Mayank Chhaya Daily

Thinking of the masterful John Constable

‘Stonehenge at sunset’, John Constable, 1836

There is no reason why I have been thinking of the great British painter John Constable. I have no cultural connection with him other than his art, which come to think of it, is indeed a strong cultural connection. Constable (1776-1837) was a contemporary and famous rival of another British treasure, Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851). The two couldn’t stand each other even as they rose to dominate British art with their extraordinary genius.

Although Constable is primarily known as a romantic landscape painter of the famous English countryside, in particular Dedham Vale, where he grew up and which is now known as ‘Constable Country’, he also painted some other remarkable works. I was going through them on Google Arts & Culture and liked these two particularly.

Here was a painter who said,“I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may - light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful.” With that as the approach to the world, it was no surprise that he could produce beautiful world rather effortlessly. It is widely thought now that without quite calling it that Constable along with Turner may have ended up pioneering Impressionism.

There are several paintings apart from his masterful landscapes, including and especially ‘The Haywain’ (1821), that capture Constable’s supreme artistry. I have chosen just two here. One is the magical ‘Stonehenge at Sunset’ (1836) and the other equally captivating, particularly the sun, ‘Hove Beach’ (1824-1828). The sub is good enough to be eaten in ‘Hove Beach’.

‘Hove Beach’, John Constable, 1824-1828

The mauve-orange in both these paintings is remarkably reassuring and reaffirming.

As an aside, which is completely unrelated to this post, I always remember that it is the earth’s atmosphere and the way it scatters higher wavelength colors such as orange, yellow and red, that painters have seen the sun in such resplendent glory. Otherwise, as a star seen from space away from our atmosphere it is a white star combining all colors. It is a powerful example of how realities in the universe depend entirely on our vantage point. Our reality is very much our own. In fact, we carry our own individual reality.

I am glad that our atmosphere does what it does so magically with sunlight. How else would we have the great sunrises and sunsets in Turner and Constable?

Painting is always on one’s mind

Sunset--MC

Prakash Bal Joshi, my highly skilled painter friend, who is also a gifted Marathi writer and well-known journalist, once told me that once you take to painting it is hard not to think of it all the time. That has happened to me. Prakash has been painting for a long time compared to me. I started only four years ago to his some 30 plus years. But I am now experiencing what he said I would. Painting is always on my mind, particularly when I am out of paint and canvas.

What I find particularly exciting is that no matter how skilled one is at duplication or even forgery no two paintings are ever really alike. A remarkable thing about any form of creation is that something that did not exist once, now does. For instance, the accompanying work, which I finished while writing this short post, did not exist until now and now it does. I say this irrespective of its artistic merit. That is the joy of creative arts.

Truth and its prevalence on its own terms

The resignation of Paranjoy Guha Thakurta as editor of the Economic and Political Weekly (EPW), one of India’s most respected journals, in the face of a threat of a major corporate lawsuit is a chilling example of how intimidation works well in an unequal financial and political order.

The bare facts are pretty straightforward. Thakurta, a highly regarded journalist and editor, resigned in the aftermath of a threatened lawsuit from Adani Power Ltd. against two articles alleging tax evasion by the company as well as gaining a lucrative favor from the Narendra Modi government. Gautam Adani, the founder of the Adani Group, one of India’s fastest growing industrial houses, is known to be particularly close to Prime Minister Modi personally.

Sitting some 10,000 miles away from the scene of action I am not qualified to establish or challenge the veracity of the two articles but if Thakurta’s career is any guide I would take their content with great seriousness. My intention is also not to paint Thakurta as a morally wronged media warrior taking on a seemingly cozy corrupt political-corporate order although both are legitimate points to debate.

It is perhaps a copout on my part but I want to make a somewhat nebulous philosophical point about the idea of truth in the age of post-truth. The problem with truth is that it does frequently prevail but on its own protracted terms. In the process, it often destroys those who are battling on its behalf. The Adani-EPW battle, which was not even fully joined before the latter appears to have waved the white flag, is an example of that. The very dangling of a lawsuit was enough to push this modestly run weekly under the supervision of Sameeksha Trust and its board of directors to drop the two articles in question. Thakurta had no choice but to resign because that is what principled journalists do.

The members of the Sameeksha board are all illustrious in their own right and have a long track record of independence in their chosen profession. Sameeksha chair Deepak Nayyar is a distinguished economist and Emeritus Professor of Economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Another member, Romila Thapar is one of India’s most respected, if often reviled by the right-wing, historians. The other two members are also well respected. They are Rajeev Bhargava, a political scientist, and Dipankar Gupta, a sociologist. They are not the kind of people to just roll over in the face of challenges. However, they seemed to have done precisely that. Once again, it is not for me to judge because I am not privy to what the real pressures are.

