Thoughts on the 'hero'

Reading Sherwood Anderson's Marching Men is like my mind is now opening to things I didn't know how to express, things I didn't know how to look and think and talk about, but only felt vaguely, like the nebulous star clouds seen by the Hubble telescope. I also felt like I should write about a hero of our time, like yesterday's post on the blogger about the questions I had about the hero's profile, characteristics etc. The barber character talking about women in chapter 3 book II stirred me deeply, resonated with my own views and made me think of writing a story around that idea.  This is the path not taken by the 'hero', one who eschews and if necessary walks away from, in order to maintain his pristine internal order, purity and sanity and therefore sanctity. The hero must emerge from burning away of those elements that hold him back, that submerge him in the ordinary rut of living, instead he nurtures elements that propel him towards a destiny away from the common lot, that make him think and act in ways contrary to popular opinion, contrary to established notions of living. He vicariously or otherwise lives through each force, sees his way through the eyes of the others, and sees the path it leads to and therefore avoids it. He must go through the three stages of life: habit, instinct and intelligence - that is, of the machine, the animal and then finally the human. The hero is born of intelligence, when he overcomes his mechanical habits, his brute nature and finally enters the portals of intelligence that is the natural state of the human being, though it is considered unnatural now, even divine in some respects. 

The first generation of men left their idyllic villages and migrated to cities in search of new opportunities, in search of greater knowledge, better housing, modern living, to partake of the advancement in science and education, in the happenings around the world and in the changing face of the country and its leadership. These men shaped the cities according to their aspirations, according to their temperament and according to their capacity in dealing with the social and political currents prevalent in the cities at the time of their migration. Some of them became news makers, some news reporters, and some totally lost in the ever changing social milieu, in the rut of family life, in the race to move up in the hierarchy, in the many distractions that are ever present in a society in perpetual transition that marks a growing city. Out of this morass must come the jewel, the hero, who rising above the ordinary flow sees the inevitable destiny and steps out of it. 

Hero

A life without a purpose, anger without a justifiable cause, hurt without anything precious to defend, weakness that masquerades as moral uprightness, no heroic struggle, a wisdom that is borrowed and repeated a thousand times, stolen yet aired with pomposity and self-righteousness, morals that have long become dull platitudes, lifeless and ineffectual, a culture that is paraded and took pride upon lost its glory in myths and vacuous and inane turpitude. Who is the hero among us?  Where is valor and supreme integrity that is not fragmented by the myriad forces that rend the soul into a million pieces? A life of safety is sought by most men, a secure life that is not threatened by the change, by the increasing violence, by the swelling greed, by the wails of the weak and the tortures of the rich and the powerful. Where is the action in life that is not a knee-jerk reaction to circumstances, not a response of the frightened being, not an outcome of the cunning mind or the pompous generosity of the self serving individuals? Where is the travail of man rising above the inanities of living, above the humdrum life of the common, soaring in the realm of the sublime, defeating the inner forces that threaten to tear at the very soul? Where is that man who is not merely led by chance, by circumstance, by forces within and without, by habits, by thoughts and ideas of others, but runs under his own steam, makes his own principles, follows his heart and directs his mind, governs his urges and blazes a trail for the former to follow? Is there such a man amongst us? A man who is not afraid to be ordinary and yet does extraordinary things with great simplicity and with scorching passion? 

Old Monk

Some years ago a friend and I were talking along the lines above and he was waxing eloquent on the idea of the world as maya, that everything is an illusion and fit only to be treated as a game. On the center table was a glass paperweight and I began to push it towards him. First he watched it with interest, and then as the heavy object edged closer to the brink, he said, alarmed, 'hey! Watch it. It is going to hurt.'

Evari Jatakam varide, evari grahalu varive

The Indian mind is immured in the idea of fate.

Even the choices we make are governed by our karma. 

Dane dane pe likha hai khane wale ka nam.

After fifty, thoughts automatically turn to the teachings of God, owing no doubt to the programmed mind that follows the pattern of The Four Stages of Life set by Manu.

