I think I found a way home. And this last job, that’s how I get there.

Absolutely brilliant. Inception had my eyes and my mind working overtime. The whole idea of weaving a movie around dreams and alternate realities was fantastic, and Nolan delivered it well. My favourite scenes were the slo-mo ones as the van fell into the river. (Do you remember Joker in The Dark Knight when he had his head out of the car after his escape?)

As I stared at these scenes in awe, the puzzle pieces fit beautifully together in the background. Each water droplet floating between the dreamers during the fall was a puzzle piece that was waiting to fit into the bigger picture; and the time between the fall and the final totem scene was the genesis. Another one for my ‘golden box’!

She was just 2 weeks old. One of the new generation cyborgs, an upgrade, I could say. With so much energy, so much aspiration and the will to soar the silver skies, she walked up to me and opened her lips just to whisper “Stereo Love – Edward Maya”. Voice Over, she called it. I knew she was a cyborg even though she didn’t admit it. You know, just so that she could always keep her emotions in check, unlike me. The “firm” that made her has been trying to take over the world for over a decade now. Things get a little nasty at times, but at the end of the day people do look up to this firm for “inspiration”. I’m not sure if people should stop doing that, because this firm, in the name of design, embraces color, form, type and aesthetics… all at once; and it’s hard to find that these days.

It all ended inside a godforsaken Samsung washing machine. I tried to save her as soon as I knew what had happened… an uncanny resemblance to The Fountain‘s story. Things went a little too fast in the end. They even rigged her up with a tiny water sensing device as if she was an expat. If they wanted to know if she’d been swimming, why didn’t they make her intelligent enough so that she could protect herself when there was a flood? The only useful thing that I can do now is initiate a relentless quest to understand everything I possibly can about this firm and find out their world domination plans which is probably entangled in some misplaced sense of ethics. And try and change things.

Look what I found. The significant ‘Back’ control pointing to my whereabouts in office. Often reminds me to get back to where I started – and thrash first principles like they were smelly roaches. In a peaceful way of course!

My sister’s reminder on a sticky note. I miss these. Mobiles have changed the way we live. I think we ought to become more responsible in designing for the mobile. The things we think of now must not only be driven by people’s preferences, but also by emotional value.

Every week, I get at least one email from GoDaddy with offers and discounts on domains. These aren’t ordinary emails… all of them usually have Danica Patrick posing harmlessly (and usually dressed up in some sort of seductive leather jacket). One may wonder how this concerns the common man trying to make a decent living, someone who would definitely not worry about getting a domain for himself – but there happens to be something in it that intrigues me. I don’t know what, but it’s something that made me renew my account after my first year. That’s one year of Danica Patrick regularly in my Gmail Inbox at least once every week. I think it’s something more than just brainwashing and awesome marketing.

“There is no future. There is no past. Do you see? Time is simultaneous, an intricately structured jewel that humans insist on viewing one edge at a time, when the whole design is visible in every facet.” – Doctor Manhattan

With the dawn of another bunch of three hundred and sixty five (or so we wish to believe) days, I present to you a new Hind-Sight comic. This is for the die hard Max Payne lovers! Oh, and a very happy new year to you

Well, I got lucky this time. I won a free pass to attend TEDx Chennai (an independently organized event bringing people together from primarily the walks of Technology, Entertainment & Design), and it turned out to be quite an eventful Sunday. Joseph (an organizer of the event) called me on Saturday evening to inform me that I had won a ticket to attend TEDx at the IIT Madras auditorium. Nothing like an otherwise ‘plan-less’ Sunday! I got up very early, which hasn’t happened for the past year or so, all ready to drive down and expect a totally inspiring set of talks.

Anil Srinivasan and Sikkil Gurucharan performed what I can call one of the best fusion pieces I’ve ever heard till date. Earlier this year, Anil performed at ‘Across the Universe’, a concert in Madras alongside Unnikrishnan and B S Purushotham, which was another fantastic performance – one which truly teleported (yes, music might be the only answer to my teleportation fetish at least in my life time!) people across dimensions. This was by far the best start I can think of for a TED event!

Romulus “the snake man” Whitaker, the founder of the Madras Snake Park, kick started the set of talks with his witty, funny and surprisingly-snake-loving instances of his life. Now I guess I’m not as scared of snakes as I was before – nothing like empathy toward anything and everything… probably something that can save the world!
Sharadha’s talk on Indian culture through films was inspiring, and made me question myself on whether it was worth watching my next Bollywood movie. As ‘politically incorrect’ as it was and as she had put it, we do need a set of fired up vigilantes to change things around here. The closest to Batman I could say!
Madhavan showed us what it took to stand out from the status quo; not by doing something entirely different, but doing something amazing with what he had already learnt. The impact of Agriculture in our nation was put through to people, some of whom didn’t know much about. A swarm of people surrounded him during the coffee break, and continued to rush out to catch him even as he was leaving after the event!
Vittal’s talk was hilarious and yet powerful. He showed us what corruption had grown into, inflicting politics, businesses and people. I felt his approach to tackle corruption by addressing the ‘money-problem’ or the flow of money in politics, a probable solution worth pondering and trying out even. Apparently ‘corruption’ is a hot topic today, especially in interviews. Getting a grassroot fix for this would be marvelous.
Krupa’s presentation on helping the underprivileged was touching, and Kavita’s life experiences and music evoked emotion.
It was at this point when I realized the TED India series of talks were slightly different from the rest. Most Indian entrepreneurs had a story to tell, which had the ability to evoke human emotion in a peculiar way. Something which captures the heart with not just awe of science or awe of technology, but with the awe of life. For me, the awe of life was very well articulated as the awe of Design! It did make a whole lot of sense. (Yet, we still have a long way to go to match TED standards – a lot more to learn.)
Reddy and Santhosh had good initiatives running on serving/helping people to build a better future. I could correlate a lot of it to creating sustainable lifestyles after understanding Sustainability at the WUD2009 event in Bangalore earlier this month. Jeeva and Bawa engaged the audience with their post lunch activity-packed talks – made me feel more human than anything else
The last talk was a bouncer. Something unexpected, yet fantastic. To be frank, it wasn’t a talk at all! It was the life of Satyabrata Dam, an ex-Indian Navy submariner with multiple roles and whacky ambitions. His perception of life is something breathtaking, and I could say I got most of today’s inspiration just by watching his slideshow: a series of jaw-dropping photos of mountains, caves, skies and beauty of mother nature. As he put it, “Mountains have all the answers, no matter what your question is”. The Himalayas has just taken the highest priority in my to-do list, after Amsterdam and places where celestial marvels happen by the minute.
Kiruba and his team put up a good show, and not to mention good food and good people. More at http://tedxchennai.com and #TEDxChennai (on Twitter).
Yet another productive TED India experience! (The earlier one was a few gigabytes of streaming video over the Indiatimes Live telecast of TED at Mysore). Looking forward to 10.10.10 – the next TEDx Chennai event.

Peace to all