The Daydreamer with a Nightmare under his Pillow

Things We Lost in the Fire

2009-03-16T15:56:00.004-04:00

The morning after
The smell of fate
Hanging heavy over me
The wisps are all that remain
And through the smoke
I see
The ephemeral space between
Reality as we like to see it
And reality as it looks
Sometimes, just sometimes...

In the dead calm
Lit up by the sunrise
That you and me never
Thought would ever come
We stand there, hand in hand
And find, and stumble on to,
And count, and try to wash
With our tears, with our kisses
The things we lost in the fire

I think there, in the corner
Is a thought you once gave me
One that I played with for a week
And then it must have fallen
Behind the table on which
I keep all my frivolities
Last night, I found it again
After the walls fell

Over there, next to where the bed was
Is the sound of the laughs you
Gifted to me on my birthday
The ones that I accepted without
Even knowing who it was
Who was making those minutes
Pinpricks on my memory, on the day
There came a fire, I never did know

On my desk, you had left
The stories of books you never read
And scraps of mischief that you threw
At me, those that I laughed at the futility of
I couldn't have been more wrong
We shall see, I had said
And I am seeing, but not what I was
Expecting to see. Looking in at you
Through this glass cage, that somehow
Survived the fire

And in that cage is something I may never lose
Try as hard as I might, maybe never, ever
I don't think I ever noticed it before
But it was always there, holding the essence
Of you, of me and of every one of us
Sitting amidst the embers, tarnished but unhurt
Something that the fire couldn't touch
The losses, we shall count in the days
Oh the days that shall stretch out for long
Defying the pulls of time

But there's one thing that
We didn't lose in the fire.
And I will keep it close to me
But don't you worry, dear friend
If I hesitate to come near it today
I'll be back tomorrow...
To take home with me,
The priceless nugget
I found after the fire.

Dedicated, with love and a profound sense of insignificance and humility, to you. Shine on, forever.

Spinning Yarns from the Darkness

2009-02-08T05:06:00.003-04:00

come and play
a game of make-believe
with me tonight

what's that?
you can't be here
hey, that's all right...

i'm going to tell
you all the rules
and top it off with
"rules are for fools"

just the right amount
of bravado, of disdain
aided and abetted by the
deliciously faithless refrain

sing along with me
the miserable, the angry
the deluded yearning to be free

rule number one
take everything as it comes
rule number two
is the rule of the ones

one is the number
of answers you will take
one is the number
of people you're not allowed to break

so go on, go on
shoot those dreams, up into the sky
expect nobody to ask, how're you gettin' by
admit no pain, all guilt you must deny
hell, crashing to the ground
is the price of wanting to fly

and when we meet in the morning
we won't need any mirrors
each man to his own, he shall
decide losers and winners

when you've had your fill
of epiphanies and obituaries
come to the clearing in the wood
while the fallen head to the cemeteries

there we'll have a bonfire big and bright
no better place to put those stained
souls and clothes tattered in the fight
hey, you're ready again to head into the night
to turn yesterday's wrongs into some right

does anguish have a memory for names?
does time smother the cinders, or does it fan the flames?
does tomorrow's repentance equal yesterday's shame?
do you forget the grudges, or do you preserve the pain?
do you want to know what made you what you became?
come, let's play the game
hell, yeah...let's get back to the game.

DUI: Disclosing Under the Influence

2009-01-16T06:00:00.002-04:00

they ask me where i came from
and i keep a story handy in my pocket
i tell them of the stuff that gets me going
and a wee bit of that which makes me fret

i tell them of people i once knew
and of folks that are keepin' me afloat
then there's the polite and the perfunctory
like where i got the dough to pay for my coat

and there's some about the places i've been
throw in a little about things dusted an' done
the sights that i dream of and the songs that i sing
and how i came to believe that gods there are none

as the evening gets soaked in some fine spirits
it gets harder and easier as we drain the keg
harder to stand, easier to lie,'cause all of ya know
a lie's got no need for a goddamn leg

and from there on does the memory fade
the storyteller in me takes over, the stage is set
i find him telling me stories i'd never believe
kinda hard to believe what you see is what you get

as the dam closes on the stream for the day
and the lights are turned on all around
it's an eerie buzz in my ears and a cold wind in my face
that starts the guessing as suspicions merrily abound

i dig into that pocket of mine
the one that i keep my story in, ya know
what i come up with looks vaguely familiar
but oh um er, what have i done now

there's a story to be told, for sure
and it's mighty useful to have told it before
but the storyteller needs discretion in matters of lore
for the wrong tales told may well cause furore
and so tonight i let them get their foot in the door
darn him - for a month, i'm seeing that barman's face no more!

There are some men whose path you do not cross

2008-08-10T03:42:00.006-04:00

(excerpted from this article in the IHT after Michael Phelps won his first gold in Beijing)

Long before he had the likes of Ryan Lochte and Laszlo Cseh to inspire him, Michael Phelps was motivated by his tormenters. His mother, Debbie, remembered an 11-year-old Phelps emerging in tears from the locker room at Towson University during a swim meet because two boys from another team were making merciless fun of him.

Four years later, in 2000, after Phelps qualified for the United States Olympic team in the 200 butterfly, one of those boys came up to him in the stands at the Indiana University-Purdue University natatorium to congratulate him. As Debbie Phelps remembered recently, the kid said to Phelps, "Remember me? I swim with ..."

Phelps looked him in the eyes and said, "I don't seem to recall who you are." After the boy left, Debbie Phelps said she turned to her son and said, incredulous, "Michael, you really didn't remember him?" He told her: "Yes I did. But I was not going to give him that sense of satisfaction."

Vindication or Vindictiveness?

Hell, give me both.

साकी ...

2008-07-24T23:43:00.001-04:00

साकी कोई ऐसा जाम पिला, कि उसकी याद का बाकी ज़र्रा भी ना रहे..
आज रात कर लूँ मोहब्बत आखिरी दफा, लेकिन सवेरे तक बाकी कोई अरमां भी ना रहे...

My R.E.M. Playlist

2008-04-17T19:47:00.007-04:00

All About Those Eyes :)

2008-04-16T01:50:00.006-04:00

He said:
Oho, really! Well, let me try to summarise what you just told me with a sher. Here goes:

तेरी आंखों की कशिश से एक पल को साँस थम गई,
तूने इशारा भी न किया और कत्ल-ऐ-आम हो गया

Howzzat?

I replied:
There's more to it. Try this:

चार लफ्ज़ बोलने का ये अंजाम हो गया
देखिये शायरों की शागिर्दी क्या इल्जाम हो गया

And,
माली से दोस्ती में मैं यूं बदनाम हो गया
काँटों के खीचे खून का भी चर्चा तमाम हो गया

But, I'll admit this...
एक घूँट में ही ग़म-ऐ-ज़िंदगी से आराम हो गया
क्या बताएं जनाब, ऐसा ही कल एक जाम हो गया

Too bad, though...
मेरे सजदे से मोहल्ले में कोहराम हो गया
उनकी इबादत करने की थी आरजू , अफ़सोस...कत्ल-ऐ-आम हो गया

:(

Hm.

2008-04-11T22:24:00.004-04:00

I've got to give it to some people, they really deserve it. The gift, you know, the sheer talent, man , that they have, it just makes comparisons so inanely redundant, you know. Now you might be thinking what's got into this raving good-for-nothing, just blabbering away, makin' no sense at all. Well, yeah, you're right, but that isn't going to make much difference to me, as you know very well by now. But anyway, I've never been one to listen too much to people who have no good words for anybody except other people they want something from, so I'm going to let you keep at it while I get myself warmed up. So, yeah, I was sayin', this is nothing to sneeze at, right? The guy was born with something but he didn't have to put so much into it to become so good at it. It's called knowing a jewel when you see one, and sometimes it's just the most goddamn hard thing to see it in yourself. Now, look at me, I've been there and I've had people totally eatin' out of my hands, you know how that goes, but I never had the kind of concentration or maybe common sense to put into what they call developing one's talents. I've always been pretty naive that way, but it's not a huge bother, I've not done that badly in life. But, sure as death, I know that if I had a half a brain I would be makin' 'em dance to my tunes all over town, you know I'm right. So, yeah, I walk into this room full of people, and in five minutes, you heard that, five minutes, I can tell who's the star of the show, who's the hanger-on and who's the timid wannabe. It's that easy, it's a gift too, but it's just as useful as an eye for useful trash in the dumpster. That's not what you might consider an appropriate example, but trust me, if you were to talk to one of them beachcombers, he would tell you the same thing, right? In any case, I was just telling you about this idea of being able to spot the man with the gift of the gab from a mile away, and I'd be lying if I didn't half envy some of those splendid men making them ladies swoon and giggle and behave like puppets on the cords of his words, flying out into the air around him, stronger and more allurin' than any of those musk perfumes you might've seen the ads about. Absolutely brilliant, I call it, and they know it too, you know, that easy charm, the way they throw their heads back when they laugh, the way they pull that jacket sleeve just a little higher to allow them to look at their expensive watch, yeah, now you notice it, don't you? It ain't no accident at all, trust me, it's a talent, and it's also a lot of practice, man. You never get quite as good at anything without beating yourself up over things once in a while. It's like this problem I have with my jokes, you know. People tell me that they were this close to bashing my head in when I tell my jokes, and I could never understand it. Of course, I get to grin behind their backs because they have no idea, absolutely no idea at all, how many times I've made fools out of 'em and they didn't even know it. As I said, it takes some doing before you can even get the hang of your own practical jokes, but if you're as good as I am, then it's only a matter of time before you have them thinking, and thinking, and thinking, and then saying, "Now what the hell was that all about?"

To Dear Papa, With Love...

2008-04-02T00:29:00.003-04:00

I watched some parts of 'Road to Perdition' again recently, and I couldn't help but be moved by the last scene of the film. To understand how much those lines convey, one has to watch the movie. However, I want to share them nonetheless, also as a tribute to my own father, with whom my relationship has evolved, and is still evolving, over my short (and in some ways, long) lifetime thus far. Here they are:

"I saw then that my father's only fear was that his son would follow the same road. And that was the last time I ever held a gun. People always thought I grew up on a farm. And I guess, in a way, I did. But I lived a lifetime before that, in those six weeks on the road in the winter of 1931. When people ask me if Michael Sullivan was a good man, or if there was just no good in him at all, I always give the same answer. I just tell them... he was my father."

Do go and see the film if you get a chance. I recommend watching it on DVD, but if you can't, then here's the youtube link to the first part. It was acclaimed cinematographer Conrad Hall's last movie, and he received a posthumous Oscar for his work. I assure you that the award doesn't honour the film, it is the other way around, in this case.

Amen.

2008-03-28T21:57:00.005-04:00

Made this to put it up over my desk. Love these lines, and the song too! (Click on the picture for the full-sized version)

A Return to Poetry

2008-03-27T02:46:00.001-04:00

I stood by the road
And watched them rush by me
As day turned to night, dusk to dawn
The most intriguing, ceaseless art you'll see

She brought me out of my trance
Quizzical look, hand on my shoulder
O Traveller, wither your destination?
You feel not the rain, nor the wind ever colder

Said I to her, you people move so fast...
Tracing curves in space and time with alacrity
Yet, in my world, I'm convinced you don't get as far as I do
For I subscribe to the principle of relative velocity.

Wiredness=weirdness?

2008-03-02T03:31:00.002-04:00

Today, I read an article in the NYT by Mark Bittman chronicling his attempts to break away from the so-called electronic addiction that afflicts a huge percentage of the population in this country, and in many other societies around the world. He describes the process as one that required a lot of effort, but one that eventually deserved the hard work because it restored some perspective on how important being connected actually is. I quote him:

"I would no more make a new-agey call to find inner peace than I would encourage a return to the mimeograph. But I do believe that there has to be a way to regularly impose some thoughtfulness, or at least calm, into modern life — or at least my version. Once I moved beyond the fear of being unavailable and what it might cost me, I experienced what, if I wasn’t such a skeptic, I would call a lightness of being. I felt connected to myself rather than my computer. I had time to think, and distance from normal demands. I got to stop."

I've had my own discussions with friends, mostly other graduate students, who have admitted that they sometimes feel rather uncomfortable with their (growing?) dependence on the internet as a means of spending time. We've all agreed that if only we could spend less time online, we could explore other options. Some of us would like to re-establish some good habits that we had in the past, such as reading books, or going biking, or simply trying a little harder to explore the social side of graduate school (it does exist!). Others would like to pick up a new hobby, start a gym regimen or simply spend more time studying.

I've done more than my share of experimenting with different degrees of detachment from the internet at various points of time, and it's a trivial conclusion that the problems arise only when one has extra time at hand, or should we say, unallocated time. Back in the times when I didn't have any regular internet access (nor any need for it), time had to be accounted for. And that needed planning, and reaching out to other people to see if there was anybody else who was struggling to keep the clock ticking at a comfortable pace. It didn't seem to be that big a deal at that time, but the fact that I'm bothering to note that should indicate how far the boat has gone down the river.

The beauty in that system was the vulnerability and need of the agents in it. I was dependent upon entities not under my control to fulfill my needs. On the surface, the internet did away with most of that deficiency by giving me all the information, all the music, all the video and all the tools I would probably need to stay in touch with friends. However, it created the possibility of being left high and dry when the bubble finally burst.

In that light, Bittman's conclusions are almost obvious and his delight and satisfaction quite palpable. However, I don't think that the same inferences are applicable for people like me, in situations like mine. At the outset, I'd say that I agree with him when he says that being cut off allowed him to think and feel one with himself again. If I have a computer screen staring me in the face for most of my waking hours, I can hardly avoid being drawn to it, even if it is on the most acceptable of bases. If I'm thinking about something, and I realise I have a need for some information or some reference at that point to help me proceed with my thinking, I'm going to try and find it on the net immediately. And unless I'm really, really short of time, what with the marvellous cross-linking on Wikipedia, one click will lead to another, and time will be history very soon!

That having been said, I differ with Mark Bittman because I feel it's really counter-productive for me to try and avoid the internet or other forms of connectivity. At this stage of my life and my career, I think that the internet can only help me if I use it with a measure of wariness (I was going to use 'self-control', but that sound like, and is, preaching) with regards to what the benefit versus cost is at a certain point on the usage curve. It's not very different from the concept of marginal profit; after a while, it ceases to be a good idea.