From atheism to unabashed worship, from skepticism to blind faith, from the power of knowledge to the surrender to belief, from debunking mysticism to glorifying bizzare cults, we swing from one branch of philosophy to the other, like the great apes, our ancestors. We are a nation of self-contradicting endlessly debating people.

The greatest achievement of the Indian psyche is the integration of numerous little cults and subcultures into a unifying religion, all subsumed under the banner of holy trinity - Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva - the creator, the preserver and the destroyer. 

So powerful is the idea of fate that we can without the least sense of shock declare an appalling crime as the fruit of the victim's past life and the perpetrator's growing karma.

It appears to me:

Philosophy is the comfort of the uncomprehending mind. Spirituality is the comfort of an aching heart. God is the comfort of a frightened being. 

Growing old

The older we grow, the louder are our chants, the greater is our fear of the unknown and the inevitable end.

A lady who turned sixty a few days back travelled across a continent to catch a glimpse of a seer in an ashram. She failed to get a darshan of the holy man even though she was prepared to buy a ticket for Rs. 1000/-, for the place was already packed. A wizened old man past seventy apparently wanted to know from a young priest, barely twenty five, to point out the passages from a holy book that he must read and chant, in order to receive the divine blessing.

An octogenarian who spent his youth as an avowed atheist became a believer in the hope that he would get a safe passage through eternity when he would be called upon to make the last journey through life.

UX Write Review

1 Introduction

According to the tagline, UX Write is "The first desktop-class word processor for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch". The blurb says it is designed for large, complex documents such as reports, research papers, thesis, technical documentation and books.

Figure 1

It is intended for students, research scholars, technical writers and those who wish to present content (text, tabulated data and pictures) as a structured document.

This review is written in UX Write not only to reveal its features, but also to operate it as a general user. The author has been associated with it since the beta testing of this product; however, he is by no means connected with either the product development or its owner in any way.

2 Features

The app has the following features:

• Structure a document into multi-level headers. This allows the content to be presented in sections with headings. All the common header styles are available. It is also possible to customize the styles using the free-formatting feature.

• The document's page layout can be set using margins, borders, line indent and spacing and colors for text and background. Fonts can selected from an array of styles.

• Extended keyboard provides the most essential keys for structured writing.

Figure 2

The extension to the regular IOS keyboard is unique in some ways:

1. The first key allows moving through letters one by one, forward or backward.

2. The second key allows swipe selection, a feature that is still on the drawing board of many app builders. It is easy to use; simply position the cursor with a tap, press the key and just swipe on the panel below. Two-finger swipe is noticeably faster.

3. The third key is very important for text formatting. Rather than pull down the menu and hunt for the style you want to apply, just press the format key and choose the style you want. Use the same feature to undo a style that you applied before (bold, italic, underline, indent, bullet)

Figure 3

I am experiencing a little difficulty here to continue the bulleted list I started above. The inclusion of a figure has apparently terminated the list. So i begin again. (Notice the letter i did not convert to upper case automatically)

To continue with the features:

The next six keys are the most useful to any writing of considerable length. The last one deserves special mention, one that is not found in any app so far as I know. It is the key, literally, to build your own lexicon. It supersedes the built-in dictionary and provides a powerful system to build a repository of words for later use. It is to all intent and purpose the auto-correct mechanism done right. Here is how it looks:

Figure 4

Clicking on the last key pops open a list of word variations to choose from and if required to add to the dictionary.  

• The icon A available on the top of the app provides all the essential text formatting features one can expect from a word processor. The figure 1 shown in the beginning of this review presents a snapshot of these features. Buried inside this pull down menu is a set of buttons to customize the styles and preview them before applying to the document.

• The + icon next to it allows insertion of pictures, tables, references from within the document, links to external web pages, generate table of contents, list of figures and tables.

• The bars icon pops open the Outline view of the document. One can jump to any section of the document from the outline menu.

• The gear icon allows document-wide layout and styles.

• The export icon allows the document to save as a PDF, email it as its native format HTML. It is also possible to open this document in any other app that supports HTML or send it to a printer.

• Undo and Redo button allow mistakes and corrections on the fly, though according to my experience this feature is yet to mature.

