The dying animal

Desert the keyboard,I shall
for the ink's still wet,waiting
for the birth of the poet.
First,a folded forehead smoothens,
loosens the trappings of knowledge.
Eyeballs and eyelids,
like the baby and its mother,
now like the mother and her baby.
An ever crooning television ,
serves as silence.
Have a good day!
said a man and a radio.
Daddy ,is that the radio-man
Yes son,replied the radio in the man.
Crawling past my pen,
is an ant,a lonely one
probably on a food foraging trip
like our ancestors.
Dodging the paranoid nib,
brave ant,it survives.
fortune favours the brave,innit.
As if in search for someone,
a lizard races up the wall
and so does my eye and
with a heart heavy with envy,
I leave them alone.
While a flickering tube flirts
at once ,with many a moth
a dry leaf drops suddenly
drops not like a stone,
but like a leaf
Gravity brought Newton's apple
alone to the ground,
but god guided my leaf down
give me my god back,Oh Reason,
for another god saved my chivalrous ant
and another brought my moth to the light
but the god who was greatest of all,
He gave the poet the life of
the animal man refused to be
But as he let go his pen again
he rejoined his dead brothers walking.

Waking up to life

In between a passionate draw of the bow across the strings ,Hari raises his head to claim that "this is what is classical Carnatic music".As if I care,To me,it is nothing more than noise filling up silence.
And silence appears so very exotic,doesn't it?Oh,the lost sound of silence,how intensely I crave for it.Infinite peace.Joy.A Zen-like state of pure consciousness!
But this degree of quietude is supremely impossible to achieve,or so it seems.For neither can I lull the twitter of sparrows in the veranda,or gesture the cooing peacock outside to shut up.Let alone hushing up the wailing tot in the construction worker's arms or pleading mercy to the raucous bathroom singer and it is pretty obvious that I am not the least bit interested in kicking up a quarrel asking Hari to stop fiddling with the violin.
What I need is a bomb,a powerful one at that or perhaps a bagful of grenades could also do. Everyone,everything killed,nothing left to even cry over.People dead.children dead.pregnant mothers dead.birds and dogs and cattle dead.There you go,there is the silence you wanted ,the peace you pined away for.You have got it,now stop cribbing and be happy.

My eyes blink furtively but I seem to have gone blind,my muscles twitch restlessly but I can pass off for a numb,half-dead corpse.I have lost myself in the opulence of freedom,of choice,the choice to deem one thing boring and to ignore it,to nullify another's existence and call it worthless.Blessed with a capacity to dream,I have forsaken the beauty of reality.
Don't I see that this music,this noise,the coo of the peacock,the twitter of the sparrows,the cry of the infant,all,all of them hold the secret of the enigma that is life.


I wonder if you share the same disease,the disease of delusion,of being anesthetized,of feeling half dead ....The moment,we are born,we begin to die and we are all racing towards the bucket before the ultimate kick.Death only completes the process of dying.Sure,we cannot beat death,the grim reaper awaits us all, but we can atleast stop being deaf to our own heartbeat.We need to reevaluate our existence.We cannot afford to forget that for every single breath we take in ,we are relishing the volatile gift that is life

I intended to write this two months back.Hari had been to Karol Bagh in Delhi exactly one week before the 13th of September when a fierce blast rocked the place.As he facetiously shared with me the joy of being a suitor to the capricious lady named good fortune,the unmistakable shudder in my spine did not show up on my face and I actually managed a chuckle .Looking back now,I wonder if the place was really so important.That day Delhi,Mumbai today,Calcutta tomorrow,Madras the day after....or now,right now... perhaps you are reading your last words.Perhaps you are not?then,just thank your dear respective Gods(yes,you heard it right,this is an avowed atheist telling you this),just go ,share a word or two with your loved ones,just start up on everything you planned for a future that may never come.

Hari still plays the violin. He has not only resumed intense rehearsals in Carnatic music ,he promised he would soon be able to play my favourite Godfather theme for me, and whenever,in between his playing sessions ,he feels like sharing some technical subtlety ,I,one of the biggest music noobs ever,no longer frown and just feign attention till he is finished. for I understand now how important it is for the music to go on and never stop.

The inner voice

The shadow of your mediocrity is falling over me,
I know not where I must flee,
The painful years of confusion,these are
give me my freedom,return me my obscurity.

Square peg in a round hole I will always be,
Refuse to chisel myself to roundness for you,
for this is MY sharp edge,this is MY insanity,
and this is really what makes me me.

Home

Far down in the south,lies a quiet city named Visakhapatnam.And somewhere , in some corner of the town,lies an even quieter street by which stands a house numbered 138-C and every evening ,if you are there,maybe you will find a couple talking over coffee at the balcony,their conversation somewhat drowned in the music of the birds cooing all around.


Its time I went back home.

The rule of the rules,How convention thrives.

When I began ,I had no idea what to write about.I kept asking myself if my blog has really exhausted all topics until ,pretty serendiptiously,Simon and Garfunkel sung out in my headphones-

"From the moment of my birth

To the instant of my death,

There are patterns I must follow

Just as I must breathe each breath.

Like a rat in a maze

The path before me lies,

And the pattern never alters

Until the rat dies.
And the pattern still remains

On the wall where darkness fell,

And it's fitting that it should,

For in darkness I must dwell.

Like the color of my skin,

Or the day that I grow old,

My life is made of patterns

That can scarcely be controlled"

Ever observed a procession of ants walking across the walls?From a distance,it gives you the illusion that its one dashed line stretching from end to end but peer harder,closer and you will discover its wiggling ,actually.A similar experience is when you take a thought shuttle to mars and gaze at earth.It will seem silent,dead ,till the morning prayer chorus at the nearby school will wake you up with a jolt.

Like many of my friends,I too have been intrigued by the effortless and magical and monotonous way convention thrives.I am not exactly your pipe-smoking skeptic(read Russell,if you haven't yet) and for that matter,a large part of me is anesthetized enough to adopt the very stereotypes that I am derisive of.But,this is what I see through the sometimes blinding glare of the obvious.

Self similarity of structure.Two years have passed since I first stumbled across an image of a fractal.Besides its enchanting symmetry,I always attached a mystic value to it.Mystic because I knew the image had something more to convey ,more than its awesome beauty and serenity.And now,I know what it wanted to say-When I listen to some powerful political oratory on television,I get the eerie hunch I am listening to the same guy who came to my hostel,campaigning for elections.True,the words are different and it is in another language,but I can't help but think its the same voice in a new echo and I am sure,you too will agree.Such is the nature of convention,its self similar nature,its ability to replicate itself at all levels,ensuring the smooth transition up the hierarchies of age,class and situations.

Thoughtless over-idolization of the unconventional.Having just finished Philip Roth's The Dying Animal,I take the liberty of using his eloquence to make my job easier.In the book,the narrator describes one his exceptionally beautiful but cerebrally limited female students' reaction to Cubist art-"Art that smacks of modernity leaves her not merely puzzled but disappointed in herself.She would love for Picasso to matter more,perhaps to transform her,but there's a scrim drawn across the proscenium of genius that obscures her vision and keeps her worshipping at a bit of a distance".

No wonder then that extremely ordinary individuals will so verbally harp on the greatness of a Steve Jobs speech without ever getting its real message and wear Che Guevara T shirts without any knowledge of his ideologies.For if you are incapable of making that leap of faith across the sea of mediocrity,you make up by standing in meek but fanatic worship of those who have done so-an unnecessary deification that separates you from the genius of a great idea and keeps you protected in uneventful ignorance.

The mind as the new chimpanzee.Dad once sighed remorsefully on looking at my trigonometry textbooks in class 9,something which he was exposed to,only in college.Compared to the bygone era,all graduate out of high school as scholars.Such is the humongous amount of information compressed into school curriculum.Add to that the way,internet is pushing the human race towards complete knowledge equality and you may be fooled to think that man is once again poised to begin a new era of unprecedented creativity and innovation
Not exactly.

