Exploring Calcutta: A Commentary on the Film

The latest episode of my Exploration film series was shot entirely in the city of Calcutta, India around New Year's Day, 2008. I was visiting family and friends around that time and had an opportunity to tour the city and capture a number of fascinating locations on film. In fact, I ended up with so much footage of various historical sites in Calcutta that, ultimately, only a tiny fraction made the cut into the film. The vast majority of the footage is still waiting for another film possibly at a future date.

In addition, I must mention that at a couple of the sites I visited, videography and still photography were not permitted. So I wasn't able to capture on film the images I witnessed firsthand. The most striking example of this is the Marble Palace in Calcutta, which is filled with spectacular art treasures dating to the days of the East India Company. Unfortunately, I was only able to capture fleeting glimpses of the external façade of the building.

In the end, I needed a theme on which to base my film. As I delved through the footage, cataloging it and cleaning it up prior to my editing process, what captured my imagination were some images of a painting of The Last Supper that I had had the opportunity of filming in St. John's Church, Calcutta. Apparently, this was a pretty controversial painting, as the painter, a colonial Englishman, had modeled the figure of Judas in the painting after the local (English) chief of police and the figure of John after his girlfriend. I immediately thought of Dan Brown's book The DaVinci Code and the Ron Howard film based on it—what struck me was how the figure of John in the painting was really a secret representation of Mary Magdalene in disguise, so to speak.

Then it occurred to me that Dan Brown's latest novel, The Lost Symbol, was due out in October. And so the theme of the film fell into place, and the film became a sort of unofficial tribute to the literary works of Dan Brown, specifically, the Robert Langdon novels.

The film begins with the Victoria Memorial, the pre-eminent, iconic monument to the British Empire in India (Calcutta being the capital city of that empire). What struck me was the uncanny resemblance the marble-domed building bears to the US Capitol building, which features prominently in Brown's latest book, The Lost Symbol.

It's also striking that at the pinnacle of the marble dome of the Victoria Memorial is perched the mysterious figure of a graceful angel. This provided a segue to the second phase of the film, which echoes Dan Brown's first Robert Langdon novel, Angels and Demons, in which Langdon visits the churches of Rome, following clues provided by statues of angels in the city to lead him to the secret hideaway of the Illuminati, the secret society that features prominently in the novel. Similarly, my film recounts my own visit to a couple of the major Anglican churches in the city of Calcutta, with images of angels (in effigy, sculpture, carving and painting) figuring prominently at each of the sites.

My film arrives at its climactic moment with the shot of the painting of The Last Supper in St. John's Church, bringing to mind Dan Brown's most famous and successful novel, The DaVinci Code.

I then round out the film with shots of a few monuments in the vicinity of St. John's Church. The first is the so-called "Black Hole" monument—an obelisk-like edifice featuring the image of an angel on its dedicatory plaque. The monument commemorates a tragic event in colonial history, in which the Islamic Nawab (ruler) of Bengal supposedly incarcerated British and Anglo-Indian prisoners of war under such brutal conditions that a majority of them died from suffocation, heat exhaustion and crushing. This event subsequently was used as a major item of propaganda by the British Empire to justify its continued presence and its own brutally repressive practices in India.

The film ends with images of the mausoleum to Job Charnock, the founder of modern Calcutta, and the Rohila War monument, both also at the site of St. John's Church.

After completing an edited cut of the film to my satisfaction, I began work on the soundtrack. After scouring through any number of potential musical scores, I settled on an excerpt from Antonin Dvořák's Symphony No. 8 as the musical backdrop to the Victoria Memorial segment, as it truly captures the nostalgic old-world flavor of the bygone days of the British Empire. I then excerpted segments from Handel's Messiah and some haunting Gregorian Chants performed by the Benedictine Monks of St. Michael's for the remainder of my film. All the symphonic pieces were performed by the Peabody Concert Orchestra. All music used in the film is in the public domain.

