Sheltering from the rain

 

 

Black Drongo

Laughing Dove

Jungle Babblers (Also called Seven Sisters since they are 

usually found to go around in groups of seven)

Arundhuti Ray's take on artificial intelligence, as described in "In what language does rain fall over tormented cities?"

 In the essay, "In what language does rain fall over tormented cities?" in her newly published book, Azadi, Arundhuti Ray notes: 

"At a book reading in Kolkata, about a week after my first novel, The God of Small Things was published, a member of the audience stood up and asked, in a tone that was distinctly hostile: "Has any writer ever written a master piece in an alien language? In a language other than his mother tongue?"

I hadn't claimed to have written a masterpiece (nor to be a "he"), but nevertheless I understood his anger towards me, a writer who lived in India, wrote in English, and who had attracted an absurd amount of attention. My answer to his question made him even angrier. "Nabakov", I said.  And he stormed out of the hall. 

The correct answer to the question today would, of course be "algorithms". Artificial Intelligence we are told, can write master pieces in any language and translate them to masterpieces in other languages. As the era that we know, and think we vaguely understand, comes to a close, perhaps we, even the most privileged amongst us, are just a group of redundant humans gathered here with an arcane interest in language generated by fellow redundants. "