FELICITY

Now & Then

2010-06-14T05:55:00.001-07:00

Every now and then
I would go back to the past
to be with you,
only to come back to the present
and find that
you are still with me.

Last Lament

2010-06-11T02:11:00.000-07:00

Just before my death, my whole life stood before me like a ghost from its tomb. Death came to me with a lantern on a boat, flowing through the river of unconsciousness, guiding me to its shore. But that light has no warmth in it, no consolation, no pity. Perhaps this IS the beginning of consciousness- the true awakening of soul.
Yes, there is no pain in the end. Just the knowledge of being. A terrible indiscernible lightness , that shrouds like a weightless hood.
For days I watched the dead being burnt at the shores. For days, I heard the cries of the widows and orphans, the shrill hoots of the vultures circling the sky , above the cry of men, some wounded asking for water, some dead, some dying, all in heaps. For days, I watched the evening sky as red as the blood soaked earth of the battleground. For days, I cringed with agony, not of my wounds, but at of knowledge of my fate, paralyzed by my own helplessness. I writhed at the juxtaposition my destiny has brought me onto.
But it will be soon over now. The arrows still stab at my chest, the heart slowly drawing in the poison, but I feel no pain now. Unlike the brief numbness of severed tissues, there is prolonged relief as last.
I know that I am dying. Just like the millions around me. Hundreds of dead and dying kings and nobles are gasping and writhing for life.
My sky is sullen and mute. Sounds are drowning in. The wall cave in around me. Yes this is the end. It must be. Yes, I am that doomed man.

My parents were poor fishermen folks. But I am no fisherman. I had the knowledge of my difference from a very young age. My parents were kind and loving, I loved them, but I knew my destiny was elsewhere. When later in life, I found out that I was adopted, it did not come as a great surprise. I figured that much out a long time ago. My parents say that they found me by the riverside one fateful morning, wearing armor and an amulet. Armor and amulet were a part of my body, they grew as I grew up. My parents said that they were lucky for me. I never took them off.
I was fascinated with the royalty from a very young age. Perhaps that was my destiny and my impending doom. For, yet again, I was drawn to politics as my fate intertwined and clashed with the fate of kings and princes. But I had no high regard for the royalty. I knew this very well, that after the game is over, both the king and the pawn went into the same box. But, I was never cut out as the pawn; I aspired to be the nobility. Even though, I was told that nobility was a birthright, not a karma. Against my parents wishes, I made friends with Duryodhan, the man who saved my life, befriended me and gave me my honor. He was to become my greatest friend and one day, my downfall. But how can I blame him for my end? He was my greatest champion and mentor. A man, who befriended me at my darkest hour, sheltered me under his cloak of royalty, so that I could get the same privileges as the royal family did. We did not always agree but we were bonded to be friends for life.
The haughty Pandavas. It is them I hated , especially Arjun, the man who thought he had conquered the universe already.
I detested and despised them, their superiority to the subservient class, to be always surrounded by sycophants, always waited upon hand and foot since childhood. My youth was spent around them, watching how as the Kuravas and Pandavas grew up, as their petty, childish squabbles became more and more serious and ultimately an ugly game of power.
And then there was Draupadi, I had seen her once in the royal palace, lissome and dark, kohl-lined eyes caught my heart like no other. But I bore the insult she gave me by refusing to marry me for being the son of a commoner just as I bore the pain of her falling in love with Arjun and subsequently the neglect she bore from him. I would have treated her like a queen, but married to five brothers she was just their bonded maid. It wrung my heart. I protested and fought with Duryodhan for the first time when they decided to shame Draupadi in public. “It is nothing personal, it is just politics” Duryodhan said to me, “ You see we have to find a reason to oust the Pandavas out of our kingdom”. But that day, when I saw Bhima swore revenge, I knew it was very very personal. And that was the end, of Kuruvangsh.
And I knew that was the end of me.
I have been rejected by not one, but two women, both I loved both I lost. I knew I was not the son of fishermen. I knew I was born nobility. But I also knew that I have been abandoned at birth. I longed for the day I shall meet my real parents, my own mother. I wanted to be accepted by her. And when it happened, it came with a price. The price of my life.
That day, in Kurukshetra, Kunti came to me, crying and admitting that she was my mother and begging for the life of Arjun, her other son.
Oh, such an agony. To be denied of love. To be denied of a name.
What else was there to live for. Nothing. I told Kunti that only one of her son would live to see tomorrow. I knew what to do. For since birth, I knew my destiny. I took off my armor and amulet and went for the battle, next day.
I knew what was coming, but I did not know that Arjun would not even give me a fair chance to fight back. OH! To be killed like a commoner, while removing my chariot from the rut into which the wheels had fallen.
But the pain receded as sun shone back from the sullen clouds. No, there was no physical pain now, just a gnawing mental agony. No, I had contemplated death, but not this kind of death. I closed my eyes and grit my teeth and let myself drown into the tumultuous thoughts that preyed on me. Demons gnawed through my vitals and searing heat of the last insult came back to scorch me. The pain was not in death. The pain was - even in death, fate has tricked me of what I deserve.
Why was I denied of a hero’s death?
Why?

Midnight Moon

2010-05-08T02:51:00.001-07:00

“Taj Mahal was intransigent in time. Except of course, environmental pollution is now eating away the marble. But the sculptures and the design is just as awesome today as it was before.”remarked Sara.
She stood at the bank of Yamuna River, holding her camera on the tripod, looking through the lens. Meera, her older sister sitting on the grass reading a book.
“Meera" she called her, " look at the Taj Mahal. It is a shame for you to read a book while you are here. "
Meera kept her book down. She stared at the Taj Mahal and involuntarily her fingers traced the outline of the structure in her mind - the bulbous dome , then the four pillars on four sides, the raised plinth. At this distance, they could see the tiny human figures near Taj, tourists from all over the world gathered in flocks.
Sara was still fixing the lens. “Excellent view from here”, she says “The sky is clear. Meera, can we wait till dark, I want to take a photograph of the Taj mahal bathed in moonlight."
"Stop taking pictures for a minute and sit beside me Sara." said Meera. " We havent really talked after I came from America.”
Sara complied, reluctantly. She spread the bed sheet on the grass sat near the banks.

The cold December sky was clear. The two sisters sat, looking at the horizon for a while, silently.
"Meera, I am thinking of getting married soon." said Sara, suddenly.
"What!!" said Meera, "What are you talking about."
"I met him at a party at my friend’s house. His name is Subir and he is a doctor at AIMS. We have known each other for almost three years now. He is graduated this year and starting his practice in Delhi. We plan to get married very soon."
“Does Ma Baba know about this? This is so abrupt.”, said Meera.
“No” said Sara, “I plan to tell them soon. No one knows Meera, I am telling you first.”
Meera and Sara were 7 apart in age. Sara was almost a child for Meera, not a younger sister. Even when she was child, Meera used to take care of her, almost like a mother.
She was going to say something, but she looked at Sara , beginning to say that their parents would never approve of a love marriage , but then she stopped.
Sara’s face was glowing with enthusiasm and happiness.
“I dont know what to say.” she shook her head. “You are grown up enough to take your own decisions.”
There was a long silence again. They stared at the River Yamuna for a while.
Sara picked up a stone and threw into the running water. The stone made a poppong sound and plunged into the stream. It was winter, the River was reduced to a narrow dry stream.
“Meera, can I tell you something?” asked Sara.
“Yes” said Meera
“I saw Parikshit in Delhi last week.”
“Who?” said Meera
That was unexpected. She looked at Sara and then turned to look at the river.
“Parikshit, you remember him dont you? I saw him last week in Delhi Hut. He was with his wife and child. Didnt see me. I dont think he would recognize me even if he saw me. " said Sara.
“Oh really” said Meera
“It was a long time ago Meera. But I still remember him vaguely, coming to our house.” said Sara. Meera said nothing. For a while silence sat heavily upon them like a paperweight.
Meera had not thought about Parikshit for a long time now. But her senses would betray her when thoughts of Parikshit would surface every night, as she tossed and turned in the bed, trying to sleep.
Meera was an art student in Agra University when she met Parikshit also in the same university. He was typical art student, wore baggy kurtas, carried a ten ruppes note in his worn out wallet, carried a canvas everywhere, borrowed money from friends for cigarettes, talked about communism and political dysfunctionism in the country in a matter of fact way. Meera knew his type, the arty-all talks- no money types. She refrained from those people. But there was something different about him. He was never very apologetic about his lack of money or his rising debts or his shabby appearance. She had infact passed her judgment on him the first time she saw him - a insolent megalomaniac.
But then fate intended them to meet.
He had seen Meera in a students union meeting. He was distributing flyers. Meera refused to take one, “I don’t need to” she said vehemently.
Their eyes met, and for a moment both did not say anything. Thinking back that day, Meera would say that she was beside herself. How did she end up liking man so different from her. All her life she has been practical except for this time when she met Parikshit.
It made no sense, but they kept on meeting each other at common friend’s houses, and finally when Parikshit asked her to have tea with him, she could hardly say no. Drawn by some invisible forces, she would listen him talking, his political views, his convictions that seem to fill up most of their evenings together. Then one day he asked her to marry him.
What was she thinking, she told herself? She knew her parents would never accept their match. Infact, she could never tell her parents, even when they fixed her marriage with an NRI living in America.Vinod was so utterly different from Parikshit. He as a grim practical man, loved his nine to five job. She told herself that she would be happy and secure with him and this was a right decision.

Parikshit had asked her again. This time, he had held her hands and told her that he cant live without her and that they would be happy together and she knew it. Meena looked into his eyes and then told him that her marriage has been fixed. He gazed fixedly into her eyes and then let go for her hands and left without a word. He was in Agra for the next two months before he left. During that time they never saw each other. Next month she was married to Vinod.
Yes, she has done the right thing she knew that.
But sometimes, as she lay tossing and turning in the bed, in her heart was an emptiness which kept growing into a storm, with each passing day. She thought how different her life could have been. Could have been. She often thought of what could have been if she had not denied Parikshit. Every night the moonlight streaming down her face provides little comfort or assurance. She looks at her husband, sleeping peaceful and sighs. Her insomnia lasted for almost a year before she went to a doctor, ridden with guilt that she might be laughed at for consulting for a small problem.
The doctor prescribes her sleeping pills. For the rest of her life she would be looking at the moon, until her head starts to feel heavy and the sharp round out-lines of the moon blurs like a distant traffic light and then disappears. For the rest of her life she would be looking at a bottle of pills like aladin’s magic lamp, to spare her the emptiness which grew like a giant spider spinning webs around her, trapping her.
“Meeraaa” cried Sara, “what are you thinking?”
“Hmm, nothing…” said Meera.

The Taj Mahal, gleamed in the dark like a phosphorescent object. The brightness of the full moon, the shimmering water surface of River Yamuna, even the glow in Sheba's face paled in comparison.
She takes her last picture, then takes off the camera from the tripod and puts it in the bag.
“Excellent, wonderful, done”, she said, excited like a child. "Nothing is as beautiful as this. Look at the moonlight falling on the Taj mahal against the backdrop of the blue sky and River Yamuna flowing. Almost mystic."
"Yes, wonderful. It is hard to believe that human hands could make something so marvelously pure and surreal as this.", Meena said, “but isn’t it ironic that the greatest expression of love is actually a mausoleum."
This wasnt a question. Sara opened her mouth to say something and then stopped.
Silence envelops them like an eerie darkness.
Both of them laid on the grass looking the stars and the grandeur of the monument bathed in silver light until the moon dimmed out-of-sight.

Warp and Woof

2009-12-21T22:34:00.001-08:00

We are all bounded on this earth and in this universe. Our speed is limited by the speed of light. So also, is our fate bounded and challenged by a certain invisible boundary?

These days I have been toying with the questions of our fate versus our free will. Which one is stronger, which one is more effective? Or more importantly which one has a greater role to play in governing our lives.

People have asked unanswerable questions since the dawn of times. Some ask for the proof of the existence of God. Some ask for the exact nature of the atom. Some ask for the structure of universe. Some ask for the possibility of time dilation or time travel. And all of us, almost at some point of our lives want to know what the future holds for us.

Think about it. Before the results are out, you wish (just to kill the suspense) you knew how you faired in the examination. After a job interview, through a nail-biting waiting period, we all wish to know if we grabbed the job or missed the bus. In the middle of the suspense thriller (not all , but just me) I want to know what happens in the end.

But these are small ripples in a vast pond.

For a bigger thing such as wanting to know the future at very step of the journey, is something else. Just before we buy some stocks, we secretly hope and pray that the next day stock market would bring some good news for us. Astrology and predictions existed in all culture and religion. Even to this day, we look at the stars, and wonder if there position is sky could govern our lives. We believe that if we know the future, we can prepare ourselves for the battle ahead. And yet again, knowing too much about the future can always distort our views. Why so?

Knowing our future can inadvertently lead us towards its realization of the prophecy. In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, three witches prophesy his doom, which eventually ushers his downfall and death. Oedipus rex by Sophocles talks of prophecy being fulfilled and thus negates the influence of free will. And in both Macbeth and Oedipus Rex, the truth is known (predicted), and it becomes unavoidable to counter ones destiny. Hinduism represents the future and our action in terms of Karma “Fate is past karma; free-will is present karma. Both are really one, that is, karma, though they may differ in the matter of time. There can be no conflict when they are really one.”

Since past present and future are three different times – we might as well see what physics says about them. In Newton’s mechanistic "clockwork" universe everything proceeded deterministically, including human behavior. There is first a cause and then an effect. Hence there is not much chance of evading Fate or Destiny, both are inevitable and there can be only one conclusion to any event. When Einstein discovered neither time nor space are as we perceive them, but are intertwined in a 4-dimensional continuum. Next Quantum physics found that, far from following principles of cause and effect, reality at its fundamental level is inherently in-deterministic. And now we cannot even predict what an atom is going to behave under a give circumstance. Then what about the prediction of our lives, our future? How much truth is there in that Gypsy woman’s words, who looked through her crystal ball and charged 20 bucks for one question?

Despite the randomness of the sub-atomic universe the perceived world consisting of the effect of huge numbers of these micro-events does behave deterministically to a large degree. For example, if you save a few dollars each week your bank balance will grow, if you don't wrap in cold weather you'll likely catch cold.

Does the gamut of small decisions that we take on a daily basis together influence our lives and change our total individual history? Or is it the bigger events, or big drastically life chancing decisions that make the greater impact. After all you may lose your entire fortune in Vegas casinos in one night and land up being in rags the next morning.

There are three basic positions we can adopt on the question of free will: either we have absolute free will, or we have no free will at all, or we have a certain measure of free will. The idea that we are absolutely free is clearly far-fetched, for there are certain obvious restrictions on our freedom: we are not free to do anything that we are physically incapable of doing. For example, we cannot change the past, breathe under water, or fly like a bird. In addition to these physical limitations, there are also psychological limitations on our freedom: our mental conditioning and our numerous habits and instincts play a major role in determining our actions. Some people might say that all these constraints are so powerful that we have no control over them whatsoever and have no free will at all. This extreme position is known as fatalism, predeterminism, or 'hard' determinism. According to fatalism, we cannot choose to do anything other than what we do choose to do; everything we do is predestined, and our feeling of being free is an illusion. Fatalism is impossible to prove, but it's also impossible to disprove, because a fatalist would say that whatever we do or say to try and disprove fatalism is itself determined by fate!

So are we locked in that gilded cage called Fate inside of which we can move freely which we call our Free Will as long as we are inside the cage we can choose to do anything but being bounded by Fate, we can never really get out of captivity.

If free will is a voluntary act, it is also controlled by our nature, which is predetermined by our genetic make up. But boiling everything down to one thing – there seems to be no one outcome of a dice throw. When probability comes into picture, everything has a chance of occurring or not occurring. Every future that we know or don’t know will have its chance of happening and not happening. But who has the hand in making it happen/ not happen?

I’d like to say it’s the individual.

Yet again, it’s another one of those Catch 22 conundrum.

The Sunflower Field

2009-06-09T21:26:00.000-07:00

The train stopped with a metallic screech.

It was a hot sweltering afternoon of mid march; the sky was clear blue, fields of yellow sunflower stretched as far as eyes could see from the train window. Jas sat up wriggling his eyes and blinking at the field of sparkling yellow sunflower. Afternoon stupor has set in and his fellow passengers were asleep.

Jas got up, stretching his arms and legs. Might as well take a breath of fresh air outside he thought. Jas climbed down from the train. The train has stopped in the middle of nowhere. Most of the people are asleep , their windows shut to keep out the afternoon sun. Jas had a strange feeling of being alone in this train, even though it was full of people. Suddenly the world seemed to be devoid of sound or movement. There is no wind, Jas thought, that is why this eerie silence.

He waved irritably at the dragon fly which had come from nowhere, flying in front of his face.

Jas looked at the sunflower field that lay before him, the flowers in full bloom facing up at the sun, all in a row. He stared at them. Suddenly he noticed a movement in the field. The plants in the first row in front of him began to move. Jas blinked. Maybe he was daydreaming. But surely, the plants could not have moved. But there it was, the plants had moved to create a small path through the field. Jas tapped his forehead, he was dreaming to be sure. Maybe the path was already there and he did not see it the first time. Curious, he walked towards the fields. There it was, a neat way amidst the sunflower field. He was tempted to go further into the fields.

But then he must be careful. He did not know how long the train will stop. Jas turned to looked at the train, it didn’t look like the train will start any time soon. May be he could take a short walk down the field, Jas thought. He started walking. The sunflower trees were quite tall, reaching 2 or 3 inches above his head. He kept on walking down the field pushing away the branches and stems with his hands. He began to sweat from the heat. Jas halted and looked behind. He had walked a good 15 mins. The train was still there. But, the path behind him was gone. Jas looked again carefully. The path through which he walked was not there anymore, but he could still see the path in front of him. But surely the plants couldn’t have moved. But where did the path go? Then how could it have disappeared.

Jas stood thinking. Suddenly, without warning, the train pulled forward. He started to panic. Then the train began to move slowly. Noooo, he said. He ran forward, waving his hands in the air. Stop. Stop.

But the wheels of the train has already started moving. He broke into a run now. But the sunflower stems were thick and strong. He began to use both his arms to push the stem and branches away. But it was difficult to run through the plants. Was the field so densely planted before? He thought suddenly. Were the trees so closely placed? The train had already started moving away. He began to push the trees wildly in all directions. But they were like a fortress of green. He began to move his arms wildly. The train quickly picked up speed and disappeared in the horizon. Jas stopped, panting with exhaustion and fatigue. Suddenly he realized that he was very tired.

Jas sat down to catch his breath. His heart was racing wildly. The trees began to loom over him, sunflowers looking down at him. Yes, looking down, he realized with horror, the sunflowers were looking down at him. Or maybe he was hallucinating. He rubbed his eyes. No, still the flowers were drooping down from the step facing him. He looked around him. There was an absolute silence. Not even a single fly buzzing in the air.

He moved to the right of were he was sitting. The flowers turned right, facing him. Suddenly he wanted to get out of the fields immediately.

Jas began to crouch on all fours trying to squeeze through the plants. But the foliage was denser below, leaves and thick hairy stem stalks grazed against him. No, it was impossible to get through the plants. He looked up again. The flowers were still looking down at him. The plants seem to crowd around him. He could hardly see the sky. His heart raced. He tried to stand up. But his legs began to shake with fear.

The heat was terrible. He began to wipe sweat off his face and brows. Jas had a sudden urge to lie down and close his eyes. Maybe this was all a bad dream. Maybe this was his imagination. Maybe he didn’t miss the train. Maybe he wasn’t there at all. He closed his eyes and opened it; he was still there. He pinched himself, no he was not dreaming. Or maybe that was also in the dream. His began to feel tired like he had never felt before. It was the heat, he thought, he was silly. He leaned against the plants and began to rest. Rest is what he needed now he thought to himself. His eyelids began to feel heavy. He tried to keep them open. The plants seem to come still closer. The flowers seem to grow bigger. He did not care anymore. He tried to push the foliage away, but his arms wouldn’t move. Something began sapping all his energy and his desire to move. Deep down, a voice within him was telling him to close his eyes and not to worry.

Maybe he should sleep. It was becoming hard to keep his eyes open. His vision was blurring. He thought he saw stems twine around his feet, his hands and his neck. But he did not feel anything so he just laid there. Then he gave up and closed his eyes. The last thing he saw was the trees moving closer, so close that he could see sunflower right in front of his eyes. He could smell them now the flowers were so close, he could see the brown whorls, the yellow petals. Strangely as they drew closer the flower petals appeared dark red. Everything was blurring out-of-focus fast.

He closed his eyes and fell asleep.

Carcinogenic

2009-04-11T07:43:00.000-07:00

A spoon full of sugar went inside my coffee.
And a generous helping of hazelnut flavored whole milk.

You picked up the sweetener
carefully stirring the spoon with your long finger, manicured nails gleaming.

"Did you know that is carcinogenic?" I said.
"Well, my dear," you said, giving me your Greek Goddess look and pointing at my coffee cup,
"Did you know that is full of fat?"

Fate Monkey

2009-04-06T07:01:00.000-07:00

I always thought that Fate was a funny guy.
It turns out that Fate is not even a human. Its a funky monkey with wicked brain. Even as I am writing this post, the Fate monkey is jumping from trees and making funny faces at me. It has been throwing twigs, stones and mud at me for quite some time and it has even snatched my food from my hand.
Not to forget the slap in the face. (ouchh!)
And now, again, it is planning some sadist plot , a joke, all at my expense.
(sob, sob)

So, fate monkey, what does your dark and twisted sense of humor have in store for me now?

Riddles, conundrums, illusions and projected self-reflections, etc.

2009-03-29T09:07:00.000-07:00

The above painting is by M.C. Escher, a Dutch painter, famous for creating visual riddles, playing with pictorially logical but visually impossible. He called them the “impossible structures” such as the one above where featureless pod-people traverse staircases that seem to go two directions simultaneously. Eyes see illusions, but the mind perceives them as real. Slowly, as science discovers new frontiers, we come to think of our universe as one with 11 dimensions of which we can only see three (four, if we consider time). All the other dimensions are hidden from us, and just like a fish views the world through a cone we see the world in 3 dimensions.As was written by Edwin Abbott, the Shakespearean scholar, we are all flat-landers. We see the world as we want it to be, as a reflection of our own selves. When we are happy, the day is bright and sunny, people we meet are balmy, but when we are sad and morose, we curse the day, the weather, suspect a sinister plot being hatched against us. We are, in a way, trapped in our mind. We also perceive people we meet as how we want them to be and not what they really are. We superimpose our views on the image of the world we live in. Infact, the blue of the sky , the green of the grass is how our eyes mix colors. A simple optical illusion is that of the mirage, or the motion picture. Every movie that we see, gives an illusion of a continuous flow, when it is a conglomeration of images that our brain cannot register.Some say that the universe is a hologram and our existence itself is an illusion. Our notion of time and space is an illusion of our senses. The atom, itself gives the illusion of being sometimes a particle and sometimes a wave. As Heisenberg states, we can never determine the position and velocity of an object at the same time and everything has an inherent quality of uncertainty to it. We look at the railway tracks and in the horizon the two parallel lines seems to meet or even the horizon itself is a line that recedes when approached. Mirrors and glass project the illusion or distortions, the best example of which are kaleidoscope (creating multiple reflections) and the pseudoscope , stereoscope (reversing the depth perception). We experience the natural world through our five senses. And yet everything that we see, that we can feel, that we can taste, that we can hear, that we can perceive with the eyes, everything is temporal.

"Everything in the picture seems to be in place, yet we seem to be in a strange universe where water flows uphill. What is wrong with it? Well, nothing is wrong with it. It is just our minds trying to equate the lines Escher drew with what our senses perceive of the real world."

Would St. Valentine bless us all?

2009-02-14T12:35:00.001-08:00

(Photocourtesy : somewhere from the net)

For those who believe in it, for those who don't,
For those who want to believe, for those who won't.............
.........whatever be the reasoning, celebrate, we must!!

Knock! Knock!! Who is there?!