I had a pretty interesting experience making this film and I hope that the subtleties are not lost to the viewer! Inspired by the symbolism of the Dan Brown novels, I have included a number of visual puzzles in the film to enhance the viewing experience and make the films a bit more interesting and entertaining to watch. I was also pretty awestruck by the way the Gregorian Chants so effectively and beautifully captured the solemnity of the ambiance inside the churches and the way the third segment from Handel's Messiah so brilliantly complements the scene in which one of the church's junior ushers turns on the lights at the altar of St. John's church, illuminating the magnificent frescoes on the wall behind the altar.

Horizon Cybermedia sincerely hopes that the film provides an enriching cultural experience to the viewer, both in terms of strengthening one's Christian faith (if you happen, like myself, to be a Christian) as well as exploring the cultural diversity of the multifaceted nation of India. Check back soon for the next film in our Exploration series which visits the ski resorts of Big Bear Lake, CA in the mountains of the San Bernadino National Forest. Meanwhile, do check out the current film on Calcutta at our website, http://www.explorationtheseries.com.

Wishing you the very best,

Uday Gunjikar,
Founder and CEO,
Horizon Cybermedia, Inc.

The War on Terror: A Triumph of Midget Minds

I've been watching the news lately and shaking my head in disbelief. How did the US go from being the most advanced nation on earth to the levels of absurdity we see in the news these days in a matter of a few short years?

Then it occurs to me—the War on Terror is what happened to us. It has become an excuse for the most outrageous madness ever conceived by man on an ongoing basis.

If you have any intelligence at all, you have got to wonder, "who are those terrorist extremists and where did they come from?" By the same token, one wonders, "who are those bureaucrats who are constantly raising terrorist threat levels and waging war against the terrorists, and where did they come from?" Who are these fruitcakes and, more significantly, why do we give them so much importance in our day-to-day lives?

The reality is that they are two opposite sides of the exact same coin—two facets of the same brain-dead mentality. In fact, one might even wonder whether the whole war on terror is some sort of mutually agreed-upon strategy amongst all the brain-dead, unimaginative authoritarians in the world, on different sides of the aisle, to hold all the creative, imaginative, productive members of society hostage to their inane agendas.

Basically, think about it—the average terrorist is a brain-dead lowlife who is encouraged not to think for themselves and blindly to obey and follow the (insane) dictates of their superiors. Similarly, the average bureaucrat is also a mindless authoritarian, lacking in imagination or the capacity for creative thinking, and encouraged blindly to obey the authorities and follow the orders of their superiors. Frankly, I would not be surprised if, when peace finally does come to Iraq and Afghanistan, the very same people who were once terrorists for Al Quaeda and the Taliban will get hired as bureaucrats in the emerging political systems in those countries. And they will probably do just great at their new jobs—because both professions require pretty much the same mindset and mentality, namely, brain-dead lack of imagination and total subservience to figures of authority.

So the question on my mind is: "When will the rest of us finally wise up to this con game being perpetrated on us? When will the productive members of society—the truly creative, imaginative thinkers and doers—finally hold the brain-dead, unimaginative, authoritarian crowd accountable for the crimes that they have perpetrated and continue to perpetrate on the rest of us? Or do we just sit back and allow this shameful con game to continue indefinitely—terrorism on the one hand and human rights violations on the other hand?"

Horizon Cybermedia is dedicated to expanding our minds through art and culture—to awakening us from the stupor that is, apparently, sucking us into a never-ending, mindless cycle of retributive violence—and enabling us to appreciate the finer things in life.

Check out our website at http://www.explorationtheseries.com for our ongoing film series, Exploration with Uday Gunjikar. The current episode visits the Wine Country of Sonoma, CA and the next episode visits the Christian monuments in the city of Calcutta, India.

Wishing you the very best,

Uday Gunjikar,
Founder and CEO,
Horizon Cybermedia, Inc.

Obamacare = Voodoo Medicine?

President George H.W. Bush coined the phrase "voodoo economics" to refer to Reaganomics during his initial Presidential run. By the same token, would it be fair to refer to the Obama Healthcare Plan as "voodoo medicine?" The difference is that I don't mean this figuratively—I mean it literally!

