Feelings of flight

From Life and Times of Michael K by J M Coetzee: the end

2010-05-22T08:46:00.005+01:00

He is like a stone, a pebble that, having lain around quietly minding its own business since the dawn of time, is now suddenly picked up and tossed randomly from hand to hand. A hard little stone, barely aware of its surroundings, enveloped in itself and its interior life. He passes through these institutions and camps and hospitals and God knows what else like a stone. Through the intestines of the war. An unbearing, unborn creature. I cannot really think of him as a man, though he is older than me by most reckonings....

...He could not sleep. Against his will the memory returned of the casque of silver hair bent over him and the grunting of the girl as she laboured on him. I have become an object of charity, he thought. Everywhere I go there are people waiting to exercise their forms of charity on me. All these years, and I still carry the look of an orphan. They treat me like the children of the prison camp, whom they were prepared to feed because they were still too young to be guilty of anything. From the children they expected only a stammer of thanks in return. From me they want more because I have been in the world longer. They want me to open my heart and tell them the story of a life lived in cages. They want to hear about all the cages I have lived in, as if I were a white mouse or a monkey. And if I had learned storytelling in primary school instead of potato-peeling and sums, if they had made me practise the story of my life every day, standing over me with a cane till I could perform without stumbling, I might have known how to please them. I would have told the story of a life passed in prisons where I stood day after day, year after year with my forehead pressed to the wire, gazing into the distance, dreaming of experiences I would never have, and where the guards called me names and kicked my backside and sent me off to scrub the floor. When my story was finished, people would have shaken their heads and been sorry and angry and plied me with food and drink; women would have taken me into their beds and mothered me in the dark. Whereas the truth is that I have been a gardener, first for the Council, later for myself, and gardeners spend their time with their noses to the ground. In fact, I am more like an earthworm. Which is also a kind of gardener. Or a mole, also a gardener, that does not tell stories because it lives in silence....

...And if some old man looked at where the pump had been that the soldiers had blown up so that nothing should be left standing, and complained, saying, 'What are we going to do about water?,' he, Michael K, would produce a teaspoon from his pocket, a teaspoon and a long roll of string. He would clear the rubble from the mouth of the shaft, he would bend the handle of the teaspoon in a loop and tie the string to it, he would lower it down the shaft deep into the earth, and when he brought it up there would be water in the bowl of the spoon; and in that way, he would say, one can live.

Motionless

2010-04-17T13:57:00.005+01:00

"Is there anything else you would like to tell me?" asked Dr. Mary.

"Our office is on the platform facing the tracks. We shifted to this one a few months back. There is a glass window between our desk and the platform. Its a one-way see-through tinted glass; so, we can see the passers-by on the station but nobody can see us. Most travellers used the glass pane as a mirror to see themselves. When John had joined the office, he used to get startled by the sight of the onlookers but with time, like all of us, he got used to it. And recently, he even started gazing back at them. I just remembered this because when I saw his picture in the newspaper, the staring eyes reminded me of how he used to stare at the travellers. He was a gentle, reticent and good man."

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"How is Rita, Dr. Mary?"
"She is doing well. I have succeeded, after a long time, in making her write. She has kept a diary and every now and then she writes about her past."

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He never spoke much. He had a rigid routine and his needs almost never changed. After so many years of living together, it had become completely unnecessary for us to talk. I knew what he wanted at any given second of the day. He seemed content with his life. He never made any attempts to improve it and never complained. He had no friends.

The stares began a few months back. I woke up one day to see him sitting beside me and staring intensely at me. I was completely shaken. It was an icy cold lifeless stare. I shrunk away from him and got out of bed. His eyes didn't move, he didn't budge. I slowly walked to him and shook him. He looked at me, smiled like nothing unusual had happened. I asked him what the matter was and he just said "I was lost in thought."

Then slowly it felt as though he became completely oblivious to his surroundings. He began staring at people as though they didn't exist. When my friends visited us, he would not notice them entering or hugging me and even after they sat down around us, he would be mute and staring at the wall or at the door. He had to be shaken out of his morbid reverie.

So many times, I spoke to him for five or ten minutes thinking he was there talking to me, but he was not. Only after he was shaken and explicitly told that I was talking to him, would he listen and participate.

He looked stoned (he wasn't). He only drank a little and perhaps it was only then that he was merrier than usual. When I asked him about it, he said he didn't feel any change in himself. It was as though people around him had stopped existing for him and he had to be consciously made aware of the fact. Movement, sounds, smells - nothing could reach him any more.

I couldn't stand the eerie transformation. He was a dead body, a zombie. He was inert, motionless. And his eyes, that vacant stare was the gaze of death. It had an unchallengeable, callous stillness that chilled my bones every time I saw him.

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Rita Anthony, a 45 year old woman was found sobbing in a pool of blood in her house at 34, Lessing Gardens, this morning. Beside her was the hacked body of her husband, John Anthony, an officer at the local Railway Station. Her neighbours had heard her screams early in the morning and informed the police. The police forced the door open to enter the house. Rita surrendered herself willingly and when questioned, said "Yes, I cut him into five pieces with that", pointing at the axe that was found beside the dead body. When asked for the reason, she said "I couldn't stand him any more." She refused to speak further and has been silent and morose. Sergeant Edward King and Dr. Mary Thomas have been assigned to the case and Mrs. Anthony is in solitary confinement at the Sherwood Psychiatric Centre.

from 'Istanbul' by Orhan Pamuk

2010-01-27T06:14:00.003+01:00

I love the early evenings when autumn is slipping into winter, when the leafless trees are trembling in the north wind and people in black coats and jackets are rushing home through the darkening streets. I love the overwhelming melancholy when I look at the walls of old apartment buildings and the dark surfaces of neglected, unpainted, fallen-down wooden mansions...When I watch the black-and-white crowds rushing through the darkening streets on a winter's evening, I feel a deep sense of fellowship, almost as if the night has cloaked our lives, our streets, our every belonging in a blanket of darkness...as I watch dusk descend like a poem in the pale light of the streetlamps to engulf the city's poor neighbourhoods...

...as night fell over the city it would erase the third dimension from the houses and the trees, the summer cinemas, balconies, and open windows, endowing the city's crooked buildings, twisting streets and rolling hills with a dark elegance.

To see the city in black and white is to see it through the tarnish of history: the patina of what is old and faded and no longer matters to the rest of the world. Even the greatest Ottoman architecture has a humble simplicity that suggests an end-of-empire melancholy, a pained submission to the diminishing European gaze and to an ancient poverty that must be endured like an incurable disease; it is resignation that nourishes Istanbul's inward-looking soul.

Fear

2010-01-24T15:43:00.004+01:00

Darkness has spared a keyhole, a jagged circle of light.
The peeping light touches the wood around the hole.
The darkness carves dusty wooden grooves around the keyhole.
The light is blocked. An eye appears.
Light struggles to enter the keyhole from around the eye.
A brown circle, black dilated pupil within, jelly white surrounding - moist and alert.
The eyelids blink: long, rich black, feathery lashes cross each other and return.
The black ball floating in the white sea squeezes itself quickly into the left end of the eye.
An orangish red appears at the right bottom and disappears.
Sight floats back to the right end and returns.
Blink. Stare. Hear the darkness. When will it strike?