2009-02-12T12:20:00.000-08:00

“No one would have believed in the early years of the 21st century that our world was being watched by intelligences greater than our own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns, *they* observed and studied, the way a man with a microscope might scrutinize the creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency, men went to and fro about the globe, confident of our empire over this world. Yet across the gulf of space, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic regarded our planet with envious eyes and slowly, and surely, drew their plans against us.” so begins HG Wells's War of the World, where Martian invade the earth.
Many of us have our own version / speculation of the Little Green Men from Outer Space. In the later nineties, UFO enthusiasts were crazed with the concept of Antenna-head aliens descending on earth from Frisbee like flying saucers.
Hollywood went high over alien movies each one with a unique looking alien – Spielberg's E.T. had them as wobbly and lumpy headed golf-eyed weirdo. Planet of the Apes was an entire planet full of monkeys in moon-suites. Star Wars made a whole zoo in the space with all forms of chimeric cows, goats, dogs, apes standing on two legs and talking gibberish. Men in Black was the most hilarious of all – the cross-bred insect-cum-human aliens with super intelligence was a laughter riot. The movie Alien went a step further, portraying Aliens as giant Man-eater plants which breeds inside humans (as if it is biologically possible to have a creature the size of cauliflower inside your body without your knowledge). Micheal Crichton's Sphere was about mind-fuddling alien manipulating human thought process. Almost all of the movies had one thing in common as far as the alien physiology is concerned – they looked remarkably like the humans, usually a bilaterally-symmetrical body, one head with two eyes, one nose and a mouth. (with a rare except of the ones with their eyes in the stomach). But how much ever funny looking teddy bear like the aliens are, they are also either vicious cannibals or super intelligent or both.
So whats the real true behind the glamorous image of this entities from another planet?
Millions of dollars are spent on the radio telescopes transmitting signals in prime numbers, SETI observations, and space probes with gold plated gramophone records.
So whats out there? And why is it not showing itself? I think the question whether there are life on other planets is not merely a scientific but a philosophical one. Perhaps a proof of life of unknown origin might help us trace back our own origin. It is a reassuring that in this vast universe, we are not alone.
But, in reality, both (the proof of) presence or absence of extraterrestrial life is enough to send us in an existential shock. But the chances of evolution going bonkers and jellyfishes developing super-intelligence on some other godforsaken planet is a rarity. The evolutionary process on earth is still a mysterious and complex process. There are millions of different species of unicellular life-forms in this earth, and compared to that, number of species variations among invertebrate is considerably less. Species variation among vertebrates are even lesser than that. And there are just few types of intelligent life form – such as the dolphins, chimpanzees and humans. Among that too, the humans chimps and orangutans are the only three species known to have self-awareness. Contrary to the popular misconception, dolphins and apes do not have self-awareness.
So according to the evolutionary growth pattern in earth, the chances of finding a unicellular organism in space is much higher than finding Lil Green men with TV antennas protruding out of their heads. Then again, think of all the viruses and bacterium on earth, and the number of diseases they cause.
Indeed, an alien bacterium can carry a fatal-alien-incurable disease that you dont want to catch. Crichton's Andromeda Strain was on similar lines, about contamination of earth atmosphere with an extraterrestrial organism causing epidemic. Very plausible.
Parallely, lets just presume that in some Kappa-Kappa-Gamma planet of a Theta-beta Star system has been home to a highly evolved intelligent life-form which can be similar to ours or may be born out of entirely different composition. Life on earth is mainly made up of hydrocarbon. In Kappa-Kappa-Gamma planet, life may have been branched out of sulfur or potassium or even helium. They can have their brain neurones in their knees for all we know. Or maybe the roasted human-hydrocarbon might just be their daily vitamin supplement. Which is when they will look for us, as we are looking for them, and instead of shaking hands with us, bake us in the oven for a barbecue party.
But lets try to be optimistic and think that they will be civilized enough and passive enough for us and way advanced in technology than us (isn't thats what we want all along – tame puppy-like aliens coming to earth to teach us some innovative new technology, too be more precise, some new form of death ray gun).
Now, to be further more optimistic, lets just say that it really happens (for SETI funding sake, coz people are beginning to get tired of shouting “Hellooooo” over the phone when there has been no sound at the other end of the line for quite some time now), wouldn't it be like teaching calculus to your pet dog, for all your get is a woof and a wag. Similarly, wouldn't it be little trying for some philanthropist Alien professor teaching us some bombastic killer technology (lets say) to make weapons of mass destruction out of (lets say) cowdung. Thats like asking the dumbest guy in your class crack a national security code, of course its going to be futile, and the aliens will have the same feeling of sympathy and pity for us, as we have for the cows.
In other words, the technology takes time to mature and develop, it took a considerable time from the first gliders of Wright Brothers to todays MIG aircraft. We may scratch our heads at a alien spacecraft that landed in our backyard by a navigational error, we may never know the science to replicate it or even use it because we need to pass the tenth level Alien-Board exam to figure the step-one math.
Whatever happens, I hope that the Aliens don't think of us as cute little lumpy creatures with big eyes and limited intelligence, as we do of them, because if they do, we are in trouble. We think dolphins are cute and clever creature and we make them sing and dance for us in Sea-Worlds.
What happened to the Indians when Europeans arrived in America, or when the Spanish came to South America or when the English came to Asia? There was an inevitable clash of cultures, each one of the civilization thought of the other as barbaric and finally the one having a superior technology wiped out the inferior one. End of story.
Are we over-whelmed with remorse and guilt when we squish a spider or a roach? Or, we just think of them as pests coming in our way. But what if, the Little Green Man harbor similar sentiments about us and do not reciprocate our friendly jesters of sending gramophone records in space. Wouldnt that be an unwelcomed guest appearance?

And after reading through this, would you still be that excited about the prospect of an E. T. knocking at our door asking for donation to make a new inter-steller highway?

Cities of the Future/ Future of Cities

2009-01-28T19:04:00.000-08:00

When I first started writing this blog I wanted the title to be “Cities of the Future”, but then as I finished writing it I realized I was expressing two different view points – one is about my idea of what our present day cities might evolve in future and another about my apprehension regarding the future of our cities. The two thoughts, even though related, echoes two different sentiments. Hence the title “Future of cities” also appealed to me.
Human requirements are increasing exponentially, and technological progressions are occurring by leaps and bounds. So what will our cities look like in future? Are we slowly moving into the Star wars age or are we designing Glamorous Ghetto versions? Will our house be plastic bubbles? Will our lives become one big science fiction story? Modern cities are facing grave problems of overpopulation, pollution, traffic congestion and urban sprawl. Every square inch of land has a purpose. And after the horizontal space depletion, there has been constant rise in vertical reaches - skyscrapers rising higher, multi-level parking, roof top gardens, fly-overs. Heritage is an important part of our cities, nation - what is Paris without Eiffel Tower, or Rome without Pantheon? What makes heritage so special is its link to our past, a window into human history. It is the preserved proof of human race. What is there to venerate in a skyscraper that is can be repeated elsewhere or anything that gives an impression of being stamped out by a machine. Craftsmanship is nowhere to be found and everything is concrete, glass, steel, and stucco.
Functionalism is everything, right down to the sheer facades. What will make Tokyo different from London or Sydney different from New York when every city has the same jagged skyline? Some argue that this is the first step towards a earth-spanning one nation. Does the evenness in our cities represent our emergent global civilization? Our individual growth is reflected in the growth of our cities. As Churchill once remarked "We shape our cities, thereby our cities shape us." What are we shaping are cities into?
I also wonder what the cities going to look like 50 or 100 years into the future. A 100 years ago, cities were just becoming industrial, downtown was born. A 1000 years ago or earlier, cities were built on prominent sites – such as the Roman Agora on mountain tops or next to fertile river banks like the Ganges or Nile or in vantage trade routes like in China. But back then it was an agriculture based society, which changed with ushering of industrial revolution – population moved towards cities as worker bees fly towards hives. Bauhaus gave birth to colonized living. Then winds changed again – construction technology improved and skyscrapers rose. Offices bottlenecked in downtowns, roads changed to fly-overs as traffic increased. It was essentially functional.
The city that is a massive pile of steel, plastic and glass put together in a way not only has no past but also actively rejects it. Technology and functionalism dictates our city planning. And with that as an agenda, future cites will be a place of heroic technology with skyscrapers the size of whole districts, roof-top aerodromes, wide pedestrian boulevards, and metal roadways strangely devoid of traffic because all transportation is air-borne. Or as some futurists predict huge underwater geodesic polychrome domes as our future ocean cities. Is efficiency robbing us of our personal identity? As was the theme behind Buckminister Fuller's Dymaxion House, factory produced "one-size-fits-all" cookie-cutter approach to housing and living. So, inadvertently or in full awareness, we are moving towards the nuclear-powered age of mass-produced family homes , frozen food, supersonic jet-taxis. What are we building? A sort of technocratic replica of Rome or a eco-friendly plasticized Camelot. Personally, whenever I envision a futuristic city, I see it straight out of the sci-fi movies with state-of-art buildings with air cars whizzing past like flies – not just a skyscraper world, but a technocratic age.

And the days you want to get away from life in a cookie jar, you could go on a Deep Space Holiday!! (whoever heard of Project Inter-Galactic Disneyland would know what I mean.)

Twist in the tale

2009-01-17T08:57:00.000-08:00

Perhaps, all of you have heard of the story of a crow as pitch black as ebony who wanted to be white.
And he prayed and prayed for miracles, for a rare and random sight of an angel descending from heaven to fulfill his wishes. His prayers were so strong that it consumed him and he thought of nothing else. He wept and prayed, wept and fasted for a miracle. And then, one day, quite by accident, his wish was granted. He was flying towards the sun when the rays stung tears in his eyes and temporarily blinded him. He fell. He fell all the way down into a pot of white paint. When he got out he had paint all over him. So he went to the river to wash himself. In the reflection he saw that he was as white as the storks and swans. God has, at last, answered my prayers he said, I am as white as snow. He was happy. At last, he was white. And he flaunted it. His friends admired his whiteness. His white feathers glimmered in the sun. He looked at all the crows around him, and said, "I am the fairest in the land. I am the best". The crows flew around him, puzzled and confused. He was certainly a crowd-puller. But slowly the other crows began to look at suspiciously and set him apart. He did after all look white. But they praised him and all the praising and compliments got the better of him. He thought to himself, I am white now, so I am better off. Now, I shall make friends with birds of the same feather. So, he went to the storks. The storks started laughing at him. He has such short legs , they said. He went to the swans. The swans started mocking him. He has no neck, they said.
Weary, tired and misfit, this crow returned to his nest. All along I wanted to be white. Now that I am white, why am I not happy. I am not like the other crows nor am I like the swans and storks. Where do I go now? What shall I do?The old crow, the wisest of all smiled at him and said, “Its because child, you are a white crow in a black world. Your feathers may be gleaming white But your heart is as black as a coal. You can take the spots out of the leopard but the leopard will always remain a leopard”.
This is a twice told tale. But unlike all twice told tales this one has a twist. A cutting edge. This was a clever crow. His Corvus intelligence told him that he has made a mistake But there has to be a way out of it. What could I do to make up for it, he thought. Then an idea came to him. He came to his colony and spoke to all the other crows, “Do you know why God made me white, it is because God was creating me, He ran out of black paint. Then God did not know what to do. So He took the best out all his creations and put everything into me. And he said that you will appear white to all, but the cleverest and wisest one, - only the one with a mind's eye can see you as black. So the crow asked, who among you can tell me that I am black – my true color.
All the crows looked at each other, confused and baffled. Everyone saw that he was white, but no one wanted to admit that they were fools. Then the stupidest crow (who always wanted to be the wisest) spoke, "I can see that you are black". The other crows looked at him horrified, how could it be that they all see him as white when the dumbest one among said he was black. It couldn't be. One by one, every one of the crows admitted that he was black. Satisfied with himself, the white crow smiled and said, “If I am black to you then, no doubt, all of you are very very wise.” And from that day onwards , no one said that he was white crow. For them he was as black as ever.
Happy with himself, our crow, slowly made himself one among the crowd.

Letters to Emily

2008-12-03T07:53:00.000-08:00

When I first saw Emily she was a vision in scarlet red. Not just her attire or her hat or her red nail-polish or her shoes. She had a healthy cherubic glow in her face which seems to exude an extraordinary redness. Like a blossoming red rose on a rainy season, said Chris, my buddy. I thought it was way too much red to be life-like. It was as if she drew blood from mankind. I was crossing the street for my first sophomore class, when she came sailing through, ignoring the traffic signals, as if the world is going to pause at her will and crossed to the other side of the street. We crossed each other and went in opposite directions. As she walked passed I took a deep breath to suck in her scent. It was a strong perfume, lingered in the spot for a moment before it dispersed in the air and remained in my nostrils for 2 seconds and in my memory forever. Could I have missed her sight that day? I don’t think so. It was supposed to happen, for some weird reasons. Or maybe it was the visibility factor in the color Red. That day, after coming home, I took out my diary and wrote those first lines of my letter to Emily Dahlia Jones.
To a Nameless Stranger,
I had never imagined that I could be pulled by a force that could be as strong as the gravitation that held us to the earth or the magnetic forces that keeps so many things unified or the attraction of the opposing charges. I could feel myself being drawn towards you; the one who is nothing more than a nameless Enigma .The whiff of the scent of your perfume filled my mind until I could smell nothing but the overpowering fission. I stopped to catch hold of myself as I fell into that strange abyss that I dreaded so much. I could feel myself falling. What could this be? How could I explain to myself a phenomenon as explainable in chemical terms as "infatuations" and so unexplainably feel-good, that it lifted me to a new stratospheric level. This is the first time I saw you and mostly the last time. I have no lofty aims to hunt you down. But I shall dedicate an hour of my life to you- your thoughts and how you walked in and out of my life in swift strides as you cross the road that day. I could have turned for a second glance if I were not so preoccupied with your thoughts. And with this I shall rest my rest my case. Because I do not wish to see you again. Once was enough. Once was good. The world is a better place with a knowledge that you exist somewhere in it.
Yours, Micheal.
That was that. I thought no more of it. One of the very many different daily chronicles of my diary. A useless piece of literature, but the one that I choose to keep up with. But I was wrong. I saw Emily again a week later, on the same day. She was an art student at the same university as mine. And who am I? The small-towner, the bicycle lover, the never to care about the world, baggy jeans and T-shirt guy. Being a student of Physics has its pitfalls, I don’t get to go around with a lot of cool people, or wear cool clothes, or shave often (although that is a personal choice) or to live in the world of torque, quantum, numbers and relativity. Or maybe it is a personal choice. Maybe that’s who I am. Quiet acceptance of my own self that came after I met Emily. How? Because I always thought I was that piece of puzzle that never really fit into the zig-saw. A grand manufacturing defect. Emily showed me the world with her arms wide open, showed me the realm of possibilities, to savor the joy of being different, to care a little less about anyone else and care a little more about her, each time I met her. Anyways, I saw Emily near the amphitheater that day. I was cycling down the slope. I saw her painting a picture of the sunset. I saw her frame silhouette against the dusk and the tangerine sunlight, her hair wildly flying against the wind. She cared not. The tree around her made long shadows and almost gobbled her up. I did not stop; one glance at a time. I just stopped peddling for a while; let the wheel roll down the slope, accelerating speed at its own will. She was engrossed, her face at a close inch from canvas when she was not looking at the sunset vacantly. I passed by. I smiled as I peddled hard to the class, I’ll see you again in this world or the next, I said to myself. What are the chances?
To Not so much of a Total Stranger,
You are not so much of a stranger any more, since I saw you the second time. And not so much of the red. So what is that one chance in a million to find you again. You seems to drop from the sky at place I least expect you. You also seems to be so into yourself, totally oblivious of the whole world going to the dogs, the bicycling passer-bys, the date-hunters. You don’t seem to care much. Today it seems that your world comprises of the sunset, the canvass, the paints , the brushes nothing more , nothing less. My world too small for anything more to fit in and yours was the space. You seems to perfectly content to let in all, but remain as one in the all. Its not an observation, it is who you are. You face tells our story, as much as I hide mine.
Yours, Micheal.
I met Emily in a bus next time after a month. It was one of those days, when without warning things don’t work. I burnt my breakfast, my dog had chewed half of my notebook and my cycle brakes were not working. I took the bus. You were at the bus stop with your bags with paints and brushes sticking out of it, your oversized drawing book. Your head nodding with the rhythm of the music you were listening in your i-pod. You barely looked at me; I barely tried not looking at you.
The bus wasn’t very crowded. But I sat in the last seat near the window at the back of the bus, tried not to look at your shadow, tried to read Stephen Hawkins. My head was down so I never saw you coming. You came and sat next to me. You were managing your stuff clumsily, when the brushes fell out your bag. I bend down to pick it up. Still not looking. I dare not.
“Thank you”, you said, taking the brush from me, “Hey, I think we are from the same university.”
“Oh really.” I replied, of course we are, I thought.
“Hey I am art student, and I bet you are one of those physics or mathematics guy”, she said, looking at my book.
“Yeah, I am a physic major.” I murmured. And that started it all. Emily started talking about herself, her classes, her aquarium at home and her dying fishes. It was short bus ride. She told me to come visit her at the amphitheater in the evening where she usually hangs out. I said I might. I did visit her, a month later. For a month I watch her at the steps of the amphitheater, stretching, painting and carving everyday. Sometimes she worked alone, other times she was with friends. Sometimes she saw me walking by and waved at me, never asked to come and join her. One day I did.
To Emily,
You came like a fresh warm breeze southern breeze on a cold winter day. The breeze that touched the surface of my calm waters of my life and send ripples of occurrences. I looked forward to meeting you, speaking to you, looking into your eyes with knowledge that you never really notice mine. You spoke casually of all great and small things in life as if they don’t really matter to you. As if, you were that separate entity, a plant that grows without sunlight and still manages to give out oxygen to the world. You forced me to come out of my shell, step into your world, with each coffee that I drank with you, with each laughter that I shared with you, with each word, in each of your action of casual defiance of the norm, I began to look forward to more. More of you. You were so different from the inscrutable modern art that you so loved to paint. You were as transparent as the elements. When I told you about theory of relativity, you just laughed and said you knew it all along. You said that it makes sense that when you go up in an elevator, things seems to go downwards, because they do. And that zero-gravity situation is possible on earth, “Every morning” you said, “every morning when I meditate, I am elevated, I swear, off the ground. I feel it, as light as feather, I float in air.” I did that day.
Yours, Micheal.
It was raining that night, raining like cats and dogs; I was busy with an assignment, when I heard a knock at the door. At this hour, I thought, who could it be? I ignored it. I have every few visitors and none at this hour. After three knocks I sensed that it was unavoidable and opened the door. You came in soaking wet, shivering with cold, your teeth chattering, but you eyes wide with amusement.
“My house is on fire,” you started laughing. You laughed and laughed until tears rolled down your cheek. I stood there watching you laugh, listening to the laughter reverberating in my small room; the sound filled up the space and made me smile.
“My roommate was having a barbeque party. It started raining. She took everything inside and apparently the curtains caught fire. Don’t ask me how. It’s a hilarious scene out there. So I am homeless for now. Can I ask for shelter?”
To Emily,
You, me, the rain outside and the city by night. It was your idea. To experience the rain, to experience the city-lights. “ Lets get the hang of the different beats of the same old city by the same old you and me” you said, “lets get the hell out of here before claustrophobia kills us both.” So it is, Emily. I’ll never forget the abruptness of the occasion, our nightly walk, watching the sunrise. I would have never done it, if you hadn’t dragged me into it. For once, left my world and ventured into yours. Learnt to let go. Learnt to live. Learnt to look through your eyes. I loved the innumerable art galleries, theaters, and movies that you dragged me into and then reproached me for sleeping through them. I loved the way you laughed and told that Quantum Physics doesn’t make sense. And time travel is not a good thing since you don’t want to see yourself old and dying.” And the way you called me “Invisible Mike, On his Bike, Going for a hike”.
Your Micheal.
Time is a grand-master of all games. Slowly I got used to expecting frantic phone calls from you at the most unexpected moments. “I think I am lost what should I do? I went for a drive, and I think I took a wrong turn and now I don’t remember the way. What should I do?” she called me one day.
“ I don’t know. How can I find you. Call 911.” I said.
To Emily,
I am not a “knight-in-shining-armor material” but I knew I could be part of the grand scheme of thing that you call your life. Just a small part. But a significant part no less. The “Invisible Mike” part.
Yours Micheal.
“Mikey, I got a job in an art gallery. I am moving to Chicago next month.” She sounded pretty excited over the phone. I knew you were dying to get the job.
A month past after you left for Chicago. Still the phone calls keep coming. I lost my apartment keys. My goldfish died last night. I am quitting my job and taking a holiday in Europe.
To Emily,
Years that past after you left, I seem go back in time. Go back to me old ways. My apartment went back to its ram shackled look. The wall-hangings went back inside the closet, the plants were given away. I can’t really say that I missed you. I had no time. I kept myself busy. But, I missed the part where I laughed at your jokes, where I started snoring in a Shakespeare play, where you told me that my work was crap and I am a Mr. Walking-talking Disaster waiting to meet Miss Walking-talking-Disastress. I missed you telling me that I am simply out-of-this-world when I tried to explain Black Hole and the Universe. I guess I would be fair to say that I missed you. Not Fair because I hear no news from you now-a-days. After that Europe trip, you disappeared completely from the face of this earth. I knew where you lived. Which only means I know your address or you telephone no, or even your bank account. I wait for your phone call which became less and less frequent as days past.
Yours, Micheal.
Days and Night, morning and noon, every hour and every second I thought about it. I looked back at my diary entries and tore down all the pages that I wrote about you. First I thought of throwing it away. Thank God I did not. I posted them to you.
To Emily,
All the miles, the six different states, the roads, the acres that separate us, have failed to do their job. We should be together. You and Me, in this whole wide crazy world. May be that’s crazy idea, but it’s worth a try.
Yours Micheal.
Few days later I get a phone call. An unexpected phone-call.
“Hey is this Mike. I am Emily’s roommate calling. I have a bad news for you. I am sorry to tell you this that Emily died last night in a road accident. She was driving down to meet you. I have your letter that you send her. Do you want me send them back to you?”
To Emily,
This is what is left of you Emily - just a bunch of letters and memories. This is how I shall remember you forever.
Yours Micheal.

What makes a good leader?

2008-10-17T10:23:00.000-07:00

"It made me sad, watching the tight-necked, pop-eyed, clenched-jawed, eyebrows-twitching, shoulders-heaving, ghoulish-smiling, rapid-blinking John McCain go from pale to translucent as he flailed away on TV last night, to remember the man I saw at a town-hall meeting in Salem, New Hampshire, last January—years ago. Back then he was witty, he was relaxed, he was appealingly combative, he was generous. The contrast now is so severe that it makes running for President seem like a personal disaster on the scale of a prolonged nervous breakdown leading to physical and psychological ruin. This campaign has done something terrible to McCain. And it’s entirely his own fault. Character is fate.
Obama has passed through the same travail along an even harder road and has been elevated. In New Hampshire one of his advisers, a former Clinton official, told me that he had come around to Obama after reading “Dreams from My Father” and then meeting its author: here was an entirely centered, self-aware man. At the time I thought this was a pretty impressionistic basis for a major political decision. Now I see what the adviser saw. Obama’s character is a political triumph. His cool, unlike McCain’s tic-filled anger, is tactically deployed; throughout the campaign it’s become his main weapon against crisis and attack. " - George Packer, The New Yorker , 17th Oct, 2008.
In the face of this current election as approval seems to swing in favor of the cool and compost stature of Obama, my question is - What is it that we are looking for in our leaders?
As for me, cool without being cynical, self assured without being self righteous, decisive without being judgmental/ impulsive, argumentative without being accusatory, combative without being offensive makes a great leader.
What made a great King largely depended upon his ministers or court advisors, King Aurthur had his Knights of the Round Table, Akbar had his. As far as, wisdom and leadership abilities are concerned, a King's job is to manage and delegate orders, to distinguish a not-so-great advise from great one and to listen to the right person at the right time.
It remains the same today for our leaders.

Whose line is it anyways?

2008-09-29T09:20:00.000-07:00

Lord have mercy on Sarah Palin, she knows not what she says!
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On a lighter note, watch out for the VP debate this Thursday. Its going to be the biggest scoop for laughter channels - some one's head is on the guillotine.
The crowd pulls in.............................