We like to think we have evolved,that we have left our cousins in the trees far behind and to some degree that is true.But a more peculiar thing has happened,as man has reasonably succeeded in the business of a fitter survival,the new chimpanzee is not the body,but the mind.Fifty years ago,this chimpanzee could wrestle with calculus only after college.Today 's preparatory schools have enabled this chimpanzee to juggle with complex mathematics and difficult literature at as early as middle school.Imagination is what I would call the brain of the brain,the mind of this new chimpanzee .It is one thing that really makes humans what they are.Every act of creation ,from a great work of art to a novel mathematical theorem is,in isolation, an exercise in absurdity.Only later does society appreciate its beauty and its applications .And in imagination,man has not progressed much in the last thousand years,inspite of the rise of knowledge,it is still a scarce commodity.The growth in the generation of original ideas is certainly not commensurate with the rapid spread of education.Rather,too much education educates you out of the creative,absurd process.

Immanuel Kant says that convention is time-tested and good,traditional rationality is a boon and it is in our best interest to embrace God and religion.I beg to differ slightly.If one is born with the rare gift of insanity,one should channelize it into creativity(in any form) for, in the words of Camus,'Art defies that part of existence in which each individual is no more that a social unit or an insignificant cog in the evolution of history'.
Convention will continue to thrive as it always has,but time and again,someone will find the courage to question it,to flout with it,and all we can hope is that a norm,that was hitherto bigoted and meaningless ,will be replaced by another that makes our lives better and encourages creativity.

Happy Conception,every one!

I am supposed to have been born on the 24th of April in the year 1988,atleast that is what I have been told ,told by Ma,by the birth certificate and by a great many lifeless sheets of paper which seem to attach mysteriously more importance to that day than even I do.Every year,even the shallowest of the acquaintance will bump into me from nowhere to wish me many happy returns of this day and for that moment,a part of me has learnt to delight itself .(Trust me,this will not turn out be as depressing as it has set out to be)

Unfortunately,the amnesia of infancy will never allow me to recollect how it felt to have earthly air whoosh past my naked body for the first time.But,I was not particularly happy to come out of my mother's womb.Ma talks of me being still in sleep when they cut the umbilical cord,still ensconced in eternal ignorance.The suspecting doctor suspended me upside down and had to only slightly pat my buttocks to extract a loud whine-the first assertion of existence.

So,that was the unassuming story of my birth .Perhaps I derive all my quixotic indifference from there.Perhaps I am still really sleeping ,only now will this attitude be cursed as dangerous oblivion.

At home,this day means the cuisine is every bit tailored to my choice,so much so that I barely manage to taste everything,much to the sweet disappointment of Ma.Besides that,birthdays are a quiet affair,a day when you take an added amount of care not to mess up with others so that ,however silently melancholy,it might turn out to be,it does not go down as an outstanding disaster in memory.

That then should explain my inability to remember my friends' birthdays and also my failure to associate due significance to them.Other than finding it somewhat amusing-this celebration for passing by the signboards that the Gregorian calendar carefully keeps erecting on the road called time,a road that only brings us closer to the destination that is death,I have now invented for myself a novel justification that I am using pretty expertly when someone close makes me uncomfortably aware of the guilt of forgetting his(her) birthday-

"The moment of your creation,of existing from non-existence,of becoming something from nothing is not your birth,it is your conception.It is that poignant juncture in time when two happily vagabond sperm and ovum chose to unite,not to execute any special design but for the sheer heck of it.And I think it is a scene so hallowed and serene,that it stubbornly remains one which cannot be recorded by a world that seemingly cannot wait to pounce on you,one that no random outsider can exploit to construct hypocritic bonhomie."

Inspite of all this rhetoric,it is no matter of extraordinary wonder that the above lines should be written by a kid who on his birthday ,kept grinning to himself all morning fuelled by phonecalls from his two schoolmates and then spent the entire evening quietly crying over not receiving even an email from someone he irrationally adores.

Only,I can tell how much joy I bring to Ma when on the 23rd of January ,I wish her early morning .Thankfully,she does not know how Baba ,being very knowledgeable of his son's absent-mindedness has called up a minute ago to remind me of her birthday.

So,the conclusion is ,even if my earnest efforts to remember your birthday don't produce any tangible results,I am making up by wishing you,my dear friends(all the school sweethearts ;),the childhood partners in crime,and now,my iitk buddies) a very Happy Conception for each one of you is so wonderful in your own special ways,that I am happy you existed in the first place.That you took birth ,and were actually destined to touch my life and make it cherishable is an added incentive, a separate source of pleasure.

Be well,all.

On Google in Chinese rooms

"Google reads your mail,we don't",fired the crazily belligerent Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.I just read that Slashdot piece how I read any other Slashdot piece and I was not going to take Ballmer seriously.I am NOT anti-Microsoft,rather I like Bill and his ideas but no,I was not buying into another show of Ballmer-ian insanity.Something for the bottomless dustbin of my mind,that's all.Or, was it?

Circa August 2008.

In between a very jovial dinner,a friend remarked how weirdly humorous the Internet had become-He had received some kind of a break-up email from his girlfriend,and despite the obvious bout of dejection that followed,he could not help suppress a wry smile when he saw the algorithmically generated accompanying ads-'Makeupwithyourgirlfriendnow.com','haveabreakup?wearehere.com' and what not!(I don't remember the names exactly.Neither did he.But they had the same spirit).I instantly imagined him-there he was ,in his room,all solitary and heartbroken and out of the blue,his dear laptop coming out of its usual inanimateness,comforting him ,directing him to sites that may offer him a solution.He had found solidarity(read your Camus?) in the computer!!!

He brought me back to reality when he grumbled,how the very next moment he felt like busting his poor laptop into pieces!

And then,it all came back to me.Every time you send a 'gmail',Google's servers read it,process it with Natural Language Processing Algorithms and publish relevant ads along with the mail to the receiver.If that is not spooky enough(merely some keyword classification shit,is that what you are thinking?),as there is rapid progress in the area of semantics and knowledge representations,we are almost already at the point where even obscure euphemisms and metaphorical expressions will not escape the algorithmic scanner and even your most private and innocent thoughts would be subject to the machine's ruthless perusal.

I realized that embedded in all this debate about Google's privacy policy ,was a more fundamental question,one that is looming so large on our collective future,that sooner or later,it would spare none of us with a direct confrontation-the difference between man and machine,is there any?

John Searle is perhaps the world's greatest living philosopher.He teaches at Berkeley.In 1980,he attempted to answer this question using his infamous Chinese Room Argument-(the italicized explanation is from wiki)

Searle requests that his reader imagine that, many years from now, people have constructed a computer that behaves as if it understands Chinese. It takes Chinese characters as input and, using a computer program, produces other Chinese characters, which it presents as output. Suppose, says Searle, that this computer performs its task so convincingly that it comfortably passes the Turing test: it convinces a human Chinese speaker that the program is itself a human Chinese speaker. All of the questions that the human asks it receive appropriate responses, such that the Chinese speaker is convinced that he or she is talking to another Chinese-speaking human being. Most proponents of artificial intelligence would draw the conclusion that the computer understands Chinese, just as the Chinese-speaking human does.
Searle then asks the reader to suppose that he is in a room in which he receives Chinese characters, consults a book containing an English version of the aforementioned computer program and processes the Chinese characters according to its instructions. He does not understand a word of Chinese; he simply manipulates what, to him, are meaningless symbols, using the book and whatever other equipment, like paper, pencils, erasers and filing cabinets, is available to him. After manipulating the symbols, he responds to a given Chinese question in the same language. As the computer passed the Turing test this way, it is fair, says Searle, to deduce that he has done so, too, simply by running the program manually. "Nobody just looking at my answers can tell that I don't speak a word of Chinese," he writes.
This lack of understanding, according to Searle, proves that computers do not understand Chinese either, because they are in the same position as he — nothing but mindless manipulators of symbols: they do not have conscious mental states like an "understanding" of what they are saying, so they cannot fairly and properly be said to have minds.
According to John Searle, biology is necessary for "understanding" of language. A man made machine (say, a computer) may appear to understand, but actually does not understand.
Neat ,really neat,but a careful look may reveal otherwise.The philosopher needs to be doubly cautious not to mince words ,more so when using such unassuming,everyday words like "understanding",for in philosophy,it is always the most banal of words that acquire the profoundest of connotations,to the point that their meaning is ultimately declared unclear.I feel we must have a close look at what "understanding" really means in view of the common Internet user.When my friend,first came across the ad,his immediate reaction was the urge to break into the laptop into pieces.

