Was Lennon a Communist?

Never mix spices and honey. You will ruin both!

I was listening to playlist I made a while ago, and suddenly it started to play Lennon, Imagine. The playlist had mostly SOAD and POTF's songs, so Imagine came as a pleasant shock. I closed my eyes, and started mouthing the words. But, perhaps it came so out of context, that I became overtly critical of his lyrics. Midway, I realized that someone else had also said similar things. Someone famous, who's regime was tainted with corruption and blood. He was Lenin. This was Lennon. Was Lennon a communist too?

I quickly pulled out my Laptop, and started searching, hoping to find someone who would ridicule my notion. Nobody did. Over and over the webpages I read. Forums on philosophy, music, famous critics. His lines in the song,

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people sharing all the world

were the first to make me realise how imprudent and stupid he was. He asks us to imagine a world of peace, set in a future without possessions, without a self? A life in a continuous oblivion, with no entity of one's own? What would such a peace pertain to? Each and every man working selflessly towards a common goal of institutional success, with his own life's measure no greater than that of another, or of no worth whatsoever? This utopian ideology, twisted to Animal Farm and 1984, was published years before Imagine by George Orwell. Other verses are no good either,

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

We can imagine there are no countries. Sure. But governance would require division of land into areas easily controllable. Any random selection is possible, but policy making would be efficient only if the local culture is taken into account. This should invoke a sense of belonging, and pride, and again a devotion to the motherland.
Unless.
There is no devotion towards one's self. So you can't appreciate or accept the traditions. This way, you wouldn't mind whatever policy the government imposes on you. You would neither have the will, nor the longing to preserve what you deem is yours. You are just living. You would be at peace, but you would survive as a living dead. It seems easy to believe such a brotherhood, but innate human nature is never accounted for. I don't think Lennon did that either. You would have to kill one's nature before you go on to implement a rule where habit would drive behaviour. In Life of Pi and A Clockwork Orange, we all see a Lion and the protagonist undergoing Behavioural Modifications to suit another's will. It doesn't seem a felicitous example, to quote from a work of fiction when trying to critic a great work of art, but it is true. A similar act on the part of the government would be required here too. That is perhaps the very thing Orwell showed in 1984. The act of thoughtcrime, to raise a spark of self even in one's thoughts, will have to be punished. It wouldn't be far fetched to say this song was inspired by The Communist Manifesto itself: From each as per his abilities, to each as per his needs. We all saw how it fared, when the mighty Soviet Union fell down in August 1991 (My friend always reminds me of this date. In the 12 years together that he has known me, he has never failed to remind me that it was on his Birthday that the great Soviet Union fell).

Lennon asked to Imagine a world with no posessions, no country, no self. So did George Orwell. But it is easier to believe Orwell's version than Lennon's.

Post Publishing Edit:  Found this online. It is taken from The Communist Manifesto, Chapter 2:
The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.

You may say I am a Dreamer, but I am a lucky one!

(Oh my bed!! I missed you so!)


Imagine yourself on a four hour journey to the airport, changing buses, fighting with smokers, screaming, hurling luggage at the conductor, bargaining with autowalah, running behind trains! And the next train gets delayed, the bus somehow gets its driveshaft broken, and the conductor on the next bus has to be assured of the legitimacy of your tickets.

Imagine yourself at the airport, wishing it didn't happen, but knowing that it doesn't bother you. You are going to board your plane, leave all this boring stuff behind. Even the guard at the security door knows you. All is starting to go well.

Imagine a tall beautiful girl, the kind that  would get a dimple on her cheeks when she smiles, waving at you. You start talking to her and decide to cancel your ticket and board the next flight instead. How good is that?!!


Before you ask, this is not a word for word account of my day. Exaggerations have been made to the level my imaginations can run naked. But the essence of my day is still delicately intact in this written piece.


AND, the talk, or let us say chat with the tall, hot beauty went surprisingly well. I tried to be a suave, debonair gent, and failed drastically. She laughed it off, and brought herself to the level of my stupidity. By my standards, this is a lot of improvement!


Expect details on the journey soon (unless I sleep on all this, or wake up before the dream ends. Depending on which dream level I am in). Don't expect details of the chat. Again, since you don't read my blog, this statement is moot anyway (Moot: rendered unimportant by recent events. Refer to TBBT S04E21).


(Oh my pillow!! Found it under the bed!)

All you can think about, after Ambedkar and Mamata cartoon row

I add a twitter panel to my account, and to provide uniformity, remove the About me section. When it comes to naming the twitter panel, Heisenberg motivates and I name the section "Uncertainly Yours". Now, as it turns out, there is no telling when the panel will show my twitter feeds, and when it will just stare back blank black!

Befitting!