Bailout and the game of Musical Chair

2008-09-27T11:44:00.000-07:00

In the light of the recent crash, thud, bang in the Wall Street and the gradually tear in the financial situation I solemnly realize that things are not looking up. Infact things look pretty bleak and morose for now. Somebody is going to get hurt......somebody, that somebody turns out be the general public.
Our great President GB has been scratching his head trying to be the last saving grace of his presidency and also to lift his grades from a F to a D, proposed to give away 700 billions into the market.
I wonder whats the best way to distribute this money in the most effective way so that hungry sharks of Wall Street do not suck it up in a day and the money is efficiently used as a wheelchair support to the already crippling economy.
Keeping aside the "market should recover on its own theory" and the middle class headache over "how the hell am I going to pay the bank my mortgage debts and credit card bills", I wonder who's fault was it anyways?
And who will get the boot in the face?
Its the public who will have to pay extra taxes for the next ten years just to get the countries economic division back on tracks.

And meanwhile the war is on while the gas in our cars run dry.

If only Camelot would come to us

2008-09-16T07:17:00.001-07:00

We pay no attention to history. We yawn through our history classes. We remember history by years and dates not so much by the events that preceded or followed which is why we learn nothing.
We are such aggressive warlike creatures. The barbaric torture chambers of medieval Europe shock and appall us, Nazi concentration camps move us to tears, we think of the institutionalized violence of the colonial era and slavery, say we are much better off now. And so while we denounce Hitler and his cronies, and talk as if communism, fascism, and the Nazis were the only horrors in this world we silently watching the accumulation of power and wealth in the first world countries when the third world countries die in darkness, deprivation and starvation.
One day there is power failure we curse the government, one day the stock market falls we blame the whole world. Look at us, we are throwing away plastic cups without even thinking about its effects in the environmental pollution.
Did you think the summer was hot? Maybe turning off the light before you leave the house could help. We are scared of global warming and yet every winter as it snows we want it to get just a little warmer. Al Gore talks about global warming as an” Inconvenient truth” while patronizing ten porches and five private jets.
Who killed the electric car? We did, the day we groaned about walking three flights of stairs because of a short term power failure or when the elevator stops. That’s the day we surrendered our fate in the hands of the Oil Companies. If you love dogs don’t keep them in manger - that's the saying. There can’t be Thai food without chilies in it. There can’t be a technological innovation without an animal testing or some form of pollution. After all, we can’t really give up our nice house, our jobs, our cars to go and live in the forest in order to steer a sustainable living that saves a few Polar bears and Pandas.
"Still, stubbornly we try to crack the nut In which the riddle of our race is shut." Do some good, earn Karma points by sponsoring a child’s education while we secretly covet our neighbor’s car. We all want Midas magic despite of being aware of the consequences.
There is a fatal incompatibility as to who we are and what we want. When we are young we want to be older, when we are getting over the hill we want to be young again. We love the nature and yet we want to keep the insects out. We have a morbid tendency to love "Finding Nemo" and then order fish n chips at Awful Aurther's and oggle at chicken biriyani while watching "Chicken Run".
Did Karl Marx know the ultimate fate of Russia? He, after all, told us about Utopia without telling us a way to achieve it. So USSR saw the good, the bad, the ugly days of communist regime before it toppled under its own weight. And now we call it “A totalitarian regime crushes all autonomous institutions in its drive to seize the human soul” and quail at the thought of communist power taking over , fear the name of Mao, Lenin, Mussolini as if the rights of the people are well-protected otherwise. It poses no greater threat to us than the thought of Little Green Men descending from Flying Saucers and controlling our minds. Slim chance of that happening. And doing we really need aliens to control us, when your government and media can do the needful. For every new channel has an agenda - to back up someone's interests. Cold War and the post Cold War era gave birth thousands of nuclear warheads and weapons of mass destruction. Is there a different God for good and bad people? Do the scripture give us enough reason for mass genocide? Power has always shifted – from Popes, to Kings, to Dukes, to soldiers, to merchants, to mercenaries and war-profiteers. There is no getting away from it. We have done nothing to stop the millions drained in the name of defense as third world countries get poorer and poorer.
Beware, fools can be kings. It is a well known fact that wise men stay away from politics while cabbage heads flourish there because, of course, swamp is where they grow. Camelot is not going to come to us, so stop bitching and start a revolution.

Falling.......................

2008-09-06T09:39:00.000-07:00

If you ask for the precise moment in time
when it all began,
I shall not be able to tell

For I was always yours,
During the raging storms, the ghastly winds,
Complete in the arms of chaos.
One blob of mercury melting seamlessly into another.

Once you read my thoughts
Out of the tattered manuscript of mind
Your words fell like faint echoes
Before dissolving into an abyss.

Once we sank into that devious darkness
Trying to find our way out of these dark woods
Where we harbored ambiguity.
At the cross roads, you let go of my hand.

So we walked alone for a while, looking for
Deceptive way finders, erased landmarks
Through uncharted terrains, unmapped routes,
Remembering each other only through snapshots.

Searching for the castle we dreamt off, so often.
Our house of cards collapsed one day
with a single touch of realization.
We were lost, once again.

Perhaps it was then, that we realize
We had roamed around in circles
Like two leaves, carried back and forth, by the wind,
Hoping to come back to the beginning again,
To know each other for the very first time.

Communication Breakdown

2008-08-26T20:17:00.000-07:00

The human animal is expressive. We started expressing ourselves through pictures, and drawings, storytelling through the generations, wrote cryptic massages on papyrus. Until one day the Chinese invented the paper and Gutenberg invented printing press in Europe. And that was the beginning of it all. Ability to have more than one copy of the same information spread that information far and wide from word of mouth and story-tellers to books and papers.

Hello darkness, my old friend,
Ive come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping,
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.

A similar revolution came with the invention of the telephone and the Internet, the television and the radio. Each one with its own merits and demerits brought the world into our living room and information at our feet. And communication was never as easy as it is today. Just pick up that phone (mobile ) or just email /chat/ voice chat and there it is – almost anywhere almost anyone is always there to talk.

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more.
People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening,
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence.

And yet, in this era of global satellite connection are we slowly losing our ability to communicate successfully?
Is the message getting across the same way we want it to be?
Are we mis-communicating?
Or have we simply lost the human touch?

Fools said i,you do not know
Silence like a cancer grows.
Hear my words that I might teach you,
Take my arms that I might reach you.
But my words like silent raindrops fell,
And echoed
In the wells of silence.

Face to face conversation has several advantages – eye-contact, face reading, body language. Much is said through the unspoken words. Much is understood without even trying to read minds.
As our lifestyle spins at nerve-racking speed, and no one has any time or energy or the effort to understand another human being.
Telephone, Internet, email and chatting has connected the world but have they really brought anyone any closer?
Are we beginning to grow apart with our inability convey what our eyes speak or our minds read over the phone or chat?
Its just a voice at the other end and that voice sometimes shows a range of emotions that are indefinable or even sometimes misleading.

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon God they made.
And the sign flashed out its warning,
In the words that it was forming.
And the signs said, the words of the prophets
Are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls.
And whispered in the sounds of silence.

But what can we do. The good old letter writing days are over. With globalization, families and relations spread all over the world, relationships are locked up like Genie in a bottle waiting for a chance to get out of the box and face the person in flesh.
As our work, and other errands take us away from our near and dear ones, it becomes a constant battle to keep the flow of communication alive and kicking without any traces of mis-interpretations. That is the curse of the modern mechanized world – where one hears but no longer listens, speaks but no longer communicates.

There is no silence, but then there is no satisfaction also.

Oodles, poodles, noodles, and scroodles

2008-08-10T12:27:00.000-07:00

My take on criticing some recent Hindi Movies.............

Love Story 2050
If you a movie buff with serious intentions, then this is puke stuff. Stay away. As for people like me, who can watch any damn junk in order to extract a few laugh out of life this was just the perfect piece of garbage. The title of the movie says Love Story 2050 and so I was pretty eager (in an amused way) to see what kind of 2050 , the bozos of Bollywood come up with. Sadly the entire first half of the movie in set in 2008. WTF…….so I had to hang around even after the interval and watch Harman Baweja , who by the way looks like a clone experiment gone wrong, transported to 2050 by a very funky time machine which runs on the principles of 10^th standard physics. Even I could have invented that one!!!
Anyways from the angular sideburns to v-necked tight-fitting t-shirts to dance moves Harman tries to mimic Hrithik, and comes out as a really poor carbon copy out a Xerox machine that clearly needs repair. I wonder what made Priyanka sign in this movie. Or act this inanely dotty. And yes, what’s with the red hair color? Other than that 2050’s Mumbai seems to have a lot of flying cars and androids with names like “Cutie”, “Sexy” and talking-walking Teddy Bears. So are we going to make funny toys in the next 50 years or the Bollywood directors are just plain nuts?
Boman Irani is sadly wasted in the role of a scientist with a bad hairstyle like Einstein, (oh, the man is turning in his grave). Everything else is a rip off from Hollywood sci-fi movies. To add icing to this ghastly cake there are corny dialogues like “I don’t need luck, I have love” etc etc. Warning : Stay away. Stay away.

Jaane Tu ….Ya Jaane Na.
Old wine in a new and improved bottle. Very nice. Story line is highly predictable, thankfully much less melodramatic. One of the highlights of the movie being the peppy song called “ Pappu can’t dance..” Everything else is innocent teenage stuff (with Archie-Jughead-Veronica-Betty kind of characters) reminding me of my Mills and Boon days and of looking at the world through heart shaped eye goggles. Imran Khan looks as cute as Aamir Khan in QSQT only I wish we didn’t have to wait the next 10 years for him to act in movies like Lagaan, DCH etc.

Race
Whats up B? Do we really have to make movies that has no story, no script and no meaning what so ever? Just a lot of odd twists and turns thrown in at every corner and people killing other people with a proverbial drop of a hat. Its not a good idea to mix Biriyani with Manchurian chicken, the recipe usually is unpalatable. And to have every kind of action flick thrown in, cars flying crashing, people dying and then coming back from the dead, plot within plot, wheels within wheels leaves one longing for a cool-off with a grenade and burning the screen down to ashes. I recommend aspirin instead of the popcorns.

Tashan
Did anyone really get this movie?
The first half an hour of watching this movie severely affected my sense and sensibility and I never reached the end of this gimmick for fear of losing my sanity.

Self and its nemesis

2008-07-21T09:34:00.001-07:00

Like so many of you, I have been caught up in the frenzy of the latest Batman movie. The critics are going gaga over Heath Ledger’s stunning/ scary performance of the joker in “The Dark Knight”. After watching the movie, I am left with no doubt about the well-deserving accolades and back slapping he would have received, had he been alive.

He was, in a way, the true hero of the movie. And by calling him the Hero, I shall now (re)define our cleashade notions of a hero and a villain, the good and the bad, the black and the white. Indeed, as is evident in our recent literature, movies, the edges are beginning to blur, the colors are seeping in through the cracks, and characters are increasingly showing tendencies of oscillating between their dark side and their white face. These trapezing of personalities were unheard of a few years back, but then that was before the discovery of psychology with a silent P.

So now, as that silent P is vociferous enough to grab our attention, I blend my passion for psychology and my fixation for Superheroes again. The Greek Mythologies were all about the Gods in the skies who occasionally wavered in the degrees of goodliness, the demons and monsters which were killed by some hero of formidable power.

Even in our Hindu mythology, Ram was the great, do-gooder, the infallible giant of a man while Ravana was the archetypical bad man with no morals. Or was it? Even though the story of Mahabharat and Ramayana, occasionally described the noble righteous man being lured into misdemeanor as Yusdhisthir was, so many times, but there was always a plausible explanation of his fall from grace. Between the good and the ugly, there was the bad, the man wronged by society like Karna or the man trailed by misfortune like Achilles.

And our heroes remained in their imperial throne of honor –their authority unquestioned. Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hide was a weak attempt to recognize the saturnine side of our personality but it had to be legitimatized with an answers, an experiment gone wrong. The reason why Mr Hide existed was not intrinsic but extrinsic.

Bizarre but true, when Sigmund Freud first came up with his theories of an unconscious mind it was thought to be outrageous. His Identity, ego, and super-ego was a preposterous truth that the world took some time to swallow.

It was been only recently, that we have been truly comfortable with the psychology of the mind where good and evil presides side by side and one can over take the other as easily as water over rocks. Not only that, like our heroes, our villains are now cherished, sympathized and understood.

So there it is, our great superhero Batman, which his insatiable drive to restore good and justice in Gotham city and his nemesis the The Joker, the Penguin, the Two Faced, the Scarecrow, the Riddler and an whole gamut of villains who challenge his superhero powers or rather stoke his "Superhero Complex".

You see, now psychology has a plausible interpretation of the Goodie-too-shoes as well. And hence, Batman is a tormented soul, traumatized by the murder of his parents in his early childhood, venting his helplessness and seeking vendetta by wearing tight-fitting body suits and flying from roof tops at the dead of the night to kill gangsters. He has no personal life, his identity is vehemently kept discreet, and he is a compulsive law abider and enforcer. Now that sounds a little weird and abnormal, not a least bit like the hero we could venerate.

What’s modern psychology done to us? Has it put us categorically in different bottles with different labels and expiry dates? Name tag does not count, the whole lot has a brand name – psychotic, neurotic, schizophrenic, schizoid, narcissistic, egoistic, Electra complex, Oedipus complex etc etc.

So now that we all have been cauterized and stamped into shelves and cans where does that leave us? It fogs the line between the hero and the antihero, the good and the bad, and puts it across as a clash of two different ideologies. Indeed, the fist fight in Dark Knight was an arms-race to prove who’s right. Was it the Batman , the incorrigible busy-body who's compelled to follow rules and order or was it the Joker who said that the world is an inherently chaotic place and everyone could fall from grace under certain circumstances?

The war is inside and hence it continues. Such is our understanding of the dark side of our mind, that ironically the word “insane” is nowhere found in the dictionary of psychology. So if everything has a reason and a clinical definition and being sane is purely subjective, where does that lead us?

Further into the dark, maybe.

How long can a Minute be?

2008-06-26T09:37:00.000-07:00

Now that I have a stiff neck and loads of time, I am thinking more and more upon the subject of illusiveness of time. Time as we know it, is omnipresent and irreversible extension of human perception and nature. The more I think of it, more I am perplexed by the fact that a simple word called “Time” whose presence is taken for granted everyday holds such mystery.
From cradle to grave we are affected by the chronology of time. We mature, we grow old, and we die all in the course of this “flow of time”. And yet we do not know what this time is? We have invented clocks to mark the hours in a day, calendars to celebrate years, achieves, museums, newspapers to document the works and happenings of centuries, millennium and eons. And yet we are bound to the hands of the clock like a dog to a lease.
Different people may judge identical lengths of time quite differently. Time can "fly" or "drag," according to our perception of it. When we are in love, we think time stands still. When we are happy we feel time has gone too fast. On a dull day, time slows down for us. We measure short time in seconds, minutes, hours and then again on a grand scale in years, decades, centuries and eons. When kept waiting at the bus stop, we feel, time has halted forever. When on a holiday in the beach we feel that the weekend went by too fast. When sitting for a boring lecture, we wish to have that invisible remote to fast forward the day. And then again, in human perceptions, we value some of our times more than the others – and distinguish them as moments and minutes. Moment is a minute that holds in our memory forever. And many such moments make our lives. Collective moments of our lives make our history.
Newton, in formulating the basic concepts of classical physics, compared absolute time to a stream flowing at a uniform rate of its own accord. This linear flow of time was called the “Arrow of time” by Newton. Time appears to have a direction – the past lies behind, fixed and incommutable, while the future lies ahead and is not necessarily fixed. Then came Einstein and changed our understanding of time forever. His theory of relativity reshuffled our given notion of absoluteness of time. Time depends upon the observer; he said that "The only reason for time to exist is so that everything does not happen at once". He gave a chance of reversing the order of cause and effect. And that time is relative to the observer. Astronaut in space age slower than their fellow humans on earth is a proven fact. So if time is a pretzel, knotted, tangled and twisted to various shapes can we travel backwards or forwards in time?
We have always been time travelers, in the sense that we are always traveling forward into future. But can we control the speed of this travel. Can we jump from today to 50 years from now and still be of the same age (more importantly alive)? Or go back into the past and witness the rise and fall of empires, turning points in human history? Can we even invent a time machine to do so? Can we go back into the past and prevent HG Wells from writing his book “The Time Machine”? Or can we go back in time to see the earth being formed in a Big Bang explosion? Stephen Hawking commented that trying to ascertain what happened before time began is like trying to find out what is north of the North Pole, and that such questions are self-contradictory.
And it also creates the famous “Time Paradox” or “Grandfather Paradox” which is a problem of round squares. “Suppose you did have a time machine right now, and you could step into it and travel back to some earlier time. Your actions in that time might then prevent your grandparents from ever having met one another. This would make you not born, and thus not step into the time machine. So, the claim that there could be a time machine is self-contradictory.” What would be the consequences, if we had the power to go back in time and change our course of actions at free will? Would we loose our sense of responsibility if we knew we can redirect our fate by altering events preceding and following our present?
And if we have mastered the art of time travel in our distant future, then where are the tourists from the future? Personally, I would like to scoot down a Black Hole and go back to witness some great time in human history, provided I am not dissipated into a million sub-atomic particles. But to keep things simple and logical, I shall conclude with my roommate’s definition of time, “How long is a minute depends on which side of the bathroom door you are in!!!!”

"Unbearable Lightness of Being"

2008-06-25T07:46:00.000-07:00

So it happened, that last week I graduated and suddenly I discovered that I have a whole lot of free time in which I can do nothing. Now, nothing turned out to be scary word.

There is absolutely nothing to do now. And things that I longed to do during my thesis writing (like movie watching, writing, sleeping, reading etc) proved boring now. Possible because, what we are not supposed to do holds a certain charm for us, and once we loose that charm, those things are no so much exciting anymore.
So, anyways, I started reading this book called "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" by Milan Kundera. I finished it as fast as I could. I remembered how I had longed to sleep for 20 undisturbed years like Rip Van Winkle and wake up as child ( 20yrs earlier, not later, of course) only to wake up 2hrs later with a terrible cramp in my neck that made me tilt my head at 45 degree angle as I spoke (like Dev Anand) for the next 2 days.
This doing nothing is indeed becoming unbearable.
Then, I recalled one of the lines from the book, "what happened once might never have happened at all", and I realized that this might be my last chance to unwind. And so, I am going back to enjoy doing nothing and meanwhile I shall leave you with these nice quotes from the book -
"We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come."

"On the surface, an intelligible lie; underneath, the unintelligible truth."

"Noise has one advantage. It drowns out words.”

"And therein lies the whole of man's plight. Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy:
happiness is the longing for repetition."

“Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.”

On sex and the city

2008-06-05T19:28:00.000-07:00

I was informed about 4 years ago that there is this mega soap on HBO called "Sex and the city" about four single women trying to find love in the big bad world of NY. Along with this simple tag line I was told that the soap definately lives up to its name - all for love and finding "true louve" of course.
Curious as hell, I started to watch. After watching the entire first two seasons I could almost predict what is going to happen next in each scene.
In the beginning it was quite impressive - Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) walking confidently along the streets of Manhattan dressed like a damsel and then bus drives by splashing water on her, while the add on the bus flashes " Carrie Bradshaw knows good sex."
Does she? I have no doubts left after finish up all the episodes with patience. All the four characters - Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, Miranda, who gets lots of sex and no love. Which brings me to think that if the lead characters where male the soap would have been called " Love and the city" in which the four lead male characters would get lots of love and no sex.
Anyways, talking about "Sex and the city" I watched four very well to do, good looking, fashionable women whining and cribbing about men in their lives, sighing and crying for the perfect guy with whom they can in love with.
And in their quest, they drop boyfriends at the drop of a hat, dump guys like they dump their twice worn designer dresses.
Holly, golly, rolly, polly...............does this even look anything close to reality? Does this even say anything about what women wants? Nooooooooooo.
Firstly, most women do not have such high standards mainly because they have no idea that such high standards exist.
Secondly, yes behind all the steamy sex, glitz and glamour, they are four women who claim to be independent and yet want men in their lives to make them complete.
Thirdly, where looks kill, flashy clothes and three inch heels say it all, there is no room for intelligence.
So I don't know if the four girls in Sex and the city got their closer, but I did not get any. Possibly because, I did not wait long enough, to watch the last season, but certainly I did not find it worthwhile.
It amuses me why Carrie Bradshaw, who knows good sex should have anything to crib about.

My unabridged self : cont.......

2008-06-01T15:38:00.000-07:00

It has been ages since I opened word document and sat down to write something. And how I missed it. Fifteen minute later I was still looking at the black page – am I just out of touch or did I have my first writer’s block? I sat reading some of my earlier posts hoping to get a head start. A year ago I had written My unabridged self. And now I decided to continue with it again, hoping, perhaps this will lift the curfew in my brain.
I have been soul searching lately. Not an easy thing to do mind you. It is like driving through thick mist at night trying to look at the traffic signals. High beam doesn’t help coz more often its blinding.
So what emerged out the precious time that I spent introspecting, (when I could have worked, instead), I’d say that the process was more rewarding than the result. The result was irrelevant. Afterall, I am what I am. Taking a tour of my own self is like an infinite regress through the neurons of my brain. It is as if I am attempting to solve a problem which re-introduced the same problem in the proposed solution. If one continues along the same lines, the initial problem will recur infinitely and will never be solved.
If I suddenly discover today that I am maniac or a neurotic, there is no ways I could alter it. I could take a few drugs, yes, go into therapy/yoga/meditation or whatever people do under such circumstances, but I’d still remain what I was/ am.
So that got me thinking, why do we want to change? I cant we accept what we are? If we are constantly trying to mould and cast ourselves according to our environment then aren’t we loosing a bit of ourselves every time? Self improvement is a good thing is but provided you don’t lose yourself. And yet again, if we remain what we are, refuse to change we become rigid. Evolutionary scientists call it walking on edge of chaos. Our gene and behavior respond and mutate with the environmental change, but if we alter too much we are in for trouble, too little we become extinct.
As the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland said: "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep yourself in the same place". And so it is with coevolution. Evolutionary changes are required to stay in the same place. Cessation of change may result in extinction. I couldn’t have agreed better.
I am the former kind. I love to change. Versatility is in my bones. In fact I am obsessed with novelty and change so much that I feel inadequate if change does not occur at regular intervals. Monotony is appalling. Mundane existence puts me off and turns me into a rock – cold and depressed. Anxiety attacks set it when things don’t change, and when they do I am over excited.
I am the chameleon that is disturbed and confused if its environment changes too often.

