An existential dilemma ...

It is not often that we surmise the fuzzy messages that Providence throws upon us, from the spatial domains you never expect. But I guess the world never gets tired of springing up that surreal moment.

It was a serene place on the Hyderabad-Nagpur highway. It was one of those places which is camouflaged by banality, but gets melancholic when you get the feel of the place. The pleasant churning of a thin stream of a rivulet embracing the constant chirping of a bird characterized the place. Welcoming us was a grand ancient archeway of the local deity. I wish I could write odes about the place, but let me reserve that for one of my puristically inclined moments. With my folks, I entered to pay my respects to the Almighty. The door was ajar, and it looked like a small but constantly glowing lamp inside the sanctum.

And then, we were greeted by a small ten-year old boy who appeared to be the kid of the temple priest. But with his devout and calm visage, he gestures us to give way, gets in and sincerely starts attending to his divine responsibilities. He comes out, blesses us and seemed to be unnerved by a couple of soiled 10-rupee notes on his plate. He again gestures the defaulters to offer them in the donation-box. I was just caught between the boundaries of astonishment and introspection.

Losing the battle of wits to my irresistible urge to talk to the boy, I try to accost him and enquire about what he is studying. He tersely asks me, "Pursuing what knowledge ?". I would be lying if I say I wasn't jostled up a bit. Naively, I explained that I was referring to the mainstream education system. He smiles at me and ascertains if my education had achieved its objectives. His sharp sight demands an answer though he could easily sense my discomfort going down this path. Cutting short my attempts to explain my job and background, he quips, "You sell what you have for what you think you do not have." I really could not deny it. I gathered that he had been in a gurukul at a place south of Chennai for a couple of years and had nearly mastered all the Vedas and Upanishads. Our conversation steered towards the duality of mind and matter. He asked me if I really believed that speed of light is the only constant we knew ? He challenged me to disprove his theory of the five elements of nature fuelling a cluster of parallel universes interacting constantly to preserve life.

Let us just say, the rest of our dialogue was heavily front-loaded with his streak of spiritual and metaphysical brilliance. More than his command of fundamentals, what stupefied me was this kid's calm confidence and alacrity. Sometimes makes me wonder whether I should consider him a prodigy or myself a part of the growing mediocre educated class not sure of our existence and mechanically creating a motive to live. If only we pause and try to apply what we know and relate it to the basic questions that nature poses us.

God Bless the kid !

The whispers of a silent upheaval

Have you ever heard a canary whispering in the ears of the fragrant breeze blowing in from the pacific ? The pillar of imagination just stretches along the sky to help us marry our meandering thoughts and dreams to the designs of nature. When the elements of our mind transcend the physical...metaphysical... and imaginative realms of nature, there is absolute bliss or there is limitless confusion which would tear you apart to disgruntled pieces of disjoint emotions. The choice unlike in the life we know, is not yours

 

If you are still wondering if I am on dope, my answer would be not exactly. There are instances in this beautiful and powerful universe that make the most rational and couter-imaginative of us to think hard, thoughts that question the very basics of what we believe in. I just started putting my myriad thoughts into words when I was travelling along the mighty rockies of the American midwest and I realised to my utter dismay, the inability of words to capture my simple instincts.

 

When you start walking in solitude, when nothing transpiring around you makes any sense to you, you get into a state of what I call translucent fantasy. My friends sometimes quip that I have a tendency to halluncinate in thin air and that I see characters and machinations personified in ways that question the rationality of a human being as we know it. But I never constrain the beautiful silhoutte of my dream with rationality. No, its not worth it and I have found it the hard way.

 

A brisk trek along a small rock is something I always cherish. Rocks remind me of patience, of humility. When a guy on whom you are clinging for support is lying there for 5000 years, you always wish you sit for a chat with him and beg him to share his experiences. And when I trek, I hear a faint voice that almost always sounds of familiarity. I claw my way on top of the monolith and am not sure if I am prepared to mentally to view the scene I witnessed.