The Speaking Tree

2009-04-18T22:29:00.003+01:00

My restless, jittery mind has picked up several distractions in the last few hours in vain.
I have tried and discarded most of man's toys available to me.
What remains is pain, listlessness, a stark desolation.

The covers of several books stare at me from my table.
One shows a tree, its long ramified branches shorn of all leaves.
It stands in dark desperation braving the onslaught of a powdery wind.
The wind wears a blanket of snow and marauds the land.
It shows a shadowy glimpse of other trees far away,
'Are we rooted so deep that we can never come together?,' I hear the tree speak in my hallucination.
The land ahead is white but not white enough to conceal the withering decay of its soul.

The inertia of my moribund existence is terrible.
I look and I do not want to see.
I hear and I do not want to listen.
I think and I do not want to live.
My memories and my dreams meet, clash and destroy each other.
There is nothing behind and nothing beyond.
The weary, frightening path that joins the past to the future wants to fall apart but goes on and on.
'O spring, O sun, where are you?'

You

2009-02-27T22:12:00.004+01:00

Meetings greedily sought
Few and far apart
You linger in between
Wistfully caressed in thought

In moments filled with fear
With hopes and dreams and tears
I look for you in vain
And revive you from memory lanes

You touch me with your voice
An absurd reality fades
A glimpse of the enchanting smile
Carries me through another day

Destiny

2009-01-06T08:29:00.003+01:00

M. walked out of the university and looked wistfully at the large gate. He had taught there for 40 years and had retired the previous day. He planned to leave the city to spend the rest of his days in the warm, anonymous solitude of a sea-side town.

That day he decided to take a last walk around the city. An hour later he found himself, inadvertently, on the road he had carefully avoided for the last three decades. His eyes leaped to the small white house surrounded by a well-maintained garden. Painful memories that had been suppressed forever rose from rusty corners of his mind.

He saw Lila, 30 years back, with a tuft of hair falling over her forehead, her slender limbs flitting around her careless gait....When their eyes had smiled at each other, he knew that his love for her was deeper than anything he had felt before. He was incomplete without her and why was that so obvious to him when he held her hands....He saw himself kissing her and still remembered the strange feeling he had had after - that everything in his life before that moment had been a mistake. The life they both yearned for lay in each others' arms and everything else felt absurd.

Flashes from the past flew around in his mind threading the story of their lives. He froze for a moment when he saw himself so clearly that night, long long ago. The stars seemed to twinkle despondently between the passing clouds that were being pushed by a pleasantly chill wind.
Lila: I have to go back now.
M: How can we live like this without each other Lila?
Lila: I have to leave him. I have no other choice. I feel very sad for him, he has been so good to me. But he has to understand what I feel for you.

M. saw himself, the very next day, staring at the small painting of a child hanging on the hospital wall. He could have painted that picture himself even today for he had stared at it for so long. Lila was beside him in tears. She was narrating, fitfully, the events of the previous night.
...they called me and asked if I was his wife....he is paralyzed....he may be able to speak and think....
M. was silent and was looking at the painting gravely. Lila began sobbing.
....he was not fully conscious last night....he held my hand and said don't leave me Lila....

M. heard a creaking sound and quickly hid himself behind a tree. He saw a wheelchair emerging from the door and wrinkled hands that were intimately familiar. He turned his face away and walked back.

from White Fang by Jack London

2009-01-01T21:50:00.000+01:00

Dark spruce forest frowned on either side the frozen waterway. The trees had been stripped by a recent wind of their white covering of frost, and they seemed to lean towards each other, black and ominous, in the fading light. A vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint in it of laughter, but of a laughter more terrible than any sadness - a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the Sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild.

Many fall

2008-12-16T22:15:00.005+01:00

With a strident yell, I fell off the edge of a cliff and felt my heart thumping out of control as the air pushed me, with increasing anger, miles downward into a thick darkness.

My eyes were closed and limbs were outstretched on what felt like curved surfaces. My head, turned to a side, was flattened against a sphere. My eyelids shivered and opened a little and shut again. Consciousness was around me, not inside and was about to leave but it felt like I woke up too soon, caught it by its trailing strings and was swallowing it back into myself. I became aware of my body in parts. My arms and legs appeared slowly. I could see that I could see again. It was white all around, everything was still.

Sight and movement felt novel, exciting. For a long time I just moved and observed my fingers and toes and all the joints of my body. I looked around and found gigantic white spheres all around and found myself in the gap between six spheres - two above, two below, one ahead and another behind. There was space between the spheres for me to walk - as though a path had been created. My mind was completely blank. I had no thoughts, no memories, no knowledge. Feelings - strange and new - were emerging.

I began moving in the world of spheres. Each touch felt the same curvature, the same glassiness of the surface and the same bright white rays from every sphere. I was walking on spheres and the path went on endlessly, jumping from sphere to sphere always finding more on every side.

After a while I saw a blurred image in the white light. I strained my eyes to see clearly. Bit by bit, the image grew to completion - large and alive. The creamy white light carved out the image of single female breast. Above the breast was a big, uneven forehead of a woman. A man was making love to the breast and the forehead. I went closer and saw the man from behind. The breast was as big as the man and the man was lying over the breast and kissing the forehead. I went closer and bumped into the surface of a sphere. I realized that the man, the forehead and the breast were inside the sphere.

I moved away and saw that inside each sphere there was an image occupying the entire sphere. The whiteness of the spheres all around were getting replaced by the colors inside. A bright red sphere drew me closer to itself. I saw a small black oval bud that had not yet blossomed. A swarm of bees was hovering around the bud trying to open the flower. The swarm formed a cylindrical shape and started attacking the bud like one single log of wood. Fresh red blood, dripping from every bee, had filled the sphere.

These sights were pure images and I could not identify what I saw with any system of concepts or language. I didn't know what I was seeing - I just knew that I could see. My mind was slowly buzzing into a state of convoluted activity. Images dug up memories and sounds. I started uttering sounds, meaningless sounds. I was still staring at the trickling redness when I uttered "beeeeeee..." and the sound of 'e' revolved around the spheres and kept hitting me as the bees were rhythmically trying to force into the bud. A vague, rusty associative memory between the image and the sound I just uttered was forming.

Every image was different and yet every image was inherently spherical. The world filled with so many different colors and objects seemed to have just one shape when touched: what I felt with my hands was just a spherical glassiness everywhere.

I walked ahead and saw more and more large images within spheres - a tuft of black hair dropping to one side with a few white strands, the legs of a farmer ploughing a barren desert, waves of the sea lapping the striped back of a woman, a glowing yellow sun setting itself behind a razor's edge, nimble fingers caressing a pair of hands, a small dark umbra of darkness and a penumbra filled with skin stretch marks, lips locked into each other kissing and starving and putrefying into a pink gangrene, a window of a bus intermittently flashing lights on an enchanted face, a slimy snail shaped like a human ear in orgasms of joy, foam filled hands scrubbing and laughing, a spine tickled into jerky movements, a mouth being fed pages of a novel, large eyes surrounded by blackness and filled with tears, two shadows walking in circles around the moon, blind eyes absorbing endless expanses of throbbing skin......

