Mayank Chhaya Daily

Donald Trump and his maiden speech at United Nations

U.S. President addressing the United Nations General Assembly

It is easy to get distracted by President Donald Trump’s construct “rocket man” in his maiden speech to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). It would be an equivalent of saying “SQUIRREL!” if we were all dogs. However, I was paying attention the the more substantive and characteristically contradictory aspects of his speech.

First, let me get the obvious point out of the way. Here was the leader of the world’s most powerful country with a population of 326 million and 6800 nuclear weapons* threatening to “totally destroy” a country with a population of 25 million and reportedly 10 nuclear weapons.* If you don’t think there is anything wrong with that picture, then I suppose you don’t think there is anything wrong with the world.

Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea is nobody’s idea of a rational humanitarian with deep compassion for his people. He probably loves his binoculars more than his people because through them he watches missiles take off. He caresses the body of an intercontinental ballistic missile more tenderly than a baby perhaps.North Koreans must find a way to create a leadership that is not full of whack jobs. That is a given.

My point is more pointedly focused on the U.S. president’s speech because of the unambiguous threat he made on as global a platform as the UNGA. The incongruity of the threat to “totally destroy”, meaning all 25 million North Koreans, must have struck many in the cavernous hall as dangerous. The idea, even if it is out of bluster and is rhetorical, that “the leader of the free world” can express a wish to “totally destroy” another country on the heels of promising “fire and fury like the world has never seen” against the same country is a deeply disturbing one.

I am not even going to dwell on the familiar fact that the only nuclear power in world history to have actually used nuclear weapons feels it proper to lecture the rest because there are several shades to that argument.

My point is the same as it was when Trump made his “fire and fury” warning last month—what do you do after serving such an ultimatum as the very first step. I suppose there was still some room left to sharpen the threat with “totally destroy.” Now that even that has been said, what next? Is it wise to come across to someone like Kim as handing down empty threats? Also, is it wise to reinforce his paranoia that America is out to get him and therefore he must pursue nuclear weapons even more flagrantly? I am not sure about the answer. May be Trump’s threats, which may not necessarily be directed only at Pyongyang, will work. May be there is justification that institutional frustration over North Korea built over several U.S. presidencies can now have only one terrible outcome.

It is in this context that I must mention the U.S. president’s more than oblique suggestion to walk out of the nuclear deal with Iran which has significantly held back Tehran from pursuing its own nuclear weapons program. Even if the North Korean leader were privately considering entering into nuclear negotiations with America and others, he would look at Trump’s warning to walk out of the Iran deal as a clear signal not to go along that path. He might argue with himself that if the world’s leading nation cannot keep its word with a country—Iran—that has not yet made nuclear weapons, why would it do so with one—North Korea—that has already produced them? This is notwithstanding the fact of nuclear weapons being their own deterrence.

I am surprised that such terrible self-defeating messaging was allowed in the UNGA speech. The description “rocket man” is just a silly sideshow.

I was watching for the reaction from the Iranian delegation to what was being said about their country and found this telling combination of a smirk and glare on one delegate’s face. (See below).

The reaction from the Venezuelan delegates was a little more couched. (See below).

It has been my old argument that basically the Western/American view is that nuclear weapons are safer in the hands of Western nations and anywhere else they represent extraordinary evil. It has not been enunciated in such categorical terms but that is what it really is.

Separately, it also struck me that Trump’s speech, quite like President George W. Bush’s 15 years ago, referred to a triumvirate of countries. While Bush’s “axis of evil” was Iraq, Iran and North Korea, Trump’s reference replaced Iraq with Venezuela.With one eye clearly on its effect, the U.S. president said, “The problem with Venezuela, is not that socialism has been poorly implemented, but that socialism has been faithfully implemented.” He paused expecting applause but was largely met with uncomfortable silence. The UNGA is not known to be a captive audience for U.S. presidents.

* That number is taken from the Arms Control Association’s website updated up to July, 2017.

Farmer in Aranya

I had done a tribute to Vincent Van Gogh’s farmers as well as my own series titled ‘Aranya’, meaning forest in Sanskrit. While Aranya is acrylic-watercolor-pastel on paper, Farmer is crayon-pastel-watercolor on paper.

This morning I used Microsoft Word to marry the two with much of the background in ‘Farmer’ having been removed. Placing the farmer in the forest works reasonably well although I have left out some of the edges.

Admittedly, my skills for digital manipulation are very rudimentary but I still marvel at how far technology has come.

A couple of points about the Emmys

Former White House Press secretary Sean Spicer at the Emmys.

