Sunshine today

Commonwealth Games 2010

2010-08-15T12:06:00.000-07:00

From numerous articles on the net about the mismanagement of funds at CWG 2010, here are some gems:

1 Treadmill rented for Rs. 10 lakh ($21, 500 US) for a period of 45 days

1 roll of toilet paper - bought for $89

Payment of $429,000 to a British film company (AM films) helmed by one Ashish Patel, to supply outdoor display units for a ceremonial function in London last year. The firm had a paid-up capital of £1 and one share held by Ash Patel, i.e. a one-man shop, until one week before the function.

43 lakh pots for a whopping INR 30 crore ($6.437M USD) to beautify the venues in Delhi. - First of all, pots? Secondly, Delhi police have told the CWG organisers that these pots cannot be placed anywhere near the venues for security reasons. Back go them pots.

All of this money comes from the pockets of the tax-paying public, and the Organizers are toying with the media, the junta, and the money itself. I guess they figured it's Games with the Common Wealth after all, so what the heck.

Soccer World Cup

2010-06-08T11:07:00.000-07:00

Overheard (or made up, not sure which):
Reporter on the street doing spots for a news show. Catches a random soccer fan and:

Reporter: So, who do you think is the dark horse for this year's cup?
Fan: India.
Reporter: India? but they aren't even part of the pool.
Fan: And that's just how dark they are.

Apologies

2010-03-31T14:18:00.000-07:00

S'troo, I haven't posted the last couple of months. A thousand apologies to those that stopped by. A thousand more to those that stopped by more than once.

I'm creating some more time, you should see something new up here pretty often now over the next quarter.

No more kids

2009-12-29T05:11:00.000-08:00

Be prepared. There will come a day, say when the mrs. has popped out kid # 3, when she will want a firm commitment that that's going to be the last one.

There'll be no escaping it then. No more beating around the bush.

You'll realise then that there's a vas deferens between getting fixed and simply talking about it.

Indian Winter

2009-12-21T18:35:00.000-08:00

I'm in Bangalore for the next couple of weeks. It's sweater weather, and there's not a chance of snow. The idea is to put my feet up and do little - very very little. The agenda is to meet old friends, and check off the usual offenders:
1. Fanoos rolls
2. Avatar 3D
3. Gemini Circus
4. Talk to local politicians about the progress with the Metro project
5. Cleanse the city of all pollution
6. And all corruption, while I'm at it

More updates to follow in this post.

Prison Money

2009-11-20T12:19:00.000-08:00

A friendly prof. sent me an article about the currency in prison. In the U.S., the old, gold standard - cigarettes, has now been replaced by "macks".

Mackerel fish. A can of the dastardly stuff goes for about $1. Two macks buy you a haircut, 400 macks a cellphone. There's obviously some elasticity in there, compared to the outside world. The prison has a cellphone-to-haircut ratio of 200 and the outside world, a ratio of about 6 (regular haircut, non-smart cellphone).

Explained easily enough:

Long hair, short hair, who cares? ...

The cellphone, OTOH, lets you keep tabs on your drug-peddling , allows cyber conjugal visits, helps plan the escape, etc...

So the currency is macks.

Me, I'd have thought it was simply the £.

Sorry. Prison joke.

No contradictions

2009-10-30T08:26:00.000-07:00

Clinton (the Ms. of the Hill-Billie jodi) had strong words for Pakistan during her recent visit there:

Al Qaeda has had safe haven in Pakistan since 2002,’ Clinton told senior Pakistani newspaper editors in the country’s cultural capital, Lahore. ‘I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn’t get them if they really wanted to,’ she added.

Harsh words, blunt words, but she said what many in the US have felt for the last few years.

Pakistan has recently stepped up military offensives against the Taliban in the Waziristan region. And the Taliban has stepped up the bombing. Here's a brilliant link to images of the strife in the country.

Tangled webs we weave
Pakistan's Interior Minister, Rehman Malik, claims Indian sponsorship of this new wave of Taliban attacks. It's difficult for the layman to knock this claim, given India's recent assimilation of embassies in Afghanistan. India is doing great work in Afghanistan, building roads, improving healthcare facilities, etc, but many feel this is part of India's strategy to undermine Pakistan's influence in the region. Perhaps it's all a front to provide the Taliban the means to wreck further destruction in Pakistan. Analogous to Pakistan's (ISI) efforts to build a nexus between Indian insurgent groups (IIGs) and Islamic fundamentalists in Bangladesh and to install Pakistani maulvis in Bangladeshi madrassas to catalyze anti-India sentiments.

Back to Hillary: She snapped at some students at a University in Lahore as they tried to grill her about how the US has mistreated Pakistan, a long-serving ally.
(paraphrased)"But we've given you billions of dollars".
"If you want to see your territory shrink [by allowing terrorists to expand their space], that’s your choice. But I don’t think that’s the right choice."

But the point of my post is this: The US has indeed given Pakistan billions of dollars. The US will continue to pour money and guns into Pakistan. But the effect on the ground, despite Pakistan's intentions, hasn't been proportional. In fact, the Taliban today are bolder, more aggressive in Pakistan than they have been in a long time. What's the plan to tackle this?

How thoroughly has the U.S. has considered the long-term effects of this supply of gun-money?

What if:

(a) The Taliban gain more ground, and defeat the shaky force that Pakistan's military presents - through building allies in the government, and among the population, through bombing civilian targets till the country grinds to a halt, among several strategies. The U.S.-provided ammunition would fall into hands that would turn, now far more resolutely, against the U.S. themselves.

(b) Pakistan's military is able to defeat the Taliban...The military pledges a feeble allegiance to the government. A new General, a new coup - everything's possible in that neck of the woods. Who's to tell what their policy will be towards the U.S. then?

Essentially, the same machinery that provided arms to the Mujahideen (of which the Taliban was a more fundamentalist subset) to defeat the Soviets, only to have the Taliban come back and strike the U.S. after, is at work again. I hope history does not repeat.

News

2009-10-05T06:46:00.001-07:00

The parental units are touring SE Asia.

The brother has them out of his hair, they have him out of theirs. These twin joys will be short-lived though.

In the papers:
There are storms and floods in Southern India. This is a great opportunity to give. Same with the earthquakes in Indonesia and Samoa. I suspect these flash crises receive a fair bit of public aid. The instant destruction tears at your heart, and hopefully loosens purse strings.

Not in the papers:
In India - the slow erosion of human capital (and the silent crumpling of little lives) when underprivileged children escape the quicksand of hard labour to attend school. The schooling is often free, but the children attend school on empty stomachs.

Imagine sending your child hungry to school. It probably hurts you to imagine such a day. You might've been running late, a water pipe might've broken, or for whatever reason, your child missed breakfast that day. You'd hurt. Imagine then that you weren't able to pack her lunch, and she didn't take her little purse, the one you keep the emergency lunch money stuffed in. The poor thing would have to sit through hour after hour of class running on last night's dinner.

Imagine next, a situation where this empty, whimpering stomach isn't an accident - you just aren't able to feed your child. You want her to learn, you want her to build a life better than yours, but you can't afford to feed her one square meal. Perhaps if she helped you till the land, repair the neighbour's clothes, you might have been able to feed her, but then she wouldn't be able to go to school. Your life hasn't amounted to anything, and you're powerless to make your daughter's life any different.

Akshayapatra provides food for underprivileged schoolchildren. Please give.

Managing Change

2009-09-11T07:09:00.000-07:00

Change is inevitable, and often the biggest challenge for people set in their ways. After years of advising people and organizations on how to manage change, I'd like to share with you my #1 tip:

Extra wallet.

The night

2009-09-03T14:08:00.000-07:00

In my city, there is no real night. There is a general absence of the sun but there is no darkness. Even unlit street corners glow with sound and some new form of filth or unexpected benevolence.

My experiments with the night have been timid. For instance, I've never driven tipsy. Nor have I ever been out wallet-less, post dusk.

And it makes sense, I suppose, because I'm all for retreating into the known and familiar. It gets depressing after a while, always doing the same things, taking every minute precaution. But we take comfort in these depressing minutiae, we, the urban gutless, creatures of routine and monthly checkups at the doctor's and bottled water and safety pins and floor-gazing.

I'd just walked my date back to her place. Beautiful girl. Over dinner, she held forth about some activism she supports vehemently, an indie band she's close to (but not THAT close to) and that new vegan restaurant. I loved it all.

We'd met last week. Friend of a friend. You can't be further separated than that, else it's too arranged. On the other hand, a degree lesser creates an awkward closeness. What's new to talk about? How do you newly touch?

I was under dressed. Sports jacket and trousers, she, backless and stilettos, but the conversation went well. I nodded and smiled all evening.

This was our second date and I was part impatient, part relieved that it wasn't our third, because I'm always nervous about the nightcap when offered.

So after we hastily cheek-pecked at her door, I turned and left, just slightly flushed. I liked her. I realized that, because four steps down, I peek-checked from corner of eye to see if she'd shut the door or if she was still there. I know she was still there. Behind the shut door. Sure of it.

Now I had the night for company. And what a night. All contradictions and whatnots. Noisy on the outside, still within. The hurried footfall of l'etrangers and the much longed for loving loveliness of lovely loves. Still fairly flushed, in case you were wondering.

I got mugged not five minutes later. I wish I'd listened to her - she'd told me to take the money from my wallet and split it between my various pockets.

I was now wallet-less, and out six tenners. I was also ID-less, with my cards and license flitting down the street, cloistered in the cold company of a possibly fake S&W.

It was as good a time as any to feel liberated, so I decided I would. I did my usual happy place exercise - listing my top 5 reasons to be alive (I managed to find three), whistled 'dancing queen', and jigged along the streets.

Corny

2009-08-28T12:06:00.001-07:00

1. Corn

2. Unicorn

Sorry, bad joke. I don't know if it's because summer's ending, or if I'm just being

yknow.....flakey.

Update

2009-08-11T08:22:00.000-07:00

You'd think the summer would help me churn out posts faster, but I've had grey, very grey exam clouds looming. I'm done with the last of them today, so the Guava man saga will continue, and I'll tie up other loose ends as well.

Hope you've been well. Keep smiling, wherever you are. I can do with the extra sunshine.

Guava man - I

2009-07-17T19:19:00.002-07:00

Coach, coach, can I play today?

No son, you're a terrible player.

But my daddy, he says I'm an EXCELLENT athlete!

Son, your daddy lyin to you.

He says I'm gonna go pro some day.

Son, that's ridonculous. Ah seen drunk snails cover ground faster than you. Heck Ah even seen deaf bats dodge better'n you.

Really coach?

Yes son, you got no skills. Why don't you take a desk job, become a writer or sumpin? You're going to hurt yourself here, on court, 'midst all these people. Go on now. Go home.

...........

Envirofiend - I

2009-06-19T21:48:00.000-07:00

* unedited

I've never seen a shower run dry before. I've lived in large metros, and the water supply's always been adequate.

There's a point in my showers when I turn up the temperature from warm to scalding. At that point, I let my shoulders fall and set aside the burden of being me. There's a comfort in knowing this waterstream will massage the back of my neck till I command it stop. The steam will cocoon me, and I can be Hitchcock's Bates one moment, or stepping out of this hazy amniotic sac, I can be reborn, sins washed away every morning.

The water had just started to dilate my capillaries, unknot fascia, when suddenly the showerhead sucked the water back into itself. The jetstream stopped dry, with a gulping sound, sort of like a guilty swallow.

I looked up and the showerhead was quiet, not even a gathering drop of water. It seemed tilted away from me. I glared at it, demanding an explanation, but it stayed quiet. I tapped it gently, and nothing. I blew air up the pore-like barrels that made up this showerhead but still no water. The audacity. Angrily, I grabbed it at the throat and pulled it free from the wall. A tile fell to the floor, narrowly missing my feet, leaving the ugliest gash on the wall.

The showerhead was attached to a rubber pipe that disappeared through the gash into the wall. I imagine this plumbing led to a large tank somewhere, a tank fed by water from the city's filtration plants. The water in these plants probably arrived from our sewers and some from the sea. None of that helped now, and the flaccid rubber pipe remained coiled, lifeless in my hands.

I towelled myself dry and couched myself in front of the tv. There were banners running across the bottom of each channel, breaking news about how the city was without water, that tanks across the city had run dry. Engineers had been dispatched to determine where the city's plumbing had gotten clogged. The problem seemed dire enough, so I decided to plough into action myself. I stepped out into the sun, minus my spf 60 sunblock. I'd get back the city's water even if it meant getting burnt.

While the engineers trawled the city's pipes, I decided to head to the source of the problem. The beach.

Seymour (or 'Why no posts')

2009-05-31T07:10:00.000-07:00

It's because my
plate's full, and I can't juggle.
There's too little time in the day.
Have petitioned the powers
to up my hours
And now I'm waiting to hear what they say

They've written back: "Sorry, can't meet, but we've given you 24"
Not good enough, I think. I need more, wayyyy more

what good are the gods if they can't make time
what good if they can't solve this problem mine

"We can lengthen the day, shorten the night if you like,
but 24's where we draw the line"

I start to give in. Perhaps what I ask
(to slow this orb's rotation)
to complete mine task,
throws much too much into disarray.
To post more often, to get my ducks in a row
I need more hours in the day
but that'd confuse the birds and the clocks
and they'd have to rename that tv show...

It's okay, the sun can set and rise
like it always has.
I'll just chop my life finer
so it slots in better.
erm..do re me fa so la ti do?

I'll sleep less, wake early,
show little, see more
crapshoot, blind alley
sigh..I'll make do with 24

I make a funny

2009-05-06T12:11:00.000-07:00

"He's a famous child specialist"
"Oh... Who do the non-famous ones go to?"

"I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me"
"Depends.. which one of you had the norwegian wood?"

Krishno VII

2009-05-03T17:22:00.000-07:00

**Still in progress, this one

Asma's last night at the hostel was also the last time she would check in with the real world. She'd been a crafter of stories ever since she was a little girl, studying cinema in her father's studio, writing abstruse prose, disconnecting herself from the pretentions of reality. Genius, it's said, needs infusions of madness to nourish itself. Those that retain a fleeting connection with the world they inhabit make a name for themselves through their fantastical unpatterned thoughts and designs. Those that let go of this connection are remanded to institutions. Asma was happy to be on the brink, happy to simply give shape to the eruption Krishno had scripted for later that night.

She could feel the romance in the air as she got dressed. Where it wisped in from, she couldn't tell. But then her notions of romance had gotten addled over the years, so perhaps what she felt today was just a heightened sensitivity to her immediacies, engendered by solitude and sharpened by the anxiety of what could go wrong that night...or possibly a wistfulness wrought on by the storm clouds that had gathered over London.

She forced a smile as she looked herself in the mirror - bedecked, jewelry resplendent, she looked every inch a cinema goddess. The earrings were a gift from Shahadat, and she'd stolen the necklace from her mother. They were essences, frozen in time, of her uncle's passion and her mother's sobriety - clasps to her old life. She undid these clasps every night when she made her way to yet another dimly lit street corner, but she decided to keep them on for this, her last night in London.

This tussle between passion and sobriety helped center Asma in the world she created around herself. It held her delicate life taut against the wind, steeling her. And she needed every last bit of these slender strengths to keep from flinching as she played out her part in Krishno's game.

She never analysed why she went along with Krishno, nor what power he held over her. She didn't care to know. He was a magician, she knew that. He created elaborate illusions that caused jaws to fall. She let herself be carried by him, by his performances. Sometimes they'd be mere ripples that floated her along from one night to the next. Other times, like she knew it'd be tonight, she gave in to the vicious riptide, to the aftershock that'd follow. She learnt to slide along with it, beginning the day Krishno told her about how he'd gotten that bomb smuggled onto The Queen Mary.

Asma's mind was pliable clay when she left Dhaka. Krishno played potter to shape it as he willed, after taking her home the night The Queen Mary sank. He lied to her shamelessly, until she became inured to his lying. She would know that his nature was to lie, but his every falsehood was designed to help Asma create an alternate reality for herself. Her uncle was a casualty, he explained. But these things happen. Asma's intelligence begged her to see through the smoke and mirrors, but it was a losing battle. When the illusions began to feel more real, more comfortable than the truth, she let herself get swept by them.

Update

2009-04-21T14:10:00.001-07:00

Haven't posted in 20 days.

Excuse: busy
Excuse expires: expired 3 days ago
New excuse: umm...
Bottomline: Thousand apologies. Will post soon. Much to share.

Krishno VI

2009-04-01T12:39:00.000-07:00

The machinations had started when he was very young. At an age when the children at school were learning to live with each other, include others in their games of fancy and upstumbledown, Krishno was crafting a walking stick for himself. There were journeys to be made and they’d be easier with a stick in hand. Such an old soul, he chuckled to himself. He was probably just as old as the wood his stick was made of. Just that the others won’t know it to look at me.

His lack of years and his tiny body surprised him. Happenstance, that his age was coupled to such a slow-moving bead on his life’s abacus, one that moved only as fast as time. It was natural then that his precocity would distance itself further and further from his actual years.

As a child, Krishno had a curious empathy for everyone around him. He would watch people and feel their burdens and wonder at their helplessness. He’d force his way into people’s lives to dissolve their worries and joys into his stomach and carry them away. You didn’t need to voice it for Krishno to know how you felt. His was a keen perspicacity, and the village loved the little big boy. He’s going to be special when he grows up. Maybe he’ll move to the city, and find that the city loves him as much as we do.

The panic began to set in when he was twelve. He had been a middling student at school, but surely that was because the rigours of discipline, of demonstrated reverence to teachers and knowledge, all were pointless exercises in the grand exercise to unleash Krishno’s potential. After all, who in my class knows of the world more than I? And people... I read them like they were yesterday's news. They'll never teach this at school.

It was around then that the adulation began to settle. Younger children were born every year. Some so prodigiously untalented that it rankled with Krishno. What had they done to deserve this equal measure of attention from the villagers? All they were good for was playing in the mud. But Krishno was growing up, and his precocity was gently removed from the pedestal the villagers had placed it on, replaced by a tepid affection and a casual regard for his progress through life.

Something needed to give.

A mela visited the village when Krishno was 13. He snuck into the room of mirrors, reflections of the oddest shapes and sizes. Funny ones and scary ones, depressing ones and some that were revelatory. He walked along the narrow corridor till he came to a small bulb of a room. It was lined with flat mirrors all around, no more those bloated, dwarfed, stretched caricatures. Now it was just him. There’s an impersonality that detaches us from a reflection when we stare at it intently. The form we see is one we’ve accepted. We know the familiar pits and embarrassments, writ large in these reflections. And we forgive ourselves easily, because we’ve learnt how to look when we stare at the glass, how to use the light and distance so that the crooked nose appears straightened, or the thin lips fuller. The ego stops us from stripping ourselves.