Should he be blamed for his reaction?

Are Google's engineers trying to say that knowing the entire process behind the generation of such outrageously pin-pointed ads is 'basic consumer awareness'?

I think what they are forgetting that "understanding" something fundamentally means agreeing with a perception and taking the conscious and unconscious decision to formulate further action based on that perception.If gmail ads are creating the perception of intrusion of privacy,it should be deemed as intrusion of privacy.

So,do not expect the common Gmail user to do a John Searle analysis everytime they send an email.

Am I asking Google to stop its gmail ad program and be ready to loose money?That is another difficult question.Frankly ,when I come to think of it, it is a small price and an even smaller compromise(think of the 1 GB space) if we look at how thoughtlessly we have forsaken our own privacy to all things 2.0 and so ,the word privacy itself ,has seen its own gradual redefinition.

Is man relegating himself to a machine as machines gradually get more human?

As the hedonist of a mankind takes to the seductive highway of technology,this is going to be just one of the many unsettling questions that he must either face or turn a blind,callous eye.

PS:the picture is a nice caricature of the Chinese Room thought experiment.

Contemplation

He sat there,rotating his brush between his slender,long fingers,sprinkling his shirt with a drop or two of colour.A gust of wind.A slight flutter of the canvas.A light tinker of the palette.But the brush ,it went on ,unnerved,unscathed,went on from one finger to another,as if in delirium in a prison,as if lost.Other days,the brush would move on its own,paint as if it needed no painter.Like it knew its strokes,under a spell and he remembered the times he had to just hold it and keep looking at it,following it in all its freedom.He then seemed to be in a trance but if people asked him he would deny.He would murmur something weird,something like, I am there but I am not there .

But today was different because he was just there,sitting a couple of feet away,which seemed a mile today.The universe had contracted into the only reality that was him and his painting,yet nothing moved,not his eyeballs,not the window frame,not the statue of Madonna,nothing but his brush ,it kept whirling,its pace dying ,whirling, twirling till it came to a halt .Nothing happened.no sound remained.And,he suddenly became aware of the shiverthat was creeping up his spine,an impending doom?,he thought.

Till he looked around,raced his eye across the wall,up at the ceiling and then again across the wall and up at the ceiling because there was nothing for his eyes to stop at,because he had nothing,nothing save the chair he had borrowed from Mother's kitchen when he decided to leave the house.He had not much money ,when he left and so his childhood aversion for anything superfluously materialistic came in handy and a time came when out of sudden disgust, he even grabbed the bible lying at a corner of the room and tucked it under the cushion of his chair,out of sight.It was too intruding,he felt ,into the divinity of emptiness.

The green,blue,red and all other shades in the palette mixing together ,mixing his memories-Joanna's green scarf,the chocolate violin,Mother's blue skirt ,the orange marmalade of many breakfasts,the black smoke of the chimney seen through the window of his old room.................................He heaved a heavy sigh ,breathed in a whiff of paint and dabbled the brush into the slimy oil of the palette.He loved this act,pretty mindlessly.He could spend entire mornings doing just that,just meandering the brush in the pool in the most fantastic of curves.Sometimes he closed his eyes and took quiet pleasure in the intoxicating ease of movement.It was as if all existence was wrapped up in that quagmire of colour and only he had the power to unwrap it,to give it form and to dissolve it ,just as whimsically, into nothingness.

But today a shade eluded him for a long time and he knew not why.What is it,he thought,the crimson of the setting sun,the bandana of the Brazilian beggar?No, it was ,it was ,it was, Yes,the ceiling of the neighbourhood church.But alas,it was not even that.He frowned and nodded his head vigorously, at some place hoping that the mere shaking of his body would wring out the answer from nowhere.But that did not happen .He knew he would give in sometime and a tear did trickle down his eyes after a while.But he did not give up hope.He felt he should meditate.So he got down from his chair and squatted in the posture his Indian friend Ravi had explained him that day.It was tough.He knew he had to patiently destroy every other thought sneaking around.Only then he stood some chance,after all ,even Ravi was a novice at this.An hour passed.He opened his eyes.He looked at his own silouhette,and calmly lifted the palette with both hands and brought it within the boundary of his own shadow,hoping to discover the shade in the new contrast of the settings.But,nothing emerged.Yet,for some mysterious reason ,he still felt close.Maybe he needed a final dash of chase,Maybe the shade had transformed into a man,an invisible man sitting in that very room,watching him,sniggering with contempt for his foolishness.So,he got up and bustled up and down the room,flaunting the pride that any physical action bestows.

But,he got tired of it after sometime.He sat there and after another hour of silence,he grabbed the brush and pierced his left thumb with its tip.It hurt so much that he soon,began laughing,But he did not dare look at it.Not till he felt something crawling all across his palm and then across his fingers ,till his elbows,like a million ants!

And he looked at it.There it was.There it was ,what he wanted.The red of blood.

In an empty room in the millionaire banker , John Deridan's house,there is an entire wall which serves as background for Blood and Sun.Every Friday ,John locks himself up in the room and stares at the wall for ,people say,the whole night.

The Grasscutter

I was going down the walkway.Luckily,I was not "thinking".
I was free and pure ,because,otherwise I wouldn't even have cared to glance at" the faceless gardener",as it did not "matter" to me.The man drove the lawn-mower forward with all his might.Sweat dripping from the body,steel merging into skin,he had become one with the machine.He had transcended into a state of divinity.He is just a couple of metres away from me.I can run up to him, and touch him but I can't because he lies much ,much farther,a distance my pitiable eye can't comprehend.

The motor whirred, seeking a certain kind of attention, aspiring, to rise above the din.The freshly cut shreds of grass formed a happy whirlpool above the wheels.I wished I could extend my hands and feel them brushing past my palm.I wished I could bribe the man into allowing me to mow all the lawns of the institute for one day .In that one day,I would successfully purge all ego,all ambition,all pretension,all envy,all angst,all anger.,all knowledge........till the only thing that remains is me.I wish it was that easy.
I feel like flinging the sack slung across my back into a horizon I cant even see . Maybe,I should go and tell him,how he has got the best job in the world but ,there again, I suffer ,from my ridiculous perception that this would make him happy .
Praying fervently that the walkway to the lecture hall would stretch itself to infinity is a more sensible thing to do,isn't it?More sensible than hoping that the insane clock would stop moving its hands around the same circle all the time.

I like to think of all celebrated complexity as,...hmmm.,a kind of a balloon,a giant balloon ,always on the verge of bursting.There is an urgent need to recognize the protective retreat that simplicity offers.
I am getting late for class,but I am already smiling.I don't know why?and I don't want to know.Because there is nothing ,like "knowing".

The sound of the motor is still there.Perhaps ,it is the only thing that can go on .Forever.



Inspired by Arthur Ganson's kinetic sculptures which draw heavily upon existentialist themes.

Tonight I can write

Sometimes you do not want to express them.They are so stark naked,so real,you feel you are discriminating,reducing them to words.The very moment you sat yourself down to write them,a tiny part of the truth dissolves.Instantly.

They are your deepest feelings,the lively throbbings of your poor little heart.

But you want to come out of your own self sometimes.Like an apparition,you want to emerge out of your own being and savour the melodrama of your own emotion.And there comes this sudden realization that your sorry life is no less theatrical.There is an unheard explosion every second.

Every single instance,you bedamned her,you drove a spear through your own heart.Yet you loved the sound of the hammer striking the nail into the coffin.It is a loud,deafening sound.Sound that for an instant,enthrones you as master of the universe,as a man of great consequence.As expected,you die.You bury yourself in the cemetery of quotidian awfulness.You are happy,once again.

Yet,there is an inevitable reawakening at every sight of passionate love.There is obvious moisture in the sands of the cemetery.Even on the sunniest of days.And you wonder if it rained,at night,when you were sleeping............

