Six Mantras To Create Money With Your Digital Camera

Most people have a camera - even a digital camera. I put it like this because you have more control over the picture with a digital camera, so you have more chance of creating the image that you want and this is important if you would like to sell your efforts.

Pet Portraits: numerous people like to have portraits of their beloved cat or dog. These photos are not a problem to take, because animals are so photogenic. There are a number of ways you could play this or you could have a number of different alternatives, all at different rates

Mantra One: six photographs of kitty in different situations on a CD

Mantra Two: as above, but with the client's favourite digital photograph printed out and framed. You would offer a choice of sizes and frames at different prices here.

Mantra Three: as option one, but with an oil painting of the favourite picture again in different sizes and frames

You could use a printing service for option two until you can afford to purchase your own printer. The oil paintings you can have done in the Far East from photos.

Graduation Photos: are very much appreciated by parents and grandparents and once again, you could offer at least three different options. Graduation photographs are a good concept because not everyone goes to their nearest college or university and parents cannot always be there.

Picture Editing: numerous people have a digital camera or a cell phone that takes photographs, but not everybody has a computer, or editing software or knows how to use it if they do have it. You could edit, crop, brighten and frame their amateurish photos and create a nice CD photo album.

You could offer to create several themed photo albums from a jumble of hundreds of photos that they have collected at random during the year(s).

Photograph Presents: you could team up with a novelty gift store or a personalized gift store and turn people's favourite photos into personalized, novelty presents. Photographs, particularly digital photographs, can be transferred to almost anything these days: coffee mugs, beer mats, coasters, T-shirts, postcards, calendars, pens, ties, you name it.

Framed Photos: places like waiting rooms, front offices, pubs and restaurants like to have tasteful pictures on the wall. You could offer a set of photos on a theme to every establishment according to what they want. A construction firm might like photos of the board and of their best jobs (most likely they are still standing).

Pub landlords often move around a fair bit, so they could have a set of photographs of taverns they have owned. Or a series of photographs of the current pub, with some historical captions.

Prized Photos: many individuals with expensive possessions like photographs of them - a beautiful home, boat, car or model. Go to the local marina, drive down an expensive street or go to an enthusiasts club meeting (go-kart racing, radio controlled models). Go to bouts or local fashion shows and offer photos to contestants or models.

Technology wizard

www.infotechwizard.com

The Tech World Top 10 Gadgets

The year 2011 is only eight months old and its getting more exciting with every new gadget coming out, but till now, the tech-world has already given us many gadgets this year to be cherished for the long run. Some are yet selling for their good demand, some showed technology inventions, some turned out to be extra-ordinarily brilliant. From them, here are the best 10 picked products of the year: which you can't afford to miss. Have a look.

1. iPad 2: As you all know, iPad 2 is sure to occupy the best yet launched product of this year (until iPhone 5 peps up this September to change the charts). It's the most happening tablet of this year sporting a.7 inch IPS display along with A5 dual core processor makes it definitely the coolest gadget on the block. Sleek, thin and ultra efficient-what else do you want.

2. Samsung Galaxy S II: This also deserves a no later mention than the iPad 2, almost a year after Galaxy S made a debut and dazzled the world with a premium take on Android, Samsung finally came up with its successor. Yet to arrive in U.S. the phone sports a gorgeous display, future-proof hardware, superb video playback capabilities and plasticky build.

3. Amazon Kindle eBook Reader (Wi-Fi): The gadget uses its wireless internet connectivity to allow its users to browse, read and shop online for e-books, newspapers, magazines, and other media. The third-generation Kindle's winning combination of noteworthy upgrades-an improved screen, better battery life, lighter weight, and lower price-vaults it to the top of the e-book reader category.

4. Samsung 9 Series Laptop: The 13-inch Series 9 packs an impressive Intel i5 processor and 4GB of RAM, plus USB 3 connectors and built-in WiMax and a "Durolumin" alloy shell that Samsung claims is several times stronger than aluminum. Samsung produces much of the memory used in SSDs, so unsurprisingly, the Series 9 has a built in solid-state drive that boots Windows 7 in just 12 seconds. The design also is far sleeker than the Air, the price, however, is less sleek, at $1600.