I have a fleeting interest in any and everything, a superficial knowledge about all, I love flitting from project to project as apparently purposelessly as a butterfly dancing from flower to flower. Life is a game which must always be full of fresh moves and continuous entertainment, free of labor and routine. Changing horses in the middle of the stream is another small quirk in the bigger scheme of things. Depths frighten me, but heights makes me elated, which why I love the mountains more than the sea. The sea reminds me of the bottom of the ocean, the endless abyss, which can suck me in like a centrifuge and I might never get out of the whirlpool. I embrace the open inviting arms of the mountains, the mystery, the fortitude, the resilient force, a forbidden territory that my must traverse. So also, I eagerly sink my teeth into any new information, a little later move on to the next table.
How I love the little oddities of this world – the creased abnormalities and anomalies that peaks and wans on the surface of this convoluted tapestry. String theory is believable only when there are no strings attached, - only if you choose to believe in the initial assumption and hypothesis that the universe that we live in nothing more than a hologram. There is always a duality of either/ or and neither/ nor that intrigues me.
Only if we choose to understand that perfection is an exception not a rule – things are supposed to be screwed up and eschewed, like the scientist who designed the best android on earth realized that he has forgotten to put the switch to turn it on.
As I grow older, I feel more and more frequently that like Lewis Carroll's Alice, I've gone some kind of rabbit hole and emerged into some bizarre universe that makes me wonder if I am hallucinating. No, alas, there's no one to blame for my warped perceptions than myself, coz the world is the same old smug ball of wool. It’s just that I see it differently. I see the world has an unexplored alien spacecraft that has landed into my backyard by mistake. I am a wide-eyed wandered. My world is as dramatic as psychedelic lights in a discotheque. It's hard to tell where reality ends and illusion begins. They blend-then they separate.
The gypsy woman knows that she is capable of premonition only through a crystal ball, and I know that I am nothing without my mindscape. If every person speaks a volume if you care to listen. Without my mind, I am a caterpillar without its cocoon, a totally vulnerable and insecure green wobbly grub.
I believe, my mind is a giant octopus that engulfs itself. The gnarly tentacles that germinates within the two hemispheres and threatens to conquer the world................it starts here, from one atom, one molecule that nourishes like a virus on a living organism and then takes the shape of a troll.
I have that nasty habit of reading the last page first. No, don’t roll your eyes at that, what’s there in knowing the end, when the journey is more important. No one gets out of it alive, so why take life seriously? There is no suspense, no melodrama, only a karmic connections, a series of events – a cause and effect relationship. So what if I know the effect first and the cause later.
So what if I am a quicksilver character, cool and willful at one moment, utterly fragile the next, isn’t it what everyone wants – masquerade for every occasion, a personality makeover for every season? The one word to describe myself would be “ambiguous” I am made of two halves that are at constant fiction with each other. Fighting for space, time and dominance, like two twins in a womb. Until one takes over the other - like phases of the moon and the tide they rise and fall, wax and wane.
One fine day, you might find me benevolent, congenial, chirpy, vivacious and full of talks with energy that fairly snaps, crackles and pops in the air. Other days I am just as gloomy as the winter weather, hibernating in the deeper sub-strata of my mercurial mind. Be sure, it is the “to be or not to be” dilemma.
The conservative stick-in-the-muds put me off. I am all for novelty and variety. And I am a traveler not a tourist. Some days I wander off into the uncharted territories of space, the other days I submerge deep into the darkness of ocean. My horizon is made of elastic – it stretches far and beyond the visible ranges. In the ranges of maxima and minima. At first there were squares and circles and now there is tesseract. What’s next on the menu? You wouldn’t even guess!
The grass always looks greener just across the road. The sky is bluer across other ocean. The sun shines brighter in a different place. What do I seeks? Perhaps some hidden, undiscovered, parallel universe within myself. I am a mental explorer. My mind is my Magnum Opus. It is my lethal half. It is my salvation. It is my doom. It is the megapolis of ideas - of what I perceive of this pale onion world.
It lives coz I let it live. And in doing so, I tear myself away from profound happiness and contentment. If that’s the price I pay for being able to see both sides of coin then so be it. There is no one answer to my questions. There is no right or wrong, simply a collection of realizations.
If you knew the address of Neverland, you would decide not to grow up. Its Peter pan syndrome – growing old but not growing up. Youth never dies, only humans do. That’s my mojo.
A well-known scientist once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the Earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the centre of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy.
At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise."
The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?"
"You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down!"
Who needs proof when the story is so good?
It rings true like a good china vase.
Both truth and reality are illusions you see.

Embryonic Eye

2008-05-29T19:56:00.000-07:00

From the bottom of the pool
amoebae crawls out of their secure nucleus,
looks at the world through their embryonic eye.

Throughout the centuries our frugal existence
have be largely ignored,
our hopes and aspirations smothered.

Now simplicity of our days are dawning,
we shall wriggle our way up the pyramid
to overthrow the empire of giants.

Now is that time.
The time is now.
Our voice is now one - voice of million minions.

Musing over Movies

2008-05-04T15:41:00.000-07:00

Alright here is another post on two of my favorite movies till date. I am not the kind of person who like romantic comedies, but I find these two movies really meaning ful, coz instead of being run-of-the-mill love story they are on a human level and very meaningful.
The first movie is "Before Sunrise" and then comes "Before Sunset" (which is a sequel to "Before Sunrise").

Before Sunrise: Simple story of a boy Jesse and girl Celine who spend one day together and starts liking each other.
SPOILERS AHEAD:
In the end they depart with a promise of meeting after six months. Very simple storyline but revitting and worth watching.

Before Sunset: They meet again after 9 years and discuss how they had been over that period.
Both the movies are dialogue based and the chemistry between the lead pair is through conversations that they have with eath other.
Here are some of the quotes from the movie -
Before Sunrise
Celine: I believe if there's any kind of God it wouldn't be in any of us, not you or me but just this little space in between. If there's any kind of magic in this world it must be in the attempt of understanding someone sharing something. I know, it's almost impossible to succeed but who cares really? The answer must be in the attempt.

Jesse: You know what's the worst thing about somebody breaking up with you? Is when you remember how little you thought about the people you broke up with and you realize that is how little they're thinking of you. You know, you'd like to think you're both in all this pain but they're just like 'Hey, I'm glad you're gone'.

Celine: Isn't everything we do in life a way to be loved a little more?

Jesse: OK, well this was my thought: 50,000 years ago, there are not even a million people on the planet. 10,000 years ago, there's, like, two million people on the planet. Now there's between five and six billion people on the planet, right? Now, if we all have our own, like, individual, unique soul, right, where do they all come from? You know, are modern souls only a fraction of the original souls? 'Cause if they are, that represents a 5,000 to 1 split of each soul in the last 50,000 years, which is, like, a blip in the Earth's time. You know, so at best we're like these tiny fractions of people, you know, walking…I mean, is that why we're so scattered? You know, is that why we're all so specialized?

Celine:I don't know, I think that if I could just accept the fact that my life is supposed to be difficult. You know, that's what to be expected, then I might not get so pissed-off about it and I'll just be glad when something nice happens.

Jesse:Well, who says relationships have to last forever?

Before Sunset
Celine: Memory's a wonderful thing if you don't have to deal with the past.

Jesse: Maybe what I'm saying is, is the world might be evolving the way a person evolves. Right? Like, I mean, me for example. Am I getting worse? Am I improving? I don't know. When I was younger, I was healthier, but I was, uh, whacked with insecurity, you know? Now I'm older and my problems are deeper, but I'm more equipped to handle them.

Celine: I guess when you're young, you just believe there'll be many people with whom you'll connect with. Later in life, you realize it only happens a few times.

Jesse: I feel like if someone were to touch me, I'd dissolve into molecules.

Celine: I see it in the people that do the real work, and what's sad in a way is that the people that are the most giving, hardworking, and capable of making this world better, usually don't have the ego and ambition to be a leader. They enjoy the goal but not the process. But the reality of it is that the true work of improving things is in the little achievements of the day.

Jesse: Life's hard. It's supposed to be. If we didn't suffer, we'd never learn anything.

Celine: You can never replace anyone because everyone is made up of such beautiful specific details.

Celine: The concept is absurd. The idea that we can only be complete with another person is evil! Right?

Ok, people go see these two movies.

My worst fears

2008-05-03T16:30:00.000-07:00

1. COCKROACHES (I hate them, filthy scurrying evil creatures,............yuks)
2. Small, enclosed places, such as elevators
3. Moving (and I am always on the move)
4. Misplacing my wallet (Yeah, I dont carry purses)
5. Nightmares that are so real that I wake up disoriented and sweating.
6. Gaining those unwanted pounds
7. Maths exam
8. Being tied down ( Spritually )
9. A horror movie (I hate watching them)
10. Losing .............................
;))

Lies We Tell

2008-05-01T10:14:00.000-07:00

“The worst lies are the lies we tell ourselves. We live in denial of what we do, even what we think. We do this because we're afraid. We fear we will not find love, and when we find it we fear we'll lose it. We fear that if we do not have love we will be unhappy.” - Richard Bach

Spending my Christmas and New Year at Blacksburg gave me a lot of time to do what I wanted to do for a long long time, which is sitting at home, reading lots of books (other than course related).

I read a Collection of Short Stories called After Rain by Irish writer William Trevor. One short story in book called "A Day" made me think.

It was a poignant story about a day in a life of a simple housewife wonderfully told - what is expected to be a mundane monologue turned out to be a play of emotions and ironic satire.
As all simple straightforward things in life standing on the legs of extreme complexity.
The story in a nutshell is about a lonely housewife and her husband - the vices, shortcoming and insecurities that their hide from each other. And not just that, the lies that they tell and the presences that goes along with it.
Strange comproises that we make everyday - the little white lies that starts from a one harmless occasional slip to a constant companion.
Is this really the easy way out? (I wonder). What happens to truth? Does it remain submerged under the layers of " Let things remain the way they are" or " Let it go on".
.Lies that we conjure everyday and every moment - why , well, one reason is to not to hurt someone else's feelings, but then another reason is US - our selfish interest to great out of an unfair truth with a fair lie.
For some it a scapegoat, for some a perpetual fool's paradise. We believe what we want to believe and what is the most convenient.
But then, sometimes, there are no lies, only many versions of truth.
Who can argue?

What kind of Superhero would you be?

2008-04-16T13:32:00.000-07:00

In a way, we are all heroes.
From cradle to grave, every step of our journey in this planet is the proof of our heroism. It is an epic journey and likewise, our first heroes are also in our epic tales.

In all the ancient world mythologies, we will find evidence of great characters with superhuman strength and abilities embarking on great missions and perilous adventures, sometimes, for the greater good of humanity, sometimes due to circumstantial motives, but always, achieving God-like indomitable status due to the challenges they take and obstacles they overcome.
Thor and Odin were perhaps the first superheroes of Norse mythology - one the great God of thunder and other God of the hunter-gatherer-warrior Anglo-Saxons. Iliad and Odyssey, the Greek epic poems celebrated heroism on a grand scale, with not just the twelve labors of Hercules , or the unconquerable Achilles, or the great battles and chimeric creatures, but in it depiction of myriads of human characters , both evil and good and the power of these forces on human mind. The Hindu mythology had its fair share of heroes as well, from the great tales of Mahabharata and the battle of Ramayana , so often riddled with stories of relentless courage, kinship, chivalry, power, justice, wisdom and vengeance.
These were the stories from the ancient world recalled and retold again and again, but about the modern world? Who are the superheroes of our times?
There are works of great men, of course, as we walk from light to darkness, through trials and tribulations, and begin to understand meaning of life. But where are our epics? Or the tales that etch the saga of humanity leeching out bare bones of our skeleton in the closet with corrosive acids of truth. Who represents MANKIND? Where are those tall stories that our grandmother would tell us at bedtime, deviously innocent tales of kings, queens, knights and dragons, that bellies an undercurrent of basic human drives and instincts that lead us to war, peace, battles fought for honor, or great empires of justice?
Can we even have a superhero in this cyber age where virtual reality is the reality? Or in the age when individual valor and courage is overshadowed with the devastating consequences of a destruction of a whole nations with a push of a button by someone unknown (we do not have to know his name, but we shudder at the effect). We know that great men, great cultures, great societies are a figment of our imagination, King Aurthur and his Excalibur was just a legend, but it fit beautifully with the aspirations of Medieval Europe. So where is our great counterpart?
Are the days of heroism finally over? Or it never existed in the first place and we are finally coming in terms with it? Who is a our great selfless protector?
Marvel Comics brings forth a whole gamut of Superheroes raining over us - the Spiderman, the Superman, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, Iron man, the Daredevil, the Ghost-rider, the Phantom among many others.
They are our very own imaginary masked men in black or masquerading crime-fighters. They are literally super-people that protect the earth from all evils and corrupt villains and gangsters- great figment of imagination or wonderful scapegoat. Their description is simple - men of superhuman power and strength who perform feat unthinkable for normal human being. And how did they get their great powers?
Some of them are born with it, like Superman,who is from planet Krypton, which explains his superhuman qualities, or some by accident like Spider man, who after having been bitten by spiders gains supernatural powers and some like Batman bring out their inner rage as a motivating force to fight all evils. And almost all of them have an alter-ego, an alternate life where they are meek and mild briefcase carrying bespectacled office-goer. One the ordinary guy next door the other the great crime-fighter. Who knows your meek unassuming neighbor might be the great superhero in disguise and might one day rescue you from a trying situation and you wouldn't even know it!
That's a plausible trait of all modern superheroes - to be able to mix with the mass. To be one among us million minions. But now there is another shift in ideology as far as the Superheroes are concerned. Gen X superheroes are very much humans - with human faults and shortcomings. Which is why, Spiderman tends to oscillate towards his latent evil side. Superman has an identity crisis, being the only extraterrestrial on earth. Batman walk on thin lines between vengeance and verdict. Now as we probe to look at th4e Man behind the mask, a much more human side of the superhero emerges before our eyes- side where the hero is vulnerable, or makes mistakes, or even battles with temptations to join the dark side. As Peter Parker aka Spiderman says :"With great power comes great responsibilities". Then comes our very own Shatiman and Krishh(..................yes, they are superheroes too, although they make a meager impression on most of us.)
Lord of the Rings conjures an epic-like tale of battle between the Dark Lord and the people of the Middle Earth. Or even Harry Potter, in its last book rises from a small child's bedtime story to a much darker and malicious plot, within the realm of magic and myth, there lies a darker force and greater power struggle. With the advent of nineteenth century, technology and space travel progressed with new possibilities and apprehensions, there came the cult of Star Wars - saga of an intergalactic race of men, armed with super technology at war. Again a battle of good and evil on a different scale and in a different scenario.
But in all these, there is a common thread that binds everything together - it is a story and the faith that Good presides over Evil. However greater the opposition may be, truth stands on its own.
Here is a quote from the movie Kill Bill that struck a chord -
"I find the whole mythology surrounding superheroes fascinating. Take my favorite superhero, Superman. Not a great comic book. Not particularly well-drawn. But the mythology... The mythology is not only great, it's unique. Now, a staple of the superhero mythology is, there's the superhero and there's the alter ego. Batman is actually Bruce Wayne, Spider-Man is actually Peter Parker. When that character wakes up in the morning, he's Peter Parker. He has to put on a costume to become Spider-Man. And it is in that characteristic Superman stands alone. Superman didn't become Superman. Superman was born Superman. "
Our image of a Superhero has changed over the ages, as our society itself has changed from agrarian communities to its nascent technological uprising to a modest beginning of a global identity. Our hopes and fears have changed, our enemies have altered. We no longer feel compelled to revere thunderstorm as the most superlative force of nature, as there are by far more devastating ones like the nuclear threats or climate change or the asteroid collision. As we delve deeper, our questions are becoming more and more complex and profound. And so are our Heroes. As we learn the inner working of our mind, we learn to look at our own darker side and not be surprised by the presence of Mr Hide. Or heroes, like us, fight two wars, one within and the one beyond. And like us, he has to win both. And in this context we are all Heroes.
In the end, no one is spared, no one is invincible, but the one who rises to the occasion is the Hero of the day. It is a trait that lurks in all of us. We do not have to be the leader of men, we only have to abide by our principals. All heroes and Superheroes are imaginary and idealistic. They are like Atlantis, our perfect imaginary societies, which we build to have a good role model before our eyes and to distinguish between the lures of the equitable and the saturnine.
And subconsciously , as a child always earns to be like his parents, we always hope to be like our superheroes whom we worship.
So what kind of Superhero would you be?
Think about it.

If I ,.......................

2008-04-09T12:26:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer : Now this is taken from another blog. I liked it enough to make it mine.

If I were a beginning, I would be:- the beginning of the universe
If I were a month, I would be: -November
If I were a day of the week, I would be :– Friday
If I were a time of day, I would be: - Twilight
If I were a planet, I would be:- Mars
If I were a season, I would be:- Winter
If I were a sea animal, I would be:- Dolphin
If I were a direction, I would be:- North
If I were a piece of furniture, I would be:- Rocking Chair
If I were a sin, I would be:-Gluttony
If I were a liquid, I would be:- Water
If I were a fraud/scare, I would be:- My doppelganger
If I were a gem, I would be:- Diamond
If I were a tree, I would be:-Red Maple
If I were a tool, I would be – Hammer
If I were a flower/plant, I would be:- Rhododendron
If I were a kind of weather, I would be:- Snowfall on a wintry day
If I were a musical instrument, I would be:- Piano
If I were an animal, I would be:- Cat
If I were an emotion, I would be:- Mercurial
If I were a vegetable, I would be:- None
If I were a sound, I would be:- Thunder
I were an element, I would be:-Fire
If I were a car, I would be:- Cadillac
If I were a song, I would be:- Orange Sky by Alexi Murdoch
If I were a food, I would be:- Butter Paneer
If I were a place, I would be:- Arctics
If I were a material, I would be:-Silk
If I were a taste, I would be:- Sweet
If I were a scent, I would be:- Lavender
If I were a religion, I would be:- Crusified
If I were a sentence, I would be:- prophetic
If I were a body part, I would be:- Legs
If I were a facial expression, I would be:- Smiley
If I were a subject in college, I would be:-Theater and Art
If I were a shape, I would be:- Circle
If I were a quantity, I would be:- A ton
If I were a colour, I would be:- Purple
If I were a thing, I would be:- A Cuckoo Clock
If I were a landmass, I would be:- Switzerland
If I were a book, I would be:- Inheritance of loss
If I were a monument, I would be:- The Pyramid
If I were an artist, I would be:- Vincent
If I were a collection of poems, I would be:- Ariel
If I were a landscape, I would be:- Grand Canyon
If I were a watch, I would be.- Black and Simple
If I were God, I would be:- Disappointed
If I were a vowel, I would be: I
If I were a consonant, I would be: V
If I were a formula, I would be: E=MCsquared
If I were a Science, I would be:-Cosmology
If I were a theory, I would be:- Theory of Everything
If I were a famous person, I would be.:- Enid Blyton
If I were an electronic equipment, I would be:- Laptop
If I were sport, I would be:- Marathon
If I were a movie, I would be:- Pan's Labyrinth
If I were a cartoon, I would be:- Tom and Jerry
If I were an explorer, I would be:-Neil Armstrong
If I were a scientist, I would be:-Merrie Curie
If I were a relation, I would be:- Free-thinker
If I were a river, I would be:- Flowing
If I were intoxication, I would be:-Rum
If I were alone, I would be:- Silent
If I were a question, then I would be:- Why not?
If I were a hobby, I would be:- Painting and Writing
If I were a habit, I would be:- Walking
If I were in an atom, I would be:- Graviton!!!!!!!
If I were an end, I would be:- Apocalypse
If I were you, I would be:- ME

Trying to Interpret Dreams

2008-04-04T12:12:00.000-07:00

Dancing silhouette of faces and hands flickers at the light beam,
Red, blue and green polka dots appear in the dark
I open my eyes and this worlds falls in shreds,
I close my eyes to reconstructed it again.
It morphs into gibberish shapes, images and colors.
Mild recollections bounce off like soap bubbles
Bursting, as I try to touch them with feverish fingers.
With head as heavy as paperweight, I try to recall,

How will I remember you? How will I fathom?
Does the sea recall the walker upon it?
Or the lark remember its nest?
Or even the butterfly, its cocoon?

Night fades slowly, the sun rises, people make merry
Summer splashes colors back on the ground
A familiar voice whispers into my ears - from faint and faraway places,
Before the blank walls approach again. And the voice speaks -
It was me who befriended you in darkness
It was me who gave you that ray of hope
Forever a faceless face, an amorphous shape
And yet, stasis in this mutable universe.

Metamorphosis

2008-03-15T10:51:00.000-07:00

Change,
everything you are,
and everything you were,
Coz with time , everything changes.

Tagging a High-fiver

2008-03-07T13:50:00.000-08:00

I have been tagged into this by Arnab.

Life ten years ago
High and Mighty,( crazy, gawky, incorrigible, precocious) teens – like Icarus, I flew towards the sun.
Life was pretty much all about studies. I was at the threshold of an exciting and a decisive turn in my life. Fresh out of the glory of my 10^th class Board Exam but still learning the ropes, dreaming about getting into the greatest Architecture school in India. I knew my destination but I did not know the directions. What do high school physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics have in common with architecture? I ‘d say almost nothing.
Frequently, I would look at the sky, see a plane flying towards the horizon and dreamt that one day the world shall be my play ground. Unknown to me, stars were changing houses, new avenues were opening up. For once I knew what I wanted, there was no looking back.
Meanwhile, DDLJ was setting the trend for a great romance. If I could almost miss the train to be rescued by a Hero who flunks exams but is a charismatic talker. Who said about anything better?

Life five years ago
Older enough to know the rules, young enough not to follow them, says the troublesome twenty, a stepping stone to adulthood.
I fondly remember my collage life as the best-est time I ever had. Pune was great. Architecture was inspiring. I had the best group of friends I’d ever imagine. Life’s lessons were not just confined in the library books, but laid out in the world – in the design studios, in our random bunking of classes to go for trekking in Mahabaleshwar, Punchgani etc, in Amruta’s babble about tensile structures, Anaheet’s paintings, Shabnam’s common sense and intellect, Manasi’s management skills and Chevan’s practicality. I had an over-dose of foreign award-winning movies at Pune film festival. Pictionary at Anaheet’s place was becoming a ritual. Nothing beat the heat of Pune summer better than sugarcane juice from the streets.

Life tomorrow
So the slow turtle won the race, hmmmmmmmmm. Maybe I should slow down too. Maybe it was time dilation.
Who knows?
And that’s the best thing about it.

Five locations I would run away to
I would never run away. But given a choice I would go to these places -

Fly to Pune , Bombay, Calcutta to meet my friends and family.
Take a tour of the world on Magellan’s boat.
Visit North Pole.
Be a time traveler and travel back and forth in time.
On a space shuttle, seeing the world as the Gods might.

Five bad habits I have

I am so disorganized, a living proof of Murphy’s Law.
I love procrastinating. Love to spend hours reading wikipedia and answers.com
Compulsive coffee drinker. Love to take long walks, even in the most inclement weather conditions.
I am very mercurial – may be little crazy as well. Now that’s a good confession.
Hell hath no fury when I am angry. Keep all blunt and sharp objects away from my reaches, including yourself. But fear not, it doesn’t take time for the volcano to cool off.

Five things I will never wear

A Miss Universe Crown (I don’t foresee that coming along anyways)
Bikini
I love new clothes. So I’d wear anything that is considered fashionable.
I whole-heartedly support tree-planting and green revolution but I avoid the color green.
I hate all kinds of jewelry except earrings.

Five biggest joys at the moment
Happiness is a state of mind; it’s a long term feeling of contentment. But joy is momentary exhilaration, which even a long drive down the winding roads can bring. Or even a glass of vodka. I’d go for the happiness. Joys will come along surely.

Something to achieve by next year
A good old job will do for now. Eventually, some day to work with the United Nations. Start taking writing and photography seriously.

Something that impacted me last year
My grandmother’s death. And then the April 16^th event at Tech.
Like trouble, help also comes from unforeseen quarters – so keep your doors open for hope to walk in.

What I will miss about 2007
Nothing. This was a year I’d like to forget.

Five things I want to do before I die
First thing, to achieve immortality. Haha, just kidding, lets see......

Live an adventurous life – to make it worthwhile.
To be part of this great social revolution called Globalization. I want to be the daughter of India and the citizen of the world.
To work in UN, for the third world and developing countries. To have sustainability as my agenda. To lobby for the environment, human rights and animal rights without sounding like a zombie.
Write a novel (more than one if possible).
To be remembered after death, as one who tried hard to change the system by being a part of it and not running away from it. I came, I saw, I conquered, not by sword but by words. (No I am not trying to be the modern day Joan of Arc or that great Lady with a Lamp or merely trying to be useful)

And now its my turn to pass the parcel to Bernie , Karthik and GPS.