Some other time the apparition comes back to you.It shoves you into life.The hope for redemption just raised ,its little head.

Another mix of circumstances is needed ,till you finally do what you should have done long before.Only every time you accumulated the sands of courage,they managed to slip out.Some mysterious force filled with shame, always acting.

But,to your surprise,you are greeted by a smile.Smile which jerks you back to life.The old music of the voice,so dear to you,your sins have blessed it with a new cadence of equanimity.Life springs up at the move of every muscle.Head is dizzy with joy.

And you are like,"Can't she xerox herself and give the copy to me.Let the rest of the world relish the original?"

Love,it is a funny animal.

Real Clairvoyance?

In the little prince,there are some amusingly queer images of tiny asteroids ,about the size of a hostel bog,each inhabited by just one human being and nothing else.One asteroid is ruled by a king,another bears the burden of a man who counts and records the position and number of stars in the night sky,a third belongs to a tippler who just keeps drinking all day.What strikes me most is the remarkable simplicity of their lives.An isolated man in the middle of nowhere is no more interesting than a deserted ant walking up a spotless,white wall.But just increase the number of men(in our hypothetical situation)by one,and you see the birth of friendship and war.Now,throw in a woman,and you witness the beginning of competition and betrayal .Keep doing this till you have over six billion sources of confusion swarming on ,in this silently constant spectator called earth.The obvious ,yet routinely eschewed question is to ask for an underlying cause which bears some semblance of an explanation to the complexity of human thought and emotion.Is there a unifying pattern in all love,war,treachery,cooperation and partnership?Can a group of human beings be really studied like the pieces of your chessboard?The momentary adaptation of a particular emotion to be deemed as the most profitable move?Can a continual observation of a group yield results akin to the study of ant colonies by social scientists and optimization experts(All Genetic Algorithm guys will know I am talking about ant colony optimizations)?

A certain school of mathematicians say the answer lies in game theory.Lovers of the movie "The Beautiful Mind" might feel I am about to tread upon repulsively arcane stuff, but all I wish to do is to provide a little window to a distant probability.To those who are not fully aware,game theory is to consider a situation,identify the players the options available to them individually and to then calculate the set of choices which lead to the maximization of profit for a particular player or the entire group.The not-so-pleasant part is that it most often,leads to complicacies whose resolution demands some really tricky mathematics.It has been used everywhere from sports to politics ,from the dynamics of relationship to animal mating and breeding habits.Recently,one of my closest friends( he is in BITS Pilani),was involved in a start-up where they use game theory based models to simulate behaviour ,to be used for recruiting employees.

One of the most shocking and for me,the most interesting results out of game theory application was W V Quine's mathematical derivation of morality from self interest.To rephrase it loosely ,is to say that it is the inherent selfishness of man,which leads him to maintain a moral code,or to say it ,in the mercilessly candid game theory lingo,being "righteous" ensures highest payoff.(Oh! my dear philosopher friends,can you hear the echoes of Nietzsche?,So,we finally found something,concrete,that was beyond good and evil ;))If I have managed to stir up your curiosity enough,I direct you to this absolutely brilliant excerpt from Richard Dawkin's The Selfish Gene where he shows exactly why nice guys finish first.Dawkins has his characteristic style of making complex ideas seem almost pedantic!!!In this article,he explains game theoretically,how being nice is usually the dominant evolutionary stable strategy,ensuring your survival and the subsequent passage of your genes to the next generation.A little contemplation really justifies this viewpoint.The human sense of morality has to be a product of evolution.We did not sleep a savage gorilla one night to wake up with a halo around our heads the next morning.
Even love has failed to avoid the scanner of game theorists.To quote from an article that appeared in The Independent, Saturday 5 April 1997, "The glorious irrationality of the emotion called love? Not at all, according to new research. Your choice of lover has subconsciously been made coolly and rationally, based on a mathematical model - similar to how job applications are processed - which analyses the best mate you're likely to get."And you thought love is blind ;) ?
Having long harboured this secret ambition to learn the nitty- gritties of game theory and experiment with its application in real life situations,I finally took a first baby step this summer, reading Thomas Schelling's Strategy of Conflict supplemented by a collection of Harvard lectures on game theory (so as to not to miss out on the flavour of the mathematics producing the conclusions).Brilliantly written ,Schelling(he is the Economics Nobel) elicits his observations with tons of fascinating examples ranging from military policies to dilemmas besetting chain smokers trying to quit.I highly recommend it to interested readers.So,next time,you are the latest prisoner of an old,familiar dilemma try breaking out by turning to the last page of your notebook,constructing a neat matrix and filling up the cells with your options and payoffs.Who knows u may find your doubts melting away in a trifle?(excuse my due frivolity with Mathematics ;))
What with all this renewed vigour in game theory research,we are looking forward to a day when Elliot's famous clairvoyante Madame Sosostris would foretell the future,not on the basis of a random pick of a Tarot card but out of the apparently mysterious,yet stubbornly logical travails of game-theoretic calculation.I see signs of a God,in atleast some of his promised prescience,in the lost notebooks of John Nash. :)

The Constant Gardener

Somewhere in the mid-nineties.
I tugged at my Mother's sari from behind and won away her attention from work to ask her,"Mother,that tree by the road that runs by the house,it is so magnificently huge.How many years old is it?Was it always so big and sturdy?"
"No,she was a little sapling once.Innocuously delicate and serene,she was brought here by one swarthy gardener who planted her there whence she grows out today.She was then only slightly taller than you.The gardener lovingly tended her.He watered her gently with a sprinkler,manured her and carefully examined her for any diseased leaf or fruit.He did this for many years continuously.After that,the gardener left and the young tree was left alone to face worldly storms.She was quite prepared though.During the first patch of singeing summer,she extended her roots to the other end of the road.With the onset of the monsoons,a hurricane ripped away one of her canonical branches.The wound healed and she grew a new branch.She was home to a wide variety of animals ,from woodpeckers to sparrows.A poison ivy still lives off her.Many years passed and she grew taller and stronger.The canopy of her leaves became so dense that sun rays could scarcely pierce it,and so you had the most impregnably cool shade even during the hottest of the days."
"What happened to the gardener?Where is he?Is he still around?"
"No,he went on to plant many other saplings here in our neighbourhood."
"All of them are big trees,now,aren't they?"
"Not all of them,really.Some couldn't rise to their fullest height,some were trampled by a cowherd,a few got damaged by harsh gusts of wind and still some were stolen,but,that does not matter,many grew up to become the beautiful trees which line our roads today."
"So,is the tree secretly aware that it was once a puny sapling?"
"I don't know I have never thought of enquiring but I think she is.That is why,perhaps,inspite of being so gigantic and powerful,it is so gently humble,providing incessant shade and shelter to all beneath it."
"Yeah,must be"

I was back at school for the foundation day ceremony.The anecdote above(written in a train compartment) is a little tribute to what my teachers have done for me when I was totally in oblivion of my own education.