• The close button faithfully closes the document and takes the user back to the main menu.

• In the landscape view, the sidebar can be opened from the bars icon to view the document in the outline view. Here ins an interesting feature here. The sections in the document can be reordered using the Edit button at the top of the sidebar.

• Another interesting feature that is lacking in the regular keyboard is the '-' key in the extended keyboard. Based on the context, the key intelligently provides the right character: an em dash, an en dash or a hyphen.

• There is a basic file management system. Create folders and files unlimited in any of the three root folders: on the device, in the cloud such as Dropbox or any WebDAV server.  

This completes the tour of the features.

3 Conclusion

• UX Write is dependable

• UX Write is elegantly designed

• Serves the purpose for which it is designed

• Implemented in the latest HTML5 technology

• Provides a rich set of features like any word processor worth its name

• The enhancements to the keyboard, intuitive user interface, personalized lexicon and export options — all these features set it apart from a number of apps in the Apple store.

• Barring minor issues that may go away as the app matures, it is a strong contender in the area of word processors for the iOS devices and is sure to give the existing apps a run for their money.

A man's life

A family just got down from the car at a railway stn. A young man was driving the car, his sister helped him take the luggage out. The mother and the children moved off with a piece of luggage and the father barely able to walk dragged himself

Sent from my Nokia phone

Mumbaistan

A book review

In a compelling thematic trilogy Piyush Jha pulled off an
unputdownable potboiler in his debut Mumbaistan. While each part
stands complete in itself, Bomb Day, Injectionwala and Coma Man taken
together portray the murky underbelly of Mumbai - the mean streets,
the shanty towns, the loves and betrayals of its desperadoes.

One can feel the pulse of the low life, expressed as it were in the
language appropriate to the macabre stories of lives on the edge of
sanity and desperation. Lies masquerade as truth, hiding behind gentle
faces and hardened hearts, in the dark recesses of the cavernous
minds.

Unsung heroes tread gingerly in the narrow filth-ridden by-lanes,
unmindful of imminent danger to their lives, forging ahead to uncover
truth at any cost. Vicious, curvaceous and self-centered charmers hide
beneath lustful and lusterless cosmetics.

Lives entwined in love and death dance, in trust and the lack of it,
in protecting the unseen majority from a handful of misguided rogues -
such are the yarns that Mr Jha spins. Cleverly designed plots
intricate and full of surprises at once captivate and mesmerize,
sadden and uplift, from one tension-filled moment to another of
relief.

There is also some humor, stark and paradoxical, lurking in the racy
pitch of narration, at once satirical and providing timely relief from
the macabre scenes. Besides a deep sense of Mumbai's slums, Mr. Jha
also has a fine sense of humour - pungent and sparingly used relieves
the tension built up on suspense and thrill. For example, a sleazy
character invites the Coma Man into a hole in the ground beside a
pipeline that he calls his Pipe Star Hotel.

Bomb Day is the story of Mumbai quivering on the brink of mayhem as a
dogged policeman struggles to nab the terrorists. Whether he succeeds
in foiling the deadly plot depends on the desperate protagonist who
braves the wrath of the ungodly for the love of a passionate harlot.
Mr. Jha does not paint all the characters by the same brush, for
neither good nor evil is the monopoly of any caste, community or
locality. The bomb knows no such things and the policeman's job is to
prevent it from exploding.

A rogue medic goes on a killing spree at the behest of his oversexed
paramour until he morphs from a humble doctor into the dreaded
Injectionwala. As the plot unfolds the reader is left aghast at the
ingenuity of the tortuous plot and the deadly machinations of its
femme fatale. Fueled by the media, egged on by the faceless humanity,
the serial murders continue until climax unravels truth when the
reader least suspects it.

In the third part of this series, the Coma Man awakens one day after
20 years and falls prey to a series of bloodcurdling events until he
discovers the truth behind his long hiatus. As the labyrinthine plot
unfolds, the reader hurtles with the man and sympathizes with his
mission. A mission to accomplish which involved the lives of several
men, drawn willy-nilly into the vortex of the man with a mission.