In addition, it's easier to avoid the internet on a weekday, especially with the kind of schedule I have, because no matter how much work I do, I always have more to consider. But that turns the tables on me, because if I want to grab a 15 minute break by taking a walk outside the lab, it's never going to be 15 minutes. And that's both the good thing and the not-so-good thing about real people: You can't always get what you want from them on your terms. It's definitely a gameplan that's too iffy for my liking. So, I conclude that I should have the internet ready when in such a situation, so that I can (hopefully, and note that this now depends to a much greater extent only on me) switch off and switch on as per my requirement.

What about the weekend? Well, on the weekend, the theme is mostly sleeping. And while awake, it's very, very tough to stay away because if I'm at home, then I'm probably in a fairly crabby mood anyway because none of my plans took off the right way (or remained grounded in a worst case), and in that situation I don't want to make my temper worse by trying hard to make something work for me when it's already looking bleak. So, what better way to feel better than to vent my spleen on someone who happens to be online at that time. It's a very effective stress release mechanism (for want of better options, I'll admit), and it works much better on people at a distance than on those in the next room.

So, I think I'll stick with the net for now, try and make the most of it while I can, and then maybe one day, when I really have interesting things to do all the time, I can come back and moralise on the ills of internet addiction :)

The Best Last Lines of Any Book I've Ever Read

2008-03-01T07:03:00.004-04:00

"I have at least one old man's ill: I suffer from insomnia. Late at night I lie in my bed, listening to the dank and hopeless sound of infirm men and women coughing their courses deeper into old age. Sometimes I hear a call-bell, or the squeak of a shoe in the corridor, or Mrs. Javits's little TV tuned to the late news. I lie here, and if the moon is in my window, I watch it.

I lie here and think about Brutal, and Dean, and sometimes William Wharton saying, That's right, nigger, bad as you'd want. I think of Delacroix saying, Watch this Boss Edgecombe, I teach Mr. Jingles a new trick. I think of Elaine, standing in the door of the sunroom and telling Brad Dolan to leave me alone. Sometimes I doze and see that underpass in the rain, with John Coffey standing beneath it in the shadows. It's never just a trick of the eye, in these little dreams; it's always him for sure, my big boy, just standing there and watching. I he here and wait. I think about Janice, how I lost her, how she ran away red through my fingers in the rain,
and I wait.

We each owe a death, there are no exceptions, I know that, but sometimes, oh God, the Green Mile is so long."

The Storyteller - part 1

2008-02-28T04:08:00.002-04:00

He was definitely one of those people whom you had to try to meet, if you wanted to meet them. He was the type of person I always seem to pick out in any group. You know, the guys who stand in a corner and blend into the surroundings, who have nothing to offer for mass consumption save for the occasional twinkle of the eye and loads of silence. Even if you were to put them in the spotlight, they would somehow manage to make themselves transparent to it. Masters of camouflage, you might call them. And true to my track record, I found him.

The interesting thing about silence is that it is open to so many interpretations. As I love to keep reminding people, nothing makes people as uneasy as a silent entity, and he seemed to fit the idea right down to the T. I sought out his company often, mostly to try and get him to speak on some topic or the other. It proved to be alternately easy and difficult. I would speak for five minutes non-stop, trying to explain myself, for he was always particular about matters of detail. Sometimes, infuriatingly so. And then, like a burst of machine-gun fire, he would put forth his response, occasionally with a very well-disguised look of boredom that proclaimed, "You know it, but I didn't say it!".

However, with time, I got better at my job, and he probably relaxed the rules of probation that he had laid down for me. As with any other person, he had buttons that needed to be punched for the music to emerge. One of our most fun pastimes was plotting mischief, and I rue my lack of foresight, in not having chronicled our plans of wreaking chaos upon our immediate universe and beyond. His penchant to dream up ways of mischief was matched only by his sheer inertia to move his body from one point to another, and so, most plans remained sadly unfulfilled.

(contd.)

Where No One Knows Me

2008-02-25T05:26:00.001-04:00

I'm not going to screw this song up by adding my commentary. All I'll say is that I love it :)

Got my suitcase
Got my dog
I'm packing up my life so far

Got my pictures
Got some cash
I'm getting out of here at last

Got my hands on the wheel, got my foot on the pedal
Gonna drive til I drop, til the tires turn to metal
Gonna sleep when I'm dead, gonna laugh like the devil
Gonna find some place where no one knows me

Gonna stop when the last drop of gas turns to vapor
Gonna ride til I can't even seem to remember
Who I was when I left and it don't even matter
Gonna find some place where no one knows me

Feel the sunburn on my skin
I feel the wind whip through my grin

Took the rear-view mirror down
I wrapped it in my wedding gown

Got my hands on the wheel, got my foot on the pedal
Gonna drive til I drop, til the tires turn to metal
Gonna sleep when I'm dead, gonna laugh like the devil
Gonna find some place where no one knows me

Gonna stop when the last drop of gas turns to vapor
Gonna ride til I can't even seem to remember
Who I was when I left and it don't even matter
Gonna find some place where no one knows me.

More Trivia...The Binary Scorecard ;)

2008-02-20T04:01:00.003-04:00

I realise that this doesn't hold much importance, but good for a few laughs nonetheless. This is the first half of the scorecard of the ICC Women's WC qualifiers game between Bermuda and South Africa:
(pay attention to the scores of the batsmen (batswomen? batsperson???!!) and the extras :D)

Bermuda Women innings (50 overs maximum)		R	M	B	4s	6s	SR
	L Mienzer	c Minnie b Loubser	1	60	48	0	0	2.08
	W Woodley	c Chetty b Smith	0	19	14	0	0	0.00
	S Albouy	lbw b Smith	0	17	16	0	0	0.00
	M Jackson	lbw b Benade	1	11	7	0	0	14.28
	TL Paynter	lbw b Loubser	0	3	8	0	0	0.00
	R Richardson	st Chetty b Loubser	0	6	1	0	0	0.00
	R Smith	c Letsoalo b Loubser	1	14	5	0	0	20.00
	N Jones	b Loubser	0	2	1	0	0	0.00
	A Smith	b Benade	0	4	2	0	0	0.00
	C Furbert	not out	0	7	4	0	0	0.00
	S Todd	b Loubser	0	3	3	0	0	0.00
	Extras	(b 2, w 7, nb 1)	10

	Total	(all out; 18 overs; 77 mins)	13	(0.72 runs per over)

As for the result, South Africa duly won the game by 10 wickets...in 4 balls. This is how that went:

South Africa Women innings (target: 14 runs from 50 overs)			R	M	B	4s	6s	SR
	OV Anderson	not out	4	4	4	1	0	100.00
	CS Terblanche	not out	1	4	1	0	0	100.00
	Extras	(w 9, nb 1)	10

	Total	(0 wickets; 0.4 overs; 4 mins)	15	(22.50 runs per over)

Cricinfo.com had this to say about the game:

"The statistics of the match are mindboggling. Eight Bermudans failed to get off the mark, and the three that did only managed a single each. Ten of the runs that helped make up their meagre score were extras - 71%. South Africa's score of 15 for 0 was also made up of ten extras - nine wides and a no-ball. Anderson scored 50% of the runs scored off the bat in the match, and 80% of her side's runs.

Unfortunately for South Africa, but mercifully for the record-books, Bermuda's debacle does not count towards the official statistics because they are ranked outside the world's top ten countries. "I am disappointed that today's stats don't count for nothing," said Loubser (the SA captain), "but I would say it was a team effort to win the opening match of the tournament." "

Hehe....

Follow-up to last post

2008-02-20T03:33:00.004-04:00

I think I got why I muddled the picture up with Zimbabwe. Less than a month before the England v NZ tie, India and Zim played out another one in Paarl (famously ending with one ball remaining because the last Indian batsman got run out on a wide ball while needing 2 to win; they got one for the wide) on Jan 27, 1997. That game was tied at 236 apiece, while the one the following month ended at 237. Maybe the closeness of the two scores tricked my poor memory :(

Faulty Memory -> Spot-on Foreshadowing

2008-02-20T03:10:00.005-04:00

Caught the second innings of today's one-dayer between New Zealand and England at Napier, with the Black Caps needing 341 to win. As far as I can remember, I've had a sharp memory for inconsequential trivia, and I normally don't mess up a recollection. As I was watching the game, I seemed to recall that Napier had hosted 2 tied games in the past (For those who know what happened in today's game: at this point NZ were 230-odd for 2 and cruising), NZ tying with England and Zimbabwe. Out of curiosity, I dug up the list of tied games on Cricinfo , and found that there had been 22 tied games in history, but only one in Napier (26 Feb 97). Admittedly, I was not too happy about that, but hell, it's not the first thing I've forgotten or remembered wrong anyway :P

As it turned out, Napier DID become only the second venue to appear twice on that list tonight, nearly 11 years to the day after the same two teams had tied! Today's game was also the highest scoring tie in history, and to convey an idea of how rare it is, only 23 out of 2682 one-dayers played have ended with scores level; that is 1 in every 117 games. And even though what I remembered was wrong, it didn't take too long for that to be set right :D

Great game, BTW, and do catch the highlights if you get a chance. Super bowling at the death by Sidebottom, Anderson and Wright negated the amazing innings of How, who made a dominating 139 off 116 balls.

Happy Valentine's Day.....NOT!!

2008-02-14T02:46:00.003-04:00

Just dropped in to warn all you guys out there of a potential situation. Read on:

A very shy guy goes into a pub on Valentine's Day night and sees a beautiful woman at the bar. After a long struggle with his shyness, he finally managed to walk over to her and asked her politely, "Um, would you mind if I give you company?" She made a furious face and yelled at the top of her lungs, "How dare you asked me to sleep with you tonight?" Everyone in the pub started staring at the man who was completely embarrassed. After a few minutes, woman walked over to him and apologized - "You see I am a student of psychology and studying how people respond to embarrassing situations. I am sorry but I was just doing my experiment!" The young man suddenly gave a loud yell, "What do you mean $200?"

Have fun!

PS: Maybe $100 would have insulted the female a lot more ;)
Thanks to Chawla for the joke!

Psssst...what's your password?

2008-02-13T02:42:00.002-04:00

Have to confess on this, people: I'm addicted to long passwords. Most people I know take a lot of pains to put in a tedious, totally unguessable combination of letters and numbers (and special characters too, if they're especially paranoid), and it's really weird when somebody like that has to give you their password (in an emergency, poor things...) on the phone. It goes something like this:

XYZ: Hey, I need a really, really urgent favour.
Me: Sure.

XYZ: I'm
(a) stuck in a traffic jam
(b) without my web-enabled cell phone
(c) my web-enabled cell phone's battery is out
(d) my IPHONE's battery is out (gotta give those rich people their own category ;) )
(e) at home (!!!!, you might say....but this used to happen a lot back in India, and it still does. When someone goes home, they are incommunicado. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, right...)

So, can you please login to my email and tell me if ABC has replied or not.
Me: Yeah, sure. What's the ID and the p-word?

XYZ: The login is xyz_awesome_dude@yahoo (ouch, ouch, OUCH!) and the p-word is...
Me: Wait a sec, man...that ID is just terrific. Has anybody told you that before? (snigger)

XYZ: (playing cool) Chalta hai yaar...Let me give you the password now. It's knph3101$1m.
Me: Huh??

XYZ: Aaaargh...I'll repeat...k-n-p-h, as in Kaho Na Pyaar Hai, 3-1-0-1 , that is the date 31st January, followed by the dollar sign, then the numeral 1 and the letter m, as in mummy.
Me: Hmmmmmmmmmm...!!!

(I fill in the fields with exaggerated care, trying to fathom what in the name of the holy Rajnikanth this password means...)

Me: (giving up on the above mentioned exercise) Yeah...it's opening, give it a second. By the way, what does this p-word mean?
XYZ: Well, don't bother about it. I know it's weird, but....

Me: (Butting in) No, no, no! I think it's an awesome password. I can never make up something like that. Tell me the thought process, coz you're going to change it anyway.
XYZ: Uhmm...well, it refers to my first date with my 1st ex-girlfriend, while we were still in school. We went to watch that movie in the old rickety theatre, you remember that, right? Yeah, so it was 31st Jan, and I had told her of my dreams to become a millionaire that day, and she was really impressed...you know how money-minded she was yaar...so anyway, that sort of stuck...

Me: ...and manifested itself here. That's quite a chain of thought. Incredible. By the way, what happened to that girl?
XYZ: (Desperate effort to change the topic) Hey, what about that email?

Me: Huh? Oh, yes. No, you haven't got any email. Hard luck.
XYZ: (I can sense him eyeing an easy escape) Alright. Sorry for the trouble, man. Thanks a million!

Me: Not so fast! What about the girl....you still in touch?
XYZ: Well, yes and no...I mean I scrap her once in a while.

Me: Hmmm. And what's she up to? She have another boyfriend? (Oh I love driving the nails in...)
XYZ: I think so...last I heard, she was seeing that guy in our class who used to drive his Dad's Merc around town.

Me: Oh! That's interesting...but don't feel too bad about it, I guess she just couldn't wait long enough for the million to materialise...hehe
XYZ: Uh...yeah...hehe (laughs limply). OK, then I'll catch you later. Bye!

Anyway, my most preferred tactic is to plonk in entire sentences in place of passwords rather than think too much. Oh, and my last password (since changed) was laalchadimaidankhadi.

Please refrain from being judgmental.
Thanks ;)

Finding Fischer

2008-02-09T07:00:00.000-04:00

It was turning out to be a really bad night when I woke up at 3 am after an hour of fitful, restless sleep. My head was throbbing with a pain that seemed to be getting worse, no matter what I did. Out of irritation and desperation, I finally took a pain-killer and waited for it to take effect. But infuriatingly, it wasn't working fast enough. So, I opened the computer and tried a combination of Pink Floyd and the New York Times to distract my attention from the pain.

