The man, the region, the film

It goes without saying, for anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of freedom of speech, that censorship or banning of a docudrama film is authoritarian, cowardly and a symptom of a regime that is drunk with its own power.

...

I have long remained an admirer of the late Mr Jaswant Singh Khalra, the human rights activist from Punjab.  During the process of his investigation and judicial activism about the state-sponsored killings and cremations of thousands of people in Punjab, he himself was kidnapped, tortured and killed by Punjab Police.

He was a family man, and he was very brave to have taken on against a brutal state machinery.  He and his family paid the price for his bravery, and the least we can do is to respect his memory, and to honor his legacy, and to be inspired by his courage and his conscience.

I have also long regarded the Punjab DGP from that era, K P S Gill, as a butcher, a cruel, sadistic and degenerate man, who was given free rein by his political masters to unleash his own brand of terrorism and violence, frequently on the innocent, while his stated mission was to control and eliminate the violence by the radical Sikh separatists, no less criminal, in Punjab.  The violence by the state is far more condemn-able than the violence by misguided separatists because the former is to be held to a far higher standard of morality and due process.

It is fitting that Mr Gill was awarded with Padam Shri, and Mr Khalra was never, either during his activism or after his death, honored by the Indian state.  Such are the ways of how power is wielded, and one must be thoroughly naive to expect otherwise.

Mr Khalra was born in a family of activists, and that showed itself in how he was roused to action when he saw what was going on.  His wife is equally brave, and my salute to her, as well.

...

When one evaluates the thuggery, violence and amorality in Punjab or in many parts of India, it is my conclusion that the region and the people are feudal in their world-view, medieval in their mindset, and brutal in their acts.  

Parents routinely murder their unborn daughters or their disobedient children who dare to marry of their own choice.  Property feuds often escalate into violence and murder.  People are petty, and though the Sikh religion is considered liberal, Sikhs are vehemently caste-conscious, superstitious, believers in blasphemy and brutality in response to it, and generally immoral (consider for example their tactics to immigrate to the West).  Sikh industrialists are well-known to be thoroughly corrupt, and not a single Sikh politician is known to have some measure of integrity.

People looted and killed and raped each other with impunity during the partition of 1947, and many of the legends of Sikh history, Banda Singh Bahadur or Ranjit Singh, falter miserably when subjected to a scrutiny of their acts and motives.

I consider this to be a lawless, despotic region.  If anything, I find that the brutality of the state has become more pervasive at present.  At that time (of Mr Khalra's death), the CBI was somewhat effective in prosecuting some police officers for Mr Khalra's murder, but since then, hundreds and thousands of people have been killed by Punjab Police without any real repercussions.  Now even human rights activists have given up.  Police "encounters" are reported every other day, gangsters in the pay of the state are busy in extortion and kidnappings, and any individual who even hints at becoming a political force to be reckoned with, is killed or imprisoned under draconian laws.

Mr Khalra was valiant, and he tried to turn the tide, but he was too hopeful about this region.  Like many previous "revolutionaries", he died an untimely death, a few of his killers were jailed, but nothing really changed in Punjab.  Punjab was a region of brutality, and it remains that way.  Perhaps more hopeless than at his time.  Most sensible people have left this region, and those who are left are busy making money while they can while the future looks bleak and black.

...

The film (Punjab 95, Satluj) itself needed to be made, but I feel it is, as produced, a mediocre film.  It would have been much better to make an actual documentary on Mr Khalra's life and work.  The film repeats some musical tones, the acting except for a couple of actors is atrocious, the scenes of torture and killings are shoddily done, and the screenwriting and the dialog delivery is amateurish.

The people involved in producing this film, however mediocre they may be in terms of execution, deserve accolades for their courage in going for it.

The Indian state has not cleared it for screening, and that's a shame (but to expected from a regime that keeps a tight grip on the media, and supports the release of far more gruesome and politically charged propaganda movies but ones that fit its chosen narratives).

