Desicritics

Book Review - Gamestorming by Dave Gray, Sunni Brown, and James Macanufo

Shanti — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 20:18:14 EDT

I have to admit that the minute I heard the name of the book, Gamestorming, I signed up to review it. Being completely un-initiated as I was in techniques like this, by the virtue of being in consulting all my life (until now), the name of the book grabbed me with it's promise of new avenues of knowledge opening up in front of me.

I was definitely not disappointed.

Gamestorming describes a series of games - a game being a kind of a play (interaction between parties) with a predefined game space, boundaries, rules for interaction, physical artifacts and a goal - that help people tasked with coming up with creative solutions to problems. The book was such an interesting read that I ended up finishing it within two days. Even though the read was quick, the concepts put forth by the book are definitely sticky in my mind and I see myself constantly reaching for some of them either consciously or not.

One of the greatest points in favor of the book is the fact that the authors not only describe the games, they also lay out certain best practices and principles that allow someone who wants to try the techniques out follow a decently defined path in becoming a good "game organizer". The authors also describe ways to "design" your own games from the scratch or as a hybrid on the games provided, allowing users to practically do anything they want to solve their unique problems.

As my introduction into the world of gamestorming (an obvious play on the word brainstorming), the book lead me around quite well and I will be using a lot of these techniques in my immediate work environment.

Original Fiction: Gullible's Travels, Part 2

Rahul Jauhari — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 20:17:07 EDT

I am, what you can call, a reformed frequent flier.

And the designation does not come easy.

You must, compulsorily, undergo life-altering experiences to earn it.

At times, experiences that alter the impression left by a previous life-altering experience.

For instance, once, after being crushed between two portly businessmen all through a Mumbai-Delhi flight, I left strict instructions with my office to ALWAYS telecheck me into a window seat.

I love window seats. Always have.

Sigh.

The next few weeks were spent flying happily ever after.

Till it happened.

I was to fly on my usual Mumbai-Delhi sector.

I was sleep starved - whenever I have to take the first flight out, I barely sleep in the worry that I won't wake up in time.

My office made no mistakes.

It was me in the window seat.

A middle-aged gentleman in the aisle seat.

Hunky and dory were together.

Till SHE walked in.

A conservative estimate would peg her between 100 to 115 kilos.

Saree-clad, very-well-fed Punjabi lady, returning home to Delhi, probably.

She 'settled' in.

What do I tell you now?

That I spent the rest of the flight with my face squashed against the window like a first time flier?

No it wasn't voluntary.

When you have a mammoth elbow intruding across three-fourths of your seat space, there is nowhere else to go.

I had to refuse breakfast.

There was NO way I could have handled a tray in that kind of space.

It's bad enough when you have to share your seat with a giant elbow.

It's worse when the elbow belongs to a giant who decides to sleep after breakfast.

And sink a little into you with every passing breath.

Now consider the fact that the elbow belongs to a woman.

What will you scream?

Rape?

I would have.

Had I managed to somehow extricate myself from under that elbow and reached upwards to buzz the air-hostess, I seriously would have.

We disembarked in Delhi.

She, refreshed.

Me, crushed. Literally.

Frequent flying is no fun, my friend.

After Vietnam and Advertising, it ranks third in my books.

That morning I learnt that even a window seat can't save you from the scourge of an intrusive elbow.

My humble advice?

If you can, fly business.

If you can't, then beg the ground-staff to tell you who or what has checked into your middle seat.

If you can do neither, quietly take the train.

Exiled, Poems of Gwalior

Amitabh Mitra — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 20:15:32 EDT

east london on a bleak winter sea side
exiled
or did i run away
when nothingness
surmounted gwalior
a fortitude strung
of lingering summers
with your name no longer
tied up
when you were no longer there
an eye refused the absence
of your silence
when the sea shared thoughts
random talks of an unsure emblem held
in a night just before the dark
winter overbearing
many years since
why does then
your name
wafts
so deftly on a seascape
horizon
still.

Poem and Watercolor by Amitabh Mitra

Worthy Matters

Cee Kay — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 20:15:20 EDT

Are housewives really "economically non-productive workers", just like beggars and prostitutes? At least that is what the Government of India believes and that is, indeed, a belief supported and propagated by many, including many housewives. If you are not bringing in the money, you are non-productive. Doesn't matter even if you are doing everything else to keep your home running smoothly. That doesn't count! The sweat and blood you put into bringing your kids up doesn't count! The three thousand and nineteen things you juggle every single day don't count! Basically nothing counts even if you do everything except bring in the dough. Sadly, such is our society and such are our views.

