Rain today

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.

Culture club

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

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

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

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.

My rain run

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

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

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.