Sinnerman and Crybabies

This is supposed to be just a fill-in post, as I had not written anything in a long time, and I feel too lazy to consider anything important to write about. Moreover, if I had even the slightest inclination to think, I would have spent that on my studies, with Majors approaching and every deadline possible surreptitiously declared by the Professors to be at the end of this week. Anyways, Sinnerman is playing in the backdrop. I don't know how or when it happened, but I have started liking Nina Simone! Had I listened to her in my school days, my first reaction would have been to search and delete her. But the more songs I listen, the more I appreciate the finer details, and not just the loudness and screech of metal or the lyrics and guitar of Blues. My initiation was Linkin Park.Their song Numb to be specific. But LP is long gone from my playlists. Their was no more space for them, with GnR, Bruce Springsteen and Pink Floyd coming in. And now my younger cousins have stopped asking for songs when I visit them. They want harsh Metal, or the crude melody of "Truly Madly Deeply". The intersection of our likeness is very narrow. I definitely like it. One more "elder brother" card to play when they are around. Maybe soon the set will be empty...

And before I forget to mention it again, I received a mail from my Modern Fiction professor. She liked my previous post, Cultivating the wilderness! Okay I had mailed her the link and her response was a single line, "It made a very interesting read, and I enjoyed it a lot!", but still, she read it and enjoyed it! And she happens to be one of my favourite professors. (Yes I have more than one. And no I am not your typical nerd). I remember being so overwhelmed by the response that I rambled about it to my friends till they picked up stapler. I think that was my cue to shut my mouth about it. And before I do it again, I will stop writing about it.

Before finishing this post (I may call it a fill-in, but it has started to look like most of my other posts) let me tell you about a particular cry-baby. He went to the supermarket with his friends, who bought him a bar of chocolate. He got it for free, and it was as tasty as any other chocolate bar, but the entire way back he cried and cried about a particular brand of chocolate which the supermarket didn't have. He didn't complain when his friends gave him the chocolate, nor did he frown when he ate it, as the chocolate was as good as any. But as was his nature, he couldn't shut up about how he never gets anything in life.

I don't know if I disguised it well or not, but I have met many such cry-babies this semester. And I would be more than glad to get rid of them when the semester ends.

Do good in exams, and if I don't write soon again, have a great summer vacation!

PS: Another step in the integration of my public profiles. I am going to add a twitter panel on the blog. Let's see how that goes.

Cultivating the wilderness

Sitting inside a lecture room, with a philosophy professor reciting his versions of life, the real world and its many epithets, I recalled one incident which introduced me to the brave affairs of the world. This was 6 years ago. I have waited till now to recite it, but I won’t wait any longer. With fingers aching to relive the daunting day, let me start my story of an incident which defined my beliefs as powerfully as a stone is smoothened by a river.

It was as the books say and the movies show, a hot and dry summer afternoon in the month of July. The sun was at its peak, and I was sitting idle on the bed, eyes fixed on the laptop screen. You can possibly perceive that I was a typical teenager, relishing the rare freedom in the house by carrying out all activities I was denied in the house. With my feet (with shoes on) up on the blanket, laptop in my lap, and headphones in my ears, it was turning out to be a marvelous day.

Suddenly, my idyllic world was disturbed by a noise outside. Though distracted, I let it go and went back to  playing with the laptop. I had possibly thought if I went outside, I would see a dog because the noise sounded like a whimpering. However, ignoring the dog seemed less and less plausible as he continued to whimper, and was now audible even through the headphones. I decided to catch the culprit, my spirits endowed by the possibility of a weakling to bully. (We can safely assume that what I meant to do was to shout and probably throw a few stones aiming to miss the dog, just to drive it away). And while I was contemplating plans for restoring order to my heavenly abode, I heard the whimpering again, louder this time. With blood boiling with rage, mind idle with nothingness, I laid low my headset, and charged out of the house looking for the would-be victim.