I have struggled with this issue plenty - what is my worth? How important a part am I, of my family? I have been on both the sides and I still don't know for sure. J can do, and does everything for the kids and the house that I do, except cook. When I didn't have a job, I thought long and hard about how it would affect him if I were to die this instant. And I couldn't reach a conclusion. Now that I am back in the workforce, I still doubt my worth because I bring in less money than J does. To his credit, he has NEVER made me feel inferior on this account. (Oh heck, on ANY account!) It is all in MY mind.

The best reassurance I ever got on this issue came from our financial advisor when he was helping us plan how much life-insurance we needed to buy for each of us. I assumed Jay's would be more because he earns more than I do, and I was right. I also assumed I didn't need any, or needed very little because I was bringing in peanuts (a 250 gm packet every month, to be very specific). He explained to me that my worth was hidden in everything else I did that Jay would need to pay to get done, if I were to say buh-bye to this world. I am telling you THAT was the biggest reassurance I have ever gotten.

So I ask the government of India - if a housewife were to pass away, leaving behind her husband and kids, and assuming that the husband wouldn't have ANY help from family or friends - what would he need to pay other people to do what his wife does? I think the answer would leave many people thinking hard!

I am not one to sing praises of the studies that deduce what is the monetary worth of a housewife because I feel it only superficially glorifies what a woman does. If it were to bring a concrete change to a society's mentality, I'd be all for it. But there IS something to be said for such studies because they do point out the one fact that we choose to ignore - A HOUSEWIFE IS AN EQUAL AND CONTRIBUTING PARTNER IN THE HOUSEHOLD!

Broken Tigers

gautampatel — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 10:03:45 EDT

The official report is so clinical and impersonal that one might be tempted to skim it and move on. That would be a mistake. Behind the dry words of the official report is the heart-rending tale of a monumental tragedy.

Dr Rajesh Gopal is the Member-Secretary of the National Tiger Conservation Authority. His report of 1 June 2010 on the death of the Jhurjhura tigress in Bandhavgarh is a profoundly distressing dossier. On 18 May, three government vehicles entered the park in the late afternoon. One turned back shortly after. Of the other two, one was 'outsourced' (read privately procured) by the CEO of the Zilla Panchayat. The occupants included the CEO, the Range Officer, Dr KK Pandey, a Veterinary Assistant Surgeon, relatives of the CEO and three children. These two vehicles remained in the park after it closed. They also went off-route. Both are illegal. Barrelling around, one of them hit the Jhurjhura tigress, the mother of three six-month old cubs.

Early next morning, visitors spotted the wounded tigress in evident distress. The Field Director immediately ordered the area cordoned off.

By 9.20 am, the tigress was dead. Post-mortem reports show that she died of massive internal haemorrhaging. Dr Gopal has recommended an urgent CBI probe. It has yet to happen. The three orphaned cubs have had to be moved to a zoo in Bhopal.

We're down four more tigers in the wild. And this is the third report of a tiger being hit by a vehicle in Bandhavgarh.

Less than a month later, the Pioneer newspaper in New Delhi broke even more ghastly news. The head of a local environmental committee was caught carrying the paws of a six-month tiger cub, one of a litter of three. This worthy gent and four chowkidars sawed off the cub's paws -- as an offering to a local tantric for a customized puja.

In Maharashtra, the Melghat Tiger Reserve, once the flagship of Project Tiger, is still under threat. Years ago, the State Government decided that the best way to protect the tigers of Melghat was to take away a third of their home, and denotified 500 sq kms of the reserve's 1500 sq kms. Of course, nobody bothered to tell the tiger.

Coincidentally, the predominant tree species here is teak.

Timely intervention by the High Court in Nagpur has ensured that that area is still part of the reserve but it is greatly degraded with a far lower tiger density. Dr Gopal concedes that there are hardly any tigers outside Protected Areas and that the only tiger-protection success stories are within tiger reserves. The Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve (TATR) has seen a resurgence of its tiger population, but without an increase in the reserve area. Merely increasing tiger numbers doesn't help. In the wild one tiger has a range of about 20 sq kms. Not in TATR: there the range seems to have been reduced to about 3 sq kms. And their habitats are constantly shrinking.

Official commitment to tiger conservation is questionable at best. In the seven months from November 2008, Maharashtra lost ten tigers, including four cubs; only one died a natural death. In a nine-year period, Assam lost 12 tigers. Orissa lost 40. Madhya Pradesh recently cleared a proposal for a segment of NH7 -- a huge multi-lane high-speed expressway -- right through the Kanha-Pench corridor; and, for good measure, a tourist resort.

Now we have the proposed amendments to the Wildlife (Protection) Act (WLP): principally increased fines and jail sentences. Nice figures, but that's all they are. Poaching needs a more severe deterrent. Fines don't address the problem. Protecting tigers is essential, and expensive. It also involves improving wildlife habitat, and the lot of humans in the vicinity.