Words were rushing into my head and I was yelling them out in a nonsensical stream of babble. I ran between the images and yelled "haaaaaaaaair", "leeeeeegs", "feeeeengers", "peeeeeenk",... stretching out the vowels and reveling in the formation of my mental associations as they emerged from my clouded mind.

Suddenly I saw someone looking at me - was she inside a sphere or outside? The word 'mirage' flashed in my head, I yelled out "meeeerage" and pursued the figure. Catching glimpses of her now and then, I kept running between those images inside the spheres trying to find the image outside the spheres.

Then, with a roaring sound, the spheres started melting. The images inside started acquiring life. The sounds from every sphere filled the air with a deafening noise. At the same time all the spheres also started coalescing. The entire world was melting and fusing around me. I was at the center of a tremendous vortex. The woman I was seeking began to form from the melting and coagulation of everything I had just seen. She had been inside each one of the spheres. And now she was congealing inside me. I was also melting and fusing with every image.

I was not outside anymore. There was no outside anymore. There was no inside either.

The wait

2008-10-26T09:50:00.003+01:00

Dull movements of an endless strife,
Hazy visions of an asymmetric time;
Life vacillates between
The ridiculous and the sublime.

The first touch

2008-07-15T16:19:00.007+01:00

There was a moment of hesitation, a tentative movement. And then, he let go. She reached out to him and he felt a dusty, dormant string within him, untouched for ages, plucked. A touch connected two fingers and broke a silence that had been stinging him unknowingly. It stirred something; like an uncoiling of a spring. In a flash, he saw two springs coiling together and his life getting tinged by the fragrant color of her being. It was a strange feeling of another presence. Like a tactile expression of abstract life previously unimaginable. It gave birth to a desire for togetherness that he had earlier found whimsical, absurd. That two lives could connect and feel each other with such a mysterious intimacy was inconceivable. He felt he could see life through the mirror of another vision. Perhaps it was an illusion and that illusion necessitated her presence.

The flash of colors that sang inside made him aware of an utter loneliness within him. Its these rare beautiful moments when we deeply relate to someone that make us aware of the empty passages of life in between. The contrast deepens the void. The daily din of life desensitizes us, cons us into living. Her touch was a momentary celebration of a liberating death. Life has befriended time. Beauty and death still belong to the glorious realm of timelessness. Like a sponge we absorb life drop after drop. A hand comes along and squeezes the sponge - there is a fleeting glimpse of harmony, a soothing emptiness that itself sucks in life and life gushes in.

Vortex of discontent

2008-05-29T21:09:00.003+01:00

Another evening is dying a slow death. The gloomy sky is blending into the gray mountains. The wind reminds me of a naughty child in search of an elusive treasure. The trees are mildly amused at its playfulness. The buildings stand callous and sombre.

I can feel a dull silence emerging from my gut. A void that is wanting to be filled, an unidentifiable restlessness. I feel like an empty earthen pot that yearns to be filled but refuses to fill itself with anything around. Like a dysfunctional digestive tract that vomits what it consumes: it starves seeking nourishment, dies seeking life.

I fill the void with words whose impotence mocks my pen. Every form that this ink assumes deforms its intention. This is an exercise in futility. The arrow that misses its mark conveys an intent that is frivolous.

A desire, a quest fulfilled only by a conquest. A future, a dream that invades the present. A word, a form that colors a dormant darkness.

Existence is a mould for disharmony. Its violations are defects in its design. The aberrations isolate themselves with an immutable hope. A hope that is abstract - formless, since it defies existence. Is it a self-absorption that is so vain that it fails to see its solipsism?

Your shadow still lurks

2008-04-25T23:50:00.004+01:00

Your shadow still lurks
...in my murmuring dreams
...in the anguish of my darkness
...in the gleam of my tears

Melting the present, forging the past
Lingering embers remain redolent
And the world shivers in the fiery haze

clutter

2008-04-18T23:06:00.004+01:00

...and there were bottles of all sizes and hundreds of toys and tomes of books and jewelery and watches adorned by several mannequins; there were chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, plenty of lamps - lit and unlit; clocks showing different times, clothes for every purpose and mirrors, yes, there were mirrors. mirrors reflecting reflections of reflected mirrors. mirrors mirroring the bottles, toys, books, clothes, lamps, clocks...mirrored clocks bespoke mistaken times...reflected faces spangled bejeweled shadows...
...i stepped in, walking on my six legs, my feelers guiding me...and there was an army i was leading, and there was an army ahead of me, competing...a radiant battlefield, ominous timely thunders; with dust inking us, lints of pain cutting through us; we moved as i moved...ahead, turning left, and then right and forward again...they were cautious, i was brazen, persistent....
...and then, i fell an unending fall...i saw behind me - there were none, i saw ahead - there were none...there was me, and me and my falling selves in infinite morphologies...in constant movement captured by reflected stillness...yes, there were mirrors...reflected shadows spangled bejeweled deaths.

Still. Resplendent. Lila

2008-02-21T11:55:00.003+01:00

She was sitting on the ground with her knees bent. Her heels touched the ground delicately and her feet were bent towards herself, her toes straining to touch her shins. Her arms gently embraced her knees. Her back was stretched and curved inwards and her forehead rested on her knees. Her curly black hair spun out of her head in long wavy strands and spread on her shoulders. The symmetry of the spread had a mathematical beauty. Her pale white skin was moist and glistening. Her back, arms and legs were taut. She was like a wound spring who could spring out of her stillness any moment.

The light showed her from the side. Her face was completely hidden by her hair and arms. Her breasts were flattened, pressed against her thighs. It was dark all around. She was the source of light and only she was illuminated. I approached her from the darkness, from behind. It was light that I was seeking. Darkness was within me, enmeshed with me and indistinguishable from me. I wanted to embrace the embracing arms.

As I crept close, I confronted the hard shell of a turtle. The dark invisible turtle was crawling very slowly on her back. Its movement was as incredible and unreal as the possibility of its existence between us.

My embrace was an inert fluid that surrounded her and the turtle without their knowledge. I waited in agony for the turtle to move away and allow the fragrance of her naked skin to touch me. Time was frozen in the endless wait and she sat motionless in her resplendent, silent beauty - palpable and yet remote. As the turtle moved, my arms started metamorphosing into large white luminous wings - the only part of me that was now visible. My body disappeared leaving behind a head, my enormous wings and claws that had nailed themselves into the turtle's shell. The turtle had conquered me. I flapped my wings in vain, in an attempt to fly with her and the turtle. Her stillness was unyielding and the darkness impenetrable.

Fog

2008-02-08T23:24:00.000+01:00

Like a possessive husband the fog had hidden the mountains from the real world. Today, perhaps, he has gone to visit another lover of his. As the haze left, the ice-capped peaks peeped out like a shy bride. Oh! The husband has returned and quickly veiled his wife again!

It is a gloomy winter evening. The sun is not a fierce ball of heat in the sky. Instead, it is a battered splash of yellow in one corner. Besieged by the gray fog it is waiting for the next hour to carry its impotent rays away from our eyes.

It has been raining since noon. The heavy shower has turned into a specter of a drizzle. The drops that I hear are not raindrops but water falling from a collected pool in the terrace. They are falling at a constant pace with enough time between consecutive drops to make me aware of each drop's journey. I hear the beginning of a drop's flight as it detaches itself from its source. The timid whistle as it cuts through the air in an acceleration of exuberance. And the final splash when it shatters its existence to make the world aware of its past.