Fiction Facts

2008-03-04T13:34:00.000-08:00

I had a few satisfactory readings lately.
The first book that I started and finished was Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar. I wanted to read this book for a long long time. I am a big fan of SP's poems - which are really good, innovative and confessionals in poetic style. However I must say I was taken aback by her novel The Bell Jar. Based on her own life experiences, she etches a character of girl who is talented, confused and finally turns out to be neurotic as well. I loved her style of writing which seems to be as fluent and lucid as her poems, but the book was singularly depressing throughout. Right from the beginning till the end, the main protagonist is locked in dualities and arguments with her own self - not able to accept the shackles of the society, her own battles and finally her mental illness. The Bell Jar was a brutally honest story but a sad one.
The second book that I finished was "Inheritance of Loss" by Kiran Desai, the book which won the Bookers prize last year. It was truly a worthy read, perhaps one of my favorite books till date. the book has a of fresh perspectives on issues like globalization, immigration, colonialism, terrorism and anglicized Indians. From the start to the finish the book was beautifully written with illuminating verses and reflections at the end of chapters which made me pause and think for few minutes. Although her work is severely criticized for aggrandizing the situations but who can oppose to the fact that “art is a point of view; it is reality recast and dramatised through imagination”. After all if we are presented with the dry leached bone of the truth it wouldn't not be a fiction, it would be a report. And yet bathed in the colors of imagination and extrapolation, the Author puts the truth out to us only in a light of careful scrutiny and realizations. The style of writing is descriptive like "God of Small Things" but much better. The story alternates between New York and Darjeeling, unraveling the lives of two generations and classes differences. The good and evil side of immigration to US and the so called "shadow-class" (illegal immigrants) and the truth behind the great American Dream. It also describes insurgencies and terrorism and how lives change under that circumstances. In other words, its a book I'd buy. I read it twice and loved it, only thing is that I felt the end was kind of abrupt, maybe because I was with the characters for so long that I missed having to end it all.
But why the name "Inheritance of loss"? It reminds me of the illustrious words of Gandhi.........
"What is my inheritance? To what am I an heir? To all that humanity has achieved during tens of thousands of years, to all that is has felt and suffered and taken pleasure in, to its cries and triumphs and its bitter agony of defeat, to that astonishing adventure of man which began so long ago and yet continues and beckons to us.
To all this and more in common with all men. But there is a special heritage for those of us of India, not an exclusive one, for none is exclusive and all are common to the race of man, one more especially applicable to us, something that is in our flesh and blood and bones, that has gone to make us what we are and what we are likely to be........an agent........an agent for social transformation!"
The lines for battle have been drawn and this battle will be fought on three fronts; the Environment front, the Social front and, the Individual front. And thus it shall be. We are the winners, we are the losers.

Pale Blue Dot

2008-02-27T06:29:00.000-08:00

The Marble like Earth as seen from Apollo 17

"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to
preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known." - Carl Sagan

And that is the Earth as seen from Voyager Spacecraft

Family Portrait of our Solar System as seen from Voyager I

This is so breathtaking that there is nothing more to say!!!

About Love and other Disasters

2008-02-14T07:58:00.000-08:00

She was haunted by the same thoughts again and again. A faceless face that flashed in her dreams time and again. She would close her eyes and trying to obliterate all her thoughts, her worries, calm her mind and reaching into the furthest corners of serenity when the face would flash in front of her. She would open her eyes and close again and the face would vanish. It was not an archetype dream of a Prince Charming, this guy had flaws, he was just as plain as ordinary as she was. And yet she found him re-surfacing again and again. After a while she got used to seeing his face in her dreams. He became as real to her as the stars in the sky - she knew their existence was true, but she had no idea how to reach to him. She would point her finger and draw imaginary smiley faces joining the stars in a line. "There you are." she would finally say." Much better." and sleep.
His cynicism came in a self-addressed envelope. When he looked at himself all he was wanted to make things perfect- he knew not how. A little better at academics, a little better at sports, a little better in articulating - he was driven. He would sit staring at the sky, at the dead of the night, looking at the stars, figuring their constellations, the Aries there, Taurus here, Pisces that way, he would think. The stars meant mystery to him. He had a telescope through which he would observe the night sky, looking for subtle changes in alignment, a shooting star, a falling meteoroid. One day while during his regular observation she heard a voice whispering into his ears "Look out of the window, Look carefully, you will see me." He would look, confused and unsettled. At first he thought he was imagining the voices or that his mind was simply playing tricks on him. But the same voice would call again. Again he would look out and see nothing but the beautiful full moon - magically calling him from somewhere in the back of his souls oldest memories.
She would feel him there, her ghostly suitor. When she combed her hair in the mirror she would see him standing behind her, far far away. But she knew that if she spun around to see, there would be nothing except silence and stillness. Somewhere in the recesses of her mind she would hear him promising " Wait for me. I'll find you when if it is the last thing I'd do." She would be consumed by this eerie feeling of someone who is not there, yet she would feel his presence. She would wrestle with the fact that he wasn't real.
Years went on, and she would accept his ghostly presence, assuring that he is there somewhere. "What is your name?" she would ask, or "Where can I find you?" She would get no answers. In the end she decided to call him Fate. She decided that she is not allowed to search for him, just wait. It would be a natural process through which he wouldappearbeforeher.
He decided that he has to find her. It irked him, something in-explainable, a conundrum that he had to solve. He called her Destiny, as if it was the challenge of his lifetime to find her. Fate and Destiny, after all, are one and the same thing.He learnt to recognize her. She learnt to wait for him in blind faith. Both had to live real live with real problems and real people in it. Neither could shake off the very real belief that the other one existed somewhere out there. And there was just this vast space between the two, that seems to be apparently filled, but in both their minds that space was empty-waiting for a magical moment of contentment.
How many times she would convince herself that man standing in front of her is her Fate? How many time he would mistake her for someone else? Would Fate and Destiny give up, burn out, writing it all off as some figment of their imagination. Do soulmates really exist? Is it an idealistic manifestation in our brain?
We are all looking for that great love. The one that is eternal. We have searched for it in the books, in movies, in the theater, in passionate love songs, in poems and ballads. We have imagined love to be there for us, waiting around the corner, to fall on us like rain, to watch over our head like an umbrella. We are all searching for that love hoping that one day Love will find us even if we don't find love.
And yet this love is a slippery blob of mercury. Just when we think we have found it, it metamorphoses into something else. Just when we think we have understood it, conquered it and tamed it, it resurfaces in its primitive form and unleashes agony. 'Perspective betrays with its dichotomy”- it is the quicksand of ambivalence. No great song can define it; no story is great enough to encompass love in it. The moment we try to ask, to dissect, to probe love, it deviates like a beam of light, from one point to another, leaving behind a mirage or a marsh light to baffle our observations.
And thus love remains illusive and an ever-changing chameleon that blushes red at sunset, darkens blue with the night, pales at dawn and shines in daylight. Like sand in a tightly closed fist, it slips away, every grain of it – to a free flowing dune. So don’t hope to understand love or overpower it. Let it grow, let it transcend to you down the stairs, like an finality. A soulmate is not someone you are in love with. They are not someone you have a karmic connection with. They are not someone you want to spent all your time, your life with.
They are someone you miss hanging out before you have even met. They are the one that upon meeting you know there has to be a second meeting and a third, so on and so forth. No questions asked. No finding out about each other. You have already known them as well as you know yourself. You have seen them in your eyes. You have known them all along. You understand them in the soul level because you share the same source.
Unfortunately this is always not a blissful experience. Most of us are not ready to meet the other halves, because we are not ready to look at ourselves in the mirror. Unless you truly love and accept yourself, you would not find your soulmate. For soulmates are not some fantastic persons send to save you from the ups and downs of life. They are not there to make your life magically perfect or fairytale-like. They simply love you and accept unlike other.
Don't not ask if all this is true. Or whether it makes sense. Believing is upto you. Romantics will believe, pragmatics will not. Optimistics will hope, pessimistic will not. It is as true as our belief that each life on earth as a purpose, a goal to fulfil. We all have to fit into roles we play. But don't ask me if searching for a soulmate is worth the hunt?
Ask yourself. Only you know what it is going to take to find them. Perhaps you will telepathically connect once you meet them. Perhaps you will go through some bad relationships first in order to find them. Perhaps you were just meant to experience the longing. Perhaps you will fail to see them at first and then slowly recognize them and accept them and then be truly content.
We do not know the answers. Shakespeare said that Journey's end at lovers meeting. Cherish the gift of finding yourself in another's eyes and see how beautiful you are. Cherish the gift of having unspoken understanding and enjoying solitude with a company. For one is a co-incidence, but two is rhythm. And love is the most wonderful way of binding all we have to say to someone in just one word. It is our greatest gift. Great battles have been fought for love, great venture have been undertaken. People die for love, cheat, steal, lie for love. Or even want to buy or sell love. "If you pluck out the heart, To find what makes it move. You'll halt the clock That syncopates our love."(Plath) And yet, love survives the rigmarole of daily lives, and make living so much worthwhile. Without love, this world is a hopeless and a dangerous place.
There is nothing more magical than this fact that - Love Survives Everything. In a perfectly chaotic world where there is hundred opportunities to strangle love with copious pollutants, love comes out unscarred - the only magic in this world we can cast without a wand. And it is called LOVE.........................

.............................It truly is. Happy Valentines Day.

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme

2008-02-07T10:36:00.000-08:00

No this post is not about that wonderful Anglo-Saxon folk song Scarborough Fair sung by sung by Simon and Garfunkel. It is not about these four lovely European herbs (Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme) and how these herbs along with Indian spices can make food Yummmmmmmmmyyyy.
Cooking is an art that I enjoy once in a while and I thought I'd share some of my "quick-fix" tricks with you. I am sure none of these recipes are original, but they are easy to make, fast to prepare and fetches me the accolades. To start with the soup -

Weight-watchers Soup of the day
Ingredients -
Any vegetables in your Refrigerator (Broccoli, carrots, peas, corn - Usually I mix them all)
One Potato
Milk
Onion, Ginger-Garlic chopped fine.
Mushroom (Both portabella and button)
Blue cheese (or any cheese will do)
Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme (for flavoring)
Salt, Black pepper, Chili powder
White Vinegar
Spring Onions (if you have them at home)
Chicken / Tofu / Paneer
Cornstarch
Procedure -
Chop onions, ginger-garlic into fine pieces. Boil the potatoes. Put all the vegetables except spring onions and corn in the blender/ mixer with milk and blend well. Fry onions, ginger-garlic in a pot till golden brown. Add corn, spring onions, the blended vegetables, chicken/ tofu/ paneer, mushrooms and potato. Stir fry them, then add water/ milk. Let it simmer for a few minutes. Add the cheese. Stir well. Add parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme for flavoring and salt, black pepper, chili powder as per taste. Mix cornstarch in half a cup of cold water and pour in the soup. This thickens the broth. Add two teaspoons of vinegar and serve hot with garlic bread.
Main Course : Chili Paneer/ Tofu/ Chicken -
Ingredients -
Paneer/Tofu/ Chicken
Onion, Ginger-Garlic
Green chilies
Soya sauce
Vinegar
Salt and Black Pepper to taste
Procedure -
Blend onion, chilies, ginger and garlic in the mixer to form a thick paste. Fry the paneer/tofu/ chicken separately in a pan. Be sure to buy firm or extra firm tofu. In a saucepan heat oil. Put the paste in the oil and stir till cooked. Add the paneer/tofu/ chicken in the pan mix well and let into simmer in medium flame for 3 minutes. Add soya sauce and vinegar. Also add salt and black pepper to taste. Serve with roti or naan.
Side dish: Corn Kamaal
Ingredients -
Corn
Mustard seeds (rai)
Onion, Ginger-Garlic
Green chilies and red chili powder/ Paprika
Salt and Black Pepper to taste
Lemon Juice
Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme
Fresh Coriander leaves
Procedure -
Put mustard seeds in the oil in a pan, then add chopped onion, ginger and garlic in the same pan and fry till golden brown. Add the green chilies (chopped) and corn. Fry till you get the smell of fried corn (bhutta like). Add drops of lemon juice, and salt, black pepper to taste along with parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme to give flavor. You can add a pinch of paprika instead of red chili powder. Sprinkle freshly cut coriander leaves for garnishing. Serve with pasta or other dish.
Delightful dessert : Fitness-freak's Parfait
Ingredients -
Pound Cake (vanilla, or any flavor that you like)
Fruits (anything that you like - pineapple, strawberries, papaya, oranges, passion fruit, grapes, cranberries)
Fruit flavored Yogurt
Hershey's Chocolate Bar
Nuts ( any nuts that you like almond etc.)
Little cream for dressing (optional)
Procedure -
I actually made this one when the cake I had baked once turned out too soggy. Well in that case, crumble the cake, finely. Take a flat bottomed glass tray/ vessel and put a layer of cake crumbs in it. Press the crumbs with your thumb as the first layer of parfait. Add the fruits as the second layer. Then pour the flavored yogurt evenly around as the third layer over the fruits. Put another layer of cake crumbles. Make it into compact and thick layers with hand. Melt chocolate in water in the microwave to a thick chocolate syrup. Pour the syrup. Sprinkle nuts. Spread the last layer of cake. Pour icing cream on top to make it an even layer. Put in the refrigerator for an hour. Cut into pieces and serve the slices.
Bon appetite!!!!!

I Want, I Want.........................

2008-02-04T06:11:00.000-08:00

A dollop of (utterly-butterly delicious) Amul butter on my platter.
A car, a car- shinning metallic beast that runs at 110 mph without a grim.
A purple room (I have seen that one before, it is not so outrageous).
A discount on drinks at Mcados! (now that one is essential).
A whole new wardrobe( I am bored with the existing one).
A mountain to climb, a breath-taking view at the summit.
To wake up at 6.30am and start studying immediately.
Live in a busy busy city not so far from a rustic farm.
A kitty (called Sherry) and a doggy (called Bozo).
A new ipod and download songs.
To finish what I start.
A visitor at my door.
To throw a party.
To write a novel.
An inspiration.
Serendipity.
You,(to keep reading).

Of course, a Genie in a Bottle or a bank balance decent enough to finance my extravagance!!!

Hackneyed

2008-01-19T09:43:00.001-08:00

Here lies the symmetry of a clear landscape.
Nothing skips a beat-
The sun, the maple leaves blush in bliss
Of newly wedded cheeks.
Wind does not stir or ruffle.
Here grass grows green over rippling dunes
Tumbling into the blue sky,
Saturated with saccharine sweetness of an unblemished
Set of teeth curved in pearl smiles.
Balanced effortlessly on toes like a dancer,
Gliding like a puff of cloud, under the umbrella
Of shady canopies.

Not a chord or a strand of hair hangs loose
Eschewed elsewhere.
The world, the silly old helium balloon, hangs
By an elastic super-string bouncing
Back and forth from its origin like an echo.

How one wishes to add a layer of imperfection, to smudge,
To add an extra dimension of disturbance
To the stasis mannequin poses.
Move the centerpiece by an inch or so,
Or to let loose the Devil
And break the monotony of this picture perfect concoction
That euthanizes its observer.

And then, whatever happens to love?

2008-01-10T13:12:00.001-08:00

What is the "natural" ending of a work of art?
How to close something whose premise, whose founding conceit is that,( like life,) it doesn't end?
The Russian short story writer Chekhov was known for his "negative endings". His stories frustrate our sense by refusing to end: Chekhov would successful keep his readers hooked on to every word and sufficiently involved with the twists and turns in the plot, after all that he would just close by saying "And then it began to rain." By then you are dying to know what happens next.
The other day I watched the movie called Before Sunset, the sequel to Before Sunrise (1995), in which two characters, Jesse and Celine, meet on a train to Vienna and decide to spend a night roaming around in the streets and talking.Next morning they part with a promise to meet in the same station after six months. Which, they never do, due to circumstantial reasons. The sequel starts off when Jesse writes a book about the time they spent together and comes to Paris and meet Celine again. Now starts a different story of characters who have growth up but haven’t grown out of each other. The sequel has a wistful, improvisatory feel that does indeed feel lifelike, and feels true to the fragile happiness of the two characters.
It is one of those endings that reformulate everything that has gone before, giving it a final power it had not possessed before. This is rare in art, surely; unsuccessful endings are the norm. You could say, as a rule, that the novel, for instance, is a form that doesn't want to end, and that generally contorts itself into unnatural closure.
How often we feel of long novels especially, that their last 50 or so pages are mechanical and overwrought, that the rhythm of the book is speeding up as it reaches its end. As if the writer just wanted to end it in the 10000 words in the last 10 pages.
Even great novels have disappointing endings, like War and Peace and The Portrait of a Lady, in which the novelist seems to admit to us that, having attempted to make his novel almost continuous with life, he cannot really wrench it away from that continuity by bringing it to a close.
“Art is never finished, only abandoned.” says the great painter Van Gogh.
Of course, the basic conundrum that attends any organic process is that in one's beginning is one's ending: the entire length of a novel or symphony can be said to be a kind of drawn-out ending. It is, as if, in the beginning tells you how it is going to end, almost like the character’s fates are predestined by the author. And yet, sometimes, they don’t end. As if, their lives continue, even though the words end. You squirm, you brood, you wish, you hope that some form of conclusive finale happens down the line. And in other times, you feel that end was so tragic that it drives you nuts.
This dilemma is more apparent in music than in writing, perhaps, because the final chord, the resolution, of a piece of music generally sounds so banal, so static, so formulaically harmonious. One often feels, especially in Classical music or Ballads, that the composer resents having to shuffle the music toward its finale.
Mozart, Wagner, Schubert wittily plays around with its audience - it seems to be about to end again and again, only to take off for another round of complication and development. Beethoven's last piano sonatas are fascinating in part because the structure is that of theme and enormously elaborate variation; and Beethoven's variations are so fertile, so ingenious, so chromatic that they seem potentially infinite, a statement of limitlessness.
And yet, we value things more because there is a finite quality about them. If stories went on and on and on, sequel after sequel, our interest would surely wan.
Sometimes things that have a physical boundary spill into that surplus space in our mind and reaches into the far distances of our senses. In other words, things that linger and stay on like a perfume’s subtle fragrance.
Beautiful paintings do not end too, they seem to pop out of the canvas and swim in the air in front of us. Even Picasso’s cubism jumps out of its boxes and takes shapes in our minds. For Van Gogh’s self portrait speaks out loud. Monet’s colors over-power.
“A picture speaks a thousand words.” Remember that photograph of an Afghan woman with striking green eyes on the covers of National Geographic magazine that held the world breathless.
Perfect endings, whether of the open to interpretations kind, or of the positive and closed kind, are rare and to be cherished. One of the most beautiful lines must occur in the last; be it “Tomorrow is another day.” (GWTW) or “The bird with the thorn in its chest, it follows an immutable law; it is driven by it knows not what to impale itself, and die singing”(Thorn Birds).
For that is what we want to say at the close of every novel. “But now I know that our world is no more permanent than a wave rising on the ocean. Whatever our struggles and triumphs, however we may suffer them, all too soon they bleed into a wash, just like watery ink on paper.” says Arthur Golden in Memoirs of Geisha.
Dali has finished his painting; and Woolf has now finished her open and fluid novel, which we, as readers, have helped to "re-paint" or “re-furnish”.
In this, we have all indeed had our vision.

Muse and Music

2008-01-10T07:33:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm a little behind the times, but I just happened to discover the band Muse. I came across this song called Apocalypse Please on youtube by Muse. I can't stop listening to it!
It's so beautiful, so eerie.
Muse is an English band more towards the progressive or alternative rock genre. Much like the other New Prog rock bands like Doves, Oceansize, Pure Reason Revolution etc Muse has a lot of heavy metal rock. Some say Muse sounds like other rock bands (Nirvana and Radiohead), but I felt that their way of singing is pretty unique.
I specially like the names of their albums and songs. Much of their lyrics are inspired from Theoretical Physics and Hyperspace.
Those who love rock, Muse is really good.

Bangs, crunches, shrieks, and whimpers

2008-01-03T17:38:00.001-08:00

Philosophers rate the end of the world (humans) in these four corny words - Bangs, Crunches, Shrieks, and Whimpers which would be the following possible disasters -
The Bangs are - Deliberate misuse of nanotechnology, Nuclear holocaust, We're living in a simulation and it gets shut down (all our lifes are like a computer programme that might shut down, the story of Eragon is roughly based on this), Badly programmed superintelligence, Genetically engineered biological agent, Accidental misuse of nanotechnology ("gray goo"), Something unforeseen, Physics disasters, Runaway global warming, Asteroid or comet impact. The Crunches are - Resource depletion or ecological destruction, Misguided world government decides to stop technological progress, "Dysgenic" pressures, Technological arrest.
The Shrieks are - Take-over by AI, Repressive totalitarian global regime The Whimpers are - Our potential or even our core values are eroded by evolutionary development, Killed by an extraterrestrial civilization.
For further information read this
Recently, I watched this new movie called " I am legend". Once again Hollywood has banked on one such possible scenario - scientific miracle cure for cancer that created Frankenstein. People who had cancer were treated with mutated measles virus to turn into blood-drinking vampirical zombies( instead of having measles or cancer or any other form of deadly disease). Only Will Smith is the last man on earth who lives with his dog in the middle of New York city now populated with Zombies and his favorite pass time is driving sports cars around the deserted Manhattan streets and hunting deers during the day. Pretty cool, until at night he has to hide from his terrible Zombie neighbors ( which thanks to Computer graphics looks scarier and ghost-like).
Well, Hollywood has almost turned to every possible alley in order to make a blockbuster potboiler, namely, the great climate change in Day After Tomorrow, asteroid collision in Armageddon so on and so forth.
And this makes me wonder how real are the threats of extinction ? But is the fate of mankind destined to be doomed? Is there no way to avoid the catastrophe?
Scientists say there isn't. The end is inevitable. This does not mean that extinction is going to happen in my lifetime, probably not till the next century at the least, but Big Demise is a certainity not a probability.
Reading this made me a little sad, not because of the knowledge that my
great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandchild is going to die, but because of what man has achieved so far will be useless if Mankind's final fate is extinction.
Look at the wonderful engineering and architectural marvels around you - the Pantheon, the Pyramids, the Colosseum, the Great Wall, beautiful bridges, stalwart monuments, - all for nothing?
Or the great scientific marvels and cures - all goes down the drain.
Or even the great human brain and mind - which is analytical yet capable of feeling compassionate, capable of loving, capable of remembering its credits - will everything eventually die out.
I mean, dinosaurs aren't really majestic except in Jurassic Park. (How many of us really like reptiles?)
Is there a way we could avoid doomsday?
Well, some scientists, notable physicists say there is a fair chance. (which I am afraid means a 50-50 chance, but still a chance).
Theoretical physicists like Michio Kaku, Stephen Hawkins states that our civilization has a chance. Technological innovation is unavoidable, awareness about global-warming can slow down its process but cannot stop it.
Could one way could be finding an alternative home / colony in another planet - mars, moon etc?
We are rocketing towards a global change. In the next hundred years - all scientific minds are going to be put together to harness the energy of the earth. The Kardashev scale classifies civilizations as to how technological advanced they are.
Type I civilization is a civilization that is able to harness all of the power available on a single planet. Type II civilization is a a civilization that is able to harness all of the power available from a single star. Type III civilization is a a civilization that is able to harness all of the power available from a single galaxy.
On this scale, our civilization is a Type 0. We still don't know what is going on inside the earth. Or how and why climatic changes occur let alone being able to control them. And we are going to reach Type I status in the next 100yrs, or less we face the dire straits. Culturally, globalization and global organizations like United Nations and WHO evidences of a beginning of a Type I civilisation. The world is now experiencing the birth pangs of a global economy and a global civilization - Internet being one of its forebearers. Today, the world is better connected through satellites, Internet other communication devices. With the rise in globalization comes the rise in terrorism.
“Modern society is a bicycle, with economic growth being the forward momentum that keeps the wheels spinning. As long as the wheels of a bicycle are spinning rapidly, it is a very stable vehicle indeed. But, when the wheels stop - even as the result of economic stagnation, rather than a downturn or a depression - political democracy, individual liberty, and social tolerance are then greatly at risk even in countries where the absolute level of material prosperity remains high....” says Friedman.
In other words, our strength lies in unity. If we are not pulled apart by our own vested interests we can prove to be the ultimate conqueror. The main reason to be careful when you walk up a flight of stairs is not that you might slip and have to retrace one step, but rather that the first slip might cause a second slip, and so on until you fall dozens of steps and break your neck. So one small thing can trigger a chain of events that might eventually destroy everything. Choas explains the scenario as the "Butterfly Effect" that is the propensity of a system to be sensitive to initial conditions.Such systems over time become unpredictable,this idea gave rise to the notion of a butterfly flapping it's wings in one area of the world,causing a tornado or some such weather event to occur in another remote area of the world.
We have to overcome these many milestones before we reach the Type I status, so honeymoon on the moon becomes a reality and the book "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" attains a literal meaning.
NASA scientists are pretty optimistic about space travel. Well, sounds like science fiction and not science just as travelling in air did before the Wright brothers discovered airplane.
But of course, as one delves deeper into science one realizes that everything is an educated guesswork - we can never be sure of anything, and 100% full proof prediction is impossible when the margin of error is pretty large solely because there are so many things we do not know.
There can be no case of murder without a body, and all claims of looking into the crystal ball of science and predicting the future leaves us with more doubts and questions. Like the mythical Holy Grail - quest of science shall never end, it shall only take us from one clue to another. And yet this journey is remarkable - right from the Stone ages, till now and beyond that.
It is perhaps interesting to know what fate befalls us in the future but it is equally interesting to know how we progress by leaps and bounds towards that great unknown spiralling maze that we so often call "humanity" or "life" or "civilization".
This is the journey of man. Fortunately,like the cockroaches, we, humans are blessed with a tough exoskeleton. I have great faith in two of the greatest boons of mankind - one is human brain and another is human heart.
In face of any great catastrophic calamity, these two gifts of Man shall finally save us. Some of us shall finally make it through the doomsday, if not all.
I'd conclude by saying that we started with a bang, but let us not end with a whimper.