My dear Uncle Sam

I can easily trace each one of my posts to a series of passionate ruminations culminating in the sudden spurt of enthusiasm which finally ensures the "publish post" button getting hit.But,quirkily,when I actually write,I have visions of myself in either of two hugely dissimilar scenes.One is the way Yann Martel purportedly wanted to write Life of Pi-sitting in the veranda of a cottage at a hill-station,notes spread out in front of me.The other is one in which I am doing one of those impromptu speeches(guffaws),setting up the Reality Distortion Field.This will be of the second kind.So,listen and don't read.
Growing up watching Hollywood movies and outgrowing pairs and pairs of Levi Strauss jeans;Using Google atleast ten times a day and idolizing Steve Jobs since adolescence;Fed upon a daily diet of WWE and the like and swearing in with the F-word to look cool.Headbanging to rock and metal and boasting a taste for Pizzas and burgers.Social networking on Orkut and Facebook and falling asleep at night with the Great American Dream in the eyes.
Was I talking about some gum-chewing,skateboarding Yankee punk?No,I haven't finished with my description yet.Reading a mag or newspaper once in a while and recklessly censuring the government for corruption,sneering with rage over "brain drain" occasionally and attending the odd Puja so people admire you for "values and traditions" and the most incongruous feature of all-bashing up America,Americanism and dismissing American culture as vacuous and filthy.
I have the pleasure of announcing the emergence of a new archetype-The confused,insecure urban Indian teen.No,I will not waste all my space eulogizing his virtues,I will focus on one particular idiosyncrasy which seizes me with incredulity and anger everytime I think of it.
I agree that an occasional awakening of patriotism is the easiest way to experience a moment full of self-righteousness.But,to go a step further and rubbish the very influence of a culture in the lives that we all love to live is perfidy of a special kind.And I am not talking of the technological and materialistic advances that they give to the whole world as you could easily refute them as a furtherance of business interests alone.
But can you deny the root of global maxims like "follow your heart","Work hard,Party Harder!!".The philosophy of placing merit above anything else.The spirit of adventure and entrepreneurship.Aren't these all essentially American ways of thought?And boy,don't they bring so much meaning to our lives?True,at first,you picture Uncle Sam as this big arrogant bully in whose inevitable shadow,lies the entire world.But are we saying that the US senate's decisions is a microcosm of every American value?Do we ignore the nationwide uproar they had against Vietnam ?Do we ignore initiatives like Live Aid,OneLaptop per Child, and many others,I cant think of,now?
Recently,I had lunch with Cindy Wang,an undergraduate from MIT(she has come here for some summer exchange program ) and we shared our tales of growing up in different cultures.Interestingly,Cindy was born in China and moved to America only when she was thirteen.So,she had quite an experience to share.It was initially weird for her.Said Cindy, between a mouthful of Chana Masala,"They have a lot of fun,you know.They party,drink..but,they are great people and once you are accepted within their community,they treat you like your own".They do,they certainly do.Mustn't there be some thing special about them,which attracts the most brilliant immigrants from around the world and absorbs them into the fabric of their society.I can go on and on professing about our love for American music and American movies.I could write entire posts about the beauty of American literature(from Harriet Beecher Stowe to Hemingway to Salinger,all the way to Palahniuk).But,I fear I might prejudice my arguments with the more personal of tastes.
Believe it or not,USA is easily the most evolved concept of a nation we can ever have.They have come a long way from the abolition of slavery to being the Land of Opportunities.Obviously we are not living in a black and white world.The colours of racism are bound to emerge here and there in this melting pot of cultures.But,certainly they are far more democratic than we people ,who are still bent upon immortalising an age-old meaningless caste system by legalizing reservation. To recognize the happiness,openness and comfort that Uncle Sam has brought to our lives is to turn a blind eye to a universal truth .We love to talk about globalization ,'cause the very moment we take a look at the way the world is moving,we are prone to feel that we are on a higher plane of thought.But before that we must globalize our minds.We must accept the origin of our inspirations and influences not hide in anti-American schools of thought and defend ourselves with much-hackneyed falsehoods.The fastest way to intellectual independence is to see the truth in all its nakedness and to embrace it wholeheartedly.India is motherland but Uncle Sam is one of the fathers of our minds.Let us acknowledge this once.With gratitude.

Colouring history

He wanted no sadness to be attached to its childhood;He loved its memories,any day of it he remembered now seemed flooded by a still brilliant sunlight.It seemed to him that a few rays from it reached to his present;not rays but like pinpoint spotlights that gave an occasional moment of glitter to his job,his lonely apartment,to the quiet ,scrupulous progression of his existence' -Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged

And a ray reached me too,reached me in my present,reached my psyche, and lit up a room of wonder,of the bliss of discovery,and gave my will the shove it needed to write a post.And so I write.

The shades of black and white are symbols of extremity.Black is the cloak thrown at all things evil.White is the robe,good things are rewarded with.It is perfectly reasonable to temper out the slight cross-cultural differences in the degree of this notion,and I am anthropologically well supported on this.But,what is noteworthy is(if for a moment we shake off the the anaesthetic of familiarity), how the fear of darkness of my game-hunting ancestors(quite some time after he came down from the trees) still pervades every sphere of modern human thought ,disguised as the distinctive emotions associated with the shades of black and white

Pardon my digressions,for I think I was talking about a ray.A ray from the past.Come sit with me and we will trace this ray back to its source.This is certainly the era of the cathode ray tube.There is a little kid sitting in his room,watching TV,his colour TV.It is not exactly clear what is widening those gullible eyes or what kind of surprise is holding his mouth open.All you know is that its some black and white thing they are showing.Black allied bombers streaking across the white sky.Or Black debris of destroyed London homes in World War II ,Or Gandhi breaking the salt-tax law taking a handful of white salt in his black hands,Or Churchill's black and white suit as he indulges in oratory.But that is not the object of our visit to this scene.To reach our object,we must go beyond his facial expressions,inside his 7 year old mind and watch silently at the machinations which led to his childhood conceptions and viewpoints."Viewpoint"-quite a classy word,suits better the brooding teenage blogger of today but spare the little kid.What he was doing was far more unconscious and far more innocent.He was making one of his zillion unconscious generalizations,part of that little bag filled with unique, stupid conclusions leading to stupider notions which every one of us remember possessing as a child.Aaah,how I treasure my little bag today.Seriously,childhood is the best time to be stupid and may people reserve all their stupidity for childhood.
So thought our young hero,that the world of yesterday was black and white only.That the universe has acquired its colours over time.And so he extrapolated the virtuality of a war footage to the reality of everything that was beyond the time scales he could handle.So,it was really true that all rivers were black in colour.That women had black lips,black eyes and black hair.That Hollywood actresses of today far overshadow any of those oldies when it comes to sexiness and beauty.That everyone in the West had either white hair or black.That trees had black leaves.And so,had you been born 50 years earlier,you would have had the most austere and monotonous experience one could ever ask for,with everything around you either black or white or with at most some degree of greyness.Waking up in a universe coloured in grey scale!What's more,he even went on to paint every World War and pre-World War emotion.He theorized ,though in extremely vague terms that ,in those days either every one was a Gandhian or like Gandhi or everyone was Hitler or a follower of his.So,the world was a really dull place to live then.Because everyone was either good or evil,just like black, or white.Thus ,the crazy ones ,the eccentric,unpredictable ones,or so to say ,"the colourful ones" were missing.Such was the nature of reality.Nature of Reality -a deep phrase and the opportune moment for another digression.
In the Critique of Pure Reason,Immanuel Kant talks of his beautiful concept of priori."That all our knowledge begins with experience,there is no doubt.But though all knowledge begins with experience,it does not follow that it arises out of experience."Kant says that there are aspects of reality that are not supplied by the senses.These he calls as priori.An example of priori knowledge is time.You don't see time,neither do you hear it,smell it,taste it ,touch it.It isn't present in the sense data that are received.Time is what Kant calls an intuition which the mind must supply as it received the sense data.And so what I described above was the a priori lens through which I looked at anything that was antiquated,anybody who was anachronistic.
And the final act.
I think I was 12 or 13 then.But I remember vividly this scene in Richard Attenborough's Gandhi (which by the way,was a colour movie)in which the paradox which had fooled me for so long,finally unweaves itself.There is a television(in the scene).The colour of the TV frame is something like brown-blue.There are people around dressed up in colourful clothes,some in uniform looking at the ensuing program where they are showing Gandhi being received at London for some round table-conference or something.And lo and behold,scenes in the television are all in that dull,blurred black and white.And the irony is worth noting.In fact,it is shocking to him and his pride in the present,his exclusive present is shattered that very moment.So,the world was colourful even then.Many years later he would come across a beautiful Calvin and Hobbes strip and all his childhood memories would come back to him as he would see how he had once owned those instincts which Bill Watterson brings out so masterfully.
Copernicus stated that the earth moves around the sun.Nothing changed as a result of this revolution,and yet everything changed.To put it in Kantian terms,the objective world producing our sense data did not change but our a priori concept was turned inside out. A Copernican revolution.For me,that childhood revelation that History was just as colourful as is the Present, was a Copernican revolution for my mind. It totally altered my apriori of the past and more importantly,whatever it stood for.The mud is just as brown as it was centuries ago.The sky was as blue as it is today.The rose just as red as it was aeons ago.Beautiful women still had those pink lips and green eyes.(here's cheers to all those beautiful grandmothers)And the world just as interesting ,diverse and just as full of surprises as it is ,today.And so as a whole new future unfolds to me,in all the brilliance of its colours,the contrast of its shades,my awe and respect for history only grows,I never forget that there is a special kind of justice I am ordained to do.There is a job I cant leave undone, The job of colouring history.

