Fizzed-out futures

Initiatives are arising to plug holes in the Indian education system, or so they claim. Many are ambitious, some even overreaching, but they also exist in the company of those that are honest. However, the cause for concern is that such projects are being viewed as extracurricular to the prevailing education system-even by those who have founded the initiatives. Thoughtful engagement is sought after, an awareness of the "outside world"–a summation of the realities extraneous to the student's chosen field–is deemed lacking and designated a goal.

Most such initiatives are by students, or recent graduates, and with them, they carry fresh memories of incomplete lessons and half-mentored theses. As their activities grow in scope–which they surely do–there is an attrition between a tendency to remain experimentalist and the certainty provided by going commercial through installing a secure source of support and a fundamental incentive. The last is necessary even though many students remain in denial of it: one man's idea cannot be shared with the same intensity throughout unless there is a need to depend on it. Money, many fail to realize, maintains currency, too.

The prevalent belief is that the Indian way of learning sidelines the humanities: if a job doesn't fetch a fat cheque, it concludes there is no point in studying for it. Unfortunately, however, such a view also degrades the pros of technical learning. Subsequently, the responses are disappointingly reactionary. If a student has found it difficult to inculcate a skill, he simply participates in the overarching institution of frustration and dissatisfaction, and assumes the problem is faced by everyone. That is never true, has never been. However, it finds enough purchase to surface as fixes.



In many parts of the country, young graduates and final-year students gather in small rooms on terraces and in garages. For the most part, they discuss the different activities they could perform to compensate for what they think they ought to have learned in the classroom but didn’t. They quickly conclude that original thought is missing-which is very true-and proceed to talk about what they’d need to inculcate it. These are, obviously, surface-level problems. As time passes, the incentive to meet each subsequent week and debate and act or whatever peters out. Essentially, such students’ and graduates’ concerns have been for the short-term.

The long-term concern, it seems, can be addressed more effectively at the individual level than at the systemic level. The institution can encourage extracurricular tasks, point at the dearth of invention and abundance of innovation, and build up an army of youngsters to fix the nation’s most pressing problems. However, the only solution that can pluck India out of this moshpit of unoriginality is to do what is required of all youngsters no matter where they are these days: ideate. Ideas, whether original or otherwise, are necessary; even better when they are distilled out from a knowledge pool that is vast.

Whatever the most dollar-guzzling problems are, the ones that are solved by continuous ideation are what will keep the machine from descending into a standstill. May the humanities be sidelined, may the rote-learner be celebrated, may technical learning signify the staple diet that deprives most Indian students’ of the indulgence of the arts-we are not in need of a paradigm shift to rectify matters. What we need most is to build ourselves to achieve even in the absence of expectations. What we need most is to transcend our cubicles and classrooms and disintegrate the institutionalized frustration. By not doing so, we are letting our communal objectives be defined by a chance mistake.

One solipsistic half

I wish I had something unwritten lying around somewhere: that way, I would only have to find it to know that I will have written something soon. Embossed with the faint shapes of letters strung together as unborn words, I ought to still have the freedom to decide what I want to write about; the moment I have, however, I will only be informed of how it is to be put down. Like a dog on a leash—neither loose nor tight—that accompanies its walker around the neighbourhood, through alleys and lanes, avenues and boulevards, all the while neither being lead nor being goaded, I must be turned to fill up the pages one after another knowing neither the futility of my will nor the successes of my endeavour. Does there exist such a magical manuscript that I may only discover it? Perhaps there does, from the moment I finish a sentence and sit back, pondering upon the text to follow—continuity of essence, enrichment of character, the like—the finished work flashes before my eyes, sculpted to perfection by a visceral sense that pierces together experience and desire, and I reach forward to touch the phantasm, aware full well of the disappointment that awaits as is due its illusory existence, and so pick the pen up once more, knowing what must definitely follow. Ha! Would that my mind was so pleasurably dual—nay!—and I suffer already the pains of Peter's theft, the vulgarity of Paul's profits...

