Brain Brain

I'm a brain, You're a brain. And we all are within a big huge brain. I blatantly admit to have taken the line from a trippy conversation. Confessions aside, this "big huge brain" that I mentioned, is what I suppose many of us have come to recognize as the collective conscious. Or actually, not many of us have come to realize the possibility of a higher mind. Wow! That sounds like the whole "god" concept. Either that, or some part of my head is feeling really numb.

The agnostic in me is probably turning religious. Brilliant! Before I lose this train of thought, let me get back to the brain issue I want to address today.

A close friend of mine told me something that validated the whole "कायनाती साज़िश " (Universal conspiracy) theory. Basically the rant about how the world secretly helps you out with things you want the most. All of this about belief, I suppose. And as John Mayer sings...

Belief is a beautiful armor,

Makes for the heaviest sword

It's like punching underwater,

You never can hit what you're trying for.

Here's the deal. When you wish for something very badly, you are creating some sort of waves of your own around yourself. If the waves are strong enough, they surely are going to distort the usual order of things from the way they would be in case you hadn't wished for something badly. And this distortion realigns everything that comes in its way with the direction of your desire's accomplishment/ manifestation. And wallah! Magic! The main trouble is getting to the point where your desire for something becomes so strong that it ain't a part of you anymore. It is you on the whole!

Goodness! Is it just a stream of epiphanies or that I have completely lost it. Here's something that I just got struck by. We humans, actually all living beings are vehicles for desires. Or, in other words, it is through us that desires take shape in the real world. A desire is like a seed. Where did the seed come from? From a fruit, of course! But the fruit? Where did that come from? Where did the tree come from? A seed again. So what came first? Chicken? Or egg? And now, I'm am going to contradict myself. Man comes from desire, and desire comes from man.

In that vein, let's talk, rather let me rant about beauty, as it is beauty that makes life that one extra bit more worth living. Sometimes, one may get fixated with beauty in a particular form, the humanly form in my case, but then again, who doesn't? Coming back to the point, beauty is a creation of man, which in turn stems from the fact that man stems out of someone beautiful. There goes the chicken and hen paradox again. Sometimes, I get blown away by the acrobatics that a few chains made up of Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen and Sulfur can do. It's all the same stuff inside each one of us. But the face in the mirror looks different to each one of us.

Just now, my train of thought just got derailed, which is highly unusual. I being a passenger on that train, happen to be the only one to have survived the accident. But then again, I was the only passenger in the entire train. Talking about vehicles, the journey, rather sojourn, that each one of us started inside someone's testicles, was a solo one-way trip. A solo trip to return every atom of your being back to the universe that each of the atoms came from. I know for a fact that I went off on a tangent while I changed the paragraph, but then come to think of it. Each one if us is as old as the universe, considering all the laws of conservation. Now THAT's awe-striking!

Carelessness, A General Compartment, And Chennai

I am surely not the first one on this planet to misread the details on a train ticket. But for just a few moments, before someone had made the same blunder that had, I was the last person to make that mistake. And I would have remained the last man to make the mistake of misreading a train ticket, had the earth been struck by another mass extinction. But some asteroid/ nuclear missile failed to strike/launch in time and I was allowed to remain "The boy who lived".

My train to Chennai was to leave on Thursday at 8 in the evening, 15 minutes before I actually checked my ticket. I still wonder why was it that I booked the ticket on Thursday, and not on Friday. Given that I had college on Friday. Basically I missed my train. Great!

Now that I look back in retrospect, had I left on Thursday, I'd have been missed by my college for a day longer. So now I think it was good on my part to spare my college the ordeal of missing me for another day. Ticket or no ticket, I was going to Chennai at all cost!

It was exactly a year ago that I went to Chennai for the same reason that I was going to Chennai this time around. The reason is called "THE HINDU Lit For Life".

So Friday evening, I set out for Chennai. With a general ticket in hand, I got into the train that would take me to the city of Chennai. And what a ride! I have traveled in general compartments of trains before, but thee journeys have never been more than 4-5 hours long. Besides, they have all been in the day time. And here stood a 12 hour overnight journey. Just as I write this, I feel like a complete imbecile. It is now that I truly understand that I was born with a silver spoon right up my arse! What I mean is, what's more ridiculous than thinking of a train journey by a general compartment as an adventure?

Anyway, I got into the train, obviously to not find a lot, if any space to sit. So I did what most Indians traveling in general compartments do. I perched myself on a luggage rack that convinced me it could bear my weight for the night.

Now here is where you find real India. Not in the reserved and air conditioned compartments. That's where you find the pseudo intellectual bourgeois population, busy in their own fight to displace the fellows who are above them, although I do agree that I belong to the same category, more so, happen to be fortunate to belong to that category.

I put myself and my belongings, namely a backpack, on the luggage rack, and took some time to settle in. I looked around, just to absorb the atmosphere inside the compartment. Not like the joke on Indian teachers that goes like...

"Open the window and let the atmosphere(or air force) in."

 It was this bustling place, full of energy, banter, burps, farts and crying toddlers. It might sound crass, but there wasn't anything unnatural about the place. And now being winter time, and I, being stupid as I am to not carry a blanket with me, I was in for a shivery night! I slept in spans of 45 minutes, checking my watch each time that I woke up. This went on for some time, at least till I was about an hour way from my destination. It was then that I decided to chuck my no longer possible sleep and settled for a book I was carrying. My destination seemed to have reached me in no time. And now, onto Chennai!

The city is one of the most well laid out metropolitans in the country. I say this despite not having been to all the metros of the country merely because of how struck I am by Chennai. The public transport system is robust, so moving about is never inconvenient. My rosy views of Chennai could also be attributed to the fact that I have only had to take on the city on weekends. With that clarification aside, the city is beautiful. The remnants of British architecture interspersed all over the city just add to its charm. I still wonder if I only roamed the heritage part of the city.

