[Click on the image above to view the full album.]

I remember reading Zen and the Art of Motor­cycle Mainte­nance by Robert Pirsig a while ago and reflecting on the nature of Quality as described by the author. Although the ideas described by Pirsig in his medita­tive narra­tive weren’t exactly novel, he did paint a layer of clarity over the things we see in day-to-day life, like a lens that magni­fies some parts of a specimen and brings to the fore an aspect that simply wasn’t noticed before, even as it stared us in the face.

But today, I was travel­ling around the streets of Mumbai, and it got me thinking about what sets nations apart from each other, especially the tenuous distinc­tion between the devel­oping and the devel­oped nations. The distinc­tion most certainly isn’t techno­log­ical — from consumer products to manufac­turing techniques, India has every­thing it needs to be on par with any other nation. In the cases where it doesn’t, there is a penalty of economic cost — we simply have to pay a little extra to get the same benefits. Alter­na­tively, the distinc­tion could be economic, but that expla­na­tion doesn’t fit either. While there are plenty of people in India below the poverty-line, there are plenty of rich people as well. But being rich doesn’t make life any easier in India, unless you are so rich that you can liter­ally pay someone to live your life for you.

To take a simple example, imagine that you need to get a new passport, and it takes several hours and several visits to the passport office to overcome bureau­cratic hurdles and get the job done. There are no missing pieces that prevent this system from functioning equally well in devel­oping as well as devel­oped nations. Except that you would expect this system to work better in a devel­oped nation, gener­ally speaking.

Or to consider another example, if it takes forty-five minutes to commute one mile in suburban Mumbai simply because the traffic is terrible (because traffic rules are not spelt out properly and seldom followed), whom do you blame? If that commute is impor­tant to you, it doesn’t matter how rich you are, such comforts cannot be easily bought. Again, the traffic is not terrible because of poverty, or lack of educa­tion, or limited access to technology.

What is missing is something that can be very accurately, if vaguely, described by the term Quality. Look around and you will see people not willing to make an effort to put in their best work, doing a shoddy job simply because everyone else does. They are surrounded by others who accept this situa­tion and get on with their lives as if it didn’t matter. The accep­tance breeds indif­fer­ence, completing the circle.

In many ways, this idea is scarier than the naïve assump­tion that gener­ating more indus­trial and agricul­tural output will magically trans­form the country into the ideal we cherish in our dreams. It is the people themselves who need to change in some hitherto undefined fashion; simply demanding more resources, more technology or more money does not help in this regard.

Somewhere along the way, we started writing down numbers in spread­sheets and ledgers, and lost track of what is really impor­tant to us.

Picking a movie to watch on an airplane is tricky business. Inexpe­ri­enced travelers make the mistake of choosing the movie they’ve been waiting to watch for the past month, or the one they think they’ll like the most. Bad idea. The audio is pretty bad on any airplane, and add the engine noise to that, and you’re left trying to lip-read the actors. Or you’ll crank up the volume to a point where you go deaf, and then life isn’t as much fun anymore.

Worse still, the little video screen in front of your seat may get turned off a little early, just before you’re told the name of the villain in a whodunit. And if that’s the movie you’ve been itching to watch for a while, it’s been effec­tively ruined for you.

That’s why I decided to watch “A Time Traveler’s Wife” on my trip from Seattle to Mumbai. It’s a perfect pick: I never really intended to watch the whole thing, so I couldn’t care less if it got cut off in the middle. The dialog didn’t matter too much, since Rachel McAdams is easy on the eyes and this is such a typical romance (man loves woman, woman loves man, man keep disap­pearing and popping up in other times, yada, yada…). And of course, I dozed off several times as the movie played on, but that didn’t matter all that much either.

Anyway, with this a priori stance about the movie, you shouldn’t really be expecting an unbiased review, but the truth is, I’m not here to comment on the movie at all. In fact, the only comment I have is on the name of the movie: I strongly believe the movie should have been named The Guy Who Disap­pears and Steals Clothes because, well, that’s what the lead character does all the time. Yes, he travels through time, sure, but that’s quite irrel­e­vant, especially on mute.

Speaking of traveling through space-time, have you ever noticed how time-travelers appear elsewhere almost instan­ta­neously? In real life, I would expect molecules of air and dust to get shoved aside violently when this happens, causing a tiny explo­sion. Oh well, I guess you can’t be all that realistic in a movie.…

On the bright side, this time traveler was less annoying than Hiro the Hero.

I waited, waited through the days,
Saw the silver moonlight light up the ghostly clouds,
Through a small glass window -
Watched the gleam of pale orange sunlight
As it reflected off the sharp metal of airplanes -
Slept and woke, woke and slept,
Waited…waited…
…and then I was home.

I think, there­fore I am.
I think I thought, there­fore I think I was.
I think I thought I thought, there­fore I think I thought I was.
Now I’m losing track of my thoughts — where was I?

I’m still in the last decade, depending on where you are. The current day in Seattle, WA, USA is the 31^st of December 2009. In most other places of the world, year 2010 has arrived already.

A lot of people are celebrating the arrival of the New Year. But with all that has gone by and all that is to come, I don’t really see the point in making a fuss about a single point in time, or even an hour or a day for that matter. It means nothing, nothing at all.

Another day goes by — another brick in the wall of eternity.

Last night’s install­ment of dreams was partic­u­larly enter­taining. I had a dream, then woke up and realized it was a dream. I fell sleep again, had another dream and then woke up once again. Then I really woke up and realized that my earlier wakeful­ness was merely another dream. Still following?

Inter­est­ingly, all of those dreams had a connected plot.

Even Ewan McGregor couldn’t possibly disagree if I said that this seven-part review of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace by some guy on YouTube is so ruddy brilliant!

This is just the first part, but all the parts are avail­able.