The comma meanwhile, evolves in its dominance, conquering everything in its path, threatening to  obliterate the semicolon out of existence.

But, the semicolon continues to survive a fragile existence. When a thought process begins from a certain idea A as the start, goes through an intermediary step B, leads to a conclusion C, the comma does the job in giving your reader the necessary pause to follow you. But a theorem is always followed by its corollary; that’s when the semicolon comes into the picture.

The comma leads the reader to take the next step, the semicolon is where you let the reader take a breath and then take the next step. You do not let him stop; doing so necessitates a period.

The comma, though dominant, is often dependent. It needs conjunctions, whether they are are, and, but, or or; the semicolon, on the other hand, is independent. The growing dominance of the comma perhaps tells us how we prefer the props of conjunctions to propel the reader breathlessly forward; while the semicolon becomes an elusive figure languishing in academic obscurity.

The comma with its conjunctions is banal; the semicolon irreplaceable. Substitute a semicolon with a comma and a conjunction and the sentence becomes insipid; divorce the two clauses with a period and the idea loses its integral character.

The semicolon is a bond like no other. It does not divide and conquer like the period, nor does it meaninglessly try to assimilate asymmetry via conjunctions. The semicolon respects individuality; it merely seeks to connect. It is the elusive glue that bonds ideas like friends.

No social network fulfills this need. Your blog is not a place where you impress your relatives with how good a vacation you had, it is not a place where you share your fantastic photographs with your friends, it is not a place where you are participating in any social network with the baggage it carries.

It is not a place like Facebook where you look at other people’s happy lives wondering what the hell you’re doing with yours. It is not like Twitter where everyone seems to have a lot of things to talk about when you yourself have nothing to say. It is not like Quora where seemingly intelligent folks are imparting their wisdom to seemingly-ignorant folks. It is not like Instagram where you’re looking at your uninteresting meal or routine surroundings while gazing at the great food or exotic destinations your friends are apparently enjoying. It is not where you find folks enjoying great music while your life seems to be in disharmony.

Your blog is a place where you can be yourself. It does not expect you to be happy and having a great time all the time. It does not expect you to capture in photos your best moments in life. It does not demand that you share the most momentous occasions with it. It does not expect that you share the great music you’re supposedly enjoying. There is no compulsion. There is no demand.

It just is there for you, if you ever need it. And that is what a true friend is. Your blog can be your best friend.

By that age, I was already fascinated by science in general and astronomy in particular. I had read how Galileo had watched the moons of Saturn and I was enchanted. The telescope described in the Tinkle article would have a magnification of 20x with an aperture of 2.5 inch. If it were built, you could watch the craters on the moon! I was fascinated but, how could I build one myself?

Huge rolls of thick paper from calendars, stuck together with adhesive, rolled to form the tube with a slit for the main front lens. Smaller roll of thick paper glued with adhesive to form the smaller tube to hold the eye piece, adjusted in dimension so that it could roll in-and-out easily within the larger tube of the front lens. Begging my parents for Rs. 175 to then let my elder brother buy those lenses.

Slowly, the telescope began to form. But it needed a stand. We had an old, discarded table study lamp, with a spherical base, and a ball-socket arrangement for an upper hemi-spherical base for the lamp. It was a gift from the school for my elder sister for her scholarly aptitude. I cut off the upper hemi-spherical base, and the cylindrical socket for it fitted the thinner eye-piece cylinder of my telescope perfectly! Wow. My telescope was ready.

From that point on, I was watching the craters on the moon, gazing at the Orion Nebula, and trying my best to observe galaxies beyond my reach. M42 became a beloved object in my life and has remained so for many decades henceforth. My passion and my curiosity had no boundaries. That telescope magnified the extent to which my human vision could reach. It taught me that there are tools man invents to reach outside and beyond the limitations of our perceptions and our individual experiences.

