Tuesday 25 March 2008
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'.
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'.
Tuesday 18 March 2008
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.
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