I like the NYT for it's refined approach to news, as compared to CNN.com (I don't even know why I still visit that website, but I still do...) and sure enough, something on the top of the homepage caught my eye. It was an article by Dick Cavett (I don't know who he is, but at least I know now that he used to be a prominent TV personality) about his experiences with former World Chess Champion Bobby Fischer on his show. It was an engaging personal account of how comfortable Fischer had been on his appearances on Cavett's show. I had some recollection of reading about Fischer's eccentricity and his descent (I hate to be judgmental here, but I'm not getting the word I want) into anti-semitism and his fugitive status in the eyes of his native USA. After reading the article, I was captivated by the references to the champion's amazing genius and his status as an American Hero at his peak, something that is impossible to believe for a chess player.

I dug up another article by Garry Kasparov, the Russian champion for 2 decades till his retirement in 2005, in which he had spoken in glowing terms of Fischer's achievements and his legacy. It also happened to be an obituary for Fischer, who died last month in his adopted home, Iceland. That spurred me on to Google videos, where I found a documentary chronicling the life of the once-in-a-generation genius. I'm not sure I have the will to go on and talk about how I felt after reading and watching what is known about him, for he was a recluse for the better part of his life, and what he has said and done (or done and said, in that order in his life) polarises people irrevocably.

But I think it's a story which, though not unique, is still quite interesting in the amount of time it's protagonist is under intense scrutiny and in the volume of speculation and mystique that surrounds his persona. You can find the documentary here. The advertisements that are splattered over it are a nuisance, and the best way to deal with them is to fast-forward through them; don't wait for them to go away quickly, because they don't :)

2D Life: Really Clueless Cartoons

2008-01-27T09:27:00.000-04:00

I drew a few cartoons last night, and to appear very flippant about my lack of drawing skills, labelled them as 2D Life. I know this might appear to make no sense at all, but if I had to apologise for something, it would be the sick shade of green :P

Now will never be again

2008-01-27T08:42:00.000-04:00

It's been a day of very striking contrasts in world sport, as I see it. On one hand, I saw Adam Gilchrist play what will most likely be his final test innings. On the other, we had a Grand Slam champion not named Federer or Nadal for the first time in three years. Gilchrist has been one of my must watch cricketers for many years now. Ever since I've had some intelligent outlook on the game, I've marvelled at the way he played his cricket: full of enthusiasm, energy, and a never-say-die spirit. I've been held speechless by the number of highlight reels he has generated over the years, and most of all, he embodied everything that was great, and could possibly be great about a sport and the men who play it.

His clean hitting (sample this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPOOhFmUprA), his athletic catching (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3st72UDKIk) and his down-to-earth personality made him a stand-out cricketer in the era of increased policing of the game, brought about by many ugly incidents which will probably be talked about in the decades to come. It's true that in the heat of the moment, people have always, and will always, do things that are over the top. But in the last few years, with the explosion of live telecasts and sites like youtube, the amount of public reaction and expert analysis has gone through the roof. A player like Gilchrist has, though, invariably made the news for all the right reasons.

His style of play was such that I never associated him with his age. He played very unlike any other 36-year old sportsman I've ever seen, and that only made the news even harder to digest. I watched him play his last innings today, and as he departed after making a quickfire 14 off 18, it suddenly struck me that these moments will only come faster as days pass. I don't know about you, but for me, the end of the career of one of my boyhood heroes punctuated the inevitability of the passing of time. Feeling a certain age is not just about how old I am, the feeling of age is in fact the sensation of living in a certain period of time, with the same rules, the same pastimes, the same dreams and the same priorities. When I will look back at this time in my life, I was always going to bed at 4 am, Federer was always weaving his magic on the court, we were always talking about how drunk we were last night, every second guy was falling for some girl and in the same way, Gilly was always murdering bowling attacks around the world.

This feeling has been around for a few months now, with many of my friends graduating from grad school, a few people getting married and engaged, some people into their second jobs, some others on the way to owning big companies and one really talented, determined fellow is even about to release his first music album! Me and my friends laugh and crib about how such people have destabilised our notions of youth and the irresponsible, impulsive selves that we've chosen to identify ourselves for a long, long time.

Strangely, even as Djokovic won the Aus Open tonight, there was no real thrill at seeing him do it. I still feel much more moist-eyed when one of the old-timers does something really good. I still remember how I was in seventh heaven when Goran Ivanisevic finally won Wimbledon in 2001. That's nearly the only time I've been moved to tears while watching a match, and I don't think there's another man who deserved those tears any more than he did. That was the accomplishment of a titan of my generation, a man whom I idolised while growing up, a man for whose success I actually prayed. The flip side is, of course, that if you've supported Ivanisevic for a decade, like I did, it's very hard to get put off even when the guy you are rooting for loses :)

Take a good look around you folks, and even if you think that it isn't a whole heap of fun right now, it's the only time you'll be living through these moments. I'll never be 23 years, 5 months and 26 days old again, and I'm glad I get the chance to experience instants like these, even though the emotions don't last forever!

I'm normal => I'm made of plastic. Yeah, I know.

2008-01-15T05:08:00.000-04:00

I can't count the number of times I've been gripped by an idea or a feeling (or maybe sensation is a better word, it hardly gets enough time to develop into a feeling, i.e. I can't put a label to it) that I felt I should put down somewhere, that I should document. You know, just like that Facebook application that allows you to say 'Ritwik is feeling _________' (by the way, I'm feeling like I have irrevocably tangled innards right now....I'm having to type so many of these words again, and again, ouch). So anyway, I can't classify that sensation. The nearest I can come to talking about it is by simply saying what thoughts are running through my head. Just the other day, I had one of these moments of clarity when I said to a friend that I'm so sick of pacing the house and reading terrible (turrrrible, turrrible...as Charles Barkley would have said) and pessimistic news items on CNN.com, that I could do with some company. The only catch was that I would've bitten the head off of anybody who approached me at that point of time because I was in such a foul mood.

The logical and expedient answer to that rant was a very measured "Uh, I think you should just go to bed." And I know that it almost always works. It took me a while to find that out, but I can't put myself to sleep simply by shutting off my brain and letting it float away, far from the shores of madness nation. And, I'm remarkably drug-free (maybe too much for my own good) so sleeping aids aren't my prescription. I just let myself get so tired that I can't lift an eyelid (or hit a key, whichever happens later..hehe) and then I'm good to go.

There used to be a time, and a place, and a bunch of people that I knew, who didn't think that being weird was much of a disadvantage, socially. Perceptions of the world, each crazier than the other, were tossed around like joints in a dope club. We all relished to some extent, the variety of viewpoints and had some sort of pride in how tangential our views were, and yet how much sense they made.

But coming out of that cocoon was in almost all ways, a very bruising experience because in the normal scheme of things, I ended up dealing with a disproportionately large number of people who hadn't a clue that such errant minds existed in such self-congratulatory harmony with each other. In this new world, weirdness or simply, being different was not looked at very kindly. Call it fear of the unknown or call it insularity, there was something that drove people nuts when they saw somebody behave differently from their own rules of normal behaviour.

Or let's call them the advertised rules of normal behaviour. I haven't seen anybody, that I know well enough, to be anywhere close to what they consider normal. And really, the only people I think are normal are probably the ones I don't know well enough. So these people are no more deviants than I am, which is fine with me (I'm called a crank collector by some folks, but that's for another post), but what amuses me most is that they are quite desperate to conceal their quirkiness even when the person in front of them is a guy like me (who once never hid his weirdness, but I've mellowed...or become more manipulative, whatever you want to call it). I mean, how weird can people be? If you ask me, I'll always say, not weird enough. But, what I see is something of a denial in action, and the amount of high ground claimed over these issues is nothing but the world's largest garbage pile with stink included.

It's not unusual to find people being driven into a corner (that's another one of my weaknesses, sorry) and then breaking down for that instant and letting me peek into the little crack on the surface of their polished surfaces at the ghosts in the machine. It's like watching one of those videos in which dogs sneeze, because it comes out all of a sudden and it's very funny. However, the flip side to the entertainment is that (and that's why I don't try this with many people any more) they'll get all worked about it and go on the defensive. See if you can spot the phrase "That's just the way I am" floating around in one of these psychological moments (I still remember Poirot very fondly...sigh).

Personally, I've always enjoyed observing people, what they say, what they do, how they react to situations and especially, how they change under pressure of emotional stress or intense scrutiny. I'll admit that I'm not good at all at predicting outcomes in situations I'm personally involved with, but I've seen a lot of different emotions from people that I'd have never guessed existed inside them. I've come to enjoy the quirks of people and I absolutely despise the vain attempts at projection of normalcy. To some extent, you may fault me for being a rabble-rouser and a trouble-seeker, but I'm always thrilled by the prospects of making new discoveries about folks in such a scenario.

I grew up with the deeply impressed notion that being different is not only the key to your identity, but also inevitable. I know it's equally true that some quirks are not for public consumption, and are better kept locked up, to be enjoyed sparingly. Still truer is the advice that many people have given me: it is sometimes a disadvantage to be too open, especially if you're very trusting and take the plunge first. That move doesn't work with everyone, and it leaves you vulnerable to manipulation. But I suppose that's a choice that each of us makes. I'm not alone in the way I think, and I get along very well with people who share my respect for the infinite possibilities of discovery in human nature, however, in a finite life, like a game of poker, one must learn to make the most of even a bad hand :D

Wanted

2008-01-10T01:06:00.000-04:00

Settling scores...
Mending fences...
Building bridges...
Forgetting history

Spending all your money on fines and beer...
Peering out of a dirty window to find the moon...
Having nightmares about the door with the missing hinge...
Pretending all questions have answers

Ending each sentence with...
Wishing on fallen stars and hollow icons...
Climbing higher, and higher, and higher...
Only to fall deeper, longer, harder

Fishing for maps, ignoring the GPS...
Staring at the Sun, scouring the shadows...
Standing in line to lose your identity...
Shivering to death while you're at it

Mercury falling
Cold sunshine
Winds that blow you away
As the world passes you by

Writing songs with no music
Reading dead people's diaries
Talking to the ghosts of friends
Getting cheap thrills while the sand runs out

Wanted, a recipe for immortality
Wanted, a love which doesn't fade
Wanted, failure without a price
Wanted, success with no expiry date.....

Wanted, five minutes of your life back
Wanted, a kick on the backside
Wanted, better things to do
Wanted, a ban on bad poetry on the internet

Amen.

The Dance of Death :O

2007-10-16T03:17:00.000-04:00

Sorry. That's not quite true. In fact, that's not true at all. It's simply Iron Maiden sneaking through my choice of expression. Anyway, that's besides the point. The point is that I don't actually know how to dance. That, of course, includes all traditional dance forms that you can think of, and in my opinion, also any motion of the body that looks appealing, looks aesthetic.

I've always been told that I have a lot of energy and substantial flexibility, but for some reason that was as much credit I ever got. Being the narcissist that I am (not entirely true, but at least it's fair to say that I don't like to look at any other man, more than I like to look at myself!), I brushed off the rather clipped feedback as simply the inability to appreciate non-conformism.

However, the other day, one of my friends caught me on video at a party while I was "dancing" (quotes are attributed to Nipun Sinha :P). Now I don't seek the spotlight, but if you want to give me attention, I can't disappoint you, can I? I strutted my stuff (I wasn't the only one fooling around, thankfully) for a full two minutes of footage, and went back to DJing feeling like I had made a point. (Ha Ha!)

Two days later, Nipun sent me the video with the comment: "You must watch this. You will love it." The alarm bells always start to ring, no..toll, when he's grinning from ear to ear, and this time his Cheshire Cat smile had expressed itself amply in the form of a bunch of smileys on the Google Talk window. I accepted the file transfer and downloaded the video.

Then I played the thing.

My first reaction was, "Wow, my back moves like a flagellum!". The footwork looked more appropriate for a tennis court than for jiving to Chaiyya Chaiyya. The arms seemed to have minds of their own. And the picture of total randomness was finished by the goofy grin plastered on my face. I had indeed made my point. My M.O. on the dance floor is unique, and it requires a special kind of aesthetic sense to appreciate it. No wonder.

All my critics: I'm with you. You may not appreciate me, but that's no problem. Apparently, I don't have this special aesthetic sense either.

life in...lowercase

2007-06-29T05:13:00.000-04:00

too afraid of making a mistake
too tired to make the leap
too weak to take it on the chin
too impervious to let it sink in

too proud to try to bend
too hard to decipher
too deaf to hear the cries
too blind to see how time flies

too alone to reach out
too lost to find the trail
too high to fall and not shatter
too wasted to even matter

too many words to even start to say
too many debts to even start to repay
too many chains to try and break away
too many sins to try and pray

too ashamed to stay
too selfish to simply fade away
too easy to lead astray
too few reasons to last through today

too wrong to be true?
too bad to be you?
too dark a hue?
too much in a single life to rue?

too bad you can't see beyond the smoke
too bad the nightmare came before you awoke
never too late to snap out of it
never too late to tell the crowd of it...
it's my life, and i'm proud of it :)

The Eigenvalues of Life

2007-06-16T16:22:00.001-04:00

Lately, I've begun to see Life as an eigenvalue-eigenvector problem. Let's say that your life can be represented as a real-valued square matrix (Why square? Why indeed? The only answer I can provide is that they appear more elegant and more pliable to me. If you have reached a level wherein you can talk about your life as a non-square matrix, do let me know how you got there :) )

So, your life is a square matrix, and it has eigenvalues and eigenvectors. Now it so happens that some matrices have more distinct eigenvalues than others. Looking for a counterpart in life, let's say that it means that the greater the number of eigenvalues, the more diverse your interests in life are. If you have a single eigenvalue with a multiplicity equal to the order of the matrix, then you're too absorbed in just one thing in your life. The progression from these two extremes is continuous, which makes sense to me.

There is also the question of real and imaginary eigenvalues. What do I think of imaginary eigenvalues? I suppose it can mean that you're living in a world that is away from reality, and consequently, to keep yourself in equilibrium, you need your imaginary eigenvalues to occur in conjugate pairs. (Slightly flimsy, this part, I'll concede :) )

From eigenvalues, we come to eigenvectors. If you imagine the matrix of your life to be a rotation matrix (i.e. it acts upon arbitrary vectors, and transforms them to new vectors), then the eigenvectors are the ones that will not rotate at all. Implying, if you like, that they are the constants of your life. The core of your existence. Your comfort zones. Like base camps in expeditions. You may go out to explore the wilderness, but when the Sun goes down, you come back to your safe haven.