One news report says that in Arunachal Pradesh, a tiger skin is worth about 5 kgs of rice. Meanwhile, our governments spend thousands of crores on airports and the Commonwealth Games and golf courses on mangroves. But money to spend on a planned and humane relocation of villages, on strengthening security in our tiger reserves, on improved protection, on larger buffer areas, on dealing with the poor who live in the vicinity of these areas? How could these ever be a priority?

Buildings and bridges and expressways can be built and rebuilt. When the last tiger dies, what have we left? We are not defined by things we can replace, but how we care for the things we cannot.

PostScript: In Bandhavgarh, the enquiry is on, the report awaited. The orphaned cubs are now in a special enclosure in the park, not in a zoo, being well cared for. Routes B & C in the park are closed. Mr Akshay Kumar Singh, the CEO of the Zilla Panchayat, has been transfered to a small town in Dhar district, Jabua. KK Pandey, the Assistant Vet has been suspended until the inquiry is over. Six people have been suspended so far. The Tiger Heaven resort is sealed.

This article was first published in the Mumbai Mirror and Bangalore Mirror on Friday, 9 July 2010, under different titles.

Eyestorms, Poems of Gwalior

Amitabh Mitra — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 22:12:34 EDT

sardar shitole's place
was the last to be ransacked
by a sudden gusto of time
creepers ran taking over a ruinous
sky
i didn't
know
even when you had left
its just a matter of moments
you said
stones only remember
the violence
of eye storms.

Poem and Watercolor by Amitabh Mitra

A Debate Over Climate Change

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 04:22:43 EDT

We had a presentation on climate change in the office and I just want to pick up on one part of it. Here is the particular slide.

Let me explain the slide first. The X axis shows GDP growth while the Y axis shows the Emissions CO2 per capita. So you end up with (a) Lesser Developed, (b) Industrialising, © Industrialised, and (d) Low Carbon Economy. The last fourth quadrant being the nirvana land, yes?

So what’s the trajectory like? If we do nothing, then the red line is operational and we will keep on going up the increased wealth with increased emissions route. The parallel bottom descending lines from the red line to the dark blue line are due to green new deals, a climate change deal if you will. The top light blue line relates to a catastrophic climate event which will pull the entire world or the country back into lesser developed status while the yellow line exhibits what will happen if we have a technological breakthrough via carbon sequestration or some other fancy technology.

This is just an illustrative slide to show what potential trajectories there can be, but I have 3 issues

1. cost: This slide does not talk about what will be the impact of adopting the green deals or the geo engineering technical solutions. If you factor that in, then the optimistic blue line at the bottom will be pulled up sharply increasing the trend line. In other words, if a country like India has to actually pay for carbon storage or other carbon emission technologies, it can very well decrease its growth rate.

2. combination: There is a strong possibility that all four elements are simultaneously applied, we can have growth, we can have new green deals, we can have geo engineering and we can end up with a catastrophic climate event such as typhoons or cyclones or something like that. Then where do we go? In other words, the choice is frankly now out of our hands.

3. Other factors such as water shortage: What happens if we have a catastrophic non climate event such as volcanic eruptions? Or severe drought? or water shortage? What then?

I further pointed out that the cost of getting people to work on this via the private sector seems to be a bit wonky, the PE ratio’s of green tech companies are hovering around the 60-100 mark. That’s ridiculous. What on earth are those valuations telling me? That’s a clear and present danger of a huge bubble.

So I am going to sit this one out I am afraid, not very clear and until and unless there is more clarity, not going to invest in this sector. This doesnt mean that I am going to stop my attempts to reduce pollution and the like, that’s on the supply side but on the demand and fixing side? Jury is still out.

Poetry: Knives at Dark, Poems of Gwalior

Amitabh Mitra — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 04:22:20 EDT

knives i love in quiet submission
a sheer habit
a linear stabbed dermis
an ooze turning into a
splash hits the words
i incise into each night
breath streaks
a slash and then a murmur
of spent needs
sleep eludes unspoken lust
i cut my dreams often wide open
a night walker perhaps feels the wound

a dog yelps
in suggested desolation

Poem and Art by Amitabh Mitra

Photo Essay: Church of St. Stephens, Rochester Row

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 04:20:12 EDT

This church has a rather interesting history. The church of St. Stephens was built in 1846/1847 by Baroness Angela Burdett-Coutts of the Coutts banking family after being encouraged by Charles Dickens.

She further extended the church in 1890.