The Literary festival that I went to attend spanned over two days, each being an all day long affair. And this part of my life is called INTELLECTUAL MASTURBATION, as said my Hemi Bhaiyya, my companion of my last two adventures to Chennai.

The festival happens within the premises of  the  Lady Andal school complex in Chennai, not that the venue of the event is of any material to the purpose of this post. But the hall where a majority of the talks, interviews and panel discussions take place, is one majestic place to be inside. If I may, I'd like you to have a look at what the hall looks like.

What happens inside this hall is exactly what happens when you bring together a lot many minds that have immersed themselves in words, pen, paper and self-consuming eliteness. They rant about the world as it should be, and we the audience sits jaw dropped, in awe of their presence and the words they utter, occasionally clapping at what they say, specially when we comprehend a tiny fraction of their lexicon, or recognize their words coming from the books that some of us accidentally happened to have read.

In most cases, nothing new is to be heard in what is being said on stage. But yes, there are some paradigm altering moments that pass by, and one keeps wondering "What just happened?".

All in all, the event is where you get to hear what one likes to hear from the people one wants to hear. Just that sometimes, you do get to hear and understand vagaries that happen to transcend mundane everyday talk. 

But sometimes, you do feel a tad to sore after rubbing yourself off too many times. Specially when what is said goes fathoms over your head. Then you think of whether you lack the intellect to grasp what is being said, or is it that the speakers have been allowed to wallow in their own intellect for a while too long for themselves to understand what they are saying. I guess it is the latter case that is true. Or is it the former? How it matters, I wonder. 

Sometimes, after a session is over, I wondered whether my travels were worth the words I heard, and the people I saw. But there were times when I walked out of a session thinking I'd travel twice the distance to hear what I just had. And so I learned that worshiping the intellect, like all things, is a double edged sword. It contorts your mind to fit into spaces which may allow it to understand something. But at the same time, it broadens your horizons of understanding on the whole. 

Enough about being Lit For Life!

Now, time for some extra luck. I say that as I find myself as one of the luckiest souls on the planet already. Remember that I completed the first leg of my journey in a general compartment, and unnecessarily made a big deal out of it? While on my way back, my ticket got upgraded from a sleeper coach to an air conditioned one. I didn't even have a clue that such a thing was possible. 

Any way. I got to my seat, all beaming like a sunflower. This was at 8 in the evening. What I saw next was the face of a beautiful lady sitting across. Now, I consider every woman beautiful by default. But then there are faces that I get attracted to, sometimes dangerously attracted to, and then there are faces that don't fancy my attraction. But the lady sitting across me happened to belong to the former category, if you know what I mean. I could dedicate an entire post to the contours of her face, but I shall refrain to do so. Here's the deal breaker. She was married. And here's the worst part. Her parents-in-law were siting right next to her. He worst part is not over yet. We were headed for the same destination. Basically, I'd have to bear the ordeal of her beauty till the last moment of my train journey. Thankfully, it was an overnight journey. So a big chunk of it would pass by in dreams, when the world is my playground. 

I say that as if the world ain't my playground when I'm awake. 

Parts left behind

I read something a while ago that left me flabbergasted. It went on the lines of....

"You don't visit the same place twice."

That is obviously because the Earth is spinning and revolving around the sun within one planetary system, which by itself is hurling around in a galaxy, which in turn is moving in through space. That takes into account the cosmic vastness, or at least a tiny fraction of the cosmic vastness that we find ourselves in the middle of. What I want to ramble about today is slightly different, and pretty much unrelated to what I just said a few lines earlier.

Firstly, I shall touch upon familiarity. Familiarity of something/someone comes with repeated/prior exposure to the something/someone/a stimulus. I just happened to notice something as a kid. If there is something ubiquitously encountered, and you stare at this hence familiar object, the object starts looking unfamiliar. The first time this happened to me was when I unknowingly stared at the rear lamps of a Maruti 800 for a lot longer than I care to remember. At the time, the 800 was one of the most common of cars to be seen on the Indian roads. And here I was, finding the car's unmistakable backside unrecognizable after staring at it for a while. I don't have an ounce of clue as to why this happened, or rather happens. But just to verify the happening, I tried staring at the back-lights of other cars, all to the same avail. 

Tail-lamps of automobiles is one thing. What about other things? What if the thing you happened to accidentally look at for a while longer than you should, happened to be the most beautiful thing you've seen?

Something strange happened recently. The phenomenon that had occurred with the tail-lamps of automobiles up till now, happened with a face. And yes! It is one of the most beautiful ones I've happened to see so far.

I was day-dreaming as usual, and my gaze came and rested upon this beautiful face that I have come to know for a very long time. I looked  at this face at both, an unconscious and conscious level. I know that because I kept looking at the face rather unapologetically after realizing that the lady knew that she was being looked at. Either I have too much balls, or that I was too dumb to not look away. 

I kept looking at the face for reasons and the duration of time, both unknown to me. But suddenly, the automobile -unfamiliarity hit me like a punch from Rocky Balboa. I could no longer recognize the face I'd known for so long. It was beautiful nevertheless, but it was not the one I knew. And for some most stupid reason in existence, I still kept looking at the face mindlessly, soaking as much as I could of it into the crevices of my mind, but to no avail. I can recall it no more.

This brings to me the second part of what I want to discuss. Do we go to the same place everyday? Be it the place of work, worship or recreation? This is a bit separate from the whole cosmic-movement theory that I mentioned earlier. What I want to say is more on the lines of the Ship Of Theseus paradox, which goes something like this.....