The deeper concern for me as a journalist is that a culture of moneybag intimidation seems to be developing in India which is bound to have a chilling effect on independent journalism. One can argue that the EPW grandees should not have truckled under so quickly and, as reported by The Wire, that too in response to a lawyer’s letter alleging defamation and not an actual lawsuit. It is conceivable that the EPW board chose a sedate survival over high legal costs of standing up for principles of independent journalism. However, that is my surmise and not necessarily a fact.

Editors and journalists are known to wear resignation and being fired as a badge of professional honor that occur in service of lofty media principles. That said, more often than not that loftiness exacts a heavy personal price. Truth is very high-maintenance. A political order favoring a corporate house is as old a story as the existence of both. Journalists taking on that order and failing is an equally old story. What is perhaps new is the growing willingness of a democratic polity to accept threats of coercive lawsuits as normal.

There is a term for that—Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP) here in America whose very purpose is to stifle free speech among ordinary citizens against a public wrong. Massive tax evasions or being favored with underhand land deals by a political order in aid of obliging corporate houses is a public wrong.

What is deeply disturbing about the practice of SLAPP is that it is not always aimed by the so-called aggrieved entity, generally a corporate house, wanting to right a wrong. It is to wrong an apparent right via implied legal intimidation. This is about malicious prosecution forcing entities such EPW into a corner where its only option is to yield. Truth is a powerful sword but its edges are often jagged and not so sharp as to cut through the legal maze in time and neatly.

The romance or lack thereof (mostly lack thereof) the typewriter

Tom Hanks in the documentary ‘California Typewriter’

Actor Tom Hanks’ obsession with typewriters is well known. My aversion to it, not so much. For one, because I lack in the fame department. There is nothing else. On April 27, 2011, I wrote a post about typewriters after reading a piece by Jonathan Glancey in The Guardian.

I reproduced that piece when my friend and fellow journalist Sidharth Bhatia published a book of essays on the typewriter that he helmed last year.

Now, with a new documentary titled ‘California Typewriter’, featuring Hanks and others, coming out it is only appropriate that I recycle that piece. I am very environmentally conscious that way. Didn’t you read about a massive iceberg weighing one trillion ton breaking away from western Antarctica? We have do all we can to recycle, including blog posts. So here goes.

April 27, 2011 

Today’s post has been triggered by Jonathan Glancey’s piece in The Guardian  about the romance of using the typewriter. Having used several typewriters during the first ten years of my journalistic career I am naturally prejudiced against them. If there was any romance to typing, it escaped me.

Anyone who has had to deal with entangled typebars, ribbon with holes and twisted keys, which is pretty much everyone who has used the typewriter, would tell you that it sounds romantic only in retrospect and in the movies. It is anything but while you are actually typing. Changing a worn-out ribbon used to be such a nightmare for many of my colleagues. There would be panic attacks as the letters on a sheet began fading with the stroke of every key, a clear indication that it was time change the ribbon. I used to be the go-to guy for changing ribbons and untangling typebars.

Not that it was a masterpiece or anything even approaching critical acclaim but my first book, a 1991 biography of Sam Pitroda, was written on a Godrej typewriter. All 80,000 words of it. This is apart from hammering out hundreds of thousands of words before that since 1981. At my peak, I used to clock nearly sixty words per minute (WPM), which was considered in the range of a professional typist. When you consider that I use only the two index fingers to type, your respect for my talent would soar. In my early days, I used to console myself saying that if I could not cut it as a journalist, I could at least make it as a typist. Some of my charitable critics insist that I did indeed make it as a professional typist. In short, I have a fair idea about the joys or otherwise  (mostly otherwise) of typewriters.

The best I can say about the typewriter is that whatever one wrote had a certain tactile rawness to it which is missing now. Jonathan refers to Godrej closing down possibly last typewriter making factory in the world. I graduated from a Remington to an Olivetti to a Godrej in a span of ten years. Like all Godrej products its typewriters too were chunky and bereft of any aesthetic qualities. And again like all Godrej products it was a workhorse that worked very well.  I remember the transition from the typewriter to the computer was particularly tough for those journalists who had become so used to practically poking and stabbing the hard typewriter keys. Computer keyboards were feather touch in comparison.

There were reporters who would destroy keyboards in a month because they just could not handle the soft touch typing that PC keyboards required. One colleague in particular was so tuned to the rhythms of the typewriter that his right hand would reflexively try to shift an imaginary carriage return lever and instead hit the monitor. He would then let out a string of expletives, chutiya being his favorite.