Normally, I never talk about political issues in my blog—I prefer to keep it clean of politics. However, this time it's personal—this time I make an exception.

For the past 3-4 days, I have been pretty much immobilized by a mysterious stabbing pain in my right side, around the hip region—almost as though some voodoo practitioner or witchdoctor somewhere were sticking a pin into an effigy of me on their dresser. Only the other day, I was doing fine—working out at the gym and doing my best to stay in shape. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, comes this mysterious, agonizingly painful stabbing pain.

Now, sure, I don't have any hard evidence to substantiate my claim and it may well come across as a facetious or ludicrous charge to make. But not so when it feels like a massive pin is sticking into your side!

Consider the timing—this is the big weekend when President Obama launches his media blitz to drum up support for his healthcare plan. What better way to ensure support than by using voodoo rituals to create phantom ailments amongst the unsuspecting members of the public?

Also, a recent Fox News exposé by a junior correspondent posing as a pimp revealed some pretty unsavory practices engaged by Acorn, the voter registration group affiliated with the Obama administration. This only proves that the Obama White House is connected with some extremely unsavory, low-life characters. Who's to say that there isn't some secret cabal of voodoo practioners and witchdoctors using voodoo or other blood rituals to promote the Obama agenda?

Now normally, I am a pretty rational guy with a scientific mode of thinking. But it's hard to be rational or scientific when you have this massive stabbing pain in your side! I don't know much about voodoo or demonic rituals—but I have heard some pretty bizarre stories in my time! It is never my aim to promote superstition, but, then again, who knows?

So, in short, I do not believe that the ends justify the means. Whatever the merits of Obamacare might be, I personally draw the line at the use of voodoo to promote political agendas (if it can be proven as such). There needs to be an ethics investigation into the practices of the Obama administration and their supporters in order to determine how far these people are willing to go to support their political agendas.

On that note, I hope I never have to discuss politics in my blog ever again!

Meanwhile, do check out my website http://www.explorationtheseries.com for my ongoing film series, Exploration with Uday Gunjikar. The latest episode visits the Wine Country of Sonoma, CA, and the next episode visits the Christian monuments of the city of Calcutta, India.

Wishing you the very best,

Uday Gunjikar,
Founder and CEO,
Horizon Cybermedia, Inc.

Networked Chaos: Mob Rule in the 21st Century

In many ways, the internet is like the American Wild West—a world of amazing possibilities and the alluring promise of overnight wealth and success. On the other hand, the West was notorious for its lynch mobs and rough justice. It was a dangerously unpredictable and unstable world in which, typically, only the most ruthless survived and innocent lives were, only too often, brutally trampled upon and destroyed.

The intoxicating freedom of information exchange and communication afforded by the internet has only brought mob rule and demagoguery to the 21^st Century—the very problems that all democratic societies have tried to combat since time immemorial through the creation of democratic institutions that seek to ensure freedom and justice to the citizens of a democratic republic, while curtailing mass hysteria and overreaction and the tendency towards demagoguery and despotism.

In the internet age, however, the reality is, all-too-often, pretty harsh, and the seamy, ugly side of life—the side that would otherwise be buried and hidden away—is given a means of access to the mainstream and emerges to the surface. It is a world of networked mob rule, which implies networked lynch mobs, networked witch hunts and networked secret societies and organizations with hidden socio-political agendas. In that sense, it is a reflection of the dangerous real world—but what makes it so terrifying is that the ease and immediacy of online communications invite us to confront the grim realities of life on a daily basis even in the intimate, secure surroundings of our homes. The same ease of access and communication that offers everyone the egalitarian promise of a voice in a networked world and age, also provides the means for the truly dangerous and evil elements of our society to gain access to the mainstream and to create a dangerous, unstable environment for all. It is an environment in which the distortion and misrepresentation of information is only too often the norm and in which minor errors and misstatements can often provoke a disastrous cascading effect that ruins innocent lives. To say nothing of the prevalence of gambling and porn sites online.