That’s how it had worked for Krishno all these years. But then, he'd never had occasion to stand between mirrors, to see himself many times over, each image lighter than the one before. It looked so regal, this multitude of Krishnos, extending to the end of the cosmos in the mirrors. He stepped back to admire himself when, suddenly, he saw another person in the room. The flashing perception in that instant was threatening. His reflex was a sudden recoil. As the image shot up through his eyes and into his brain, he began to break down the threat. He’s my height. I can take him. He looks like he hasn’t seen me here yet..No, he’s seen me now. Fight? Absolutely. Wait…What was that again? Play it back..Where’ve I seen him before…Oh..

Krishno was surprised by this new reflection of himself. It was on a third mirror, the way someone standing off to the side would see him. He looked closely at himself, careful not to lose this new perspective. How did they see him when he wasn’t conscious of them watching, when he wasn’t performing? He saw glimpses of ugliness in this reflection. That stance. Arrogant without reason. His hair, unkempt, and so uncivilized from the side. Who’d take him seriously? …Even the illusions of being special crumbled when he looked at himself this way, when he couldn’t control the impression he was making. This couldn’t go on.. Where was that gem in the coal-dust? What was all this mediocrity doing in the reflection? No, no.. His life would be seen only as he wanted it shown.

....Hunched over Shahadat’s body, pumping his chest, Krishno couldn’t help himself. Brilliant, he whispered in his head. He couldn't bring himself to say it but it bounced around the walls of his skull, vibrating against his inner ear, forming a residue on his tongue that he just had to spit out. He would, all in due course.

Time travel

2009-03-26T18:55:00.000-07:00

* (Warning: long post)

** (Krishno series will continue. No, really it will. I just needed to get a physics post out of my system)

In an earlier post, I'd talked about entanglement, where a photon could affect the behavior of another (its entangled counterpart) even when separated in space. Bear with me while I dial up the geek factor now.

In our macro world, every event we can conceive can be traced back to its origin by simply following a trail. As an example, consider flipping channels on a TV using a remote control. Seems pretty fancy - two bodies, a distance apart, affecting each other without an apparent connection between them. But if you consider that the remote emits an infra-red light that propagates through the air and is then sensed by the TV, the resultant changed channel becomes an anticlimax. It reduces to a simple chain of events that occurred across connected media (remember determinism?). No entanglement here.

In the quantum world though, entanglement is a lot like that J. Chan movie about a set of twins (Twin Dragons - youtube it), where when one of them gets hit, both get hurt. But in reality, this sort of thing has only been observed at the scale of quantum particles. It's a leap, but imagine if we could extrapolate this observed effect from the quantum scale to our macro one. It hasn't been done yet, but no physicist will admit it's improbable - that's just going to cut her research grants.

Before I get to the good parts (about the time travel), here's a quick swipe at Einstein. The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen argument glosses over this phenomenon of non-locality - where a particle influences another particle in some different locality through no quantifiable connection - when claiming that the quantum-mechanical description of physical reality is incomplete. It gets interesting when we bring Einstein's special relativity (STR) into the picture. The essence of STR is that no particle with mass can be accelerated to the speed of light. This limits every conceivable action (save human imagination) to below the speed of light. This includes the transmission of information. If information were to travel faster than light, it'd have to bend space.

If a bit/byte were to achieve such a speed, STR stipulates that the object carrying this information would become simultaneously infinitely massive and contracted in length. As a kid, I wondered why Einstein didn't just say "nope, not possible, not happening". Why these disclaimers about mass and distance? I guess that's just how these physicists roll - Minimizing culpability at every step, aka covering your behind. At that speed-of-light point, the problem would become cyclical, where the energy needed to accelerate this infinitely massive object to c would itself be infinite, i.e. more than all the energy in the universe.

Anyhow, with entanglement, information transmission takes on a new shape entirely. A bit can be transmitted non-locally and instantaneously by manipulating a particle at point A and reading the effect of this manipulation on an entangled particle at point B. For any non-zero distance AB, the speed of this transmission is higher than c (speed of light). Einstein is on such a high pedestal though that physicists are creating new frameworks that'll allow for STR and the phenomenon of entanglement to co-exist. It'll be abstract, possibly math-intensive, and won't really make much sense, but atleast the house of Einstein will remain undisturbed. See Bell's inequality (technical).

Ok, now, about the time travel. I lied. I still don't see how it's possible. What is possible though is just as interesting, so stay with me here.

So far, we've talked about the non-local interaction of two particles as it applies across the first three dimensions (length, breadth, height). As observers, we humans are limited to just these three dimensions, and to an extent, the fourth (time) that we exist in. However, I haven't seen any research showing evidence that these entangled particles can't straddle even this fourth dimension while influencing each others' behaviour. After all, time is nothing but another dimension…just the way you can separate particles by a distance (length) and then by a distance along another axis (width – creating a diagonal) and a third – height, it's a reasonable extension to separate two entangled particles by time, the next higher dimension.

Consider then a situation where we know that a particle under our control has an entangled counterpart at a different point, not in space, but in time.

Even if we can’t physically travel back or forward in time, we can have this entangled particle exist in the future or past, by introducing a lag into the process that creates the entangled particle. Particle 1 is spit out at time t, and Particle 2 at time t+t1 (future).

If we can now make that second particle interact with its surroundings by messing with the original - we have a way to change history or to chart the future. I won't bother animating the possibilities.

*Update (Sep 30, 2009): Quantum entanglement visible to the naked eye
*Update (May 23, 2010): Teleportation over 10 miles

Moment of zen

2009-03-20T10:54:00.001-07:00

To make amends for my recent tardy posting-

*I found this here*

April 1995: Chesapeake, Virginia prison inmate Robert Lee Brock was upset at himself for getting arrested for breaking and entering and grand larceny, so he decided to make himself pay -- by suing himself for $5 million. Stating that he violated his own religious beliefs by committing the crime, he sought payment for a civil rights offense. Of course, since he didn't have $5 million to pay himself, he asked that the state pay on his behalf...

I imagine the dialogue went - "I'm disappointed by my behaviour. I have higher standards than this. It's only fair I be punished in full public view. Flog me, milord, flog me to the tune of 5 mil. You can deposit it to Prendre Que Suckair Bank, acct no..."

** The Krishno series continues after this post

Krishno - V

2009-03-15T18:02:00.000-07:00

1983
Krishno felt it on the tips of his fingers, and in the chill of his bones. The exhilaration of watching a plot play out just the way it was written was miraculous. It coursed through every sinew, and caused your being to shudder. It turned your age on its head. And Krishno'd been addicted to this thrill for as long as he could remember.

Krishno'd had an exciting life by all counts. Every measure of it was fantastical. Each happening was a confluence of so many fates, so many destinies, that Krishno himself didn't believe a life, any life, could play out like this. He used to love to pick a frame from the movie of his life and live it anew, again and again..but even this, like him, had begun to grow old.

As he stared across the canyon, hair and beard white from his journey across geographies and time, he felt a weariness. For all the thrills of the ride, his puppeteering had taken its toll over the years. Such contrivance, all those expedients...all that plotting. He'd begun to feel a detachment from himself. This, he realised, was where he'd wanted to go all along. This prime spectator's view. No longer just the player, now he was becoming the ghost that straddled the end of the stage, loosening the rivets from his actor's body and coalescing into the seats, front and center. It was soon going to be time to bring down the curtains.

The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.

1942
Her Girl's Hostel was a loose place. "Hostel" was an especially kind euphemism. Some had plied their trade there uninterrupted for decades, so "Girl's" was stretching it too. It hurt Asma's scalp to pull her hair back that tight, but she liked the look. The streets demanded it, she'd smile to herself. She had learnt the art of makeup quickly, and spent much of her money on the best products. Krishno later chronicled how one of her young clients was a hindustani who went back to India and became a famous film producer. Apparently, it was this young man who years later insisted Asha Parekh kajol her eyes the way he remembered it on an unnamed girl in an unnamed city.

Krishno, now a second officer, would be commissioned to sea for three months at a stretch. When he docked, he'd head straight to that seedy underbelly of the city, that heaven on earth. He'd take a woman before he met with Asma. No, her he'd love slowly through the night, but these others, they were just grinding stones to blunt the edge off him after three dry months on the water.

Asma hurried home early that night. She had simply gone through the motions during the day, waiting for it to end but her clients tipped her lavishly. Each felt he was the reason she was glowing.

Once home, she found Krishno on the bed, face buried in her pillow and lost to the world. She didn't care if he was tired from the sea or from the women, she was comforted just seeing him. She wouldn't wake him till the morning.

Krishno brought Asma home the night the ship capsized. She didn't speak a word for a week, and he couldn't tell if it was the shock or if she was mute. He fed her and left her indoors by day, while he went to train at the docks. In the evening, when he returned, she'd still be by the window he left her at in the morning. One morning, as he was about to leave the house, he heard her cry out sharply. He ran back up and found her hopping on one foot at the top of the stairs. She had stubbed her toe , rushing to the stairwell to watch Krishno leave. They looked at each other, she hopping, he not so much, and they broke into a laugh.

Four years later, Asma had her back to Krishno as he slept. She asked herself everyday if she was happy, if this independence she had was worth the price of separation from family, from the charted life she'd left behind in Dhaka. Not today though. She decided she didn't want to hear the answer tonight. She'd take solace in Krishno's sleeping form. Let him sleep. Let him not wake. She could dream about how her life would take flight from that point on. If the bastard woke, he'd just drag her back to reality.

Krishno - IV

2009-03-01T19:27:00.000-08:00

The Queen Mary at the British Nautical Museum today is a replica. The wood is shinier, they have panels of oak, carpets where there weren't any earlier and a captain's deck that wasn't on the original ship. Some say this model won't even float. Only the helm on this replica, blackened from the fire, reminds visitors of that inky '37 night.

It was just past midnight and The Queen Mary was supposed to dock within the hour when suddenly the radio at the Port Authority burst into life. Cries of "Mayday!" cut quickly through the inebriation. Her Majesty's Coastguard rallied two rescue boats to set out immediately to sea. A group of docksmen scrambled to assemble Manby's mortar, to reach the wrecked vessel with a line from the shore. Someone else was on the phone with the Royal Navy to see if they had a ship near the QM.

Krishno and three young officers were at the docks at the time, celebrating their new appointment to the vessel, when they saw the commotion. The rescue-boats needed able bodies - strong swimmers, ship-climbers, firefighters, life-boat rowers - so they jumped in without a thought.

The Queen Mary was a mere 20 miles from the docks. She was sighted easily enough against the black sea. The balls of orange erupting into the night sky lit up the ship like a festival.

The headlines the next day reported a fuel leak. One of the lesser known dailies reported survivors hearing cries of "Bomb!!" before the first blast happened, but the rumours died soon. Back then, talk of foreign hands, of conspiracies by non-state actors wasn't given much credence. Back then, the ship's body makers simply apologised and shut shop.

Out on the sea though, the situation was dire. The Coastguard boats circled the Queen Mary as the fire raged on board. Those not trapped on the lower decks jumped into the water and were lifted onto the rescue boats. There were others that were panic-stricken, rooted to where they stood as fires blazed around them. Krishno cried out to a young lady to jump, but he was left watching helplessly as she was swallowed by the flames. The ship wouldn't last much longer, and by now, the fates of the passengers had been decided. Those that had managed to jump ship would live if the coastguard spotted them, and those that remained on board were likely dead.

Shahadat was lost to the fire long before Krishno drew his body up on shore. Asma and he were in their cabin when the screaming began. The flames swept through the narrow passageway connecting each cabin. The doorknob on the inside of the cabin had become too hot to touch and viscous smoke had started to billow through the slip between door and frame. Shahadat and Asma held towels to their faces as he elbowed the glass in the porthole. The glass wouldn't give, it was that thick. The wooden door was aglow by then. It would be only moments before the monster outside swallowed it. Shahadat picked up a chair and Asma helped him smash the window till a crack appeared around the rim.

The wooden door caved just then. Shahadat stood tall behind Asma as the flames licked at his back. He delivered a final mighty blow to the window and the glass fell out into the sea. The splash caught the attention of a rescue dinghy. Asma climbed through where the glass had been and saw the dinghy below her. The porthole was a couple of stories above the sea, but she couldn't be scared. Not now, not while her uncle was still inside. The fire tore at his back as Asma jumped out. Shahadat lurched to the window behind her, hoping that the ship would have rehem, that the ship would spit him out. The adrenalin had numbed the sear till now, but as his body dangled out the window, his last memory was the smell of his burning flesh.

From the dinghy below, Krishno could tell that the man in the window, body ablaze, was unconscious at the very least. The girl had swum onto the dinghy, but to save the man, they needed the Queen Mary to roll toward them, to have him drop from the porthole. Even as they watched, the infernal vessel obliged. Shahadat dropped into the water, and Krishno dove in after him.

Newspapers were delivered late the next morning. The major publications had stopped presses to report the tragedy. 410 passengers in all, 110 women, 44 children. Survivors 30. All thanks to the brazen disregard for life shown by Her Majesty's Coastguard. The enduring image was of an officer thumping the chest of an elderly gentleman as he lay breathless on the shore. A young girl looked on disbelievingly.

Krishno - III

2009-02-23T09:26:00.000-08:00

In October 1937, less than a year after Krishno first set foot in England, news arrived from India that Lt. Col. Trebblewood had met with an accident while hunting tiger. The machan he was on had been built with wood rotten from the inside. It gave way just as he was taking aim. The porters reported a flash of gold and black dragging the young man into the trees. The screaming and thrashing stopped faster than it began, swallowed into the deathly blackness of the forest. An armed search party found half a body the next day. The Lt. Col. was identified only by his boots.

Krishno poured all of himself into taking care of Lady Trebblewood. She was a vigorous woman, but a crucial strength wisped out of her when she realised she had outlived her only son. Suddenly, the cancer she'd staved off so well all these months grew new heads and ate at her ravenously.

Death was new to Krishno. He couldn't understand how she dealt so stoically with her imminent end. An accident was one thing. You couldn't see it coming, it swept you away before you had the chance to judge your life, what you touched and what you didn't, what you were leaving behind and where you were heading. But this moderately paced exit, it gave you time to reflect..and how could anyone be content with their lives? How would they suppress that..that greed to live? How did they make their peace with their lot?

Lady Trebblewood saw Krishno as her own son by then. She spoke to her lawyers to make sure he was taken care of after she was gone. Krishno spent countless hours by her bed, nursing her. She talked to him about how she wanted him to live on in England, do business here and across Europe. She had monies which were going to be his, his family in India would never be wanting. Krishno protested..and stopped when he saw how this deference slashed at her.

The funeral was a solemn affair. Krishno made all the arrangements himself. Black coattails stood listless under a stark grey sky, veils and hats remained soberly in place. A knot surged into Krishno's throat and exploded. His knees gave, and he sank to the ground, muddying his trousers. This new emptiness struck him like a cosh on the back of his head, and behind his eyes, and it sucked away emotion. No tears came, just sounds of hollowness and people moving slowly, reaching for his arm, guiding him back to London.

Krishno spent the next week wrapping up Lady Trebblewood's affairs. He sold the furniture on her insistence, and sent the money to his brother in Calcutta. He saved the bed she spent her last months on. He couldn't decide what to do with it, so he spent nights asleep under it. During the day, he looked for work. The landlord let him stay there while he looked.

It ought to have been easy, this business of finding work. The Lady's farthest-flung acquaintances had let Krishno know to look them up if he ever needed a job. It was an insidious irony - Krishno's notions of dignity and propriety, all antiquated, wholly rustic, stopped him from ever taking up these offers.

Other employment was hard to come by. It was fine to speak english, but how many would want this aftermath of colonial rule selling them soap, or doing their accounts?

Krishno's search ended when he returned to a pub that Lady Trebblewood and he frequented. He'd been embarassed at first, visiting there with her, but he soon grew thick with the blokes. They joked with the Lady, and any friend of hers.. One of the pubbers gave him a Captain's name. They needed a fourth officer on the Queen Mary when it docked in from Chittagong.

Krishno - II

2009-02-19T09:37:00.000-08:00

*See Krishno - I

Asma was born to a wealthy family in Dhaka. Those were days of plenty. Her mother came with land, and her father with a temper. The in-laws mistook his temper for ambition and fussed little, marrying their daughter off.

Asma was besotted with cinema for as long as she could recall. She had an uncle on the seas, Shahadat, who went shore to shore collecting films for his niece. She'd write him about how her interest in the craft had shifted from curiosity to obsession, and he'd gladly ship back new movies and lamps for her projector. She had dog-eared American cinema, and had dissected all that Europe had to offer, from Hitchcock's works to Rene Clair's movies with music. She loved mainstream with a passion and had written several screenplays of her own, ones she hoped to someday direct.

It wasn't an understood thing, this passion for cinema, among girls, less among the aristocracy Asma belonged to. And who'd believe her if she said she was simply interested in the process, in the storytelling, not in fluttering her lids in front of the camera.. "She's just got stars in her eyes.."

When she turned eighteen, the wheel had come full circle for her mother who began preparations for a wedding. Any of the suitors, young lawyers who'd studied across the oceans, would be blessed to have her. Asma was a delicate thing, she'd say. A porcelain constitution, an unhurried disposition, just so used to the good life, you know..Your son looks like he'd take good care of
her.

Asma was distraught. She had known the day would come, but there was something crushing about its momentum, the product of its consequences and the suddenness of its happening, that trapped her. She was scared for the first time in her life. All her conceptions of the world, of cinema and people, were suddenly reduced to a marriage she'd seen innumerable times, where young aunts and cousins were shipped off to foreign lands, only to be heard from in letters when they delivered babies.

The uncle returned to Dhaka for the wedding, wondering how Asma was coping with all of it. Shahadat had always been a romantic, hoped that Asma would do a dream turn someday and join India's burgeoning film industry. He entered her room and saw her in front of the mirror. She had never looked more beautiful. He recognised his sister's jewelry on Asma, still as golden as all those years ago when he had prayed for her happiness at the nikaah. Asma's reflection though was prayerless. It stared back at him, blankly, with a soullessness that frightened him.

Shahadat had seen this beauty before. It was fragile, fleeting, but it had fossilized in his brain. Thirty years ago, his mother's sister had visited them at home. Shahadat was a young lad, but not much younger than this aunt. She had dazzled him then, her skin whiter than he remembered, her eyes deep wells. She hugged her sister, Shahadat's mother, and gently shut a door behind them. The sisters talked for hours. The voices never rose enough to slip under the door. Later that evening, the doors opened, and the young lady stepped out. Her shoulders were stiff and jaw firm, her eyes newly cold, but her stride strong. She carried the weight of her beauty purposefully out the house without so much as a glance back. After the last handfuls of earth had been poured on her grave, the family issued an obituary, mourning the accident.

Shahadat saw this beauty and all its spite in Asma, as she looked at him unblinkingly. He knew then what needed to happen. He smuggled her out to the railway station that night and onward to the Chittagong port. The families searched her friends' houses through the night, while Asma and Shahadat set course for England at dawn.