Damage Assessment (EWP)

Note: This article is part of the EWP

--

Creative spark

The escalation of commitment can be quite a dreadful thing. Just a little more than a week ago, I set out to write a short story simply because I felt like writing fiction. Drawing inspiration from Thomas Pynchon’s ‘Against The Day’ and the names of particles in the Standard Model of particle physics (along with a working knowledge of the LHC at CERN), I first set out a simple header-plot (which is what I call the template from which I work upward). Once that was done, I checked it to see if it read well. It did.

Great! The next step was to define the characters’ personas, which, for me, doesn’t take much time because I ‘wing’ it (yes, you read that right), as I do the plot itself. The only things I decide beforehand are the only things I really enjoy deciding in the short-run: the names of the characters and the locales. Anyway, on the 7th of March, I began to write my story. (Download: session I)

Incomplete inspiration – hallucinating an abundance of opportunities – willingness to experiment – hesitation to lay out full plot

Reality hits

After two days or so, I realized to my horror that my narrative was going full speed ahead while the dialogue and character and plot developments were going nowhere. Back then, I had recently been criticized for indulging myself with too much prose at the risk of turning the whole endeavour pedantic and droll-like. In order to set it right, I scrolled back to the top of the page and began to edit what I’d written.

You see, I don’t edit my works much. I understand how an article or a story can be polished again and again and how there are so many techniques for that, but I’m a hesitating pacifist – and that means I get angry first and then calm down. So, if I gave myself time to calm down, I’d probably come up with something extremely blunt and literarily non-penetrating. Now, since I was editing this story, I began to have a bad feeling about it. My ideas and my intentions change so much within the same ideological bounds that there was a chance for a paragraph to turn out like a semantic singsong. (Download: session II)

Celebratory indulgence – brakes applied suddenly – improper attitude towards editing – thinking faster than writing

Battle for revival

The third challenge, and also the last one, I was left to confront now was the scripture of dialogues. I’d sucked at it in the past and had always strived to keep it at a minimum. Now, however, since the story seemed to be going good even though an indication of sunk costs was beginning to present itself, I decided to go for it.

Now, there are two kinds of dialogues that I’ve observed in stories. The first is between two people who are both active participators in the contents of the talk. This is the easiest to write because all you have to do is a conversation with yourself (which writers and philosophers do a lot) and then break it into two halves, one for each interlocutor. The second type is when two people are talking but only one of them is actually paying any heed to what’s being discussed, a type that is very important in most books written because if everyone listened to what was being spoken, there wouldn’t be a plot worth expounding for reams on. If you read the draft, you’ll be able to easily deduce that I struggled at writing the lines. (Download: session III)

Over-analysis – struggling to generate "flow" – very systematic approach

Desperate experimentation

The two ensuing sections of the story were actually written in the neighbourhood of 00:00, March 13, and opened up my eyes to the mistake I was doing: it seemed that if I started to script the dialogues, I was reluctant to take up the narrative, and if I started to script the narrative, I was reluctant to take up the dialogues. This resulted in conspicuous fault lines appearing all over the text – discernible easily to the reader to the point of him being able to read my mind, to the point of my work of “fiction” becoming transparent to his eyes. Also, in order to mask my own logical proclivities – which are strong enough as it is – I took the trouble to NOT be aware of the whole plot myself. This, in turn, awarded me with the liberty to experiment with what the two characters were saying to each other. This is a risky way to go about writing anything since, with the sunk cost fallacy being a real possibility, it could drain you of your creative faculties. (Download: session IV)

Retaining the option of "killing" a project as need be – consumed by occasionally trivial fears

Surrender

The last few paragraphs are what speak truly and openly of my defeat: the sentences are too long, the choice of words defer to a subconscious lack of precision, the uneven amount of attention paid to different parts of the same setting hint at the absence of decisiveness. Game over. (Download: session V)

Sunk costs – fractional kill – diminishing returns

--

Fog index: 16.72

A Story Through Ten Images

An old draft, warm with all the years of our acquaintance, edged conveniently off the table. Outside, the world was up to something, it was always up to something, but I never bothered. It was up to no good anyway. Such evenings always made me smile, not in the cocky way some old fart smiles when his midlife crises hits him in the face, but in the cocky way an old soldier is allowed to feel, is entitled to feel. Those were the days... when the world was up to worse.