5. Intel 2nd Generation Core Processors ("Sandy Bridge"): 2011 is the year of the fully integrated processor. Intel has done a total redesign of their Core processor architecture, integrating graphics processing onto the CPU chip and seamlessly distributing tasks across processors to deliver a 40 to 50 percent increase in performance for tasks such as transcoding and gaming. Also, with Intel's Turbo Boost technology, individual cores can automatically overclock themselves when multiple cores are not in use.

6. Sony 3D Bloggie MHS-FS3 Camcorder: Previous generations of Sony's Bloggie were decent takes on the Flip style of dead-simple, web-worthy camcorders. Now, the Bloggie 3D one-ups the entire category, retaining the slim profile and pop-out USB arm, while shooting 3D HD video with two lenses. The display is a 2.4-in. glasses-free 3D screen, which is fun, but the real story here is price. At $250, consumers can dip a toe into the supposed 3D revolution. Even if it fizzles, they'll still have an 8GB pocket camcorder that shoots 2D just fine.

7. AMD Fusion: The product of AMD's acquisition of graphics processor maker ATI in 2006, this integration of CPU and graphics processing technology on a single die allows computers that would previously have required discrete graphics processors to run high-powered gaming applications and HD video with a single-chip solution. The Fusion platform also delivers massive power savings relative to performance, giving laptops all-day battery life without compromise.

8. Samsung LED 8000 Series TV: There's a lot to like about Samsung's 8000 Series LED TV-it's LED backlit, 3D-capable, and packed with services and apps people might actually use, such as Skype and Facebook. What we love about it is the stunning industrial design. Samsung's engineers whittled the bezel down to just 0.2-in, increasing screen size without increasing the overall footprint, and creating a picture that's more otherwordly portal than TV monitor. The series will be available this in 46-in., 55-in. and 65-in. sizes, starting at $2800.

9. Microsoft Avatar Kinect: Avatar Kinect will be a free update for Xbox Live Gold members that uses the sensor to track facial expressions as well as body movements, then use those to animate your on-screen Xbox avatar. Avatar Kinect will also have several virtual "sets" in which Xbox Live users can gather with their avatars (sports desk, lawn chair circle). These environments could prove to be Second Life-style novelties, but the facial tracking technology has some serious potential. Consider that movie digital effects crews spend millions to accomplish the type of motion capture that Microsoft has managed to pull off with a $150 accessory.

10. Motorola Xoom: The year 2011 is definitely a year of tablets. So the device which got the sixth position on the list is the Motorola Xoom Android tablet. The tablet is light and thin and features 1 GHz processor on a 10.1 wide screen display. This device has two cameras and looks extremely sleek and is a very powerful multitasking machine.

Geotagging mantras

It sounds like a futuristic sci-fi fantasy. But the future is here.
The photos and videos that you take with your smartphone and then post online may be revealing your location to anyone who views the photo. It's called geotagging


What is Geotagging?


Geotagging is the process of adding geographical information to a photo, video, website or RSS feed. This information reveals your exact longitude and latitude when the picture was taken. Often the tagging is done using geo-coordinates and GPS or global positioning system data.
Is it accurate? Absolutely. The geotags can identify location within a meter of where the photo was taken.



Metadata: What it is and Why You Should Care


The data that is being embedded in the pictures is called metadata. Metadata is hidden information not readily seen by the normal viewer.
But with some simple technology (available online), this information is easily captured and read. Online software can scan the photos and produce the embedded coordinates. Once the coordinates are noted, Google street maps offer a convenient way to pinpoint exact addresses and street views.
Not every phone embeds the metadata in the photos and videos, but many do. The phone must have a built-in GPS in order to add geotags to photos.


Legitimate Uses for Geotagging


This technoloty can be helpful for some people. For example, law enforcement officers who are solving crimes or getting help to those who need it may depend on it. Further, photographers find it useful as they catalogue and systematize their work.




