyone want to be a smart funny guy on twitter? no, really?)

I don't know about the other hats, but I do feel compelled to support the wearer to don one particular hat.. the one that lets him play act as an 'artist'.
With each new discovery, with each new mutation an 'artist' in us is born. We run to our mom that is the notification window for some appreciation of the 'work' we have created and labeled it ever so subtly as 'through my lens', 'joe photography' and so on. People might ridicule us. Indeed, most of the work we put out is not merely pedestrian but smacking of sheer indifference and ignorance of the rest of the world. Its almost insulting to the world around. But an artist is never deterred by the world's opinions.
There is never going to be a perfect ideal of artistry. An artist by the virtue of his act of creation has earned the right to be free. to be free to entertain only self's idea of art and being an artist. The artist only entertains his private moral compass.
People may point out and say that my artistic ideals are holier than yours. They are merely deluded. There is no relativity in the world of art. Your art is yours. its valuable to you. It may or may not be valuable to me.
Art is boundless. Art is imprecise. Art is yours.
So, we may be guilty of being too indulgent of ourselves and being a tad too involved in the chamber of echoes, we have our right to it. The democracy then perhaps turns into a din making machine, but that's merely the price of it. I think, its worth it. So it is, being a peter pan. 

three kids

slow and certain

What do you think of, when you stare at the slowly moving progress bar on the flickering screen?
Or when you refresh the facebook feed?

What do people in desert think, when they stare at slow shape shifting of sand dunes?
What do aboriginals think when they gaze at the slowly moving stars on the dark screen overhead?

What do the old Parsi men think, when they read the day's obituary in Jam-e-Jamshed?

you and aam aadmi

Do you think you are an aam aadmi?
you are a voyeur in the great playground of this nation. You are outside the playground. You are a consumer. you earn your white collar dollars and spend it on processed snacks and shiny things. and that's the only thing that excites you or the people high up. They are concerned with nothing else about you. Sadly, neither are you.
The only things that hold your gaze are TV and your ever expanding belly. The shining rectangles are narrowing your minds and squeezing out all empathy you've got.
You whine for a while when shit happens. But won't try to affect any change. At this moment you pick up the placards in the name of aam aadmi and walk in circles in your living room. But there's nothing 'aam' about how you see yourself. You are world unto you. That world is small but richly invested with your emotions. That narrow world doesn't entertain logic or differing opinions. Once painted with a favorite color, the personal bubble refuses to be bathed in any other light.
The aam aadmi at the centre of playground has no placards, has no cameras, has no interactive glowing rectangles to play the unfair game. But he is forced to. The game's an abomination. An invention of modernity. No one wants to play it but 'aam aadmi' get sucked in it nevertheless. you don't. you have detergents, cars and deodorants that help you remain out of the boundary of the playground.
But you are a funny spectator. You don't cheer the playing 'aam aadmi'. You jeer at his mouth for uttering sounds in non modern languages. You cover your nose in his direction, for he has yet to learn your perverted notion of shame. You deride his love for his motherland by calling him anti-progress for not letting the big people rape the nations' resources. You cry foul at his increasing standard of living for you see that as a threat to your standards of living. You want him to vacate his home which had been destined to be crushed under the juggernaut called progress. Millenias of waiting for this eventual destruction. That's the aam aadmi's karma.
But if he does move and end up in your backyard, you screech and shout to get him crushed here again under the juggernaut called greed.
Unfortunately for you though, your inaction is as loud and potent as your possible action. Your westwards dreams have gone bankrupt. Like the aam aadmi your karma will be measured on this very land itself. Your backyards will continue to get filled. While you want to impose martial law on the traffic system of India, the aam aadmi is imposing himself on the little oases (more like a giant dung heap the flies get attracted to) you call home. Your inaction is breeding new future battlegrounds right along your water pipelines and conditioned air.
Wish you cared for your children. You wouldn't have let the world go on as it is. They will breathe fear and uncertainty before they would  know what breathing is.
That's your legacy. Fear, uncertainty, hatred, bigotry.
Jana Gana mana will become the anthem of suspicion. your india, my india. There will be a race to un-belong and then to belong. The abstract is already larger than the real people. It will get even more imaginary. What started as a dream of equality, will now become a cynical joke. nation. India. unity.

About time you set your karma right. Neither I nor you want the children's neck at the mercy of red scythe. The only way to that is to play the game alongside the aam aadmi. to enter the playground. That's all you need to do. enter.