As I remember it, I didn't see any dog at all anywhere near the house. (Perhaps you fail to notice, but I am telling you this story in the cold month of February today, and the setting is in the month of July five years ago, so  there are at least sixty six months of memory losses embedded in this story). So as I was saying, there is no dog in my memory, but only a boy, who looked like a rag-picker, clutching his leg. It looked as if he was hit by a car. Thanks to the scorching sun, and the lonely roads thereof, the car driver must have vanished unnoticed. You would ask how could I hear a dog barking when it was a child crying, but the account is very old and thus not liable for small aberrations. But now it all came down to this. I was a proud teenager in front of the house, with an injured child and no elder at home to stress about the situation. I couldn't ask for help from the neighbors, who would take any opportunity to show me that I am still a child and need to be cooed. I had no obligation to finding an aid for the boy, and I wasn't the type to care too much about simple humane feelings. But the persistent crying of the boy was becoming quite bothersome for me and none of the neighbors seem to care. So I decided to take the boy to the Hospital myself on my father's scooter. I knew well how to drive, and the possibility of any policeman in this exorbitant heat was laughable. With the intention of dumping the boy there and letting him find his own treatment (and I doing the noble, angelic deed of transporting him there), I would come back to my room with the same laptop, and a great story to boast of when I am out with friends. But no sooner that I had picked the boy, he slipped out of my hands. I couldn't have placed him on the back seat of my scooter, with him clutching his one leg and unable to speak, so I decided to give him the rider seat and the leg space between the handle and it, and drove myself from the pillion. Luckily the boy, ill fed it seemed, shrunk to only the leg space and I carefully rode on the front, hanging my legs out trying not to stain them with the blood and dirty clothes. The hospital is not far off from our home so my heroic act wouldn't have taken much of my time. We reached the hospital in just a few minutes. My mind was perhaps occupied by the thought of my empty house and the possibility that I might have to battle robbers once I went back. For the crucial dumping part, I decided the usual parking pretext would be fine (“You stand here, I will go park” and then off to home!).  I stopped the scooter in front of the emergency ward, and waited for him to get down. But he never moved, just sat shrunk there. It was frustrating. I put my scooter on a stand, and decided to again lift the boy. When I was about to place the boy down (holding him as far from my body as my arms allowed it), I heard a laugh and a voice, ”Take him to a vet kid, they don't treat gutter waste here”.

I was shocked! I looked around to see the meddler, and located him behind a reception desk, 10 feet inside the gate with the typical desi look (bidi in his mouth, gamcha on his shoulder and red pan stained mouth). Defiantly, I asked, ”What?” He again repeated his line, a cynical grin on his face. Now I was confused, as something furry brushed against my hand. I looked down to see that what I had till now thought to be a boy was indeed a dog and my imaginations (hallucinations?) had got the better of me. Still, I decided to believe in the hallucination (imagination?) theory rather than shape-shifting-alien theories. It wasn't far fetched for me to think that I was too preoccupied with the thoughts of dumping the boy/dog, and with my eyes, ears and brain already “stressed” from planning my heroic act and the possibility of robbers in the house, I was imagining things. Not putting a big deal on the situation, I started to study my surrounding. There weren't any known people who might have seen what I did and reported to my parents. Carefully, I put the dog back on the scooter. It isn't very common to see animals being hauled to the hospital. I knew everyone was watching me while I started the scooter. Obviously they may be another figment of my imagination, since I had become extremely self conscious. So while I took off, my mind started to weigh the possibility of someone there accidentally knowing me and spreading the word to my parents. So I went to the vet and with all intentions of carrying out the good deed to the end, decided to stay there and let the robbers have a picnic at my house. Nobody would remember the hospital incident and I would gloat with pride as the neighbors will praise my wisdom and generosity. Too occupied with myself, I parked the scooter at the gate and picked up the dog. With a dirty bleeding dog in my hand, I pictured myself as a great, selfless God in disguise, taking away the pains of mortal beings. I pictured the news-van of our local news channel passing by and stopping at the marvelous, stupefying sight, and journalists running out of the van to take my photo. I would play the humble hero, running in the mean time inside the vet's office and locking the door so that the journalists never got to take my pic (After which they call a posse of reporters and break in and I become a celebrity) As you may have noticed, my accounts in this story have been very much clearer now that the initial boy-dog hiccup is over. You can assume it all to be the make-belief story of a teenager obsessed with superhero comics. That way, there wouldn't be much to forget about it over the years, it would always have been a part of me. As I said before, I was dreaming some imaginary reporters, and seeing that they are not coming, I finally landed on the first step of the clinic. He was a private doctor, and the fact that there weren't much people around, evening clearly being the preferred time for a visit to the vet, I went straight to the doctor's office. I must proclaim my sanity before I proceed further. I am an engineering student in a prestigious institute, 21 years old, with no background of mental illness, or any other major illness (except a chance malaria, and occasional flues), with completely fine social traits, never being accused of being mad except when friends are passing exaggerated judgments. I am as my education and my health perhaps now indicate, a completely sound mind in a completely sound body. Thus now that I have successfully proved my sanity, I am obliged by my duty as the narrator to continue the story further. I stepped in the doctor's office expecting accolades from him, now that my dream of the reporters pushing open the door had crashed. Preoccupied again, I was completely unperturbed when the doctor said, ”Oh my God! What happened to him? Did you hit him? Take him to a hospital, I won't treat him here. I am too busy. Shoo!” Still holding my hands as far from my body as I could, I could only reply with an “Uh” before he pushed me out of the clinic. When I tried to look at him again, I saw the closed door of the clinic, a reflection of me holding a small bleeding rag-picker with my arms stretched out.