Incidentally, I am as averse to touchscreen typing now as that irascible colleague then was to the computer keyboard. I can do it but don’t like it.

There is so much more I can write about joys or lack thereof (mostly lack thereof) the typewriter but this should give you some perspective.

P.S.: The most irritating part of the whole experience was when the ribbon would bunch up inside the spools and would require to be rewound manually.

Federer is the only true rival of Federer

Roger Federer with his Wimbledon trophy on July 16 (Photo: @Wimbledon Wimbledon Twitter feed)

Three times during yesterday’s Wimbledon men’s final I wrote on my Facebook status that Roger Federer should be just handed the title. The first time I wrote it was at the end of the first set which he won 6-3 against Marin Cilic of Croatia. Despite some early aggression in the opening set Cilic had an air of defeat about him even as Federer displayed his trademark cool composure.

Over the past 14 years of having watched him play since his first Wimbledon title in 2003 against Australia's Mark Philippoussis, one consistent feature about Federer is that he does not look defeated even when he loses. I am making a subtle distinction between loss and defeat at the risk of sounding glib. It may be a distinction without a difference.

When you consider that the last time he won the Wimbledon title was five years ago, you realize how tenacious he is. His eighth Wimbledon title in 14 years even while he notched up 11 other Grand Slams on the way is a testament to his preternatural ability as a tennis player and athlete. However, to clothe Federer in statistics—as extraordinary as they are—is to do him injustice. The man is a tennis painter. Just as the brush becomes a natural limb for a great painter, the racquet has become his natural limb. His backhands are like Vincent van Gogh’s brushwork—they whip up sheer art.

Federer is now at a stage in his career where both his triumphs and travails are in a league of their own. In a sense, Federer’s only true rival is Federer. In a way his cool reserve undermines his very natural tenacity. His spirit to fight is often invisible because of his legendary composure. Yesterday’s game did not demand much of him even though there were moments—particularly his backhands—when one could sense that he was perhaps wishing for much greater resistance from his opponent.

Speaking of his tenacity, it was for the first time ten years that he won a Grand Slam without dropping a set. The last time a player had played Wimbledon without dropping a set was in 1976. The player was Bjorn Borg. Remember this is a 35-year-old tennis player which in tennis years is often past retirement age at this level of performance.

Whether Federer returns next year to try and claim his ninth title at Wimbledon to equal Martina Navratilova’s record is not something that interests me much. Like I said, clothing his artistry in statistics is incongruous.

When he won the match yesterday my thumb and index finger reflexively formed a circle, went to the edge of him lips and let out a robust but short whistle.

Denim as canvas is fun

It is my case that being able to practice any art with any degree of merit can and does make one self-indulgent. This morning I began painting on an old denim shirt which I use while painting. Denim makes for excellent canvas.

The shirt painting is still a work in progress. The only challenge is that since it is not mounted on a frame and the fabric surface is not taut, moving brushes and knives is a bit of a task. On the other hand though, it helps me develop a better control on my movements.

That’s all for Sunday. It’s not as if you pay to read this blog.

This much is true of changing seasons

Bagh--MC

Shers or verses are born immaculately and rather frequently. Poetic fertility is out of control these days. The following ones were born as fraternal twins this morning. So let’s do with them today. It’s not as if you pay me to read this blog.

As always, I have given the pronunciation key in the Roman script below the verses and then a loose translation.

 

बदलती ऋतों का इतना तो सच है

जो गुज़रती है वोह लौटती भी है

 

(Badlti ruton ka itna to sach hai

Jo guzarti hai who lautati bhi hai)

 

This much is true of changing seasons

What passes, also returns

***

सब को अपना हाल बयां करते हो

वोह भी हमारे इश्क के दरम्याँ करते हो

कुछ तो मेरे इल्म के परे रहने दो

मेरी नुक्ताचीनी मेरे ही यहाँ करते हो

 

(Sab ko apna haal bayan karte ho

Voh bhi hamarae ishq ke darmyan karte ho

Kuchh to mere ilm ke pare rahne do

Meri nuqtachini bhi mera yahan karte ho)

 

You tell the world of your state of mind

That too in the midst of our love

Let something remain outside my knowledge

You even criticize me in my presence

Women with mysterious allure

‘In the forest’, Acrylic and crayon on canvas--MC

‘Intezar’-Digital- MC

Women seemingly waiting without revealing who they are and for whom they are waiting is emerging to be a motif in my paintings. I say seemingly because they are not necessarily waiting for anyone or anything. While I am painting them, that is not the intention in my mind.