A Criminal's Dream


But dangers of geotagging lurk all around.
The implications for security are staggering. Many people don't think twice about snapping a picture of the kitchen table they have for sale and posting it on Craigslist. Or the expensive jewelry they are trying to sell. But if the camera they are using is tagging the photos, any thief can learn the precise location of seller's home and help himself to the items. If the seller has also listed the best times to be reached by phone, the thief now also has an idea of when the home might be empty.
Stalking is also a real danger when it comes to geotagging. Twitter photos, Facebook photos, and casual snapshots on blogs can all give stalkers information about their victims-where they live, what their favorite restaurants are, where they shop, etc. In essence, it is like leaving a digital trail to be analyzed and followed. A quick scan with software and a comparison with Google street maps is all it takes. The result? Address and street view.


Turn it Off


Some people don't mind their information being public. But others do. If you are among those who do not want their photos tagged with geographical coordinates, you can turn it off.
The settings can be changed on any phone that embeds this metadata. Why is it turned on in the first place? Perhaps when the phone was purchased, the salesperson didn't mention the feature, or if she did, the implications of having it activated weren't immediately obvious.
Some of the phones that have this feature include:
• iPhone
• Blackberry
• Palm
• Google Android
To turn off this feature, navigate to settings, and then find an option that is titled something similar to "location," "location services," or "GPS." With some phones, this feature may have to be turned off multiple times as it is associated with different applications.
If you would like to learn more about disabling geotagging on your phone, Ben Jackson and Larry Pesce can help. They provide detailed instructions on their website. Visit http://icanstalku.com/how.php


Protect Yourself


Search for disabling software. There are software programs available for download right to your iPhone that will scan your outgoing information for geotags and then remove it.
If you have images stored on Flicker that you suspect might have location information embedded, you can do a batch GPS delete. Choose the photos that you want to edit, and then from the location menu, select 'change geoprivacy,' and then 'remove map information.'
Do your friends post pictures of you online? If so, be aware that their cameras and phones might be embedding location information as well.
Geotagging can be helpful and lifesaving technology. But in the wrong hands, it is dangerous. You can stay safe by being aware of its presence and by being in control of your own information

Human Machine Interface Mantra

A Human Machine Interface or HMI is the graphical display that represents a machine, process, or facility so that the user can easily, intuitively control and monitor the status of such a system.

A simple machine will require a simple interface for the user and not require a HMI. A few indicator lights, some push buttons and switches will be all that is needed to operate a simple machine, say one that presses parts into a casting of some sorts. To quickly give you an idea of what the lights and push buttons would do, is to inform the operator that a part was in place and ready for the next step along the line to a finished piece. The operator would know now the machine is ready, add another component to the part and push the appropriate button to begin the next action.

 Way before there where the great colour displays of today, a panel (metal, plastic or even wood) would be created and imprinted with a simplified version of the actual process. At key points on this panel, holes would be drilled and indicators and pilot lights installed. This panel would be mounted on the wall and the panel for the switchgear such as push buttons and selector switches, mounted below. Typically placed at desk height to allow the operator to control the machine or process.

Keep in mind that the Human Machine Interface is just...well... an interface. What I mean is that the real control and intelligence is handled by a controller, usually a PLC, although integrated HMI/PLCs are available. The HMI sends a request for an action by a graphic push button pressed by the operator to the controller. In turn an action is performed though the intelligence programmed into the controller and the machine actual producing the action. The PLC through sensors placed on the machine can send this status to the HMI.

 The HMI can be a self-contained touch screen device made specifically to be used with a particular brand of PLC or controller. While others are more universal and can be used with many controllers since they have most communication protocol included or communication drivers available. Usually, you will see these mounted right on the enclosure door of a control cabinet. The HMI is also the user's front end to a SCADA system's controls and databases. Essentially SCADA is the top level of control of a network of PLCs controlling a large, complex process.

Other HMIs make use of a software package and adapter for a common PC. The adapter card is inserted into the PC to enable connection to a specific communication medium and protocol of the control system. Depending on the supplier and the power and complexity, the software package will contain a development system and run-time license. In this way a developer can have one system for creating the design of the HMI and multiple less costly run-time licenses for use on every machine.