Conquer

2007-03-03T16:07:00.000+01:00

Sailor, sailor, why do you sleep?
Enchanting beckoning rhymes are the winds
Waters cradle your boat with longing desire
Wake up and go, explore, conquer!

O absurd voice, O blind fool!
I am a coconut, not a sailor of your charming dreams!

Again and Again

2007-03-01T14:35:00.000+01:00

Fractals of chaos, links of serendipity
Mute strings bind and break lives unseen

The chattering fireworks of wind - leaping, capricious
Blow scattered embers of memories away

Seldom sung dreams whisper into cherished scars
The ashes of crushed hope stir a renewed passion

The Eternal Dawn seeks anti-chains of infinity
And the Glorious Dusk withers them all...

Again and again...

Awake

2007-01-12T14:01:00.000+01:00

Dark is the day as I stroll in my lands of fiction
Fighting with images of my myopic breath
Juggling carnival eggs in a giddy merry-go-round
Why did you wake me up, O treacherous dawn!

Inside

2007-01-07T15:42:00.000+01:00

In every shadow
     Cries a desire to outlive reality
In every rock
     Sleeps the destruction of the world
In every man
     Lurks an angel enchanted to love

the metamorphosis

2007-01-07T15:36:00.000+01:00

A sparkle of sunlight, a sudden flash
A warmth within, a feeling in sight
A flicker of a flame kindled by blood
A thought-enveloped mutiny of desires

It grew, it spread, mutated by breath
Burning and raging and embracing death
How was it born? When did it transform?
Why did it sear the flesh it fed on?

Beggar girl

2006-12-31T16:15:00.000+01:00

A wan smile of recognition
Aren’t we of the same kin?
Betrothed by the coincidence of humanness
Eyes pleading revenge
Why do I have to sleep hungry?
Ragged clothes, bruised limbs
Trapped in the hapless games of time
A penny dropped, a penny preyed on
Ah the illusory economics of metals
A glint of hope, a battered past
Why am I caught in the middle?

the silent night

2006-09-20T18:24:00.000+01:00

With both hands clutching my hair and my head bent, my eyes were restlessly following the intricate design of the tablecloth. A glimpse of the passing waiter’s apron stole a part of the table from my vision. I recklessly turned and blurted – “A cup of coffee please.”

I was taken aback to see a beautiful girl in an elegantly simple evening gown standing there, equally alarmed. For a few moments we just stared at each other – both of us stunned at my outburst. Her smile finally broke the awkward silence and she daintily went and sat at the table ahead. I was still in a state of shock. I caught up with reality, rose and went to the next table to apologize. “I am very sorry. I mistook you for the waitress.” My words were slow and abrupt and it seemed like each word touched her sparkling eyes, felt her soft cheeks and then reached her ears. She patiently heard me with a benign smile and nodded. She had a sweet face that reminded me of a flowing river – full of life, calm and soothing.

I didn’t know what to say next. This time her touch broke the silence. She touched my hand and pointed to the opposite chair. Her face and smile had enchanted me completely. Her sharp nose was small for her face but it made her look cute and innocent. I realized that I was deeply attracted to her. I also sensed, or perhaps imagined, that she liked me too.

I was about to say something when she lifted her finger, pointed to her mouth and shook her wrists. She could not speak! She pouted her lips and squeezed her eyes as though sad about her condition. I clasped her hands with mine. I wanted to speak, thinking it would entertain her. But I felt her eyes asking me not to speak. I felt that her language of silence was richer than mine and we were communicating with an immeasurable tenderness. I was mesmerized by her, enslaved by her lively eyes, motionless lips, tantalizing fragrance and reassuring silence.

She held my hand and led me out to the balcony. Sounds of lapping waves were dancing wildly in the soft light of the full moon. The moonlight seemed enthralled as it touched the bubbling whispers of the sea. Silently absorbing the intoxicating beauty, we held each other closer and kissed. Her passion was as tender as her smile. Under the moonlight, we made love in a dream like delirium.

When I woke up, I thought it was all a fantastic dream. But then, I could smell her fragrance on my self. I looked around and couldn’t find her anywhere. I ran down to the portico and saw her entering a car. I almost called out her name and I realized I didn’t know it. And then, I heard her talking to the porter! The bewilderment at hearing her voice shook me from within. A streak of worry passed over her resplendent face as she saw me. The car roared away filling my shock with smoke.

I stood watching the car with my vacant eyes, my mind confused and numb. The car stopped at a distance and I saw the driver running back. He came to me, handed a sheet of paper and ran back. I felt I was in the midst of a mysterious intrigue. I watched him running back to the car and drive away. The note explained it all. It was as simple as that – “I didn’t want words and our lives to come between us.”

Excerpt from 'Trainspotting'

2006-09-17T10:23:00.000+01:00

Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family, Choose a fucking big television, Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers.
Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed-interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends.
Choose leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose a three piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing sprit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing you last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life.

But why would I want to do a thing like that?
I chose not to choose life: I chose something else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who need reasons when you've got heroin?

People think it's all about misery and desperation and death and all that shite, which is not to be ignored, but what they forget - is the pleasure of it. Otherwise we wouldn't do it. After all, we're not fucking stupid. At least, we're not that fucking stupid. Take the best orgasm you ever had, multiply it by a thousand and you're still nowhere near it. When you're on junk you have only one worry: scoring. When you're off it you are suddenly obliged to worry about all sorts of other shite. Got no money: can't get pished. Got money: drinking too much. Can't get a bird: no chance of a ride. Got a bird: too much hassle. You have to worry about bills, about food, about some football team that never fucking wins, about human relationships and all the things that really don't matter when you've got a sincere and truthful junk habit.

The only drawback, or at least the principal drawback, is that you have to endure all manner of cunts telling you that -
"No way would I poison my body with that shite, all they fucking chemicals, no fucking way."
"It's a waste of your life, Rents, poisoning your body with that shite."
"Every chance you've ever had, you've blown it, stuffing your veins with that filth."
"Get off that stuff, Rents and get a job. It's not as bad as it looks. While you're here, you don't fancy buying a cooker, do you?"

Swanney taught us to adore and respect the National Health Service, for it was the source of much of our gear. We stole drugs, we stole prescriptions, or bought them, sold them, swapped them, forged them, photocopied them or traded them with c ancer victims, alcoholics, old age pensioners, AIDS patients, epileptics and bored housewives. We took morphine, diamorphine, cyclozine, codeine, temazepam, nitrezepam, phenobarbitone, sodium amytal dextropropoxyphene, methadone, nalbuphine, pethidine, pentazocine, buprenorphine, dextromoramide chlormethiazole.
The streets are awash with drugs that you can have for unhappiness and pain, and we took them all. Fuck it, we would have injected Vitamin C if only they'd made it illegal.

The Parting

2006-09-10T08:57:00.001+01:00

I was sitting in my verandah with a book on my lap staring at my dreamy eyes that were looking at the refreshingly clear blue sky. I could see birds gliding near the horizon – birds trying to fathom the depth of the sky, moving higher and higher, dissolving in the sky and emerging again from a speck. While the book was fluttering its pages to catch my attention, I heard another flutter.

