Project Nim

So by now, it is a well-known fact that I am a movie buff. I love movies made well and language does not matter. I also developed an interest in the other kind of films, that are not really feature films. They are called documentaries and are a very rare breed in Indian cinema. Documentary makers in our country are few and often have difficulty finding the necessary funding. And this is probably one of the reasons why many documentaries never get made. Sadly, this also means that some stories never get told.
We love to argue that with the amount of negativity we see and hear about around us, we would not want any more of reality that what life and news channels offer. Movie watching for us, is as the famous dialogue goes, for only 3 reasons – Entertainment, Entertainment and Entertainment. But feature films cannot be (and probably should not be) made out of all good stories. Some stories are so remarkable that adding 5 songs (including an item number) and 5 fights would do nothing to increase their worth.
The first documentary I watched was Fahrenheit 9/11. I had no idea that it was a documentary before I started watching it. My friend had once casually remarked that he had seen it and it was excellent. And I kept hearing it mentioned in various magazines. The director, Michael Moore, was mentioned too in connection with the Oscar awards and the (in)famous acceptance of the 2003 ceremony. After I watched it, I was stunned. For the first time I realized that documentaries can be very very interesting too!! There was enough drama in real life to make it more exciting than any fiction.
I have been watching some documentaries – usually picked from Roger Ebert’s ‘Best Documentaries of the year’ lists or Oscar nominated ones. I watched one called Project Nim yesterday. I had no idea of writing about it initially, but as I was describing the subject of the documentary to my friend, I was suddenly inspired and thought I will write about it.
Project Nim, refers to an experiment carried out a professor of linguistics – Herbert Terrace in Columbia University, to see whether chimpanzees could be taught to communicate with humans using the sign language. The documentary traces the life of the chimp – Nim Chimpsky, who as a baby, barely a few weeks old, is forcefully separated from his mother and given to one of Terrace’s students  – Stefanie LaFarge to be brought up in a human family and just like a human baby. While Nim learns some sign language in the beginning, the professor feels that he is given too much leeway at the LaFarge home. Herb also feels that the atmosphere is not conducive for experimental purposes and takes Nim away to live with two other students.
Like heroes of tragic movies, Nim is kicked from one place to another. At one point, when Herb Terrace decides to end the experiment, Nim is returned to the primate facility in Oklahama where he was initially taken from. This is again a shock to him, since he has never seen another chimpanzee before (at least as far as he can remember). A medical company then buys Nim and a few other chimpanzees to conduct testing of medicines and vaccines on them. From here Nim is rescued by a well-meaning, but utterly clueless person who runs a ranch for abused animals with hoofs (horses/mules/ elephants etc.). Nim, who is literally a social animal gets really lonely and restless here and people at the ranch have no idea how to treat him. Bob Ingersoll, a friend from the primate facility tries to help him, but is not able to do so until much later.
The documentary is in the form of long and intense interviews that take us through Nim’s growth and changes in his life. Almost all the people who have come in contact with Nim remember the period they spent with him as one of the most unforgettable episodes of their lives. Almost all, except Herb Terrace, appear to have developed very strong bonds with him and Nim seems to have changed them or touched them in one way or the other.
Ultimately though, it appears as though Nim was a much better person than the humans that interacted with him. Each human who came in contact with him, treated him like a toy, an experimental object, a playmate, but hardly anyone thought of him as a person with feelings. And you can see that he is let down by his human friends again and again and again. The callousness and coldness of Herb Terrace is in fact very chilling!! It is probably necessary for scientists to not get attached to their subjects emotionally, yet to this day, Terrace does not seem to have any pangs of guilt about how he mistreated Nim for his own ends and then threw him away like a rag doll.
Once again, human beings come across as extremely selfish beings, who can kill not just for food, but for pleasure. We are the only living beings capable of hurting animals that cannot fight back, to serve our needs that include testing our toothpaste to our makeup, our shampoos to our vaccines! We consider our life so worthy that we don’t think twice before sacrificing something that is not really ours – lives of these animals. Yet we are the ones supposedly blessed with a sixth sense!!
If the aim of a film is to touch you in one way or the other, Project Nim does more that you would expect. As a documentary, this is definitely a great watch.