 Good design is necessary to obtain the most benefit from a Human Machine Interface. The Screens that are created, how they are laid out and how it all flows together can make a huge difference. Generally a Main Screen, Overview screen for each main area or system, a Current Alarms and Alarms History screen are a good start. The Overview screen will provide access to more detailed sub screens through a grouping of push buttons and/or logical drill down points on the Overview screen. Easy navigation to and from connected processes is necessary as well as to the main screens.

Choosing the correct graphics from the included library and creating your own is important for depicting your machine or process so that operator will learn quickly and not become confused.

 The included graphic libraries have cool looking indicators, push-buttons, meters, numerical displays, tanks, piping, valves, motors, blowers, etc.

Creating a great HMI is part art, part engineering, and part psychology. A thorough understanding of the process is necessary and it can be quite a bit fun, especially for the creative types among us.

 Search Amazon.com for HumanMachine Interface

Mantras for New Bloggers.

Mantra # 1.

 What is your blog about?

Many first-time visitors will want to find an About page to learn more about the blog. Your blog should not only include an About page, but it should also be very easy for visitors to find. Using descriptive categories for your posts can also help new visitors to see the focus of your blog.


Mantra # 2.

 How can I subscribe?

Visitors should never have to struggle to subscribe. Make it as easy as possible by placing subscription links in prominent places and by using commonly recognized icons. Many blogs, including this one, also use a message included in each post to encourage subscribers (mine appears just above the post). You should also offer an email subscription as many visitors will still prefer to use email, and in non-technical industries readers may not even be aware of RSS.

Mantra # 3.

What is your best work?

It’s a good idea to display your best or most popular content somewhere that will allow new visitors to easily find it. This can be done in a few different ways. This blog includes a “Popular Posts” section in the sidebar that I manually update with links to posts that are reader favorites. There are also a number of Word Press plug-in that will automate the process for you, but then you won’t have complete control over which posts are included. I also like the method used at CourtneyTuttle.com. Court has 3 boxes that appear above every post that include links to several posts that new readers are likely to want to read.

Mantra # 4.

How can I contact you?

Some readers will have a question or comment that they want to send to you privately rather than leaving a comment on a blog post. If this is the case, they will want to find a contact page that allows them to do just that. There are also a number of different plugins to accomplish this, one of them from Douglas Karr.

Mantra # 5.

What else do you have to offer?

Many blogs now are more than just blogs. An example is Blogging Tips, which also offers forums and a marketplace that lets users post and search for services. Another example is the job board at ProBlogger, which is one of the best places for bloggers to find paid positions. Offering something in addition to the blog can be a great way to encourage repeat traffic and draw inbound links as you make your blog a more valuable resource to readers.

Mantra # 6.

Is the blog regularly updated and current?

As you know, there are thousands, probably even millions, of abandoned blogs out there. Before visitors will subscribe, they may want to know that you add new content on a regular basis. One of the easiest ways to show that you are current is to include the date on your posts. Of course, if they come in through an older post they will see an older date, but if they are interested in the blog and want to see how up-to-date it is, all they will have to do is go to the front page and check out the publication date of your latest post.

Mantra # 7.

Why should I care about you?

Try not to assume that your new visitors will be familiar with your or your blog. In many cases you will have to prove your worth. If you have a decent number of subscribers, consider displaying your numbers through the FeedBurner feed count. When a new visitor arrives and sees a large subscriber count they will often assume that your blog must be a quality resource if you have built that amount of subscribers.
Some blogs also display Technorati Rank or Alexa Rank which can also help to show visitors that they should care about you. Of course, if your rankings are poor and you display them it can have the reverse effect. Another option is to include a brief author bio on the post, which is done nicely at Devlounge in the “about this author” section.

Taglines and descriptions can also be used for a similar purpose. For example, John Chow uses the tagline “The miscellaneous ramblings of a dot com mogul.” This statement serves to brand John Chow as a dot com mogul, which will ultimately make readers value his information.

Mantra # 8.

How can I find what I want?