My friend, the gray falcon, flew into the verandah and sat beside me. Had she flown out of my mind or did she fly in through the window? There she was in flesh and blood and it was a delightful surprise! We had not met many times – she had the habit of flying in and out of my life at her own fancy. I remember the first time we had met – we had struck an instant friendship. There was an ineffable aura of warmth and openness when we were together. As she sipped water from the bowl, memories of our previous meetings – few and fond – flashed through my mind.

She: You have become older!
I: Yes, I have! And you look better than before!
She: I’m enjoying my flight more than ever. In the last two years I have seen new lands and met new families. Nowadays, I’m flying with a family that’s very simple and easy to live with! Indeed I’m happy with them!

She winked and added, “They are not complicated like you and me!”

I: How I wish I could fly!
She: It sure would be nice if you could. We could have spent more time together. But, men can’t fly because their minds are too full. They don’t “let go”. Flight requires freedom.

I pondered over the meaning of that esoteric statement. She was flying in and out of the window meeting other falcons who were passing by. We talked, as usual, about life, philosophy and flight and of old times and common friends. A falcon’s face is not too expressive but she could laugh. We had a meal together and later, I walked behind her while she flew ahead. It was symbolic of the past when she had led me to unknown directions. We returned and sat quietly in the verandah.

She: This is probably the last time we’ll meet. It’s sad.

There was a melancholic quiet when she said that. I tried to fill the silence with hope.

I: Life is long and strange. You never know how and when our paths may cross again.
She: You are a man and I am a falcon. We have different lives and different flights. And, today when I fly, I don’t know where I’ll be going.

A quaint thought passed my mind. I imagined the two of us meeting after many, many years and spending the last few years of our old age together. It was an amusing picture – a gaunt, toothless, hunched man with a walking stick and a drooping falcon on the shoulder!

She: I have to leave now.
I: Can’t you stay longer?
She: What is the use? I have to leave anyway!

And she flew away once more. Her flight was elegant and enchanting. Her flapping wings soon became a spot that disappeared in the clouds. But the spot started growing and flew in my mind for hours. The breeze blew her dropped feather onto my feet. I looked at it wistfully and thought, “My dear friend, I’ll miss you. Hope you have a good life ahead!”

Many birds visit my house. Most are scared of me. Some like me and talk to me. But only a few leave a nest behind. When they come and fly away, they leave a disquieting void in the nests. But slowly, their nests get filled with memories, and life goes on…

Believe It or Not!

2006-08-26T18:13:00.000+01:00

I woke up groggily one morning to find myself in a dark, damp hole! “This is definitely not the place where I had slept last night. I didn’t drink too much. I’m not dreaming,” I thought as I pinched myself several times. The place had an awful stench of soggy, rotten vegetables. After a while, I could also discern a fertilizer-like smell. “Was I kidnapped last night and dumped in this weird factory?”

I shook my head in disbelief as I looked behind. There was no bed – I had slept on the ground! I felt nauseated seeing the place around. The ground also looked soggy like the walls. Now, when I looked more carefully, I saw that the room was spherical in shape. Not exactly spherical but it had no sharp edges anywhere – just curves all around with several flap like structures on the sides. Dull light was streaming in from one corner of the room. It was intermittent and there had been several short periods of startling darkness. I could hear faint gurgling sounds like the working of some distant, gigantic machine. I was bewildered and petrified. I was rudely disturbed by a large ball that was slowly rumbling down the window.
“Was I Alice in Wonderland? Was I dead and in hell?”

Confused, scared and hopelessly out of my wits, I saw the ball coming dangerously close. Without knowing where to, I decided to run. I got my second and bigger shock when I ‘saw’ that I had no body!! Mad with confusion, I wanted to kick the wall – but, obviously, I couldn’t! I calmed myself and decided to think about this bizarre situation. In the meanwhile, the giant ball had broken into bits and surrounded me. It was a gooey whitish substance and was sticking and rolling about the wall. I had no body and yet I could ‘see’, ‘hear’, and ‘feel’ that place. I was happy that whatever ghoulish contraption I was in, at least, it wouldn’t hurt my body! I realized that although I could see all around, I couldn’t move.

Then, I heard voices. It was my wife calling out my name.
“Was she also in the same predicament? In another torture chamber like this?”
And then, I heard my voice! I couldn’t be mistaken. I was talking to my wife. I heard myself crunching some chips. Just then, I saw another soggy shape descend through the window. I thought I saw the ridges of potato chips in it. I thought I was hallucinating. An outlandish idea struck me then – “Am I in my stomach? How is that possible? Well, nothing sane had happened since waking up! But, if I am in my stomach, then who is outside? What about my normal consciousness?” My wife had not sounded perturbed while talking to me. I had even heard her kissing me goodbye to office!

I had developed a parallel consciousness of my stomach. Very interesting! But, I didn’t want to continue experiencing the noisome acid filled environment with a window that emitted semi-digested balls. I spent what felt like an interminable stretch of time in my stomach. And, suddenly, I ceased to exist. I switched back to normal consciousness. I was simultaneously relieved, amused, astounded and scared. However, life went on as usual after that, and nobody felt anything amiss.

I remember the life in my stomach just as I knew who I was while I was in there. After that day, there have been a number of days when I have woken up in my stomach. Its familiar territory now – those flapped peristaltic walls! Now, I am convinced that I have two parallel lines of consciousness and I can experience only one of them at a time. I switch involuntarily from one to another. Of course, there are many puzzling, unanswered questions – what happens to the other one while I am experiencing one? How could I experience all that without a body? Are there other levels or types of consciousness? And most confounding of them all, who am I?

From the ancient manuscript of grotesque tales

2006-08-20T05:17:00.000+01:00

1. A devout couple lived a simple and pious life by the river bank. With the first ray of sunlight, they would begin the day with prayers. A day’s hard work at the fields would end with an evening of sacred chants.
2. Content they were with their lives but for their desire for a child to brighten their daily chores. The man wanted a daughter and the woman yearned for a son.
3. The Gods who listened to their prayers were in a playful mood one day. They granted their wishes and a child was born to them. They were both overjoyed and danced with delight.
4. The pregnant wife’s face was more beautiful than the moon. The happiness of the husband never ceased to show on his face. And nine months later, a boy was born to them.
5. As was the custom, to christen the child and know his future, on the 101st day he was taken to the astrologer who was old, wise and well versed in the arts of astrology, palmistry, face reading and other psychic disciplines.
6. “This child is not normal. It’s a boy below the navel and a girl above. This child will suffer when it grows on account of this. You both are devout and God fearing. I don’t know why this misfortune befell on this innocent one,” said the learned man with a dark seriousness.
7. Stunned to silence, the mother saw her smiling child holding her hand. Her eyes moist with tears, she held him to her bosom and covering him from the astrologer’s wrathful words, ran away to her home.
8. The child was named Krishna. Enchanted by the child’s tantrums, the astrologer’s words faded and flowed away like the waters of the mighty river of Saurashtra and many years passed.

