I was playing, many years back, in the hot scorching heat of my hometown Balasore when I was called by the man we used to call Hetram for some reason I don’t remember now. As I heard the name of the real caller, I ran faster than the then 100 meter Olympics Champion. Almost some seconds by, I was in front of all big personalities of our school gathered at a man’s room, the man who was just touching the height of 5 inches, a bit fairer than the William sisters, holding a self-proclaimed belt in Karate, shouts to 500 meters without microphone and many a times had beaten the shit out of our class mates. The man was our headmaster and I was in class XIIth. I was yet to catch my breath when he told me can you roar? I looked at everyone’s eyes and I saw there was nothing in them. I asked before he could speak again, I knew that would have been a GET OUT, why do I have to roar?
“You are selected as School Captain by everyone quite anonymously and I need to assure whether you can really command to the assembly in the morning because you will be a Leader. Can you Mr. Kaushik Chakraborty?”
I was like … (read dot dot dot)
6 years after the above incident, I was in a saloon at Kolkata when I met some one. He was fast as a storm as he was speaking about the name of the countries and the results from the world of games. For one moment I thought he is a news-machine. But then his words meant knowledge. He was not only talking as if he has mugged that up for any quiz competition rather it seemed knowledge is his life force. He knows about the favorite food of Dhoni to the angle at which Ronaldinho and Beckham take their magical free-kicks. He can argue with you on why Liverpool don’t stand any chance to win this years Premier League (because I said him that Liverpool is my favorite PL team) and in the end he made a bet with me on it. It is not only with sports, he was about to talk politics as well. I compared him with me. I was ashamed. He is in class 5th.
I am, like a lot many, a freedom evangelist. We write open-source s/w, we like to master Linux, we like to attend open-source conferences, we have very open-mind, and there are many things where we think we loose freedom and find ways to break the shackles. But some days before the above saloon incident, I was reading a magazine published by a villain of our freedom movement, yes M$. Editor there says
“Creativity often blossoms not when there is total freedom, but severe restrictions limit the creator”
I couldn’t disagree with him. May be because I don’t have the required knowledge to argue with him as he was none other than Charles Petzold (if any body had any time coded anything in M$ technology then he must have read this man’s name on some pedagogy for it). And he had really given some very substantial reasons for e.g.
“When an oxygen tank exploded in Apollo 13 on its way to the moon, great creativity and ingenuity was required to make fixes. The creativity arose directly from the limited materials at hand.”
That article was not against our freedom movement rather it was on a new language XAML (Extensible Application Markup Language) which it self is a free framework. But what is important here is level where now the new-world is thinking. And what I am thinking?
I just came back from a movie called 300. It was very much one of the path-breaking historical-war movies of all time; not only because of its design but also for its application. I have always wondered what makes some men so much powerful than the rest. Or if I say what makes a man – a leader. How could a leader make his followers follow him so blindly and always he becomes so much correct? Now may be what they show in movies are all fictitious but how could a scriptwriter (a man) can think of the fiction, a director (a man) can think of the action, a cinematographer (a man) can think of the lights for the action, the programmers and designers (men) can think of the motions. There is a magic in the way those characters portray power on screen, there is a magic in the way those persons intelligently make those characters portray and then there is creativity which make the end-product so extra-ordinary. To be a bit realist, for 300 –
“The film was edited on an Avid; with an HD cut also maintained in Final Cut Pro.The 3D was made using Maya, XSI, and Lightwave. The 2D composites were made with Shake, Inferno, Fusion, and Combustion. The filmmakers prefer Macintosh, but large portions of the movie were made under Linux. Asset management was handled by custom software written in the Panorama development environment, made by Provue. Color management was handled by Truelight software. The film was scanned on a northlight scanner and was recorded on the arrilaser. Most of the film was shot at high speed, between 50 and 150fps. Normal film is at 24fps. The film was transferred to HD SR tape and quicktime, and HD quicktimes were the basis for the HD preview cuts. The working resolution for the film was 2K, at a working aspect ratio of 2.11 and a projected aspect ratio of 2.35.”
These above things happened at a corner of earth, but at this corner there has been a contagious inanity.
At my work place, before moving to the peaceful no-work phase or bench, I was in a team of programmer analysts who were really cognizant about many things like above. And they enjoyed discussing and praising people who make them happen. And at the same time they never loose the diligence while copying-pasting someone else’s code to resolve a defect, updating some dropped out data into the database, documenting pages after pages without knowing why they are doing it, getting to know everyday that the way and on which they are working has no future, getting pissed every time by some stinking professional politics, talking it loud to themselves as to how quickly get out of this place but wait for some more time. I did that for 7 months, and then I refused to stay like that. It is just the picture of a place which names cognizance literally but lacks the same practically. And it is also the picture of many of its comrades which are now soul of prosperity and growth of this country.
Where am I heading among all these conformists? I now regret my head-master’s words, but then what am I at class 5th? What all I have created out of all those freedom struggles? But have I got any chance to do so? Why I get inspired from some people who never admit defeat, when we don’t have any culture like that? But then culture was made by us? Why am I talking about the negligence of my co-workers when I am also one of them – developing never creating? But does this side of world really create or is it famous of its unchallenged support structure? Now the big question, which question should be answered first? Who is the bigger rascal?
But then as always, it’s easy to ignore rather than to ignite.
(Writer is insane)