The two paintings here were done several months apart. The bearing of the two women might suggest they are the same person but in diverse geographical contexts. They are clearly two very different climatic zones. Even though I have painted them I am curious to see what their faces look like. At some point in the near future they might turn and reveal themselves but for now they remain a mysterious allure.

I am writing about these paintings as if they are masterpieces of an unsung genius which were accidentally discovered well past the painter’s life. The truth is they are quite ordinary. They reveal no particular flair or hold any promise of artistic greatness. They are easy on the eye and may have some minor merit as art. Notwithstanding that I like them both. They both engage without letting you in on what they are engaging you on.

The digital one does not have any depth of field. The striking colors of the woman’s clothes, however, does create some distance between the foreground and the background. The other painting ‘In the forest’ has much more of everything, including depth and texture. Although these women are utterly fictional, I do want to know about them. This is despite the fact that I have created them.

A feature I have noticed often is that many of my paintings seem to have cinematic framing. It is a subconscious act. I slice the two paintings to illustrate my point.

Like I said, I am analyzing them as if they are some undiscovered masterpieces. They are not even anywhere close but I like them.

Quantum teleportation for dummies; not quite

Nocturnal boat ride—MC*

It is not my case that I understand quantum teleportation enough to produce “Quantum Teleportation for Dummies.” I wish I could with the news that Chinese scientists have successfully teleported an object from Earth to a satellite 300 miles above in orbit. The success is attributed to the still mind-numbing idea of quantum entanglement.

I have written about quantum entanglement, one as recently as May 30, 2014 when a team of physicists at the Netherlands’ Kavli Institute of Nanoscience were successfully able to teleport information between two quantum bits separated by 3 meters. Their distance was only 3 meters, which is remarkable as a first step but not very useful in creating actual applications. The one achieved by the Chinese scientists is quite a leap when you consider a distance of 300 miles or 482803 meters.

As part of their experiment they fired photons from Ngari in Tibet to its Micius satellite orbiting Earth at 300 miles. The bit about quantum entanglement came when two photons shared the same quantum state. If that is too much for you to crack it, it is because it is too much to crack for most people. Let me compound it by quoting from the extract of the scientists’ paper published online on arXiv.

It says, “An arbitrary unknown quantum state cannot be precisely measured or perfectly replicated. However, quantum teleportation allows faithful transfer of unknown quantum states from one object to another over long distance, without physical travelling of the object itself. Long-distance teleportation has been recognized as a fundamental element in protocols such as large-scale quantum networks and distributed quantum computation. However, the previous teleportation experiments between distant locations were limited to a distance on the order of 100 kilometers, due to photon loss in optical fibres or terrestrial free-space channels. An outstanding open challenge for a global-scale "quantum internet" is to significantly extend the range for teleportation. A promising solution to this problem is exploiting satellite platform and space-based link, which can conveniently connect two remote points on the Earth with greatly reduced channel loss because most of the photons' propagation path is in empty space. Here, we report the first quantum teleportation of independent single-photon qubits from a ground observatory to a low Earth orbit satellite - through an up-link channel - with a distance up to 1400 km. To optimize the link efficiency and overcome the atmospheric turbulence in the up-link, a series of techniques are developed, including a compact ultra-bright source of multi-photon entanglement, narrow beam divergence, high-bandwidth and high-accuracy acquiring, pointing, and tracking (APT). We demonstrate successful quantum teleportation for six input states in mutually unbiased bases with an average fidelity of 0.80+/-0.01, well above the classical limit. This work establishes the first ground-to-satellite up-link for faithful and ultra-long-distance quantum teleportation, an essential step toward global-scale quantum internet.”

In order to make it a little more palatable, I am reproducing what I wrote some three years ago after the first successful teleportation of information over three meters.

Trying to make sense out of quantum entanglement in the midst of a migraine attack is nearly lethal. However, it seems to me that the only way to understand quantum entanglement is via a migraine attack. Having lived with migraines of varying ferocity for almost my entire life, I can now conclude that they give you such dazzling clarity about concepts of physics as is not possible in a normal state.

I am thinking of quantum entanglement this morning because it is being reported that a team of physicists at the Netherlands’ Kavli Institute of Nanoscience has been successfully able to teleport information between two quantum bits separated by 3 meters. As I mentioned, I would not have been able to comprehend any of this in a normal state without a migraine attack. Since I am going through one right now I am able to make much better sense of this finding for myself than I normally would have. Think of migraine as a lens that sharpens the information that goes through it. I call it migraine lensing. Unfortunately, I don’t think I can explain to you what stands fully explained to me right now.