Doomsday Argument

Once in a Leap Year

2008-01-02T06:56:00.000-08:00

Another chance.............................

to live life.

to think back.

to make things right.

to look forward to the future.

Stars are moving again. The Planets are realigning their arrangements. Take a leap now to the indeterminate future.

"Again we are deluded and infer
that somehow we are younger than we were."
Happy New Year

Female Writer - Paperbacked and Autographed

2007-12-30T13:45:00.000-08:00

Her almanac is like a spreadsheet. Forked into two - Task to be done and task accomplished table. Only the balance weighs more on one side. She loves to live on the edge - or else she is taking too much space. She leans over a narrow, admonitory cliff. The edge of the cliff elbows off towards the land's end. Without her over-active imagination she is like Alice out of Wonderland. She hunts for her white rabbit. She looks for the obvious signs in the misty moors of England along with the hooked-nose, pipe smoking detective with a love of opium and a doctor for assistance. Hounds of Baskervilles are silenced for now. Above her head the nutty old Professor flies in a gas balloon - "...in a hurry, around the world in eighty days..." he shouts as he passes by.

Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup, They slither while they pass, they slip away across the universe Pools of sorrow, waves of joy are drifting through my open mind, Possessing and caressing me.

All day she plays chess with the bare bones of the world. Sometimes they pour, gushing out of the hydraulic valves in right hemisphere. Other times it is just fog and mist. A little cloud over her head that is not silver enough to shine a light on the dark invisible matters.
Invariably, she is trying to write a story. A book. An alibi.
Intuitively, she tried to color the dashboard of life with colors - a little bit of spectacles, a little bit of fluoresces and gallons of word jugglery.
Involuntarily, she reaches for the box of chocolates and nibbles on it, curling in the purple cushions and rugs, now and then the wine glass begs for a sip.
It starts to rain. Rain outside as well as inside. She types out, her long fingers clicking on twenty seven English characters on the keyboard.
Prim, pink-cheeked feminine, she nurses chocolate fancies in purple-papered rooms, where polished words whisper promises and breaches - hothouse roses shed immortal blooms with thorns as sharp as three inch heel.
How does Nathaniel Hawthorn feel about it? She doesn't know yet?

Images of broken light which dance before me like a million eyes, That call me on and on across the universe, Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letter box they Tumble blindly as they make their way Across the universe.

The emerald on her fingers twinkle often, tinkling against the metal case of the universally abused and admirably faithful Dell inspiron laptop. Blood from her veins reflects across the manuscript - Word document catches on with her anecdotes.
She muses on the odor, sweet and sick, of festering gardenias smells from Bath & Body cologne, lavender colored room freshener leaks across the room.

And lost in subtle metaphor, retreats the gray faces and characters out of her rhetorics crying for a soul in the streets of imagination.
Like Oliver Twist they are crying for love and a piece of bread.

Slowly she glides into that uncharted territory . Like so many before her and after her. Lost in order to be found. In Robinson Crusoe's island time stands still, nothing changes, no evolution or metamorphosis or turn-over.
So how does the elements solidify into one whole?
Peter pan grows up to be a grumpy old man dissatisfied with his current job, family as large as China's population waiting for him to bring in the daily bread. Or was it the thoughts of Never Never Land?
These wood burns a dark incense like scented candles, the trees stand as blue mists move over. Pale moss drips over the way through the woods only cleared by the passing of the galloping houses - Robin Hood and his merry men crosses the stream over a worn down wooden bridge.
Just around the other corner of the globe, two men wait on a ambush - up on the Deodar tree of a Indian jungle. The great man-eating tiger of Deodar then crawls towards the bleating goat tied to the pole as Jim Corbet's rifle shoots at the mark.

Sounds of laughter shades of earth are ringing Through my open views inviting and inciting me Limitless undying love which shines around me like a Million suns, it calls me on and on Across the universe.

Two virtues ride side by side. One that cooks a meal the other that pens stories. Two are great friends until the pots smell of charcoal lifting the marinated incense in the house. The smoke alarm shrieks like a Banshee on call.Remembering a thousand autumns such as this, she gropes for another cauldron to serve her soup. Not surprised at the ruins of a good old recipe - one concoction in her mind is still workable.
Born green she was to this flawed garden, but in speckled thickets, warted as a toad. Ugly as Lady Havisham or the any other ordinary Joe off the street looking for a forbidden fruit - the lousy treasure-hunters /gold-diggers - deep down in the heart of Amazon, or twenty thousand blue leagues under the sea . The Little Women is coming of age at last. But her timing is imperfect. Her fangs honed sharp with wit, pride and prejudice. Her accent americanish - hair sprayed and garnished - a straightened broomstick mop. Abundance of her youth drips like butter - Scarlet with vanity. Like Tom Sawyer - there is adventure in store for her. The hourglass shifts clumsily. There is magic in the air now, and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.

Too late to ask if end was worth the means and the efforts. Who else would she be , if she wasn't this?

Silk Routes

2007-12-30T11:12:00.000-08:00

These routes are not red carpeted,
I have come a long way,
Trudging along with a lantern.
I chanted the divine slokas with the scholars
And the sages in ancient caverns.
I have rolled the dice and taken my chances -

With lonely houses, wolves, elves and foxes.
I have left the warm hearth of the tropics,
Buzzing of the fruit flies, gushing rivers
And swarming bee-hives of the megapolis
I have laid in the arms of green meadows and paddy fields-
Looked at the globe with wanderlust eyes.

I have been in the coven of that misunderstood woman-
To join in her midnight rituals,
Propelled my broomstick to the stars.
I have danced to your tunes Piper,
Tailgated in your car, dropped you a red handkerchief
In an old smoky bar.

I have hitch-hiked through the highways
Followed my distant dreams in your pick-up truck,
Seen the last of it - in the golden sunset.
I had been in your palace, Caesar
Charmed you through the night,
And left you a souvenir.

Yes, I had then stopped measuring my life
With a measuring tape, instead,
Tied the world in my locks of hair and choose my way
With the knowledge that road to El dorado is not paved in gold,
I traded my glass slipper for a pair of muddy boots
And a worn out-palimpsest.

Tried and Tested

2007-12-13T19:14:00.001-08:00

Ever since the first ape climbed down from trees, wobble a first stroll down the grasslands of Africa, he has been posing a serious threat to rest the animal kinds.
All animal kills. But they kill when they need. We are the one animal, after having an evolved a higher functional and intuitive brain - kill for purpose, kill for pleasure, kill in the name of science and technology.
All over the world, in research labs, animals such as rats, guinea pigs, rhesus monkeys, chimpanzees etc are used for experiments.
Drugs tested and experimented on them for cancer, AIDs and other diseases. Not to mention the fact that they have been infected with the disease first and then subjected to all kinds of experiments.
Not just medicine, cosmetic testing (Shampoos, soaps, skin products) material testing (helmet testing) etc are also done on the animals. Next time you buy your favorite brand of shampoo you know that it is been more likely tested on the eyes of rabbits who finally become blind.
Stop eating meat that comes from animals injected with steroids and other growth hormones or artificial methods of meat and milk production.
Stop using products tested on animals.
Support cause to fight against animal testing in labs.

Lets make this world a more humane place.
Lets not use God's creatures for our own purpose.

Stop animal testing - as simple as that.

Immaculate Inception of the Universe

2007-12-05T07:12:00.001-08:00

At first, there was nothing.Nothing but emptiness, emptiness that filled in like water in a glass - transparent yet omni- present. Yet this emptiness was a vacant space - with multiple flashes of energy traveling through the eternal passage of time. They traveled, they flew, they collided.
Then one day it happened, quite by chance. The energy transformed itself to a tiny spec of matter - tiny , minuscule but substantial point, from which started the story of how everything came into existence.
This happened, at a time before time. At a time, when time and space was one and the same. Even before the birth of the universe.
This happened when the world was filled with just heat, terrible heat and nothingness. Heat and energy gave birth to that tiny spec of matter. It is the equation we all know now as E= MC2.
But the matter, thus formed was so tiny that it wasn't even a molecule or an atom. It was in the sub-atomic scale - a particle with a little charge.
Many such particles with charges were formed. And they had opposite charges - negative and positive. They roamed around freely in the vast seething bowl of soup. Until, years went past, the space cooled down enough to allow the opposing charges to draw towards each other - by the fatal attraction of the opposite forces.
They clustered together. Some in the center, some around the periphery. Then came the neutral particles to give them stability. A structure was formed. An atom - the building block was ready, as the space cooled down further.
The simplest one was Hydrogen - having one of each of the particle with opposing forces. Then came Helium, little more complex.
Then God decided to get creative.
Thus space was like the empty canvas ready to be filled in. Atoms were the colors and the medium to fill the space with.
God was the Artist.
Millions of atoms got together and formed molecules. Millions of molecules got together to form matter.
Within the atoms there were diversities , and their arrangements made the molecules more diverse. All the elements were formed. The canvas was ready to be painted.
Permutation and combination formed unlimited and unimaginable variety of patterns.
So starting from a single point of origin, there was an entire array of forms and masses, gasses, solids and semi-solids, hovering aimlessly in space. Energy gave birth to photons out of which light was formed. And heat was ever present. Out of the great thermal and nuclear reactions were born stars - burning bodies of light, heat and energy. From far, they gave light to the space-travelers (there were no space travelers yet ), from near they were giant gaseous bodies of matter - burning itself.
They held the system together by gravity- the garlands of rock-masses we now call planets, maverick asteroids and comets , flying through space - the ever expanding universe.
The stars pulled them towards itself by gravity, like a mother pulling a child, as the electromagnetic force pulled the sub-atomic particles. Together they prevented the expanding universe from slipping away. Thus the galaxy was formed - deviously stable and dangerously unstable at the same time. Within which was the solar system. All of them tied together like pearls in a string - delicate balance and pattern of life.
The other rocks, aka planets cooled down. Some cooled to form frozen deserts, some remained boiling mass of volcanoes and lavas. Others, in mean distance had an optimum temperature. One such planet was cooled just enough to let a strange thing happen.
The stage was set. There was hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and myriads of other elements. They forming a framework together - The raw material was there, only a fuel was needed. Fuel came in form of a electric charge.
The atmosphere on that particular planet was still unstable. Thunderstorms and lightenings took place everyday, rains, floods created rivers. Large gorges filled up with water to form vast bodies of oceans. A few landmasses peaked from the vast stretches of water.
It was in this water something called life was created. Nitrogen, Hydrogen got together to form a complex protein strand. Which then formed a DNA. And then a single jolt of electric, it sprung to life magically.
It is magic indeed, how the first unicellular organism was born in this planet. How it evolved into more and more complex forms, how the planet changed from a turbulent land to a more hospitable habitat. There were sagas of great extinctions and great calamities, or of cataclysmic changes - but life found a way.
It always has and it always will.

Thus goes the fascinating story of creation.

(This post is based on Stephen Hawkins's theory of cosmology. All images are from Google.)

Medusa's Masquerade

2007-12-02T14:33:00.000-08:00

Out of the chilling blues,
Into a sizzling cauldron
Of eternal turbulence,

Tapping in an hour of bliss
In pivotal desires
Of achievements, accolades.

One magnetic eye
Fixed on the mark
The other petrified.

A motivated projectile
Undeterred from trajectory
Flying into space - the eye.

The owner of an octopus-head
whose tentacles slowly engulf itself
Until the mirror cracks.

Truth hides under a tormenting mask.
One more terrifying
Than the other.

Floating and drifting
Like a foetus in a womb
Buoyant, jubilant, prospective, pretty

Radiant exo-skeleton
Of flesh and blood.
Over the disfigured, mangy mass

Of confusion inside -
Vulnerable to the core.
What drives, also destroys.

Tentacles, starved of passion,
Feed on its mother -
The tumulus mind.

Winter Psychadelics

2007-11-30T13:20:00.000-08:00

Here, in this corner of the world, silver dominates over everything,
Silvery bristles of winter are wizened
And Gothic like an old man’s mane.
Shrieking wind and the swirling mist whirl
Around the wilting bough Of the lone tree -
Twisting and wrenching its branches.
Its black mottled barks are stiff with Rigor Mortis.
The grey sky offers no consolation. It bears sullen clouds.
This world is not pleasant to look at, like the cross-eyed,
The crooked-nosed, the humpbacks, the hare-lipped.
No soothe of wintergreen balm in it.
It is poor, miserly and white as a ghost.
The winter is without pretenses or vendetta. It is not two faced.
The cold is merciless and desolate. Its disposition is malicious.
Glory that lies in life is now sucked in seasonal centrifuge.
Beyond the rectangles of my window lurks this deathly silence.
The snow falls silently too, as smoky as liquid nitrogen.
Where have all the colors gone? Or hope for that matter?
This whiteness - this all pervading whiteness follows me around
Like the bland moon. And the casual stillness
Not daring to breath.

The scene looks the same every day.

This world is a white naphthalene ball. It shrinks before my eyes,
As night conquers day. Black allows phantasmagoria.
Twisted agony of dead mandrake roots rise in air.
My heart is as poor as a church mouse.My dreams are amorphous.
I struggle to hold on. The tree springs to life like a prehistoric trilobite,
Its antennae weaving in air.
In the dark the creatures move, creeping out of the earth.
Unaware, from the shadows of the tree appears
The ten headed demon in his air-borne chariot.
The ten headed demon then pulls me by the root of my hair.
Dragging me into his blazon chariot - to hell, to hell, to hell.
Clutching and grasping the black branches of the ebony tree
I retaliate his attack. Cold corrodes my strength
Like acid through paper,
Inch by inch – as knots of my resolution untangles.
The demon then strikes me with his electrode-trident,
Scorching me to the roots. Hyperthermia sinks into my veins.
my frazzled ends spark a fire, and hisses smoke.
Wild winds scream into my ears.
I have to find a way out of this miasma.
I have to fignt tooth and nail to survive.

I must, I must, I must survive.

Sixth Great Extinction

2007-11-23T16:04:00.001-08:00

Religion describes the apocalyptic end of the world in four ways - Pestilence, War, Famine and Death. There has been five great extinction on this planet before this. Scientist say sixth one is soon on its way, and humans are going to face most of the burn. Unless we amend our ways.
And the modern world faces the challenges of Global Warming, Acid Rain, Air Pollution, Hazardous Waste Disposal, Ozone Depletion, Smog, Water Pollution, Overpopulation, and Rain Forest Destruction. The age of planet earth is about 4.54 billion years (wikipedia) and the first Homo sapiens walked on this earth at about 200,000 years ago. Compared to the age of the earth this time span is relatively short, yet in this time humans have manages to alter the air, water, climate and soil of earth. In the name of civilization we have wipe down rain forests, our ancestors have proudly hunted the tigers and lions to near extinction, we have built dams that change the course of rivers, in the name of science we have blasted mountains, dumped oils and hazardous industrial wastes in the ocean, our cars spew tons of carbon dioxide in the air, our ecosystem is damaged beyond repair.
Now we know that our environment is changing and to stall the change is beyond our control. One nuclear war and the half of the earth are destroyed. So our existence and fate hang on a delicate balance that can be lost and in a matter of seconds our house of cards shall crash in.
Tsunami in year 1999 killed more people than the atom bomb at Hiroshima did during World war two. A hunt for the real culprit has begun. People are now sitting up straight and asking questions. But who is to blame? Is it us? And our insatiable greed?

What if it is not us who should be blamed? What if we are just the senseless actors in this play? What if the real grand master is NATURE itself?

Ecologists and Environmentalists have always given us this perception that we are the monster that has destroyed this beautiful place called Planet Earth. What if it is the other way round?

Nature poses as much threat to us as we do to nature. Nature’s vagaries and climatic changes have made possible the extinction 99.9% of the species since life began. Who killed the Dinosaurs? Or the Saber tooth Tiger? Or the woolly mammoth?

Of course humans have done their bit too. It was our ancestors have hunted down the Bengal Tiger, the African Lion, the great elephant, the dodo, the Panda and proudly posed to take a picture next to the carcass. But it nothing compared to what nature has done. With one swing of the sword nature can wipe out all life on earth.
Even the human’s survival is nothing less than a miracle. Consider the plague that wiped out nearly ¾ the of Europe’s population or the influenza virus epidemic in 1918.
The 17 major ice ages killed almost entire population on earth. The time between the two ice ages is a period of “global warming” when the earth heats up. And the next ice age is coming soon, as the time between the two ice ages are reducing. The last one was 10000 years ago; this one is expected to be 8000 years from now.
Not just this, as science and technology progresses, we think that we are one step closer to cracking the code of DNA and eventually life by discovering vaccines and medicines that prevent the viruses, bacteria and other germs. There is a rising strain of antibiotic resistant bacterium and viruses.
And if we think that it is the global warming causing all the air pollution we are wrong. One severe volcanic eruption spits out more carbon in air than any global warming could do. Maybe it the super volcanoes, hot springs and geysers of Yellowstone that will one day wipe us out. Or a major earthquake or a huge tidal wave.
And if none of these work out, there is always a chance that a big asteroid or comet pulled by the earth’s gravitation will collide into our home destroy us forever.
The truth is that humans have survived by squeezing through narrowly closed doors. It is a miracle that we are still flourishing despite of the nature, the earth, the calamities, the germs, the poisonous gases in air, the rising ocean levels, the melting ice polar caps.
So in reality, we are in a countdown - we destroy the nature or the nature destroys us. Either ways, it is a race against time.

Misery

2007-11-23T07:58:00.000-08:00

It is when, you drew in the last breath of smoke from cigarette

Into your lungs, let out a puff of rings in air, flicked the cigarette's
Last length into the ash tray, that misery ended.

The pressed cigarette stub in the ash tray burnt its last,
As the last glow of the dying fire in it switched off
And the last smoke column faded. It was all over.

Out of its ashes, poetry was born.

"Funda-Mentals" Laws of Thesis Writing

2007-11-19T19:41:00.000-08:00

Newton gave us three laws, so did Einstein.
Now here are MY "Funda-Mentals" Laws of Thesis Writing -

1. If it does not make sense to you , it probably does not make sense to anybody.

2. There is always a better way to write. Lets start from scratch. Opppsss, your time just ran out. Why bother with the artistic refinements, who the hell is going to read a 100 page long sob-story about what your research is all about?

3. Staying up late at night and having little or no sleep does not even benefit you, how on earth is it going to benefit mankind. Early hair-loss, weight loss, aging, is directly related to how many times you write thesis in your life ( eg.......bachelors design thesis, masters thesis, Ph. D. research thesis). Good excuse to be anti-social (not seen or heard for a long time in any social gatherings, shuns human contact and reclusive behavior) is definitely thesis writing.

Corrollary : Without head there would be no head-ache.

Inference : When "what Graduate Student proposes, Advisor disposes", recycling is the best sutaible option.
(Old wine in a new bottle with a ribbon and card attached and gift of gab.)

Anachronic Clock

2007-11-12T22:35:00.000-08:00

Blewing my birthday candles,
Knifing through the layer cake with juvenile trepidations.
I wished when the clock strikes twelve

Time would start to race backwards.
Instead, the clock froze for a split second.
The dancing and champagne stopped.

World turned into a pumpkin.
Event horizon unfolded before me.
As I put one foot out of the threshold

Of infinite future.
Behind, an indelible past slammed its
door shut. I cringed.

What do I make of this woman in the mirror?
She once was a little girl with wings.
She once yearned for the moon.

What has changed between yesterday
And tomorrow? Only an indiscernible today.
When did that child melt into the woman?

It was as if, I grew old but did not grow up.
It was as if, yearbooks, calendars did not exist for me.
Then again, the space-time tapestry

Warped. Time started flowing foward with speed of light.
Chewing on that chocolate cake slice
Collecting crumbs of memory with each of my birthday candles,

I wondered, why every sweet occasion in life
Comes with a pinch of salt?

Contact Improvisation

2007-11-11T08:16:00.000-08:00

Dance like no one is watching - is my motto.
(this image is from this website )
I love to dance. It adds a new meaning to life - dance for me is a refreshing, spiritual experience that pulls me out of any depths and adds a new dimension to my everyday living.
I started with Bharatnatyam, under Thankamani Kutti dance school in Calcutta. Nothing teaches discipline like classical dance forms. Deeply rooted in philosophy and traditions handed from generations, Bharatnatyam (and any other classical dance ) has rigors of dedication, skill, practise and creativity.
However, my training was stopped when I moved to Pune, but that never stalled my interest in dance-forms. Every culture has own unique dance form.
Dance like everything else, has evolved over the centuries.
Watch this video to understand what I mean -

Evolution of Dance

Surely dance forms have metamorphosed with the change in theater and performing arts style. Now, acknowledged as the guru of all performing arts we still look back at the classical dance and folk dance forms for inspiration.
Fusion dance is the new mantra of this century. So is Contact Improvisation
It is new dance form - that is a fusion of many classical elements and relies on rhythm and movement.
But you dont have to know dance to dance.
It doesn't really matter if you have two left feet or if you are skillful Arthur - dance like no one is watching and release those tensions in the muscles and in mind.
Get footloose - whenever, where ever you can.

We Hope To Fall In Love, But Sometimes We’re Not So Sure

2007-11-02T19:06:00.000-07:00

Truth or dare

to love by the books, folk-lores and myths.

Winter warmth,
like hesitation slides over slippery snow surface.

Railway tracks

converge into snake curls in distant horizons.

Traffic lights,
still blinking as eternal love crashes into mortality.

Stars swallow

little dews as wheels vaporize night to brightness.

An eye-opener,

the morning sun, at times luminous, other times ambiguous.

Irksome

2007-10-22T18:03:00.000-07:00

I have lived here for a hundred years
Without gilded frames,
Without talks of great accolades,
Perks and dividends.

Only these blank walls,
Glittering with apprehensions
Of incomprehensible dilemmas
And nemesis of self.

This brutality is insane.
All day I struggle to furnish
Facts, to play with dazzling
Colors, lines and arcs.

But the last piece of the jigsaw
Does not quite fit in.
Its obfuscation is as irritating as a scratchy
Throat and a runny nose.

Keeps slipping away like sand
Through a tight fist.
I pray for a miracle
Or an unexpected turn of events,

Writhing like a fish
Caught in a hook of questions,
That present themselves as caliginous
And never-ending.

Voices do not filter
Through the mouthpiece
With answers. I am the arrow
That darts forward only to be deviated

By swiftly changing winds
To fly into this labyrinth of doubt.
There is no great escape out of mind--
Out of these convoluted cave-ins,

Lacinated dents, burrowy holes
And manacles of expectations
How shall I metamorphose
To accept the true banalities of life.

Grinding, until one incarceration transforms
to another and I pulverize to dust.

How the river flows?

2007-10-19T15:56:00.000-07:00

How the river flows?

As smooth as silk over
Bruising angles of rock beds

Usual serpentine curves

Slow and sluggish drawls in summer or

The desultory winter wanderings,

Monsoons, when she surges with vivacity.

Take a plunge into the devious whirlpool.
Who knows the bottom? The great depths?

Or how the river flows?

Mercurial or methodical, or motiveless moves,
Claiming possessions of the landscape she trails,

Her adamant territorial assertions.

Diaphanous as crystal
Opaque as the shapeless silt.

With the moon's celestial swing

She swells like a toad's throat

Aquamarine with pride, turquoise with vanity,

Earth dead secretes are in her belly

The sky pours it's secrets too
And winks an azure reflection into
Her calm mirror. A girlfriend's secret.

From birth to death,
In confluence in a million dissipating
Molecules into the seven seas

She converges herself, utterly and selflessly.
Then again she rises to ensnare,

The world with her voluptuous flair.