The cliché is that the internet is "self-regulating"—but the internet is a reflection of the real world, and "self-regulation" in the real world essentially means mob rule. The question is, what is the tradeoff between the freedom of ease-of-access made possible by networked technologies and the dangerous, unstable environment that it often brings about? I guess the only answer is that the internet needs to create its own institutions to ensure safety and validity of information while still enabling freedom and ease of access.

Horizon Cybermedia was started with the aspiration of becoming one such media institution on the internet frontier. We are about creating quality digital media content that does not pander to the lowest common denominator of taste and standards but, instead, aspires to quality and the highest of standards.

Check us out online at http://www.explorationtheseries.com for our ongoing film series, Exploration with Uday Gunjikar. The next episode takes the viewer to the city of Calcutta, India and to a tour of the amazing Christian monuments of the city.

Wishing you the very best,

Uday Gunjikar,
Founder and CEO,
Horizon Cybermedia, Inc.

Foresight: A Clarification

In a prior blog post, I talked about demythologizing Hindu iconography in an attempt to try to get to the core of what the symbols or icons of the culture represent and, thereby, to clarify their originary meaning. This deserves further explanation, so here goes:

My ideas as stated here would probably be considered controversial in the world of Hindu academia, but I'm not going to make any attempt to address any such potential controversy. Also, I'm speaking pretty much as a layman in the field of cultural anthropology, so I make no claims to expertise or qualifications in the field—I'm only stating my ideas as I see them purely from a layman's perspective.

Basically, looking back at the last several centuries of Hindu culture, I think that the original sense of what the iconography and mythology represented has been lost, perhaps even distorted and corrupted, by thousands of years of cultural aggregation and, possibly, miscommunication. So icons representing certain ideas originally have very possibly been distorted over time to represent something completely different thousands of years later. Myths, originally conveyed via an archaic oral tradition, were probably only first written down several centuries following their original composition, so that the original stories constituting the myths were probably distorted over time and came to include several additional fables and folklore that were missing from the original work. It would probably be an academic exercise in and of itself to attempt to extract the original mythology from the subsequent add-ons, and I'm not about to take on that enterprise given my own limited expertise in the field!

However, the point I made in the prior post was about the Hindu icon of the "third eye" and what it came to represent over time as opposed to my interpretation of what it probably signified originally. The point I made was that in present-day Hindu philosophy, the "third eye" represents clairvoyance or psychic abilities or the mind-expanding effect of hallucinogenic substances and narcotics. However, I think that this meaning is a corruption of what it probably originally signified, way back in the beginning of Vedic Indian history.

"Reverse-engineering" backwards to what might originally have been the Vedic culture in whose milieu the war of Kurukshetra was probably fought and, subsequently, recounted in Sanskrit verse, I think that the symbology of the "third eye" and the tilak or mark on the forehead probably represented something closer to simple foresight on the battlefield. One has to keep in mind that the philosophy articulated in the epic poem The Mahabharata was linked with a martial context—a philosophy of the battlefield, in which the mentor tries to motivate his pupil into war. So it seems to me to make sense that the iconography of the "third eye" should fit into this context—rather than referring to mysticism or clairvoyance, as a superficial reading might suggest, it seems to make more sense to me that it refers to the ability to foresee or anticipate the enemy's moves on the battlefield and react accordingly, as a product of years of intensive skill and training.

Think of a Grandmaster chess player and their ability almost to read their opponent's mind and foresee their moves several moves in advance, strategizing their own game accordingly. Or think of the expert swordsman or fencer, and their ability to foresee and foreshadow their opponent's moves ahead of time and react almost instantaneously, even preemptively, on occasion. Or think of the highly skilled and experienced matador, and their ability to foresee and anticipate the brutish movements of the bull and react accordingly before zeroing in for the kill. Or think of the highly trained and experienced athlete and their ability to anticipate and out-think their opponent on the field or court. Again, this ability comes from expertise in one's skill and from years of training and experience. It's not really a psychic ability, but, rather, the ability to view circumstances holistically and to respond proactively based on an unconscious extrapolation into the future (I hope that makes sense).