Teleportation is an idea familiar to us as part of ‘Star Trek’ folklore and other science fiction stories. What the Kavli scientists are reporting is not about teleporting actual people such as Captain James Tiberius Kirk or Mr. Spock (I am being ironic by calling them actual people). It is about teleporting information between two points, which would constitute the fundamentals of the much talked about quantum computing. From Isaac Newton’s precisely deterministic universe to Albert Einstein’s more subtle and nuanced universe to rather bizarrely unpredictable quantum universe there are several layers of the physics of our universe. Just as Newton might have found weird and bizarre Einstein’s assertion that there is no single universal clock or time or what is now here is something else a billion light years away, Einstein found the quantum world equally weird and bizarre. Responding to the idea of quantum mechanics he famously said,  "physics should represent a reality in time and space, free from spooky actions at a distance." The idea that two particles separated by a massive, unimaginable distance can affect each other or in a way are entangled as memorably described by Erwin Schrodinger, for want of a better expression, freaked Einstein out. You should bear in mind is that Einstein’s freaking out is not like an ordinary mortal’s freaking out. It is based on some profound objections. Unraveling Einstein’s freaking out can earn you a PhD in physics.

So far computing is in the realm of classical bits, meaning information getting transferred in the two values of 0 and 1. Quantum computing, in contrast, allows for information to be transferred in many different values through what is known as quantum bits or qubits. Quantum computing is supposed to be way more reliable than classical computing, the way it is done now.It is in this context that what the Kavli scientists are reporting is extraordinary. They say they have been able to teleport information absolutely accurately, meaning without losing any data. From the 3 meter transfer, they now propose to do it over a distance of over one kilometer and eventually over longer distances. This is their way of showing that quantum entanglement works, something that completely defies Einstein’s idea of what he called “spooky actions at a distance.”

The above description was written by me in a span of about ten minutes under the dazzling clarity created by my migraine attack. As it begins to wear off because of a pain killer and as I return to my normal state, that comprehension is beginning to fade. So I might as well end it here. If you do not understand what I have said here, well it is just too bad. Not everything is for everyone. Either that or go get a migraine.

I am fairly certain that did not make it any easier because it did not make it easier for me either even though I was the one who wrote it. Suffice it to know that it works and will absolutely revolutionize the way we transfer information or communicate. One of the key features of quantum computing would be that it cannot be tapped into or broken into without the user instantly finding out that it is being broken into. The thing with eavesdropping on quantum particles such as photons is that the act of observing creates disturbance in them. It alters their state.

* My latest painting has nothing to do with the theme of the post except that it looks mysterious. Also, it gives me an excuse to plug it here.

Dredging two over forty years old memories for no reason

It is fascinating how the human brain retains and recalls memories. This morning my brain recalled two memories stitched together. Both relate to famous Indian cricketers. Both involve popular Hindi movie songs. Both are about the cricketers’ special appearances on a hit radio show of the 1970s.

Mansoor Ali Khan and Salim Durrani were highly charismatic cricketers, the former a scion of a minor principality and one of India’s most successful captains and the latter a sort of enfant terrible with considerably unrealized cricketing talent. Khan died in 2011 at age 60 while Durrani is very much alive at 82. I have seen them both play. Both were very handsome and carried a certain aura around them, Khan of an aloof royal and Durrani of somewhat cavalier indifference. Both had their collars famously upturned.

The memories are about an era long past when the radio was the only source of entertainment. Vividh Bharti, the entertainment station of the state-owned All India Radio, had a hit parade called Jaimala that routinely featured celebrity hosts. Khan and Durrani were among them. Both played several of their favorite songs but the two I recall instantly without any effort at all are “Itni jaldi kya hair gori sajan ke ghar jane ki” (What is the rush to go to your beloved’s home, darling?)  for Khan and “O janewale ho sakey to laut ke ana” (O’ the one about to depart, return if you can) for Durrani.

I vaguely remember Khan saying that he liked the teasing tones of the song ‘Itni jaldi..” The song’s lyrics are somewhat like tips to a friend who is on the verge of consummating her marriage. It was composed by Lakshmikant-Pyarelal for the 1964 film ‘Sati Savitri’. Durrani’s song is somewhat melancholic from the 1963 movie ‘Bandini’ and composed by the great Sachin Dev Burman. I remember Durrani talking about how his pocket was picked once and given his penurious state then how bad he felt. It was an odd song to play to rue a lost wallet. 

The more important question is why is it that I woke up with these utterly trivial memories. It is not as if they relate to my current predicaments, such as they are, in any way. My brain just randomly dredged out these two memories. The problem now is that I will keep these two songs all day. In fact, I am already playing “Itni jaldi…” while writing this post.

And the reason why I am telling you this? None at all. None at all.