Krishno - I

2009-02-11T21:16:00.000-08:00

In 1936, Krishno was 16, and if only you could've seen him. He was athletic and looked dapper in a shirt and the trousers he'd had tailored that year. He spoke English like it was his to speak (thank you Radio BBC) - was often interpreter for when the English had bulletins for the village. He was a good son, and he helped run his family, making money off of the Britishers at the local cantonment. He'd run errands for them, some shadier than others, the rest sunnily English. At times, they'd send him to hunt down the district talukdar, or to tend to the Cantonment library. Other times, he'd take the white children over to the waterfall at the jungle's edge and play a game of footie with them. The younger officers - they took to him because he was also the Cantonment's supplier of all things smokeable.

Within a few months, Krishno learnt nuances about the British as a people that even the city-bred babus hadn't caught onto. He learnt their intonations, but stayed clear of the accent. He used colloquialisms sparingly so that they didn't think him just another johnny-come-lately (*the author has noted the irony here*).

Krishno absorbed subtleties of the tilts of head and the stiffened lip, of plain food and small talk, of the Country and the City, of lawns and schools, tennis and plimsolls, of the unmarried ladies back home and their mothers. The more he imbibed, the more curious he grew. The phirangs at the cantonment wouldn't mingle with just anybody, so over time, Krishno learnt how to hold up the right mirrors to his British acquaintances. This way, for the most part, they'd just be talking to themselves; they could revel in the impression they must've made on those around them. Krishno would be careful though not to show them so much of the mirror that they'd be embarrassed. Sometimes, they'd like the mirrors turned just so, to light up the spots where they stood. These were their moments of glory in the colonies, when even the most discerning native would doff his hat, had he one.

Lt. Col. Trebblewood had risen fast through the ranks. The senior Trebblewood had distinguished himself to the Queen by his services in Malta, setting up military schools that recruited several locals into the British National Army. At 22, Lt. Col. Trebblewood was still reaping the goodwill. He'd been posted that year to the 24 Parganas Cantonment on special assignment. Chief among his perquisites was the travel allowance provided to bring his mother, the widow Trebblewood, along. She was given her own lodgings at the Cantonment.

The Lt. Col.'s mother made her first sortie into the village the very day she arrived at the Cantonment. Parasol tucked under one arm, cheeks flushed from the effort under the unforgiving sun, she climbed the hillocks to the village. She had sneaked out of the cantonment, and so managed to be unaccompanied. Krishno was on his way back to the village himself, from Calcutta, where he'd been to visit his brother at school. He saw her ahead of him, still a distance from the village and caught up with her soon enough. He hadn't ever spoken to a British lady before and wasn't about to let the opportunity pass. Drawing up beside her, Krishno offered a drink of water and thought it quite a bargain in exchange for the conversation.

As they continued, village-bound, they got talking about public transport in the city, and how it left one soft in the middle. She was surprised to hear he'd lived his whole life in the village ("Well, how is it I can understand what you're saying?"). He showed her around the village, and eventually brought her home to dinner. She was taken by the food, simple fare, but wholesome in a most settling way. Later that evening, the lady Trebblewood asked to be walked back to the Cantonment. Krishno obliged. She insisted he visit often.

It was when she fell sick a few months later that Lt. Col. Trebblewood decided to have Krishno escort her back to England. By the time their liner docked, it was December, and Krishno saw both England and snow for the first time.

His first few months there were spent helping her settle back in. It came naturally to him, this care-giving. He looked after Lady Trebblewood delicately most days, but she was a hardy woman, and on the days she looked pink, they'd land up at watering holes where the older pubbers knew her. Krishno wasn't sure what to make of this at first. Surely Ladies didn't just walk into pubs, much less those ladies with titles, much much less those accompanied by brownies.

For Lady Trebblewood's friends, Krishno was an exotic treat. His skin, his hands, the calluses, the branched veins on his palms, his barefoot life - all of these were captivating. Ironic that in India, Krishno gained ground with the British when he took on the airs of the pawns at the cantonment, while here in London, each striking dissimilarity, each novel un-British experience from his old life lifted him from pedestal to higher pedestal in Lady Trebblewood's circles.

From among the friends that visited, two had daughters only slightly older than Krishno. When the girls heard from their mothers about this dapper brownie, they were beyond intrigued. London, in all its greyness, could soon become boring. The eligible men were serving abroad, and those that remained were strangely affected. These men were english, certainly, and bore every appurtenance, but perhaps that itself was the problem. Krishno on the other hand was a delectable misfit. Where he went, people stared. How held he his head that high, back that straight? Why was he lithe, why not underfed? How spoke he english? And the girls wondered how naughty it would be if they linked arms and walked down Knightsbridge? Their mothers were sure to hear of it. Oh, this'd show them!

Soon, quite blasphemously, Krishno began to receive invites to dinners and cottages by lakes. London's snow melted early that year.

**To be continued

India Series update

2009-02-08T08:03:00.000-08:00

The India posts end here. I've created a too-large canvas for the story, one unsupported by the blog format. Watch for a book. The plot involves espionage, heinous villainy and much in the way of romance, all in the garb of an updated Therouxian guide to the country's riches.

India V

2009-02-05T17:25:00.000-08:00

It was many years ago, I might have been about 10 at the time when I had walked into this run-down building at the end of the road from where I lived. I went there because I'd been told not to go near it.

It was mostly dark inside and the floors were greasily dirty, hadn't been mopped or swept in years. I could feel the grime even through the soles of my shoes. The stair corners had paan stains and the cement walls were bare.

I was in the elevator when the power went out, trapping me inside. The lift had stopped where the floor outside, beyond the lift gates, was at the level of my eye. I didn't call for help. I'd gotten myself into this, and I'd damned sure get out of it myself.

The yellow-red evening sun streamed through rusty grilled windows, lighting up the floors, drawing obtuse shadows that grew every minute, all angles and blocks. These slanted columns of sun were made distinct by the shafts of dust they illuminated. Glittering dust that seemed to flow this way and that within the light, that would suddenly disappear behind shadows, where the sun was quiet. As though the Sun and the dust were playing a game of seek & find, as though the dust moved because the Sun permitted it, as though the dust was simply preening before the Sun called it back to the heavens. Angel dust.

The dirt on the floor was now in front of my nose as I stood trapped in the cage. I knew grime, sweat, sand, insects, all played together here and I'd become an unwilling audience. It was strange though, watching the game from as close as this. Each player had grown larger than life at this distance. So much so that I felt I could throw a hat into the ring myself.

The sand wasn't the dull brown colour I'd expected. The grains were distinct at this close distance, each glistening like a crystal ball, lying quiet on the floor, as though they were done telling fortunes. A spider walked tent-legged over these grains, an elaborately improvised dance over crystal glinting in the setting sun.

The stains on the floor had disappeared now, in my two-dimensional world. I could see length and breadth, but couldn't conceive height. When a dried leaf fluttered to the floor from above, the ants and I were equally surprised. I let them examine the leaf for me, because I was still caged, my eyes now two limbless points, hungry to learn about this new world. Life in this microscale played out harmoniously, rhythmically, so different from our chaos-infested world of giants. Every particle, every creature had its own flow and its own rules. There was an invisible stream here that floated each entity, carried this world from age to age, independent of ours, oblivious of us, except when we interfered, when we played god and decided to stamp out life or simply to sweep the dirt.

Back here in Bombay, I looked hither, tither, idhar, udhar, at the life all around me as Ranjit led me to his house through the galis of Dharavi.

India IV: Bombay

2009-02-03T19:26:00.000-08:00

Ranjit lived not far, in a chawl that he paid 15 lakhs for. He lived there with his parents, who had grown old in the city. It was a one-bedroom affair, and had its own bathroom. And they'd hung a nameboard on the door. Patels. They owned the land now, a piece of the earth that wasn't the government's, nor the police's to raid. Even the local bhai wasn't going to stake a claim, so slickly had Ranjit greased every proferred palm.

The politics of land-owning, in the thick of the city, are complicated. There's no paperwork to speak of, no documents that will deter an encroacher. Ownership is never absolute, it only grows as generations hold on to the land. A newly settled couple can be ousted overnight from the basti, pans and almirahs flung out, onto the galli. But with a family that's lived there two generations, it's much harder. The mastans might scare the family, but there are neighbours to deal with. Neighbours who've shared salt with the family for decades. These neighbours are spokes in the wheel the mastans turn. The mastans can be young, their arms puffy, but their Bhai takes hafta from the bastiwalas. The bhai is sheriff and dictator, ernesto and castro all in one, but he isn't absolute, he's the thread that loops through the basti, in, out, in, out. In fact, Bhai is pixel art, each pixel a beating heart from the basti. There's a grand order in this universe that even the next Bhai will toe. Age, caste, money, all will be accorded gravity before the Bhais, present and future, order action.

And Ranjit, at 19, has played this game remarkably well to buy his chawl. The other bastiwalas rent, and do so indefinitely. Bhai splits these rent amounts into several piles. One for the Deputy Inspector in charge of the area, another for his minions, one for the MP who contested polls at the basti, another for the city to bring their sewage and garbage clearance machinery by once a month. It's a country within a city. The rent and the hafta support Bhai's fiefdom by funding defense budgets, diplomatic offices, infrastructure, and relief funds.

Ranjit is free from all of this. There are no sluices to drain his money every month. He's paid his dues, all black, but all cash.

Ranjit's father, toothless now, grandparent to Ranjit's many nieces and nephews, appreciates the land more than anyone. Three strides and you've covered the area of their home, but the old man finds an infinity hidden in there. He once explained it to Ranjit "Yes, I can see the walls of our house, here's one and there's the other, and they need a coat of lime. I can see why you think this is small. But look through the ceiling. Look up at the square of sky you've bought us. How many miles is it to that sky? I don't know. And how deep below the earth does our land run? I don't know. Look from that square in the sky through the floor, to the center of the earth. That is what we own. No more these debts, those vacant stares into bombay's traffic, that talk of home and the world. Son, you've freed us from the cycle..."

I understood then where he learnt to grin like that. Within his four walls, Ranjitrulez was king.

India - III

2009-01-23T12:58:00.001-08:00

My room was sparse, but it had a rickety ceiling fan. The fan was old, and the years hadn't been kind. Its blades had curved downwards over time, and the plaster where it met the ceiling had broken off revealing concrete and iron rods. As the night grew still, the heat settled on me like a fever. I couldn't crank the fan up higher than a slow spin, lest its ties to the ceiling gave. I sweated just lying on the hot bed and couldn't see how I'd manage to sleep that night. I had absorbed every last patch of coolness from either side of the pillow, and now there was just me and the sweat. My sleep that night was more a departure from a state of awakened alertness than a night of rest.

I was up and about as soon as the sun broke. I made my way to the reception downstairs where I found a familiar face. A thin, reedy character, face all pimples, moustache all mousy was busy stacking ledgers into a drawer. It was Ranjit Rulez. Perhaps it was just me, but Ranjit always struck me as the name of a brawny, truck-like character. That and the fact that this Ranjit claimed sovereignty over some unspecified kingdom had led me to believe he'd be more than he was, despite the grainy webcam capture I'd seen on the net when I booked a room here.

He turned to face me and gave me the widest grin I'd seen in a long time. He looked like he was in his late teens. He wore gold chains around his neck and had a flashy mobile clipped onto the front of his shirt. The shades were flipped onto the top of his head. I'm not sure he wasn't simply compensating.

"Aaiye, aaiye, thik thak soye aap? I hope everything was to your liking?"
I replied that it was way too hot and that the fan just didn't cut it.
"Ah..well, anyways, I'm sure you haven't come here to sleep. What can I get you?"

Well...a wife really...but I couldn't tell him that just yet. There was still so much to do before all of that was allowed to happen.

India - II

2009-01-19T09:58:00.000-08:00

Mumbai
Even though I've just gotten off a flight from Toronto, I don't qualify as a 'Saab' for several reasons. One, I look no different from the teeming crowds, Two, there's an age factor intertwined with the concept of Saab. You need to look 35+ before the epithet is accorded. Three, I didn't feel the part. I wasn't going to play tourist here. I was here on a gritty, nose-to-the-ground mission. Saabs beget obsequence, the non-saabs do not. So the taxi drivers did not fawn, and in the wet steam-heat of the mumbai afternoon, I turned to the rickshaws.

I'd made reservations at a guest-house in Andheri before I left Canada. I'd found them earlier while googling for places to stay in Mumbai. The guesthouse's website had a link - "Reserve online now!". I was duly impressed. I clicked the link and was shown a picture of a man with a mousy moustache looking away from the webcam that clicked it. Below the capture was a piece of badly aligned text that said "For room booking, send email letter to ranjitrulez@....com". The short of it is that I received a reply within minutes, and a room had been reserved for me simply on good faith. There was no talk of credit cards.

The auto ride was eventful, but not a new experience. I was used to the concept of stop lights being treated as driving suggestions rather than law. I was accustomed to policemen flagging down my auto to 'urgently' get to a chai stall. And lastly, I had mastered the art of small talk with autowalas. You want to shoot the breeze for the most part, but every once in a while, garnish the conversation with a common frustration and round it off with a small, personal vulnerability.
The conversations go like this - "Nahin, bas gharwalon se milne. Bangalore ka train pakadna hai kal. Aap kahan rehte ho? Oh Borivli?....Haan, India ko cricket chhoDni chahiye. Hockey mein toh kuchh hona nahi, ab cricket mein bhi zero. Sirf shatranj raha.....Nahin, shaadi toot gayi, usey meri tankhwa kam lagti thhi."
This one-two-three strategy ensures that the autowala empathises with you and doesn't take you for too much of a ride. Has worked well for me.

I found the guesthouse desk empty. It was dusk, and there was no sign of ranjitrulez. I was about to ring a bell placed on the desk when I spotted an envelope beside it. There was a letter in it, enclosing a key. It asked for me to head upstairs to Room 202, and that money matters would be handled in the morning.

Portraits IV

2009-01-10T18:04:00.000-08:00

March 4, 2019

At 5:00am this morning, I woke up to find my pillow damp.

It's been over a decade since I saw her last, but she's imprinted herself onto me, perhaps at a cellular level, or somewhere in my bloodstream, or maybe she's gone so far as to dissolve some of herself into my spirituality... I'm not sure, but it's certainly somewhere further than the rational me can get at.

We went to school together. She didn't know it then, but I was crazy about her from way earlier than is comfortable to admit :) I met her for the first time four days into March when I got off a rickety stage at a student function. I had just croaked my way through a song, and was putting my guitar away when she came up and introduced herself. I must've stood there five minutes, mouth open just wide enough to signal serious mental challenges. She pretended not to notice.

I found we had a couple of classes in common that semester and I ensured that I plonked myself beside her at every opportunity. As I got to know her better (and as my babbling regained its coherence), I found that she could be the picture of composure one moment, and the next, laugh so loud that it'd ring through the street. Her smile could be so soft, and yet so warm, that I'd have to hide my popsicles away. More than that though, she could be so giving of herself to all those around her that it turned my world. This was the girl for me.

It took me long enough, but I eventually asked her if she was seeing anyone. She said she had a long list of boyfriends. In all earnestness, I asked to be added to the list. Turned out she had a sense of humour too. Phew.

There are relationships where, over years of living with someone, you begin to read their physicality, and then their minds, such that there's none that can know this other person better than you. And then there are those of us that are luckier. I'd been seeing her for a handful of days when I realised I must have been crafted from her essence, that she knew my ins and outs, my fears and joys better than any one before or since. Cue a hindi film clip here, something about how there's a singular someone out there for each of us, or how when the gods play matchmaker, they do it to perfection.

When we fought (and we did a lot of that), it was over the most trivial things. Perhaps I'd kept her waiting five minutes. Or I felt she was being too chummy with the guys at her work. And these fights were explosions. Sometimes we'd stop talking for days. I guess I handled it better than her. And not because I was detached. It was because I knew what bound us together was stronger than any fight we could manufacture.

I didn't attend her wedding when it happened all those years ago. I saw her last some months before the day, and haven't seen her since. We didn't suffer a tragedy, nor was there a crisis between us. It's just how it needed to be because we weren't the only players involved. There were other happinesses at stake, some so important that a mere love lost just didn't compare.

The consolation back then was that we were young, and our love a first blush. There would be more mature loves to come later. Best of all, we were always going to have the memories of our time together. Surely those would see us through till other anchors entered our lives.

The other anchors, the loves in times more mature, they've filled up my mindspace over the years. They've made the winters seem easy and the summers breezy. But we never fight. Nothing they do upsets me.

I've learnt she has two kids. They're going to enter their teens soon. Ordinarily, I'd feel for her. The kids' adolescence will bring tantrums and demands, insecurities and rebellion, discovery and selfishness. But if they turn out to be anything like her, she might still have an easy time. They're going to put her happiness miles ahead of what they want.

My story remains incomplete until I've explored how I still see her. On the street and in the subway, I run into so many people that look nothing like her, but my imagination (or possibly an unfettered longing) fills in familiar colours, sounds, perceptions into the empty frames that these people present. I know it isn't her I just saw window shopping, or getting off the streetcar, but I can't keep from smiling, because I'm never *entirely* certain it wasn't her.

It's been many many years since I spoke to her, and you'd think that natural forces would've corroded the memories by now, but these forces compete against an unnatural love. Others that I've lost touch with have floated away into the ether. Their statistics are archived in my head, but they remain cloudy, hazy constructs. She, on the other hand, lives and breathes inside me. I take her to shows and dinners. She offers advice when I'm taking decisions, and she still laughs at my attempts at humour. That warmth is so pronounced that I sometimes turn around expecting to see her. It's so pronounced that sometimes my pillow is dampened by the tears.

Salt where it bleeds

2009-01-07T12:45:00.000-08:00

'Satyam' derives from the Sanskrit for truth, doesn't it?

Me - 2.0

2009-01-02T11:01:00.000-08:00

My first expendable $1B will be spent outwitting mortality.

When I go, the usual sacraments are welcome - ashes urned (or set afloat on a holy river), garlands around an uncomfortable portrait, my organs donated in equal parts to science and the needy. All of this is acceptable, because I hope to have set grander schemes in motion by the time my ghost is called up.

The idea of living on after medical death isn't new. Certain religions make death less painful by introducing concepts of re-incarnation or of the soul simply shedding its clothes, or of how heaven's a better place. Amateur science toyed with cryogenics - freezing our bodies till a pre-agreed point in time, so we can get out in 2050 and see the flying cars. And then there's the romantic notion - a person lives on through the memories they shared with others.

For the serious death0phobic (or life-o-phile) though, there's cloning, but even that leaves behind a vacuoid, a kink in the continuum of self-identity.