Now the eigenvalues and eigenvectors are definitely not unique. For a matrix of n^2 elements, you can get a set of eigenvalues with n elements. So, it suggests that inspite of being very different on the surface, we are actually not that dissimilar after all. And in our associations with people around us, we try to look for the same eigenvalue set, even though it may come from a very startlingly different-looking matrix.

I suppose it's the same thing with relationships. I've often been asked how I've been great friends with people who are so unlike me. The answer is probably similar to the hypothesis I just presented above.

Having said all that, I must pause and point out that inspite of having the same eigenvalues, the eigenvectors of two matrices might not be the same. And really, I think it would be a pity if it would be so. In my mind, every association I have should simultaneously nurture me, and challenge me. Bring me new sights and sounds everyday, and encourage me to expand my horizons. Perfection in people, or in relationships with people, is rather undesirable, because there is nothing to learn, nothing to adapt to. And invariably, the quest for that elusive perfection obscures the joys that being different can bring.

The human life matrix is not like the typical n=3 or n=4 matrices that I've (and most of us have) worked with. It has such an amazingly large number of eigenvalues and eigenvectors that the possibilities in being different are endless, and very exciting.

The only perfection I hope to achieve, and indeed, hope to find in others, is perfection in making the most of our imperfections.

:)

(all factual errors may please be attributed to the defective recall of a hopelessly romantic imagination!)

Crashing Hard, in your Backyard!

2007-05-17T11:05:00.000-04:00

(An experiment in a different theme and style, as compared to what I normally prefer)

Taking off, clear skies above
Heading into the setting Sun
Time runs fast enough, but still
No match for a heart on the run

My flight plan is in place
Compass proclaiming me on course
Can't wait to put this baby down
And walk through your doors

But I should've known
Even though I couldn't really
I'm flying right into trouble
And now I can see it clearly

It didn't take a storm
It didn't take turbulence
All it took was a blast of air
Distant voices, cold indifference

You've knocked my engine out
Is this trouble in paradise?
And I reach for my radio
Thumping heart, fear-struck eyes

I call out, "Mayday, Mayday!!"
But there's nobody who hears my call
But, hey...there can't be anybody
Only you knew about it all

Maybe I should turn back...
Or should I keep going on?
Don't think...there isn't any time
I'm already a speck on your horizon

I know you're looking at the sky
With your hands on your lips
Wishing you wouldn't have to see it
It's going to become one of 'em YouTube clips!

Don't tell me to save myself
My engine's out, but my heart's running
And I know exactly where to land
Look out! I'm coming, I'm coming...

An Onion for your thoughts?

2007-05-16T20:35:00.000-04:00

Feverishly, she peeled them away
Stripping off one layer
Then another...and yet another...
A curtain of sweat-soaked hair
Two green beads of crazed emotion
Despair writ large everywhere

"Can you tell me why
Parts of your self mutually belie
One second, take me so high
The next, leave me high and dry...

The core that I seek
Is swathed in covers that wreak
Panic, and leave me sapped, weak
The dam has begun to leak..."

Her hoarse laugh broke through
"You have more layers than onions, why...why?
What's there to hide, that keeps you shy??"

The slow swivelling of the head
Taking in the sight of opinions awry

Said he, as if swatting a fly,
"Strange that onions should come up
Maybe I too, can't help but make you cry..."

Run, Allan, run!

2007-04-24T06:34:00.000-04:00

But he was watching the ball, frozen in his own trepidation and uncertainty. So was Lance Klusener. But the difference was that he was running hard towards Donald. It almost seemed like the two of them were on different pitches, in different matches. And a generation's brittleness came to the fore in a few moments of farcical misjudgment, leaving those who followed in their footsteps to paper over the cracks, even as they tried to believe there were none at all....

If only Allan had run.

Looking in at me, locked inside myself...hmmm

2007-04-24T04:19:00.000-04:00

There have been times when I've wished for things in the manner of a man who knows that he has no say in the granting of his desire, and looks at the fulfillment of that desire as a departure from the odds governing its occurrence. In such a scenario, one feels happy if he gets what he wished for, but not too disappointed if he doesn't.

Then there are occasions when I'm very optimistic about the occurrence of an event, which is just a euphemism for saying that I'm certain that it will happen (I'm rather over-optimistic, I think)

A third situation which arises is when my gut feeling tells me that the probability of what I'm wishing for to happen is on the lower side, yet I yearn for its fulfillment with such an unreasoning desire that it scares me to see the ferocity of my own stubbornness. I find myself willing it to happen with all the might of my mental faculties till it blocks out everything else and releases its hold only when the mind gets drained of its capacity to focus on solely one objective. And all this, when sometimes I'm actually powerless to affect the occurrence of the event.

I wonder if you also get the feeling occasionally, that in spite of the fact that it is your brain, and your wishes, yet you are no more than a bystander in the manipulations of the mind. In any case, I suppose that the realisation that something needs to be fixed, is the first step to fixing it, isn't it? :)

Blogging from the classroom: PHYS 580 reloaded

2007-04-10T12:40:00.000-04:00

I wrote the following post while attending the lecture of one of my courses, called Biological Physics, about whose instructor, Dr. Mark Goulian, I had mentioned in an earlier post
---------------------------------------------------
April 10, 2007
Lecture Hall 3C6
David Rittenhouse Laboratories
University of Pennsylvania

1041 hrs: I had come to this lecture today with great hopes of finally doing justice to Dr. Goulian (henceforth, Dr. G) and his inimitable teaching. The semester's drawing to a close. I've already studied in another course what we're doing right now, and to top it all, I have 8 hours of solid sleep behind me! Yay!

But so far, it has been a strangely subdued class. The redhead in the 2nd row with the bobbing ponytail and animated expressions looks somewhat sedated. Her friend, the wooden-faced brunette, who normally keeps her hair flowing over her shoulders, has tied it up in a bun, and the stunning AND brainy (yes, that's right) dark-haired girl in the 1st row is having an off day too. No questions from her up to this point...

1049 hrs: The first question of the day from the last mentioned lady! And that is followed by the first collective guffaw from the students. Dr. G has just proven something that looks as convoluted as my DNA (and yours too...), and smells worse than bad fish. But he defuses the tension by capping the derivation with an irreverent "Who cares??!!". For now, I certainly don't, Dr. G!

Not everything looks weird though. Some things are going as they have always gone. The shock-headed guy sitting in front of me and the ABCD to my right look as routinely doped. The poker-faced fellow who always arrives in class with a biking helmet under his arm was 10 minutes late, as always. Good...I like some semblance of order.

Suddenly, Dr. G has a flash of inspiration and jumps on me," Blah, Blah...It was YOU who said that last week, RIGHT?". I take a second to regain my bearings, and affirm his suspicions. He looks as pleased as punch. Maybe I do ask the weirdest questions. I'm quite sure now that he remembers our discussion about ice creams and pluronics...

1101 hrs: Dr. G asks us a question while I'm scribbling this post, and he asks for a vote. The class is as split as the Lok Sabha, showing that it is a thorny matter indeed. I manage to get the answer right even though I had very little inkling as to what the question was :D

1106 hrs: For those of you, who had likened Dr. G to one of those Blue Men group performers who did the Mirinda commercials a few years ago, you're wrong. This guy beats them hands down. And he gets my thumbs up for doing it while talking about rate constants, rectifiers, binding proteins and beam theory all in a single sentence!!!

1113 hrs: Dr. G is also an accomplished cartoonist, and he uses the chalk and board extensively while teaching. In my opinion, it's a great gift to have when you're teaching something as visually involved as Biological Physics. he's talkign about proteins being pumped into lipid vesicles made from Endoplasmic Reticulum, and the whole class is listening, captivated. It is a wonder how superbly, and intuitively the living world works, apparently spontaneously, yet seamlessly, and Dr. G does a superb job of bringing it to us. And if you consider that this guy started out as a Theoretical Physics person at Harvard, and today he does experiments in Molecular Biology, you should be impressed. Even if you aren't sure if you should, take it from me. This guy is amazing!

1129 hrs: This is interesting, it really is. The engaging thing about discussing models is that they always leave the door open for doubters to ignore the advances in understanding made by the model and concentrate on pointing out the gaps instead. That's not a bad thing in itself, because it's only when we are sceptical, do we try to find better answers. Dr. G is certainly doing his bit, by fielding our inane questions, and treating them seriously too!

1136 hrs: In some ways, it's been a disappointing class because we've laughed hard only twice in just over an hour. Pity. And one of those occasions seemed more like an attempt to get the ball rolling. It didn't succeed. Dr. G isn't brooding or anything, though. Maybe he just had too much (or too little?) breakfast :D

1140 hrs: The windows of 3W6 give a panoramic widescreen view of perhaps one of the most pretty parts of the university, with the Penn Tower, the Franklin Field (our football stadium) and the classical-looking Towne Building all jostling for eyeballs. If I look a little lower, there's a grassy area with a tree (maybe magnolia, I'm not sure) laden with blossoms. There are wooden benches and squirrels, and in the early summer, you would find several people having their lunch there. Next to that area are Penn's tennis courts, where the women's team is practising right now. Enough said. I'm sure you get my drift. ;)

1146 hrs: Dr. G looks at the clock behind my head for the first time today. I must confess: I'm desperately hungry. There's only so much I can do on just a glass of milk. I'm sorry.

1150 hrs: And we're through for the day. I'm off for lunch. But before that, let me put on record that when I've finished the course, I will surely miss Dr. G and PHYS 580!

The Feel of Music

2007-04-03T14:12:00.000-04:00

I'm very opinionated and at the same time, very attached to my music. I tend to form correlations of people, times and places with songs very strongly, and even if I try, I am never able to shake off those links. For example, I haven't listened to Linkin Park and most of Enigma and Bryan Adams for about 3 years, and there is no sign that that will change.

On the other hand, there are some songs with which I am able to recall the best times of my life, and the uplifting effect of those songs is simply amazing. However, I've often wondered if it possible for a song to have the same effect on everybody who listens to it. I have a candidate for such a song. You can find it here

It's a song called Appalachian Fall by DJ Sammy, and is completely instrumental. I'll be keeping it uploaded for a few days, before removing it. Do let me know how you liked it, and whether it had the same effect on you as it has had on me, every single time I've heard it.

PHYS 580...beta version

2007-03-28T04:07:00.000-04:00

Phys...phys...phis...fiss....tain-tain-fisssss.....

This was supposed to be a post about the most deceptively useless class I've sat through, but now I'm feeling drowsy, and so it'll have to wait. This post, as deceptively useless as its subject, will remind me to come back to the tale I want to tell. In the meantime, let me introduce you to the Professor who takes the class. Absurd guesses regarding his actions (antics?) in class are very welcome!

More later!

Six degrees

2007-03-25T03:48:00.000-04:00

On the merry-go-round
Of a tired mind
On a lonely night
Of a long winter

They all come back to you
one by one, like the
dripping of water from
the leaky tap in the kitchen

All the memories that
you wanted to keep
and all those you wished
would just go away and get lost

The carousel spins slowly
slowly, ever so slowly
never letting you miss a thing
so slowly that it would take another life

to go back and see those
three-hundred-and-sixty degrees
of a life that passed by
in little more than a blink of an eye

tell me if it isn't so
oh yes, you can't say no
that some parts of the pie
were sweeter than those nearby

turning round, and round
you found yourself smiling
at the three-hundred-and-fifty-four
degrees, you wanted to see again

but between the lights of
the brightest past
between the stories of victory
of treasures vast

there lie the spaces
of darkness, dissipation
indelible, on the pages
of history, of recollection

can you face them,
your agents of persecution?
can you smother the cries
of the pain of ambition?

between the reality
and dreamed-of perfection
there's always more than just
six degrees of separation...
-------------------------------------
This was an accidentally-conceived alternative spin on the term "six degrees of separation"

Thoughts on the World Cup thus far

2007-03-23T17:26:00.000-04:00

It's been nearly 10 days since the Cup began, but I think it was only after watching India lose to Sri Lanka and limp out of the tourney, that I felt compelled, or let's say, moved sufficiently to write something on the goings-on.

To get this out of the way, I'll say that it was a disappointing way to go out for the team, which had shown the ability to live up to promise, playing effective cricket without riding on sensational individual performances. As I watched the dismemberment of the top order, I was sad, even sympathetic, at what was happening. There have been so many occasions in the past, when I have felt anger at Indian losses, but today, the sense of helplessness that pervaded the batting effort could not evoke such strong emotions.

Going into the championship, I felt, for perhaps the first time, among the 3 WC's that I have watched with some kind of intelligent perspective, that the team had a good chance of doing well, and even the thoughts of losses were invariably linked to images of a team fighting hard, and going down to the might of a superior opponent with its pride still intact. I would like to think that I had reasonable and well-founded expectations. It was as true then, as it is now, that we were missing a bowling spearhead, but the line-up had demonstrated its capacity to overcome that disadvantage and still win games.

I had never expected the team to win, but I was looking forward to the Super 8's, when they got themselves into a tangle by coming out under-cooked mentally against Bangladesh. Perhaps I'm too lenient, but the first thought that came into my mind was that they had an off-day, and they would surely bounce back from it. Today, I realized that I was wrong, not because they could not bounce back, but because in a tournament with the format this one has, off-days are blunders, and more likely than not, fatal. I also realized that even though the team did superbly in 2003, I probably gave them less credit than they deserved. That tournament had a more forgiving format, and yet the team won 8 games in a row between defeats to Australia, against quality opposition, and with convincing margins. That side did not have off-days at crucial junctures, even though the lopsided losses to Oz were in the same bracket as the losses in this Cup.

So, were Sri Lanka the better team today? They were, in hindsight. But this game could have been so much more closer had there been calmer and more sensible minds on the field. The dismissals of 4 of the top 6, to me, were similar because they were all results of what I like to call brain fades, blind spots in judgment. The tension and pressure were so palpable that anybody would have called it quits for Indian hopes after 25 overs of their innings.

This will inevitably be clubbed together with the demise of Pakistan to make a very succulently amazing statement, but I make a distinction between the two. The Pakistanis had come into the Cup looking woebegone, and their campaign never even looked as if it had even started running, let alone taken off. But as their loss to Ireland showed, just how far they had slipped was hidden by the fact that the opposition they played before the championship was considered capable of beating them.