Imagine a ship. It is used for all the things a ship is usually used for, i.e. transport, wars, etcetera. And eventually, its parts wear off, requiring replacement. Here's the deal. The original part, assuming there is no serious damage to the part's shape, is preserved separately. And this is done for each part of the ship that requires replacement, until every last part of the ship has been replaced. Now, the original parts that had been preserved so far, is used to make another ship. And now, we have two ships with us. One ship is the ship that went through a series of repairs to receive new parts. The other ship is that which has been reconstructed using the preserved parts. Which one is the real ship?

Continuing on the same line, the place we go to everyday, if there is such a place in everyone's life, is it the same day after day? Specially given that there are a thousand things that might never become know to anybody, of things that might never even transpire in one's lifetime.

Of all the murmurs, all the wear, all the tear and toil that a place takes onto itself everyday, it becomes a bit more, or maybe a bit less of what the place was on the day before. It witnesses a bit of history, and stores it within itself till the time it gets reduced to the ground like all other things. Only thing being that since time is an irreplaceable commodity, one cannot put together a place all over again with the history that the place contains. The only thing that can be possible for rebuilding a place in time is to have another parallel universe where the event happen in the same sequence as that in our universe. But then which is the real universe?

Each day I leave the place that I think I've known for so long, I wonder if I'm leaving the same place that I left the day before. The other thing that strikes me is how much, rather how little do I know of this place that I think I know? I might stare at the place long enough, and it might just turn into something unfamiliar, so that I can start afresh.

Down the rooftop

Ever been on the terrace of a high-rise building? If yes, then have you ever looked down from the top to see the world below? In most likelihood, the answer to the second question would too be a resounding "Yes".

Now, for the third question.... Ever wanted to jump off the terrace? Or rather, let me put it a little differently. Ever felt a part of you badly wanting to jump off the terrace, while the other part of you cringed, held on tightly onto the railing that kept you from making the leap? I am pretty sure that I ain't the first one on this planet to have thoughts of making that leap, and then wondering if such thoughts are even normal. What I do know for a fact is that there will be a few people celebrating the very thought of me jumping off a tall building. They have my condolences.
This feeling of wanting to jump off a tall building has been troublesomely floating in my mind for a while. I did a bit of googling about whether this feeling is something usual. But I shall chuck all that I read, specially as none of it sounded very fantastic. Although there was one line that I read, which stuck to my mind, as I couldn't completely comprehend its meaning. It went like this...

"The feeling to jump off a high place stems from a desire to live, and not a wish to commit suicide."

My personal interpretation to the whole feeling of wanting to jump off a high place is slightly different, and also a little wide in context, or so I think.
Keep in mind the cringing feeling you have at the very thought of jumping off.  The one that eventually draws you away from the edge of the terrace.
It is that feeling that you impose on yourself, that which makes you question your sanity, which keeps you from giving into your impulse of leaping off.
It is like this. If you know for a fact that there is a high likelihood of you giving into something that looks tantalizing, there happens to be some sort of inhibitory mechanism that prevents you from giving into preliminary temptation.
So much so that you will end up staying away from anything that shall even closely remind you of the pleasure that you intrinsically seek by engaging in an apparently dangerous act.
For example, take the case of alcohol consumption. Ever since when we were young, we have been told to abstain from alcohol. So many a times, it may happen that one may develop a fear for alcohol, more so a fear of giving into temptation of consuming alcohol, specially if it is forbidden in one's religion, because we are all "God fearing" men and women.
And hence, we keep away from the company of friends who drink, as we are fundamentally convinced that our drinking friends will wean us of our resolve that we have so dearly sworn to.
I can extend the "jumping off the roof" idea into another facet of life. That of falling for someone. The dichotomy here is that both cases, those of leaping off a high place, and allowing yourself to fall for someone involves the act of falling.
If you know for a fact that you will eventually fall for someone, it sounds rather surprising when you do everything in your will to keep yourself from falling for the person you know you are going to fall for. It feels like a part of you wanting to make the fall happen, while the other half of you grabbing the safety railing tighter with every moment.
It feels like a fight with Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls. You might fall any moment. Or is it that you're already falling? It becomes increasingly difficult for the mind to decide as to what it is doing. Is it fighting a slippery grip, trying to hold on to the edge of a cliff? Or is it relieved to feel the free fall into the abyss?

THE END?

Innocence of sleep

There's something about someone sleeping, an intangible sense of purity and serenity. I'm quite sure even the devil will look innocent as a child, when asleep.

I was lost while solving a puzzle of my own creation. That's when I saw her, sleeping like a child, or maybe pretending to be asleep. 

It was my wish to see her sleep, I told her long ago. For all I know, she mistook my connotations, alas.

I sat in front of her, so that if she got tired of her pretense, she'd open her eyes to see exactly what she expected to see. But she hid behind the veils of pretense, until her act remained a pretense no more, and beautiful sleep lifted her in its bosoms. 

I saw her nod her head, while asleep, as though answering questions I shall know not what they were, ever. An itch here, a scratch there, and frayed strands of her hair, I saw everywhere. 

I kept looking at what looked like an angel, dressed in black, with strands of white, telling be nothing in life is completely black, neither white. It's all shades of gray, and all of them look beautiful apparently.

I had never seen her eyes more closely. Never at least seen them so closely when they were closed. So I needed not to worry about her stealing her gaze from me. 

A part of me told myself that she knew how closely I was looking at her. Shamelessly so. But then, a part of me rises fruitlessly in justification saying, "How is a beautiful woman any different from a beautiful painting?"

You stand with dropped jaws in front of an intricate work of art. And then you justify yourself when you do the same in the presence of nature's own wonderful creation. Why this hypocrisy? While my mind was in two minds of its own, I did not deny my eyes the pleasure of what was right in front of me. 

Everything about the sight was smooth. The contours of the face, the shape of the lips, the way her silhouette started from her soft, delicate looking neck, entering her back, that swept over her short spine into the small of her lower back. The line that sketched her back into her derrière felt like a silent poetry. 