A kute luv stories – Part 6

(Due to overwhelming demand from the readers*, a prequel to the wildly popular post is here for your consumption. I had to choose the least racy one, so ended up with part 6. Parts 1-5 were deemed too hot to be handled).
Warning 1 : May contain material inappropriate for people over the age of 18. Reader discretion advised.
Warning 2: For clarity’s sake, the narration has been translated to narrator’s language at the age of 5.
Venue : Government Hospital
I comed with mummy. See holding me in her and and starring at me. Neer mummy, one anty is standing and sitting. See ave one gale in and. That gale baby wearing small pink frok. I wared blu. Her mummy and my mummy talked on talking.
Then that anty showing games to me. Something and all she told.
I looking at gale in pink frok only.
‘Gah’, I said.
She dint anser.
‘Goo goo’, I said.
‘Uaah’, she said.
That time my mummy ashamed me and told anty ‘It is time to change Anand’s diaper’. I felt so ashamed means, I started shouting at mummy and crying ‘Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh.. guaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh’.
The gale baby also shouting and crying.. ‘Uaaah Uaah’ like that. I think she loved me, becos she cry for my.
That time anty said, ‘Priya also wet herself. For her also nappy change time’.
Then only I noed.. that Priya is the gale’s name. She also ashamed I think so.. But in my haar I thinked ‘If I marry means, it will be nappy gale.. I mean Priya’. Like that, I thinked and told mummy about my idea.
‘Grrooooooooooooo.. gaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.. juuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu’, I said.
But my mummy dint understood my feelings and laafed. But Priya understood I think so. Becos she told ‘Uaah’. My sweet Priya, she dont kno any other word I think so.
Like that our story started in the aaspital.
*1 person

Friend.. Philosopher.. Google..