 

A small boy, around 6 years into this world and his pony, shoulder on shoulder walk along the rock. He is dressed in an unassuming fashion, with a leather skin wrapping his tiny body and leaving his feet bare. He crosses a stream of pleasant water until something pricks him. He looks at his toe, but makes no attempt to get to the area of pain. Instead he looks at the ground, and something astounds him. He sees something sharp. The pony looks at it and turns its head around in disdain. The boy chuckles, is pleased with himself and starts to dig enthusiastically, with a passion that we so long to see in our loved ones. Moments turn into minutes, minutes into hours and he hits upon something. Its a marble lining about 7 feet tall and a foot wide. He takes out a stone and starts breaking the slab. I still was trying to make out what the thing that excited the boy so much was. The pony now moves away and drinks some water turning around at the boy at intervals that it seems fit. The boy puts his hand into the box and removes what seems to be small white sticks. He takes out his sledge hammer, and with a shine in his eyes, starts to work something out of the rod. The sound is hollow and the breeze is calm. Its not unless he unearthed an oval shaped object, that I could make out that the box was a casket and the tiny items that had sustained our subject's interest for this long were bones of a human body buried time immemorial. I just gasped for air. It was lonely out there.

 

And he finishes his job finally. He carves out a beautiful knife - sharp and light, tugs it under his leather belt. He calls his pony with a song and running it comes to pick its hero. The bones lie there unattended and far high up the sky, I can hear the sounds of a vulture who is pleasantly surprised by the turn of events. Like i told earlier, I tried hard to summon words to fill the hiatus between my mind and my brain - but of no avail. I gave up, just allowing the melancholic shudder to sink in. It signified the futility of rationality, the limitless definition of beauty, the chillness of pain in the laps of nature.

 

Do you think I am hallucinating ? I wish. Reality and rationality are not mathematical anymore. 

The Conundrum Called Reason

"God Does Not Like To Play Dice
– Sir Albert Einstein"

First things first. I do not even deserve an apology for this inexplicable hiatus of (I have frankly lost track) about twenty months. There are some things in life which just happen without poise and rhythm, which take you on a journey from the physical to the metaphysical to the emotional to the imaginary realms of your mind. And giving vent to my thoughts is something I would never ever do with a divided sense of purpose. That said, my inability to bring myself back for this long reflects on my weakness.

There are myriad tiny little truths hidden all over the universe. Human beings are severely stunted by the frequencies which they can listen to. Science tells us that we operate between the infra red and the ultra violet. But what is beyond this spectrum is so powerful, that even an intelligible discussion often ends up in a whirlpool of contradictions. I cannot ignore the strong strands of bondage between philosophy and physics. Take for example this person……

She was a small girl, very cute and naughty; belonging to a breed of never-say-dies’ who always had trouble understanding why human beings accept life as is. She could neither fathom why the amazing colors on the butterflies could not be painted on the white twinkling starts in the evening sky nor convince herself why the sweet smell of the first drops of rain touching the thirsty grains of sand could not be blended with the distant fragrance of the bunch of jasmine flowers that adorned her teacher’s silky hair. It was a strange world, she used to think; with Mother Nature showering so many cryptic clues so close to a stunted mind. She did not know what it was, neither was she least bothered; but she could faintly make out that she was not as smart as her friends in school.

But strange are the ways contours are drawn in this wonderland. The pillars of support that we thrive upon in our innocent childhood, on occasions, is our biggest weakness….. diluting our creativity. This angel did not have any support to look up to. She was born alone and grew alone. She started out as the tiniest skeptic that the Supreme Power trembled to see. The strength of her sharp questions to her Conscience was so massive that it often resulted in self destruction – of love, tenderness and patience. I was not surprised at all. After all, we all know Andy Du’frein and as he likes to say – Lumps of coal become diamonds, with just two variables – Time and Pressure. Yes, lots of time.. and lots of pressure…. And you get a stone so strong that it can cut almost anything apart clean.

Oh yes, she was abrasive…. All the way… to herself especially ….

