Lost in Translation

One thought that always rankles in my mind is - 'Could I have done this better?' - or its variant - 'What would have happened had I not done what I did?'. Thankfully for me, after some moments of moping and self-pity, I do come to the comforting conclusion - 'I did the best I could, and things couldn't have been better'. There is nothing wrong in thinking like that, save the fact that my argument is specious.

I have come to believe that things don't pan out the way we expect because we dont heed the warning signs early enough. Digressing slightly to bring in a metaphysical perspective, I do indeed think that we are playing a part in the drama of life. That means that we are not completely free-willed ( though libertarians may think other wise ), and do get affected by our milieu. I think we need to look for cues provided by some supreme-being ( call it God if you like ) in order to play our part well, akin to what an actor does in a play.

Alas! It all seems a nice bit of thoery, but what am I getting at? The sad part is that we all look for signs, right or wrong is altogether a different matter though. An interesting tradition comes to mind. Many moons ago, I heard that in a village near Goa, arranged marriage is conducted by tossing a leaf ( a special kind, of course ). If it does land on a specific side, the marriage is propitious; otherwise, doomed. This seems a rather extreme example, and I should clarify that I don' t want to hint at superstution here. What I do mean to say is that we all can do a lot better in our lives, if we know what to look for and do keep on the look-out.

I would propose, that we might even think of life as a 'Controlled Experiment'. We all have our wishes, our dreams, our aspirations. We might as well go about them in a rational manner, and with an intensity and patience befitting a research scientist - pick and choose the conditions that favour us and replicate them for life. The most important message is that we should persevere, and do enjoy this process of analysis and synthesis if we wish to improve our lot.

I seek comfort in Mr. Einstein - "God doesn't play dice with the world". Seems true to me, and there is good justification for it. Maybe, its just because we do not have perfect information. Maybe, we do not extract the 'signal' from the 'noise'. Or maybe, it is all 'lost in translation'.

The Uncanny Valley

I will start with the theory first to put to rest speculation about the seemingly incongruous title. In 1970, Masahiro Mori, a Japanese roboticist, described a phenomenon known as the 'Uncanny Valley'.

The discovery had to do with human response to a humanoid robot. He postulated that a contraption performing human feats evokes highly emotional responses from people. However, as one strives to make the machine more human-like, assigning facial features, and advanced mobility abilities, the response flip-flops and degenerates into one of repulsion. But the best part is, on working even further, to the point where the robot and human seem indistinguishable, a person begins to show enhanced empathy towards the robot, gradually accepting it as part of his own life.

The 'valley' phenomenon may be slightly hard to accept, but it is not without rhyme or reason. We all experience such pendulating mood-swings with regard to our dreams, our aspirations, endeavours and relationships. It all starts with a desire, a blue-print. Wouldn't be nice if I prepare for CAT and crack it, wouldn't be great to find a suitable mate, or for that matter, wouldn't be smart to write something and make the world read it ;)....the list goes on. Well, these are the sparks that fire our imagination and give us sleepless nights. Everything seems so rosy, so hunky-dory, when we even don't know where to start!

Then comes the crash. We start to realize our dreams, put a skeleton on a spirit...and that sure is scary. Little by little, the problems trickle in, the pressures and demands seem insurmountable. The more we strive to actualize our vision, the more distant it seems. So near yet so far. Disappointment, despair, desperation, apathy, revulsion...we all feel something or the other during this journey. We move through this dark valley and many of us are left stranded at the trough.

But a few of us are survivors, and as they say - "There is always light at the end of a tunnel" - we find that light. When we devote our all to our cause, and fulfill it in all its beauty and spirit, we feel one with our creation, our conception. And that is the most uplifting and satisfying feeling of all.

But the million dollar question is - Are we ready to make this journey, and complete it...Ask yourself.

The Rashtrapati

Reality is at best relative, and this is the realization made by those of us given to compulsive introspection. I mean, there are times when we all think - Do we really feel what we say?
Can we do what we say? Is what we do that defines us and our persona and mindset? And the biggest of all - Are thoughts and actions a cause or effect?

Actually this abstruse rambling is inspired by an article by Nehru, which he wrote anonymously and titled it "The Rashtrapati". It goes thus -

" The smile passes away and yet again the face becomes stern and impassive in the midst of the emotion that it had roused in the multitude. Almost it seemed that the smile and the gesture accompanying it had little reality behind them; they were just tricks of the trade to gain the goodwill of the crowd whose darling he had become. Was it so?"

"....Is all this natural or the carefully thought-out trickery of the public man?....Whither is this going to lead him and the country?What lies behind this mask of his, what desires, what will to power, what insatiate longings?"

Whoa...what breathtaking intensity of thought!! Surely one is compelled to think whether its applicable to our lives. Whether we do actually put on a facade of make-believe, goodness and altruism just to please. Whether all our high-sounding proclamations are just bluster and rhetoric. Whether we truly believe in what we say. The trail of answers would surely be enlightening.

I thought about it myself, and to my slight amazement, I found that I too was guilty of this skulduggery. But, horror of horrors, or should I say, fortune of fortunes ;), I found that there is much more to it. Infact, Nehru is said to have indulged in such introspection as a sort of catharsis. The idea being that when we are aware of our faults, we are more wary of them. In this case, the more acutely aware we are about our predisposition to deceive, the more likely we are to refrain from it.

Soemone can try it as an exercise. The more we ask ourselves whether we truly believe in what we think and act, the more is the likelihood that the parallax is resolved, and our thoughts and actions coalesce into what we truly are.

For want of a shoe....

"For the want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for the want of a shoe the horse was lost; and for the want of a horse the rider was lost, being overtaken and slain by the enemy, all for the want of care about a horseshoe nail." - Benjamin Franklin

In keeping with my new found love for poetry and good quotes, I hereby begin this blog with another famous maxim. And though highly unnecessary and somewhat annoying, I proclaim - "How true!!".

In fact our dear friend Murphy had another take on this - If something can go wrong, it sure will. In other words, miniscule gaffes somehow seem predestined to snowball into Himalayan blunders.

This sorry thought always surfaces in my mind, whenever I recall the incidents that took place with my previous job, and it just amazes me to see an honest mistake comes to a point of no-return, compounded by mis-information and bruised egos, stoked by arrogance and unwillingness to forgive and forget. My own version goes as follows:

"For the want of leave, faith was lost. For the want of faith, all sense of perception was lost. And for the want of faith and perception, an employee was lost."

It isn't as amusing as I intended it to be, but that is perhaps because the statement is true. Even now, the denouement to the tale is far-off.

Another interesting parallel can be found in relationships at large. A single snub, a misconstrued statement or a high-pitched remark are all enough to nuke a relationship. This particular story is far interesting for me to keep it to myself, and in due course, I surely would like to describe it in some detail.

But for now, I too am witnessing the drama of life, and my only hope is that Benjamin Franklin is proved wrong.