9. Krishna reached adolescence and it was then that the parents remembered the dismal predictions of the seer. Krishna’s voice, face and breasts were that of a beautiful maiden. But, below the navel Krishna was a strong, virile man.
10. The villagers called Krishna a witch for she could sing better than a nightingale and run faster than the cheetah. Villagers avoided her and she became devoid of all friends.
11. Years passed as Krishna and her parents led sad and lonely lives. Krishna helped her father in tilling the land and sang with the birds. And then, her parents died, worried and fearful of Krishna’s future until their last breath.
12. Once a troupe of hermaphrodites came to the village and Krishna left her house to travel with them. Although Krishna was with them she was still lonely and couldn’t find a friend among them. They were boisterous and insensitive while Krishna yearned for nobler company.
13. Krishna earned her living by selling her voice and not her flesh like the others in the troupe. Many men were attracted to her divine face and sweet voice but were horrified to know her secret.
14. Krishna’s first friend was Shyam, a drunkard poet who was ostracized because he was an atheist. Although Krishna was a believer, she liked him because he was a thoughtful and sensitive man.
15. Shyam wrote songs that Krishna sang beautifully. But the people around disliked their happiness like the rain clouds dislike hot lands. They were pushed out of the village and were forced to live with lepers.
16. Shyam fell ill and was bed-ridden. Krishna was again lonely and miserable. Poverty-stricken and desperate, she thought of ending her harrowed life many times. She bore her tribulations only for the sake of Shyam.

17. And then, so was the playful will of the Gods, sorrow and happiness came together. Krishna met a group of women who were kind and loving. Enchanted by her magical voice, they decided to keep her with them as a servant. On the same day, Shyam died.
18. They were women who made love among themselves and avoided the company of men. Each had been shunned by the society because of their deviant desires. Except for Meera who had once loved men but all the men she had known had been deceitful, selfish and violent with her.
19. Meera, strong willed and independent, had decided to leave the world of men like the solitary tigress leaves her mother to find a different family. She was loved and revered in this group and soon assumed the role of the leader.
20. When the group learnt of Krishna’s secret, they were apprehensive of keeping her with them. But, Meera, who had developed a special liking for Krishna, was strongly in favor of her staying with them and her voice prevailed.
21. Krishna was also fond of Meera and soon they were consorts for life. Krishna was the perfect partner for Meera as she was virile in bed and had a woman’s sweet kindness.
22. Krishna led a happy life thereafter and the souls of her parents smiled with satisfaction in the abode of the Gods. Such was the inscrutable playfulness of the Gods.

Disclaimer: This is purely a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person (living or dead) or to any texts (ancient or modern) is co-incidental and unintentional.

Old Man - Part II

2006-08-18T05:32:00.000+01:00

In the past few months, I have read many articles about the professor in the newspapers. Naturally, the death of a curious character like the professor cannot skip today's vigilant media attention.
Here are a few excerpts, in chronological order:

“…opinions regarding the relevance of the professor’s works are divided among the mathematical community. Some claim that his works are the result of a truly original thinker and the world has much to gain from the study of his unusual but outstanding contributions. While others think that his seclusion led to his (possibly psychotic) imagination that works of other mathematicians are actually his own creation …”

“…roughly half of the professor’s works have been perused by his colleagues. It has been found that the professor was diligent and neat in recording his findings and all his works are chronologically arranged. His works have touched many fields of mathematics such as…and researchers have found mathematically elegant proofs of many known as well as unknown theorems.”

“…`We have unearthed a potential goldmine`, says Professor K.”

“…Professor S. has now disclosed that he had collaborated with the professor for a number of years and is familiar with some of his works. He also claims that he is a co-author of some of the papers found. When asked why he didn’t announce this earlier, he said that the professor had forbid him to do so, when alive…”

“…in a startling new statement, Professor S. has accused the professor of fabricating the dates of some of his works. He said that the mentally ill professor was in the habit of reading current literature in mathematics and re-writing them as pre-dated entries in his journal. This has now led to doubts about the originality of the professor’s works. However, numerous other original results of the professor make the possibility of such fraud unlikely, say other colleagues of the professor. Is this a case of professional jealousy or an idiosyncrasy of a mentally ill man? Only time can tell…”

“…Professor S. has filed a case of willful plagiarism against the professor supporting his previous claim…the mathematical community has decided not to consider the professor’s works until the case is settled…”

And, many months later –

“…the latest international rankings have placed the department of mathematics at Z. among the top 20 in the world. The meteoric rise in the rankings is due to the fact that in the past few months, the research efforts of a number of mathematicians in the department have borne fruit yielding a surge of groundbreaking new results…”

Old man

2006-07-29T10:36:00.000+01:00

As I sip my Sunday morning tea, my dreamy, half-awake eyes fall on the newspaper headline that reads "A lifetime’s work discovered!" This is about the professor. I had read his obituary a few weeks back.

It was a decade ago when I had first met this strange man. I was attending a seminar in the university where he was teaching then. He was almost sixty and was the most senior professor in the department. By a quirk of fate, I happened to stay with him for a week. The room previously allotted to me was burnt in an accident and there was no other room available. The professor was requested to house me in his dwelling and he graciously accepted.

After exchanging a few pleasantries he took me home, that afternoon, and said - "Please use the bedroom for yourself. I am in the study most of the time." With this he vanished into the study and locked himself up. The gentleness in his voice was soothing and friendly but I was perturbed by his sudden disappearance. I slowly made myself at home. There was a single mat on the bedroom floor. Traveling had exhausted me and I slept immediately. When I got up, it was almost nine and the professor was in his study. I knocked and he came out and said, "I usually cook my own meals. Would you prefer eating out?" Most of his sentences began and ended abruptly like these. I offered to take him out but he refused. Wanting to spend more time with him, I agreed to help him in the kitchen and dine with him.

The professor lived alone. I got to know later that his wife and only child had died in a road accident thirty years back. Ever since, he had lived alone in this house. The house was Spartan - a minimal kitchen and living room. There was a large wooden cupboard full of books except for one of the shelves that had his clothes. The professor was of average height and had a long, rectangular face with a neat crew cut. He was clean shaven and wore simple clothes. He had a relaxed, pleasing look that bore no trace of malice. It was a face that you could trust instantly.

The first thing one observed about him was the silence surrounding him. He was obviously not used to human company and was exceptionally reticent. All my efforts of striking a conversation with him while cooking failed. He answered all my questions with monosyllables or with a few words. But for his friendly face and politeness, I would have branded him an arrogant snob. We ate and washed dishes in an awkward silence.

After dinner, he went back to his study and when I woke up the next day, he was still locked up in the study. I decided to cancel all my other plans and spend the week studying this curious old man. Observing him was easy - he was indifferent to his surroundings and even when you sat in front of him, he ignored you completely until you asked him a question. He spent an astounding 14-16 hours in his study everyday. He slept for 4 hours daily – from 7 to 11 in the morning, ate 2 meals a day and spent 2 hours in the afternoon either walking or taking a class in the university.

I spoke to a few of his students who said that he was a good teacher who knew the subject well but was always aloof and didn’t interact much with the students. The subject he took was a relatively easy one and the students didn’t need to consult him much. Even during the lecture, he didn’t speak much. He would write on the board and then urge the students to think on their own. He would then wait for their queries and diligently reply to each one of them. He was not a popular teacher.