No one utters a word, and yet, everyone knows the meaning of what remains untold. 

How can something be so irresistible, so tantalizing, and yet so innocent looking? And this is exactly where I lose track and sight of sanity. 

I can only thank my fortune that she was asleep. For when awake, she can trace my gaze on herself. And then she turns restless. She breathes harder, and the pretense of ignorance makes itself more obvious than the North star on a clear night. 

I just hope he doesn't sleep too long. Else I'll have to kiss her back into wakefulness.

Mamma, I want juice!

There are kids, and then there are parents. Parents, now, they are a category of dumb people. Seriously. I have two of them. So I know.. No! Actually, I had 6, considering "grand"parents. That is of course before my maternal grandmom decided to leave for her heavenly abode.

I was traveling on a train. And as you know, on a train, there are a lot of people who sell a lot of things. Many of the things the people go about selling are colorful shiny things that catch the attention of cranky little kids.Which in turn gives the kids an opportunity to pester their parents with their needs, wants and demands, to which, the parents comply in order to avoid any embarrassment in pubic caused by their kid's rampant and uncalled for behavior.

Hence came along a chap selling pineapple juice, also announcing to the world of his world of his arrival. The kid sitting next to me obviously saw the arrival of the juice seller. The thing with kids is that they want everything they see and hear about. The next thing I heard was "Mumma, I want juice!"
Yeah! Needless to say that it was the kid sitting next to me. The poor mother helplessly complied.
The kid happily sucked on the juice with a straw. Happyz Endingz!
And this incident is not that the post is about. A while before the juice vendor came blowing his own horn, the kid was busy at drawing something. She had a big color set, replete with crayons, color pencils, and all the paraphernalia that da Vinci needed to complete all his works. Basically, the kid was at her thing, completely immersed in what ever it was that she was drawing. After she was done, she brought along the piece of paper with her drawing to her mother and showed it to her. From the mother's reaction, I understood that the kid had drawn her mother's face.Finally, I got a glimpse of the drawing. It was supposed to be the mother's face from some contorted angle. Or it was the mother's face, purely for representative purposes, like how in Indian movies, if you see the goons being thrown around, it means that the hero is beating the living daylights out of the villains. Never mind the bad example I made use of.
Any way, I saw the drawing, and one thing I can say for sure is that the kid shouldn't pursue a career that has anything to do with drawing. For she will die penniless.

Had I been the mother of that kid, and had the kid come to me to show her version of my face, the events following I seeing my so called "Portrait" would look like....

I look like that, you say?? Stupid kid!!

But that same obnoxious little drawing made the mother smile like there was nothing more that could have made her happier in the world. And I thought to myself..... "What a dumb female!"
The mother kept smiling for a very long time after she saw the drawing. I must say, the kid was smart. Not that she used the drawing to manipulate her mother in any devious manner. Just that the kid's energy was absolutely BONKERS! Jumping, singing, talking to someone, sometimes talking to no one. I consider myself a high energy individual, specially given that very often, people nowadays behave no better than corpses, as far as their energy levels are concerned. And here was a kid in all her vibrancy. How I wish we could all be, and more so, remain child-like for the time we have on this planet. I know a few people whom I've seen when their energy levels were all spiked up, but then that's another topic for discussion.
 
Okay! Back to parents! These folks light up like Christmas trees when they get to know that their progenies are so much so even thinking about them. Then they think to themselves "Oh! That's my kid!! I'm so proud of him/her!". They also go about thinking so out loud. Sometimes, a tad too loud. Goodness knows what makes them so proud of us, their kids. It must be because they are still not out of the shock that sexual intercourse produces geniuses! I obviously don't know the actual reason to why parents feel proud of their children, and why they invest so much of their time, energy and money nourishing, worrying  and fretting over their children. Or maybe I do have some clue as to what makes us, children of our parents, a major cause of worry for our parents.
I have a simple argument for this, a modified version of Richard Dawkins's reasoning in his book The Selfish Gene. It's like this. Our parent survive through us. Meaning, after all our evolution so far, we have attained a particular lifespan of typically 5-8 decades. And our primary purpose is to ensure the safest possible passing of our genes into the future generations, or at least make way  for passing our genes forward. And that is through having kids. So the least the parents can do to ensure the survival and passing forward of their genes is to take care of the kids they happened to produce. Specially if the kids are weaklings like those of humans.
Of course, taking care of human kids involves a lot of diaper cleaning, lot of potty training, lot of talking nonsense languages to a toddler, who by itself has no clue of what this gigantic creature is talking and smiling about. Bringing kids up also has a ton of expenditure, more tonnes of emotional and financial investment, lots of scolding, sometimes even spanking, and another ton of things I have no clue about. I still think of myself as  a toddler wondering why the big mamma and big pappa are smiling so much after picking me up. And although I don't shit in my pants(diaper) when dad starts shouting anymore, somewhere in the back of my soft head, I still think that dad is the strongest man there can be. I could be wrong. But believing so has kept me in good stead so far.

There's a line in the movie Interstellar that almost brought me to tears.

Cooper(The lead protagonist says to his daughter): "After you kids came along, your mom, she said something to me I never quite understood.
She said: Now, we’re just here……to be the memories for our kids."

What brought me to tears was my interpretation of the lines I just quoted from the movie, which is that after our parents have given birth to us, and decide to not produce any more children, their existence is of no consequence. Basically, after we are born, it doesn't really matter if our parents live or die. Yes, of course our emotions(which seem like common sense to us) tell us that this thought is probably the most absurd of things that can come up in our minds. But sadly, from an evolutionary perspective, this realization is irrefutably true.

Now I wish to have never had this realization.

Shame is a sham!