And then one day, a miracle happened. She had a dream …. It was not normal…. All she could see was pungent colors mixing intricately with each other to form a concentrated mass of white light. They came from everywhere….. every part of this universe….. from directions that she didn’t even know about… from dimensions that she could not relate to…

Then Lo and Behold! The most amazing sight she had ever witnessed…. She could see a time series of events nicely threaded upon one behind another like a string of beads…. And she could see more beads… all interwoven and forming a sphere of infinite complexity …. I would not give a word to what she was… partly because there is no language which can capture that and partly because we humans tend to relate what we hear to the past… this was revolutionary…. She could touch the beads and alter their course … just like the line of ants she used to envy for their gift of conformance and how they used to run helter-skelter when she diverted even one tiny little ant on their long line. She could not hear anything nor see anything worldly after that. The doctors said her heart stopped functioning hours before she even started dreaming. But her brain was fully functional. A phenomenon that they could not understand… Her eyes were open… they saw what no one could even place it …. And she smiled… her sweet lips just curving a wee bit…. With her eyelashes batting one last time…

She did not know religion.. nor philosophy .. nor spirituality…. All she did was to chase her dreams… And here we are… bundles of logic connected by calcium and flesh, pretending to make this world a better place to live for our progeny… I wish I could trade those dreams for this curse called intellect and reason… and maybe… go beyond all the bondages to the next plane … I feel tired and weak…..

Hanging Strands of Puerility

Left inactive on the Stalk, All its Purple fled

Revolution shakes it for, Test if it be dead.

It was the day of temporary salvation. People in this Well Known Institute in Western India would instantly tell you that I am referring to the term break. I was finally going to be with my parents for the new year. Its one of those parts of the year when you travel air conditioned to Delhi just to keep yourself tolerably warm (Try explaining that to my 8 year old cousin and he would ask you if he could dry his clothes in the refrigerator in winter. Well, there are some things you cannot explain over the dining table). On my brisk walk towards the metro station, entertaining my imaginations on spending time for the next three days (Yes, you heard it right, its 72 hours of continuous leisure and we term it a vacation … do not dare to think otherwise), I was surprised to find this short little girl following me deftly. Initially, with a typical urban mentality of cold insensitivity, I tried not to notice her and tuned to my CD player. But, music was not in store for me that morning.

Following transformed to accompanying. She had a schoolbag on her, but was not in any sort of uniform. She sported a curious look on her innocent face, her hair slightly disheveled by the dryness of the day, and was wearing a green frock with one of those Made in USA lines embossed in red (Forget the crashing of the Quota Regime; Uncle Sam is now targeting the low end apparel market in India, especially in Central Delhi). I would be overestimating her age if I estimated her to be 12 years old. I took off my earphones, stopped, took her to the side and asked her politely who she was and what she wanted. She blinked for a moment, and appeared to think hard as to how to frame her question probably. With a feeble voice, she enquired

Kya yeh safedh relgadi dilli ke us paar jaayegi ? (Would this white train go to the other end of Delhi)

I stared at her momentarily and nodded in the affirmative. I came to understand that her destination was two stations before my stop. Then she picked up a crumpled 20 rupee note and innocuously asked if it would suffice, waving it like a flag. It did not require a Sherlock to figure out that this was all she had. I asked her to accompany me, if she wanted to and told her that the stations we needed to alight were not very far from each other. You could see the relief in her face. I bet it was her first trip on the city’s showpiece.

When I purchased two tickets, I was in for a breather. She demanded to know why I failed in my duty to consult her before paying up for her. A law abiding and a peace loving citizen that I am (yes, sometimes you do not have any choice but to trust me), I apologized to her and offered to accept her share of the ticket price. Now, I did not have the change for twenty bucks and somehow convinced her to appreciate this unforgivable gesture of mine one time over. Merciful as she was, she relented finally. Ummpphh, I now can see where all the problems in life originate from ……. The train was nearly empty and before even I could take my bags, this gracious female runs like there is no tomorrow and sits in the first coach, first seat. I barely managed to get in the train before those automatic doors close in on you. And then the best part. She hollers at the top of her voice

Bhaiyya, rel mein log andar kya dekhenge? khidki peeche kyon rakha hai ?