The discussion of what constitutes identity is a large one. At the least, it comprises dna and nurture, as also memory and emotion. The thing is, even if I were to replicate each of these as they applied to me into a clone, and let myself die off, I still wouldn't have transitioned the uniqueness of me. This uniqueness problem arises given that for some non-insignificant duration, there would exist two of me (my clone and I), and also, if I'd indeed transitioned successfully into this clone, then what does it mean to let "myself die off"? What is it that's died if I'm still alive as the clone?

Even if the clone functions exactly as I would have (had I lived longer), I'd still remain detached from it, because I wouldn't have perpetuated myself.

*Aside: 'cloning' is an ambiguous term. I'd simply download my brain onto a hard-drive, the size of which is a finite number of terabytes. The brain download would capture my memories and experiences, separated into stimuli from the outside world and my own reactions to these stimuli. Through some careful analysis, an A.I. algorithm could be charted to say - if the stimulus is x, then from his past reactions, we predict his reaction will be y.

The other step would be to monitor my brain for the last few years of my life, and see which areas of this brain turn on/off during scenarios that trigger emotion. These too can then be uploaded into a table, and the magnitude of the emotion felt is plotted against the gravity of the scenario using a complex points system. These will help predict what I will feel in a future situation.

At this point, this hard-drive copy of my brain has perpetuated the notion of me. If housed in a basic shell, it would take decisions (career, family, etc) like I would. My creativity, since a function of experience, and random synapse firing, could be replicated by introducing wanton shocks to the system. The creativity would be kept in check ("this brain is insane".."no, it's just creative") by running its output against a list of all experiences that my sanitized brain accepted as sane or insane during my life. If the absolute insanity quotient of my digital creativity was outside my sanity spectrum, the digital brain would supress it.*

All of this perpetuates what I could have been had I lived, but none of this perpetuates me. As a result, my imaginary $1B then won't go towards more cloning research. I'll have to spend it on somehow blurring that marker called identity. Once we've managed to block that ceaseless stream of inner body perceptions that anchor the conscious self to the physical body, we can simply exist virtually or become one with a machine (bhatakti aatma). Woohoo.

Why aren't you popping the bubbly yet?

War Reboot

2009-01-02T09:16:00.001-08:00

India and Pakistan are on the verge of a war, or so the media and unnamed sources from the Foreign offices will have us believe. This teetering system, nuclear precipice and all, gets much attention the world over. A top Chinese diplomat is flown in to de-escalate the tension. No, the regular Chinese diplomats won't do, it has to be a top one.

India is carrying out troop movements that look ominous. Satellites see this and then do a tell-all to the world. India denounces this as a routine winter exercise. Presumably to keep the blood pumping through the jawans' legs.

Pakistan wants peace not war, but if pressed, they will relocate their troops from the Northwest to the Southeast. The US and the UK like having the Pakistani troops in the Northwest, alongside their own. Twiddlethumbs is a popular game there, and they need three to play. So the U(S+K) will shell out many moneys and the Pakistanis will stay.

This won't sit well with India. She'll raise the hourly rates of her call-centre agents if things continue this way. That will pinch the U(S+K). So the west peremptorily sends their best talkers to sort out the situation - Brown, Rice (apologies, but it's good for you). A month passes and the posturing continues. The Indians waterboard Kasab, and he talks of Faridkot and his father, of his training and his cell-phone. He writes letters to the Pakistani Government pleading for legal aid. Pakistan rejects all of this and demands concrete evidence from India. Nothing is provided for more than a month. This is understandable because India has
(a) little else to go on or
(b) is busy manufacturing said evidence or
(c) is worried that the evidence, which may be circumstantial once presented, will be dismantled by Pakistan before an independent body agrees that Pakistan is culpable.

In the meantime, Zardari, who is grieving for his wife ("she was killed by the same terrorists that blew up Mumbai") more now than ever before, even more than when he was Pallin' around with the U.S. has denounced these non-state actors (NSA) that carried out the heinous attacks in Mumbai. One supposes that he has no clue why the NSA chose his virgin country to incubate the cancer. In any case, he'd resolved to take swift action and so promised to send the chief of the ISI over to India. In keeping with the resolution to remain swift, this promise was recanted within hours.

Pakistan then placed various citizens rumoured to have been involved in the planning of the attacks under house-arrest. This form of punishment, extreme to say the least, was later degraded to non-strict house arrest.

Thankfully though, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the charitable organisation that planned the attacks was banned by Pakistan. Banning, as we know, is almost as horrific a punishment as house-arrest. However, using chicanery of the highest order, the organisation has moved back to the unbanned list by using an alias, 'Tehreek-e-Hurmat-e-Rasool'. Clever as ever.

As unjust as the Mumbai attacks (or other terrorist attacks, in India or in Pakistan) were, we know war isn't the answer. I'm glad, for all their posturing, the two governments also seem to have realised the fact. The enemies are elsewhere - in the minds of people, in biased accounts of history, in the policies of 4 year eat-and-leave governments. So really, the eradication process shouldn't involve soldiers dying, fighting each other, while the real puppeteers kick back in their caves or drug mansions and watch. We're coming full-circle again. We need to be the change.

A thousand apologies

2008-12-30T17:00:00.000-08:00

I haven't been posting for a while. And it isn't that I've been inordinately busy. It's much worse. I'm missing my muse. If you find her, please return.

India - I

2008-12-16T10:37:00.000-08:00

This new series of posts catalogues a recent trip to India. The agenda was simple - I was going to take a wife.

Mine own, preferably. Oh, i keed, i keed.

The backstory is like my bank account, eerily void. There's no pressure on me to marry, not from family, nor from my peers, nor is it vedic (no grihastha ashram ideas in my head). I live in a foreign country, which used to be a plus, now it's just a hiatus. I work in a recession-afflicted industry, and my job's as insecure as a kid with a new baby brother. My world-view is limited to tv, postcards and advertisements for vacation deals, but it's itching to be let out of its confines.

So, the real driver for this urge to wive is circumstance. Minimal savings and wanderlust make a heady cocktail and I'm drunk on it. The economics of the situation drive me to where my $ will squeeze out a life. That I haven't explored India's oli-golis (english: alley-galleys...) yet, makes her an attractive destination.

And I want to breathe in India. I want her smell to permeate every pore of my skin, and her lifewater to drench me from the inside out. And I can't afford the luxury of spending my time and money, and coming out unaffected.

So I think to myself, I'd like to marry in India. In the span of a few weeks, I will meet the salt of India's earth, woo her, grow to love her, her to love me, and marry her. In so doing, I'll have made sweet love to this country.

Goodbye Blue Sky

2008-11-29T19:28:00.000-08:00

*It's my fault. I turned the other cheek one time too many...

Last night, as I stood naked before you, proud that I could,
you speared me and spared none.
Worse still, you cut me from behind,
you cut me down, even as I smiled, even as I shined

You've scared me before, but I've gathered myself and ploughed ahead.
You've killed mine own before, and I've forgiven.
Today, fool that I am, I thought your bloodlust was over
I'm so much to blame. I hadn't realised how different your blood from mine

This past night, when you shot me through the heart,
grinned maniacally,
did you not stop to think what next?
When you killed innocents, did you not kill innocence?
When you went down for the last time, I hope you didn't smile to yourself
I hope you didn't really think your own would have a better tomorrow.

If you did, I suppose that's my fault too.
When I forgave, you'd thought I'd forgotten
When I ploughed ahead, you thought I'd left the bodies behind
When I shone, you thought luck had polished my dullness.
I didn't warn you that the shine outside was really a fire inside

Tomorrow, when my spittle turns to venom,
It's going to remain my fault, because I still won't know how you did it -
how you cast me so far away from you
and yet made me so much like you,
all in one moment

Now that you're drunk on my blood, go ask mother if we're still both her children.
She might say yes, but my bloodhaze says no.
Pray it lifts, pray it lifts quick so you may live.

*And I'll pray we still eat from the same plate tomorrow

Portraits - III

2008-11-19T10:43:00.000-08:00

And just when you think you've seen it all.

Near where I live in Bangalore, there's a Muslim neighbourhood that comes to life at dusk. Little hole-in-the-wall eateries turn on yellow lightbulbs and fire up charcoal grills. Sheek-kabab skewers lie on these grills like pyres at a cremation ghaat. The smell of charred meat cuts through the air, knifing the day's pollution.

The tea-house culture in these neighbourhoods, where they serve syrupy tea in tiny glasses, helps dissolve the ills of the world into the sorrow-hole of the community, and the joys of life are passed around like saltines.

The story began at one of these tea-houses, when an elderly gentleman walked in and plopped himself onto a chair. He was flushed and out of breath, but spared a genial smile for the boy that brought him his tea. Judging by the regulars' askew glances, this was the man's first time here. Each little clique exchanged salaams with him and went back to their conversations. Even as the gentleman's glass of tea clattered to the ground, it's possible that some in the crowd knew he'd had a heart attack. Credit this to that brief lag between knowing something and realizing it.

A search of the old man's pockets revealed nothing. A party of men was sent in different directions to see if anybody could help identify the man. Meanwhile, the neighbourhood Imam who'd been called in declared the man dead and instructed that the body be moved away from the crowd. And so it was, the body was carried to the back of the tea-house so that business could resume. As dawn approached, it was time for the tea-house to close, but there was no news about who the person was or where he came from. Had he relatives in the city? No one knew.

As per Islamic custom, the body needed to be buried within a day of death. It was beginning to stiffen, and would start to rot not long after. The police weren't going to be called in. The owner of the tea-house had had his share of run-ins with the law, and the body wouldn't help matters. All he cared about now was getting rid of the body, and no, he wasn't going to spring for a hearse.

An autowala who'd slept the night in his vehicle in the next bylane was woken up by the ruckus from the tea-house. Something about a body needing to be disposed of. A couple of voices demanded the body be buried, but a louder, gruff voice said he'd have none of it. More than the noise, it was the crassness, like a draft of cold air, that woke him up. The autowala made his way groggily to the shop. The situation was simple - there were rituals and rites to be performed, but there was no one that'd shoulder the responsibility or the body.

The driver carted the body onto his shoulders and into the back of the auto. It lay propped up awkwardly between the seat and the floor, wedged into place by a sack of potatoes that the driver found outside the tea-house. The autowala knew he couldn't afford to bury the body himself either. Custom called for the body to be washed by relatives first before being wrapped in a white shroud. The next problem was going to be arranging for a grave site, which needed to be in a Muslim cemetery, not just because of what it would cost, but because the autowala would be harassed about who it was that he was burying, how died he, about obtaining a death certificate, and then getting an Imam to recite the janazah prayers.

And he couldn't just ride a dead body in an open auto through the city - the police would swarm all over him. It wasn't just that the law wouldn't let him pass, even the culture of our country would be offended. Death is scary, possibly impure, and definitely confusing. The populace won't accept death easy. They'll question, they'll argue, they'll fight, even though it's no business of theirs. That's probably why dead bodies are transported in processions. Strength in numbers. If you have a problem with such and such person being dead, you can take it up with the procession collectively. That might also be why we make such a racket with the drums and the dancing when escorting the body to the ghats. A war cry to scare off not just the malevolent spirits, but also the uber-curious public. Here the autowala was by himself, weaving his auto through the city.

You've seen Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron. You know then that the only way to transport a dead body through a city is to dress it up, cap, goggles, unlit cigarette, the works. Moreover, if you've seen an autorickshaw driver in Bangalore, you've probably sensed the frustration that his khaki uniform causes him. These accessories are consequently always on hand for when the opportunity presents itself. And none more apt that this. So the old man's body, ridiculously outfitted, stared soulessly into the traffic as it was chauffeured to the outskirts of the city.

The driver stopped the auto at one of the lakes that dot our city's boundary. There were three hindu families there, each with a dead relative of their own. Three pyres had been built along the shore, and the bodies were being hoisted onto these. The solitary priest there was sprinkling ghee on the first of the bodies. A fourth pyre, unattended, was still aglow, all embers and ash. An earlier body must have burned there not minutes ago. That was probably the instant that religion and frugality melded into one. How lowly the obeisance to rites and rituals within religion, when stacked up against a last sacrament, against a sincere farewell to the dead? Win who then, religion or humanity?

The autowala left his vehicle metres from the pyres and walked up to where the priest was chanting his mantras. A metal bowl containing sandalwood paste lay not far. The paste had crusted over.

Three years later, as the head priest of the crematorium-by-the-lake, the muslim autowala chanted shlokas as he sent another body from this world to the next.

Portraits - II

2008-11-10T13:28:00.000-08:00

It's well past midnight, and the skyscrapers in the city's downtown financial district have their lights on, pretending as though there are bankers and brokers still at work on each floor, balancing the world's markets. Personally, I think they leave the lights on so that TIME and Google Earth can take satellite shots of how vibrant the city is, and then recycle the notion that this city is among the world's best places to live. All noble endeavours.

I'd miss it if I didn't know to look for it, but the lights on the topmost floor of one of these buildings are off, and I can feel myself being summoned. I fly through the night, undecided if I want to enter the floor through the glass windows, or through the stone walls. That feeling of passing through glass is decidedly weird, but it'd only last a second. On the other hand, the stone walls are cold and comfortable mostly, but there's something about opacity that scares me even after all these millenia.

Once in, I'm surprised to find that the entire floor is one continuous unpillared space. It's dark, and the air feels stormy, even within the building. I'm being pulled towards the farthest corner of the floor, where I can hazily make out a light glow around a seated figure. As I draw closer, I'm able to make out a tapasvin seated on the floor, back to me. The light aura around him tells me he's been at it for at least three weeks now, if not longer.

A tapasvin is one who performs tapasya, i.e. one who channels unrest and anger (tapa) into meditation. This tapa, directed well, obligates higher powers to douse the flames of the tapa by quenching that which gave birth to the tapa in the first place, i.e. the cause for the tapasvin's unrest

I'm floating in front of the jiva now, and am studying his face. He sits erect, eyes closed, ash smeared across his forehead, arms and chest. His face betrays no malintent, which is unusual. Tapasvins, for all their discipline, can't hide the ill they want to inflict. The jiva looks young. 60 man-years, I'd say. The veins on his forehead are throbbing now, a natural consequence of my proximity. I expect he'll wake momentarily. I wonder what he wants me to destroy.

Four years later

2008-11-02T20:56:00.001-08:00

October 2012

Joe, plumber

"Mornin' sir, I'm here to fix that faucet you called about."
"No it's okay, I'm used to people looking at me all funny. You remember me from TV three years ago."
"Yep, my own show, 'Leaky bastard'. I flew all over the country solving people's problems, all far outside my own domain of expertise, faulty faucets."

A discussion with a friend
Me? Run for President? Saar, I pale in comparison to the red candidate.
*Yes, choke and splutter. I'm bad with homophones but glad I'm out of arm-swipe reach from you.

Bradley's sorrows
"Perhaps this time they'll vote like they said they would. I wish Obama'd try again. "

*Update - Nov 5, 2008: I've obviously reverse-psyched the zeitgeist to steer it back towards Obama. You and he are both welcome.

Seasoning

2008-10-29T19:39:00.000-07:00

This winter's going to be a rough one. And I don't need weathernetwork's long-term forecasts to know. It's not yet November and I've had to bring out the big guns - woollen socks, mufflers, toques, etc. I leave home all wrapped up, looking very teddy like (more bear, less roosevelt) and with all the dexterity of a deaf bat... So I really have to ask: Why do we put up with winter?

There was this one year when I collected signatures to petition the weatherman for a milder winter. It didn't work. I shoulda got more signatures.

But winter's just part of the seasonality. Four seasons, each very different from the other, changes things up when you're bored of the view outside. It gives me a sense of the passage of time*. In Bangalore, when each day felt just like the one before or the one after, I had to rely on the newspapers to know how far into the year we were. Here, in Toronto, the colour (or the absence) of leaves helps me find my bearings.

And it makes us appreciate each season that much more, knowing it's going to be a good while before similar conditions visit us again. I suspect this is why sunburns happen. When the sun comes out, I feel like a grad student at an expensive AYCE, stuffing myself silly because it's going to be a while before I can afford the extravagance again.

The other plus about winter is that you can resort to the evergreen conversation fallback - "Man, some weather, eh?" - without it seeming wholly unintelligent.

In Bangalore though, this'd be a little silly *any* time of year - "Wow, it's crazy out there, again in the 27-32 range, eh?"

*Update - Nov 2, 2008 - I wrapped this one up prematurely. I meant to hold forth on the nature of time, and how, even within the context of its inevitable march (day-night and the seasons themselves, i.e. rotation and revolution), there's concepts that we as a species append to it.

Because of our mortality, we feel the need to divide time into past, present and future. We use the concept of a calendar, where though the days and months continue to recycle themselves, we can't extend that luxury to the year. And that's a good thing. Imagine if our hypothetical immortal selves had decided on a binary year calendar, one that reset itself when four seasons passed. The concept of history would get addled..Our schools might have had to do away with the subject entirely..and in some part then, the concept of memory..then, that of nostalgia..and so, a large part of emotion.

Portraits - I

2008-10-20T13:16:00.000-07:00

They'd run out of orange wedges and fortune cookies at this rundown restaurant in chinatown thirty years ago, and Lourdes wouldn't leave until they'd given her something to wash down the chopsuey with. They asked her if she'd take a baby. How the baby got there, I don't know. Lourdes agreed, and a few minutes later, boarded the bus with a box of General Tao/sticky rice in one hand, this chinese baby cradled in the other.

It was past midnight by the time she got off the bus and walked the remaining three blocks. Her apartment building was boarded up from the outside, except for a retractable metal gate at the north-eastern corner. All three tenants had their own keys to this gate. She set the baby and the chopsuey down on the pavement as she jiggled the key to the gate. A cone of orange light from a buzzing street-lamp lit the area. The gate opened noiselessly. The tenants took turns keeping the gate oiled. You couldn't have it jam when there was trouble on the street. Oiling the gate was also a mirror of how they lived in that neighbourhood - smoothening edges, beating the rust.

That was thirty years ago. This past week, when Lourdes died, her son couldn't afford to bury her. His skin itched, flies swarming about the dried blood on his body where the skin had cracked open. The desert heat sizzled off the concrete roads where he lay, his mother's body beside him, under a cover of tattered cardboard boxes. She probably died of old age, though she couldn't have been more than sixty. When the mind gives in, the body soon follows.

On Holiday

2008-10-18T01:29:00.000-07:00

For those of you that have stopped by over the last couple of weeks and seen nothing new, my apologies. I've been soaking my feet in the mothersoil, will be posting starting next week (week of Oct 20).

Drum Circle - IV: The last of us

2008-09-26T15:52:00.000-07:00

Drum Circle I, Drum Circle II, Drum Circle III

I'm not sure how I want to dazzle this crowd. Should I do my version of the Tandav, yknow, to microcosm the duality of creation and destruction? Or perhaps the cliched rhythm evolution, from morse code to music.....Or maybe I should just say something first.

I'm at the front of the stage now, crouched down so that the stage mics on the floor can pick up my voice. I've got sweaty palms, but something tells me I can do little wrong tonight.