The film is brave in pointing clearly at KPS Gill and the then Chief Minister Beant Singh for the violence indulged in by the police.  The film does not go into into Mr Khalra's background, his wife's courage, the reactions of his relatives or children, his association with left-leaning people (his wife is shown in a library where a portrait of Pash the Punjabi poet is behind her desk), and the general context of the violence and extortion. 

The film also doesn't consider the general disenfranchisement of a population who has to beg and plead for a modicum of justice.  Even the judges shown in the film are unremarkable, and it is only due to a single witness' testimony which almost wasn't there, that there were some convictions.

The film should not have ended in a catharsis, but in rage.  The architects of the thousands of those killings that Mr Khalra was investigating remain unpunished.  Mr K P S Gill is dead and he was provided with state honors.  The riots of 1984 remain unpunished.  And the Indian state continues to plot and carry out assassinations of Sikhs in India and abroad.

This film needed to be made, and it is perhaps unrealistic to expect a great film given the restrictions on its message and that it was never going to make any money.  But a good director can work with a limited budget and instead of filming shoddy scenes of fake torture, can show things in a hidden manner rather than overtly.  But again, that is my quibble as a cinematic critic, and as a social wake-up call, this film deserves to be applauded.  

I have very little hope that any lasting change will be triggered by this film.  I pray that I am wrong.

Some Notes on Artificial General Intelligence

Instrumentalism in Quantum Mechanics is a perspective where we consider the various equations and mathematical formulations strictly as a means to predicting physical outcomes.  If the formulae work well, great!  We don't really care about the philosophical meaning of the equations, or the ontological implications (uncertainty, duality, the observer effect, etc.).  We have a series of physical measurements, we apply certain equations, we get predicted measurements in the future, and we are happy.

In a similar manner, debates about consciousness, self-awareness, emergent properties, Chinese room, etc. in computational intelligence are fine as conversational pieces.  But that does not diminish one bit the extraordinary capabilities shown by LLMs in responding to complex inputs.  Those capabilities in LLMs are usable whether or not we endow them with "real" intelligence or "understanding".

For example, see this sample problem from Humanity's Last Exam (a benchmark for LLMs):

Hummingbirds within Apodiformes uniquely have a bilaterally paired oval bone, a sesamoid embedded in the caudolateral portion of the expanded, cruciate aponeurosis of insertion of m. depressor caudae. How many paired tendons are supported by this sesamoid bone? Answer with a number.

 ...

We will see a rapid evolution in AI capabilities.  We are still in the very early stages of this new technology and for many years and decades, the capabilities will increase non-linearly.  Capabilities will evolve in various dimensions:

• Computational advances: It is very likely that the current foundations of AI in terms of context and token-input-output neural networks will morph into something very different that requires a very different quality or quantity of computational horsepower.
  
  
• Multi-modal expansion: For computation to excel in the real world, input processing from high-fidelity environments (such as visual or tactile or auditory) will become more tractable.  Multi-modal output will also become increasingly realistic.  Augmented reality will become as good as lucid dreaming.
  
  
• Agency: After a few initial hiccups, AI agents will be increasingly left alone, with very little oversight except from AI supervisors, to inspect, decide and take action.
  
  
• Price and Availability: AI will become cheaper and cheaper, eventually uncensored: almost omnipotent AND almost free.  What that will mean for human consumption patterns is scary.
  

...

AI will lead to economic devastation for those who offer repetition and basic pattern-matching as their value-add to human society.  Many regions of the world will become empty of humans and will be managed by AI.  Flourishing as a human being, having power, commanding AI, and reproducing will be a luxury that only a few will experience.  Vastly fewer in percentage terms.

IITD/JEE

While studying in 12th standard, I applied to appear in IIT Joint Entrance.  The application form came to me in a brown envelope, with the acronym IITD/JEE/xyz written in one corner.  I remember the fondness with which I noticed the seven characters: IITD/JEE.  It seemed like a distant, cherished, perhaps unattainable dream.