Here’s a woodcut showing how it looked like back then. Interesting enough, the rated capacity of the church is 1000 worshippers but i very much about that, you will have to stack them up to fit them all in.

When I first saw it, it was extraordinary, in a way, its taller (200 feet) than its length and its quite narrow. Almost like they wanted to fit in a tall landmark in a very small corner plot. It was closed so I was unable to take photographs of the inside, but here’s a good site to see the internal decor.

The spire is the most eye catching piece, very tall and singularly fated with bad luck for being the spire of a House of God. Even the people who saw it back in the late 19th century thought the spire was too attenuated. It was struck by lightening in the late 19th century, then the Germans dropped bombs all over it and then British Health and Safety Departments got involved, the top was removed and it was only in 1994 that a replacement was constructed by workers abseiling inside the spire. I am sure it would have looked a bit strange.

The belfry has some good bells apparently and while researching this church, came across a recording of how they sound.

Here are some photographs of the bells concerned which were cast in 1850. Can you imagine? these have been in operation now for 160 years, still pealing out across the parish to call the faithful to prayer and mark celebrations.

There are four statues of saints up there, but not sure what’s the point of putting these statues up there at the base of the spire where nobody can see them? They look a bit weather beaten anyway.

Stained Glass windows. Looked nice from outside the little I could make out, but the wtf was the bits at the bottom of the arches. Can you see the heads?

What’s rather extraordinary about this church is (and something that I haven't seen anywhere else) is the profusion of small carved heads and animals. These heads were carved by Peter Wright of Vauxhall Bridge Road who left some really interesting faces decorating various corners and edges.

All over the church.

Here’s a pig on the left and what appears to be a hairless, wrinkly, large leaf shaped ear wielding, upside down dog on the right. This smaller spire also has a whole set of gargoyles.

One of the smaller spires seems to have been repaired or cleaned, and its looking a bit spotty..

Here’s the porch. It was closed, but i could see a parking attendant in there, there were two others and believe it or not, they were dancing inside. Seriously wtf.

The traffic wardens cleared off and then I could take a photo of the door.

St. Stephen I presume with another two disembodied heads grinning insanely on both sides. Presumably these were local / church worthies being immortalised. Looking at the history of St. Stephen, I was a bit confused, he was tried by the Jews for blasphemy against Moses and God, against the Temple and the Law. Then he was stoned to death by a mob which was encouraged by Saint Paul? Very curious story.

Then there is a thoroughly modern sign warning thieves off the property.

I think the roof can do with a spot of elbow grease and cleaning, getting quite mossy there.

A small door hidden behind the buttress wall.

And a list of notices, with one saying Be Quiet for Lent. Full slideshow with all the photographs in higher resolution is here.

Poetry: Old Gwalior, Poems of Gwalior

Amitabh Mitra — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 10:41:10 EDT

]many aeons back
when rock changed faces
many a times and clan men
resisted irrefutably
time
the sky always gave way
to unhindered horizons
to newer lives
in dust torn
revelry
each time we passed the long
languorous tunnels of
waking
each time we found
ourselves on ledges
of looming betrayal
the fort grew taller and higher
overlapping many a skin
many a shadow
many a summers
and i thought that
perhaps one day
you would tell me a secret
of holding the lizard
in my grip
of a moment
knee deep in a drying river
of your breath
navigating a stronghold
of refute
you told me
the ruddy earth would also change
the peacocks would be no more
fungus and fern would darken
such agreements
such love
insisted
and we would remain torn
answerable only to the wind.

why did we run away each time the
sun changed surfaces
why did we cross eye storms
ensnared long hidden stars
why did we eclipse in patterns
of lip talk on your neck
why did we turn one and only one
burnt one single night
why did we then never die
why did the fort
kept silent
why

beneath us
deep down
stayed the dargah
the mad man danced
looked at us
in sightless eyes
we had seen him before
much before
when the hot wind
blew away advancing
and departing reasons
a maratha willingness to melt away
at each nightend
we saw him still
shaking his head
his hands sang the song
of the next blitz
the dead around in cavernous
holes never slept
we knew
the rainriver
would storm down
in crypts and crevices
in sultry memory lanes
weather broken thickets
on to those
living and buried
we knew then
it was the moment
of a quiet dismissal
of unhastened departures.

families left for far shores
and houses sprung up on
rusty dreams
a dishevelled robe dragging
a far innocence
hands sought to hold a
belief
and eyes stored tears
unbelieving
on your lips i saw a murmur
loves disparity rootless in
undefined times
i told you the stillness of the fort
stillness of our drifting
stillness of the riversong
stillness of an everydaysky
yet
we lived
shattering long drawn thoughts
in strange dawns
in
old gwalior.

Poem and Ink Drawing by Amitabh Mitra