‘Democracy is dead!! Long live Democracy!!’ said my friend as she entered the office.
‘What’s wrong?’ I said.
‘Don’t you watch the news?’ she asked.
‘Come on, I was tired after watching the MLA getting hit with the slipper for the 1045th time. I hate the guy, but there are only so many replays I can watch of that scene!! What’s up?’ I asked.
‘It is the end of the world, dammit!! Google is down!!’ she said.
‘What do you mean Google is down?’ I asked. I still didn’t see what the fuss was about.
‘Give me at least 3 other ways you can interpret my statement’ she said irritatedly. I know how irritating this series of ‘What do you mean x’ kind of statements can get. Still, I had to know.
‘The Government has decided to ban Google in India’, she said, struggling to keep herself from breaking down.
‘What do you mean..’
‘Don’t even dare to start that again’ she warned. ‘The oldest party is supposedly getting tired of the search phrases on whether Rahul’s hair is real or if Priyanka has had a nose job done. Apparently the top search phrases are if Priyanka has learnt dancing too and Rahul’s favourite state’.
‘But Priyanka did have a nose job done’ I said, completely missing the point.
‘They thought it was the other Priyanka’ she said with some exasperation.
‘So why are you so upset? What if Google is banned? We will live’ I said.
‘No we won’t!! I have to send out a presentation on trends in the energy industry. Who is going to give me the information? Your uncle in Villupuram?’ she yelled.
She had a point. But I was the epitome of patience and wisdom. I wasn’t going to lose my head over something as trivial as a website getting banned.
‘Remember the older days? What did we do then?’ I asked her in my sweetest possible voice.
Apparently that only seemed to irk her more.
‘In the older days, we thought Windows 95 was cool and did not know the difference between a search engine and a browser. Remember how you were perplexed about why you needed IE AND yahoo?? ‘ she said with a nasty smile. She was starting to enjoy this.
‘Not that, you fool!! What about yahoo, msn, that bling something and that spanish thing that sounded like abracadabra.. or even ask-somebody-dot-something? Didn’t we use one of those things before we were googled?’ I asked.
‘Well, all of them are banned. If Google is banned, why wouldn’t the others be??’ she said.
I didn’t see it. I mean, the internet was still there right? What is the big deal if the search engines were banned?
After an hour or 2 of checking emails, looking at news sites (that were still talking about the MLA getting hit with a slipper and Rakhi Sawant claiming that ‘The Avengers’ was actually her story) and talking with my manager on general office gossip and 3 presentation decks that had to go out, I suddenly realized that it was a Friday and that I was due for my weekly shampoo bath the next day. Should I get a henna hair pack or not? I got one last week, but how frequently do I do that? I did what I always do in such cases of extreme importance. I typed ‘Google.com’ on the browser and waited. The screen turned red and I turned purple with worry. I didn’t know if people usually turn that colour with worry and right then I had no way of checking, for at that moment a message appeared,  ‘You are kidding, right? Don’t ask, think!!’. I had never felt so insulted in life and that’s when I realized that my life was not going to be the same ever again!!
There was some serious stuff going on in the next bay. The young developers sitting there looked ashen-faced. A few girls were crying. I couldn’t help but overhear them wondering out aloud what they were going to do. A few guys were talking about finding work in a bottling factory. A few suggested turning into data-entry operators.
‘But we only know Ctrl+C  and Ctrl+V’, another guy said.
Some of the girls were worried that now they would really have to get married according to their parents’ wishes. A few bright ones suggested that by hook or crook they become project managers.
‘Think about it!!’ said a PYT excitedly. ‘All we will need to know is Excel and Powerpoint’.
‘But without Google…’, interrupted a guy.
‘They don’t have to know or learn anything else. So they are probably the only group of people who don’t use it!!’, the PYT said.
I was feeling hurt. Not because I was a PM, but because my work also involved mostly Powerpoint and Excel. But like my search earlier had proven, we were human too! We needed Google too!! No one seemed to understand our feelings!!
Things went from bad to worse after that!! My boss called to tell me that a customer had asked for a solution for smart homes.
‘Smart what?’ I caught myself saying and then realized that my boss had no clue either and that he was simply passing on the work.
‘Also, can you do some research on this tool called totalfail?’ he said.
I now knew what he was up to. Rumours on the company’s plan to silently layoff people had been doing the rounds and this was a strategic move in that direction!!
‘Smooth!!’ I would have said, were it not for the fact that I was at the receiving end of the treatment!!
I was ruing my decision to put off my search on news on the politician’s leaked video yesterday. Now, I will never know!!
I was planning to search for stores in Chennai that sold organic cocoa butter and then look for recipes for making lip balm at home. Now I was stuck to the ones by Vaseline and Himalaya!
I wanted to know if there were more Swedish and Danish films I should be checking out and now I will  never know.
I was banking on Google to help me find the meaning of this seemingly 100000 digit error message that keeps popping up on my application. And now I have to search for the manual to find out if it means anything.
I thought Google would guide me on the best diet plan, if suryanamaskars had to be done on an empty stomach, on which is better for weight loss – cardio or weight training. Now I will have to take some gym instructor’s word for it.
Life seemed not worth living. Here I was, thinking of writing to the guys at Google to expand their search engine to enable searching for my dupattas and the shirt that I always seem to be missing at any point in time (and turning up later when I am not looking for it) in my wardrobe, to look for that wire that I want to disconnect from the jungle of wires behind my PC  – in short extend search to real life and what happened? I did not even have what I had before.
One tends to realize the importance of something only after one loses it and I was getting to know how much of a friend Google had been. I couldn’t take it anymore. My heart felt like it was going to explode. The world really seemed to be coming to an end. And then it started.. the ground beneath me started shaking. I thought I was going to be swallowed into the earth, when I heard a voice calling to me. It had to be the Creator. I really had died without Google, I thought.
‘Sleeping in the office is bad enough!! But that, you could do it when there is an earthquake, is beyond unbelievable’ said my angry looking friend!
Damn!! It wasn’t the creator. And sweetest thing of all, was when I looked up at my PC screen and saw Google.com  smiling at me with something like love!! ‘Chennai earthquake’, I typed on the screen and hit ‘Enter’!!!