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Can you feel the prayer wheel turn?

This blog was begun not with the motive of being a peek into the whole baggage of actions and happenings that are summed up into a four lettered word called life.It was meant to be a place where I could stop at and contemplate,where "I" could for at least a few moments,drug the other guy who goes to classes,fights for grades and commits all the crimes necessary to punish myself with an unremarkable life,into a state of a thoughtless,dreamless sleep.Lastly,it was never meant to be a place where I would voice any opinion against the omnipresent injustice,oppression and violence which this world reeks of.Somethings which I have conditioned my heart to become insensitive to.For once,though,I have decided to come out of this self induced state of intoxication.And so ,without further ado,here it goes.

Tibet:here is a spontaneous string of snapshots which pop up in my mind when I hear this word-I can see endless stretches of barren snow dotted with yak-herds and tribe-camps.I can see Yeti drinking water at the Mansarovar Lake.I can see those monks walking outside some ancient monastery,draped in their red-coloured robes ,their faces brimming with a smile behind which lies vast spiritual knowledge.I can see Tibetan kids playing mirthfully at one of the village grounds.I can see the old lady selling Tibetan rugs at the Lhasa market.

I can also see the nightclubs and internet cafes that have come up in suburban Lhasa.I can see the Qinghai-Tibet railway crisscross the vast ,cold plateau ,snatching away its surreal ,almost divine emptiness which is symbolic of the unscathed simplicity of the Buddhist monk.I can see the discontent and gloom in the eyes of an elderly man sitting by the door of his little house on a Lhasa street.I can feel every brick of the Potala Palace waiting for its rightful resident-the Dalai Lama.

No,I haven't been to Tibet,nor am I some expert on Buddhist philosophy.I haven't chatted up with the Dalai Lama at Dharamshala ,nor I have enjoyed a long dinner-table conversation with some immigrant Tibetan teacher about his homeland and culture .Who am I ,then, to rant about the fate of the people who populate the Roof of the World.Well,lets just say ,that twenty years of life have made me inquisitive and open-minded enough to embark upon mental journeys trying to discover the truth about complex topics that don't bother my selfish everyday life directly.It was during one of these journeys that I was sensitized enough to write a post and share with my blog's limited readership ,my take on the Tibetan problem.
Around 50 years ago,China's People's Liberation Army "liberated" Tibet .They did this by marching into Tibetan heartland with a heavily armed force which outnumbered many times over a Tibetan "army" mostly made up of civilians who were forced to take up outdated weaponry out of desperation.Beijing celebrated its "victory" and proudly proclaimed to the world that it finally regained "control" over what was an "integral part" of its nationhood.Baseless,I know,but for a moment,let us make a compromise by stepping into the shoes of the patriotic Chinese statesman and the need for territorial expansion,given the fact of your extreme military dominance seems a foregone conclusion.Probe a little bit further though,and ask him what was wrong with the original Tibetan government,and in all probability,he would try his hand at sounding intellectual,hiding the real motive behind words like"the Tibetans are a bunch of uncivilized,ignorant,filthy and superstitious people whose attitude has badly stymied economic growth in the region."He certainly does not know what he is talking about.Even if he does,it appears a far too "weak" argument to stop him from loosing himself in the empty feeling of power that overtaking Tibet gives him and his establishment.I am truly bored to death you know by this "China story" that is doing the rounds in the media for quiet a few years.Hello,did you people forget this side of the China Story?
Most Han Chinese today consider Tibetan culture to be inferior,Tibetan people to be too simple.Not very long ago,I read stuff like China having the most number of computers,about its government going full steam with some English-education program in preparation for the Olympics.But when I come to know of such comments,these Chinese make on the Tibetans,I am compelled to see the wide gap between the rapid "development" of the society and the gradual decadence of individual morality.To call a culture inferior without giving a thought to the basic philosophical threads ,the cultural fabric is made up of,is gross injustice.Simplicity in the typical Tibetan indigenous life should not be interpreted as ignorance or illiteracy but as the sheer confidence the Tibetans place in their Buddhist principles.
Being a Tibetan Buddhist is not easy.Buddhism has still not degenerated itself to the definition of religion that most of the economically progressing world lives by.Being a Christian today might be as simple as going to the Church every Sunday morning and saying "For Christ's sake" or "Oh Jesus" every time you feel exasperated.Being a Hindu today,might mean chanting a few mantras everyday before an assortment of idols .Reading the namaz five times a day will make you a Muslim.But ,Buddhism, I repeat is not a "religion",it is a philosophy.A philosophy which denies the need for a supernatural entity called God.A philosophy which stresses on the need for enlightenment,on the importance of non violence.For them,its not as simple as quoting from the Bible because it serves well some righteous sounding oratory.For them,Buddha's guidelines are truly a way of life.
What is even worse is that I can't just stop myself from drawing parallels between the Holocaust and the Tibetan Problem.While the Chinese haven't reached the requisite level of insanity to commit mass murder but in many ways I feel they are committing graver crimes.The Jews in Europe were at least a powerful and wealthy class,but what about the Tibetans?Do they want to strip them of the simple,peaceful and content lives that they live.And for what? To bless Tibet with "economic development"?Tibetan lifestyle was never based on "economic development",One of the fundamental tenets of Buddhist philosophy is to "abandon the Ego".To the outside world which is blinded by dogmas based on empty consumerism and materialism,to a generation conned into thinking that cities flashing "Coca Cola " billboards is where all the action is,the easiest thing to do is to dismiss Buddhist philosophy as superstition-ridden anarchy.Not that Tibetans were suffering for not choosing the path of evolution that the rest of the world is taking.They were completely self sufficient ,peaceful and happy.Today,just like the Jews,the Tibetans are displaced from their homelands,scattered a cross the world,trying their best to support their people back home.
Tibet should be protected and preserved like a sanctuary lest we want a cultural species with a very special value system to become extinct.In a world dominated by catchwords like globalization and economic growth,Tibet is a beautiful island.Let us not sink this island in the sea of OUR progress.Right now,as I type away,night gives way to dawn and the sun rays light up my room,I can see the Buddhist monk waking up,meditating and coming outside his monastery.He turns the prayer-wheels and hopes for the best for his fellowmen.The prayer wheels don't make much of a noise but I can hear it,in fact,almost feel it.

Are YOU with me?

Can YOU feel the prayer wheel turn?

He lives...

An unconscious mind there is,
beneath an easy grave.
Life is never forgiving,
will He ever behave?

Sometimes he feels the poor soul,
the clear ,tender eye.
Lust ,they call the burning coal,
has wings,yet never will fly.

Somewhere up the rickety ladder,
they say lies destiny.
Let go,douse the fire,
free fall,but free it would be.

A brain sold to buy some aura,
A heart lost to a narcissist.
Rendered homeless into paranoia,
A work of God turns existentialist.

As the water of youth,
seeps out of His numb hands.
Despair rams home more truth,
hope exiled to faraway lands.

Not that he dismisses the charm of Life,
or call his birth a misfortune,
When he is witness to true strife
Everything seems a blessing,a boon.

Pray He redeems a stolen heart,
shrug away a past as timidity.
It is indeed quiet an art,
to seek a union for eternity.

Pray the Sun shall also rise,
happiness flooding a thinking universe.
No more hiding under a disguise,
Truth is all that matters.

Pray He no more would force a smile,
to appear in harmony with worldly laughter.
He enjoys His obscurity for a while,
gives Him freedom of failure.

Right now,the love of His fictional muse,
is washing away all His pain.
Right now,He can see,
His frolicking brainchildren.
Right now,He looks up at the stars in the sky,
And the world seems so beautiful,again.

