Why Are We Obsessed With Celebrities: is it mostly about "she's famous, so she must be awesome"?

Having attended that Amitabh Bachchan lecture, and thus having witnessed a massive examination hall packed with hundreds of people (i.e., almost every Indian in Oxford) desperately trying to get photos and videos of the great star, has once again got me thinking about the strange pull celebrity culture seems to have on our lives. I have long thought that in this modern information age, the fame and influence of a handful of top celebrities gets magnified far beyond anything their intrinsic abilities or value to society could possibly justify. Consider J. K. Rowling, or Sachin Tendulkar, or Shah Rukh Khan: they are all obviously highly talented, and I admire of all of them, but are they, in any sense, so far superior to most other authors or sportspersons or actors so as to justify their enormously incommensurate status and wealth? It's hard to argue that they are, and I don't suppose anyone would disagree that beyond a certain point fame becomes self-perpetuating: as they say, nothing succeeds like success. In the age of the internet and social media and ubiquitous advertising, these feedback effects seem to have become much stronger than they were even a generation ago. However, the underlying psychology — the human need for social conformity, the desire to be part of the 'in-crowd', deference to authority and an inclination towards hero-worship — is presumably as old as humanity itself. A fascinating recent social experiment indicates just how powerful such contextual factors are in shaping our likes and dislikes: a world-famous musician playing incognito at a metro station attracted hardly any attention at all! The idea that we are able to judge works of art, music, literature, cinema, etc. on their merits may be much closer to being a myth than we think...

[Update: Video of the visit; yours truly can be glimpsed 4:35–4:39, to the right of the balding gentleman holding up the camera.]

More Poetry

Just had the privilege of listening to these lovely verses from Harivansh Rai Bachchan's Madhushala, recited by none other than Amitabh Bachchan:

मदिरालय जाने को घर से चलता है पीने वाला,
'किस पथ से जाऊं?' असमंजस में है वो भोला भाला,
अलग अलग पथ बतलाते सब, पर मैं यह बतलाता हूं —
'राह पकड़ तू एक चलाचल, पा जाएगा मधुशाला।'

एक बरस में एक बार ही जगती होली की ज्वाला,
एक बार ही लगती बाज़ी जलती दीपों की माला,
दुनियावालों किंतु किसी दिन आ मदिरालय में देखो,
दिन में होली, रात दिवाली, रोज़ मनाती मधुशाला।

मुसलमान औ' हिंदू हैं दो, एक मगर उनका प्याला,
एक मगर उनका मदिरालय, एक मगर उनकी हाला,
दोनों रहते एक न जब तक मंदिर मस्जिद में जाते,
बैर बढ़ाते मंदिर मस्जिद मेल कराती मधुशाला!

[Update: Video]

You know you've been away from home too long when you start relishing these...

बरसों के इंतज़ार का अंजाम लिख दिया
काग़ज़ पे शाम काट के फिर शाम लिख दिया

बिखरी पड़ी थीं टूट के कलियाँ ज़मीन पर
तरतीब देके मैंने तेरा नाम लिख दिया

आसान नहीं थी तर्क-ए-मोहब्बत की दास्ताँ
दो आंसुओं ने आख़िरी पैग़ाम लिख दिया

हमको किसी के हुस्न ने शायर बना दिया
होठों का नाम ले न सके, जाम लिख दिया

अल्लाह ज़िन्दगी से कहाँ तक निभाऊँ मैं
किस बेवफ़ा के साथ मेरा नाम लिख दिया

तक़सीम हो रही थीं ख़ुदाई की नेमतें
एक इश्क़ बच गया सो मेरे नाम लिख दिया

'क़ैसर' किसी की देन है यह शायरी मेरी
उसकी ग़ज़ल पे जिसने मेरा नाम लिख दिया

[Qawwali]

Why I (almost) want Pakistan to win in Mohali

I think one of the most wonderful things to happen in the 2011 Cricket World Cup so far has been the manner in which the Bangladeshi crowd at the Sher-e-Bangla stadium in Mirpur wholeheartedly cheered for Pakistan in their quarter-final demolition of the West Indies. Given the history between the two nations, this is hardly a trivial thing, as Pakistanis themselves have appreciated (e.g., see this post, and in particular the heart-warming comments below it). It is testament to the power of sport to unite; after all, cricket in the subcontinent has long been much more than just a game, and has always been tied to issues of politics and identity. India's first influential cricket tournament, the Bombay Quadrangular, began in 1912 and was organised along communal lines, with the four teams being the Europeans, Parsis, Hindus and Muslims. Gandhiji realised that this fit into the broader divide-and-rule strategy of the British Raj and wanted to get rid of the communal aspect, but such were the passions aroused by the tournament that it was not until 1946 that it was abandoned, having laid the foundations for cricketing loyalties in the subcontinent to serve as powerful symbols of ethnicity.