(She was referring to this longitudinal arrangement of seats, with two columns facing one another, as opposed to the normal pairwise seats in other trains). I had to admit she had me stumped there beyond recovery. After about ten seconds of silence, I managed to convince her to look through the opposite side windows. Phewww…

Suddenly, I recollected something called basic manners which my English teacher had taught me in …hmm….yes…. 3^rd grade. I asked her what her name was. Chotu, came her prompt reply. I asked her if she went to school. “No, but I am planning to”, was her analytical and thought out reply. She also told me that she collects, ties and sells jasmine flowers in Connaught Place in the weekends and works as a maid in a house at Rohini. She even had a few packets of tied up jasmine flowers in her bag (The ones meant for women to adorn their heads I guess) and offered to sell it to me. I turned the offer down with a cherubic smile and asked her what her parents were doing. Then came the second bouncer….. she asked me to give her a valid reason why I would not use personal information about her family to cause her harm. Suddenly I could understand the significance of the Right to Privacy and the Right to Information acts battling in the Legislature. A middle aged person, hearing all the tamasha sitting near us started laughing uncontrollably and continued eating his banana. Well…I started it and it is only right that I own up to all the showdowns today with this esteemed company I had got.

It was a half an hour journey. Defining my boundaries very clearly, and staying off the personal frontiers, our conversation gradually veered round to the way she looked at life and what she wanted to become on growing up(sometimes people do grow up). Though she was not very comfortable with entertaining the thoughts of her future, she gradually opened up. She confessed how it was difficult for her to understand all the events that go on around her. She still could not help but wonder why cigarettes were available in shops in India. Well, all I could tell her was that I was gravely unqualified to even attempt to answer that question on anybody’s behalf. Then I nonchalantly asked her what she wanted to become on becoming a big lady one day.

PradhAn Mantri, came a brisk reply.

I was all the while fiddling with this Reynolds pen of mine (has become quite a dangerous addiction these days). I stopped instinctively and looked into her eyes. I could see the glitter in her eyes and a calm, innocent smile.

We both were silent for at least five minutes. Before I could talk to her about her thoughts, she was back at her curious best. She threw this seemingly straight question,

Aap kya karte ho bhaiyya?(What do you do bro)

In retrospect, I recall that this has always been the most contentious and complicated of all questions that Man had managed to conceive in his mind. Given the critical annihilation that any answer of mine would be subject to, I told her that I was learning how business works and understand how people make money. (Hooooohaaaaaa… How on Mother Earth could I even imagine that this temerity of mine would go unpunished?)

Then I could see her face turn morose. She stood up on her seat, facing the window and pointed at the thousand hawkers on the street that the superstructure was overlooking. She asked me if knowing to sell things to people would help them become rich. I couldn’t answer her. She felt that all the children in this world should try to become politicians and that way there would be no shortage of money. The first thing she wanted to do after getting elected was to print a lot of money and distribute it in all shops (Shit...I am born 50 years too early). She meant it. Her eyes did not show pretension. I could sense that.

And there it arrived. This has been my fastest journey on the metro. Time had flown. She gestured me to come closer and whispered into my ears, with her fists tightly closed and pumped.

Paawar, tabhi log sunte hain. Tata Bhaiyya (Power, that’s when people hear you)

By this time, I had totally lost my ability to converse freely. I couldn’t even mutter a bubbye to her. I just looked at her with deference.

And then she got down and disappeared gradually into the milling crowd. A gust of cold wind started blowing on my face from the direction of the doors. She had dropped a jasmine bud on her seat. I took it and had a very close look at it. Within the beautiful closed white petals was a stain of red blood. And then the train started. So did my temporarily interrupted mental journey.

Beyond Perception ...

"The destiny of man is not measured by material computations"
Sir Winston Churchill

Have you ever wondered why you are what you are ? Though not intended to be overloaded, this has a profound insinuation. We all have small desires in life which flower by the day and get fulfilled by the wink of the eye. Then we incrementally build dreams, which gradually give our life a reason. Well, not a reason, but the reason.