Some foresight

Since time immemorial,man has had a certain kind of fixation with predicting the future.We predict every moment,every day and every year.Some will draw a purely statistical inference from the past.A rare few of them will entrust
neural nets and genetic algorithms to do that job. Some will be paid for weaving their esteemed intuition into their vision.Some will simply paint their favourite picture and be fanatic about it.Some will consult the stars,astrologers and Gods(apologies for mentioning the three in the same breadth).A few will announce something apparently incoherent and then initiate forces towards realisation. But I this is my take on how this eccentric,moody man sporting dark sunglasses -Mr Future looks like:

Language: No colloquial word will be longer than more than seven syllables.The number of chat acronyms in the oxford dictionary will be closing in on the rest of the words.Kindergarten exam papers will ask you to expand ASAP,BRB,etc. USA might go in for its own official alphabet and phonetic system which will be readily adopted by the rest of the world and my descendants vill raaete der haart out.Spellchecks will become obsolete.Calligraphy courses will be highly sought after as hand-writing will be as aesthetically pleasing as painting.

Sexuality:Gay and lesbian rights will be recognized all over the world. Religious texts will look absurd for their opposition.New sects and religions which support homosexuality will take birth and flourish. As women get more independent and powerful,they will take a more conscious and thoughtful approach towards things and somewhere down the line,population would stop growing.India too like Germany and Australia will offer incentives for having children.

Religion: Richard Dawkins says,"We are evolving irrespective of religion.Things like gay rights and gender equality have been clearly and vehemently opposed in the Bible and other texts.This evolution will continue through novels,editorials and blogs.We will all evolve,though at our own individual pace."So,as we proceed,religion will reduce itself to a dimension of life that must be preserved as a legacy and our actual belief system will heavily contrast the sacred texts.This fact might provoke a few of us to think that most of humanity is engaged in blasphemy and that liberalism should be renounced.So,here's the hard irony,fundamentalism is not only here to stay,but to grow and flourish.

I could have chosen to deliberate on technology as well but I strongly agree with Kevin Kelly that technology is a species on its own right,deserving a post of its own.Besides,it is still language,sexuality and religion which form the fundamental bonds between individuals.

If my predictions ever come true,I hope Blogger's servers would still be holding this post.

Lets get back to the future.

I am,therefore I think

I live.I see people cry and die.I am happy and I live.Its good to think that I am different,once in a while,but what does being different mean anyway.Its sad to know that the Universe is not aware of my existence.No,I did not deduce that by the number of people I expect to turn up at my cremation if I die tomorrow.I mean,in a more fundamental sense.
.It is sad to know that God is no more than a metaphorical shorthand for unexplained reality.Its a rude shock to realize that the process of my conception was so random and sudden,like the lottery ticket which becomes precious only after the draw.Its devastating to realize that all my physical features and character traits can possibly be encoded and stored like dumb computer programs.Craig Venter says ,"that any two humans differ from each other by about 1-2%, not the 0.1% that we thought was the case when we sequenced the first draft of the human genome earlier in the decade. This data is much more comforting as it is clear to me that we are all much more individualistic than previously thought".Thank you,Craig ,so I AM DIFFERENT,in some small way,atleast.Lately ,its a torture for me to think that my thoughts,one of the few things I can so proudly call my own are the manifestation of the interplay between different neural circuits.So,what makes us so proud,we were created by chance,we are in some intangible,but sure means,controlled.As we grow up,we become,more and more,a reflection of our surroundings.
Man is a part of nature,an element in his own surroundings.He is a self-proclaimed genius.Unaware of this,he fails to give other species an equal status.The first man learnt the art of making fire from nature,he liked the pace at which round objects moved and the wheel was born.We have learnt from nature.Knowledge has been shared between individuals and passed to future generations.So,even as I am performing the action of typing away my thoughts,I am enjoying the fruits of millions of years of evolution.Bio-inspired design is perhaps man's most fitting tribute to nature.
I had been profoundly moved by some lines from Saren Kierkegaard's Repetition, where his protagonist Young Man ponders, "How did I get into the world? Why was I not asked about it and why was I not informed of the rules and regulations but just thrust into the ranks as if I had been bought by a peddling shanghaier of human beings? How did I get involved in this big enterprise called actuality? Why should I be involved? Isn't it a matter of choice? And if I am compelled to be involved, where is the manager—I have something to say about this. Is there no manager? To whom shall I make my complaint?"
It is indeed true that any journey of self-discovery is humiliating .
Nevertheless,it still feels liberating to know that you are closer to truth.

Never mind :)

Some things just happen.Some faces you never forget.

Airplane Diaries

Its been quiet sometime since I have been home.Each time,I go back,I have this hunch that the whole house has been repainted(for me ;)),the neat,sparkling ambiance seems somewhat quaint after a couple of months of separation.My mother will have sprucely arranged all my old textbooks ,novels and notebooks in the racks.The study table is right there in its place with a beautiful,ironed tablecloth and the ancient yet sturdy lamp seems so happy to have me back.It seems only yesterday I had those hourly sessions when Ma would bring back order and harmony to my room in between her anger-ridden discourse about the value of cleanliness in life.

Last year,I discovered two new additions to my bookshelf.Both were diaries,a black,short one and and the other brown and slightly larger,like a big brother to the former.There were dried stains of glue on both covers and pages seemed to be uncomfortably kept together.The year on both is 1996.I open one of the diaries.I am shocked to see that the first page for personal data is filled with pencil!!Scrawny,arrogant letters, sans the serif, boldly announce the name Ravishekhar(It was modified to Ravishekhar Chakraborty in 10th class so as to sound more serious and complete :) )I am pretty much irked as I see,in the address space, a familiar looking sequence of numbers differ from my town's pin code in one digit.8-year olds shud know this much ,atleast.
On the first page,there is a serious,jargonnish sounding phrase:Ground Attack Aircraft.Clearly distinguishable columns are drawn for Name,Country,Armour ,NATO code name and Rating.To my amazement,there is a small note on the top right corner whispering 'highly confidential'. :D
The pages that follow display the pasted photographs(sourced from the Hindu newspapers and
magazines) of many a fighter aircraft.Also jostling for place among them are postcards of combat jets which seem to have been collected on every trip to the shopping complex as freebies with candies and gums.There are around hundred such pics ,even mid-air refuelling tanks ,unmanned aerial vehicles and military transport aircraft have not been spared.The newspaper cuttings are sometimes awfully clumsy,perhaps ,those hands had not been able to locate the scissors which mother had kept hidden.The more popular IAF jets like MiG-21,Mirage,Sukhoi have multiple snaps of themselves.There is a French Atlantique early warning aircraft.There are many copies of F-16.The Tupolev 22 and F 117 seem to be in a league of their own as both have them have merited footnotes .
It all rushes back to me,I was a 8-year old once.I used to be fanatically crazy about military aircraft.Even the slightest mention of a name ,the faintest sight,was enough to draw me into fantasies for a while.Every morning,I used to be the first to pick up the newspaper from my doorstep and then scan the newspaper for defence-related news,in the hope of coming across a fantastic picture.Over time,my collection grew to two diaries fattened up with newspaper cuttings.I passionately believed for a long time that I had access to highly 'clandestine' information and used to hide them safely in a dark corner of my cupboard 'camouflaged' in my foldable chess-board.I even fancied that one day,I would happen to stumble upon an Air Force guy by chance and part away patriotically with all my 'valuable information'.
But then,there was a day when i woke up and looked at the F-16 on the front page and my usual reaction of wonder and joy got replaced by irritation and mockery(of my foolishness)Today , a combat jet pic succeeds in drawing no more than a cursory glance from me.They all seem to be the same.That day,that fateful day,I lost my childhood.It was like the storm of maturity carried away with it every last shred left of childish naivete .I stopped reading news items on aircrafts ,dismissing them as totally worthless and meaningless.And now as I held it in my hand,I realized I was holding the last remnants of a little thin boy who loved aeroplanes.
But,fortunately,every time you have the return of the prodigal son :),a mother will make sure that the two notebooks would be carefully preserved and placed in the bookshelves,so that her son could smile away a whole evening thinking of the little maniac who wrote the 'Airplane Diaries'.