However, I think I've said enough, and I'm looking forward to enjoying more marquee match-ups from hereon, especially Oz vs South Africa tomorrow. On a sadder note, the death of Bob Woolmer was a great shock, and now that it has been confirmed that it was not natural (I can hardly bring myself to use the word murder, it upsets me so much), the shock has given way to dismay. There are so many things that come to mind, and I'm sure every person who has some degree of perspective on sport, and even more so, defeat in sport, would feel anguished too. Sambit Bal has written a comprehensive article on the same in Cricinfo, which I would definitely want every cricket fanatic to read and absorb. The deluge of public reaction to the article shows that there are many who share similar views, but a closer look at the feedback shows up some issues with the way we in India perceive the sport and the players.

The most common comments that I've read so far are "the lack of accountabilityof the players to the people" and "players are interested only in making money" and others expressing the same sentiment. Firstly, it's not obvious to the folks making these statements that technically there is no accountability and there can never be any accountability, NOT because there is no such thing, but because the grounds on which such accountability is being demanded are hollow. If the players were being paid by the government, and hence by the taxpayers, then such a sentiment would undoubtedly justified. But it's not so at all. Cricketers earn huge sums of money because the people elevate them to the status of Gods, and allow them to be even considered for such astronomical payments. I am sceptical about their value as brand ambassadors. I am not convinced that their would be a drastic difference in the sales and consumption of various products, and more so, competing product, if the cricketers were removed from the calculations. After all, rival companies are both employing their services, and in popularity stakes, apart from perhaps Tendulkar, all the others nullify each other's effects.

So the gist is, if you're the ones who allow them to earn that kind of money, then you're also the ones who can take it away. After all, cricketers who fade from public memory are consigned to the 'expired' bin very quickly. So what is the point? The point is, sadly, that we are a country of a billion people, and just as there are failures and successes in any society, we have our fair share too (maybe more than our fair share, I'll concede). In such a country, you do not descend into anonymity and neglect, you rise from it. It's a nation of people who were denied opportunities to achieve their goals in life, and on top of that, many of them have seen the unfair side of life at almost every juncture. In many a moment of sheer frustration I have called the Indian people a bunch of losers, who live off the the glory and success of their chosen ones, such as actors and cricketers. With little to look forward to in terms of personal advancement, the average person looks to them to provide his thrills and his ecstasy, and the ugliness of hurt dreams rears its head every time the team does badly. The media adds fuel to the fire, and the result is very, very unpleasant.

Being in the US, I'm thankful that I won't have to see the hate and fault-finding campaigns that are surely ready to come out, all guns firing. I'm so glad to be away from it all, even though there is little else to be glad about.

Blast from the past...literally!

2007-03-14T06:09:00.000-04:00

When I was very young, I often had a hard time falling asleep at night, and I used to lie awake long after all the lights in the house had been turned out. All, except one. The coloured low-wattage bulb that seemed to do a better job of casting shadows on the walls and the floor, than to illuminate. In the summer, the sound made by the fan in my room filled the silence of the night, but in winter, there was absolutely nothing to fill the vacuum, save for the occasional barks of the dogs, or the whistle of the night-watchman, or the rumble of trains passing through the small station. Most of the long-distance trains made their stops in Roorkee during the night, and I could tell which train was passing by, if only they had managed to stay on schedule :)

And then there were the sirens of the trains, carrying over miles, accompanied by the unmistakable sound of the wheels on the rails. Sometime there were short bursts, sometimes long and drawn out. Lying there, under the covers on such a winter night, I used to think. Think about many things, talk to myself, let my imagination loose, free to find shapes in the shadows, to make wild conjectures about the odd sound that broke the stillness, hear the low squeak of the mice in the house, and guess where they were hiding, or simply wonder what I would do if one of them decided to climb on top of me!

And in the middle of those chains of thought, of fantasy, the sound of the horn of a train was always exciting, bringing with it visions of places I'd been to, and yet more fantasies about places that lay unexplored by me. It evoked the sense of excitement that a lone explorer in the woods experiences as he hikes up the hill, wondering what the view would be like from the top. I used to imagine myself sitting at the window of such a train, as it went scything through the darkness with the light on its engine. I could feel the wind on my face, as I looked out into the night, seeing practically nothing but assorted shapes of darkness and the odd light in a hut or a dhaaba on the highway running next to the tracks. I dreamed that I was going away to some destination that I had found on the railway time-table. Some place I had never been to, but the kind of place whose name sounded nice when you said it aloud. Some place away from home. Far away. And yet, it wasn't the thrill of reaching that place that used to send a chill down my spine. It was simply the excitement of the traveller, the man on a journey, in which sense, I guess I could say that the journey was a destination in its own right.

As I sit here in my room, next to my open window, I can hear the siren of a train wailing through the night, and it brings back old feelings, thoughts, recollections so vivid and yet sufficiently hazy, that I don't quite know if they're my own memories or just figments of a romantic imagination. But I guess I don't dream of going away from home any more, at least, not all the time. It is but natural, you know, because where I live is just where I am physically, and even home has become a destination now...

Looking at Me

2007-03-08T02:52:00.001-04:00

a shape-shifter
a random number
a ticking bomb
deep in slumber

a reflection shrouded in smoke
a doubt at the back of the mind
a nagging memory, like a tape
with no rewind

just a lump of clay
with a backbone
with a few grey cells
maybe best left alone

like the views past curtains in my windows
like colours in black-n-white photos
like the secrets in a magician's shows
like the gold at the feet of the rainbows
like legends, true and imagined
as for reality, well...who knows?

On the road!

2007-03-05T18:56:00.000-04:00

I'm an incurable romantic, as far as long road trips are concerned. In particular, I love the feeling that I've left work, home and boredom behind, and I help things along by pretending I'm never going to return to them again :)

There are so many things that change when I'm on the road, or travelling, in general:

1) I have meals at normal hours: At home, there are a thousand distractions, and then there's laziness, and there's sometimes just nothing to eat till Ankur comes home...but, when you're travelling, food rises in the priority list to near the top, because there is nothing to wait for except for the eating joint of my choice, and if it's hot under the Sun, then a brief respite is always welcome.

2) I'm not online: Yes! That is a big deal. I think I shouldn't bother to explain this one!

3) I can hum songs with no fear of being laughed at: This isn't really true, because I'm not afraid of criticism, especially about bedroom and bathroom singing, which makes no sense anyway. However, under the cover of the roar of the engine, I am virtually fearless.

4) I can call people up and tell them what they're missing: Truth be told, a good fraction of the enjoyment of travelling is its capacity to generate anecdotes, often massaged with a more than a pinch of salt. And if you are out to do better things than visit relatives, then you have a greater chance of seeing beautiful places, taking breathtaking photos and eating weird food. Your pals at home, meanwhile, are unanimous in their envy.

5) I get to read maps: I'm a map fanatic. I just love journeying through towns with quotable names; I love drawing up road maps, navigating, looking forward to the changing landscapes, checking the odometer for the miles travelled, and all that kind of (so you think) pointless stuff. No wonder the Casio Pathfinder PAW-12001V is the watch on my wrist :)

6) Some trips turn into battles of attrition: And then it's the survival of the fittest. Mostly, I come out looking better than the rest of my gang. Adverse conditions bring out the masochist in me, and it's very ugly. But, I still don't mind it. Makes for amazing tales to tell!

7) The radio stations: Some of the FM stations are simply fantastic, and normally you get a bunch of them, so if you don't like the music that you're hearing, you simply twist the knob.

I'm sure that isn't all, but I think I've covered most of the important things. Oh wait, did I mention the rather obvious fact that I get to sit in a respectable car?

;)

Untitled

2007-03-05T16:13:00.000-04:00

so you thought
that the Freak Kingdom was
not your type of place
and your incompatible normalcy

and then you decided
to give it all up
hit the road that leads out
into the promise of amnesic bliss

ha! you so wanted to see
the looks on their faces
when they found out you had
gone away, with no goodbyes, no tears

you'd wanted to look back over
your shoulder and find them calling
oh yes, you wanted to hear it,
if only to leave them in your wake

how long will it be
i hope, less than the man before you
before you see that there is nothing
to see on the road ahead

the mirage of your freedom
the sirens and their songs
of the fabled escape
of the thirst that can kill, but can never be killed

running away is so damn easy
until it becomes so unbelievably
hard, and the sights you wanted
to see, end up behind your back

you're a runaway
but you're no fugitive
nobody wants to bring you back
nobody cares if you're gone

it was all yours to lose
it was all yours to give up
or to throw away, into the quicksand
of irreversibility, of prodigality

you're no odysseus
listen to that little voice
inside your head, and turn back
if you don't, well, i'm here to count you down

once you turn your back on them
they'll tell themselves that it was good
riddance to rubbish that was once good
can you take that and live with it?

it's going to take all the running
you can do, just to stay where you
are now, and that means either
forgetting what you ever had, and won't ever have

or planting the seeds of your own
Freak Kingdom in the desolation
of the desert sands made by the bones
of those that withered to their demise

but, i'll tell you this
what if you have what it takes to make
an oasis of your dreams
that can pull them from their sad gardens

on the other side of the desert
he who runs away, has but two ways
to end, either to rue, or to rule
remember, shattering hearts make no sound

in the swirling, blinding, deafening
winds, but if the world's too small
for you, then you've to go farther
than the man you followed out here

either they'll pull you back
or you'll reel them in, think about it
and tell me how that sounds to you
running away forever, you've nowhere to run

this is the playground of your visions
dig in the heels, plant that flag
and dare the sun to strike you down
nobody remembers the faceless names in the sand

but if it's all going to end one way or the other,
you'd rather go out in a blaze of glory, flying high, shining bright

a supernova explosion it may be,
but might be a majestic volcanic burst too,
it might be the flight of icarus,
but what if you had wings of fire...?

Hush...I'm dreaming...

2007-02-19T03:51:00.000-04:00

I looked out the window
as the world drifted to sleep
in the shadows of the lights
lit to light up the darkness in its dreams

The snowflakes tumbled down
from the heavens, swirling,
breathing silent life onto the streets
putting the covers on the exhausted

I step out my door
and look the cold straight in the eye
The lamps are but fireflies
Beacons they may be, but no fire in them

They choose to chase their visions
in the light of the day
while I roam the paths that lie
deserted, cold, in the interludes between the sun

Don't they know what they're missing?
why do they have to dream
with their eyes shut, and boots off?
is this spectacle waiting for an audience?

I'm doing justice to His creation
in speechless admiration of the pristine
yet moving force of the scenes
He etches tirelessly through the night

But am I?
in the solitude of my ecstacy
have i left some dreams
out here in the cold, to wither?

Do all those who wander
have to get lost?
Do all those who stay on the path
make sacrifices worth their weight in gold?

Oh, to be a daydreamer
Living out the days in my imagination
And waking the nights to find the joys
Of a life they call wasted, with no regrets.

Amen.

Garbled confessions

2007-02-02T21:14:00.000-04:00

Overcome with a flood of so many nameless emotions, and inexplicable sensations, with no control over my next thought. Switch on the music, push up the volume to max, and starve the brain of space to think, because thinking won't help. Let it pass...

Rediscovering the joy in the dismay

2007-01-19T08:43:00.000-04:00

I just saw Andy Roddick dump Marat Safin out of the Australian Open in the 3rd round in 4 sets, including 2 tie-breakers. The match ran over 3 hours, and the quality of tennis was outstanding from both players. I've always had a soft corner for the temperamental types of players and teams (somebody did some research on this...I'll try and dig up that article in another post), and Marat has been one of my favourites ever since he dismantled Sampras in that amazing US Open final in 2000.

But going into his 28th year now, he's proven himself to be an underachiever of colossal proportions. Even before Federer came around and started winning everything, Safin was playing hide-and-seek with himself and with his fans, squandering his career away, while winning over hearts wherever he went with his supremely uncomplicated and unconquered nature. He turns 27 on January 27, and he will have, to show for nearly a decade of efforts, 15 titles, including 2 Grand Slams, which is both surprising, and not-so-surprising.

Today, he produced some enthralling tennis, but was defeated by a player whose combination of skill and method proved too good for his largely inspired, yet inconsistent, performance. It was the second tennis match that I watched live on TV after arriving in the US (the first being Federer's dismissal of Blake in Shanghai), and the moment of my favourite's loss brought with it feelings very familiar, which had been lost somewhere for the past few months.

Back in college, competing with a pack of guys who were very nearly at the same level as me, victory and defeat were regular ingredients of a memorable period of my life. I've not been a good loser, ever, in the sense that I lacked the desirable calmness and stoicism in the hour of defeat, even though I never retained even a smidgen of ill-will against anybody I lost to, and generally recovered well after a loss. However, the flood of self-reproach and dismay made THAT moment a very hard one to live through.

Since joining grad school, I haven't been involved in any competitive activity outside academics, and those days had receded into the distant past. I've often wondered at the emotional changes I've undergone, some of which I may not even be aware of. An existence devoid of any strong emotions doesn't feel like me at all. And it took Marat's defeat to awaken me to this realization. It feels so good to experience the upwelling of blood in the veins and tears in the eyes.

To rehash a cliche, I feel alive again!

Update to the previous post

2007-01-16T00:22:00.000-04:00

The decision has come quickly, and Herschelle Gibbs has paid the price for, what is in my view, indiscretion and simple bad luck: http://content-usa.cricinfo.com/rsavpak/content/current/story/276497.html

I don't mean to justify what he did, and apparently some of the things that he had said were too bad to be even hinted at in print. Saurabh had this to say about my earlier post, wherein I think he has raised the larger issue of the ghost inside the machine, rather than just the accident caused by a combination of circumstances. He says,

"..are the ideas of right and wrong based upon locality and convenience? the remarks - whatever they were - were found to be offensive by the committee. now, to say that "they were not meant for the public, but for the team"... doesn't make then right anymore."

I agree that the fact that Gibbs was caught mouthing whatever he was mouthing indicates something beneath the surface, namely the presence of some deep-rooted contempt and derision for Asian people. What surprises me is that Gibbs should be the one implicated, because he has, for a long time, been an automatic selection in the team along with Makhaya Ntini. Both these players have surpassed expectations in SA colours, while also making the stated agenda of including coloured players an easy one to implement.