So what does this have to do with the India-Pakistan semifinal in Mohali? I know this is blasphemous, but a part of me can't help hoping for a Pakistani victory. Imagine the prospect of Pakistan playing in the final in Mumbai, cheered on by an Indian crowd! It has happened before; I remember that wonderful test match at Chennai in 1999, when the winning Pakistan team got a standing ovation from the crowd. More recently, the Pakistani contingent at the Commonwealth games in Delhi got a big cheer at the opening ceremony. If Pakistan were to lift the world cup to the cheers of the great city of Mumbai, with all its recent history, what a powerful message that could send to help heal the wounds between our two estranged nations!

But, you ask, what about the disappointment of the passionate Punjabi crowd at Mohali, and the heartbreak of a billion Indians? What about the dream of seeing Sachin lift the world cup in front of his home crowd? That's why I said 'almost'---my Indian identity will not allow me to go any further. Next Wednesday, my loyalties will naturally be with India; but somewhere inside me, a small voice will be cheering for Pakistan.

The latest (Gold)man-made food crisis

Johann Hari writes:
"By now, you probably think your opinion of Goldman Sachs and its swarm of Wall Street allies has rock-bottomed at raw loathing. You're wrong. There's more. It turns out that the most destructive of all their recent acts has barely been discussed at all. Here's the rest. This is the story of how some of the richest people in the world – Goldman, Deutsche Bank, the traders at Merrill Lynch, and more – have caused the starvation of some of the poorest people in the world."

Those of us who come from societies which have suffered under the yoke of imperialism are of course reminded of the all too many occasions when needless mass starvation and death have resulted from blind free-market economics and a failure to check speculation and hoarding, coupled with a disregard for the lives of the oppressed peoples. Two of the most prominent examples were the Irish potato famine of 1845-52, when about a million people died, and the Bengal famine of 1943, when nearly 3 million are estimated to have perished. Of course, in many ways the circumstances of these two tragedies were quite different, but they shared in common an attitude of complete callousness on the part of the British administration; even as masses in the colonies were dying of starvation, food exports to richer markets such as England continued unabated. Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister at the time of the Bengal famine, responded to an urgent request for food on the part of the Indian authorities by asking why, if food was so scarce, had Gandhi not died yet.

However, it is shocking to see that similar phenomena persist even into the 21st century: and the new imperialists are the financial oligarchs whose recklessness has caused such misery. Dr. Jayati Ghosh, an economist at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi and a prominent advisor to the Government of India, is one of the leading authorities on the causes underlying the recent 'global food crisis' (remember how George W Bush blamed the increasing appetites of the Indians and Chinese?). She has noted how there were no massive bailouts for the starving, and demonstrated how financial speculation was the fundamental driver, rather than any dramatic shift in actual demand or supply (interview: part 1, part 2).

The World Development Movement has more information, and is leading the campaign against food speculation. For those in the UK, please take action to help end this lunacy.

The Improbable Popularity of Funny Toy Creatures

Two facts I learnt today:

1. Toy Story 3 has shot up the IMDb charts incredibly rapidly and is now rated the 6th best movie ever, despite not even having been released yet in many countries (including the UK).

2. Zoozoo is the most 'liked' Facebook fan page in India.

Interesting world we live in, is it not?

The Character of Physical Law

The one thing in the whole of science that I have found most captivating and enigmatic, pretty much ever since I first came across it (probably sometime in my early teens), is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. I still find it quite incredible how fundamental and deep-seated the idea seems to be: from car engines and refrigerators to cells and living organisms and entire human societies, the working of everything around us is a manifestation of this law, which underpins the phenomenon of irreversibility and the nature of time itself. In my school days, the fascination was a bit more prosaic: one of the reasons being simply that our textbooks contained so many different 'statements' of the law. For a naïve schoolchild brought up under an education system which essentially encouraged one to cram oneself with immutable scientific 'laws', to be regurgitated verbatim during exams, this was quite a novelty. The fact that the same principle could be expressed in so many entirely different ways meant it must be somehow special, and this was one of the things that first tickled my scientific antennae. My favourite statement of the law, however, has to be one that I first heard just a couple of days ago, at a fascinating lecture by a famous physicist:

"If you eat, you have to go to the toilet".

I wish I'd thought of that when writing my physics exams...