I think that that's closer to what the iconography of the "third eye" probably represented in its original form and it became corrupted over time into representing something quite different, namely clairvoyance or mysticism. However, if one strips away the distortions that have accrued over centuries and returns to original core of the mythology, I think the context reveals the original meaning of the myths and icons much more vividly and clearly. However, I must note, that this is all hypothetical—in no way do I have the academic credentials in the field to back up my statements! All I can say is that such a reading of the myths and icons makes sense to me!

Myths and icons are a fascinating subject in and of themselves, and the puzzle of getting to their originary meanings is a worthy subject of study, because they meant so much to the cultures they sprang from, and continue to mean a lot to the society of the present day. I guess it is a worthwhile effort trying to understand exactly what they represented back when they were originally conceived and how their meaning might have changed or transformed over time.

Horizon Cybermedia, as a part of our ongoing film-making project, attempts to make sense of the mass of cultural icons that have come down to us over the ages from bygone cultures and civilizations. Rather than dismiss them offhand, I think it is a worthwhile effort to try and understand them and the histories associated with them. Meanwhile, do check out our website at http://www.explorationtheseries.com for our ongoing film series, Exploration with Uday Gunjikar.

Wishing you the very best,

Uday Gunjikar,
Founder and CEO,
Horizon Cybermedia, Inc.

The Myth of Self-Reliance

In his revolutionary book, Thus Spake Zarathustra, the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche argued the case for a form of radical, heroic self-reliance centering around a figure that he called the Übermensch—the "Overman" or "Superman." He articulates some powerful and extremely virile ideas rooted in a radical departure from the bourgeois Christianity of his day, which he considered to be steeped in complacency. Instead, he argued for complete individualism to a radical degree.

Now these are some powerful ideas and, I will not deny, that they are profound in their implications. The concept of radical individualism is appealing—almost hypnotically so—especially in the context of the Classical Greek mythology and philosophy by which it is largely inspired. I am the first to submit that Nietzsche, in his works, presents us with some powerful ideas, inspiring us to question all that we usually take for granted and come up with new values, new ideas and a new mode of thinking as a departure from stale conventionalism.

In fact, Nietzsche's thinking goes to the extreme of advocating total atheism in the context of its credo of self-reliance and individualism. "God is dead," he declares, in the person of his fictional prophet, Zarathustra—which is to say, forget about Divine intervention—do it yourself and be the self-reliant individualist. Again, this thinking is especially appealing to the individualists among us, myself included, who aim to be fiercely independent and self-reliant in our attitude.

But, in the end, sooner or later, one has to confront reality. The reality that, as human beings, we are pretty insignificant creatures in the face of the forces of nature. Even the strongest and greatest among us is, ultimately, no match for the blind forces of nature, in their unbelievable, arbitrary destructive power.

Forget about total self-reliance—it is a myth. In the face of the blind forces of nature, what one truly discovers is how fragile the human condition really is and our need for one another and total dependence on the grace of God. As seen in the movie Deliverance, nature humbles us into acknowledging our need for God—to be unaware of that fact is to be self-deceived. The depth of our reliance upon God is absolute—we cannot exist apart from the will of God. This is the credo of Biblical Christianity and it is up to each of us to discover for ourselves whether or not it is factual.

All I can say is that, in the course of my life, at any given stage, any number of things could go wrong. The idea that any of us have any significant degree of control over our destinies is a myth. It is only too easy for some calamity to claim any of our lives, whether it happens to be a natural disaster like a Tsunami in south-east Asia; a man-made disaster like the flooding in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, or a financial disaster like the recent collapse of Wall Street. Our lives are so fragile, in retrospect, that apart from Divine intervention, none of us really stands a chance! Our only hope is total reliance on God in the person of Jesus Christ—anything else is, ultimately, self-deception.