Coming back to the point that I was trying to impress earlier, I'm less than enamoured with the idea that Gibbs deserved censure for what his opinions were, rather than that he was caught expressing them. It's not the politically correct thing to say, but I think it is fair to say that most, nay all, of us go through entire lifetimes addled with unreasonable and (at times) unfounded opinions on people and their philosophies. It's just that nobody comes asking us what we think, and most of us would rather keep our mouths shut than go and stick up for our trenchant views against people who differ.

Within the rules of the game, Gibbs got his just desserts, and in the future, I'm sure we won't hear any such chit-chat from him, but hey, he can always find ways to beat the microphone.

Adios!

"What is said on the field should stay on the field."

2007-01-14T23:28:00.000-04:00

The First Test between Pakistan and South Africa is being played at Centurion, and I found this article as I was burrowing through Cricinfo for the latest: http://content-usa.cricinfo.com/rsavpak/content/current/story/276456.html

The gist of the article is this:
"...South African officials are investigating an incident during the fourth day of the first Test against Pakistan in which an unnamed South African allegedly made an insulting remark which was heard by television viewers around the world.

"They're like animals," was the comment picked up by a stump microphone which apparently had not been turned off as normally happens soon after a ball has been bowled..."

SA coach Mickey Arthur was understandably displeased about the whole affair, and he clarified that the comment was not made at any Pakistan player, though he stopped short of saying exactly whom one of his players thought were like animals :)

It seems that SA left-armer Paul Harris was abused by some Pakistan supporters while he was fielding at the boundary, and the people in question were ejected from the stadium. While the comment itself leaves much to the imagination, I guess I would not buy the idea so easily that it was an insult aimed at a player. The test has been played in good spirit, and as I write this a somewhat interesting final day remains to be played out. However, several people don't believe so, and Arthur revealed that he had received complaining emails from Pakistan!

The whole incident is, on the surface, thoroughly hilarious, as far as I'm concerned. It is one thing to heap the responsibility of being politically correct, humane and compassionate human beings on prominent sportsmen, given the amount of spotlight they are in, and it is yet another thing to expect them to be gentlemen even on the field, EVEN when they are speaking among themselves!

Let us say that Mr. JH Kallis thinks that XYZ resembles some kind of animal, and he says so to Mr. HH Gibbs, in a perfectly amiable conversation, and they share a snigger at a men's joke. But that becomes a problem for a guy sitting 5,000 miles away, and armed with a deep distrust of the South African psyche with regards to racial issues, he gets incensed and addresses his grievances to the SA coach.

Really, I can't imagine how Arthur would have reacted to the first sight of such a complaint!

There are other things to think about as well. For the sake of raising questions, here I go:

One: Is calling someone an animal serious enough for Match Referees to get involved, as Chris Broad might do?
Two: How useful are the on-field microphones? Are they creating more chaos than the benefits they provide?
Three: Should the live feed be made accessible to television viewers, when there is no monitoring of the same?
Four: Was it right for the SA player in question to call the unruly spectators 'animals'? (assuming they were the ones being referred to)
Five: Are subcontinental viewers more touchy than they should be when it comes to racial issues?
Six: The SA players see as much sledging from the crowd in Australia, as a pig sees mud. Would Aussie supporters have been called 'animals'? (I don't imply that those folks would have been invited for drinks, but would the terms of endearment be any different?)
Seven: Which type of animal, Mr. SA player? Pleaeeeeeeeeeese! I SO want to know how good your zoology is!

:D

Adios!

The Last About Me I'm ever going to write on Orkut :D

2007-01-13T20:54:00.000-04:00

Take a picture
Or take two, if you should.
Give me an excuse
To never forget where we stood.

But for all you know
Even though I'll save
What I wanted to remain,
I might also feel
What I ne'er wanted to feel again...

-----------------------------------

Deviance....without defiance.

-----------------------------------

TO ANYBODY....who has played sports or has felt as one in heart and soul with the tennis player who hits that last forehand into the net after a gruelling 5-setter to signal his defeat......the basketballer who goes for that three-pointer with one second remaining on the clock, and misses it......the marathon runner who strains every muscle, every neuron, every bead of sweat on his body on the home stretch, only to see himself overtaken by a fitter or possibly smarter rival........the footballer who finds himself with the ball staving off an attack on his own goal, with his team a goal down and with 10 seconds to play......the fielder who makes an acrobatic pick up and throw, knocks the stumps down, but cannot stop the batsmen from stealing the winning run.

TO EVERY ONE of you out there who knows what it feels like to be beaten , and to hate yourself for it. Not because you didn't give it all you had, but because it was all you had, and no more.

TO ALL THOSE who didn't allow this to break them down, or push them over....you are my heroes.

-----------------------------------

PAINT your favourite smile on your face, clothe yourself in your best suit of irreverence, and be prepared to turn a sneering, insolent face to all that life throws at you. Even if it means telling lies to those who will be the most pained to see you in pain, even if it means forgetting how close you are to being somewhere you don't want to be, even if it means being misunderstood and criticized for trying to shield those you care for from the heat of your own sorrows.

IF THAT is what it takes to keep the world around you moving, then do it. Who knows how many people out there are seeing the world from your broad shoulders?

-----------------------------------

THE BIGGEST challenge in life is to be able to live with who you are, what you have, what you want and whether all these put together make sense or not.

THE NEXT hardest thing to do is to have the courage to ask yourself these questions, and actually try to answer them.

I hope to be able to do both these things by the time I'm through with my life.

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(copied from my Orkut homepage on Jan. 13, 1954 hrs)

Self-improvement

2007-01-13T17:38:00.000-04:00

I've never been a huge fan of the self-help genre of books, primarily due to 2 reasons: one, I am too entrenched in my own set of beliefs to yield to any external pressure, and two, they have this tendency to further their cause by propagating the idea that there is definitely something wrong with you and that the way to change that is ridiculously simple. The catch is that you are probably not smart enough to figure it out by yourself. Hence you need help, you need sugar-coated words of consolation, you need elaborate thought channels wherein you delude yourself with some peculiar thoughts, all in the name of healing and improvement.

As I grow older, and with my relocation to the US, I've become more aware of the weaknesses in people's mental make-up that these works target. As long as you're in a close-knit society of any sort, be it your group of friends in class, your mates in the hostel, or best of all, in a caring, understanding family, you get to observe people at very close quarters, and for considerable lengths of time. You get to appreciate the goodness in them, but more importantly, you regularly come face-to-face with the fact that nobody is even close to perfect.

It seems to alleviate the frustration that builds up inside at your own shortcomings, and you take a more realistic look at yourself. What's more, you don't spend hours mulling over these things and feeling a growing sense of desperation at the state of affairs in your life.

If I were to make a list of the things that I would like to remove from my psychology, then it would undoubtedly make very gloomy reading. And in my case, the step up to the next level of education has been accompanied by more isolation, which is partly due to circumstances, and partly due to the time it takes to adjust oneself to the new circumstances, provided an adjustment is possible, and you want to make it.

In such a scenario, I've fallen into the trap of excessive introspection more than once, and knowing how useless it is, I guess it should be unlikely that I would walk down the same road again. But the point is that, sometimes you are so fed up with trying to work out things by yourself, that you wish there were easy answers. That feeling is impressed further when you look around and see people ostensibly happy, occupied and leading 'normal' lives. And you ask, is there something drastically wrong with me?

Truth is, there probably isn't. You are no more sad, or confused, or weird, or crazy than the next person. But how do you know that with certainty? You don't, because you don't spend enough time in the company of people to be wiser. You end up feeling despondent, and it's something that arises out of almost nothing tangible. It's considerably worse if you have a slightly dim opinion of your abilities and your skills, because low self-esteem makes you feel like you're slowly sinking into anonymity, nothingness. Nobody cares for you, and even if you were to scream out in panic, you wouldn't be heard.

It's here that self-help gurus step in, and give you what seem to be the elixir: personalized solutions to all your issues. Prioritizing the scattered elements which sting like the thorns in a bush. Most of the people I'm in touch with seem to be affected by a pervasive loneliness. People look for support and attention from complete strangers, while traveling in a bus or at some get-together. It might even be possible that they speak to folks they don't know, more than they speak to people they do know. There are scores of general courtesies which the average person observes, such as saying thank you at every possible instance, or wishing each other a good day and many more. But I have no doubt that inspite of these gestures of civility, they can never make one feel at home or wanted in a way that our people in India can.

It is ironic that while you won't have any interaction with a person performing a certain function on a daily basis In India, as compared to that with his counterpart in the US, but still, the forced smiles and machine-like sweet nothings, thrust your own loneliness in your face. I concede that it's not the only factor that makes one feel a certain way, but it is so glaring, that I couldn't help noticing it, like most of the other Indians I've spoken to.

So! Are we all destined to finding all our solutions in the proverbial teacup? The cup with the magic concoction that cures all ills? I would like to think not. I'm still going to heal myself with the magic mixture of a willingness to fight the odds, and plain, simple, effective passage of time.

Adios!

That song you played for me...

2006-12-24T08:02:00.000-04:00

....transported me back in time, to a moment when I was someone else, when I thought differently, when I knew different people. Nothing remains the same, yet it seems so much so...the quickeming of the pulse, the desire to block everything out, the wanderings away from the path we travelled a thousand times....without ever getting anywhere.

Sometimes, when I hear that song again, I don't know how to think. Should I benumb my mind to its effect, so that I'll never feel like this ever again? It seems like a good idea. Face your demons and remove them once and for all. You can do it. But then, it doesn't feel like such a brainwave any more. I want to remember those things, because today, when I remember them, they give me the confidence in myself that I sorely need.

Do we cease to remain who we are, if we don't have our memories with us? Of course, if you agree that the real "you" was the one you saw in the mirror yesterday. But was it? Which leads me to conclude that there is probably no well defined being such as "Me".

In my case, I just look back over my shoulder and see my shadow following me. It has no face, and no colour, no expression. I paint it as I feel then and there, and that becomes the "Me" that may or mayn't exist.

Funny, isn't it?

But what about the songs of the days when I was blissfully ignorant? Oh...I so want to be there again...

Your Fortune Today

2006-12-08T21:17:00.000-04:00

You will write a blog entry today.

Ha!

Sucker!!!

Look Me in the Eye...

2006-11-10T00:02:00.000-04:00

It's fun
Being the Sun

Being Today's light
Not knowing the Darkness
Of Tomorrow's fright

Being The Warmth
Good enough for me
Or You, or for Both

Then at Night
You think I'm gone
Putting the Shadows away
Turning off the Furnace
While You hide in the Dark
Thankful to escape the Heat

But where is the Shade
For Me?
But where is the Breeze
For Me?

Lonely Sun
Contrary Sun

Shining On
Burning On

You know why?

Because
The best way to dodge
A peering gaze
A deceitful gaze
Isn't a curtain
Isn't a smokescreen
Isn't a maze

When you're the Sun
It is
The ability to say
"Look Me in the Eye"

About Adjectives

2006-11-06T02:10:00.000-04:00

Even though I can use my fair share of adjectives pretty well, I'm not a great fan of theirs. Using adjectives is like indulging in self-pity...once you don't do it, you feel you'd be better off doing it, and once you've gone and cried your heart out, you find that nothing's changed, and that you could've done better.

When I use adjectives, words to describe things, or people, or feelings, I feel a great thrill of having so many arrows in my quiver, and I spare no effort to try and use the most apt words in my collection. But somehow, especially in the case of people, and of natural beauty, the harder I try, the more dissatisfied I feel.

I remember that when I was about 8 or 9 years old, we had to mug up what we called 'anek shabdon ke liye ek shabd' in Hindi. It was one of the easiest parts of the syllabus, because when I sat with my Mum before the exam, and she helped me revise, it was perhaps the only type of question in which she had to speak more than I did while answering! :)

I remember taking an inordinate amount of pleasure in being able to use these words-standing-for-oh-so-long-phrases. At that time, it felt very good that I was able to cheat my way out of writing long sentences. Just like everybody likes long mathematical expressions to reduce to concise LH and RH sides! However, with time, as I began to write more, to write better, not just in my own opinion, but in everybody's, I found these abridgements of expression to be very suffocating. What was worse, every one used them!

It was no longer a big deal to call a scenery 'pristine' or 'enchanting' or any of the umpteen shortcuts there exist to disguise the fact that, even if you tried, you wouldn't be able to much justice to the object of your fascination. It was then, that I decided that I had to unlearn some things. Even if it were to come at the cost of not being lazy!

It's taken me some time to gather the courage to avoid using adjectives when I really, really want to do a good job of describing something very moving, or very beautiful or very exciting. I've moved away from the adjective as a descriptive tool, towards the analogy, or even towards a more visceral, blow-by-blow account of the way I have felt at those times when I felt overwhelmed by what I experienced.

By this, I mean that I've tried to link experiences in one panorama, to those in another. And believe me, the similarities are striking, and very thrilling to discover. Too often, we condense our emotions into cliches and banalities, rather than try and express the feelings as they came, one following the other, like a river through its meanders. The start and the end may not be very far apart, but the beauty of the landform lies in the circuitousness of the path.

It's hard sometimes to simultaneously experience, and to record, the cascade of feelings that you go through. But for a few blissful moments after the experience has passed, you can still see those sights, hear those sounds and feel that touch, as if it were still there. Realization dawns slowly, and if you're really serious about capturing the essence of the moment, that's the time for you. And you know as well as I do, that that feeling is not a combination of adjectives. It's like a seasonal river in flood, breaking down the dams that strive in vain to hold it within its banks.

You are certain to be washed away, but the day you learn how to keep your eyes open even while your helpless little skiff is at the mercy of the torrent, you'll know exactly what I mean.

Motive Force, Idleness Threshold and Relapse Resistance

2006-10-08T23:38:00.000-04:00

The first pushes you over the second and you have the third if you don't tend to fall back.

I'm not talking about myself. This is the way a disgruntled tech guy sounds.

And I guess I've already admitted I'm disgruntled.

Zephyr in the Woods

2006-10-06T21:03:00.000-04:00

(Reproduced from an older blog of mine...I am rather hazy about what I was thinking when I wrote it, though [ :( ])

A grey sky
A desolate landscape
An empty horizon
A deathly silence....or is it?