28 years later, I ask myself, which telescope am I using now? Not to gaze into outer space, but to observe within and around myself. The answer came readily: it is books, movies, and primarily, people. Books and movies expand our experiences beyond what our own perception could ever have. Books place you into situations you’ve never been, make you understand the motivations of characters you’ve never met. Movies let you experience situations you’ll probably never experience and allow your imagination to fly. These are telescopes that magnify individual human perception and expand it beyond what would have been naturally possible.

People are the ultimate telescopes. Every person, has a wealth of experience and learning and wisdom to whomever is allowed access. Every person has a wealth of knowledge we’ve never learned, a treasure of insights we’ve never had, a gold mine of experiences we’ll never have. How often do we make use of these readily available telescopes?

How much trouble, how much effort, I went through to construct my first telescope! Do I take even a 10% effort in utilizing the telescopes that other people offer me for free?

“Oh no, he lives in such a bad area, it’s a pain just to drive to his home.” “Oh no, she talks too much, I can’t even listen to her anymore.” “Oh no, he is too pretentious.” “Oh no, she is too much into her own thing she doesn’t care about anybody else.” There are dozens and dozens of reasons we have for ourselves.

Each of these human beings is a telescope, if only one were willing to watch through the eyepiece. The eyepiece, in this case, is the human ability to listen, which we most often abuse — or in other words, don’t use at all.

We reject the view, by not listening at all. Often, we choose not to view through the telescope.

Because, we’re so comfortable with our own worldview, that anything that changes it, is deeply uncomfortable to us. We do not want telescopes.

Every block of stone has a statue in it, and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it — Michelanglo

The beauty of an artwork is not just because of what the artist has included in the work, but also because of what the artist has excluded from it. I find this to be true of most forms of creative art, whether it is music or photography, painting or literature, sculpture or architecture.

In a sculpture, it is easy to visualize this aspect of the artistic process — a statue is initially a block of stone from which the sculptor removes parts, and the result is the work of art — the statue. We are easily able to visualize the artist’s work in removing the unnecessary parts of the stone. In painting, one can visualize the colors not used. And so on. In music, however, it is difficult to appreciate this aspect, because we are almost never aware of what the composer has excluded. As casual listeners of music, we only respond to what we listen to, what the composer has included, we do not wear the hat of a composer and think about what the composer has excluded.

This aspect of music appreciation is certainly not a prerequisite to appreciating WCM, but it does help us to appreciate Form. We have discussed Form in WCM before, and it is worthwhile reiterating its key lesson:

Form is a series of strategies designed to find a suc­cess­ful mean between the opposite extremes of unre­lieved rep­e­ti­tion and unrelieved alteration.

The key is to find the balance between the two. Which aspects of the imagined work has the composer excluded because they were too repetitive? Which aspects of the imagined work has the composer excluded because they were straying too far away from the theme? Is the music leading you subconsciously on a predetermined roadmap in which the composer ultimately wants to take you through a journey to his chosen destination? When you love a piece of music, this is exactly what the composer achieves — take you through a wonderful journey to a destination.

There are very, very few instances where this can be studied and experienced in the field of music. If you have experienced a musician’s composition process, it is an insightful experience. With WCM, the only way we can engage in the composition process is to go back centuries in time and study the notes of the composer. This is, fortunately, what musical scholars have done. However, their archived scribblings of musical notations and their exploration mostly remains exclusive to the elitist scholarly domain, leaving us casual listeners with no way to appreciate or understand them.

This is quite similar to science. There are many fascinating areas of science that remain beyond the reach of the mainstream, because their appreciation requires specialized knowledge. There is a gulf between the higher echelons of art and science and the mainstream populace. There are very few people who attempt to bridge that gulf. I have the most profound respect for them, because they attempt to enlighten us.

Carl Sagan epitomized this role in Science. Leonard Bernstein epitomizes it in Music. Leonard Bernstein is to Music what Carl Sagan was to Science.