Written for a contest

Iron Woman

Posted on April 27, 2012 by rathi

No, this post is not an addition to that endless list of posts on Evil Men vs. Evil Women.
And it is not an ode to my mother, who brought me up fighting many odds etc.(I don’t think there were that many, and I was fairly well-behaved, at least as a child).
So, those of you who entered this post all set to comment on how I should stop the male-bashing and get on with my daily-soap-watching, cool down and read on..
There was a time in school and later at work, when my teachers/managers used to appreciate one quality in me – they called it ‘perseverance’. I did not fully appreciate their perspicacity at that time. I simply thought they had received that word in their ‘A word a day’ mail the previous day or saw it in the solution for the day’s crossword and wanted to show-off their new-found knowledge! However, at moments of deep introspection – you know those moments, when you start with the thought ‘Who am I?’ – I am struck by the perceptiveness these great souls displayed.
Every time I introspect, I realize that I am crazy about films and TV shows. And my love for well-made mysteries and thrillers has made me search the internet relentlessly for information on movies/shows in any language and then get hold of them to watch them in the evenings or over the weekends. (And with that, I hope I have justified my hitherto unjustified meandering over-long introduction!!).
I don’t know what I was searching for, although I know that definitely one thing (which one, I can’t say), led to the other and in the end, I came to know about this Danish TV series called ‘Forbrydelsen’  (meaning, ‘The Crime’). It was supposedly telecast on BBC in the original language with English subtitles and was supposedly very well received. Thanks to the internet and the most popular movie source in the world (and I am not going to name the provider), I watched the first season of the series, consisting of 20 one-hour episodes and am now midway in season 2 of the series.
Each series traces the investigation of one murder by the Danish police, specifically by the lead detective Sarah Lund (played by Sofie Gråbøl). Like all good police procedurals, the investigation is painstaking and the results are not immediate. I was reminded of one of my favourite police procedural movies – Zodiac, while I was watching the first season.
I was fascinated by the character of Sarah Lund. I have often mentioned about my attraction towards flawed characters in fiction – especially if the flawed character is the protagonist of the story. The flaws complement the good qualities of the character and makes her more believable. Add to it, the fact that I was really tired of watching women mostly in the sidelines of any good movie/series ( and I wrote a long post about it a while back). I did not read about the story outline before starting to watch the series, so it was a pleasant surprise watching this character on screen.
There are some characters in fiction, that you tend to love. You may never like them in real-life, but as characters in the story, they add another dimension to it. Their unpredictability makes the investigation process more interesting. And if I, a regular viewer think that way, no points for guessing that the makers of such fiction think so too. So the challenge for every creator is to create a slightly dysfunctional protagonist whose quirks are different from those we have already read/seen.
In that sense, I am not able to think of what is special about Detective Lund. She is like any other smartass investigator we have seen umpteen times in other films. She is driven and married to her work. She is a failure with her personal relationships and no matter how much she tries to be otherwise, she cares for her profession more than her family. She has no interests (obvious ones at least) outside of work. She does not treat her colleagues as friends and does not seem to have friends outside of work. She has a son, who she thinks she loves, but it is easy to think otherwise. She has a caring boyfriend, who is there for her whenever she wants, but whom she seems oblivious to. She has a loving mother who supports her when she needs a place to stay. And who is the only person who speaks her mind and constantly chides Lund for treating people around her badly, yet nothing seems to get through the woman’s mind. She is relentless in her pursuit of the killer of a young woman (who we see mostly in pictures) and is willing to concede her mistakes as long as she is allowed to pursue her next lead to the true killer.
Her male colleague, who is supposed to be her replacement (since at the beginning of the series, Sarah Lund is all set to emigrate and settle down in Sweden with her boyfriend and son), resents her attitude and coldness, but cannot help but respect her uncanny ability to see past the facades of people and think from multiple angles on the same issue.
While watching the series, it becomes increasingly difficult to separate the character from the actor and it is to Sofie Gråbøl’s credit, that I will never be able to think of her as anything other than Sarah Lund. I loved the fact Lund is never given any special treatment as a woman. She gains the grudging respect of  her colleagues and superiors purely due to her intellect and steely interior and not because of her intelligence in spite of being a woman. She does not demand respect – in fact she does not seem to care what people around her think about her. And that was very refreshing to see
For all her characteristics, I was not able to think of the character of Sarah Lund being replaced by a man. This, in spite of the fact that she exhibits almost none of the characteristic (and stereotypical) features of a woman – caring, nurturing, working from the heart rather than intellect, having strong intuitive skills etc, nor does she conform to  the other kind of stereotype of the b***y career woman. The series shows no judgement on her behaviour towards her family. The character seemed more real to me than any other portrayal of a woman detective I have seen in movies/television. The character of Kima Greggs in ‘The Wire’ comes close, but she still was one of the team members in that show and was a representative female character in a largely male-dominated story.
I don’t know if I have conveyed my liking and respect for this series and the lead character. But I have got my hands on at least 2 other Danish series. And it appears that in one of them called Borgen, which is again very popular, the lead character is a career woman. So having strong women characters is probably normal in Denmark. ‘Forbrydelsen’ has been remade in English as ‘The Killing’ and telecast in AMC. The first season supposedly received universal critical acclaim.
My insatiable hunger for more interesting and well-made series is exposing me to films and TV shows in languages of whose existence I had only vaguely heard of (I am ashamed to say that I was sometimes under the impression that people living in Denmark were Dutch!!). Forbrydelsen now ranks among my other favourites like The Wire (always the first and will probably remain so), Breaking Bad*,  and Dexter (Sherlock – the immensely interesting and awesomely made TV series is likely to get on to this list pretty soon, but I have seen only the 1st episode – the pilot and the original – so far).