"When You and i
see eye-to-eye, there's a third murmur
that escapes the heart"

A soft bass begins on the kpanlogos - 3rd beat in a bar of 4

"And when we dance,
we immerse ourselves, into all that's bliss
all that's bliss"

The cajons join in, a snare-like 4/4

"Tonight,
grace our dance,
drink and sing,
become one with us"

Nora's seen the grin on my face, and I'm not sure how but I can tell she knows where I'm going with this. She'd left me halfway through the second verse but is back now with a mic in hand.

Nora: "So we're dancing now?"
Me: "I hope so. Do you want to start us off?"

The drums all stop. One count, two counts, three counts, four.

Nora taps her naked left foot on the stage. The bells on her ankles and the hollowed woody sound of the stage twist together in my head. It feels like a distant, cosmic sound dopplering past me, each tap lasting an age, each tap still so transient.

"We're lucky if we dream
while we sleep, we're luckier
if we sleep without a dream" *1*

"That's when you lose the 'I'
become king and pauper, all at once
That's when you peek into every life,
every mind your own, every song, every dance" *2*

I suspect I've lost the crowd by now, but I can't help myself. Nora and the drummers have been down this road with me before, and they don't have trouble slamming along.

Chris:

"Last night, I died again,
woke up this a.m.,
older, wiser and
hungry as heck. " *3*

By now, we've gotten a groove going with the toms and djembes pitching in solos. The crowd doesn't care what's said as long as the groove holds. A couple of people are on the floor, doing some exotic snake dance (solidarity with the brown guy on stage).

Siva:

"It feels like I've been fighting,
fighting maya all my life,
so why do I care now
if maya says goodbye?" *4*

And he follows it up with a fast ditty on the crash. Crash, silence, crash, silence, crash.

It's not smooth... The loudness there creates a silence in my head. The lights seem to dim two shades. That isn't where I wanted to go. It'll take some doing to bring back the sunshine now, keeping the meter and the rhythm..so we don't bother. Nora remains at the front of the stage, dancing with the crowd, and the rest of us build the beat, rising and falling, in tempo and volume, like the sea over many nights.

Eventually, the jam grinds down to a low background patter, and there's a brief round of applause. The crowd slowly makes their way to the door, and we begin to collect our instruments. Our jam wasn't a sizzler but we're content with the awkward set we've played. I'm just hoping the lounge will let us in again next week.

*1* The upanishads describe dreamless sleep as that state where our consciousness withdraws itself from the mind, and the entity that comprises each person can retreat into what's best described as a Jung-ian collective subconscious.

*2* This state, of ego withdrawn from the unique ID called the mind, leaves us equal in all respects, and every thought in this subconscious state is a shared one.

*3* In fact, the very concept of sleep is thought of as similar to death, where our seven-sheathed personality temporarily strips itself down to the core. This frees us of the trappings of the illusory world. Possibly the all-time best segue in any situation - "Broke eh? Ah well, everything is maya anyways.." The next morning though, the hangover arrives, or worse, it's a Monday, and we have to deal with life as this outermost sheath of our personality perceives it.

*4* Maya straight up, is illusion. And reality as our senses perceive it, is not different from illusion. When even little electrodes hooked up to the brain can confuse our senses, it's conceivable that our perceived reality is illusory, whether solipsistic or perhaps just part of a giant computer program where 'destiny' is a state machine input. So why worry when the soul exits the sheath?

Drum Circle - III

2008-09-20T19:32:00.000-07:00

None of that's helping right now though. Why don't we just play a canned set and end this? Why this pressure to bring down the house? Where did it begin?

Nobody's backing down on intention, I can see that. We're all leaning forward in our chairs. I'm beginning to understand the problem, and oh, how I'd love to get away from here right now so I can light up and deconstruct how we need to tackle this. Break the problem into emotion, history and anticipation...or skill, need and conflict...

But I have no such relief. It feels like we're sitting around a fire, a really hot fire. And I can sense something's about to give.

I get off my chair and walk towards Nora. The crowd's eyes follow me. Nora and I are now in the center of our stage and I take her hand. She's inordinately pretty, and I feel like I must let her know but that isn't why I took her hand. I actually need someone to hold onto as I begin tonight's last jam.

Drum Circle - II

2008-09-20T18:26:00.000-07:00

All six of us come from different schools of drumming, and when we aren't playing for crowds, we like to talk about these systems of percussion. It help us understand the cultures we represent, and how those cultures permeate into our soundplay. For instance, Latin American percussion, while parts of it can be subtle and layered, is mostly loud in its impact on the listener. Loud in colour, performance and presentation, and loud in the way it dominates a musical performance. Extremely enjoyable. You could re-read this paragraph pretending I was talking about the region and the people, and not much would be amiss.

And a good Indian percussionist can make love to a crowd. The parallels begin with the foreplay of an alaap, and extend to that shocked silence at the end of a rela, before the crowd unwinds itself with applause, like a Gold Flake in bed. But there's the other idea that Indian percussion can create a sense of harmony. It sets things right and the mechanics are simply explained. The basis of any beat in the indian system is circular. At the completion of the pre-defined notes that make up the taal, the beat returns to the sam, the initial note that started off the taal. The sphericality of this return to the origin lets us know all is well with the world.

We discuss these and other systems not just in the contexts of culture, but also in terms of the underlying math, the techniques, the allowed improvisation and the boundaries of where the sound can go before it breaks the rhythm system and becomes part of some other system, new or not.
But the discussions have a shallower purpose. We want to know where each of us is coming from so that we can tell where each of us is going to go, and in no metaphorical sense :) If Chris is the one soloing, with his clean-cut rock background, there's going to be no syncopation surprises when he ends his solo, and I know easily at what point in time I'll need to pick up when he leaves off.

Drum circle - I

2008-09-20T17:42:00.000-07:00

Six of us are hunched around our individual drums. There are djembes, kpanlogos and an assortment of toms and cajons. Nora is in the centre of the circle, wearing a loose blouse, tied in a knot below her chest, her midriff encircled by a thin gold ringlet. It's a bellydancing essential she tells us. She has ghungrus on both feet, and they look heavy, they look like she's about to dance up a storm.

She caught me smiling at her as she was putting them on a few minutes ago. She finished lacing them up and walked up to me slowly, and asked if it was just the ghungrus that caught my eye. Nora..ah Nora.. :)

All of us drummers want to make this next jam a spectacular one. We feel the electricity of intention as we look at each other, but nobody wants to start a beat we can build on. I think we're all scared we might play something we've played before. Nora can always be counted on to start us off, a few vigorous shakes of the bells on her feet and she gets a rhythm going, but she's quiet too. Like the rest of us, she feels the sizzle in the air, and she's worried she might douse it.

Rob begins to take off his shirt. I think we all saw that coming. He has this idea that his salon-waxed chest, his machine-sculpted arms and that manufactured tan will bring out a tribal fervour in all of us. He gets the collective glare. Shirt remains on.

The silence since our last piece has been long enough that we're beginning to worry. Though the crowd hasn't had to pay to hear us, they're still expecting something. The electricity we felt a couple of minutes ago is threatening to fizzle out.

We've had false starts in the past. Like everytime Rob's disrobed, or the time I decided this drum circle needed vocals. This time's not like that. We're looking at each other, and I can see the anxiety in each eye. Nora's eyes linger on my fingers and I want to say that's when the rapture struck, but it wasn't.

There's a whistle from the crowd. It's followed by some muted applause. I know how this sort of thing goes down, and I can feel my face flush. It begins. Somebody at the back shouts "it's easy! A wimba weppa wimba weppa" People laugh. But we've just played a good set, so the respect hangover stifles what would have become a good heckle from the crowd.

-

2008-09-16T19:58:00.000-07:00

Every so often, I have the urge to buy a yo-yo, but then it goes away.

I remember the first time I got on an elevator. After it dropped me off on the 32nd floor, I wondered what they'd call it on my way down.

I've painted bars on the top left corner of my cell-phone. Now I'm reachable wherever I go.

And finally,

I bought 32 toothbrushes yesterday.

Grandmaster Ki

2008-09-09T09:13:00.000-07:00

The great Wing-Chun Sifu, Loo Yung Ki, is distraught that his latest movie has failed to create ripples at the box-office."I sweated blood for the stunts in 'Omelette without Eggs'. I cannot believe how empty the halls are!"

We are sitting in his monastery in LA, where Ki's students, a hundred eager monks, shuffle in and out silently as they go about their training exercises and daily chores. Ki's been a recognized kung-fu Grandmaster for over twenty years now, ever since he won the '88 kung-fu monkathon in the city. He recalls the competition vividly. He was going neck-to-neck with Xao Woo up until the 'Show me your qi' round.

Woo was hooked up to an voltmeter, and he delivered some off-the-scale electric shocks that impressed the judges. That didn't deter Ki, who, sitting off to the corner knew this round was going to be his. He walked up to an area that had bells strung up. After a few moments of intense concentration, the bells began to ring. The judges had never before heard a qi-bell version of 'when the saints come marching in'. Ki took the lead right there, later sailing through the 'Fly stiffly through air' and 'Zen me to sleep' rounds.

Ki still regrets how he rubbed it in to Woo, as he recounted telling Woo off at the end of the event - "My Zen crescent-kicks your Zen's ass! Who da man now??". He shakes his head "I brought shame upon my dojo....but it felt so good!".

I hear a stifled cough and turn to find a gaggle of monks sidled up beside me. They're carrying trays of steaming hot food - soup, dumplings, shrimp sticks and what have you. They move silently, these monks. In a moment, they've laid out the food and disappeared, leaving me to fumble with a pair of chopsticks. I wonder how we're ever going to finish all they've brought. It's then that I notice, even under the billowing robes, the traces of an ample paunch on Grandmaster Ki.

'Omelette without Eggs' is not a revolutionary movie. Grandmaster Ki admits sheepishly that they used wires. "Old Dojo dictum, do not use Kung-fu for profit. Even so, you know that scene where I break the egg and a chick appears? No special effects, I used finger kata to transport the yolk to a future state. They do not appreciate these things anymore."

Perhaps that's a sign of the times. Intricate art forms like these are fast being lost, because we, the audience, can no longer tell what's real and what's not. I leave there wistfully. I'm not worried about Grandmaster Ki, he has his own Dojo and is doing well for himself. I just feel sorry for the movies he won't get to make. It's you Grandmaster Ki, you da man..

Baba

2008-09-07T11:56:00.000-07:00

Through every awful joke I've shared with baba and every mile that's separated us, there's been a force that's cocooned us together, loathe it or love it as we will. This force is definitely the dna we share, that great pre-programmed life-chalker, but I've learnt now that the dna's less than half the story.

Baba's always been a writer. I'd heard this earlier, and I see it now, as he's writing and publishing more often. I'd done some writing myself as a kid, but it was from within so many confines that I'll be the first to discount it. I was caged by my age, by my schooling and by the compulsion to write instead of being freed by actual moments of inspiration.

Baba's latest work, a novella, creates a pause when you're done reading. I've only heard an excerpt myself, but I'm told that the work is significant. In this excerpt, he'd drawn parallels between his days as a kid and mine. I suspect it's the interesting vs. the not-so-much :) but that there's this minor unification between our lives, dissimilar as they are, makes me sit up and take note. I'm stunned that two lives, separated in time, can share the noosphere while accounting for their wholly different settings. If these were two unconnected lives we were discussing, we 'd call it coincidence. When it's father and son, my vocabulary fails me.

And this biophysics was only a small aspect of the novella. The work, I hear, is balls-to-the-wall witty, and at the end, pregnantly poignant. Plus, that it's me plugging his work, despite the flak this will draw, distinguishes the effort.

I'm going to exploit this to the fullest. I've asked him to write, write till his keyboard crumbles, so that genetics and legacy combine and, using the same wormhole that governs the parallelism of our lives, infuse me with writing prowess beyond my blinkers.

Incursions

2008-09-03T12:30:00.000-07:00

I'm always going to have some distance to go before I'm comfortable with my intellectual capacity, like that bunny/frog problem where it can only hop half the distance to its goal each time. To nevertheless hurry the process, one of my favourite exercises is to pick a system that's on the fringes of said intellect, and to then chip away at it, hopefully coaxing it into some form of submission where I can unravel every last thread of this system just as easily as I can roll it back into its original tangled-mess form.

'System' here refers to any object, physical or non, that requires a level of analysis before it's understood. It could be an emotion, perhaps a piece of prose that has an nth degree of meaning between its lines, or just something wholly new (i.e. limited a priori baseline in our consciousness to compare this 'new' with).

Thankfully, the successful conquering of a system leaves just as many systems to choose from for my next assignment, because I've conquered so little. At the same time it does aid the process of sharpening thought and of understanding how to apply dimensions of intellect to deconstruct these systems.

My approach to this exercise involves picking the system, and then analysing the challenge presented by it. I choose between the following paths (because there's only so much time I'm going to give a particular system):

(i) This system I've picked - what type of understanding should I gun for, so that it benefits me?

For instance, let the system be the complex emotion when someone close dies. I have little to gain by detached high-level observation, analysis, rationalization, painting a snapshot, etc. These would be good academic understandings. Thesis-worthy even, but really, the type of understanding I'm looking for is one that'll help ease the pain.

(ii) What the challenges that the system poses are, and so, what the methods of analysis should be -

The answers to this question always annoy me. The methods I settle upon take me wandering into some narrow, unlit entrail in the underbelly of the system. Once there, I've understood the entrail well, but am never sure if this understanding's important. And so I backtrack, and head into a new nether region, same odds of meeting the same end.

At other times, these methods will lead me into the big-picture dilemma, where I'm outside the system, holding it up to the light, looking at it from various angles. I'll realise then that I'm not seeing all of the picture, and that I perhaps need to hold the system a little further away, and then a lot further, until 'big-picture' becomes 'bird's eye-view' accompanied also by a bird-like understanding of the system. From way up here, the term 'big-picture' becomes an oxymoron.

Over time though, I'm hoping I'll learn which methods are best applied when, and that it'll become instinct. The gain then isn't just understanding these systems, but doing so efficiently.

Like when Bruce Lee's surrounded by ten thugs :)

Did you see the kung-fu angle coming?

Entanglement

2008-09-02T11:42:00.000-07:00

There's a lot of talk about quantum entanglement these days, where a particle influences its 'entangled' counterpart when any sort of measurement is attempted on it. The particles are entangled in a way that their spatial separation doesn't matter when it comes to one particle influencing the other.

[My references to 'particles' favour the omnipresent, multi-purpose photon of course :-) - Two entangled photons can be created by a process called 'parametic down conversion', where a photon spends a romantic evening with an atom from a beta-borium-borate crystal, and nine picoseconds later, said atom decays and pops out twins, or rather two entangled photons].

Einstein and two of his students, Podolsky and Rosen - in that order (E.P.R), if you want the best google results - conceived a famous argument to question the completeness of quantum theory. A salient component of this argument had Einstein considering the hypothetical example of gunpowder that was intrinsically unstable (i.e. could explode as a result of forces/reactions from within the gunpowder system). He applied Schrödinger's equation to it to determine the state of the gunpowder after a year and determined that the equation would give him garbage (of course, Einstein put this result across very politely to Schrödinger).

The culture of physics in these quantum echelons is such that Schrödinger could respond to Einstein with his cat experiment (strikingly similar to Einstein's gunpowder) and though the result gave us little concrete understanding, we still applaud the response.

In these rarefied clouds of opinions and philosophies on the nature of particles, it's refreshing to see these theories actually put to use in real-life:

One such application of quantum entanglement is in cryptography. The parties involved are Alice and Bob. Each of them have two distinct bit-measuring machines. Alice sends Bob the entangled dual of a piece of information and both of them proceed to measure the bits comprising the information. The trick here is that they each choose a random machine to measure individual bits.

The key to this encryption: Alice and Bob then share with each other information about which machine they used to measure which bit. This information can be shared across a public channel and it won't help an eavesdropper. Instances where different machines were used are dropped, because the results, even if identical, do not confirm entanglement. The remaining bits are condensed and of these, Bob and Alice again compare, publicly, a random sample to ensure that the information they have is identical bit-for-bit. If yes, keep, if no, discard.

Simplistically, the probability is high that an eavesdropper would alter the information while trying to spy on the communication. The more information that the eavesdropper gathers about the key, the higher the likelihood that Alice and Bob will realise they're being snooped upon and will try the communication anew.

Possibly the most foolproof cipher :)

Get there faster

2008-08-31T08:53:00.000-07:00

Most main streets have a co-ordinated traffic light system, timed to allow vehicles that have hit one green to pass through uninterrupted for as long a stretch as possible.

That said, if as a driver, your route involves turning onto a side street, your luck with the lights gets scrambled.

The timing of the lights is usually pre-programmed and in phases, accounting for variables such as offering independent lefts, rush-hour, etc. There are newer real-time reactive systems that account for unexpected traffic volume and the like, but for the most part, the lights have a state machine controller that pre-accounts for several traffic-related variables before spitting out an optimal light-changing schedule.

Given such a case, how about feeding the timing sequence of these lights into your GPS unit? That way, when mapping a route to your destination, the unit would consider the posted speed limits on all of these roads, traffic conditions (another real-time GPS input easily available these days) and how far you are from the next traffic light. The unit would then map a route that would take you through the most green lights, even if it meant a bit of a longer distance, with the goal being either fuel economy or a shorter drive time.

There you go, more $$ I've just given away :)

P.S. On a tangential note, I'd read UPS delivery trucks have routes mapped out for them that have no left turns so that the truck never gets stuck at a light. Saves a lot of time, PLUS the driver doesn't have to worry about explaining the shorts to whoever pulls up alongside at a light.

My low-key Kung-Fu - II

2008-08-27T12:22:00.000-07:00

This post centers on movement. I'm condensing a couple of concepts here, so I hope you'll forgive the abrupt tone.

The moving mind

We're all trying to push mountains, whether it's in combat (or conflict - not necessarily physical), towards some collaborative effort, or simply an individual effort to become a better people. All of these mountains are easier moved when we can understand what's on the other side, i.e. what's
(a) stopping the mountain from moving and
(b) where we want the mountain to finally end up.

To do this, consider being able to dance around the mountain. The notion here is that the mountain isn't insurmountable. As far as obstacles go, the mountain exists in fewer dimensions than we can look beyond. Here are some of the dance styles you might consider -
(i) The possibility to physically dominate the mountain
(ii) to intellectualize a tunnel through the mountain or
(iii) to wear it down through will-power

*Note that will-power is not a fixed-quantity commodity. It's very muscle-like. Exercise it to depletion, and over a realizable period, it'll nourish itself back to where you began and then some.

Degrees of movement

The idea here isn't necessarily physical movement. Here are some of the degrees.

(i) Hum
This is code for 'faster than the mind can perceive', producing a low hum. Muhammad Ali, Usain Bolt, Einstein, Tagore, they're all hummers, whether it be in the form of their world record sprints or just the magnitude of their achievements, measured by volume and impact.