Catalyst in this Catastrophy

2007-10-14T07:45:00.000-07:00

My first ABC's
My first scribbles.
My first writings on the wall
And the consequneces so far...........................

Another Hole in the Brick Wall

2007-10-10T09:37:00.000-07:00

.......For Thine is the Kingdom.......

Where are we from?
Where is this Universe from?
How did we arrive at this junction?
And how will it end?

Yes, it will end.......we all know it. So much as been discussed and thought about the end of the world. And it is coming. Not tomorrow. Not ten-fifty years from now. But it is coming within this finite time frame.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the shadow

Is there somebody out there really watching over us?
Looking after us?
Take care of us?
Existence of God has been urged over many centuries. All civilizations seek it.
Holy wars have been fought for it. The early civilizations found God in nature - the God of earth, God of fire, the God of Wrath, God of destruction, God of Prosperity.
But as we started taming nature, these Gods lost their importance. We started looking inwards, within our own self. Man is a mixture of virtues and vices. The seven deadly sins were born.
So there came God who said , "Control your evil desires and you will be taken care off. If not, you shall be punished."
This new God was the reflection of our own self, but is larger than Life. Indestructible.
If ever you are seeking God, seek within yourself. In our spiritual existence. .......For Thine is the Kingdom.......
Maybe we shall never know.
But we shall always ask???
Wonder???? and Probe????
Yes it is the shadow land. The one whose existence we are only subconsciously aware off. Yet it is not a virtual world. It is very real.
Pain is real. Suffering is real.
Great losses bring great realizations. The realization that we are not even one millionth of an molecule in a million others. We are insignificant in scale. In the scale of this universe, this galaxy.

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

The reason why happiness and sadness effects us is because, under our thick exoskeleton, we are like candles - we melt at the slightest of heat. We are powerless in this world. And most of all we are clueless.

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
and the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow

Coming back, to the mega-questions.........We have tried to define the end of this world in so many ways - The Apocalypse, The Rapture, The Kalyug, all of these give reasons and descriptions as to how it is going to end. Physics and Logic tried to define boundaries and scientifically prove it. the Big Bang theory, the Black Hole, the SuperNova, all squeezes the universe in a Ball and rolls it towards an overwhelming question - THE END OF DAYS.
Keep looking, the answers are not here..........

This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

The lines in red are extracts from the poem called "Hollow Men" by T. S. Elliot.

Night Visions

2007-10-03T05:54:00.000-07:00

The night was scintillating drunk as any friday,
We walked like scarecrows under the prickling gaze
Of the purple, bruised November sky,
Stuffed with straw, but blithe with spirit.
Stars appeared in chaotic disarray of dwindling dreams in intoxicating eyes.
We walked; hugging tree-trunks, loving the humility
Of the grass; kissing the crisp air.
You aimed at the stars.
Then at the giant trunk of the Oak
Hitting the trunk with a stone.
"Who moved that tree?" you cried,
Missing the mark, by a yard or so.
We patronized your failure with jocund cheers.
What is nobility but a murmur in the soul?
We climbed up the Oak, clutching its branches
Wildly, like a flotsam in a wreckage.
The tree bore us silently like a womb.
Huddled together on that branch; swinging our legs in air
We gazed at the condescending constellations,
Taking lessons in astronomy and planetary movements.
"You can never get lost if you know the stars." you had said back then.
Our thoughts diffused into air like concentric smoke rings,
On how a bubble could make a difference in the universe?
Or the truth and the nature of love.
Such incongruity; such disparity.
We do not remember dates, hours and months,
But we still remember the bonds of friendship, faith
Trials of life. Ignominy in obscurity.
Then you called for a closer shot.
Standing up on the branch for a stellar performance.
The bough snapped under the strain.
We came crashing down on the ground, unceremoniously,
Screaming, laughing, panting like sullen toddlers,
As the mother Oak banished us out of her belly.
Even the Orion smiling at us as we crawled to our feet.

Because you were there.....

2007-10-01T06:17:00.001-07:00

Because you were there.........

There was light, not just the light from sky to add a new
green to the lackluster leaves, but light that spreads in many hues,
colors and prismatic overtones. That light made faces glow.

The lingering fragrance in breeze made roses blush.
An ancient aroma of misty mornings,sultry nights,
or flavoured days in barbecue grills, floods of memories.

There was charm, munificent, yet overwhelming.
Progression of events towards a known finality.
A clockwork of days that knew its beginning and its end.

There was faith in eventuality, in transformation, in metamorphosis.
There was a belief that stability disproves Heisenberg's
Principle of Uncertainty. An infinite zest for living.

There was mortality and fear of death. Fear of loss, parting and pain.
Fear of war, famine, pestilence and disease.
The fear of slow unhinging of bones, blinding of sights.

....A chance of dispersing into oblivion.To loose a self,
to gain a self. While we played a game of snakes n ladders,
stars changed their celestial houses and altered lives, forever.

Thank you, for being there.

Because you were not there.....

2007-09-30T06:46:00.000-07:00

Because you were not there,

I learnt the enormity of the mountains,
density of woods, diversity of thoughts,
depths of the blue oceans, flight of the minds.

I learnt elastic limit of possibilities, the curvature
of the horizons, the melody in the whistling winds
to rise, to fall, to resume with the moon.

I learnt to look at the reflection in the still-waters,
to take a bow amidst the large gnarly pulpits of the
giant trees and raise my hands towards the millions stars.

I learnt to look beyond the obvious motives, to leap to greater
heights and then come back and touch the ground with parachute,
to be as buoyant as the feather in the winds.

I learnt to breath the rarified air, to get soaked in rain, to cry
like a wolf, to mother like a lioness, to winnow but not break,to laugh
at obstacles, to dance on my toes, to love, to befriend, to cheer.

Most of all, I learnt to let go - of inhibitions,
of prejudices, of constraints. To steal happiness
out of the blues like a desultory cloud.

Thank you, for not being there.

Words

2007-09-30T06:30:00.000-07:00

Better to have said it all and strike
you off-balance from the taunt rope of nonchalant
equilibrium, by these unabashed and brazen bayonet-like words
that impale the underbelly of our sordid existence
and unsettle your center of gravity by a long drawn
clash of voices and of jargons,

than to seethe in suffocating silence
of many snuffed sentiments, wishing
to be martyred every moment of this indecision,
that exiled me, the magnificent fool, to another
land of anguish to be lynched alive everyday
had I not spoken my mind too loud and too clear.

Caterpillar in my Salad

2007-09-26T10:20:00.000-07:00

What was the last time life hit you on the face like a punch-bag? What was the last time you felt, that God is dangling carrots in front of you and making you run like a psycho bunny?
I call these "caterpillar in my salad" times.
Imagine you are a vegetarian (you might be one) and you are happily munching on the green lettuce, spinach and all other goodie and healthy stuff for lunch, feeling really good about your diet, and then Bingo................a caterpillar crawls out of the cabbage leaf in your bowl.
You had it now!!!!
Lets just say that :"Life is full of surprises".
And there are shockers? The unpleasant surprises? The moments of anguish, awkward silences? Moments of absolute bozo-ism? Moments of mismanagement? Moments of grand fiascoes? Moments of questions and no answers?

Put together, there are many such moments.

You climb to the pulpit, fully dressed about to give the greatest speech of your lifetime , that you have been rehearsing for days, and then as you start to open your mouth you realize that you have forgotten the first stanza completely. Ooooppppppppssssssssss!!!
What do you do then?
Smile and make up for it with a few stammering sentences with a somersault in the pit of your stomach.

Its one of those days, you are feeling good about yourself, you wear your favorite dress and get out of the house, it is sunny and breezy. You are admiring the beauty of nature as you walk down the lane, and then, bam..................your foot slips on a banana skin and you fall flat on your nose.

What a feat!

The crowd gathers as they will always do, smiling at your accomplishments, even the man who ate the banana and did that grouse act is there in the crowd. You don't know him of course.

What do you do?

Get up, take a bow, throw the banana in the nearest trash and move on.

My friends, that is what I call the "Human Boomerang". Being able to bounce back to action from disaster to disaster.
We all have "Lazarus" hidden in us. Lazarus was, by the way, that guy from the Bible who came back from the dead. So be prepared for the shock waves in life. They might be high on the Richter scale, but if we have our foundations strong and your head below the clouds, nothing can deter us.
If not anything else, you can just say " Jeez, that was what I call a loser-act of the first order, but heck, I've learnt something from it."
You know what???
At the end of the day, when everything went wrong or when you feel like a complete loser/clown/dimwit/idiot, please ask a friend/boyfriend/girlfriend/family/folks/just about anyone to give you big bear hug.
It fixes nothing.
Life is as screwed up as it was before.
But it is going to keep you going during those unforeseen ugly times.

Lets be the drowned man who rises from the ocean and complains of a great cold.

Period.

Poems, Photography and Procrastination : the long process of rumination (ooppsss illumination) of mind

2007-09-17T15:25:00.000-07:00

It is 4am in the morning and I am procrastinating - says the eminent Grad student and also the writer of this illustrious comic strip called www.phdcomics.com
Normally I would never read comics or anything remotely resembling a cartoon, but like this eminent Grad student I am also in the process of deep procrastination right now.
I am supposed to defend my thesis in the next 4 months and I have not finish even a single chapter of it, except for the acknowledgment's page and the Bibliography. Unless someone ghost-writes it for me, to finish it on time is going to be an up-hill task. And, yet, mother of all jokes, is that I still find time to write this blog, post a poem or two and even put comments on the numerous blogs sites that I visit on a regular basis and then look at my photography website a hundred times a day.
It all in my head. It processing there, my imaginary thesis. I have to graduate in order to become one of the briefcase carrying white collar no-life-after-work humanity(my scheme to become a part time Architect and a full time Writer) - I tell myself. Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that my advisor is out of town. Hence I am under no solemn oath to study nor under any surveillance camera nor under the watchful eyes of my Mom. And hence, I am safely doing what I shouldn't be doing. Such as -
1. Net surfing
2. Writing
3. Reading
4. Exercising
5. Catnapping
In short , I am procrastinating with purpose and with pride.
I stand destruction site of a civilization consisting of endless cups of coffee mugs, numerous scribbled illegible pieces of paper flying everywhere , books piled on the floor and outcome of all things that I (dare say) call my thesis.
So in the process of all these, I stumble upon this book called "PHD- Piled Higher and Deeper" - a creative way of expressing what I call TOTAL TIMEPASS. Here is an excerpt -
"The history of all hitherto existing research is the history of class struggle - of thesis and anti-thesis, facult'e and gradetariat, oppressor and the oppressed, standing in constant opposition to one another. Across academia, in small labs and cramped cubicles, honest graduate students have begun to realize the real truth; through laziness, they control the means of production. Productivity is an illusion, a means of subjugation. Procrastination is the tool for emancipation of true insight from the shackles of soulless publication. To end class struggle, we must skip class. To think freely, we need free time. The rule of the facult'e will now come crashing down. Only though procrastination not graduation can the working class break its chains and ultimately destroy the system of oppression to achieve Utopia. Victory of the gradetariat is inevitable. grad students of the world UNITE! Procrastinate! Rise up and do nothing!" (quoted from Piled Higher and Deeper)

To cut a long ruminating story short, and ignore the fact that education is a matter of how fat your wallet is, or how many doors have you knocked in order to get funding or how you are dangerously close to getting stomach ulcer due to long nights, erratic food habits and excess of coke and coffee. Someone had reflected aptly " I was born intelligent but education ruined me." Everyone knows it. Meanwhile, anyone who has learnt anything from French Revolution also knows that Guillotine is now probably the only known cure for dandruff or a jammed-brain-full-of-distracting-ideas.
Grad or No-Grad, Welcome to my world of Prolific Procrastination.

The Story of Two Halves

2007-09-15T06:11:00.000-07:00

When in good humor,

Give grass its green Blazon sky blue,

and endow the sun With gold;

Yet, in my wintriest moods,

I hold Absolute power

To boycott any color and forbid any flower

To be.

I have been tossing and turning in my bed, trying to find a good excuse to sleep. None came to my mind. I craned my neck to look out of my window. Maybe it is going to rain today. Maybe it will snow. Maybe there is a weather warning today to stay at home.
I try to think of excuses to sleep. But sleep eludes me like a unicorn. I stay awake, trying to blot every thought out of my memory cells, but they keep coming back.
I am dangerously close to becoming an insomniac. past week I have slept for four hours, woken before the alarm clock rang. After trying to squeeze shut my eyes for half an hour I give up. I get up to got for a class. Physically I feel fine, never better. I had no serious illness for the past two years. But sometimes it is so damn difficult to concentrate on one thing for long. My mind keeps jumping from one thing to another like a butterfly.
I cant even sit still in class. Inside my shoes my toes and fingers are curled as I try to concentrate on the lecture. The Professor goes on and on and on. I don't walk anymore, its almost a brisk walk or a light jog when ever I am walking. My friends looking at my energy level keep asking me if I had gone to the gym that day.Of course I have, and worn myself out by an hour of exercises.

Make houses shrink

And trees diminish

By going far; my look's leash

Dangles the puppet-people

Who, unaware how they dwindle,

Laugh, kiss, get drunk,

Nor guess that if I choose to blink

They die.

I am a graphomaniac. I love to write. Sometimes my thoughts come fleeting past, too fast for me to catch. I cant even type that fast. I am formulating in my mind 24 hours. I start talk fast, energetically and exuberantly. My spirit is infectious.
My lunch reduces to sand witch, dinner to a small chapati or rice. Sometimes when I think I had too much, wave of nausea hits me. It was tough to get rid of the urge to put my finger into my throat and puke. Yes, I was bulimic once. Once , once I was many things. Once I did so many things, everything incomplete. I just lost interest on the way.
And then I start walking again, all over the house, without reason. I have to do something. I cant sit still. What an agony.

I walk alone;

The midnight street

Spins itself from under my feet;

When my eyes shut

These dreaming houses all snuff out;

Through a whim of mine

Over gables the moon's celestial onion

Hangs high.

Few months ago I was heavily depressed. It started from last October, after the death of my grandmother. Depression hit me like an ice-berg and I sank. To deal with desperation and depression is not easy, especially when there is not one single reason for it. Everyday I woke with a sinking feeling. Each day rolled by like a serrated bulldozed, ramming me to the ground. Sometimes there was severe anxiety , sometimes acute sadness sometimes a desire to give up on everything.
All the simple things in life seems useless. Like even combing hair, wearing a good dress or shoes. Life seemed to be lost in a tunnel, snuffing all my energy like a radium battery with no light in the end. There was no end out of this labyrinth. The thoughts of future impaled me, the past scorched me , the present was an unbearable burden. I was almost always preoccupied and withdrawn. A frown appeared on my face and stayed there fore ever. I stooped as I walked dragging my steps unwillingly. I stopped eating, except when I was very hungry. All food tasted the same anyways. It was 5 months complete polar darkness in my mind.
So this are the two halves - one doesn't know of the other. They both exist inside me - the same me. They are the opposites. One with a lust for life and hope and other a disaster. They appear and disappear in cycles, like the seasons totally out-of-my-control.

Know you appear

Vivid at my side,

Denying you sprang out of my head,

Claiming you feel

Love fiery enough to prove flesh real,

Though it's quite clear

All you beauty, all your wit, is a gift, my dear,

From me.

I am slightly claustrophobic, I hate small rooms, passages and dark corners. They are unnerving. Yet, I hate big spaces as well, they are formless for me.
I love spaces with definition. But then my mind expands and contracts with the phases of the moon, like the tides. Sometimes there are extreme highs, sometimes extreme lows.
I may be mercurial. The highs are effervescent, confidant brimming with life individual and the lows are irritable, retracted phases. And they co-exist, like Jekyll and Hide in the tangles of grey areas of my mind. One over-powering the other, the other weening for one time, until reprisal of the other begins.
But they are neither black nor white. One is colorless other vibgour.
Only thing that is constant in this variable existance is my creativity and imagination. They stay by me like royal friend, helping me to procreate the alternate reality at a blink of an eyelid.

Create and enrich

With a wink of an eye, without your knowledge

Or permission I create a bioscopic

Image, talking, walking miniscule universe,

until without warning the supernova

Sucks them in and destroys them like toy in a

child's hand.

P.S. - The lines are from Sylvia Plath's poem called "Soliloquay of a Solipsist" the last paragraph is however my creative addition to the poem.

Shooting Star

2007-09-08T18:30:00.000-07:00

Sulphurous fumes of all my yesterdays
fill my skull with their acrid stench
and if my mind would explode
because of some explainable reason
such as a heartache or a footsore

I will not remember you

or that because of serendipity
as seldom seen as the blue moon
that because of happiness
nourishing as vitamin
that because of these

and in the brief fatalistic moment
in which we collided and fell apart

a future was lost yesterday
as untraceable as the light trail
of shooting star lost in its usual discourse
among a million others, fell from Grace
and left charred debris of ashes, ashes only ashes.

It Takes 30 Seconds to Dawn

2007-09-03T11:07:00.000-07:00

I
re-live every yesterday that was spent thoughtlessly and aimlessly,
staring at the stellar ceiling, conjuring imaginary constellations,
Musing on trivialities such as the lemon meringue moon,
Or the possibility of ants in red sweatpants, or even on the
Traces of life on Mars; or life expectancy of a blind date,
Snug into eight hours or more of that holistic slumber after
Snuffing the renditions of a dutiful alarm clock under my pillows.

I
even after that, or more, the blazing goof-ball of buffoonery,
wag unwillingly out of my cotton-candy kingdom
for an urgent protocol to attend my serious daily chores,
later than usual, because of all the emerging digressions
such as Internet,so on and so forth, would then manage to make
outlandish late appearance on every occasions, ridden
with clumsiness and awkwardness of a gawky misfit.

I
the leading farceur, then, blatantly broadcast my tomfoolery
among the hapless humanity, inflicting them with pathetic
scores of my drab limericks or drivelling humor of a teaspoon.
wriggle my way into the empire of earthworms,
Spell doom among the denizens of underworld with my quip.
Repeatedly infest chaos among the orderly, appal among
the purists with my jovial jesters.

I
having frazzled my cronies with my incoherence and
furthermore, unaware of the consequence of my innocuous
statements upon the mankind, thus go on and on and on.
Only the owl, one among Mother Natures many freakish
follies would turn a blind eye to my goofy gesticulations.
The rest, scorched by the torch of my gimmickry
Suffer in silence in the arena of spoofs of a charismatic clown.

My Unabridged Self

2007-09-02T13:47:00.000-07:00

Until now I have written more than 100 blogs, some funny, some not, some about life and some about my thoughts. But none of them are really about myself. I like to be a Puppeteer, to play behind the curtains. Why? It’s not because I cannot master the courage to come upfront, but because, I don’t know where to begin. I am no Mata Hari , nor do I have a skeleton in my closet. I lead a very ordinary life, but there’s something special about this mundane life. At least to me. Everyone has something to say and I am no exception. So here’s my story, in short.
This is how it all started.
I read Shomu’s blogs, fascinated by his short stories, thought of writing one myself. Sat down with a pen and paper, trying to write a prize winning story. After the 11th attempt, I gave up. Then I decided to stop trying so hard. After all, the best things in life are supposed to be spontaneous. Its like our deep dark hidden desires, more they are suppressed, more they keep surfacing. No pun intended here.
I like humor. Good classic humor, not the “There’s Something About Mary” style or the one in Govinda movies. Good humor is all about turning life’s grand fiascoes into a laughter riot. And humor is like wine, older the better. So also, good humor, like charity, begins at home. So I mock myself as I mock the world. It’s nice to think life has a tainted quarter, with heads on both sides. Flip the coin and don’t bother about the outcome. Don’t hold your breath; don’t bet your life on it. Sit back and relax, its always gonna be what you want it to be, just enjoy the fun in tossing and pretending not to know the result. There is nothing surprising about a surprise birthday party, coz somebody just let the cat out of the bag, but I’ll still pretend to be excited. Well, that’s me!
Its simple, coz there are no statistics involved. The most beautiful things in nature are all in Fibonacci sequence, but they are prettier, if you didn’t know this.
I wake up every morning, with a knowledge there lies ahead an entire day when anything could happen. I could hit a jackpot or hit by a car. In any case, I rise and shine. No matter what the outcome, gotto get out of the box. It’s a jungle out there, wherever you go and Darwin’s theory of “survival of the fittest” applies everywhere. So I bear my cross, and trudge along, occasionally trying to gallop. And this, considering the fact that I have been occasionally bulimic, mildly claustrophobic, severely allergic to ignorance, rarely sycophantic and almost always a self-critic, an achievement by itself.
Sometimes I amaze myself. I can be so reckless. There is Gypsy’s blood running in my veins that refuses to let me settle down. I get so bored if I don’t stand on shifting grounds. Theirs is no fun in following the crowd. Trying to be off-beat can be a daunting task, especially when we are taught from childhood, to conform to the society, to the family, cluster in groups. The world has no patience for drifters, and I have no patience for this world. But this ain’t about a revolution to change the world. God knows there have been enough of those, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the Green Revolution, the Fashion Revolution, the Space Revolution, revolution against revolutions. Doesn’t make sense anymore, the whole nine yards, better stop now. I have roller skates tied to my feet, just keep rolling, whether I want it or not. Stagnancy is misnomer to me. I want to be the daughter of India, and the Citizen of this World. Go places and keep moving. Only thing is that, sometimes I feel that I might be going in circles, coz I keep coming back to the same point.
Sometime I could be so bored. When I was a kid, I used to get regular remark in my report card , “diligent, but inattentive student”. The credit for the diligence goes to my Mom, who being a bright student herself, took it up as her personal crusade to make me a straight A student. I just didn’t care enough. Until, one day, I was sitting and reading under a apple tree and an apple fell on my head and a light bulb turned on. I knew my place in the scheme of things, instantly. Mommy and Daddy are not going to be my backup every time, I‘ll have to fiend for myself. I have to have that thing which is called “my individuality” and stand on my two wobbly feet. Getting good grades still didn’t make sense, but it could be my beanstalk to haven. Truth dawned and I got my much needed booster. Its funny how, with a fall of an apple, one realizes that what goes up must come down, and the other realizes that the energy (E) that comes from effort (m) and luck (c2) can give that stupendous thrust , exceeding the escape velocity. And then, sky is the limit.
So they say, a small step for Mr Armstrong was a giant leap for mankind. I found my footsteps and my piece of Lego to play with. So I started putting it all together, brick by brick. I became an architect.
Sometimes I embarrass myself. I seem to have no control over what I say or do. If all the world’s a stage, I could very well play the part where Charlie Chaplin trips on the wet floor and the bucket of water falls on his head. There are times, for instance, when I have to wear those 3 inch heels of mine and then fall down flat, coz I am no lady-like lady. Maybe I should just shut up or maybe this world is that fucked up…..oops….i see a pattern here. After all I don’t need a butcher’s knife to cut butter; it’s a bad show off.
Sometimes I overwhelm myself. Things are changing so fast around me that I have a tough time to keep up with the frenzy. Its all chaos and Butterfly effect “the butterfly flapping its wings in Tahiti and causing that tornado in Toronto” I wish life could be a classic like Wizard of Oz, I will sit back and enjoy Dorothy’s adventures down the yellow brick road. To bad, in reality, the yellow brick road has become a treadmill. I have to keep running to stand still, or I might land up with a broken jaw. Paradox of life…..huh
Sometimes I get scared of myself. I don’t want to die in the line of fire trying to be brave. But my world is in grayscale and I am not in monochrome. Trying to explain Murphy’s Law to a habitual gambler, like me, is like banging my head against the wall. I tell that to myself all the time. The art of living is not the righteous way or the intended way, but my way. Hell, I am not trying to be a modern day Joan of Arc, I don’t hunt for trouble, trouble finds me. Or Love of that matter. Did I just spend my college life trying to get over a certain Mr Moreorangee? Did I just get into that train without ticket, just to take a chance? I wasn’t born shortsighted, but eventually I became one and most likely to remain like that for the rest of my life. My friend Shane once told me, “You don’t realize this coz that’s who you are”. I’ll go by what he said. A clock is not supposed to know how it works.
Sometimes I feel so tired. I could lock myself in a room and be there forever, trying to write blogs such as these. For its hard to venture into the world where people speak in languages I understand but cannot comprehend. I could wrap myself in that cocoon and know that at least I am at one with my own self. The other days, I would love being "here" so much, that I could drive people around me crazy. I carry my heart on my sleeves…..scary, coz there’s a fear of losing it and never getting it back. Or those days, when nothing makes sense anymore, the chase, the cutthroat competitions. Why don’t I just go in the Himalayas and stay there. Depletion of oxygen can cause hallucinations in higher altitudes; I’ve experienced that in plains as well. The other times, I have this enormous stored energy that I want to get rid off. I rush, I run; I try to find an unreachable aim that would keep me busy for the next five years. It’s like that dog which runs after speeding cars. What happens when the car stops? The dog is confused. It backs off, there’s nothing more to do. The dog looses its interest in the car; coz chase is the name of the game. There is no other way.
Sometimes I’d be so angry with myself. Albert Pinto ko gussa kyon aata hai? Kyon ki, 99% fat-free food is always 1% fat. And 97% full proof causes 3% unwanted pregnancies in this world. And then, seahorse isn’t a horse living in the sea. Ignorance is bliss. Why are things so obviously misleading? Why wasn’t I born with a silver spoon? Why can’t things take care of themselves without me lifting a finger?
Sometimes, I’d be in a state of absolute euphoria. I would love the fact that morning is morning and evening is evening. And there’s always Monday after every Sunday. Those are the days when I can drive everybody crazy. I could go off like a rocket fueled with nuclear energy and unlimited ideas. Those are the days when I paint the town red. Those are the days I never regret. Those are the days when you could see the flame in my eyes. Those are the days I could be rash enough to think I can fly with a pair of imaginary wings (then fall flat like Icarus). Those are the days I am God of my small world. Those are the days I create this bubble-gum universe around me through which no atom of pessimism or failure could penetrate. Those are good days.Unfortunately they dont last long.
Alice was in wonderland for one day and it was just a dream. A crazy dream.
If you can’t convince, just confuse. Most people are like sheep, they like to stay in flocks, and like being bullied by the sheep dog. Ever stand against the crowd in a busy Mumbai railway station, when the local just arrived and been jostled and pushed by a horde of commuters. That’s the true meaning of standing against the crowd. Being different is all bullshit.