Make an effort to keep your navigation as simple as possible. Displaying links to posts by category is done by almost every blog, and it is effective. The popular post links that were mentioned earlier also helps for this purpose. Sometimes visitors will not have a specific post that they are looking for, but they want information on a certain topic. In this situation it’s very helpful to offer a search feature. Additionally, links to all of your major pages (about, contact, etc.) should be easily found.

Mantra # 9.

What type of environment does the blog have?

Blogging is very community-oriented and visitors will often want to see an active, intelligent community. Encourage comments on your blog so that so readers get involved and new visitors can see the activity to occur. Delete spam and rude comments as they can hurt the image of your community and turn off visitors. I’m not saying that anything negative or comments that disagree with you should be deleted, but there are some comments that are unnecessarily attacking.

What other factors do you think influence the first experience that a new visitor has at your blog?

A Tribute to Great artist indian picasso Maqbool Fida Husain

I will begin my essay about the nomadic eye of Maqbool Fida Husain (known to millions of his admirers simply as M.F.Husain) by referring to his feet. This is in no way an odd or capricious decision, because what is odd for others appears to have become the norm for Husain. Husain walks barefoot--as far as I have been able to determine he does this at all times when he is in India, which is virtually most of his life. The gesture is peculiarly appropriate for the Indian painter who has come to represent for many people Indian art itself. For, in India the majority of the population goes about its daily business in unshod feet.

It will not be hard to bring to bear upon Husain’s habit of walking about on naked feet some pietistic or fatuous symbolic reading: that he commiserates with the poverty-stricken masses of India, or that he "expresses" his Indian-ness through this act of remaining in contact with the soil of India. To say so would be merely to attribute to the man qualities of mind he doubtlessly possesses; but it would inevitably obscure yet another aspect of his personality--especially his artistic personality--his ‘style’ or, more accurately, his sense of style. But, of course, style is also always an extinction of personality, a reaching beyond the accidents of identity.

Style, as the classic humanist dictum of Buffon has it, is the man (and we could do worse than emphasize the word "man," after all Buffon’s 1753 word was "l’homme"). The whole issue, clearly, operates at multiple levels. If by being barefoot Husain creates his "style" in the Western humanist sense of Buffon, then his action is not merely an expression of his personality, but nearly co-equal with it. After all, Husain is India’s most public artist, 4 and on many highly publicized occasions he has created his art working barefoot in front of large audiences, including press reporters, art critics and art lovers. Moreover, numerous photographs of such occasions, depicting the artist doing his work in bare feet, have appeared widely in the press--in turn replicating nearly ceaselessly the image of the barefoot artist in the act of creation.
 At one level, then, Husain’s barefoot "style" is a deliberately orchestrated circulation of a set image of his personality. But I wish to argue further that it is as much Husain himself, his identity, that these images broadcast as they do the "trademark" of his artistic enterprise in the postmodern economy of contemporary Indian public media. Not surprisingly, then, corresponding stories about a barefoot Husain having been denied entry into this or that snooty private club regularly feature on the front pages of newspapers and personality columns of countless news magazines in a country where the ephemeral printed word of journalism still provides significant challenge to the equally powerful and equally fleeting impact of numerous formula movies routinely churned out by film studios, especially in Bombay and Madras.
A point that is often missed by critics writing about Husain is that he operates out of probably the one country in the world that can mount a really serious challenge to the so called new imperialism of a postmodern, post-rational, fast replicating, information proliferating, media-dominated, United States of America. 5 Once the student of India, or the artist of India, learns to erase and overwrite the colonial "Orientalist" discourse of a stratified, hidebound ancient culture, she is likely to recognize--as I think Husain has clearly done--the fluid, multivalent, unsettled, ironic, absurd, and palpable vitality of the country and its multi-layered, multifaceted culture. Here ideas undergo metamorphosis rapidly while they also remain constant. And when one has cultivated the requisite rapidity of eye movement--the nomadic eye--and resulting ability of a fluid focus, one learns to look at once at many things and at one thing, to look through one thing at many things and, most importantly, to look at one object (or image) and know its unity to be as real as its possible/inherent multiplicity, its fractured wholeness, even its inscrutable absence within its undeniable presence.
Clearly, the nomadic eye, needed for such an enterprise, is also the ludic eye, or the playful eye; and that eye must be carried on restless feet--movement being the hallmark of that constantly playful gaze. Perhaps by some equation, which we can appreciate