(ii) Skeet
This movement form is seen in a winning street fighter - move more effectively than your opponent. You don't have to be quick, this degree of movement is viewed relative to the context.

(iii) Slide
This movement form enables streamlining. Flying a kite, growing older gracefully, paying your taxes - all of these are examples of the slide, where movement is in keeping with the immediate environment, causing the least disruption while allowing natural flow.

(iv) Dam
Ahimsa's a good example - where you stand upright against the wind. In doing so, you begin to discover your center of gravity, and adjust your stance accordingly. This stillness takes the most toll on your body, and has the least impact on your conscience.

My low-key kung-fu - I

2008-08-25T11:15:00.000-07:00

Over the last couple of weeks, I've tried to initiate myself into the world of combat by auditing some wing chun kung-fu classes. Initially, the idea was to get in another form of physical activity, and if as a side-effect, I achieved some mystical, oriental tranquility in the process, I'd take it. The idea's begun to evolve already, and hopefully in the days to come it'll become part of my philosophy. Here are the seeds.

When someone bumps into us on the street and doesn't apologise, our senses flare up. There's anger, confusion, sadness -we were just minding our own business, being conscientous of our manners and taking care not to spill any bit of ourselves onto others on the street so why did we just get roughed up like that? By a stranger, no less...Surely we didn't deserve it?

All this emotion for a simple shoulder bump.

What then if we're actually assaulted? It's disturbing if you seriously picture it, and a lot more scarring when it actually happens to you. You don't see it coming, but you suddenly feel the shock of physical pain, inflicted purposefully, and there's little about it that's friendly. It was meant to cause some degree of trauma. The why isn't important here, just the act and its repercussions.

I know I'd be reeling from a punch long after my body had forgotten about it. This is because I wouldn't be able to distance myself emotionally from the attack. Ego, personality and injury would all tie into an indistinguishable lifeless form, dragging me down with it.

These kung-fu classes (boxing classes would've worked just as well - no oriental philosophy yet) have started to teach me how to physiologically react to assault. The differences between this class environment and the street assault scenario are (a) the surprise component is low here because we're expecting to be attacked (this is the downside) and (b) there's no underlying malintent. You start to separate personality from the action.

Of course, I'm not kung-fuing to win. I just really love my noodle soup.

More to come on how far I get with my kung fu zen.

News - Friday Aug 22

2008-08-22T11:36:00.001-07:00

*I'm going white-water rafting and cliff-jumping today. I obviously haven't learnt my lesson. I'm praying I return in one piece. I'm also praying that something slightly untoward happens ;-), stay tuned*

Update (Aug 24) - All of it went by the script. Each rapid, each wave played out its role. The raft obliged, taco-ing up on itself each time. I jumped off a cliff as well, and managed not to face plant. By the end of it, I was drenched to the bone, but left feeling just a tad dry. Nirawsh.

Older

2008-08-20T17:45:00.000-07:00

A close friend posted recently that he'd begun to feel old.

During the last year of our teens, I'd wished him a happy birthday as best I could sitting in a different country, and without a credit card. I was hopeful the "thought-that-counts" would go a long way :)

Anyways, here's a letter I sent him, it's obviously fairly personal, and dripping adolescence (which in my case may just be a terminal condition).

Saar,
You turn twenty soon. Older than me.A year. Not that much of a difference really. Not agewise, not otherwise either. I'm sorry I'm not around for that monster hug. Only email sending possible. Could've sent an e-card also, but that's not worth even the thought.

Maybe on this day, we could've gone to Angeethi, and settled ourselves in for a stuffing the likes of which the manager's never seen before. Maybe we could've gone to watch the James Bond flick after that..Of course, we'd drown the movie with our snoring. And at the end of the movie, we'd be back out on the streets..Normally, we'd just get out our respective modes of transp. and head homewards (Marvel and yamaha 100cc)..But not this time..Bday doesn't come every month. This time, we'd draw up a list of chaps from school or elsewhere (max of three), and then buy bus tickets to Kodai. Give call to old uncles/aunties, let them know we'll be back in three days. So, no luggage, minimal amount of money (definitely enough for return trip), three other chaps (optional), and we're Kodai bound by nine pm sharma travels bus. Reminiscent of that Jaguar trip last year? well, what to do? I'm just real predictable..

But this isn't any distant future..this is happening now. We polish off dinner at some darshini, and get on the bus, with only the clothes we're wearing. We're pretty gung-ho about having some major discussion through the night, but we're asleep by ten..wake up at 5:00am, bus is climbing some weird hills..it's still dark outside..not black, but maybe a deep blue...some retard left his window open in the front of the bus..bloody cold..Sharma's given each passenger a thin blanket..wrap yourself up well..through the window, you can make out the silhouettes of stunted mountain trees..you can see the valley down far below..and you can see misty clouds enveloping the rocks, the way sleep's enveloped the other passengers.
Wake me up..Wake up other guys if there are any..all have terrible breath...For a moment, we're a little stunned, as to why we aren't in our bedrooms..then it comes back. And we realise how young we are, and yet old enough, so we can chill..It's all good, all good.

Bus stops at small tea stall, for driver to take a leak, and a sip of tea. We trundle out too..He's surprised..didn't expect anyone to be up this early..Nothing like overboiled tea leaves in a syrup of milk to drive away the sleep. Three rupees..each..highway robbery.. People around the stall busy themselves over their kadai-s, pumping up their small gas stoves, heating the oil to start frying the morning bondas..pretty cold at this altitude..We're still celebrating your birthday, so we get the first order of fries...even the locals are wearing sweaters and monkey caps..we've only got thin blankets..but the hot batter fried stuff does wonders for our chilly insides.

And this, saar, is just the journey..We haven't even gotten to the party. We will. Real soon. Happy Birthday man.

It's been a few years since, and we still haven't gotten around to it. We're at that age now where we think we've outgrown this teen/tween sentimentality. I hope we haven't, but we'll know for sure only when we actually get on that bus.

Saar, you listening?

Rain today

2008-08-20T10:04:00.000-07:00

Beautiful article at the link below on how america (or those who can afford it) pursues happiness at the cost of doing away with the opposite end of our emotional spectrum.

http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=tk1twsk466pmt0m7fj6py116kyc71fhv

The article talks about our obsession with eliminating melancholia, and finding happiness in every walk. Each life an individual shangrila. Not isolation, but happiness all around. We try to do away with sadness and pain, and so injure the muse. Happiness slowly becomes the norm and everything else is an aberration that needs treating. And so we have pills to make us happy.

*Like the author of the article, I'm not knocking the seriousness of clinical, manic depression. I'm just talking about the lighter variety.*

Happiness is a broad term though. There's that question "wouldst you dance in the rain or be free from pain?". Romantically, the answer's obvious. Practically, it's the latter. Not that the choice has been offered, but ideally, you should want to enjoy dancing even if you are in pain.

And finally, there's the danger of losing our definition of happiness if we constantly try to do away with the baseline reference of unhappiness. There are parts of this article I don't subscribe to but I'd like to project here - I hope our capitalist mentality helps us preserve the concept of 'degrees of happiness'. This'll help us come to peace with our stock (because we know it can always be worse).

This stillness against the race for happiness is another kind of tranquility, one that helps a new kind of happiness blossom.

*Update* - I realise I started this post by plugging that melancholia article, but the forecast called for sunshine today.

I was there

2008-08-17T07:12:00.000-07:00

At a restaurant in Montreal

Waiter: "Zis evening, we 'ave smoked salmon in ze kitchen"
My hot date: "Hehe, yeah I can tell. But how'd you roll it??"

Culture club

2008-08-13T09:17:00.001-07:00

In trying to decide whether I need an iPhone, I was confronted with several questions about my sense of identity that I thought I'd buried (the questions, not the sense of identity) when I emerged out of my teens.

The first had to do with why I wanted the iPhone. I'm still convinced it's only because my little Ericsson has caused me enough grief, and the frustration I've borne deserves a reward. Thing is though, by ascribing to the iPhone culture, I also join a club (no longer exclusive, given volume of iphone sales).

I'm averse to joining clubs for the sake of joining them. The problem is that this non-club joining mentality (sure, call it non-conformity) drops me right into another club.

The other trouble, again cutting to my pith, has to do with this pressure to be an early adopter - whether of technology, ideas, lifestyle or anything in between. (Have you read Fassbinder? NO?? Oh, but you must! He's the Goethe of our times!..No, he hasn't published yet, but here's the address of his blog).

That I've considered the iPhone only just now reveals I haven't given in to this culture. But the pressure's been there.

And it only gets worse. By the time (if ever) I end up owning an iPhone, it's going to be on its way out. And not just technology-wise. I won't draw a parallel to fashion because that monster 180s on itself all the time. But I'd be like the guy that's just bought a Hummer. I'd draw sneers of reproval even if the instrument worked well for me.

Eventually, after I come to grips with being an early adopter, I'd have to evolve into an early discarder. It's that fine line between "I want one because everyone else has one" and "Everbody has one, I need something else".

I think you know how I'm going to wrap up this post.

My crappy Ericsson lives to fight another day.

Lost

2008-08-09T20:46:00.000-07:00

I went kayaking this past weekend, at a place not far from this millwheel on bracebridge in northern Ontario (http://www.panoramio.com/photo/9847). It's a pretty sight here, and I'm just glad I've lived to tell the story.

It was my third time kayaking. They'd vanned us out to a point from where it was to take us an hour to get back via kayak. It was mid-afternoon, we were on a winding stream with a gentle current.

After lazing a while, letting the current do the work, I decided to put my back into it, and pulled ahead of the others. The vistas changed with every bend in the stream, beginning with open country on either side of the stream to a more wooded landscape as the current began to pick up. The faded dry-green facade quickly changed into a deep, pulsating forest-green. With the water speeding up, rocks sprung from the water-bed, and the earlier light gurgling of the stream gave way to animated arguments where water met rock.

I hadn't realised it, but I'd missed the sign that asked kayakers to dock. The aerodynamics of rowing with the rapids took up all of my mindspace. Insert the oar's blades into the water at an angle that least disrupts the kayak's lines. Don't push the water, pivot the boat using the oar as fulcrum. Accelerate the blade rapidly (m/s^3) so that the oar builds on the kayak's momentum instead of subtracting from it. I was creating my own little Beijing.

It was possibly an hour past the stopping sign that I realised I'd probably missed it. By now, the stream was a river. A shallow one, but one that looked remarkably like the picture above. Beautiful, and alive. Far be it from me to claim any kayaking expertise, but I was having the time of my life dodging rocks, and ducking under ash-white branches that were drawn towards the river. Each new bend, each rapid was a mini-challenge. There was a point that I perfectly jumped a five-foot straight drop waterfall in my kayak. I learnt later that I wasn't supposed to have been that lucky. Rather, that my kayak should've tipped and that I should've hit my head against some rocks. I'd have been easily found then.

By now, I was looking for a spot that I could lodge my kayak, realising that the further I went, the higher the chances I was going to get lost. The river goaded me on some partly by how beautiful it was, and partly by sheer dominance.. The rapids were in no mood to help me break my journey.

Three hours into this my kayak finally lodged itself in the branches of a dead tree that had fallen across the river. I was unhurt, and quickly got out of the kayak as water gushed into it.

There was forest on either side, and I had little knowledge about the geography of the area. I hadn't seen any signs warning of bears, but then, with it approaching dusk, my delicate urban sensibilities would've been ruffled by any carnivore. I decided I was better off making my way upriver rather than trying my luck in the woods. The river was wider than I've managed to show in this picture above, but it gives you an idea of the forest on either side.

I walked along the sides of the river, so that I could clutch onto the underbrush to help push against the current. My sneakers were soaked, but with every step into the water, I felt like I was redefining the concept of saturation. The river bed was not just slippery because of the moss, but at various points, it'd suddenly change depth. Here a foot deep, and there, five. I broke off a long, unwieldy branch that seemed to have extended itself for the purpose, and poked at the rocks on the bed to see if they were truly part of the bed, or if they were just playing possum until I stepped on them. I fell a few times and the current pushed me back some meters, but I was making positive overall progress against the current.

There were times when branches hung so low over the river that the only way to get past would be to take a deep breath and swim below them, against what was quite a rough current. It wouldn't be as much swimming as much as using these same branches to pull my way past them. At other times, I'd turn back and head to a uniformly shallower part of the river so that I could swim-crawl on all fours to the other bank, hoping I'd have better luck moving upriver on that side.

I could no longer see the sun, and though there was still some light, the green of the woods was fast changing into a darker, deadlier colour. I had already called out for help a couple of times without any real conviction, as though it was just a step towards my rescue. Now, I realised how much hope and desperation my next call would have. And as I shouted for help, I knew I wasn't going to get a reply, it was that densely wooded and that remote. And all of it felt so primal. This base instinct for survival tempered with an illogical attempt at dignity. Articulated in a foreign language, limited to a single word. "Help". Not "HELP!!!!". I hope I haven't let on I'm scared. It'd be funny if they find me and say, "Hey, don't you know there's a path behind that oak there? leads right to our cottage. We're having a barbeque. Join us?"

But as the minutes ticked by and with no help to be had, I found instincts I didn't know were in me. Instincts, not courage. Courage is a choice, instinct is your subconscious taking over. I'd scraped the skin off my thumbs a little while earlier and when I grabbed onto a log to stop me falling, I felt a shock, a sting so intensely painful that I cried out. I'd normally have dropped everything to treat it, but my instincts had prioritized things for me. The sting was secondary. Survival primary. I needed to get to a vantage point, and if there wasn't one on hand, I needed to find a dry spot to spend the night on before it got too dark to see.

I was crawling back across the river to the other side when I heard a shrill whistle. I looked up to see a canoe rounding the bend, two men pointing excitedly at me.

I'd known it wouldn't be hard for them to find me. I'd kayaked a finite number of hours downstream. I was making my way back going the most logical search path any rescuers would take. But I'd be lying if I said I hadn't seen this playing out in some other ways as well.

Later, when my feet were on land, I looked at my thumb, wondering why such a clean patch of scraped skin would sting as much as it did. A tiny worm emerged from under my skin. It had made pincer-like holes in my flesh at a few points, from which an oily secretion flowed. Later this just turned into tiny droplets of blood. Blood I know. Blood I can deal with.

A friend asked me if I felt stronger for the experience. I didn't know what to tell him.

Lean to the right

2008-08-08T17:20:00.000-07:00

I'm convinced there's beauty in asymmetry too. It gives me a hint of something unnatural that went before, or that there's layers and nuances within.

In numbers - a portrait of something solitary, the third person in a crowd of three and so on.

In a face - a scar, a lazy eye.

In music - a 7th chord, the one baton a conductor uses, the third tenor, shikar taal.

In food - I can't think of how asymmetry applies here. Perhaps in how sashimi doesn't need to be washed down with a salad. Here, I'm thinking asymmetry in nutritional content. Or maybe I'm just hungry.

The intelligence paradox

2008-08-02T07:02:00.000-07:00

There are a few paradoxes surrounding the general concept of intelligence. Most of them are academic constructs, making no notable points. I've listed a couple here. The second one is a good take-away, and possibly something to reflect on as we go about building our lives following markers that society defines as measures of intelligence and success.

1. The un-PC paradox: Yes, I've named it myself. It's a throwback to a pet topic, Darwin's theory of evolution. Ideally, as we tend to infinite time, the selected random mutations in our DNA should make us supermen. This conceivably includes our becoming super-intelligent as well. The paradox however is in the reality of our times, economic and social. Those of our species considered to be elitely intelligent tend to have way fewer children than the lesser-blessed crowd. These are raw statistics. The intelligence gene pool is skewed towards devolution. Random dna mutations vs a lesser number of intelligent pro-creators.

And then there's

2. The intelligent life -

Society pushes the more intelligent beings of our species to take up jobs that demand they use this intelligence to the fullest capacity. As a result, an intelligent person ends up becoming a lawyer juggling five corporate cases, or an investment banker paying meticulous attention to her commas and zeroes. This leaves them with fewer mental cycles to exercise their intelligence for themselves, having sold most of it off to the highest bidder.

The blue-collar joe then becomes today's thinker. A big step for joe, a smaller step for mankind.

As a result, the sum total of our intelligence is hard-pressed to grow. Call it the devolution of intelligence, or just the paradox that holds us back.

Superheroes - I

2008-07-23T18:55:00.000-07:00

I'd always known I was a superhero. Thing is though, I didn't come with a manual, so it'd been a struggle trying to discover my particular powers.

Now I haven't tried jumping off the roof of my building ala Shaktiman. I did debate it with myself though. Realised the odds were high that the flight path mightn't pan out as planned. That said, I have made other efforts. I have an hour-long video, taken on the front porch, of myself leaning slightly forward, an arm outstretched over my head. I'd decided to record this in the event that take-off was achieved... The tape today rests in my basement, marked "Attempt 1".

Of course, flight and levitation aren't the only markers of a superhero. I've dabbled in web slinging and getting really angry, in weather-bending and elasticising my limbs. The results have all sadly been dodgy.

I've had a gaggle of exotic creatures bite and sting me, have spent nights in particle accelerators and nuclear plants, but my powers have remained dormant.

Until yesterday.

I was in a taxi, making my way to a downtown meeting during rush hour. My cabbie was making exceptional time through traffic and I got to my destination well before I needed to. The meeting was a short one, and when I stepped back out onto the street, I found the cab driver still parked where I'd left him. He was sifting his beard through his fingers, furrowed brows and all.

...to be continued...

My rain run

2008-07-20T19:34:00.001-07:00

I saw two remarkable old men today. I'd have been content to just appreciate the mental postcard they presented, but they'd decided they were going to be written about today.

It was at a parkette, not far from home. They sat on a bench, a chess set between them.

I'd stepped out for a run, my route carefully mapped so that I could take in all the greenery this part of the city had to offer. It was overcast for most of the day, and I could've won good money betting it'd rain as soon as I left home. That's just how it works with me and the weatherman.

Anyhoo, I made my way past these quaint houses, not the sort with the manicured lawns - these were more the wild creepers, vines, stout tree-types. Sort of like dragon-boating through kerala's canopied backwaters.

I stopped near this parkette to catch my breath and wipe the water off my glasses when I realised the sun'd come out. The men must've only just gotten there. They had their set-up laid out, and white had moved to e4. Suddenly the man in the hat looked up and said "Hey, yknow who I like? That Gibbins. He's a heck of a guy."

The other gentleman stuck out his left hand and knocked the hat off his friend's head. "Gibbins is dead."

I picked up the hat for the first gentleman and saw a grin escape his face. I knew then that they hadn't thought out the script for their little show beyond that point, so I thanked them and jogged back the way I came. Good run today.

Key

2008-07-17T07:24:00.000-07:00

I'd gotten home last evening and in the daze that follows from two hours on Toronto's public transit system, walked through the front door and onto my sofa, putting my feet up.