A vacation in space-time

Every human act, or deed is in some apparent or unobvious way ,inspired.My inspiration for the act i am going to desribe is a man called Bob Pease,a staff scientist at National Semiconductor considered the guru of analog design.He was notorious for his amusing idiosyncrasies,one of which was showing up at the airport and asking the woman at the reservation counter to book the next flight available irrespective of the destination.When I first came across this anecdote,I sighed at the ocean of beautiful mysteries that logic and order hid from the eyes of humanity.I promised myself that one fine day,i will wake up and enslave my mind to the randomness of temptation .But the very premise of my existence within this SOCIETY is my decision to subordinate my innate instincts to a common minimum unwritten code of lifestyle.Fortunately for me, the mid sem recess were approaching and i knew that for sometime the word SOCIETY would temporarily loose its footing within the institute campus with over 70 % of the junta running off to rejoin the SOCIETIES they have at their hometowns.I am staying back.One day into the holidays and I get this idea knocking at the door of my mind,that my one fine day is here.This is how it went and i assure you that you too would not mind having a similar page in your book of memories:

I am tossing like a fish out of water in my bed but I suppose the orchestra of mosquitoes believe i am dancing to their melody .I am certainly not very drowsy or else I wouldn't be having the stamina to fight a group of creatures which are far lower in the evolutionary ladder than me-the mosquitoes.Suddenly it strikes me what is it that keeps me bound to my bed now,i dont have class tomorrow,no quiz ,no lab........so where the hell is the compulsion to grope for artificially induced sleep.I sit up abruptly , throw away my blanket with rebellion and I look at the window.Faint sunlight creeps in and the mirth of birds occasionally aggregate into a crescendo.I am reminded of Shakespeare's all the world's a stage.Well,Bard of Avon,you forgot to add nature to your cast.Early morning is Nature's turn to perform ,and for few lucky spectators like me,to observe and contemplate.

I take out my mobile phone and time flashes into my eyes,its 5:35.I ponder why the hell should i bother about time that is calculated on the basis of 82.5° E longitude,a line which the sun,the birds,the mosquitoes will not care about in many more million years to come.Here i was enjoying nature's act and it took a thing called time-a contrivance of mankind, to disrupt my mind from wandering away with nature.I threw my phone with a sense of contempt and irritation.

The next thing I am supposed to do is to apply a jellyish mixture of silica and sorbitol to my toothbrush and generate some foam in my mouth by a wiggling action perfected since kindergarten.I am supposed to do it .No,i wont do it.Why do I need to brush my teeth?Why,because it may stink and people will be annoyed.Wow,i tried to estimate the total amount of time i have spent brushing my teeth.Say,4 minutes per day for around 15 years(assuming I did not know how to brush my teeth for the first three years since i popped out,and my mom tells me ppl loved to kiss me those days)...I grabbed the calculator and punched the numbers in and lo and behold,it turns out I have already spent half a month brushing my teeth..Can u take that!!!!!!!!!So,i decided the toothbrush can wait today.I walked out of the door.I thought I should

wear my slippers but decided against it,at the moment i was not convinced how a sheet of rubber stood between me and naked reality.I left the door of my room open ,wide open.I told myself that all man made things have no intrinsic value of their own,it is just the value which we attached to them and everytime a thing gets stolen,i guess it feels more valuable.So,if anything gets stolen from my room,it would only make that thing feel valuable and i would feel happy for it.As I strolled down the road,my bare feet kissing the cold asphalt road,a gust of wind blew past me as if nature was welcoming me into its arms.I responded by picking up my pace slowly until finally I was sprinting at top speed down the road by the girl's hostel.I ran and ran and ran.It was like true liberation,some deep sense of harmony with the surroundings.

I had to stop .oh my,i was laughing like mad.I entered the stadium and lied down on the ground looking at the sky above,grinning,cheshire-cat like .The sun was coming up quietly as if aroused with the conversation I was having with the sky.Why is it that ,sometimes it is so wonderful to think that you are alone .I stood up and I simply walked ..today there was no thinking about where i would go or what road i would take,it had to be a journey in the most original sense where the journey defines the outset and the destination and not the other way round.I walked out on the road and I saw this peacock perched up on the tree.I desperately wanted to believe that I could start talking with the peacock.I began this monologue anyway,"You are the most beautiful thing i have ever seen.I first read about you in kindergarten,but you are so much more beautiful than your picture.Do you know that its because of you that I have woken up many mornings in attention to the trumpet of your throat?I love you ,you are so spontaneous yet so graceful at the same time."I ended my talk with a wink and all this while the peacock was listening to me,i tell u,perched there at the same branch as it was,a minute ago.

I kept walking until I came across a temple.I walked towards it and peered into the window.I pitied mankind,how foolish it is to search for harmony and salvation in a mystery called God when there is so much unexplored beauty waiting to be liberated in the reality called nature.If God says that I am the reason behing all existence,it does curtail the curiosity to understand the world in all its real wondrousness and loveliness.God teaches us to be satisfied.

I am not sure how I came back to my hostel that day,my mind tends to repress the boring,unremarkable part of memory.But here is what I am trying to sayEach tiny moment in life offers so much for us to judge,think and brood upon but we are so caught up in our past and in our future that we take the present for granted.The wheel of time keeps rotating and we are like that tiny point on the rim.,which knew it touched the ground a little while ago and will return to the ground again soon.,and it seems life is all about going in the same circle everytime.You know its easy to think that we can escape all this by taking a vacation,but that my friend would be a vacation in the quantum of space.To experience the supreme vacation we not only need to go to new places,but also do new things and think totally anew.That is something that would not only be a vacation in space,but one in space-time.

There is a place called happiness

The other day I was walking out of Hostel 8 after a sumptuous dinner with a friend.Belching with satisfaction and enjoying the cool february winds blowing past me,walking down the lonely road guided by moonlight,a moment when the easel of our minds is closest to clean and empty and our whole being overcome by the beauty of the present ambience.These are the few times in my life when my mind reverts back to fundamental albeit vague questions lie what my life stands for and if I am satisfied by my present state .So i thought aloud,'what are we doing in life,i mean,are we happy?'Hari's grin told me'oh ravi,u began again!'.I pestered on,'Come on,tell me'.The grin vanished and he bent his head gazing at his moving silhouette ,seemed like the surroundings had conspired against us to force us to do some serious contemplation.A brief silence followed but what was going inside our minds,i tell you was nothing close to silence,a storm of thoughts ravaged -I thought about my own moving shadow,we are known by our shadows ,the shadows that our acts and choices cast upon the world ,the shadow of our overt expressions,and to the world we are our shadows, a fact so very universal that we forget that we
had our own inner self lying untouched for ages.Hari broke my train of thought saying he was not happy at all and for a moment i felt guilty of murdering the cheerful Hari with whom I had dinner.Its not that I have discussed such stuff with Hari before but today I decided to take a different turn,I asked him ,Tell me what really makes you happy,as in,what would a happy life mean to you'.Hari answered,'A good life with lots of money ,a beautiful woman and wonderful little children'.I nodded disapprovingly,it was not him but his shadow that was speaking for him.I asked again.'no,Hari,i mean real happiness'Hari got me finally.This was what he said:
"I would like to be back at Hyderabad to my mother.Wake up every morning,call my friends from the neighbourhood ,play cricket all day.Have delicious lunch cooked by my mother.Chat with grandma before afternoon siesta and in the evening again spend time with friends."The smile was back on Hari's face,a smile that came straight from the heart.I too felt happy suddenly,in fact ecstatic.I thought about happiness too .Hmm for me it would be travelling all around the world ,meeting new people,observing the world around me and writing .
Happiness ,what a beautiful thing,how naked and simple,yet so evasive.We are sent to this world to lead happy lives,but over time we get engulfed and wrapped by our own shadows.
Sometimes,take up a torchlight and explore the world that your shadows have blinded you from.Unlock the doors of ego,pride ,ambitions and pretensions and you will discover that there is a place called happiness.There IS a place called happiness.