Attack of Technology

The first sign of the impending crisis appeared on our ATL day celebrations in Chennai. Our chief guest was a professor who was working for a research foundation. The topic of his talk was on the challenges of Brain Modeling. I was assigned the task of welcoming the participants to the program and passing on the baton to my colleague who would then introduce the chief guest – I did and he did. Then the professor started talking. That talk opened my eyes – figuratively of course, for the temptation to close my eyes for a second was hard at fight with the inner voice chastising and later ridiculing me on how far I had moved away from science.
Word after word that the professor uttered sounded like nails on the coffin of my self-esteem. The first nail was ‘mitochondria’ and later RNA, synapses and so on and on. By the time he mentioned ‘Golgi bodies’ I was prepared to dig my own grave, get into the coffin after handing over the shovel to my friends in the room (Now don’t ask me how I could enter a coffin that had already been nailed. When a person is extremely disturbed, she tends to mix metaphors). Anyway, when the lecture finally ended after a seemingly never ending 1.5 hours, people in the room were comatose. Some looked like they had been attacked by Dementors while others merely saw the end of the speech as a chance to rush to the pantry to get coffee.
Little did I realize that my brush with science and technology had just begun!! One good thing that this talk did was to make me realize what I had been missing. I had once been in love with science – all parts of it and with time I had moved away from it completely.
The second bout of the attack occurred last week, when I was in Bangalore for the ATL day celebrations there. A few professors from MIT were coming down to talk about their research. The venue was full with over 100 people participating. These sessions were a little better and I could at least understand bits and pieces of what was happening, mainly due to 2 reasons:
a. The first speaker focused more on the applications of his research and although the title (The Inner Beauty of Computational Enhanced Systems) was intimidating, the talk was not. I consider attending a session of value, if I am able to ask at least one question at the end of it and I was able to ask one
b. The second speaker spoke more on market trends and although his topic (Driving Digital Transformation ) sounded like the talk was to do with technology, it was more like a Market Analyst talk.
These 2 talks had lessened my initial fear of attending the EmTech conference that was scheduled for the next 2 days. All the others in my team were attending the conference. I was initially a little worried of coming across as a complete fool while attending this conference , especially in the company of mostly Ph.Ds and veterans in the technology area (I don’t worry too much about being a fool, only about coming across as one!!).
However as I said, when I found that even professors from MIT are human (not that I ever thought they were inhuman, but you know what I mean), I decided, that come what may, I will attend this conference and ask at least one question in one of the sessions. I have had good practice in asking seemingly relevant questions on topics that I have no understanding off, merely by catching some keywords mentioned in the talk. This practice dates back to the time I attended Physics lectures in college and learnt to sleep with my eyes wide open. (Since this information will be presented in more detail in my autobiography, it is ok not to note this down for your reference).
A few in my team had attended the conference in the past and while there were some scattered memories of past sessions, the memory of the food served was fairly decent. The conference was to be held at ITC Gardenia and the food was supposedly good. What more motivation does a technology enthusiast like me need to attend it?
The conference was backed by MIT and so most speakers for the conference were from MIT. The morning’s session started with the welcome address followed by a talk by an MIT professor and no points for guessing that this was the same person who spoke at our office. It was amazing to watch the entire speech unfold before us. I could not believe what was happening. This was the talk on Digital Transformation and like a trained performer, the professor spoke the exact same words that he spoke in the talk at my company! Even the jokes and the sequence in which they appeared was exactly the same. I was thinking of how stand-up comedians like Russell Peters use the same routines everywhere they go. If you have watched it once, you have watched it a hundred times.