When the eyes have given up
looking out for the elusive sign
When the hands reach out
for a feel that's no longer there
When the ears strain to catch
notes that once filled space

My face feels it...
slow, gentle, deliberate
or can I call it afraid?
Flowing through the leaves
Brushing the trunks
Kissing the wild flowers
And...

Maybe there's a word from someone afar
Maybe there's a feeling waiting to be felt
Maybe it's the last there ever will be
Maybe it's now or never

Grappling with a trepidation
The solace of arrival may well be
Overwhelmed by the loneliness of parting
Welcome it with open arms, if you must
But know that you will never hold it for ever
Enticement; entrapment; what punishment!
But then...
It may all be nothing
Or it may hold a storm in its wake
What do you have for me?
O zephyr in the woods...

Stills (or should they be called blurs!) from The American Experience...

2006-09-28T20:37:00.000-04:00

...have been uploaded here, and more will follow soon.

Hope you like them!
Adios!

Weaknesses galore!

2006-09-28T20:16:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow, it will be exactly a month since my arrival in Philly, and I can't help marvelling at the two mutually contradictory feelings I'm experiencing. While it's hard to believe on one hand, that just a month has passed, considering how much water seems to have flowed under the bridge, there is a certain amount of dissatisfaction at the time it's taking me to settle into a routine.

The workload is considerable, which isn't really a talking point, because all folks I know in their first semesters have said the same. Then I am really suffering because of my bad sleeping habits, which means that I sleep around 6 hours a night, in general from 3:30 am to 9:30 am. To boot, I still haven't got internet at home, which makes a fellow like me stay till late in the Engineering building, accumulating tiring hours on a chair, when I can be far more comfortable on my bed at home. Then, there is the small issue of food. Eating out is interesting in the sense that you get to try out lots of new dishes and cuisines, but somehow, unless you pay a visit to the Indian restaurants in the vicinity, which offer sizeable meals in the form of buffets (albeit at somewhat high prices), you never get the feeling that you stuffed yourself till you could eat no more! Then we have the devil of free calling within the US after 9 PM. This implies that I am spending approximately 1.5 hours (eeek!!!) a night talking to friends, especially at the time when I think I am at my productive best (granted that it's not as if I move mountains when I'm productive, but still...), and there is usually so much to talk about that if you happen to get started, it's tough to look at your watch and say: Hoi! I have to get back to work!!!

But this post isn't for the purpose for whining about my troubles. The damnable thing about the situation is that I don't feel bad, in general, but I surely feel the pinch, when I am running out of time, trying to get an assignment in, on time, or when I have to skip a class, because I feel like I simply have to sleep, or when I wake up and have to walk to campus with no breakfast in my tummy because I missed the last shuttle.

Ah well! Not many options exist. So I might as well stop griping, and get on with the job. However, I would really appreciate it, if somebody could make me believe that a month is really too small a length of time for hardened procrastinators like me to be able to mend their ways!

Hope to have more cheerful things to tell you about, next time!

Alarms!!! (not clocks, though!)

2006-09-18T14:37:00.000-04:00

Spruce Street, between approximately 39th to 45th Streets, is a great residential neighbourhood. It's clean, inhabited by nice people (like me!), has quaint buildings, and is supposed to look good in the Fall (coming up!). Basically, the only complaint I have is that it's 20 minutes on foot to Towne Building, which houses the MEAM department, and that means ooh-ah-ouch in the winters. Pretty good, no?

NO.

DEFINITELY NOT!

Right at the end of Spruce Street, is the University of Pennsylvania Health System's main operations, which comprises the Hospital of the University (it has the cute acronym HUP...huppp!! haha!!). And in an infamous city like Philadelphia, which has a number of assorted law-breakers (Nipun says: Texas is very law abiding!), the personnel and their ambulances have their hands full. Spruce Street happens to be one of their favoured roads, and if you are in the middle of a potentially bad dream, then the ambulance may be thrown into it, as it is passing by my window, just to make matters more serious...

Well, no problem. Let's just say I am glad not to be in one of those ambulances.

See you!

An Addendum to the previous post

2006-09-17T02:41:00.000-04:00

It was somehow fitting that while watching the movie, I kept hearing these lines again and again:
(Maybe I've watched this film too many times...)

"...And that's the day I knew there was this entire life behind things, and... this incredibly benevolent force, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever. Video's a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember... and I need to remember... Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it, like my heart's going to cave in..."

That's right...'American Beauty' again.

I somehow feel that Mendes and Cinematographer Conrad Hall just managed to make me feel like MY heart was going to cave in...thanks to them both for such an enthralling exhibition of beauty!

Now...

When am I going to buy that digital camera??

Hmmmmmmmmmmm....truth be told, I can't wait!

An Unintended Review: Road to Perdition

2006-09-17T02:16:00.000-04:00

I had latched on to 'Road of Perdition' at the very mention of director Sam Mendes' name, whose 'American Beauty' is one of my favourite movies. I was lucky enough to get it from the Van Pelt Library's video collection today, it having been listed as Checked Out last night, because the guy who had borrowed it happened to be in front of me in the line!

I've just finished watching the film, and while I will leave it to you to form your own opinions on the storytelling, the acting and the characters, I couldn't help being awestruck by the visual impact of the film; in particular the locales, the angles and the harmony between colours, and even more so between shades. It also helped to have a number of striking looking people in the cast, including Paul Newman, a spine-tingling Jude Law (creepy is more like it...), the craggy Daniel Craig (Pierce Brosnan's successor as Bond...James Bond!) and even the young Tyler Hoechlin as Tom Hanks' son.

As far as I know, some of the scenery in the father-son duo's drives are from the Prairies of the American Midwest (even if they aren't, who cares?), and the desolation, coupled with the stunning colours and grandly manoeuvered angles, make for an unforgettable viewing experience. Set in the winter of 1931, the quaint automobiles, oil lamps, elegant homes and refreshingly open streets (now this may not be due to the cinematographer's genius; I have a soft corner for empty streets!) provide a wonderful backdrop to the story. It also happened to be my first experience of a widescreen DVD, and I am sure I can never forgive the ordinary prints for being ordinary again!

In particular there is a street shooting scene at night, in the rain, with men in overcoats and hats, and a particular sequence in the scene of Hanks walking into the background. I think I'll try and put it on my desktop as a wallpaper, even though it means absolutely nothing, except that its visual appeal is irresistible.

Do watch the movie folks...and if you have any other tips for films with great cinematography, please do let me know. Next on my list is Clint Eastwood's 'The Bridges of Madison County'!

See you around!

The Compulsive Blogger

2006-09-13T19:55:00.000-04:00

...is what I am not. In fact, I realize with some disappointment that one of the foremost reasons I started to blog in the first place was because I had nothing to do. This further implies that I was doing nothing that people might want to know about. Now, I am busy. I have, what can really be termed a 'life' (yes folks, staying at home and enjoying the holidays does not qualify as 'life'.) And so, now I have a lot of stuff to share with people who scrap me on Orkut asking me how I find it here. But I don't have the time to talk about it any more. Paradox!!

I have, thus far, been shortchanging everybody with the same 'trying to get settled' crap, which is perfectly true and absolutely useless to a well-wisher. But, as I said, I am not a man who blogs due to an inner urge. So, I'll try to write about some oddities of Penn and Philly, as I keep on encoutering them. Now, as I had just reiterated, I am not a compulsive blogger (haha...I love doing this!!), so I think this suffices as a post in itself, and I will end it right here. Oh, and maybe you should know that we (Roomie and Me) need to cook dinner now, and (here I go again!!) I am not a compulsive blogger (!!!!!). So I'll take your leave for the moment.

See you around!

PS: Before I go, Oddity number one: I solved an entire tutorial assignment by myself yesterday. Don't recall the last time I came even close...

Post One from the First Capital

2006-09-01T12:23:00.000-04:00

So, finally in Philly!

Folks, this place is good, and I am really, really apologetic about presenting such a useless assessment of this place's charms, but it's next to impossible to do better right now. The sheer volume of input is quite overwhelming, really. The only consolation is that my mental bandwidth is completely occupied, so I am thinking of nothing which even remotely approaches philosophy. And I am thankful for it. Today, I'll move into my apartment, which is anice piece of realestate at just over 500 dollars per head of rent. Will update you later on the ghosts in the closets!

More coming up very soon. Thanks again for your concern and best wishes.

Ready to roll?

2006-08-27T17:13:00.000-04:00

By all appearances, yes. The calendar says the same. It's August 28, 2k6, the date I've repeated a million times to people who probably wanted me off this country's territory as soon as possible. It's now 0242 hrs. My bags are packed, and save for the small matters of couriering a CD to Doski, and faxing a form to Penn, I should be ready to shift base.

The lead up to this day has been full of an exaggerated normalcy, which settled in with surprising ease among all the restlessness that pervades a household which is about to bid its elder son goodbye for a substantial period of time, for the first time. Everyday, for the past two weeks, I've woken up at 11 am, eaten a cold breakfast, spent the day hiding from the Sun, and playing tennis in the evening with such a suggestion of routine, that a few alarmed folks thought I had chickened out of going to the US of A (or that they had told me to sit at home...whatever...some strange panic-inducing thought, for sure...)

And, now in the last 24 hours of stay at home, I find myself weighing the price of numbness and indifference to this change of seismic proportions in my life. But, I have nothing to say for the moment.

Maybe the impact will hit me suddenly when I step out at Philly International, which will look nothing like Roorkee...or IGI, Delhi...or India...

Ah well, if it doesn't happen, then maybe I'll be a little guilty about not mirroring the emotions at home.

I still hope to be OK. You'll know in the next post. Thanks for your good wishes, and support. Goodbye for now!

If you want to see the stars....don't be afraid to step into the night...

2006-08-26T05:21:00.000-04:00

Never knew that caring
Could be so hard
Never knew that oblivion
Could be so guiltless

Never knew that silence
Could tell me so much
Never knew that words, even actions
Could be so futile

Never knew that ordinariness
Could be so heartening
Never knew that being different
Could deny me my mould

Never knew that
I never knew all that

Don't venture out of the house
And you'll never be lost
Do you love to read maps?
I do.
And so
Here I go
Getting lost again...

About me...

2006-08-22T01:12:00.000-04:00

The vast majority of people I can see on Orkut flinch when they face this section of the profile. I can't say that I'm completely at ease with it either, but I've always tried to keep this section filled with something or the other. Most of the time it's just a mini-blog in which I put lyrics or quotes to share with the nice folks who stop and read people's about me's (or do I have this uncommon privilege? Either way, I'm thankful!).

I’m a firm believer that most people are the way they are, in a large part, due to the way they were brought up, and the surroundings, the people and the culture they were exposed to, in their formative years. If I look back at my own childhood, I can see my physicist parents working from morning till evening, and we used to meet at lunch, following which they went back to their department, with just me, my little brother and his nanny at home for the afternoon. And those times were fun. I tried lots of things, some of which I never told anyone about (and I guess this isn’t my autobiography, so I’ll keep it to myself for the time being!) And I still marvel at how busy I used to be with just myself, with no friends for company. Dreaming up entire worlds, making little towns with Lego and Hot Wheels cars, of which I had several. It was probably the happiest time of my life. And then, swinging on the gate, looking out for Mum and Dad to come back, throwing pebbles at dogs to see how they reacted, buying the odd ice-cream while I waited.

And then, I find that my memory has given up on me. I catch the train of recollections again in 6th grade, when I started what was to become my passion in life. I’m talking about Tennis. We had a bunch of 4 guys, and we used to play doubles everyday. And not with much surprise, I can still remember that I never came back before dark, much to the annoyance of my mum. Some things just never change!

Around the same time blossomed another of my more fruitful pursuits, that of reading. The Children’s Library on the campus was a treasure trove of all the collections that children of my age die for. This combination of reading and tennis knit our group in school into a unit whose members still stand by each other today through thick and thin. It was a wonderful group, one filled of achievers, dreamers, exciting, like-minded people, who were just sufficiently different for each of us to be equally good friends outside the class, and competitive rivals within. Needless to say, we thought a great deal of ourselves, and I probably trace the beginnings of the pride-before-everything-else mentality that has both served and hampered me all my life, to this phase.

Then there were the Board exams of grade 10, the first litmus test of my calibre as a student. I had been topping my class for many years, and for many people, it was probably a foregone conclusion that I was going to repeat the feat. But it was to prove the first of many of my achievements in which I surpassed my own expectations, simply because I didn’t think I could do what I eventually did. That one result card changed my life forever. It changed me from a person who could put up with anything, to a person who had to get things to be his way. It instilled a self belief that unfortunately crossed the thin line into the territory of arrogance and presumptuousness. But frankly, had it not been for these two traits, I don’t think I would have made my next target.

From June 3rd, 2000, was the start of a self-destructing pattern that would recur in my life so many times, that I have been in a state of perpetual deja-vu ever since! From that day, the fierce desire to be different became an integral part of my psyche. I never had a lot of problems managing that even earlier, and it was just a matter of time before it became an all-consuming focus of my thought process and my work ethic. With a degree of hubris came the recklessness that occasionally leads to a supernova explosion, but which more often than not, sets back careers, and does irreversible damage to lives. But inspite of all that, I still managed to retain an ends-justify-means approach, which never allowed my preoccupation with method to overshadow purpose. Or at least, I guess it was true for my professional life.

Entering IIT was a milestone which I viewed as an elevation into a hallowed peer group, men and women of intellect, with the potential to shake foundations, as well as to build edifices. I was also aware from the very beginning, that from now on, I could take a million things for granted, because I was one of the chosen few. It was also the start of a period in which I think I was closest to doing things I really wanted to do, with disdain for the consequences. Academics ceased to be top priority, and again, for the first time in my life, I proved to everybody that I was nearly as good at something which had nothing to do with books, classrooms and teachers, my old priorities. Looking back, every hour of practice, of sweat, pain, anger and sacrifice on other fronts was probably worth it. And I know it because any day that I’m down, I only have to hit the courts to realize that I have something with me that I owe to, well, hardly anybody but myself.