I was particularly fascinated by his eyes. They were dull and dreamy during his daily chores. Occasionally, there would be a sparkle, a twinkling brightness that would light his eyes. I could see fireworks going on behind his eyes in such moments. Once I woke up at night and saw him pacing in the living room with the same glow in his eyes. It was an absurd sight - a paranoid pair of eyes set in a calm face.

After a few days, he started opening up to my persistent interrogation. I learnt from him that he had been working on various research topics in mathematics for the last thirty years. When asked why he was solitary and why he never collaborated with other researchers, he replied almost hysterically –
“I do not have much time left on earth. I have so many ideas that I want to document before I die. Speeches, publications and collaboration do not interest me and I can spend my time better by noting down all that my head is producing.” This is was the longest I had ever heard him speak at one stretch.
“But all your research may be futile if you don’t let the world know,” I pleaded, sounding like a teenager asking his father for pocket-money.
By then, he became oblivious of my presence and walked into his study.

His colleagues told me that nobody had ever seen him do anything other than his personal study and research. When asked to discuss his research he had given the same reply to everyone. He had no hobbies. Nobody had ever seen a friend or relative of his. He had no interest in current affairs or politics or religion. Everyone thought he was excessively shy and soon he was forgotten as nobody ever saw him. There were rumors about great works, about his spiritual powers and even about his criminal links. All of them died simply because nothing ever happened in his life. Unlike so many others like him he was never idolized and put on a pedestal. He was almost non-existent!

I haven’t met a more solitary or laconic man. The article describes his works and comments of other researchers.
“We have found an astonishing 30 volumes of work. Sadly, most of his work is already known to the research community. There are a few results that are ambiguous and a few more that we need to still work on. Right now, nothing spectacular is expected. Of course, we must acknowledge the man’s life-long perseverance.”
Somehow, my heart refuses to believe the expert comments. An entire life, a devoted passionate life – and a futile life!

Anne's diary: 27th December - last night

2006-07-25T18:58:00.000+01:00

It was a cold night and I was cozily tucked into my boyfriend's arms. He was half-asleep and was mumbling intermittently. I was staring at the white ceiling trying to find dark spots in the seemingly spotless white.

“You are the quiet types, aren’t you?” he whispered drowsily.
“Hmm,” I said.
“You hardly speak, honey. Sometimes your silence is scary!”
“I’m scared of words.”
The words hit his impenetrable sleep and spiraled upwards carrying my thoughts.

I saw my Dad’s hand emerging from the bathroom and asking my Mom for a towel.
“Get ready soon, Daddy, I’ll be late for school,” I yelled with a mouth full of oranges.
“Chew your food properly, Anne, and don’t talk with food in your mouth,” ordered my Mom. She came to the table and meticulously packed my lunch box. I chewed the oranges opening my mouth, now and then, displaying my efforts to my Mom.
“Anne, don’t do that. How many times do I have to tell you that?”
“Sorry, Mamma.”

I ran into Daddy’s room and saw him sitting silently on the bed, facing the wall. He was still in his towel. I heard a strange humming sound. I got scared. I had never seen Daddy sit so silently before. I ran back to my Mom and cried, “Mamma...”
“What happened dear?”
“Daddy…”
“He’s getting ready, isn’t he?”
“He’s not moving…”
“What?” a look of concern flashed on her face and we both ran into the bedroom.
Daddy was there - immobile.

We crossed the bed and saw him. His face was peaceful, almost numb. He was still. Dead calm. But his lips were quivering and he was softly muttering something incoherent. My mom yelled and shook him. But his body was lifeless. His mouth didn’t stop. It was muttering non-stop – “car happy talk office book is was am I a the rat year father anne mother room parrot sand water pavement rain help man stomach dates palm copy sheets snow train battery pencil gas…”

I was petrified. Both my Mom and I were crying.
An ambulance came and took him to the hospital.
A few hours later I saw him in the hospital, unconscious but his mouth moving slowly. When he regained consciousness, there was an incessant stream of words from his mouth.
I never saw him again after that day.

“You are sweating,” said my boyfriend as he hugged me again, “Oh baby, must have had a bad dream. Sleep tight dear.”

escaping illusions

2006-06-08T04:46:00.000+01:00

singing the dreams of mystery
the wind whistles into my ears
a pregnant silence
i yearn to fathom

the flight of the eagle
immortal desires
the elements of uncertainty
an enchanting chaos

The first letter in a string

2006-05-31T10:46:00.000+01:00

“I can’t think. There are too many images tossing about in my mind. I can’t see clearly. The afternoon sunlight is blinding. There’s a desolate road on the right. There are no people. Dead faces - faces that have no meaning in my life any more. This road is my life now. Oh, my bloody itchy legs. Damn my leprous skin. I am surrounded by them – strangers - and I want none, I can see none. Aah! The acid is surging into my neck now. This house looks like mine. Looks like the house that I once had. What’s this tinkling sound? Three rupees. Why did I lose today’s game? The brandy was good – worth my last note. Why am I so restless? Its all so disgusting, so ridiculous. Look at this leaf that falls from this monstrous tree on my bruised shoulder. I want to look at my eyes, strained, burning, teary eyes.”

A dog was lying in the shade. It was a puppy that was on the threshold of becoming an adult. A man with ragged clothes was walking on the road. He had a dreamy look and would occasionally stop and look at the surroundings with vacant eyes. He looked completely absorbed in himself. His demeanor bespoke a terrible loss, a pensive, pathetic sorrow. Absent-mindedly he stepped on the dog’s tail. The sudden disturbance irritated the dog. It yelped and angrily sunk its teeth into the man’s leg – just above the ankle. What followed was an episode of shocking brutality.

The man bent on his knees and caught the neck of the dog with his large, swarthy hand. He rammed the head of the dog into the bark of the tree. The dog was yelping loudly and desperately attacking with its paws. The nails dug into his feet and legs and they were bleeding profusely. His red, livid face was shrieking with anger but his eyes were still vacant. They were not participating in this gruesome duel.

“How many more things do I have to face? This bloody creature…what right does it have to live? Why should it suffer this existence? Why can’t they just leave me alone? Bloody bastards, I’ll kill them all. Sickening morons – all of them. The villains, the plunderers – oh, this stupid dog, its stinking flesh. Ah, see the mashed flesh, the fresh blood. Society, evolution – what utter nonsense. Bloody scoundrel of a dog – why did you bite me?”

His left hand found a large stone. His right hand was still clutching the neck of the suffocating dog and muffling its cries. The stone pounded on the dog’s head till it was thoroughly smashed. The ears bled, the eyes bled, the teeth cracked, the skull cracked. Pools of blood surrounded lumps of scattered pulp of the dog’s flesh. The fidgety limbs came to a halt. The man released the dog’s neck and stood up. He jumped on the body of the dog kicking it with vicious force. With every kick his angry yells became louder and more terrifying. The unconscious dog’s abdominal skin tore apart. The man was not looking at the dog. His face was tensed and stretched to the point of exploding. Tears were flowing from his bloody eyes that stared with melancholy at the clear sky.

Completely exhausted, he fell on the ground that stank of blood and flesh. A mangled body lay beside a battered mind.

