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Showing posts from 2017

Godha and feminism

Godha is a good film; good enough to make you wish it was better.  The first half is very entertaining.  The humour is quite refreshing.  And, the various relationships are portrayed really well.  I highly recommend the film. The film is basically about a woman chasing her dreams, the right a woman has to chase her dreams, her freedom etc.  And I feel they have done justice to that theme.  I was slightly disappointed to see such a feminist film holding the idea that a man has to be better than a woman to get accepted.  This I think is a very dangerous stance, especially because this is the reason why many fear their daughters' achievements.  The more they achieve, the tougher it gets to find a groom.   I am not implying that marriage is or should be THE AIM in life.  But, the majority certainly desires marriage or at least a romantic relationship.  If achievements become detrimental to this desire, many would sacrifice their dreams.         By Source (WP:NFCC#4), Fair use,

Noble truth 1.5

Buddha told us about the existence of suffering, the cause of suffering and the path to liberation from suffering through his four noble truths. I feel that hidden in a famous comedy scene from the film " Vettam " is another noble truth about the nature of suffering. The volley of dialogues is as follows Hero: According to my horoscope, I have bad times till I am 20. Heroine: And, after that...? Hero: He said I will get used to it. This is a truth about the nature of suffering I have realised time and again. Namely, We get used to suffering. When I started having neck pain, I used to find it unbearable. After several years, now I can easily manage. I can even ignore it most of the time. Similarly, I have an artificial aortic valve. The clock-like sound it makes used to disturb me a lot initially. I used to find it difficult to sleep. Now, I cannot hear it unless I concentrate. In the famous book "Oru deshathinte katha ", S.K. Pottekatt portrays t

Phantoms in the brain

It was a holiday for me, but not for my father. He had very few holidays. He was preparing to leave. As usual, I rushed to open the gates for him. While opening the gates, the gate slid over my toe and took my thumbnail off. It was extremely painful. As there was a meeting my father had to attend, he left to his office. However, he returned home soon after the meeting. After coming back, he read out Lee Falk's Phantom for me. I was not old enough to read on my own. I still remember the story he read out to me, the story of Hanta witch. Absorbed in the story I soon forgot my pain. That was when I realised that you can forget pain by distracting yourself. Years passed by. I have suffered much greater pains. And, this trick saved me almost every time. Along with a strong disbelief in an inherent purpose for life, this experience made distractions from life the sole purpose of life. Ironic, isn't it. By "Phantom, The #12". Grand Comics Database

Naruto; Ino's advice

Naruto is an anime with many lessons - both direct and indirect. Among the direct lessons, namely advice, my favourite is Ino's advice to Sakura. Simple yet powerful. And of great significance in our society. People are often ashamed about some of their attributes - colour, build, hair, etc. And they try to hide them. In this process, they often get ridiculed even more. Why? Becuase, you are implicitly telling that you are ashamed of it. You are giving them the stick to beat you. Afraid that people will tease her, Sakura hides her big forehead. Ino advises sakura to stop this. She urges her to proudly display her forehead instead and gifts a ribbon to do so. And, Sakura (cherry blossoms) starts to bloom.

Correlation is not causation

Humans tend to seek causal link between events that always or generally occur together.  "Correlation is not causation" or "correlation does not imply causation"  is a phrase in statistics or science, in general, to warn against this fallacy.  Even smart people tend to make this mistake.  Hence, this phrase has gained importance. Due to its importance, people have come up with various examples illustrating the mistake.  Surprisingly, among all the examples I have seen, a movie dialogue did the best job, at least in my opinion.  This is a dialogue from one of the many brilliant comedy scenes from the Malayalam film Punjabi house. In the film, one of the characters says "I do not eat chapati and hence I do not know Hindi".  Eating chapati and knowing Hindi is certainly correlated.  Chapati is predominantly a food of North India and Hindi is a language of North India.  However, as is obvious to all of us, there is no causal link.  Hence, the dialogu