The moment anything goes in an unorthodox manner in a society, that is to say, anything hard to digest for general public, but at the same time, favors the individual, the society pulls out its weaponry, one by one, to slow down the individual. Even to the extent of completely preventing him/her from attaining his/her intended goal. In a way, this tendency of the human race, its despise for the progress of the individual has helped keep crime under check, or has at least allowed us to prevent collateral damage associated to crimes, though obviously not quite completely. That is because progress, when it comes to a criminal (an individual), means successfully committing the crime. So preventing his progress/success effectively stops the crime. By writing that line, I get a feeling that I am underestimating your intelligence. Yikes!

But our collective despise for aspirations of non-criminal citizens of the world is what baffles me. Sure, were it not for jealousy, there would be no competition, and we would all be controlled by a handful of people producing all our daily requirements, and hence we would not exactly have a "choice" while choosing what to buy and what not to. Carefully notice. This phenomenon, that of a handful of companies controlling us, is already a reality. Nevertheless, that being a topic for another post, I shall continue, as jealousy and despise are completely different.

Despise is the feeling of revulsion/contempt for something. This something is usually what people can do nothing about. And since they can do nothing about it, their emotion remains an emotion, and nothing more. 

As I was saying, the moment there is a despicable human in sight, the society, specially now that it cannot do anything about the situation, pulls out the "Shame" card. 

The teacher says "Shame on you for XYZ!"

Your friends say "Shame on you for ABC!"

Then the world says "Shame on you for PQR!"

It's like the dialogue in the movie Devdas...

माँ ने कहा "घर छोड़ दो", पारो ने कहा "मुझे छोड़ दो", तुम कहती हो "शराब छोड़ दो"।कल कोई कहेगा "दुनिया ही छोड़ दो ।"

Translation...

(My mom told me to leave the house. Paaro(his lover) told him to leave her. Now you(Chandramukhi-a prostitute Devdas falls in love with..) are telling me to leave alcohol. Tomorrow, someone will tell me to leave the world...)

Okay, that dialogue might just have completely derailed the message I wanted to convey through this post. But damn! What a dialogue! Again, moving on.

What I want to say is "Jaa chudail!!". Apologies...

What I actually want to say is that the moment your personal gains even remotely diverge from that of the general public, the first thing the world seems to do is to make you feel ashamed of it. What you shall read next might sound counterintuitive to what you just read. 

It is we who feel that the world is making us feel ashamed. this "feeling" of ours has obviously been reinforced by our surroundings, by the people we hold dear, specially those who tell us that the world is a hostile place. 

NOOOO! Are you crazy?? The world isn't a hostile place! It is just indifferent! It doesn't give a shit about the individual! And why should it? What's in it for them, the rest of the world, if you make progress? In case they benefit from you, sure as hell will they join the band-wagon! But otherwise, the whole conspiracy theory of "The world trying to make you feel ashamed for what you want to do" is purely a simulation in our own heads. 

Imagine this. You are in an embarrassing position with a thousand onlookers. If a thousand onlookers feels far too intimidating, imagine yourself in a classroom. Now imagine that you made a blunder somewhere, and unfortunately, the teacher caught you while making the blunder. You become the laughing stock. CONGRATULATIONS! Now, spend the entire evening, or day, or week, or a fortnight feeling miserable for being laughed at. We all are perfectly capable of wallowing in our sorrows endlessly. So much for all the intelligence!

OR think of the situation in this way. How are the people, who laughed a you, going to matter to you in a certain time frame? Say 2 years, or even 2 months? I'm pretty sure the people won't make a difference. I am a staunch believer of solipsism. As an individual, the thoughts of another individual are immaterial to you. Specially if the other individual's thoughts are holding you back from attaining what you want. 

Basically, what I just figured out while I am writing all of this, is that everything we think, is all, completely inside our own heads. To the extent that even our secrets don't matter, specially if you share them with someone. Your secret is a reality for you. Yeah, sure very few people know about it. But that is because one is "ashamed" of it for some reason. 

I don't think feeling proud of one's feelings, one's intimate details is going to make anyone feel miserable. Rather own your feelings, cherish the fact that one has a mind that can feel so much, than feel pathetic about what the world might think/make of them.

No strength in number

Flock together, and you shall remain safe. Nonsense! Whosoever brought about this concept was 

a) A coward

b) Weak

c) Stupid. 

Many might refute to the perspective that you are safer in number. One might imagine a flock of sheep huddling together, each trying to move to the center of the herd to "feel" the safest. If what they are up against is not so much a fierce adversary, they might lose one, two or maybe three of the herd's members. But what if they are surrounded by an entire wolf-pack? That too the hungry types? Yes, the one closest to the center will survive the longest. But it shall perish eventually. 

Well, that was as far as sheep go. But what about us, men and women? The way we are being socially conditioned, more-so our men, we too have fallen for this notion of strength in men. This is when our environment hasn't exactly changed from that of our animal-fending ancestors. And if there has been a change in the environment, there has also been a corresponding weakening of our physiology, because of the apparent absence of imminent threat. Specially with all the sitting around that we engage ourselves in.

In reality, the "Each for thyself" rule remains true, irrespective of the situation one finds oneself in. Besides, if there is an idea that you need numbers for, to show the strength of the idea, then the idea is fundamentally weak. And no matter the number, a weak foundation will perish, just like the herd of sheep mentioned before.

By no means do I want to derogate the act of asking for help. For, asking help is part of the process of growth, provided of course one doesn't entirely develop dependency on the source of help. But when it comes to group-dynamics, a group is only as strong as its weakest link, just like a human body. No matter how much of weight you can curl up with your hand, if you have weak legs, it won't be long before your weakness surfaces, allowing the adversary to leverage your weak spot. In the realm of martial arts, the sport of Judo beautifully leverages the architecture of the human body, specially the range of motion of individual joints, spots of vulnerability in every human. 