I did not know about IITs when I graduated from class 10.  One day I noticed an advert in the paper for a correspondence course to help students prepare for IIT joint entrance.  The company advertising was called Brilliant Tutorials based in Madras.

I, and my family, thought it was well worth it to prepare for and to take the entrance exam.  I studied mostly at leisure.  I never woke up at an unearthly hour, or stayed awake beyond bedtime.  My normal 11th and 12th standard college regimen was a breeze.  I never took any in-person coaching.

Once a distant relative visited us, and he sternly chided me on my leisurely studying, and told me that unless I woke up at 4 every morning, or unless I studied till midnight or beyond, I had no hope in hell of succeeding.

My hometown was not known to produce IIT graduates, and when the fact of my preparing for JEE became known in my locality, I was the laughing stock of many youngsters, one of whom said that he would change his name if I didn't crash and burn at the entrance exam.  The teachers at my 11th and 12th standard college were dismissive and insulting of their students, and took pride in their haughty condescension.

Our home was near a university, and both my parents were teachers in that university.  I therefore had ready access to the university library, and read many a text meant for undergraduate and postgraduate science degrees.  Sometimes I could only understand one or two chapters, and at other times it was instructive to read books designed and written with far greater care and quality than the Indian textbooks I normally had for my college syllabus.

Due to those university books, my interest was not just in solving problems but in educating myself.  Those days of being a self-paced learner, an autodidact, someone who studied for pleasure, was one of the happiest periods of my life.

In the end, I got the JEE All India Rank 19, and was ranked third in the North zone, with two students from Delhi ahead of me.

...

I loved computers, but had no access to computer at school, at my college, or at home.  I chose to study Computer Science at IIT Delhi, and from the very early days, it was a nightmare and a debacle.  Ugly hostels, bad food, a terrible discouragement to do anything but study the prescribed syllabus, a woeful library that had nothing but textbooks, a crammed curriculum, subjects which were taught without passion, some sadistic teachers, attendance requirements, and hardly any time to think and reflect.  This was in stark contrast to a life of leisurely intellection and study in my hometown.

The one positive was ready access to computing machinery, and instead of spending my time trying to get good grades, I spent almost all my free time tinkering with personal computers, mainframes, and multi-user Unix systems.

Except for courses in Logic and Philosophy and the Humanities, which I genuinely enjoyed, I did not have good grades.  I trudged through the four years at IIT Delhi, and got thoroughly disenchanted with studying for grades.  I copied assignments, cheated in some quizzes, and became generally alienated from the official curriculum, while gaining tremendous felicity with systems administration.  A few courses did hold my interest, but those were very unpleasant four years.  I wished to be rid of being in that cage, and not being able to physically leave IIT, I instead became interested in transcendental philosophy, social activism and alternative ways of living.

...

I had become almost the best in a country by having space and freedom for two years.  But I became a recluse and a shell of a person by going through four years of IIT.  Many of my IIT friends lost their balance from that trauma, and have still not regained it, and struggle with feelings of inadequacy and maladjustment.  

For me, preparing to get into IIT was a great joy.  But the actual reward, the actual being at IIT, was a disaster.  The acronym that had enchanted me, IITD/JEE, proved to be a conjunction of hell and heaven.

During my fourth year at IIT Delhi, I appeared for the GATE exam for entrance to post-graduate courses at IISc or at the IITs, and I think I got a rank that was in the top 40.  But I chose not to study further, and decided pretty much to drop out of society.  

Many of my fellow classmates went to do their Masters in Computer Science, but I know they had no passion for the subject, and even less the courage to live an authentic life.  Even today, I find them disinterested in a new advance in computing or science or philosophy, with their energies focused on their careers and the careers of their children.

I imagine that these days even that heaven of preparing for JEE has become hellish for many, with students choosing rather to die than go through the endless coaching.  And I have no reason to think that the actual experience at the IITs has gotten any better.