They were themselves a scientist and a musician, but in looking back at their role in history, their bridging the gulf may be deemed more important than their professional careers.

With no further eulogizing, let us now learn from Leonard Bernstein teaching us about the composition process that went behind Beethoven’s highly regarded and most loved 5th Symphony:

Watch and listen. I need not say anything further. This is a unique experience for us to learn to appreciate WCM and we should forever be grateful to Lenny.

P.S. The Mandelbrot set is a unique exception to the rule of Form, where unrelieved repetition ultimately results in what some may say is Art.

Photography enabled us to capture Time and imprison it. Time could no longer sneakily slip away. We are now able to press the “Pause” button in a moment of fleeting Time. We conquered Time thanks to photography.

A photograph also has different eyes than yours. When you are in a situation, you see and perceive it according to your fixed attitudes of seeing and perceiving. When you see a photograph of the same situation taken by a different person, it often suddenly opens up a whole new world. Photographs are a way of seeing the world through different eyes. They can encourage us to look at situations in different ways. Photographs are not just ways of seeing the world differently, they often epitomize ways of thinking about the world around you differently.

I want to learn not to be prejudiced by experiencing a situation in the ways that I usually do. I want to open my mind to other possibilities of experiencing the same situation, through different eyes. And if possible, capture them as a moment in time.

It is with this goal in mind that I am joining the free massive open online course to explore and learn about photography. I am afraid it will take me more than a year to complete what is supposed to be a 4 month course, but the best part about it is that you can take your own sweet time about it, so I need not worry. Interested? Do join!

A goodbye in an airport is the worst. You hug your dear friend, say goodbye, after which you see him stand in queues, then disappear, but you know he’s still there. You wait in the parking lot outside, waiting to catch a glimpse of the plane when it takes off. And you silently say goodbye again to your friend who is no longer visible, as the plane zooms towards the sky.

Goodbyes in buses are a mixed affair. After a deep-hearted goodbye, your friend boards the bus, and then you see him in a window, waving as the bus speeds away. Often, it takes quite a while before it does so, leaving you disenchanted as you and your friend can see and communicate with each other without experiencing the intimacy of your friendship.

This does not happen often with whom we call relatives. Blood may be thicker than water, but nothing quenches thirst as well as water. The thirst for a connection, a mutuality, a bond. When a thirst is fulfilled, a relationship is born.

Relationships are at angles. One’s line of approach towards a relationship usually lies at an angle to the other’s thinking. The acuity or obtuseness leads to complexity; orthogonality, though at right angles, usually doesn’t feel right. Sometimes, relationships that are parallel seem the most intimately connected, though parallel lines never meet.

Further, one’s perception of angles in a relationship also differs from the other’s. One may idolize a parallel, much to the consternation of the other who perceives orthogonality. After few meetings, one may think of another as someone one knows for many lifetimes, while being just a newcomer to the other. The frames of reference are very different, the passage of time unequal. In this way, relationships are relative.

He hated being young and small and wanted to grow up soon, so that he could start giving orders to others and expect others to obey him. He would grow up and be strong, so nobody could bully him. He hated school, having to study and do lessons that were not at all interesting. He dreamt of being a grown-up so he could be smart. When he was an adult, he would have his own farm, and have others work for him. He would not have to beg for money anymore, he would have his own money and spend it on whatever he wished. He would have his own family, and he would be respected as the head of the family.

The boy grew up, married and soon had his own children. He hated being a farmer. Their crops would suffer when there was no rain. A lot of the farming equipment was so expensive, he couldn’t afford it, and he struggled to pay his workers’ wages. Managing the household finances was so difficult! His wife was always dissatisfied, not having this and that and always having to work around the house, and always wanting this and that. Being married was such a curse! His kids always wanted the latest toys he couldn’t afford, didn’t do their studies, and hated school. Disciplining kids was such a headache! All the blame for everything was always put on him, because he was the head of the household. Responsibility was such a pain!