 only by the other-than-rational logic of the postmodern, a connection exists between the unblinkered ludic eye and this artist’s unshod feet; perhaps a metaphoric equivalence prevails between a vision unencumbered by convention, and fleet feet untrammelled by the bourgeois respectability routinely associated with footwear. Husain keeps his feet out of commodities, at the same time his bare feet become valuable investment in buying him the attention of media and the public. His feet support the productions of his eyes (and hand)--his paintings, collages, drawings, serigraphs.

How does such an odd equation help? Is there a real utility here? Do bare feet help nomadic eyes? I think they do, and very significantly. The language of the nomadic eye, as it expresses itself on canvas or in print, can easily lapse into mystification and cant: the one and the many; the real and the unreal; the noumenal and the phenomenal. This is especially a problem with India and Indian matters because such mystification derives directly from the received or Orientalist "wisdom" about the country, the almost solid construction of a mystical India. The earthy and earthbound feet of Husain--almost always in view--juxtaposed with his complex real vision and allow for a necessary lapse from metaphysics: an absurdist, somewhat irreverent, descent into the terrestrial. (At the same time, the absurd is not quite absurd, the irreverence not quite irreverent.)

At any rate, Husain always stops, as T.S. Eliot said the artist of necessity must, "at the frontier of metaphysics or mysticism." The frontier is a divide, but its location is not spatial. It is a line, it is one-dimensional and lacks breadth. So, when one is at the frontier, one is at a liminal situation: no matter which side of the boundary one might be on, as long as one is at the frontier one cannot be any closer to the other side. It is a point of intersection. Husain’s art, like all credible art, gets close, whereas fastidious and cautious Reason remains apart. Instead of the solidity (stolidity?) of the modern, Husain’s art places us at the fluid frontier, at the threshold--in other words, in "India," in a rapidly reconfiguring topography that is also a rapidly recyclable topos.
Maqbool Fida Husain was born in 1915 and spent his childhood in the central Indian town of Indore. He lost his mother at the age of three, and spent his childhood and youth in considerable penury. Husain received no formal training in art. As a young man he moved to the bustling metropolitan city of Bombay--a major cultural and commercial centre of India--then as now--and while still in his teens he began his "artistic" career as a lowly paid painter of movie posters and billboards. Thus the crass vitality of oversized advertising art depicting the improbable, larger-than-life, glamour-and-adventure world of film images was able to register its imprint on the artist’s mind at a very early and crucial phase of his career.

Films, rather movies and moviedom, continue to fascinate Husain to this day. But this is no uncritical attachment, for Husain has discovered in the shifting and slippery world of movies and filmic images numerous different analogies for his projection of both a vibrant personal imagination--with its attendant contradictory and shifting demands--and (in the absence of a more appropriate term) a "postmodern" India, a country whose postmodernity is, certainly in Husain’s eyes, as old as its history. At best, the characteristics one associates with contemporary postmodern society and the art it has generated provide a somewhat convenient analogy to Husain’s sense of a trans-historical India and its qualities. Clearly, in the context of this India projected by Husain, the term "postmodern"--which does not occur in the title of my essay--must be used within quotation marks, and avoided altogether if possible. 6
To study the work of any major contemporary Indian artist we must consider issues relating to the particularity of India, not merely as another possible "case study" in the exploration of the supposedly universal notion of "postmodernity," "postcoloniality," or "nationalism." Each term needs to be problematized, its universalizing and homogenizing thrust challenged. Yet the terms cannot be entirely rejected. Whether one is dealing with Satyajit Ray’s movie "Ghorey Bairey" ("Home and Abroad") or with Husain’s long "The Raj" series of paintings--he is unique among Indian painters to have attended to this period of colonial history--one cannot entirely ignore nationalist or post-colonialist concerns. Similarly, in other contexts Husain’s paintings require us to drag in the word "postmodern."