[caption id="attachment_146" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Of all the many journeys I was a part of, the Kohrin Expedition comes to mind now - not always, it's too special to be wondering about on any evening except this one. The Kohrin were an ancient people who civilized slowly, deliberately, accruing for themselves a foundation for their future so strong, so unshakeable, that they automatically threatened anyone they dealt with, whether by accident or by measure. In the fourth year of the twelfth solar cycle, a secret expedition was sent forth by an affluent Kohrini thug named Brull; I was conscripted along with four other pilots to deliver resources to rebel factions coming together to topple the ruling council of ministers. Brull wanted the crown for himself, the kingdom for his house."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_149" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="A 17-hour journey later, I was at SR-71 to meet with the faction titled Bazlac. To cut a long story short, they weren't there. The place was desolate, the wooden struts had been blasted off with undue force, pocks littered the face of the earth. Some of the spots were still smoldering and a wet track led away from them, deep in the squelch, a heavy vehicle of some kind had been here. Keeping the shuttle low, I followed it north for as long as it lasted. Then, in the distance..."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_148" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="A Citadel of Light, unmistakable from this distance, with its rounded ramparts and domed crowns, with the blue flames of necromancy climbing into the sky out of the blast-capillaries, hot as Hell, cold as Hell, webs of some strange silken cord hanging in strands from its facade. The mound of land on which it stood seemed still loose, which meant it was new, a "fresh" acquisition. The Drasil were cannibals, morally decadent spawn detested by the kinds of Brull even. The Bazlac were done for, I knew, but what the Drasil were doing so far outfield I didn't, so I decided to pay them a visit. A secret one."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_151" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="The Drasil were very religious, which meant taking to the skies was equal to defying the airspace of the "Gods", so getting to the other side was easy. Perching atop a hill shrouded in mist, I found a vantage point after cloaking the shuttle, took my post and waited. Beneath, a sea of green light, within which boats were being scuttled. This was strange, there was no enemy army in sight, no threat, no chance of one either as a great army encircling the camp came to be seen under the dim light. Why were the boats being scuttled? I heard a noise behind me, and turning to look, saw it was a dunkke."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_152" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="A dunkke was a proselyte with the Drasil camp whose arms and legs had been cut off and substituted with electromechanical limbs that enhanced speed. They argued that, over the years, this left the brain to focus more on other activities, such as strategizing or backstabbing. Two red bulbs glowed bright on the bosom of this woman, which meant she had been deactivated. Her activation signals would gradually die out, leaving her immobile and starving to death. I walked up to the figure, dragged her to near the craft, and fed her some energy from the engines. She was obviously a traitor to the Drasilhani cause."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_153" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="The first words out of her mouth and I prepared to disconnect her, but her arms were exceptionally strong. She was some kind of a warrior, absorbed into the cult through blackmail and torture, to dive beneath the seas and awaken the Purge. Brull had not sought to bring down Kohrin, at least at first, but instead sought to repel the Drasil. The Bazlac were planning to awaken the Purge themselves to quench the fire of the Kohrin and the Drasil had intervened. But why? The Drasil needed life to kill, fertility to blight."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_154" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="The Purge was an antediluvian cabal buried midway between the outer crust and inner mantle of three planets in the entire galaxy, conceived and gestated since time immemorial by some Kohrin overlord, commanded to rise and be born as a machine with unimaginable power, with the sole purpose of melting and consuming whole planets within days. The one in SR-71 was named Red Hand. The three Purges were the ultimate weapons of the Kohrin, unstoppable, reckless in their hunger for metal and stone. Now, I understood the answer: the Kohrin had allied with the Drasil to eliminate fringe rebels, but the Drasil had grabbed the chance to reactivate the three Hands of Oblivion... against the Kohrin."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_155" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="This here's the construction site behind my home. They're building some sort of an office, although for what I don't know. My planet's exactly one parsec away from SR-71, which means it will be another six years before Red Hand gets here. They don't know yet, or they'd be over their sorrow already and holding some sort of celebration, calling for world peace and brotherhood, what melodrama! I can't stand that. If they let me be, I'd let them be. That looks impossible all the time. Cancer's going to take me in another four months, so I figured, hey! Let's not tell them anything. Keep the mystery alive, that sorta thing, get me? After all, anything's possible!"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_157" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Anything at all."][/caption]