My moderate professional success has no doubt been partly due to my IIT pedigree, but that is no commendation of its killing the soul of so many students.  IITs get the very best of brains in India, and then choose to trample over them.  Many of its students eventually do great things after they leave, but that is more a tribute to the innate intellectual ability of the students than to any nourishing of that ability by the IITs.

On India

"God created men, Colt made them equal."

For the state to confiscate and restrict arms is an injustice intolerable to a free man, but one could be excused if one finds it acceptable in a nation-state where there is an easy and efficient recourse against violence, especially for the weaker sections who do not have money or power.  In most places, this recourse is The Police.

In India, guns are de facto legal and affordable only for the rich and connected.  To add injury to this insult, the police usually side with the rich and connected and shoo away or beat up anyone who dares to think otherwise.

And since the police is worthless to a common man, one might think that after all the courts will be fair.  That assumption too is badly trampled as soon as one tries to litigate against the state or against the powerful.  In the rare case that there is a just verdict, the powerful keep appealing, finality is elusive, and as they say, the process is the punishment.

For a common man or woman in India, a region replete with injustice, illegality and corruption, not only is there no recourse to arms, but there is no recourse to law enforcement, and there is no recourse to the courts.

People might say the United States is corrupt too, and the powerful have their advantages, but it is head and shoulders above a third-world hellhole like India when it comes to the right to bear arms, the right to approach the police, and the right to a fair trial.

People might want to leave India for many reasons, but I left India to escape this tangible sense of being helpless in the face of aggravations.  I do not wish to approach a well-connected bureaucrat, and to stand before him, and to lower my dignity and beg for his favors to do something that should be done as a matter of course.

For those who cannot leave India, my advice is to lay low politically, and not be brutalized by the state.  You cannot do much as an individual, and you should try this perilous path of being a lone-wolf reformer only if you have no other ambition in life, especially that of living a free, peaceful and intellectual life.

If you wish to consider joining a mainstream or alternative political party, remember that the political parties are a reflection of India at large: corrupt, brutal, nepotistic, opportunistic.  You will have to kiss the feet of men like Rahul Gandhi or Narendra Modi or Amit Shah or Arvind Kejriwal, or Mr Vijay.  That may not be abhorrent to you, but it is to me.

I find it increasingly true to say that though I love many things that have happened in India (especially as it relates to some forms of music and literature and philosophy), I hate what it has become.  It is an ugly, dysfunctional and despotic region, and I feel fortunate that I am no longer trapped in it.

The Infinitesimal and the Infinite

 A friend shared a poem with me today:

Vast Emptiness

Emotion less
Thought less
Good less
Bad less
Joy less
Sorrow lessDevoid of it all
Is this vast emptinessA few fireballs littered around as stars
A few pebbles thrown around as planets
A few specks of dust moving around as life
As plants as trees
As insects as worms
As fish as reptiles
As birds as animals
As men as women
And the non-gender ones tooWinds swirling
Rains lashing
Thunders thundering
Dust storms brewingOf what significance
But an eternal play
Of time in the lap of timelessAll of the above
But words in my head
Without words
There is but
Vast Emptiness

I used to have similar thoughts, and I'm sure many a reflective man or woman have had the same.

But here is a counterpoint to this wondrous feeling and cognition of being a mere speck in the vast space-time. And that is the wondrous feeling and cognition that in this infinite vastness, infinite duration, but at present, here and now, I am. I exist, I am aware, I see, I wonder.

The insignificance is as marvelous as the infinitely improbable existence of us. Both are marvelous, both are wondrous, both are worthy of one stopping in one's tracks and be awed.

One existence, that of space-time, is infinite (notwithstanding the Big Bang model of a finite universe), the other ephemeral: I was not aware before I was born, and I shall be not aware after I die. But in a certain sense, I am eternal too, because I am part of this universe. And I shall never cease to exist, but shall go on to appear in different forms.

And what a wonder of wonders that matter arranges itself so as to be self-aware. It is perhaps the greatest wonder of all.