Concurrently, I flirted with, and gradually embraced a new status as one of the wild cards in class, capable of the odd top-of-the-class performance, but more often than not, plumbing depths I was hitherto unfamiliar with. And I dare say, it was a masochistic journey. There was an insane amount of satisfaction in seeing the horror writ large on people’s faces when they heard my grades. Of course, I would be lying if I said I tried to do it, but it always turned out the same way. What could have been, had I shown the willingness to ponder over it, would have been a very, very interesting topic to think about.

Towards the end of undergraduate study, however, damage control mode had begun to set in, and I guess I can safely say that Autopilot had taken over the troubled flight. What followed was a golden period, in which I probably did some of the smartest, most confident, and beat-the-rat-race work of my life. I chased a dream to apply and work in a field I had no experience with, and I got away with it. At least to the extent, that I can now hang myself to death with honour in the future, if need be.

All through this journey, I made some incredible friends, apart from seeing in action, some of the most special, gifted, astounding, ridiculous, bold, intelligent, hard-working, focused and ambitious people, that I will ever see. The whole mix was there, and barring the minor matter of opportunity, you could go and take your pick from the motley bunch. It would be a rare man who would say he didn’t find like-minded souls in the group. These were men with obvious shortcomings, with habits so egregious that I would have been kicked out of home had I been a slave to them (come to think of it, I guess I am no better or no worse, and I’m still at home. So that’s open to conjecture!) But they were all, without exception, great people. They respected you, had the ability to see how you were special. They dreamed big, they either hated or loved their lives, but they had a swagger about them that comes with minds that may be in turmoil, in confusion, in uproar, but these minds never ever think small. Behind every one of the men who took his share from the table at the end of our four years together, some rich, some poor, there lurked the shadow of ambition. The sheer inevitability of paying life back in some measure for whatever they had to put up with or whatever they had got themselves into. Believe me, it’s not easy to keep up with such a fellowship of mavericks. And I guess it’s what keeps us all going.

So much for the past. Now the curtain rises again. A new set. New characters. With a dream in the head, stars in the eyes, prayer (or expletive?) on the lips, and sweat in the palms, I start again.

The Iceman Cometh…

Oversimplification, anyone?

2006-08-17T08:48:00.000-04:00

I was watching 'Good Will Hunting' today and I came across these lines spoken by Matt Damon's Will Hunting. The movie is close to my heart for entirely different reasons, but I thought you might like this monologue. Will Hunting has just been offered a job by the National Security Agency, and he comes up with this explanation for why he doesn't fancy working with them:

Will: "Why shouldn't I work for the N.S.A.? That's a tough one, but I'll give it a shot.

Say I'm working at N.S.A. Somebody puts a code on my desk, something nobody else can break. So I take a shot at it and maybe I break it. And I'm real happy with myself, 'cause I did my job well. But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East. Once they have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels were hiding and fifteen hundred people I never had a problem with get killed.

Now the politicians are sayin', "Send in the marines to secure the area" 'cause they don't give a shit. It won't be their kid over there, gettin' shot. Just like it wasn't them when their number was called, 'cause they were pullin' a tour in the National Guard. It'll be some guy from Southie takin' shrapnel in the ass. And he comes home to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from. And the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, 'cause he'll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks.

Meanwhile my buddy from Southie realizes the only reason he was over there was so we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price. And of course the oil companies used the skirmish to scare up oil prices so they could turn a quick buck. A cute little ancillary benefit for them but it ain't helping my buddy at two-fifty a gallon. And naturally they're takin' their sweet time bringin' the oil back, and maybe even took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and play slalom with the icebergs, and it ain't too long 'til he hits one, spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic.

So my buddy's out of work and he can't afford to drive, so he's got to walk to the job interviews, which sucks 'cause the shrapnel in his ass is givin' him chronic hemorrhoids. And meanwhile he's starvin' 'cause every time he tries to get a bite to eat the only blue plate special they're servin' is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State. So what do I think? I'm holdin' out for somethin' better. Why not just shoot my buddy, take his job and give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? I could be elected president. "

Way to go, Will!!!

Staying alive...is something like this

2006-08-17T05:03:00.000-04:00

For me, several of the most poignant moments depicted on film can be found in Sam Mendes' reflective and, in some ways, liberating film 'American Beauty'. Kevin Spacey's monologue at the end of the movie is probably the best of them. The place it has in the film is, of course, responsible for it being so moving.

"I had always heard your entire life flashes in front of your eyes the second before you die. First of all, that one second isn't a second at all, it stretches on forever, like an ocean of time...

For me, it was lying on my back at Boy Scout camp, watching falling stars... And yellow leaves, from the maple trees, that lined my street... Or my grandmother's hands, and the way her skin seemed like paper... And the first time I saw my cousin Tony's brand new Firebird... And Janie... And Janie... And... Carolyn.

I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me... but it's hard to stay mad, when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst... And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life... You have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sure. But don't worry... you will someday."

I don't know how right the bit is about what your last recollections are before you die, but somehow I can subscribe to the idea that some of the moments of your life which are most deeply etched on the mind's eye just come out of nowhere. You don't try to get them. They just happen. And they sometimes feel like a divine answer to those ever-elusive questions: What is happiness? What am I looking for in my life?

A few days ago, I was out roaming the streets with my great friend GC. He had returned to Roorkee for a last return to old times (ostentatiously though, we always do manage to pull work into the picture somehow...he was no different) It was 2:20 at night, and we staggered out of Govind after a tiring day, most of which was spent on our feet. But for old addicts like us, the lure of a walk around the EnC roundabout before hitting the sack was too much to resist!

A light drizzle soon started, the kind which hits your clothes and disappears before you know it. As we approached the roundabout, it gained momentum, becoming more of a light rain, and we decided to use the senate steps as cover.

I've read that from some kind of chaos in the head, result the most beautiful, the most profound sensations, feelings that transcend perceptions, emotions that warp reality and transport a person to a level of hyper-consciousness that is oh-so-ephemeral, which leaves you gasping in its wake, with nothing left but the realization that what you just experienced was something that you never asked for, but are thankful to have got.

It was exactly one of these moments...tired, jaded, but determined to extract every moment possible from the passage of time. With my back to the pillar, the light spray hitting my face like the surf from a restless ocean, nobody in sight. The area, as always, was well illuminated with sodium lamps, against which the drops of rain looked like molten bits of yellow-pink light. The road sloped away in front of us, and small rivulets flowed across. The grand conifer standing in the middle of the triangle of grass, glowing green, swaying ever so slightly. A fountain of colour, with rich black, warm yellow, dark green...freshened by the drink of water. The absolutely delightful feeling of having nobody around, but not feeling lonely. No need to think, no need to reflect. It was as perfect as moments made only to savour. Moments which can probably be described with nouns, adjectives and exclamations, but which are inherently ineffable, for the simple reason that they are far greater than the sum of their parts...at least parts which stay with you, imprinted on the consciousness.

It was just so right then:
"...I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me... but it's hard to stay mad, when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst..."

I've said so much, but frankly, I can only hope you know what I mean. Words don't even begin to do justice.

More from me soon!

Hello! Guess who??

2006-08-14T04:36:00.000-04:00

Aaaaarrrrrggggghhhhhhhhh!!!!!!

Time: 12:15 pm
Date: August 14, 2006
Place: My living room

The phone rings. I pick it up.
Voice: Arre, Ricky?
Me: Haan...(hesitation) kaun bol rahe hain?

And all hell needed no further invitation to break loose.

Let me explain: it was actually my beloved uncle calling, back to India after a lengthy foreign stint. I think I'll also take the liberty of saying that he is fond of me, and keeps himself updated on how I'm doing. It might justify the heartburn I caused him.

"Ab tum humari aawaz bhi nahin pehchante? Itni jaldi bhool gaye!!"

I tried to blame the running taps, the screwed up telephone lines, MTV etc. for the lapse, but to no avail.

Why I'm telling you this is because it happens way too often to me for my comfort. On my birthday, I ended up asking 7 or 8 people who called me up their good names. It offends to no end the considerate soul who is spending money and time wishing you. As far as I am concerned, if I don't tell people who I am when I call up, then I feel that I get my just desserts if they need to ask. But most other people don't. To make matters worse, they're usually the same people who DON'T ask me my name when I call.

Ouch.

Well, I had the option once of developing a better auditory perception or growing a thicker epidermis. You can see which fork in the road I chose.

See you around!

2006-08-09T05:00:00.000-04:00

As you can very well see, I'm not the only Monty supporter...errr, or should it be SuperMon(ty)??

NEWS FLASH!!!!

2006-08-09T04:09:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, I was (as usual) hunched over my keyboard after lunch, going through cricinfo.com, getting my update on the Sri Lanka-South Africa Test Match in Colombo (the match eventually went down to the wire thanks to a masterclass of an innings from Mahela Jayawardene, and a crazy, stupid, inane, unnecessary, mindless, imbecilic slog from no. 10 Murali)

In the mean time, the hyperlink under the section on England v Pakistan at Headingley went from 'Scorecard' to 'Live Scorecard'. Pakistan needed to get 323 to win and square the series at 1-1, and they were to begin their innings on the final morning. And then I got the proverbial sock between the eyes.

If you're familiar with the live scorecard page on Cricinfo, then you know that the names of the 2 batsmen are at the top, followed, by the names of the two bowlers. There, very innocuously, innocently, was displayed:

Salman Butt 0* (8b) MS Panesar 1-0-1-0
Taufeeq Umar 1* (4b) MJ Hoggard 1-1-0-0

This isn't the same thing (I pinched it from the site later), but fellows, this has to be a landmark moment in modern English cricket. An English spinner sharing the new ball in a test match being played in England against a side whose batsmen are considered seasoned agaisnt spin. No matter what Andrew Strauss does in his career hereon, I will always love him. The days of the defensive, ugly, dispensable, batsman-posing-as-spinner England spinners are surely behind us now!

But Strauss then proceeded to break my heart by installing the old firm of Hoggard and Harmison from the 3rd over onwards. Sigh! And to think, I went and switched on the TV to watch my first ball of live cricket in 3 weeks, just to see Monty bowl with the bright red cherry. But it wasn't to be.

That's life: When you have a Kodak moment, you generally don't have a bloody camera.

In the memory of a memory lost...

2006-08-08T04:13:00.000-04:00

I'd have to say that I haven't seen a film that has affected me as much as Chris Nolan's 'Memento'. The plot is basically simple: a man with just a short-term memory is out searching for his wife's killers. He can't remember things that happened to him after the kilelrs broke into his house, beat him up, and raped and killed his wife. But he does remember everything before that happened, and it anchors his existence to the extent that he knows his name, his hometown, his previous occupation as an insurance claims scrutinizer, and all of the things that remind him of his wife, and haunt him to such an extent that he has sworn not to rest until he avenges her death.

Simple enough. But the masterful direction, editing and screenplay, bolstered by impressive performances by the not-so-famous cast combine to create a mentally stimulating and challenging movie. Anyway, I'm not going to review the film or sing its praises. All I say is: Just go and watch it, if you haven't. You're missing something.

The reason I was impressed by the film was the concept that springs forth from Guy Pearce's memory condition, that of a man with no memory. There are two ways to look at it. One, the more pragamatic view, says that such a person would be irretrievably lost in the world, with no markers to guide him. He cannot learn from experience, he cannot trust people, he can't make friends, he can't achieve things because he can't build on what he knows (or does he know anything??) From that point of view, it's a hopeless construct.

The other perspective is from a more impassioned stance. What if you had memories you didn't want? How would you escape them? It would be quite convenient to wipe the slate clean, wouldn't it? But then you would lose all other memories as well. The ones you want to hold on to, all your life. The ones which can brighten up a difficult day or a tough spell. How about the concept of selective elimination of memory? It's practised by some of the most strong-willed people I know. They tell me that the best way to overcome the pull of bad times is simply not to think about them. You ought to learn from your mistakes, of course, otherwise you end up being in the same situation again, and that puts you back on square one. But if you've absorbed the lesson, and are determined to forget the details...well, it is possible.

As for myself, I find that I have a rather weak hold on my remembrances, in the sense that I can't tell myself that "You have to remember this! This is going to be one of the moments of your life!!". In fact, it's the strangely insignificant, little details that stick around for years, rather than the momentous occasions. Often, I find myself groping in the haze for some recollections of what I can assuredly call 'The Times of My Life', but whose particulars are so sketchy that I can scarcely believe it all happened to me. I wonder if I'm making any sense...but that's why 'Memento' affected me so much.

Here is a man who remembers nothing except one fact, one aim which acts like a beacon in his life, illuminating the path for his daily existence. Forgetting is probably an alien concept because its other half, remembering doesnt exist either...just like streaming data. Such a man is perfect for a lifetime of devotion to a cause, with nothing to sway him. Of course, the things he misses out on, are far too many to be listed. And justified too.

But it's an interesting premise.

And before I forget, the dialogues in the film are excellent. Do give them a second look, especially the last scene, in which Pearce delivers a haunting monologue, which I reproduce here:
"I have to believe in a world outside my own mind. I have to believe that my actions still have meaning, even if I can't remember them. I have to believe that when my eyes are closed, the world's still there.

Do I believe the world's still there? Is it still out there?... Yeah.

We all need mirrors to remind ourselves who we are. I'm no different."

Will be back soon!

Among other things...

2006-08-06T12:06:00.000-04:00

Point number 1, which I feel obliged to make: The title of this blog has nothing to do with the stuff that will appear in it. It's merely an elaborate subtitle I've given myself (how goddamn vain, you must be saying...you're right...)

I am a lonely sort of chap, by which I mean that my mates at IIT-R have graduated and left me alone to feel moody, look morose, and stick to the internet much like the famed Fevicol mascots. I love being with people who think like me, and I also like to be with people who don't think like me, provided they can argue some topics well, and stop when I think I've had enough.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that I like chocolates, but I don't indulge because I have an inbuilt switch which shuts off my appetite when I've had something in the region of a safe bit. It's good, but in some ways, it's worse than having no chocolates at all. I'm sure you can empathize.

And I really do love you if you've just read this. It has nothing to do with my sexual orientation, and it's really a pity that guys get all worked up when I tell them I love them. Such narrow-mindedness. Especially when love is so hard to find these days.

Well, I'll be around. So, catch you later.