Protocol for a Fabulous Life

2007-08-28T16:50:00.000-07:00

I wonder sometimes, what could be the protocol for a fabulous life..........fancy that..........is it raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens? Or is it the great discount on a reckless act of shopping one fine day? What is it? I wish life could be as easy as finding a perfect pair of shoe, although to find that great match with a friendly price tag is a daunting task, especially with the party scenario being so omnipresent.
So what does it take? Good Will Hunting? Or Jadu ki Jhappi........to make the day bright. Sometimes happiness is just a phone call away. How? Coz they have happy hours to keep us yapping away all night. Man!......is it a social necessity or a gizmo dependency thats killing us?
If the world was coming to an end in 3 days, what would you do? Go have that reckless orgy or go tell that one person who matters, about your feelings.
You can't have best of both the worlds; it has to be either a romantic comedy or a action packed thriller. I'll take the thriller; coz romanticism is not for the pragmatic.
A good novel is all about what's there in the first and the last 20 pages, rest is all crap. i never read the middle.
Isn't it irony that a fat Frenchman is a rare thing, even with his obsession for wine, women and French fries; although I believe the last one is entirely American.
So there it is.............life is fabulous with a seven course meal, Spanish villa, German sports car, wife as polychromatic as colored TV, a few casual flings, here and there, designer wear to carry it off, and top it all blackberry to show off.
Oh,Wait, maybe not, why does the wet earth after rain smell so good? Why is it nice to get soaking wet in the rain? Sometimes it feels so great to leave the car and take a bus to work.
Human touch is really a touchstone, imperialism, chauvinism, feminism, communism, socialism, orgasm, masochism and all the other isms aside.
Do we really care if Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie break up? Or if Linsay Lohan kills herself due to overdose of party, booze and drugs. Or who the hell cares what Britney Spears wears or nor wears?
I mean, will they make the least bit of difference in our life.
Why don't we do some real stargazing at night instead of bird watching and bull hunting?
Yoga can't cure cancer, but it sure can make us feel better.
If you try hard enough, you may not still be able to move mountains, but you can make a ant-hill and take pride in your efforts.
Winner takes it all, they say, well, so does the sinner. A friend of mine wrote in one of his blogs, “it doesn't matter if you’re wrong or right, it only matters if you can sleep at night." Agreed, let the sleeping dogs lie and let us all look, but not see, hear , but not listen. Isn’t that the reason why most marriages end up in divorce?
Don't try to perfect, perfection is boring............and monotonous.
In the end it’s all about the hormonal imbalance that causes all the tiny little agony and ecstasy in us. Our mind can play tricks on us sometimes. Very deceptive act of leading us to sure shot misery.
Mind games,.......huh...........crossword puzzle is so much better, at least you can give it a shot and know the answers next day.
Women try to illusive only when they can't make up their bloody mind. Likewise, most strong and silent men are silent coz they have nothing to say, and strong coz they are silent.
But they sure have a common ground...........we all know that.
All Women Keep Score... Only The Great Ones Put It In Writing.

Well said Bridget.

Places I have been so far

2007-08-26T07:32:00.000-07:00

Here's a list of places I have visited so far in US. Each experiance has been unique and memorable. Here's the full account -

Blacksburg (the Unshakable) - I call it the Unshakable town. My first experience of a town (now I know as a village) in US. Three million years ago it was the same as it is today. Nice old place for retired old people and old fellow students like me, who lovvvvvvvveeee to indulge in undisturbed academics.
Cheapest place to stay in so far. Nice atmosphere. You can never get lost in Blacksburg , no matter how you want.
New York - Much like any big cities in US, its multi-cultural, congested and vibrant city that never sleeps. I'd think its over-rated like so many other things in this country, but those who hail from NY, being a "NewYorker" is worth the trouble one take in the long commutes, congestion and pollutions.
Washington DC - The power capital of the world, this city is actually has a faint old world charm to it, by which I only mean that I that the buildings are grand and majestic and old style. Its nice, well maintained and of course has so many things to visit. No one really lives in DC so I can say that the whole city is any expanded downtown.
Northern Virginia - The whole of Virginia has a special place in my heart, being scenic, mountainous, and welcoming. Northern Virginia is beautiful, but from what I hear so far, it has no life. I liked it, plenty of open spaces to walk around, trails, trekking and camping opportunities, what else does one look for?
Maryland - Maryland-Baltimore are sister cities that cater to people mostly working in DC area. Nice place, left a long lasting impression on me since i got lost there.
Richmond - The capital of Virginia state. Anyone wanting to stay back in the lap of luxury and nature and also have a great job, Richmond is the place. Nice houses and river side, not much of a night life, I am afraid.
Fort Lauderdale - This place rocks due to various reasons. Its a smaller town, has a great ambiance, 45 mins away from hot and happening Miami. Only thing about Florida is the weather, everything else is high on the fun scale. The beach is great. Nice downtown. Great place to stay.
Orlando - The place which has the Disneyland and Island of Adventure and so many other theme parks and water sports. Awesome for holidays.
Atlanta - This place did not leave so much impression on me. I had been there, see that.........over , done with.
Miami - This is an awesome place. Miami had me spellbound. The sun, the sand, the sea, the beach, the ships, the cruise-liners, the lifestyle - this place is just too good to be true. Life is a party if you stay here.
Las Vegas - Do I need to say anymore? The name itself is enough. Great place for a holidays. Those who feel they have too much cash just sitting there, please go to the casinos and gamble. Otherwise too, it is a fun place for party lovers. So much light and pomp and glare is rarely see in any other place. Its the only Americans perhaps, who can transform the arid desert into a multi-million turn over tourist spot. hats off to them. Thanks to the people who have an "urge to splurge" and the bank balance for it, there is enough lights in the billboards of this city to support an entire third world country for a year.
Arizona (Grand Canyons/ Hoover Dam) - The canyons are great for serious trekkers, nature lover and adventure freaks. I loved the mountains and the gorge. The beauty of the rocks and cliffs is mesmerizing.
Chicago - Rightfully known as the cultural capital of the world. The place has everything for everybody. As an architect, I thought that the city was great. Not as crowded as NY, city has what it takes. The shoreline to the great lakes in beautiful.

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2007-08-18T19:25:00.001-07:00

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Vacancy

2007-07-28T10:45:00.000-07:00

No laughter squealed through sunlight,
Rays rusty with dust; archaic carpets,
Walls, arteries, vestibules ring
With a hollow sound.

Nobody lives here anymore.
Space-jam cleared; dusty edges,
Dark corners are stark, no corporeal
Heat can warm in. Only cold

Cold claws stealing over. Stricken
Spider-web, cracked glass; brittle
Tumulous remnants of one annihilated,
Living, breathing yesterday

Now a gaping hole.
Shower-slimes stopped swimming back.
Bleeding through the choked valves
Leveed; scratches plastered.

A few of vagrant suitcases piled
At the doorstep. Bag full of fresh memories
In Pieces, burnt or torn, trashed.
All is quiet up here.

Someone moved out for good.
Someone erased a nameplate on the door.
Someone recreated the world with a masterstroke.
"For Sale", again, this place.

Dichotomy of Spring Cleaning

2007-07-25T08:29:00.000-07:00

Is it me, or is it the general rule of Humanity to expand in terms of materials and to collect useless tit-bits from anywhere possible.
People, Please tell me that I am not alone.
In the last three years I have moved at least three times. Each time the effect of moving was from a minor headache to a major nightmare. Spring cleaning is a dangerous thing for its never-ending and toiling procedure.
On the upside of things, I actually find a lot of things that I thought I had lost months ago. Latest I found the first flash-drive I had lost in the process of moving out. And it works fine even after going through a cycle in the washer-dryer.
Anyways its stressful, its fun, moving is one of things I cant avoid.
After all is said and done, I stumbled upon the first ten-pointers of an effective Spring Cleaning and moving -

1. If your room looks like a glorified pidgeon pen, please , it is for a very good reason. Hail Murphy, the chap is right all the time.

2. The chances of finding a lost object is inversely proportional to its value and urgency.

3. After a round of cleaning, when everything is in proper place, home does not feel like home anymore.

4. Bills, letters, cards, papers, and other useless accessories - they multiplies in geometric progression.

5. Cleanliness is next to Godliness, hence its difficult to achieve on earth.

6. Spring clean can be a very good alternate to weight lifting and gyming. Think about it!

7. Pains of parting with old old vintage clothes, papers, diaries is unbearable, but in any case, earth to earth, dust to dust - the least I could do is give them a proper burial. ( Goodwill store etc.)

8. Next time, I see a cute table lamp or a flower-vase, I 'd know they are a potent threat to my motto of "traveling-light".

9. Coffee stains, fabric stains, marks on the carpet, wall - aha, nothing is impeccably white or maybe its my eyes playing tricks on me after long hours of chlorine inhalation.

10. In the end, there is always something left to be done (cleaned). Keep the broom ready.

Crafty Jo's being grounded story

2007-07-23T10:06:00.001-07:00

To my Fellow Earth-lings,

My earliest recollection of my childhood was "being grounded for not doing homework".
And what was I doing instead?
I was reading a book called "Little Women"
Very Interesting book about four women. Loved the character Jo.
She was one hell of a Tomboy.
Like Georgina of Famous Five.
I like tough men, but I like tougher women. Believe me they came as strong as an iron-fist.
Never underestimate a women's strength and never ever step on their foot "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" said by a suffering gentlemen called Shakespeare.
Even if she looks like a Delicate Darling Dandelion who could be blow away with the wind,
she is a survivor - she is designed by the Gods to bear and dare.

Anyways getting back to my "Well-Grounded" childhood , I love sneaky reading, (which is what I am doing right now) which means I love to read story book, when I should be doing my homework. Here's a list -
1. Little Women
2. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
3. Davidcopperfield
4. Gone with the Wind
5. Cant think of anything (that's not a name, it's an indication that the list is as long as the number of tickets/punishments I had against it)

And again getting back to Strong women and Diplomatic Men. Here's a trick played by men to win women( this was told by one of my co-worker)

A four yr old boy was throwing tantrums for a chocolate with her mother. Mom said a firm NO.
The boy shrugs and says " It's ok Mom. Even if you don't give me the chocolate, still you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen."

Moral of the story : Being Smart makes up for not being sensitive, intelligent with a good sense of humor. You can catch more bee through honey , then by vinegar. Sadly, I never knew this when I was a kid.

Confessions

2007-07-21T08:10:00.000-07:00

You were The Calm
The Unperturbed.
I trembled under your glacial stiffness,

“Why are you confessing?”
I was expecting rage, accusation.

“Because I am sorry” I said
“In the eyes of God….”
“God” I said, “Forget God, I ask for your forgiveness,

between you and me, there is no God”
“Ah,” you said, “How convenient,

To put your conscience to rest.”
“You forgive me?”
“If you had a chance, to rewind, to regress in time,

to make amends”
You said,

“Would you still do it?”
I sucked in a deep
Protracted breath.

A formidable question.
As always, there was a tug of war between

Pleasant lie and an unpleasant truth.
“If had a million chance to go back,
To change,

Without the knowledge of my own amendment
I will perhaps, make

The same mistakes again and again.
You and me,
Fallible aren’t we?”

I answered cautiously.
“I am what I am.”

Parenthesis in Poetry

2007-07-18T20:19:00.000-07:00

A conundrum
Strategic, yet seemingly senseless shift
In paradigm.

Pruned in
Abstract shapes for no
Apparent reason.

In Birnum,
Dark woods are moving
Barks are slit; Men

Musk faces,
To hide their hideous history
In parenthesis. Like Poetry,

A puzzle
Is waiting to be solved; Crack the code
And its yours.

The Nest

2007-07-18T12:35:00.000-07:00

They were young once, young anorexics,
Love-struck, flighty feathered, and slightly buoyant,
Full of juvenile promiscuity, a pair of nihilists,
Their values variable - ranging from maxima to minima.
Lean, thin, sanguine, they were nudging and shoving for attention,
Shifting positions in geography.
Summers here, winters there,
Freelancers, constructing homes on wheels,
Their tapestry intertwined with leaves, twigs, feather-soft
King-size plush upholstery. Their roofs were expanded domes.

They are antiquated now, as wrinkled as hands in water,
Creased as the Crow's feet, foreheads full of lines. The carcass-pallid
Skin bleached and insalubrious. Their swift strides are
Decelerated. They have parented
A whole generation of Demi-gods.
Big fat worms in their beaks.
Once quick-footed drifters, now they bask in the sun and golf-greens.
Dull green patina crust on their brass statutes.
Their arched bows tense, might snap anytime.
Tractable and blind-fold, they stoop.

But their nest is static in space-time frame.
Like a cracked salad-bowl in a rickety wooden cupboard,
It etches its presence in nothingness.

Intrinsic/Extrinsic

2007-07-15T17:52:00.000-07:00

Sometimes my palms itch,
I clench unclench my hands,
A classic symptom
Of an obsessive compulsive fit.
Ideas fly by, too fast
To catch in my radar.
Satellite sensors activated,
My pupils dilated; Orbiting the screen.
Ideas, Images, Portraits, Stories
Flit past.

My toes wriggle with excitement
My tongue sticks out,
That unwomanly poise
A chewing gum makes its way down the esophagus.
My fingers play piano in air,
Crazy dough-nut shaped hole
Of that mouth mumbling to me.
My legs twitch in rhythm of my typing,
Keyboard fails to keep up,
Now and then.

Mother would have disapproved of this,
Ivan would have found its reflexes interesting,
Sigmund would gone for a psychoanalysis,
William would have been dramatic,
Vincent just bemused,
Rest of us would have had fits of hysterical
Laughter.
The black crow on the cill
Drools over my half-eaten breakfast
Eyeing for my attention with a cacophonic caw.

Only after its flight, I become aware of the,
Drops of water falling from the tap
At harmonic intervals the
Drip Sound reverberating,
Unscrewing my resolution to stay put;
Their nocturnal distortions echo inside my pinna
As they hatch a sinister plot.
I am unperturbed.
I am intransigent,
I never asked for absolute silence. They fail miserably.

My laptop falls asleep. The insomniac,
Red eyed,
Bleeding hands
Sweaty brows, is still on the prowl.
I shift my position in the chair.
Sensation comes back to the numb
Right leg,
After the statutory five minutes.
My mind still sharp
And caffeine induced.

All of them,
Stars in their own galaxy,
Sit around, discussing like old women,
Verdict is yet to be announced.
Hearing proceeds,
Their faces bland as they shuffle through paper,
I shudder under their fixed gaze.
Order restores itself
My feathers unruffled,
I strut. And then I stutter.

They sieve through the paper,
Words leap in air; taking shapes
Performing salsa, spectators agape,
Object, subject, figure, protagonist, plot,
Move like pantomimes,
Yet, no sign of life.
This could be a paperback
Or a paper Mache. In a mixer,
Pulp of two squeezed oranges -my brain.
Pips are in the trash.

The show as grand as Broadway musical
Begins, I pull the strings
I could make them dance. Or nose-dive
Into a rut. I could be God. I could be Anti-God.
The dead longs for justice,
(Neither delayed nor denied.)
The world longs for truth,
(Some of it.)
I long for attention.
(All of it.)
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Kindly peruse.

Harry Potter Finale

2007-07-13T22:05:00.000-07:00

Yes, I am an avid Harry Potter fan.
Although, magic and fair tales are for kids, but HP deserves its position in the Hall of Fame.
Why??????
Coz, other than magic and HP talks about so many trends of our times. And they are -
1. The era of Heroism is long gone. There is not superhuman hero-worshipping in this century. Emphasis is more on group work, team building and comradeship. Alone Harry is nothing, he needs Hermione and Ron. They are more than just side-kicks. They are his right and left hand. When Harry fails, they take over.
2. With heroism gone, the perfect spotless white hero and his anti-thesis the villain goes too. Although, "He Who Must Not Be Named" is often called the Dark Lord in the movie, but he is often shown as a character with a past to explain his misdeeds, (like the much misunderstood Professor Snape)
Likewise, Harry is no saint, he is human in flesh and blood, with shades of grey such as jealousies, fits of rage, impatience etc.
3. Globalization is taking is roots everywhere, the world is shrinking. And with that comes, exposure to different cultures, mixed marriages, unity of similar minds and not just similar cast, religion or community.
J. K Rowlings talks about cast system and distinctions with worlds like "muggles" "wizards and witches" and then comes the "half-bloods" . The Half-bloods are the inevitable by-product of mixed marriages. The marriage of the equals and not of perfunctory opposites.
Hence they are the ones who have best and the worst of both the worlds. Sometimes miss-fits (as Harry was with his cousin) and looked down upon by Pure bloods like Malfoy. Sometimes venerated purely because of his own ability and merit.
With royalty almost becoming obsolete , its funny that only thing "blue-blooded" are Shrimps!
4. This is an era when women are increasingly becoming a part of the work-force, the brainers, the bread-winners, and their importance is getting acknowledged everywhere. Without Hermione, Harry would not be half the Hero he is for us. Isn't it?
5. The pain of growing up is omnipresent. For some it is unbearably trying for others it is a passing phase. But it is there. Harry faced it all the way, so did we.
6. No school is the same without the bunch of geeks or pompous rich-kids or big bullies. Or even the peer pressure to perform be it Quiddich or football or math test.
7. The four horsemen of Apocalypse unleashed it all - without war, evil super-powers taking over the world where will we be. Or at least the thought that they are lurking behind the corner is what keeps us on our toes. And we like it that way. Well, Well Well, look at the political situation now and look back in the worst of times in history - you wont find much difference. We aren't very civilized , just polished.
8. Parenting is not an easy task. But to have a childhood without parents is plain sad. Harry has to go through his childhood trials to gain that higher ground.
These are the eight pointer I always thought was the under-lining idea of the book.
Cant wait to read the final version / finale to the story, but I hope the burden of saving the world does not fall on one shoulder. That will just make it a damp squib.

Twilight

2007-07-11T10:58:00.001-07:00

Arduous journey it was,
All in the name of a hike up-hill,

To see
The sunset, one evening.
The future an onerous orange

Streak in the sky.
An ancestral demand
Of subservience to the
Forbidding darkness.
Sunset of desires.

Through the lenses,
Uncaptured was the
Landscape that sucked in spirits.
So hypnotic was the
Rapture of the terrain,

That Climbing over
A heap of bones in twilight
Hours of diminishing light
Seemed worthy. At the pinnacle,
Doubts poked at ribs

With twigs.
Looking at the languorous trail
Of bloody footprints, the
Few scarred, exigent souls
demanded rest.

A bonfire was lit.
Flames engulfed consciousness.
Dull stupor was making a
Nest. In front, lay a journey
Back home.

One dreary step
At a time, this time.
Civilization was so far, Its existence
Almost celestial.
As sublime as camphor.

Escape Artist

2007-07-07T13:55:00.000-07:00

Trapped in a Cube of a limted volume,
Crouched in darkness;
Strapped and straddled,
Sealed water-tight
And plunged.
Like a rock it sinks to the bottom
Crowd at the bank gasps,
Awed disbelief.
Holds their breath in claustrophobic anxiety
As the blue seconds dissolve
Pin drop silence as
Mind ransacks.
Roofs and walls close in
Caustic clock ticks away plaintively.
Each pair of eyes scan
For a ripple, a bubble
That might escape unnoticed
In air.
Five fatal minutes of dead silence,
Then the head resurrects
Throwing splashes in water.
Sucks in oxygen, the body,
Out of thin air.
The crowd heaves a sigh,
Applause, hoots, cheers, claps
The showman takes a bow as the cube drowns
This time.

Pegasus Flights

2007-07-03T19:02:00.000-07:00

Pegasus, the winged white stallion,
Hoof in the white cloud, a foot in air.
A leap, a trot, a galloping stride to the moon,
There, a Lady who spins silver webs, fulfiller of
Wishes. Or a fallen eye-lash.

Pegasus, the guardian of techno-colored
desires of unvanquished sojourns, as lovely
as an eloped heart of a wild colt, a hero, a princess
to be rescue by the sword, all evils vaporized,
In worlds of the lore.

Pegasus, the harbinger of spring queen,
From the corpse of the winter’s dead tombs
she rises; her leafy green dress, dandelion crown,
Only to be blown away with the North wind
To Atlantis we shall find.

Pegasus, born of Medusa's blood and foams,
From the oceans deep, corals and wild
spirit who reached for the constellations in Prussian
blues. A feather fell beside the pillow,
Shimmering, as white as bride’s veil.

Pegasus, the catalyst of the dreams of a child
Encased in an adult. One peaceful night in
Fantasy land. One less pill. One less moon to watch.
Only white Knights of surreal white
dreams caressed by a feather light.

(The image is from google, poem is mine.)

Smells Good

2007-07-03T11:37:00.001-07:00

I am obsessed with perfumes - I have to smell good, my room has to smell good,my clothes have to smell like flowers.
Scented candles, Does, Scrubs, Soaps, Hand creams, Foot creams, etc. etc......all have to be smelling good.

I have been shopping at Bath & Body lately. I bought a sack full of perfumes and moisturizers body creams etc etc. They are having a sale and hence the rampage.

And the experts say we are loosing our olfactory usage and our sense of smell.

Hail bath & Body, we are not. At least the feminine obsession with perfumes and creams and soaps are definitely here to stay. I can vouch for that.
It is said that Cleopatra spend a better part of her day in grooming herself and literally marinated herself in perfumes.
Luckily, this generation has a lot less time to devote to such trivia, but Bath & body, Elizabeth Arden and Red Door makes it sure that they are in the business. Advertising.
When have you not be tempted to buy anything that smells good?
A chemically processed cream bagged in a pretty tube smelling like a bunch of fresh roses , or lilac, or rosemary - Aromatherapy may be relaxing but aromatic products usually burn a hole in the pocket. UHHHH, its a tough choice.
Life is all about taking the right choices, and when cosmetic shops & boutiques host sales it becomes tougher and tougher.
Beauty Products and Perfumes, scented skin and hair nourishers sell like hot cakes every year all over the world.
And so when there is a sale at the cosmetic shops, Felicity goes on a shopping-spree.
And, in all this -
"Our Vision of Beauty is highly distorted"