There are two ways to spin Alec Baldwin’s Emmy for his portrayal of Donald Trump. One is to say—and this is unintentionally in Trump’s favor—that Trump is so remarkable and effective that even a “fake Trump” is a winner.The other is to say that only a “fake Trump”—a stinging caricature—could win an Emmy because the real one is not up to the standard as illustrated by his failure to win it for ‘The Apprentice’. I leave it to your political predilections to decide which one you want to use.

Speaking of the president, his former press secretary Sean Spicer’s surprise appearance at the Emmys last night can also be spun in two ways. One is to say that his gratuitous lies and half-truths during his tenure makes him a perfect target for public ridicule which is what it really was. The other is to protest the “normalizing” of a high profile public official who deliberately misled.

There is some debate about whether the Emmys generally and its host Stephen Colbert particularly should have given Spicer the huge platform to either wittingly or unwittingly help rehabilitate him so soon after a rather disgraceful stint at the White House. It could be equally argued that the job of the White House press secretary is to faithfully represent his or her boss even if the latter has a disturbing penchant to spread grotesque misinformation and even lies.

That is a legitimate debate to have without losing the sight of the fact that his presence was funny. I suppose funny was the only standard applied to decide whether he should be there even at the cost of “normalizing” him. I am inclined to go with funny is funny even as I bear in mind the egregiousness of his conduct.

The larger point is about the world having entered an era where any conduct or behavior that generates popular interest and triggers a popular response is rewarded whether or not it is in public good. The old adage that no publicity is bad publicity is having its best days currently. Nothing is beneath some kind of reward. To that extent it is possible that Spicer’s high profile is currently opening many doors for him in utter disregard of what gave him that high profile in the first place.

Umbrella man

Umbrella Man—MC

That’s all for today.

Breathtaking detailed world of Qiu Ying

I have been spellbound since last evening by the works of a 16th century Chinese master called Qiu Ying (1494-1552). As always, I chanced upon his breathtaking works on Google Arts & Culture.

My first reaction on looking at Qiu’s works in detail was that he had showed more skills in a tiny corner of a single painting than many so-called great painters do in all their works in their entire careers.

Rather than describing his brief biography myself, I would quote what it says online: “Qiu Ying was a Chinese painter who specialized in the gongbi brush technique. Qiu Ying's courtesy name was Shifu, and his pseudonym was Shizhou. He was born to a peasant family in Taicang and studied painting under Zhou Chen in Suzhou. Though Suzhou's Wu School encouraged painting in ink washes, Qiu Ying also painted in the green-and-blue style. He painted with the support of wealthy patrons, creating images of flowers, gardens, religious subjects, and landscapes in the fashions of the Ming dynasty. He incorporated different techniques into his paintings, and acquired a few wealthy patrons. His talent and versatility allowed him to become regarded as one of the Four Masters of the Ming dynasty.”

Google Arts & Culture has 31 of his works, each one an extraordinary example of his astonishing craftsmanship. His attention to detail is exhausting just to look at. That he did a lot of his work on silk using ink and color makes it even more outstanding.

The four close-up frames so far are from Qiu Ying’s 1552 work ‘Spring Morning in the Han Palace’.

I would have liked to carry all his 31 works here but it is not practical. You might want to visit this link. I have cited just a few examples to illustrate Qiu’s genius. His single 1552 work ‘Spring Morning in the Han Palace’ alone should have earned him a place among the world’s pantheon. It is  a 30.6 (height) X 574.1 (width) cm. color depiction on silk that took my breath away. I have given some close-ups here along with some other equally remarkable works.

I have not read much about Qiu’s works. It is just as well I chanced upon them. They have left me utterly enchanted.

Qiu’s ‘Travelers in Springtime Mountains’ (Also jointly attributed to Wen Zhenming).

A slice from that painting.

I took this frame and tried to do my version below.

One feels transported to the 16th century China looking at Qiu and finds it very hard to snap out of it.

Detail from ‘Travelers in Springtime Mountains’

Cassini is Saturn now

Saturn by Cassini (Image: NASA)

Giovanni Cassini, the Italian astronomer after whom NASA named its Cassini mission to Saturn, died on September 12, 1712. As a cheap gimmick NASA could have crashed the spacecraft onto Saturn yesterday to coincide with the 305th death anniversary of the man thus immortalized. It is a good thing that NASA did not because as a scientific enterprise of the highest caliber it would be silly for it to be influenced by such considerations.

I am certain people at NASA knew about the date and its symbolic meaning but they would have been more interested in extracting every last bit of data out of Cassini before it crashed and burned into Saturn’s atmosphere.

I was imagining a fantasy story where Cassini the man were at hand on Saturn (even if it is unclear what its core surface may be like) to receive Cassini the spacecraft. In fact, I have begun to write it. (Copyrighted.) Imagine Cassini the spacecraft sending a photograph of Cassini the man from Saturn’s surface. Forget the little detail that Saturn is not known to support any life and even if it did how would have Cassini lived to be 305 and traveled to the planet? But, like I said, it is a fantasy.