I must tell you that I was only a small kid who was trying to master the ways of the world by imitating what he believed was the ideal worldly behavior, and trying to hold ground in whatsoever good reputation he could earn. The outside world was new to me. And I was eccentric enough to imitate and not be guided. This confession of mine would also act as a justification for my actions in the later part of this story, as you would see.

Summing my story so far, I was now stranded outside the Veterinarian’s clinic with someone who he (I think) described as a rag picker (and who I now see as a rag picker) after having been to a Hospital with the same one who (I think) was described as a dog (and who I then saw as a dog). All I could understand with my-yet-too-feeble-to-contemplate-the-world-brain (which still held enough imagination) was that whatever this creature was, he obviously could not be given the so obvious first-aid the by the veterinarian (and whose treatment wasn't as important as the vet’s conversation with the fat pet owner) and it was definitely unwanted at a hospital and could not receive a treatment there (like other normal patients). Both these incidents ruled out the possibilities of “it” being a human or an animal. I came back to my theory of shape-shifting-aliens. I reasoned that the possibility of an alien life form present on earth was possible, if not highly probable. Besides, only two forms of life were mobile on earth, humans and animals, and the creature was neither. Thus, afloat on the voice of reason, I declared it as an alien who was left alone on earth after its mother ship had sailed away. I again decided to be the humble hero, who decides to be modest about his deeds till he is defiantly betrayed into fame by a blabbering friend. I rushed to my scooter, put the “someone” who now resembled a green-bodied and injured alien on my scooter as before, and rushed off to home. I put him where the car hit him, parked the scooter back in the house, and ran to get a cotton and a bottle of antiseptic. My plan was to treat him on the road so someone would see me helping him and betray me out of my modesty later. While I was searching for the medicines, my mind exhilarated by my approaching fame, I heard a loud crash outside. Afraid of what might have happened, I ran out to find the alien dead after being run over by another car, while the receptionist and the vet were talking outside on the pavement just in front of my house. They both rushed to see the incident, and so did I. Very soon, a big crowd gathered and all of them were talking about the blood spilling on the road. Since the receptionist, the vet were the first ones to reach and thus closest to the body, someone asked them, “Did you see anything?”, and then all sorts of related questions. Both the vet and the receptionist denied ever having seen the dog/boy/alien before, or having seen the accident. Unaware and confused, I nodded with them, all the while trying to see what final shape the body takes.

But I could not see. The body remained hidden from my view by the receptionist and the vet, and then by the crowd, till the MCD Van took it away.

This was my first true lesson in worldly affairs. This was the day I understood the value of life. This was the day I grew up.

Which V Project- V speech Dubbed

Finally!!

It did take me a while, but the work is over now. 6 hours spent, figuring out what to do, doing, re-doing, finding errors, and then re-redoing it.
And the result:

The following video is a clip from the movie "V for Vendetta". What is special now about this clip is that I have recorded the dialogues of V in this clip, and then replaced the original with them! All else is retained, or I have tried to retain them, only that instead of V, I am saying these thunderous dialogues to the awestruck Natalie Portman. The sound quality isn't too great, neither is my performance. What the hell, I ain't a performer, and the sound is the best I could get from open source.

Cool, aint it?


I had known the V speech for too long. When I see a movie, the dialogues sometimes get etched in my mind unknowingly, but this one was special. It was better than the rest, more innovative, more vicious. But I loved the movie so much, I watched it a couple of times. And the result, one day I realized I remember most of the V speech. So I learned the rest, and lo, here I was, entertaining my friends in classes sometimes, and mesmerizing my younger cousins who had seen nothing of the like.

But It wasn't untill yesterday, when sitting in a particularly boring lecture with the professor ranting out the slides, I thought I could do V. In the movie, and not just the dialogue! So I started looking for ways to replace V. The first task was to set the timeline, and cut a video accordingly. Windows movie maker failed me, yet again! I couldn't view the picture, and only the audio was worthless. But Handbrakedid the task beautifully. I was even able to add subtitles to the video, so I could read the dialogues while delivering, and meanwhile also retained the original video quality. Next, I extracted the audio from the video, and Virtual DJ finally proved its worth. First I had tried the crossfader of Virtual DJ, but it didn't work too well. Not that it didn't offer me a way to remove the dialogues of V, I couldn't do it very efficiently, and traces of V stayed. But when it came to recording, it could play anything, and record in anything! Next, while surfing I came across Audacity, and left all worries aside. With a few youtube videos, I could remove V completely, record my voice, suppress noise from my recording, align the tracks correctly to the timeline, and mix the tracks to ensure the background score didn't go mute when I spoke. I didn't do a very good job, and I think you can hear what I mean in the "Madam Justice...." dialogue, but the overall effect was commendable.

So here it is folks!Presenting, as V, Rohan!