He looked at his kids playing with their friends and thought how nice it is to be a child! Those kids didn’t have to worry about money. They had no respnsibility on their shoulders and could sleep peacefully at night, unlike him. They didn’t have nagging wives, lazy workers to manage, disobedient children to raise. They didn’t know how cruel the world could be. They were so innocent and carefree! He lamented not being a child anymore.

Unadulterated, an idea is just what it is, an idea — a thought.

But ideas and thoughts have become powerless and ineffective on their own in our civilization. Unless they are embellished.

Embellishing an idea or a thought takes many forms. What was the idea behind a festival? Nobody remembers, we celebrate the embellishment. What was the idea behind a book? We celebrate the discussions. the reviews, the book club discussions, or the bans about it. What was the idea behind a photograph? We discuss whether it was taken from an iPhone or a Samsung Galaxy S3 or an SLR and whether and what zoom lens was used. What was the idea behind composing poetry? We adorn it with vocabulary most don’t have. What was the idea behind a script that was made into a movie? We embellish it with music and songs and dance that have no integrity with the idea.

Adorning any idea with an embellishment has become a way of life in our culture. Without embellishment, it seems, one cannot reach the mass audience. Do we need to reach the mass audience every time? We have lost the ability to communicate ideas to each other.

When was the last time you encountered an idea without embellishment?

An idea can be at the level of genius. It is often original. We have come to disrespect originality and disrespect ideas. Even a god needs to be embellished by a huge church or a temple with dozens of flowers, without which one is apparently not able to experience the godliness. Embellishment is being used to draw attention, rather than the idea itself.

We have come to want and need embellishment. But.

Embellishment turns an idea into mediocrity.

The lead character is Mukund, a student in the 9th grade, who falls in love with the charming girl, Shirodkar. Mukund is among the brightest in his class and the movie does a good job in portraying him as one of those who are intellectually a level above their peers, without being snobbish about it. There is the usual palette of teachers, from kind and liberal to the harsh disciplinarians, that one finds in any average Indian school. There are the admonishing but loving parents, and there are groups of classmates who hang out together after school to secretively stare at the village girls as they pass by the road. There are lakes where one sits by the rocks in introspection or for close talks with a friend, and there are mountains and sunsets evoking the earthy flavors of rustic life. Diego Romero’s cinematography captures all this vividly, with a mix of close ups and vistas, with a level of sophistication that was absent in Marathi films for decades.

Teenage love is a difficult subject, and Shala’s endearing aspect to me is that it does justice to it, treating it with delicacy and care. Teenage love is almost always surreptitious as it happens under the suspicious supervision of grown-ups; it starts out in a psychological state where one is unaware of it at the beginning and realization dawns slowly; it is pure, driven by romance and not lust; it is infantile in the sense that a meeting of the eyes feels like a passionate kiss; and finally, it is almost always doomed to be lost forever. Shala encompasses and treats all these aspects with sensitivity and charm.

Ketaki Mategaonkar’s casting as the charming Shirodkar is a huge statement. She is not beautiful in any conventional sense, but the movie makes her beautiful as it makes you look at her through Mukund’s eyes. Mategaonkar does a passable job with her role, primarily exuding shyness and charm, but also revealing that unspoken acknowledgment of love in her eyes. On the other hand, Anshuman Joshi’s performance as Mukund is the backbone of the movie and he shoulders that responsibility with amazing grace. He is masterful in the entire repertoire of emotions, and is a natural actor.

Most of the background cast of grown-ups do a passable job, with some scenes becoming awkward due to amateurish performances. The music is pleasant and unobtrusive for the most part, which is an achievement in Marathi cinema. Sentimentality oozes beyond acceptable limits only once or twice, and the emotional quotient is held in admirable restraint throughout the movie.

All in all, a pleasant movie that could have been better with a better supporting cast, but nevertheless can be enjoyed thoroughly.