Attainment of the dream often is perceived to imply fruition. The ultimate destination or the state of nirvana as the purists would put it. But does it make sense to believe that this realisation is asymptotic to the ideal state we long for ? Lets think about it.

I am sure most of you would now throw your hands up and wonder if I am struck with the spiritual bug and imagine me sitting under the Banyan tree in a tapovan, floating freely in abstract thoughts. We often talk of abstraction and arbitrariness and how they cloud our normal state of mind. Let me assure you, this is not one of them. I am trying to get at what a normal human being goes through innumerable times a day......

We find ourselves tied in a intricate web of expectations right from the moment we step into this world. You are expected to be a boy or a girl, say and follow the footsteps of your benefactors. Though this is perfectly natural and normal, we unconsciously develop a set of future goals that define what we do now. Again, what future means might change from person to person. We work hard, use our superior intellect and fight .... do all it takes to attain this goal. This goal might be as simple and logical as making money or as kiddish (seemingly kiddish) as kissing Keira Knightley. But what distinguishes them is that the former in most cases does what he does because people around him think that is what is imperative. He looks at examples and models himself according to that. But the latter does it because he thinks he is passionate about what he wants to do and carries on with it. What is significant here is that we are not talking in terms of right and wrong at all.

That takes us non-sequentially to the next level of thought. If perceptions about our goals is what guides us, why is that we make the unforgivable mistake of being myopic at the definition stage itself ? Its a non trivial question to even attempt to answer. And even if we do know unambiguously what we want to do, where is the drive and the energy required to enable us push the destination higher ? Not to make things difficult for us... but to motivate us to rediscover ourselves.

There can be n reasons for this shorting or the goal-push deficit I like to call. And the most important of them is the unexpected bolt of lightning that just flashes, makes us numb and takes away everything that is dear to us. I read a little quote in the speech from Theodore Roosevelt. This quote is about a young man. He was a young lawyer in New York. He had married a beautiful girl, and they had a lovely daughter, and then suddenly she died, and this is what he wrote. This was in his diary - He said

"She was beautiful in face and form and lovelier still in spirit. As a flower she grew and as a fair young flower she died. Her life had been always in the sunshine. There had never come to her a single great sorrow. None ever knew her who did not love and revere her for her bright and sunny temper and her saintly unselfishness. Fair, pure and joyous as a maiden, loving, tender and happy as a young wife. When she had just become a mother, when her life seemed to be just begun and when the years seemed so bright before her, then by a strange and terrible fate death came to her. And when my heart's dearest died, the light went from my life forever"

That was Theodore in his twenties. He thought the light had gone from his life forever, but he went on. And not only did he became the President of the United States of America, but as an ex-President, he served his country, always in the arena, tempestuous, strong, sometimes wrong, sometimes right, but he was a man !

And this is an example I think all of us should remember. We think sometimes when things happen that don't go the right way. ...we think that when someone dear to us dies, when we suffer a defeat; that all life has come to a screeching halt. We think, as Theodore said, that the light has left our lives forever. Not true.I reassert.. its not justice to our thought process.

This is where the strength of our dreams come into the fore. Do we have it in us to withstand the jerks life can create along our sojourn ? It is still interesting to observe that this strength is partly provided by the nature of our goal itself. Thinking big... yes... really big .. takes you so far from the granularity of life that you start to wonder. It is at this point you wonder if the cause you are standing up for is just and noble. And its the love and devotion of your fellow men ... their gratitude for all the selfless sacrifices you have made.... that brings the first drop of tear from your eye and kills the wrinkles on your forehead. Its at this point that you are indifferent to the cold, black breeze of mortality....You only see the pretty, solitary face of all the love in this world personified .... standing in front of you with a fresh rose....

You have left an indelible mark for humanity to follow.....

Gods must be Crazy ..

She was sitting on the shores of the Marina Beach in Chennai, seemingly indifferent to the mellifluous waves. There was a latent bonding between Her and the waters. I hope I had the words to put them down....