I think it was James Joyce that wrote about this family man, who worked long hours at an oppresive factory to feed his family. He'd squeeze his large feet into shoes that were two sizes too small. It increased the agony immeasurably in the heat of the factory. But when he got home at a late hour (when the night had grown thin), sheer relief would course through him as he took off the shoes. It seemed to set the world back into its orbit.

I felt much the same.

This morning though, just as I was about to step out to work, I realised I was missing the keys to my apartment. I'd let myself in with these keys a few short hours ago, so I knew they had to be in the apartment somewhere. I searched all the usual spots but didn't find anything. The short of it is that I spent a good quarter-hour turning everything upside down, but the key was nowhere to be found.

It was really early, around sunrise actually, that I was scrambling for these keys. The keys to the apartment were lost in the apartment itself. And while I wasn't on anything, the situation seemed to be crying out for a metaphor.

Matryoshka doll? no, perhaps more like a white dwarf collapsing on itself...almost, but not really.

And I milked the extrapolations for all they were worth. The situation grew maniacally dire when I tried to see it as a bystander from the outside would. Here, the very means to enter (the key to the apartment) was swallowed by the thing needing to be entered. There was a blackness to it all. And tiny beads of sweat formed on my forehead.

The starkness threatened to envelop my work day before it had even begun, when I suddenly decided to pick up an obtuse third cushion from the sofa. And there it was. Shiny, gleaming, just a little shy, but overall beautiful in that early morning haze that wafted into the living room.

The story closed on itself. I had the cool key in my palm, and dawn's mist flowed in through the windows to chill the back of my neck.

Staccato love

2008-07-12T18:40:00.000-07:00

I'd planned to write a post called 'Yesterday' in this space. I promise to get around to it soon.

For now, here's a short film called Staccato Love. It's based on an incident that happened in Calcutta.

The boy loved her, and what's not to love? She's classical in her sensibilities and rasta in style. She cooks like a chef's daughter (in that she doesn't) and wears outlandishly bookish glasses. She's painted a tattoo onto the small of her back, so she can scrub it off the day she's outgrown it. She can't see a thing through those glasses she wears. And she can sing. [Scrap that. She likes to sing, but can't].
She didn't need to be beautiful, not for him, nor for the film, but if you've already seen her in your head, you can decide for yourself.

The boy - he wore this and he looked like that. He spoke soft somethings in a gravelly voice, and could whip out a kurta-jhola ensemble from his gym-bag anytime the going got smart. He liked to read and ride, knew monet from manet, impressionism from post, but in some ways, he was a mushroom. There was a lot of surface and not as much beneath.

He loved her sharply though. He'd probably seen all the right movies about love. His idea of love was conservative, its expression liberal. They'd met first at a library or maybe at a lounge. She looked hard at him where he sat, and he grew immediately uncomfortable. His breathing turned clunky when she walked over and stood in front of him, hands on her hips. She then simply raised an eyebrow at him. It stripped him naked. He'd had on his 'thinker' look, eyes vacant, hoping he looked smarter than he was. She of course felt sorry for him, which is why she walked over.

And even as she walked his way, he was hoping she'd be unsmart, or at least taken, so he wouldn't have to worry about keeping from falling in love. Something about long-distance pheromones that'd already begun their magic. But then she spoke, and the voice was perfect, the tone, the notes, the lilt, the cadence. As though in an instant he was back in his mother's womb, and all the right sounds made their way into his subconscious. [I'm hoping this Freudian angle on love is legit]

The love grew wildly. [I can't graph it]. It hit him from nowhere and swept him away, but for her, there was a logic to her love. It's the sum of a hundred different components, like a jigsaw puzzle.

The elements that constitute love trooped in on cue. For her, these were (chronologically) that base maternal need to right a man, that the man in question was the moldable sort, that he loved her unabashedly, how old-fashioned he could be, and that he validated her eccentricities by being the properer of the two. I suspect this is as deep as one needs to get to engender love. If not, throw in a love for the same style of theatre, and perhaps a divine connection in the stars as well.

I think Love is a binary condition. There's no in-between state. Atleast that's how all of my romantic movies are going to be. Digital. No, I make bad joke. My vision of love is that when it's there, it's end-of-the-earth absolute.

And that's how it was here. So when he didn't pick up his phone today, Tuesday, she was concerned. She turned worried when she tried him 10 minutes later with the same result. She realised then why this script introduced her in the present and him in the past tense.

An older voice answered on the tenth try. 'Yes, hi...This phone's been lying here for some time now. I didn't know what to do when I heard it ring all those times.'
'That's right, there has been an accident here. By the tracks. The area's been cordoned off.'
'This is the Sealdah station.'

It took her a half-hour to get there. Barefoot, and indecently dressed for the time of night. She wanted to see the body, but nobody'd let her. It was neither procedure nor a pretty sight. She pleaded with the police and then followed them to the autopsy centre. She'd heard whispers of 'suicide' back on the platform.

She sits stoic through the night. I'm not sure how she doesn't break down and into little pieces. I think she's in shock, but that's taking away from her. Maybe she's reflecting...by breaking down and into little pieces the love that's been taken away from her.

I let a week pass. Her folks keep a judicious eye on her, dusting off the kid-gloves. But one never knows what to do at a time like this. If only she'd speak, vent, rant, rave, .. cry. She spends an afternoon getting her hair straightened. The next day, she's laughing with the neighbour's little boy, and the day after that, she's feeding her grandpa at the hospital.

She's hung herself from the fan today. She knows better than to look forward to a reunion with him. She knows her parents will be inconsolable. She knows she needed to be there to look after them. She knows she isn't solving anything, that she's only being selfish. Then why?

Blame it on that absolute, end-of-the-earth love.

The film finishes here, leaving close to no questions unanswered. In the film format, I'd stretch out the staccato part of their love more. It's an ideal picture I have of the emotion. Like a tap dance sawaal-jawaab. When two people share quick exchanges that are witty, spontaneous, exciting. Like a little switch flipping on and off rapidly. On-off-on-off-on-off. Binary.

Tomorrow

2008-07-07T15:28:00.000-07:00

I'd left off on my future shock series of posts at a point where I hypothesized that the future may be predictable. The idea behind the posts was only to introduce the concepts related to that school of thought (determinism, that Demon thing etc).

That said, the first concept that could do with some clarity is what might happen when the Demon acts to change the future she's foreseen. There was a movie about this sort of thing, called Next, starring Nicholas Cage. Anyyyways... The paradox that immediately plays out is very simply this:

The demon foresees being hit by a car at a spot x, at a time (t+t1) in the immediate future. Being averse to the whole car-accident thing, she steps to one side at the exact moment, and in so doing, avoids being hit by the car. The future she'd seen is no longer true. In fact, what's to say it was true in the first place?

Two points about this scenario:
1) It's not quite as damaging as the grandfather paradox (where if you were able to travel back in time and defertilize your gramps, you wouldn't be born...and so wouldn't have been able to go back in time) because this construct interferes with the concept of time travel, but as a thought experiment, you're atleast able to go so far back as to visit your gramps before you begin the defertilization ritual.

--> Read the post above - "Yesterday"

2) What if the demon did not act to change the future and did indeed get hit by the car? Then the future she saw at time t was correct. This means that for any value of t, the future at t+t1 for an incremental value of t1, is a series of possibilities (she could've been hit, she could've avoided being hit, etc) rather than being a pre-defined path.

On point #2

As good a time as any to make reference to the concept of unitarity (wiki: "the sum of probabilities of all possible outcomes of any event is always 1. This is necessary for the theory to be consistent.") This simply means that the future must occur, or that time will continue its march, much like the flawed 2nd law of thermodynamics.

Consider then that our demon, Billie, has an evil twin sister, Jean. In our movie (surely there's a movie? atrocities like Cage's Next or Denzel Washington's Déjà Vu can't be our only mainstream tributes to Q.physics), where Billie is pitted against Jean, this clash will result either in a fantastic series of near-death escapes for both or the driest movie since wall-e. These extremes (near-death escapes or nothing interesting happening) follow from the concept of unitarity, but warrant a longer discussion than in the scope of this post.

The chance that Billie or Jean has of foreseeing a future that will happen have dropped to 50-50. If there are more such demons, each interfering with events they've foreseen, the chance that the future seen by any of the other demons will unfold drops further. That then reduces my fascination with Laplace Demons. If all they're able to do is make a guess about what might happen in the future, they're doing no better than us non-demons.

About determinism then: It seems that if at a time t we begin to observe the past (say an event at a time t-t1), all that happened was truly the result of what went before it. The past is definitely deterministic. The future though is an infinite number of possibilities. We can change it by doing what we will. We'll reap what we sow, and our will remains free. Amen.

P.S. Apologies for the Billie Jean angle. It was that or the cross-dressing siblings, Eleanor and Rigby.

Rhythmspeak

2008-07-03T10:44:00.000-07:00

What this post isn't: Examples of rhythm in nature, a treatise on how life parallels rhythm or how rhythm is where music began

What it is: An appreciation of rhythm

Take a metronome pulsing at a fair clip. Add a second metronome that beats at half the speed, synced with the first and you have your basic 4/4 going. Turn this system on and leave it by a kettle of water on medium heat. Come back in 6 minutes and look at how the bubbles in the boiling water react to the sound.

Fine, so there's no relation...but there could've been.

Future Shock - IV

2008-06-27T11:31:00.000-07:00

That bit in my last post, about Maxwell's coup de grâce to Laplace's Demon, was only a prelude to the quantum stuff below.

Laplace's hypothesis was based on principles of precision in nature. In keeping with classical mechanics, the overriding assumption was that it is possible to know simultaneously the position and momentum of a particle exactly. This was critical to the Demon to enable computation of the data. What drove LD out of a job though was Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.

In quantum mechanics, the position and momentum of particles no longer have precise values. The best assertion one can make about a particle is that there's a probability it exists at a particular location, or has a particular momentum. Heck, at the particle level, this becomes obvious when we consider that an effort to observe a particle will involve shining light (a stream of photons) on it. These photons themselves are particles (yes, yes, they're waves too) that will disrupt the peace of the particle we're trying to observe.

Schrödinger's cat:
It's at this point in the Q.physics-101 lecture that even the jocks at the back of the class wake up and listen - A cat is placed in a sealed box along with a flask containing cyanide gas. In addition, a tiny amount of a radioactive substance is placed in the box, alongside a Geiger counter. The amount of radioactive substance is small enough that in an hour, there's as much chance of it decaying as not. If the Geiger counter detects radiation, it triggers a mechanism that releases the cyanide gas.

In the real world, if we were to look in the box after an hour, the cat would either be alive or dead. Binary. In the quantum world though, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead, in a quantum superposition of these two states. It's at this point that the Laplace Demon hypothesis falls off the rails. The demon, at the particle level, cannot know for sure positions and momenta. An error in approximation at the particle level will blow up when extrapolated to the level of objects at the human scale.

The short of it is that quantum physics throws a wrench into the Newtonian/Laplace Demon machine and messes up the impetus that the determinism juggernaut had built up.

The long of it though is where it's most interesting: Heisenberg's postulate is unproven when we consider that the precise observation of a particle isn't possible because of human limitation. It is our inability to observe or measure a particle's characteristics without disturbing it that lead us to conclude that the particle's position is hazy within a probability cloud.

What do we know about the particle at a moment when we aren't observing it? Could it be, is it possible that the particle is at point x, y, z exactly? What if the demon knows this particle and its every last characteristic? The future won't be much of a shock to LD then.

Future Shock - III

2008-06-27T09:52:00.000-07:00

The argument practically extends itself - What's keeping us from reading the future then? If what will happen is essentially a measurable function, then given our current state of computing prowess, there must be some events (small ones, like coin flips) that we should be able to predict.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Determinism is closely coupled with all things Newtonian, where matter, position and energy (force, pressure) are distinct ideas. F=m x a, v = u + at, etc.

Laplace's Demon:

Pierre-Simon Laplace went so far as to construct a demon, a hypothetical creature possessing an intellect that knew at any point in time about all forces that exist in nature, and the positions of all of those items that make up this nature. The demon, if it could compute this data, would then have a way to predict every movement of every body in the universe. To this demon, the future would be reduced to a simple continuum of the past and present.

The second law of thermodynamics:

The entropy of a system will increase over time to bring the system to equilibrium. This can be understood as all systems trying to become homogeneous over time.

This law definitely helped the 'demon' construct along, as a means of understanding how systems change with time.

*Note that James Clerk Maxwell showed that this law did not in fact apply across the board. Kick in the groin for L's demon. Maxwell did this by going back to the premise of Brownian motion, a basic model of how particles suspended in a liquid move randomly. It was already established that if this liquid was heated, the particles would move about faster, but still in a random manner.

In such a situation it was conceivable that the hotter particles at any one point in time could accumulate in one section of the liquid container (since the motion of these particles is random, this is a possibility). In that case, there would be a kink in the time-dispersal entropy-increasing graph of the system.

Future Shock - II

2008-06-26T08:16:00.000-07:00

Determinism claims then that gambling can be reduced to a science. In the same vein, it refutes the concept of karma, confuses the theory of evolution and throws in a solipsistic twist to reality as we perceive it. Without trivialising the philosophy, this gives us an idea of what ascribing to determinism might mean.

As a note to the point on evolution theory, Darwin's primary postulate was that living creatures, over generations adapt at a genetic level to their environment (http://www.darwins-theory-of-evolution.com/: "As random genetic mutations occur within an organism's genetic code, the beneficial mutations are preserved because they aid survival -- a process known as natural selection").

Who's to say though that these mutations that caused our evolution from ape to man were random? What if the mutations are the result of our genes identifying the definite need to adapt and then doing the needful? In that case, while the theory of evolution remains whole, the idea of 'natural selection' of genetic mutations is refuted.

A final point on determinism - it says there's no such thing as free will. Everything we do is the result of something else. If we know those 'something-elses', i.e. those causal factors, we can predict what will happen, what the next person will do and what this week's winning numbers are at the 649.

Future Shock - I

2008-06-26T07:37:00.000-07:00

In my last post, I discussed how looking at history as an input to a system can help predict stuff. This new series (Future Shock) expands on the idea. For the sake of continuity, skim through the post below first - "The macro on decision logic".

There's a school of thought, called determinism, that disregards the notion of randomness in any event. Every event that happens is the result of some causal factors or forces that went before it. Effectively, there's no coincidences anymore. Determinism says that if you've won the lottery on your birthday, there's a reason for it.

One way to rationalize this is by looking at the usual keystones of probability, rolling dice and flipping coins. Your rolling a six is usually considered to have the odds of 1 in 6. Obvious, right? But consider that the outcome (i.e. the 6 that you've rolled) was influenced by a bunch of different factors - the weights of the different faces of the dice, the force with which the dice was thrown, angle of impact, elasticity of the dice and contact surface, etc.

Hypothetically, if these factors had been been measured beforehand, then just understanding the interaction between these factors would mean that the rolled six could've been predicted.

The macro on decision logic

2008-06-16T11:30:00.000-07:00

Decisions we take are either intuitive or based on a calculated risk. Decision takers include you and me, as also economists/bankers, politicians and gamblers (to define the spectrum of decisions that this post talks about).

Economists have their intricate mathematical models, politicians - their gauging of the collective sentiment and gamblers, their gut. All of these decision-making devices, fuzzy, neural, artificial, intuitive, etc are used on a daily basis to predict the future. That said, the world's population would all be paupers or trillionaires if any of these could boast consistency.

Given that such is not the case, i.e. there's only such a percentage of accuracy any decision logic machinery can claim, it's time to start looking at models that are organic - Letting reality and recallable (recent) history be the major inputs to your guesstimating. As an example, if the roulette ball lands on the 00 six times in a row, and you're unsure where to bet next ("hmm....even or odd?"), just go with the 00. Chances are the house is playing dirty. The Mahabharata would've been a shade less vengeful had Yudi figured this out before betting the kitchen sink.

Of course, this isn't revolutionary. It's part of any adaptive system in use today and all connectionist models rely on history (wiki this stuff). Here's another element to help focus the predictions - Your best guess for the future. Toss this element into the mix of inputs (i.e. along with what's happened already). An instance of where this might come in handy is with work flow automation at a call-center. If an extraordinary event has happened (an earthquake, discovery of a faulty part in the computers you sell, etc), it's safe to surmise that the future volume of calls will need more than the past week's call-volume as an input to forecast what's coming.

The last decision-making factor is the cornerstone of AI. Is there any information that can be derived from the interaction of your inputs? An instance of this is a loan officer assigning points to a prospective loanee based on standard criteria like their age (assume age directly proportional to points) and whether they rent or mortgage a house (assume renting gets higher points than mortgaging). This would mean that an elderly renter would be a better bet for the loan officer than a young house-owner. In the real world though, this is counter-intuitive, but you wouldn't get that from the discrete point-assigning system. And this is only two dimensional, the logical progression would be to extend this to n dimensions whose interactions can paint a picture.

My point though is to be able to spot patterns when theoretically none should exist - and to be an intelligent human, the macro-decider on when a decision needs to be made via an intelligent machine and when only in collaboration with one.

Overheard

2008-04-16T13:38:00.000-07:00

A newswoman was running late for her live broadcast, and had botched her makeup even if slightly.

The producer muttered "Close, but no shringar".

My life-hacker/zen habits

2008-04-09T12:59:00.000-07:00

Here are some lessons I've learnt well. Some of these have come as benefits-on-the-side with my advancing years, others from the burnt-finger chronicles of my biography, and the rest from that holiest oracle of all, the last word in fountainheads, Bollywood.

1. Remember that there are always atleast three cameras on you, one of them capturing every detail in slo-mo. As true in the corporate world as on a cricket field and as in the final confrontation with Mogambo. You never know who's watching, and to what detail they're interested in your performance. When under pressure, he who resists the nose-picking shall move up. Helps to know where the cameras are though.

2. The movie isn't worth making if the hero hasn't struggled. If you're down but fighting the odds, you'll come back up. That's most of what Bollywood's about. If you're up, realise that there's a new trend of sequels. You going down real soon. There's a discussion in here, waiting to be trashed out, about what's up and what's down. Gives me another post.

3. Don't sweat the small stuff. Instead, invest time finding the right person that will. If I had to learn real estate to buy a condo, do my CA exam before filing my taxes, get a many-hued belt in an obscure martial art form before I could leap tall buildings in my next movie, I'd really never get anything done. Instead, I figure my time's better spent if I can locate portly doubles to do all of these things for me. Task delegation is key. My responsibility is finding the right person to delegate to. Of course, the accountability remains mine too.

The arranged Lavalife

2008-03-31T10:26:00.000-07:00

Lavalife, eHarmony, entrenous, ........, shaadi, bharatmatrimony

The spectrum above is distilled below:

Lavalife.com introduces arranged marriages to the west

shaadi.com introduces an online dating service to the east

How have newspapers survived?