After the first few keynotes, the sessions were divided into 2 parts. One part was the innovations track and the other was the technology track. The focus this time was on Healthcare on day 1 and Energy on day 2. We attended a few sessions on both tracks and on both domains. There were also short (15 min) presentations by winners of the TR35 innovation awards sponsored by my company. These winners were mostly young innovators, who were mostly researchers, who had come up with innovative solutions in different streams. I saw the presentations by a few of these innovators.By now, my skin was sufficiently thickened and I had learnt to ignore the constant taunts of my inner voice. As a result, I was not thinking about what I had and had not achieved, but was genuinely happy and taken in by some of the innovations (those that I understood at least).
The highlight of day 1, was a talk by a person who had formerly worked in NASA. ‘Unassuming’ is the word that instantly springs to mind if I have to describe the gentleman. As he waited on the stage for a couple of seconds, he appeared perfectly ordinary and seemed to be one of those many people who talk in a dull monotone – the kind of voice that is perfectly suitable as a background for a post-lunch siesta, but definitely unsuited for a thought provoking conversation in a technology conference. All these thoughts and presumptions occurred before he even spoke a word. But the minute he started talking, he had the entire audience captivated. I have often felt, that great people are often very simple. This person was no exception. The audience were in love with him and his wonderful sense of sarcastic humour. He delivered most of the jokes with a deadpan expression, but what shone in between the jokes, was his passion for his city and the work he had done with the toughest collaborator of all – the local government and that made him better than Superman. While he listed out project after project he had rolled out for Bangalore – the motivation for each project, the work involved and the benefit of the project, we were mesmerized. At the end of his talk, the hall burst into applause and the talk received the longest ovation of the event.
Many of us decided to leave after this talk, even though another discussion with an eminent professor was announced. None of us wanted our high spirits to be disturbed after listening to that awesome speech. The next day started with another repeat speech. This one, by the person who spoke on Computational Enhanced Systems. I sort of slept through the session.
The rest of the sessions were alternatively very interesting- like the talk by a professor on cochlear implants and retinal implants and another towards the end about sensors- and not so interesting – and I would rather not mention the titles here.
My moment of achievement came during one of the sessions on Smart Energy. Since I had been reading about Smart Grids and Smart metering in the recent past, I was able to ask a question on how we were doing in India with regards to this technology. While one of the previous speakers thought I was being sarcastic (although I usually am, but he would not know that!!) and became defensive saying we had a lot of the necessary systems in place, the speaker from GE Energy, to whom this question was addressed, gave a more diplomatic (and to me very sensible) answer that since the Indian setup is very different from the rest of world, we may have to redefine Smart Energy to suit our country.
The day’s sessions wound up by 4:30 pm. We had used all the time given in between under the heading of networking to network within ourselves and getting to know each other better.
If I have to list down lessons learnt from this workshop, they would be as follows :

• Great scientists are not always great talkers and vice-versa
• True greatness and simplicity usually go hand-in-hand
• Age has nothing to do with the ability to innovate and see new solutions to old problems
• Innovations are not necessarily life-saving or groundbreaking – they just need a fresh perspective to normal things – one of the speakers spoke about a new business venture that provides people with the ability to send money using the mobile phone. This has been implemented in many villages in the supposedly remote corners of Bihar.
• To many Indians, networking means talking to one’s own colleagues
• A speech cannot be (and should not be) a series of ‘sort-of’ and/or ‘like, you know’ interspersed with a few other words
• There is no shame in waiting in long queues for the dessert, especially when the food is free
• Indians who have spent a even a few months in America, speak with a heavier American accent than people born and brought up in the US
• Many women are extremely talented and can walk and sometimes even run with very high-heeled shoes
• I still have the capacity to sit and listen to a completely obscure topic and to try and understand at least parts of it