Her childhood was not picture perfect. In fact, far from it. She wasn't interested in bedtime stories and fairy tales like Her friends. She had a flair for estimations of all kinds. Her innocent smile of relief after Her small predictions came true was enough to light up Her mom's face. She did everything in her capacity to supplant a seamless world into her Daughter's psyche.

After completing Her honors in Statistics, She resisted Her temptations to take up what the industry had to offer. The Massive Waters of this planet had always fascinated Her. Never did She miss an opportunity to visit Kanyakumari in the pretext of seeing Her relatives. Her uncle doesn't remember a single occasion when She didn't ask about the way waves and tides behave when three seas collude. She even spent a fortune to participate in a deep sea diving adventure with Her collegemates. Somehow it seemed that the Waters beckoned her in their own passive way.

She decided to pursue Masters in Ocean Engineering from IIT Madras. With an unmatched academic fervour, She worked on turbulations on the surface of water bodies with specific emphasis on analysing and predicting under sea disturbances. Her paper on cyclones and employing recursion to establish their relationship with southwest monsoons received international recognition.

But there was something that kept telling Her that she was probably moving in the wrong direction. Yes, things which She had tucked beneath the layers of Her intellect for years. Time was ripe for Her insticts to take over and explore the path till it hit bottom. It was about a study of the Bay of Bengal that She had undertaken as a sophomore. She had arrived at results which seemed to indicate heightened activity at an area 50000 km north east of Port Blair. On comparison with the data from the Met Department, She could detect a cycle of activities in the Pacific Belt...... yes..... that was the area Her data converged to....

But if you are a research associate from India, credibility is considered alien to you. There were no takers for Her findings ...neither from the Universities nor from the US Met Office. It was dismissed as "a typical case of megalomania". She did feel disheartened, but She had time; about 200 days was Her guess. She would keep trying, atleast to prove that there are alternate methods to predict natural sea-borne disasters (Yes..She was sure this was going to be unprecedented in scale).

It was with these myriad thoughts that She found Herself lost on the seashore. She had never been out of Her house at Mylapore beyond 10:00 pm... till today. But Her mental wranglings brought Her to this place at midnight and She was musing for about five hours now. She somehow felt that it was a War of Wits between Her and the Ocean. And almost instantly, Her results did not sound logical to Her.

Suddenly, Her heart missed a beat. She had forgotten all about a preliminary sub-division of Her calculations. And it had to be divided by the present distance factor of 10. Yes, by Jove, the distance must then be 5000 km, not 50000. And the time at hand would reduce proportionately too ! She felt a cold tremor run through Her. She just hoped that it wasn't too late.

But late it was ! Fatally late. Almost immediately when this realisation dawned on Her with the first rays of the sun sneaking from the horizon, She saw the waves raise and cover the sunlight. No, it was not an ordinary high crest. The sea was moving in.... She did not remember walking into the beach at all...but She felt surrounded by water. Maybe She was drowning, but She did not care. She saluted the Almighty and her favourite Waters for outsmarting Her by seconds. Yes, Nature is always too smart for mortals. Gracefully accepting the verdict, She disappeared into a fading melancholy..........

She looked to the sea for hope and inspiration.
She looked to the sea to dream.
She looked to the sea for peace and sanctuary.
She looked to the sea to be free.
And there She was, as free as she imagined.....


The above depiction is based on a true story, the life of a person I knew about. Yes. It was the Fateful 26th of December, 2004. The Boxing day Tsunami showed the world what Nature is capable of. Some might think that Vandhana is incredibly unlucky. But I feel that it is people like Her (Yes.. caps for my respect) who still make us nurture the hope that we can bank on our superior intellects to survive and preserve our race.

I heard from a friend at IITM last week that The US Met Department confirmed Vandhana's turbulation predictions last year which pertained to a series of hurricanes hitting the West Coast now. Though Katrina and Rita were not unexpected, her findings are now studied by an expert commitiee.

It was my pleasure knowing Vandhana; though for a brief period. I am still trying to translate my deep sorrow into a celebration of victory.... the victory of the seamless Human Mind over Nature.

I name and dedicate my first blog to Her.