When it comes to human groups, there is only one that comes to my mind, who won by the virtue of their number. They were 300 in number, but according to myth, could withstand an army a thousand times their size. Quite obviously, I am talking about the spartan warriors, their group which has been made popular through books and movies. Each of the 300 men, considered descendants of Hercules, brought down many an army. They were one for all, and all for one. But it doesn't stop there. Each man in that group WAS THE GROUP! Each was as strong as the other. None of them even an ounce behind the other in terms of strength, agility, integrity nor bravery. Their strength multiplied, not added up, when they came together. And as the movie 300 depicts, just one out of the 300 defected, bringing demise upon an until then,unstoppable, indisputable force.

If 1 and 1 makes 2, i.e. any collaboration between two parties, the collaboration won't make sense, wouldn't be to anyone's advantage. Only if 1 and 1 make 11 does a collaboration make any sense. Or else, it is a lot better to stand and face the music all by yourself. That is because, at the end of the day, when push comes to shove, everyone will be all too busy protecting themselves, rather than caring about what is happening to the next person. So it is always better to make oneself stronger, rather than cower behind someone else. 

Another thing what I want to touch upon is the exact opposite of what I just wrote about. We have been made to fear almost everything that happens around us. Many of these things are absolutely natural, non threatening and harmless, and rather exciting. Sadly, our fear-conditioning has caused us to mistake the stimulus that causes excitement, for that which causes fear. This is perfectly understandable as the physiological response to both fear and excitement is very similar. Quickening of the heart-beat, hence the spike in blood pressure, a result of release of adrenaline in the blood-stream, and also testosterone(in guys). Basically, it all feels like a triple shot of espresso, giving all its jolt at once!

It feels all too overwhelming. Ever felt the relief after such an episode has gotten over? Phew! Goodness gracious! You literally thank your heart for not having fallen apart! But if one can harness that feeling, that rush of blood to the head, it is THE most gratifying feeling to experience, no matter how silly the situation may seem after all the rush has worn off. And believe me, in most situations when we feel that rush, the situation is usually a silly one. Just that we have made a very big deal out of what happened, more so what "We think" just happened. 

I figured a way out of such situation. Before you experience the full blunt force of the adrenaline rush, think for a second if the consequence of the situation will cause you bodily harm, or whether you will come out alive after the situation persists no more. If you know you'll survive, don't bother running from the situation. Enjoy the experience of feeling your heart pump blood into every cubic centimeter of your body. The poor heart beats for you all its life. You owe it some acknowledgement, specially if it beats harder out of excitement.

Don't pluck the flower!

This world is an extremely beautiful place.  I don't know if I write that line because I am in a particularly good mood. But yes, I have been awe struck by the amount of beauty that we're gifted with all around us. I shall try to say what I want to in the simplest manner my eloquence allows me to. Basically, I won't be an arsehole on this post, as long as language is concerned. 

Imagine a flower. It is the simplest non-human thing that might come to one's mind when one hears the word "Beautiful". Let's be a bit more specific. Let's imagine a white rose. That makes things a bit clearer in my mind for some reason. Its very image exudes purity, femininity, delicacy, and needless to mention, beauty. All the qualities we associate with things that appeal to our senses. 

Now say, someone is walking down a street, and he/she notices this white rose. The person becomes infatuated with the rose, entranced by its beauty. The typical response of a person is that he/she wants to OWN the flower, possess it in exclusivity. So, he/she plucks the flower and walks away happily, thinking that now the flower belongs to him/her forever, and that he/she can show the flower all the adoration and admiration in his/her capacity forever. Specially now that he/she owns the flower. And so, the flower, in the mind of the person who plucked it, shall remain ever indebted to the plucker's admiration and affection. 

Here's where things really go spiraling downward for the plucker. 

Little does the plucker realize that the flower, the moment it is plucked, is dead. All its vitality, all its exuberance that the plucker found it with, remains no more. And so, it shall wilt. It will wither away. At best, it will find itself crinkled between pages of some book that someone will open ages after when it was originally kept there as a remnant of the beauty that it possessed.

You know what's worse? Now that the flower has been plucked, its beauty is lost to the world, because the world can see it no more, for it resides no more on the same street that many walked by.

Owning something, or let me be more blunt, owning someone means making the thing.person give up its/his/her own will. The thing with someone/something that loses his/her/its will ceases to be the person whom the you admired. And so, since the thing/person remains no more the one you admired, your admiration for it/his/her fades away, until the admiration the object of admiration entitled to itself, turns into contempt for the once-admirer. 

I read this some place that if you find something beautiful, admire it. Acknowledge its beauty. More importantly acknowledge your fascination/ admiration for its beauty, and then, let go. You have no entitlement to its beauty. All you can do, at best, is to allow its beauty to flood you completely without wanting to hold it within you. 

Someone told me "You don't own me". I was naive, and stupid enough not to realize what the person meant by that at the time. I was more-so stupid to get offended hearing it. It just skipped through my ability to comprehend. That line never meant that I was to be denied what I admired. It simply meant that I shouldn't be so hell-bent on wanting to control the object of my admiration. Even now, I THINK that I understand what I heard. But frankly, you never now. Actually, I never know.

And now, the last four months...

I feel time ticking faster than ever as I watch the cursor blink on my screen. Each time, taking a second away from the time I have remaining in this place, that now IS my home. I say this because when I went back to my parents, this vacation, I felt completely out of place. 

Three and a half years went by like a gust of wind. It blew me away, whistled in my ear, comforted me under scorching sun, threw dust in my eyes and made me cry, strengthened my roots, but most importantly, taught me to fly.

I remember the first day I stepped into the college campus. I actually did  not step into the campus. I drove into it. Okay, bad joke!