This may sound insensitive to someone who is facing financial ruin or the loss of a home caused by one of any number of calamities we face every day worldwide—but I have come to believe that it is the only reality in the end. Our lives as human beings are so fragile that apart from Divine intervention, none of us stands a chance! In that sense, self-reliance is, ultimately, a myth—no one can truly be totally self-reliant—we are, as human beings, dependent upon one another for our survival and co-existence and, ultimately, dependent on God for every breath of air that we breathe.

Horizon Cybermedia humbly and gratefully acknowledges our total dependence on the grace of God, in the person of Jesus Christ, for our continued existence as a new media company and we can only hope that our success is blessed by Divine agency. We invite you to share in our ongoing adventures across the world that we hope to continue to bring to you. Check http://www.explorationtheseries.com, our website, for the latest film in our Exploration series on the stunning vistas of the Wine Country of Sonoma County, Ca., and check back again soon for the next film in our series on the magnificent Christian monuments in the city of Calcutta, India.

Wishing you the very best,

Uday Gunjikar,
Founder and CEO,
Horizon Cybermedia, Inc.

Depth Perception: Deciphering Hindu Iconography

The iconography of the Hindu culture and religion can be pretty bizarre and terrifying. Having grown up in India, I have found parts of it to be downright confusing, personally. Take, for example, the concept of the "third eye." In Hinduism, supposedly, the "third eye" is considered to be a symbol of clairvoyance, enlightenment or a higher level of consciousness or awareness. In the Vedic Indian tradition, ascetics were supposed to spend years of solitude in the wilderness meditating in silence, until they achieved this so-called "heightened consciousness" or "heightened awareness." In fact, some scholars read this as referring to the "mind-expanding" or "mind-altering" effect of hallucinogens and narcotics such as soma, whose use is referred to in the Hindu text, the Rig Veda.

In the Hindu tradition, as a matter of fact, many devoted Hindus wear a mark on the forehead called a tilak to symbolize the "third eye"—and this is especially true of weatherbeaten Hindu ascetics, who wear an especially pronounced tilak on the forehead. Here is an image of actor Harrison Ford wearing a tilak on his forehead in the 1984 film Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, a film which, incidentally, distorts Indian culture to the point of caricaturing, parodying and demonizing it pretty severely.

Now these interpretations of the concept of the "third eye" may well be true—I don't consider myself to be a scholar of Sanskrit texts or an expert on the Hindu tradition. I guess my understanding of the culture and tradition of my homeland is, in that sense, pretty limited and superficial. Having been educated primarily in the western tradition, I guess my thinking is far more pragmatic. I personally see that as a good thing in some ways because it enables me to view the iconography of the culture with a more holistic, dispassionate eye rather than get lost in its symbolism, which is only too easy to do. This can lead to confusion and misinterpretation and even, ultimately, to confused hostility towards the culture and tradition.

So thinking about it pragmatically, what does the iconography of the "third eye" refer to? I was reflecting on this concept recently, along with the concept of the illusory and transient nature of reality as described in the epic poem, the Mahabharata, with an eye towards demythologizing and clarifying these ideas so as to try to get to the core of what they represent.

Then it occurred to me that in his epic poem, the Odyssey, Homer relates a sequence wherein Odysseus (or Ulysses, in Latin) lands upon an island in the course of his voyages and is taken hostage, along with many of his men, by a gigantic cannibalistic Cyclops named Polyphemus. They are only able to escape with their lives secretly by blinding the one-eyed creature—which is to say, rendering the creature completely blind, whereas previously, its vision was already pretty limited, as it had only one eye.

So it got me thinking—what was Homer talking about here, in the metaphorical language of mythology? What does it mean to have only one eye as opposed to two eyes? The answer is pretty obvious when you think about it—if you have only one eye, you have no depth perception. You see the world as flat and two-dimensional. We have depth perception because we have stereoscopic vision—two eyes. It is the difference between watching a movie on a flat screen and watching the same movie in 3D—a huge difference. So, with no eyes, we are completely blind and cannot see the world at all. With one eye, we see the world as two-dimensional. With a second eye, we can perceive three dimensions—we have depth perception.