The terms are problematic for two separate reasons. The fact that they are privileged by the power operations of western institutions (its publishing industry, its media, its universities), is only one of these. The other reason is more significant because it does not operate merely by default, and goes beyond the negative mode of the first argument, which must run something like this: because the terms are produced outside of India they are not valid in India. The second argument operates, instead, on the basis of equivalence (at the least): India is a ‘world’ in itself. Here, what comes into the "endo-world" (so to speak) from the outside world has no especially privileged status because what is generated within is at least as adequate, self-validating and appropriate. Whether this argument (or sentiment) is overtly expressed, or its validity is silently and subconsciously accepted, its presence is undeniable in the globalizing thought processes of really powerful countries and their cultures.


Although it is hard to realize this in the First World, the artists and thinkers of India--especially those who live and work in India, and have not been co-opted into the First World’s essentially alienating "visible minority" agenda--regard the world to be Indo-centric. A few other countries, too, feel that way about their own cultures but clearly not every country can do so. And, for a number of valid reasons, Indians can and often do feel that way. One reason has to do with the continuous presence of a very large number of contradictory discourses in virtually all periods of India’s recorded history. A ‘nation’ in a narrow sense--in its classic European notion of a state--cannot allow a diversity of discourses to coexist; it would have a dominant discourse (the national discourse) subordinate the others. When that does not happen, one has--in the classical view--mere chaos. Or, one might in fact be describing an entity one could call a world-state, rather than a nation-state. In India--a country that routinely frustrates theorists of "nationalism"--an entire collection of nations co-exists, not always peacefully, often chaotically, but nearly always vitally. If in this synchronic view--perceived at one point in time--India presents multiplicity and diversity of discourses, it is multi-layered in a diachronic way too. Virtually all ‘times’ seem to co-exist in India, from the pre-industrial to the post-industrial.

India is, then, in a certain sense both all world and all time. 8 In the kind of complexity India presents, all normal categories of Reason breakdown. National thought in India transcends "nationalism." The distinguished Indian political theorist, Partha Chatterjee, has argued that this transcendence is the expected result of the conflation in India of borrowed European notion of "nation" and the continuously present pre-colonial realities and particularities. 9 In another sense, this transcendent nationalism, also transcends history. Consequently, in India the premodern, the modern, and the postmodern are all co-existent. And not only are they co-existent, in each case the meaning of the specific term transcends its limited routine sense. The only exception, perhaps, is "postmodern," which, by definition, appears to rupture limit and postpone closure.
In the view I am proposing, two things happen simultaneously; and we need to understand them clearly if we are to appreciate the art of Husain. First, the creative Indian mind can adopt any view or any principle from the outside world because the world is at once outside and inside of one’s Indian-ness. Second, whatever is imported somehow also becomes native; it is possessed, co-opted, and transfigured. This will explain my hesitation with the academic expression "postmodern"--in that technical sense it can only be a borrowed concept in India. But it is not merely so. For Husain, as we will see, the postmodern has always been a felt presence in India, and the obscurity, open-endedness, and near absurdity that the term connotes can be seen evident in virtually all periods of Indian history and all aspects of its culture. The only odd exception is the officially-sanctioned ‘nationhood’ of the state, and the colonially induced modernity that to this day drives its official laws, its official science, its planned industrialization.
India’s poor assimilation into the spirit of modernity--in spite of the creditable performance of many individual Indians in the fields of education, social thought, science and technology--has been commented upon by many. The utter despair that many colonial administrators felt about their largely-failed mission to modernize the country--the notorious white man’s burden--is attested to in many chronicles of the Raj. In the arts, the profoundest statement is found in the admission made in the final words of E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India: "No, not yet," and "No, not there." In Husain’s "The Raj" paintings that encounter of cultures--the national and the modern on the one hand, and the supra-national (or non-national) and the ahistorical on the other--is depicted as utterly ineffectual; it is baffling for the colonizer, and absurd for the colonized.