What I do remember is the rain thrashing against the car's wind screen and windows with the same excitement that was brewing inside of me, for staying away from home was a first-time thing for me. I thought I'd miss mum and dad a lot. My grandmother was skeptical as to how I'd live without my mum. A day hadn't passed in college, that I completely forgot about where I came from, or whom I'd miss. It was life's  new chapter. A clean slate. Sadly, my mum is still plagued with the thought "Oh my god, how will my son live without me?". Sorry mom... I'm alive and kicking!! I somehow feel heartless saying that.

Today morning, I sped through all the paraphernalia that one needs to go though to get enrolled into the next semester. It all happened a lot faster than I thought. But now, as I sit jobless, ruminating about all that has happened in the past 3 odd years, I feel a tad bit pathetic. I mean, these four months that remain, feel like the last four months of life, well at least a part of my life. It feels like running at full speed toward the edge of a cliff, not slowing down one bit. Or I may just be getting far too sentimental.

Of all the things I thought I'd do in the four years of college, a lot many things remain pending. I day-dreamed my way through over three years. It doesn't feel that long  when you look at it in hindsight. But somewhere in the back of my mind, I know for a fact that roughly one-fifth of my lived life has flashed past me, that too, right in front of my eyes. 

But that is all the looking back I want to do for now. The time I have at hand is ticking like a count-down timer on the screen of an online examination. And hence, time is of the essence. 

How I hope to live this time out! 

Burn every ounce of myself in the quests of all I want, 

as I already have all that I need.

Only Robert Frost's lines can describe how I fee right now...

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,   

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep.

Stop this train I want to get off and go home again,
I can't take the speed it's moving in
I know I can't
But honestly won't someone Stop this train!

Go fiddle it out!

If you mention the word "setting" in India, more so in North India, it usually refers to a makeshift arrangement to get something done. And on more instance than one, it often times refers to a dating couple.

"अरे! उस बन्दे ने तोह लड़की के साथ अपनी "Setting" करवा ली!" 

(Dude! That guy managed to get the girl to date him!)

But as usual, I am not going to talk about the aforementioned connotation of "Setting". What a waste of 100 words, right?

The "Setting" I want to discuss is the one we find on remote controls, and other common electronic devices, say phones, cameras, and other appliances we come across from day to day. 

I come from a technologically challenged household. It's not like there is financial trouble in my home. But despite using electronics from the time of their advent, my parents are still skeptical about even mistakenly pressing buttons on devices, whose functions are unknown to them. And just in case they do accidentally press something unknowingly on a remote, which brings about a change on the, say TV screen, they're like....

So that's what it does!

It is a problem with us as a species. We tend to simply avoid fiddling with things we don't completely understand. More so, we truly believe in the following...

"People have so *much*(read gadgets) to lose. This is a world we'll never understand. And you always fear what you don't understand."

To be honest, I am no tech geek. That said, I am definitely not averse to technology. Quite on the contrary, I love nifty pieces of technology, the ones that are actually functional. Not the ones that can do everything for namesake. For instance, I have fallen in love with the Kindle e-reader I got myself some time ago. Purely built for reading. Nothing else! No unnecessary dating applications, no Facebook, no distractions! It is purpose personified. The only thing better than a Kindle is the paperback of the book you're reading on your kindle. But hauling a lot of books around involves logistics of its own. With this device, all the books you could read in a lifetime weigh in at 180 grams. But that said, the Kindle does take away the joy of holding a book in your hand. Whoops! This post is turning into a Kindle advertisement. And so, moving on....

The day I got the kindle, I had to go out for some reason. My sister came home, while I was gone. Upon knowing that she was back home, I told her to check what was on my bed(my Kindle). She opened the box, saw the e-reader, and got all excited. That's the thing with younger siblings. They actually think that the elder one gets knows about the cool things. I say this despite that my sister uses a Nexus 5, and I use a 5 year old Nokia E-72. At this juncture, I'd like to add to my own credit that I was the one to suggest the Nexus 5 to my sister. I don't know how that bumps up my credibility. But nevertheless, the mere thought of someone getting excited by a Rs. 5000 device, specially if that same person uses a Rs. 25000 device to make a call, sounds utterly ludicrous to me. Eh! Kids are turning dumber by the day!

Any way, I was sitting next to my dad, as I broke the news to my sister about the new device at home. Just to make my sister at ease with the device, I told her something like "Go on! Try fiddling with it. Figure it inside out." My sister was happy now, after I had given her Carte Blanch to the device.

My father on the other hand, got all worked up the moment I mentioned the word "fiddle" to my sister. He believes that electronics are things one must not fiddle with. His beliefs stem from those of my grandfather, who is a strict adherent of User Manuals that come with electronic devices. So when two generations get used to reading User Manuals for fun, and the third generation(me) is repulsed by the idea of referring to user manuals to sort out issues with electronic devices, there are bound to be tense moments. I truly believe that User Manuals undermine the User's intelligence. There are as it is very few slot where a wire of a particular kind will fit into the appliance. 

Coming to the buttons  on the device/ device's remote, there is a very low chance that pressing them can cause any form of irreversible damage, if at all it can cause any damage. Just imagine! Why would the manufacturer put buttons on the device/appliance that would screw with the device's normal functioning?

On a bus trip, not too long ago, an old lady sitting next to me wanted to get a bottle of water. She had a problem with her leg, and for the amazingly good person I am, I volunteered to get her a water bottle from the shop outside.

The bus had electric doors, the ones you control from the driver's seat usually using a joystick, or some button. I saw a joystick on the dashboard of the bus, fiddled with it, and figured out how to open the door. 

A lady, presuming that I was up to no good, reprimanded me, telling me not to "fiddle" with things that I don't know about, as it might spoil the doors. To tell the truth, my ego took a big hit when this timid lady said that I didn't understand how the door worked, when I had just figured it out right in front of her eyes. I pretty much lost my cool, but stopped myself from doing/saying anything rash. 