With the 20-year Cassini mission concluding NASA announced the end of transmission and the end of the spacecraft that, one can say with some certainty, the mission scientists and engineers had become sentimentally attached to. I could sense some quiver in the voice of the NASA official who announced the end of the spacecraft. By now one can safely say Cassini is totally finished. It is highly unlikely that any bits of it managed to land anywhere.

While reading up a biography of Cassini the man, I found that he believed in an Earth-centric solar system and it was only later that he accepted the Sun-centric system proposed by Tyco Brahe. One can only speculate how he might have reacted to NASA’s mission.

By any measure the Cassini mission has been a spectacular success. It has transmitted data of some extraordinary consequence about our solar system, especially Saturn and its moons. Its imaging has been magical. We are unlikely to see such visuals of the planet close to a billion miles from us for quite sometime, until another mission is sent to it.

The purpose behind the deliberate crash of the spacecraft was purely scientific. With its fuel depleting NASA had to direct it to Saturn in order not to contaminate its moons such as Titan and Enceladus, especially the latter which is known to have a subsurface ocean. In case it does have life NASA wanted to avoid contaminating it by having Cassini crash there.

The mission found that Enceladus has a global liquid water ocean. Cassini produced marvelous photos of water plumes shooting out into space from Enceladus. On November 2, 2009, Cassini flew only 100 kilometers above the moon’s surface. My bar may be too low but for me that one shot alone more than justified the Cassini mission.

Water plumes on Enceladus as captured by Cassini (NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)

I remain captivated by the level of excellence NASA displays in space exploration despite its obvious budgetary constraints. The Cassini mission is yet another example of that.

An infinite number of parallel universes with shifting slices of realities

Untitled by MC

I have this concept of perpetually shifting slices of realities within an infinite number of parallel universes. In order to get a handle on what I am proposing you have to imagine an infinite number of parallel universes like the thin lines in my painting above. Disregard the blue square and green sphere for a while.

Now imagine that each of these fine lines as a universe in itself. While each universe broadly remains unchanged in and of itself, there are random pieces or slices that arbitrarily shift horizontally either to the right or the left. These shifts are not just within one large collective universal reality but even for individuals like you and I who inhabit these parallel universes.

All of us routinely experience a seemingly inexplicable shifts in our lives right from something as trivial as high traffic or low traffic or something much more profound as a realization about who we might be. I attribute this to the horizontally shifting pieces of realities. These shifts may not be so rapid as to completely upend our existence but enough so as to make us discern them. Déjà vu can be explained thus because even within an infinite number of parallel universes there are patterns that can repeat themselves—hence déjà vu.

For this weird concept to make any sense it is important that universes are able to leak into one another or, more precisely, information is able to leak into one another as it were. I experienced a bit of this the other day when something that I thought logically should not have happened at all, did. I am in no position to give details but suffice it so say that when I tried to accomplish that task again presuming that it would happen on the basis of it having happened once before, it did not. Perhaps I will have to wait for that one in infinite chances to get lucky again.

Now on to the blue square and green sphere; it is my visualization of a sort of super processor distributed throughout these parallel universes whose task is to scramble data from time to time to keep the universes from becoming too predictable or too unpredictable.

If any of this makes any sense to you, you have to have a somewhat twisted mind like mine.

Of Cézanne and Zola

Mont Sainte-Victoire Seen from the Bibémus Quarry, Paul Cézannec. 1897

I started watching ‘Cézanne et Moi’, directed by Danièle Thompson, about a remarkable friendship and falling out between the painter Paul Cézanne and the writer Emile Zola. They both grew up together and developed a tumultuous friendship which had its terrible ups and downs.

One of the main causes for the terminal rupture in their friendship was Zola’s celebrated book ‘The Masterpiece’, one of whose main characters was based on Cézanne, something the latter resented. Although Zola maintained that the character was an amalgamation of many people and not necessarily him, a famously cantankerous Cézanne was not persuaded.

Interestingly, the director, who also wrote the film, does not overtly refer to either Zola’s writings or Cézanne’s paintings much. One does not get to hear or see much of either other than in passing. For someone obsessed with visuals like me, the big compensation comes in the form of gorgeous cinematography Jean-Marie Dreujou several of whose frames are reminiscent of Cézanne’s extraordinary works.

The fabled blue sky of Aix-en-Provence and other enchanting offerings of Nature are spectacularly captured. Once again, the cinematographer takes care not to overwhelm you even while making you distinctly feel as if you are walking through Cézanne’s works.