So what about the metaphorical, figurative "third eye" of Hindu mythology? If we go strictly by the logic of progression, it must mean being able to see the world as four-dimensional—to being able to discern the fourth dimension, i.e. time—to be able to view the space-time continuum as a continuum.

Basically, it seems to me to refer to foresight and insight—not necessarily to clairvoyance but, rather, to the ability to see through and beyond the illusory surfaces of the world—to see beyond superficiality—and to discern hidden trends and deeper meaning. So maybe we're not talking about something as esoteric as clairvoyance or mysticism so much as a heightened ability for interpretive, deductive reasoning—to be able to discern clues and patterns in the world around us and, thereby, to extrapolate into the future and see beyond the immediacy of present experience (which is inherently illusory and transient).

In A. Conan Doyle's novel A Study in Scarlet, Sherlock Holmes is described as having an almost intuitive ability to arrive instantaneously at deductions based on the evidence presented to him—viewing a set of clues holistically and almost instantaneously arriving at a conclusion. His abilities are described as being almost clairvoyant or supernatural to the casual observer. In one sequence in the novel, Dr. Watson reads a newspaper article written, unknown to him, by Sherlock Holmes:

The writer claimed by a momentary expression, a twitch of a muscle or a glance of an eye, to fathom a man's inmost thoughts. Deceit, according to him, was an impossibility in the case of one trained to observation and analysis. His conclusions were as infallible as so many propositions of Euclid. So startling would his results appear to the uninitiated that until they learned the processes by which he had arrived at them they might well consider him as a necromancer.

"From a drop of water," said the writer, "a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other. So all life is a great chain, the nature of which is known whenever we are shown a single link of it. Like all other arts, the Science of Deduction and Analysis is one which can only be acquired by long and patient study nor is life long enough to allow any mortal to attain the highest possible perfection in it.

In the Rudolph Valentino film, The Young Rajah, in a dramatization of the battle of Kurukshetra, the film depicts Krishna applying a mark on Arjuna's forehead, which supposedly gives Arjuna the power of "second sight." This power is carried down to his descendant, Amos Judd (Valentino's character), who carries a birthmark on his forehead and possesses the uncanny ability to see into the future—to foresee events. This ties in neatly with Hindu tradition—the mark or "tilak" on the forehead worn by Hindus as a symbol or iconic representation of the mysterious "third eye."

But far from the esoteric, mystical connotations of this iconography, I think it is far more valuable and informative to think of this as representing simple foresight—being a visionary thinker—being able to see beyond surfaces and superficiality and discern hidden meaning from clues through interpretive, deductive reasoning. I think it makes much more sense, from a purely pragmatic standpoint, to interpret this iconography as such, especially in the context of the epic poem, the Mahabharata. Perhaps if more people in our world had foresight and the ability to see beyond surfaces and the immediate present, our world might be a happier place to live in and we might be wiser as individuals and collectively.

Perhaps this ability could be developed through training and exercise until it achieved the level of clarity and sophistication demonstrated by Sherlock Holmes in the literary works by Conan Doyle—approaching a level that, to the untutored eye, might appear to be mystical clairvoyance.

Horizon Cybermedia aims, as part of our agenda, to decipher and demythologize arcane ideas and iconography in order to make them comprehensible and pragmatic (though running the risk of oversimplification), in an attempt to promote understanding, acceptance and tolerance between cultures and populations. Hopefully, our efforts will yield positive results! Meanwhile, check out our website, http://www.explorationtheseries.com for our ongoing film series, Exploration with Uday Gunjikar. The current episode takes the viewer to the Wine Country of Sonoma, CA and future episodes will visit Calcutta, India and other locations worldwide!

Wishing you the very best,

Uday Gunjikar,
Founder and CEO,
Horizon Cybermedia, Inc.