I realized that the lady's apprehensions to my fiddling with the door was not exactly her fault. 

We have been brought up by being constantly told that the ways of the world are far too complicated for our simpleton minds, and hence, questioning the things that surround us, trying new ways around problems is a futile waste of time and energy. In the end, what we are handed is a User's Manual. And sadly, that's all we end up being left with.
Chuck the manual! Press all the buttons. I'm sure we'll eventually learn to press the right ones!
So Keep Calm and....

Ernakulam....

There are three things, I believe, each one of lives should be at the end of this one life, specially so if we happen to have the means. Well traveled, well read, and well lived.

I haven't lived long enough to tell anybody how to live well. But from all the philosophy that we have been bombarded with, if I live with all I have, and love with all I have, I am quite certain that someday, I'll have a big, fat, chunky diary, that will make for a good read, and maybe also make it to Goodreads.

About being well read, I cannot say enough. All I can say is barring a few people,

"People Don't Read Anymore"- Steve Jobs

You can never read enough. Ever! I am fortunate to have voracious readers for friends, those who inspire me to not stay without a book, when I have nothing to do. It keeps the mind stimulated. And I shall stop my rant about books, before the entire post becomes about reading.

The last thing, the thing I want to talk about, is Traveling. As much as I love traveling, I haven't done much of it. I've been to a bunch of places here and there, few road trips, an odd bike trip, and that's pretty much it. Nothing close to what one may call well traveled. But I have a lifetime ahead, but you never know if you'd wake up tomorrow. Anyway, that's another discussion.

Traveling is fun as hell. All the planning, or rather in my case, the lack of planning, all the last moment hustle and bustle, and the whole emotional concoction that brews inside before, during and after the trip is just worth dying for.

All that's about to follow comes from a brief trip I had to make to Ernakulam/Cochin for a test I was supposed to write. Do not wonder about how the test went, as that is absolutely immaterial to the context of traveling. Or maybe it is not. But who cares about a test after it is over? Eh?

I like traveling alone. A back-pack, a cellphone, a book, undies, my wallet and I am sorted. If I were to be quoted by someone, I'd like to be quoted by this line...

"Travel light. Keep luggage, and more importantly emotional baggage as light as possible. They slow you down."- Myself (of course)

  Now that I have satisfied my ego by quoting myself, let's move ahead with "traveling". Go on a trip to a city where you have no bearings. No one to guide you, no easy place to stay, no immediate next of kin. It will be the most rewarding of trips you make. Why? Because then, you actually make the most of your mental faculties. You learn ways to be frugal. Because it is only when you are vulnerable that you realize your strengths.

Ernakulam, is a beautiful city. I can say this despite not having traveled through the entire length and breadth of the city because you don't need to see every nook and cranny of a city to conjure a general image of a place in your mind. A couple of places, for example the roads, and the railway stations, are more than requisite for that.

Well, that's not the only reason why I call Cochin a beautiful city. I have a special spot for this city. I know not if it is pure coincidence, or what, but I realized that the ladies I have fallen for, in the last 3 odd years, each one of them, are all supposed to be from here. And this is something I realized yesterday. Boy, OH boy! The ladies here are pretty. I was almost about to ask one of them out for coffee. The Cochin ferry, a really handsome looking place was the perfect background for such a rendezvous, but a part of me, call it my better/worse sense of judgment, cock-blocked me from asking the beautiful lady out, that too at the last moment. Sucks!

The evening that I reached Cochin wasn't the most pleasant of experiences. Not that anything specific happened. But when you're not sure about where you are going to put up for the night, and you see a board saying something like "Thevara Home For Destitutes, Ernakulam", I am pretty sure that there are few things that make you feel mare pathetic than that board staring you right in the face. That was the one time I think I would have broken down, specially because that was when my mind started playing with me. My head prompted me to call the people I know in Ernakulam, who could bail me out of my plight for the night. But thanks to manly ego, I said to myself, "What? You don't have the balls to last a night in a new city you know little about??" That rhetoric question was enough, in fact, more than enough for me to brave through the night. That is of course, given that I found myself a rather affordable place to put up for the night. So getting run over by a truck on the side-walk at night was now a reassuring impossibility.

And since I had located my test center beforehand, for the smartie I am, it was just a morning cake walk for me to reach my exam place from the motel that I put up for th night. Easy!

I get a feeling that I made a rather big deal out of a rather humdrum uneventful trip. But I did make out one thing. Traveling, and moving about by yourself in unfamiliar territory  doesn't just allow you to steer through new places. It also allows you to move through the labyrinths of your own mind and soul. I know this sounds abstract. But there are places that we haven't seen yet. And many of them lie within the bounds of our skin. 

To end with, I'd like to quote lines from the movie Up in the air...

"Imagine for a second that you're carrying a backpack. I want you to pack it with all the stuff that you have in your life... you start with the little things. The shelves, the drawers, the knickknacks, then you start adding larger stuff. Clothes, tabletop appliances, lamps, your TV... the backpack should be getting pretty heavy now. You go bigger. Your couch, car, home... I want you to stuff it all into that backpack. Now I want you to fill it with people. Start with casual acquaintances, friends... and then you move into the people you trust with your most intimate secrets. Your brothers, your sisters, your children, your parents and finally your husband, your wife, your boyfriend, your girlfriend. You get them into that backpack, feel the weight of that bag. Make no mistake your relationships are the heaviest components in your life. All those negotiations and arguments and secrets, the compromises. The slower we move the faster we die. Make no mistake, moving is living. Some animals were meant to carry each other to live symbiotically over a lifetime. Star crossed lovers, monogamous swans. We are not swans. We are sharks!"

And so... Move, people! Move like the sharks