2008-03-24T11:25:00.000-07:00

For the wired crowd, newspapers are a bit of a novelty. Unmanageable sheafs of paper delivering news that's a day old at best. Like tv, the news too is sometimes just a break between advertisements. So when pitted against the instantaneousness of the net, how has the daily goliath survived?

Against

News is almost always a day old, if not more, save some of the stop-press items
You don't get to choose the news in the paper. You can choose the sections you want to read though
With its 40 odd pages, each the length of a dinner jacket, the paper's unwieldy at best
Environment hazard

For

There's an editor
You don't get to choose the news in the paper. For some of us, if we did, the breadth of our awareness would be narrow
Tradition and routine. We're comfortable with news being a day old. It's the optimum amount of time that we're okay with, knowing that reporters aren't relaying hearsay and that they've had a chance to confirm stuff they're reporting on. Editors have given it the thumbs up after a careful review
To pack tiffin

To me, it seems like 'For' wins the day. At this time.

The bigger question is how much longer can the tradition of newspapers hold fort against all the other forces? In an article in the New Yorker, Eric Alterman says "newspaper companies are losing advertisers, readers, market value, and, in some cases, their sense of mission at a pace that would have been barely imaginable just four years ago."

The reasons are many, and chiefly to do with competition from the net. Editors on the net are savvy about the audience they want, and with a decent editor at the helm, loyal readership is easy to build. Content-specific blogs, where the writer is often the editor, do quite well for themselves. The new information junkie sets up rss feeds from her favourite blogs and is wired for the day.

There is a semi-bright spot though. Online newspapers, i.e. the websites of the major newspapers that carry a cross-section of articles from the days' papers, are a compromise. That a newspaper runs a corresponding website gives the paper a way to connect with the crowd that's drawing away. Sadly though, the revenue a site like this generates through ads and the like probably isn't enough to sustain the site, given the reduced profits from decreasing circulation and falling rates for the print ads. Coupled with the fact that the online newspaper still needs the same machinery (journalists, editorial staff, reuters contracts, etc) to back it up as the printed paper, it's a lose-lose situation.

From my younger days

2008-01-21T11:20:00.000-08:00

"Thought for the day"

We used to have these back in school. Sometimes, I'd choose to take it literally, to let it be the sole thing that occupied my mindspace all day. I'd often be tempted to actually learn stuff that day, or to, yknow, talk to folks, but I'm sure wiser minds than mine had deemed the 'thought for the day' truly encompassing enough to sustain.

So, on the day, my credo could be: 'It is terrible to speak well and be wrong.' - Sophocles or 'Not failure, but low aim, is crime.' -J.R. Lowell

or some other such. And call it a genetic virasat, but I could always blank my slate save the thought for the day. Got into much trouble.

A one-line tragedy

2007-11-23T10:51:00.000-08:00

There have been others, but this here stood out -

"For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn."

- Ernest Hemingway.

No more traffic tickets

2007-10-03T09:05:00.000-07:00

I don't drive in N. America, but if I did, my biggest worry would be the fines I'd have to shell out everytime I'd get a ticket.

That worry has now disappeared.

http://www.antiticketdonut.com/

Dawn's best

2007-08-30T12:04:00.001-07:00

I get my brightest ideas before it's bright out. That's right, every morning, just before sunrise, these epiphanous little movies play in my head. And they're actually really funny! Thing is though, that when you're asleep, the part of your brain that's responsible for storing minutiae, and storing them long enough that you can flip through them like notes later, is switched off.

I realised that I was letting many a riveting blog post slip by only because I'm always too sleepy to transcribe the stuff I see during those early hours. Last night though, I'd kept pen-paper handy, by a bedside table to beat the machine. And did I ever :) It's three in the afternoon now, and I have a whole page of notes here, albeit scrawled illegibly, but then, this is the stuff dreams are made of...wait back that up...my hyperbole just melded with reality..I'm feeling special now :-)

This post is written in real-time. I was pretty sure I had gold, so didn't bother constructing this post in my head first. Had I, I realise now it would've been a good idea.

Having made sense of my notes, I find I've written crap. I've learnt a little about myself today though. During the pre-sunrise hours, it isn't that I produce gold every morning, rather my threshold for what causes the chuckles drops like a blessed christian on GOD tv.

Maybe some other day.

The areas of my ineptitude

2007-08-22T12:37:00.000-07:00

These are many, but the ones I chose for this top 5-er are those that frustrate me the most.

5. Sewing - At various points in time, my wardrobe's had perfectly nice shirts and trousers that've been rendered unwearable by a missing button or a come-undone hem. So I see the button lying there, the shirt pleading to be worn, and the thread/needle combination lying by the potpourri. Yet, I'm going to do nothing about it until I get to go home and have my mommy do the dirty.

4. Multitasking - I cannot talk to my significant other while trying to pretty up a presentation, nor can I pick out work clothes while listening to Anindo Chatterjee do an intricate rela.

The point is, these things need all the attention I can give them, with little (ability to pay attention) left over. In fact, when I chance upon somebody else multitasking their way through similarly involved activities, I'm left in awe. Can't do much else but admire.

3. Drawing - You'd be amazed at some of the replicas I can produce. Back in the day, my biology teacher gave me star*star*star when he saw my detailing of the cell structure. Without a dang picture or photo in front of me though, when what was needed was a little girl lost in thought, I've been known to produce a slug.

2. Dancing - I sprout appendages at the very thought. I'll have to forever say never.

1. Singing - I have my good days. The problem is that I have too many bad ones.

Married to the movies

2007-08-18T15:37:00.001-07:00

When I get off a taxi, I like to stand there, back to the cab, luggage on the pavement beside me. The luggage and I remain absolutely still (me by choice, the luggage, not so much) contemplating whatever lies ahead and the life we've left behind, while the taxi pulls away.

I do this because it would make a nice cinematic moment. It's definitely a moment you've seen before in some movie. In that moment, it'd appear as though this person (here, me) was about to begin life anew.

And when I write, I like to sometimes chew on a pencil using the corner of my mouth. I don't remember though, the last time I used anything other than a keyboard to write. As you might suspect, I do this because it makes a movie moment, were someone to catch a glimpse.

Finally, I'm given to planting trees in my driveway, in the hope that they'll one day grow tall and cast a sweet shadow where they stand. This way, my neighbour's children, when on their way back from taekwondo class can run around them while I blare Pehla Nasha from my den. This would make for a terrible cinematic moment, but one I'd fondly marry.

A long long time ago, in the bastide town of Navarrenx

2007-08-15T08:54:00.000-07:00

It was dusk. JJ sat by a cobblestoned road. He'd sat here a century, waiting for *the* day, but it never seemed to come. This evening, he sensed, was going to be different.

A sun-blonde gypsy had been trudging all over town, searching for any signs of nightlife, for he'd done nothing, seen no sights, danced no jigs ever since he got here and had no place to sleep. He seemed well under the weather for it was chilly, and he had on but a shimmery, slight shirt.

He posed his problem to JJ.

JJ: "Cold, eh? nowhere to lay down the old bone-sack, eh? It's obviously a rhume and bored situation."

So saying, JJ cackled himself into the afterlife.

Media bashing

2007-07-16T15:00:00.000-07:00

You get to see these clips of Rumsfeld - "I never said we know for sure where Iraq's WMDs were" and thanks to some really great archiving, the folks over at Jon Stewart's Daily show are able to pull up another, older clip of Donny boy saying "Yes, well they're north of xyz, south of abc, etc, Yeah, we've got good intelligence".

But what I'd REALLY like to see is taking this up another notch, so that the likes of Tony Snow, and heck, even Bush, when lying at Press conferences, can immediately be told off for their two-faced, no-good, double-dealing ways.

This doesn't need magic. If you're a half decent journalist, and you've got your questions mapped out right, you already know the line that Snow, Bush and their ilk are going to toe.What that means is if you make an accusation, they're going to deny it. If you ask them about how something they'd said earlier turned out to be untrue, they're going to deny having ever said such a thing. If you tell them you love their hair, they're going to say it wasn't their fault, they had to wear a helmet on the way over.

The point is, many of these press soundbytes are given at events/press conferences that are telecast live. All that the journalist needs to do is to dig up a video of the guy when he was asked the same question a few months earlier. The difference between this and Stewart's daily show is that the video needs to be ready PRIOR to the journalist's question being asked.

Journalist then asks question. Snow goes "Ermm..No, no, I never said anything of the sort. The media always distorts facts". BAM - Journalist whips out her new iVideoplayathingy in front of the TV cameras! Yeah, I'd like to see THAT.

Hope

2007-07-12T11:41:00.000-07:00

The coal-dust looked almost golden in the light of the grease-lamps.
Miners chipped and dug away at various floors throughout the depth of the dark giant well under the earth.
At the bottom of the well, near the centre of the earth, where the mine was at its hottest and darkest, some miners spotted a leaf floating towards them.
They all looked up, wanting to see
the sky and the tree.

- There was a poem posted on various Toronto subway cars, about a falling leaf and a sense of hope. I'd liked it tremendously, but couldn't remember the details nor, sadly, the poet's name. The above is an attempt to capture the feeling of that poem. Will update this post as soon as I can track down that poem's co-ordinates.

Update: The name of the original poem is Branch Line by Gary Michael Dault. Please look it up, it's a far better, simpler thought.

Stand-up

2007-07-11T11:00:00.000-07:00

I was watching an old taping of a Richard Pryor show, where he did this bit about kids lying to their folks. Little kids, and painfully obvious lies :) Pryor himself must've been such a cute kid. Incidentally, he had a really rough time growing up but that just heightened the sensitivity of his performance.

See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5l6F_GQTGK8

That's it for today, your 2 minutes of bliss.

Update (26 July 2007): Youtube's removed the video. It was only a minute and a half in length, and did much good spreading Pryor's infectious funnies. I hope removing the video will feed some starving kids.

Moving up

2007-07-05T08:20:00.000-07:00

Two recent events, both fairly minor, had me reminiscing.

Event 1:
I was at lunch yesterday, a fancy Japanese joint and the food, ambience, etc was all top-notch, as was the accompanying LIT. The place was fairly high-end, but I had a nice time, and few qualms about footing the bill.

Event 2:
Yesterday also marked my first anniversary at work. During the year I'd learnt tons and done well. But it wasn't so much about it being a year at work as much as it was about it being a year out of school, a year since my student lifestyle.

The reminiscing:
I've had a great life while at University. Indian boy, North American aspirations, half-decent grades, some scholarships. All of it panned out pretty well. It's not a story unique to me either, which is why I could summarise it for you as easily as I just did.

In this new life, away from home, everything I wanted was made of dollars, and as a result, 36.5 times harder to get..Or 4 times harder if you factor in cost-of-living indices.

Add to that the fact that I was in my mid-late teens and had planned to pay my own way through college, i.e. with loans that I'd be paying back later myself.

The truth is I'd never handled money before. At most, I'd ask my parents for cash to go out, and if any remained later that evening, I'd hand it right back. And then suddenly, here I was, handed what seemed to be obscene amounts of money, only to see it fly straight out of my account.

I'd spend hours forecasting my expenses, subtracting scholarships, applying for bursaries and more loans, keeping my fingers crossed about the exchange rate, scouring neighbourhoods to find places where the general cost of living (and not just the monthly rent) was cheaper, all of this learnt slowly, learnt well.

It was embarrassing when anything caused my budget to spike past the tiny contingency funds that I'd set aside every semester because then, I'd need my folks to send me money. And I worked hard to never let that happen.

While a full-time electrical engineering student, I held down three jobs. One at a library that paid near minimum wage, but afforded me time to study while on the job, another that paid better, but needed me to cut classes often during business hours and a third that paid very well, that I could do on my own time (read late nights and weekends).

The great thing about my combination of jobs was that if I was ever running short on cash, I could up the hours at one of these jobs such that my next pay-cheque was meatier. I'd be damned though if that's all I did to help my finances. I've eaten many a meal of bread and cheese, of eggs fried en-masse during the start of the week. On occasion, when I wanted to treat myself, I'd borrow burger king mail-coupons from friends I knew were never going to use theirs.
I'd also tried borrowing money from my friends when I knew it was only a question of money flow and timing. This is possibly the most embarrassing thing when it doesn't work out. It makes you question not just your friends, but also yourself for having either failed to forge the friendships you needed, or having misread them. I was lucky most times.

Yesterday though, I thought nothing of tipping the waiter close to what I'd earn for a day's work at one of my older jobs. It might be trite, but I wouldn't have appreciated my circumstances now had not my earlier ones been as vastly dissimilar as they were.

P.S. This was written while watching an interview of Ishmael Beah, a boy-soldier in Sierra Leone, who later wrote a book about his experiences called 'A Long Way Gone' . It's an amazing read. In the right perspective, bread and cheese sounds pretty good.

Cut-paste raja

2007-06-25T14:53:00.000-07:00

I've been religiously blogging the last few days, caring little for the audience. I haven't figured out how I might install a widget to tell me if there are folks that actually visit here, but that's partly because I haven't felt the need.

Sopher, Phil O. had said something about a tree falling in the forest, and no-one being around to hear it. I figure mine not to ask, rather to just plug away at the blog. The blog can be the tree. I'm sure the tree was aware it fell.

I haven't even begun to mix metaphors, and am already worried about having a falling blog on my hands.

What know I

2007-06-21T20:12:00.000-07:00

Here's a summary of the Hodgmanesque areas of my expertise:

1. Indian cricket - Stats, present and past. Venues across the country. Politics. U-19s to watch out for. A lucid understanding of the technique, fallacies and strengths of each of our batsmen and bowlers. The basics of bowling quick. Strategies to win the next two world cups. Note that I'm no longer sentimental about how the team does. Our prolonged mediocrity at this game, one we're all so invested in, has finally made me lose heart.

2. Hindi films - I'm fact-filled, but also emotionally attached to bollywood. I think these movies are a great way to raise your kids. You instill all the necessary values in 3 hour bursts. It's no longer an indefinite parenting responsibility. Just deposit impressionable kids at a Yash Raj (actually more B.R. Chopra or Barjatya) movie, and you'll have them touching your feet for years to come. There are always exceptions, be it movies or the kids themselves.

3. Indian writing in English - I connect well to a select few authors. Some of these folks, I've read inside out. While the field is vast, if you were to ask me about Malgudi, I'd do a decent job.

4. Photonics - Am unusually interested in the field. Particularly lasers. Yknow, to blow stuff up and all. But no, seriously, I'm a laser and semi-conductor enthusiast. I'm not sure why. Also, it's a cause I support..Every second, a gazillion photons give up their ghosts. How much longer will we look the other way?

5. Elegant math/logic puzzles - I lie. This is not an area of my expertise. It's only an area of interest.

6. Mainstream Hollywood - I've had some time on my hands. I know some stuff about the post 1990 era.

7. Comics [serious stuff this] - Asterix, Tintin, Calvin & Hobbes, Dilbert. Mastermind level on a good day.

8. Fashion - ok, no.

9. Project Management - You might want to take a look at my work blog. I've only just started on the blog, but I've put in a fair number of hours dissecting the field, straddling its dual nature of art somedays, science others.

10. ... in progress ...

Wingin' it

2006-04-17T17:50:00.000-07:00

It's been said of me that I act before I think. And that I couldn't be bothered to actually do the thinking after.

That explains much. A recent survey I carried out showed that the junta here were not much impressed by my "Chicken World" anecdote.

Three chickens had only just flown the coop from a poultry farm. Two miles from the farm, as they lay down on a grassy knoll to reflect on their escapade, Pavneet, the bravest of the three, whistled a sad tune. Obalesh joined in on seconds and the third chicken, who didn't have a name, beatboxed.

Just then, it suddenly occurred to them that they were chickens, and it wasn't a very chickeny thing to a cappella the night away. They stopped. They decided they would be better off charting a course for the unknown that lay ahead.

At this point, Obalesh pointed out that nothing had changed, that they were still chickens and they didn't really have the brainpower for something like this.

The third chicken (one of those intense brooding types we see so often sitting on the far end of the cage, away from the feeder, ruminating on what could have been) decided to speak up. However, just as he was about to, he realised that he too was a chicken, and no chicken the world over had ever spoken. Thankfully, it didn't douse his plans much.

On a small sandy clearing in the knoll, the third chicken drew a map of the universe.

He then outlined a plan to take over this universe, overthrowing Bush and his cronies using ChickenFart TM, a secret weapon first developed by Google. It would infect humans that came in contact with any of the band of renegade chicken soldiers, the Nuggets.

* I can't reveal much more of the story. I'm hoping there'll be a movie. The screenplay is tentatively called Bird Flew.

Sunshine today

2006-04-10T11:56:00.000-07:00

Trippy times

The undergrad career is careening to an end. Am bent back all the way over trying to land a job. But these are happy times. The weather's good. Yes, there's Sunshine Today, and perhaps some cricket in the offing... Or on the legging. :-) I kill myself.

I wish I knew where to get me some of those 'fast-twitch' muscles that these quicks have. Bowling at 140 is a distant dream, but what i wouldn't give.

The batting's going well, sweet spot and all. Solid defence, good ground shots, and all of that against some of the fastest pakis that be. Short ball will still do me in though.

Will update after I get a match in. Have to rally all the buggers. Stupid exams, nobody wants to come out and play.

Surveyor of all I see

2005-11-30T09:03:00.000-08:00

The word used most often in blog posts and social profiles on the net is "Random". This was confirmed by a survey carried out in late November, 2005 by me.

Random pics.

Random quotes.

Random random.

Random nothings.

It's when we're too lazy to be organized, to take the trouble to categorize our thoughts, posts, pics, etc.

Astute observation, eh? A bit random, yes, but astute, what?

2005-11-22T18:00:00.000-08:00

It's been a struggle coming up with a worthy first post. I haven't blogged or kept a diary/journal before, and have done little writing since I started studying engineering. Hopefully all of this'll change in the days to come.

I've decided that I'm going to need to blog about random-nothings, just so this doesn't become something I'll have to spend hours redrafting, ensuring that the lyrical quality is just right, that I've kept my apolitical views to myself, that the degree of philo in my writings touches a minimum intellect, etc.

For today's random highlight, dinner was dal-bhaat, with a side dish of tuna charred in soya sauce. Lip-smacking absolutely. If you haven't heard already, I'll have you know I'm more than your average dalletante. Oh, and I make the sidey-est wordplays ever. Keeps me going, gives me my thrills :-)

On the agenda tonight is a healthy dose of computer architecture. I have my semester's final exams coming up in two weeks and I figure it wouldn't kill me to get my work done before it does me in.

I've newly discovered the joys of playing Ballpop on the T200 Sony Ericsson phone (the baby blue one), and it makes the metro stops just whiz by on my way home from school. People do weird things and get good at it. Me, I'm going to break all records at this game.

2005-11-20T16:20:00.000-08:00

Test. Classic test. Will it work? Won't it?