I have done a few tributes to Cézanne. I publish two here about his favorite Mont Sainte-Victoire. In the movie, the mountain shows up like it does in Cézanne’s works.

There is no particular point to the post today other than just writing something, anything.

My tributes

I can tell you what the time is but not what time is

It happened in 1977 in Ahmedabad when I was 16. I was waiting for a bus near Ashram Road. I had worn a new HMT watch that I had been gifted by my maternal uncles. It was late in the afternoon, fully baked by Ahmedabad’s intense summer.

An elderly man, possibly in his 50s which is an age I am at now, joined me in waiting for the bus. There was a brief exchange of smiles. A moment or two later he pointed at my watch and asked me in English for some strange reason, “What is time?”

For a nerd like me this was an equivalent of a half volley in cricket which I played rather well too. An involuntary half laugh preceded my response.

“That is a deep question which even Einstein could not answer. I don’t think I can answer that here at this bus stop in such a short time,” I said.

The elderly gentleman was confused and somewhat peeved at my rather patronizing response. He sighed and said, “Just tell me time.”

“If you want to know THE time, it is 3.45,” I said.

The bus came soon after that. We both boarded. He sat as far away from me as possible.

I have not enjoyed a nerdy exchange more in the last 40 years.

Reading a new Hitler biography despite fatigue over him

I have just begun reading 'Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939' by Volker Ullrich despite my Hitler-fatigue.

Over the past four decades I have read several books about him individually or the Second World War, including the masterful journalistic account 'The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich' by William Shirer and 'Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris' by Ian Kershaw.

The essence that remains from all this reading is that of a deeply damaged individual with a fiendish ability to manipulate collectively and charm individually. His mendacity was so epic that he could no longer tell--nor care to tell--the difference between truth and untruth. He used whatever worked in the moment and beyond. One powerful example of his fiendishness was the way he kept himself isolated from the utterly inhumane, criminal and monstrous consequences of his lunatic socio-political beliefs even while creating perfect conditions for those to happen.

Kershaw and Ullrich both address roughly the same period with the latter extending it by three more years, making it a neat 50 years. I find that every time I read any Hitler or Second World war related literature I do not seem to remember the complex details the circumstances which led to Hitler’s rise very well.

However, a  point that has always struck me is how high child mortality played such a decisive role in whether there would have been an Adolf Hitler or not. Three of his siblings died as children before he was born. If all three had lived on, one can argue that Adolf Hitler may never have been born. There is no guarantee, of course, that after having three children—Gustav in 1885, Ida in 1886 and Otto in 1887—his mother Klara would not have had Adolf even if the other three were alive. But it is interesting to speculate what if they had all lived on and also whether one of the three may have gone to become what Adolf did.

Hitler has been dead for 72 years and since the end of the Second World War the world has undergone extraordinary transformations which should have erased any fascination for the man. Yet, here we are in 2017 with another biography of the man that seems to have clear pointers to our current predicaments.

As I said I have just begun reading it and I could not possibly tell you in greater detail about it. Reading Michiko Kakutani’s review in The New York Times, especially the way she has crafted it, one can replace Hitler with the names of some current leaders and many of the traits fit perfectly. Kakutani does a clever job of writing about the Hitler of more than seven decades ago even as doing it in a manner as if she is talking about now. That is primarily because there are leaders in our times who mimic some of those very traits but mercifully without the matching staggering cruelty towards fellow humans so far.

These modern day leaders do show some comparable antipathies toward fellow humans and even a willingness to act on them.  John le Carré, regarded as one of Britain’s greatest living writers, has darkly warned about the rise of fascism. The 85-year-old writer of brilliant espionage and international intrigue novels said the following at a charity event recently in London, according to The Guardian.

“Something truly, seriously bad is happening and from my point of view we have to be awake to that.

“These stages that (President Donald) Trump is going through in the United States and the stirring of racial hatred … a kind of burning of the books as he attacks, as he declares real news as fake news, the law becomes fake news, everything becomes fake news.

“I think of all things that were happening across Europe in the 1930s, in Spain, in Japan, obviously in Germany. To me, these are absolutely comparable signs of the rise of fascism and it’s contagious, it’s infectious. Fascism is up and running in Poland and Hungary. There’s an encouragement about.”

These are infectious forms of demagogic behavior and they are toxic.”

It is relevant to ask whether it is possible in current times for a figure like Hitler to succeed in carrying out the scale of psychopathic violence that he did. I cannot say I am fully resolved either way but I seem to be leaning towards that likelihood not materializing because of a combination of factors, including the rise and proliferation of social media. That may be an optimist in me. The pessimist in me thinks otherwise because seeming modernity offers no immunity against deranged criminality.