Early morning

2006-05-07T06:03:00.001+01:00

A cold beautiful morning melts on the quiet buds of my thoughts. The suppressed crooning of the tender breeze bathes my skin. I wake up and look out of the window. Just inhaling the sight around me is divine, blissful. Twittering birds that dissolve in their camouflage. Moist grass catching the enchanting first rays of sunlight. I look at a large drop of water sitting like a pearl on the upper edge of my window. It has swallowed the sky and I look at the clouds floating inside it. As I open the window further, the drop rolls down slowly. I can see it letting go of the sky and consuming, one after another, the trees, the hut beside, and my finger nails. Like memories, they coagulate inside the drop and vanish. The drop falls on the ground and spreads to engulf the blossoming of a flower above. The liquid flower flows in the spreading drop, mingling with sunshine, yawning and stretching, changing colors and shapes with a fluid effortlessness. In that fantastic mirage, the flower and the water live together and move with the rhythm of the sunlight, feeding on the ground and slowly fading away. In an effort to save them, a drizzle begins. The sweet smell of rain wafts into me and settles on the stillness of my mind. I see the colors of the flower rise up against the rain, crystallizing in every raindrop. The rain destroys the solidity of the surroundings - the hut, the trees and the hills around. They become shimmering silhouettes of delicate, dancing colors. The world around me looks gentle, vulnerable and tremulous - like a nascent being.

things - Lila - anguish

2006-04-29T09:13:00.000+01:00

the incessant humming of the fan - silent sunlight flowing in through the windows - a table littered with books - a wasted education - the face in the mirror - a wretched experiment of nature - the telephone - conversation - Lila - the cold voice - the emptiness - a dry invitation to meet - the bottle of rum in the fridge - two swigs to pour tranquility into blood - the wall clock that is anxious for the future - bleak, scary, purposeless - a look at myself - limbs of pain, leprous skin - just a few more decades of existence - i close my eyes - the past strangling me with colorful ribbons - "happy birthday to you" - a cake stuffed into my mouth - the grease smeared on my heart, lungs, brain - suffocating, stinking, rotten entrails - Lila's melting hands caressing my forehead when my eyes on her lap meet her tears on the sky - i open my eyes - Lila's mangled face squeezing out of my pupils - alas, i close my eyes again - entrapment - fury - an axe, a club - the pulp of the body i loved - blood, crushed bones, putrefying flesh - i kiss them all - purifying rains - i open my eyes - the ghost is born again - the tree - the moist, verdant leaves - the withered, tired, rusty bark - filthy human beings - cars - roads - movement - struggle - corroding ambition - noise, hunger, poverty - a carnival of death - the clawing anguish - a long, miserable, mysterious wait.

Ear itch

2006-04-27T17:02:00.000+01:00

My right ear had been itching inside for a long time. The itch would aggravate in certain positions. For example, when lying on my right side with the ear pressed against the pillow. At times, there was pain in the region below the ear. A course of antibiotics ruled out an infection - the feelings persisted. Physical inspection also dismissed wax collection. I could feel movement within the ear. Like a sharp pricking pain moving along the interiors of the ear - millimeter by millimeter.

A few days back I was lying on the bed with a mirror in my hand early in the morning. I noticed a black spot in motion in the cusps of my right ear. I turned to look at the pillow and found a clear white pillow-cover. Despite some gymnastics with the hand mirror & the mirror on the wall, I couldn't look inside my ear! But then I realized that there was an animal living inside, most probably, an ant. An ant that had liked the warm coziness of my ear. Perhaps, it had also acquired a taste for ear wax.

Days passed.

I have now got used to living with the ant in my ear. It regularly crawls out for fresh air. But returns promptly on seeing any approaching threat including my fingers. It doesn't recognize my human body: it just knows the ear canal - its home; and the ear wax - its food.

We have a language of movement and touch with which we communicate. There are certain head positions that my ant dislikes. During the day, when my head is almost always straight, my ant doesn't move much. I think it sleeps. At nights, particularly when I just lie down, I wake it up with many jolts due to my changing postures. Earlier, due to these jolts, it would run helter-skelter making my ear itch for a long time. Then, slowly, it got used to the daily earthquakes and I, for my part, always moved my head delicately, with care.

My ant feels better now. From its position inside my ear I know when it is sleeping, eating or playing my ear drums!

The Final Intercourse

2006-01-15T14:35:00.001+01:00

He was delirious with exhaustion. His heart was beating wildly as he lay with his back kissing the dry grass, his hands outstretched beside his head and his legs held together as though in a vice. Despite the heat and noise, his mind was comfortably numb and was moving incoherently through absurd lanes of his mind. The sun was streaming mirages into his head - a bed cozily tucked below a dark, damp staircase, a garden surrounded by snow clad mountains, previous moments of intimacy that he had never found in his conscious memory…

She was lying atop and had the serene look of conquest in her eyes. She was panting and her nails were quietly caressing his bare chest drenched in sweat. Her legs were on his legs - perfectly superimposed – twitching now and then, seductively, through the shreds of his trousers. Her naked skin displayed the resplendent vigor of youth.

Their breath coincided in a swift, tired rhythm. His eyes were closed and hers were intensely awake. In the midst of the blistering sunlight and arid land, the two of them made a perfect picture of raving wildness and intolerable hunger.

At a hazy distance in the plains, she saw hyenas approaching. Without further delay, she dug her razor sharp incisors into his stomach and devoured his entrails. A strident wail melted in the vastness of the plains as her tail fondly stroked the spattered blood on his legs. Other lionesses and cubs had joined her and were nibbling at his toes and outstretched hands.

Sojourn

2006-01-03T19:51:00.000+01:00

[ This is an exercise in imagination and writing. I took a picture and then, along with its description, have penned the thoughts that ran in my mind when I was seeing it. ]

I stopped my bike on the way to take a break and breathe in the intoxicating beauty of the landscape around me. After two hours of non-stop riding, it took time and effort for my feet to balance my weight while standing. I had started ascending the mountain about ten minutes back and already I could savor the giddy height on seeing the ground a few hundred feet below. I tucked my bike away from the highway, sat on a rock that looked like a colony of algae feeding on a giant almond, lit a cigarette and listened to the silence taking shape around me.

My worn out shoes sniffed the edge of the desolate road that curved out from behind the mountain on the right and sank into the trees on my left. The dazzling sunlight streaked through the grass and trees creating new rainbows with every tilt of my head. My green sweater stretched from my back to clothe the cliff behind me. The vegetation was thick and ominous. In contrast, a small patch of the ground on the opposite side of the road had been cleared and looked barren and forlorn. The farther edge of the patch slowly rose from tiny shrubs to a dense forest, walking its way to drink the river flowing below. The loneliness was augmented by a single naked tree, bereft of leaves, guarding the patch.

The tree was standing tall and proud amidst the surrounding lowly shrubs. Its nakedness was a stark attempt to soar above the mundane. Its pencil-tipped branches were trying to hold and etch its existence into the fleeting bolts of clouds, in vain. Clouds there were many, like an army moving forward to besiege the sun. But every soldier, however valiant, was impaled mercilessly by the furious, golden monarch of the sky. In a monstrous, collusive alliance, the sun crushed the invasive forces and fed them to life beneath.

The cigarette amalgamated into the sunlight. I broke myself out of my reverie, started my bike and resumed my journey.

A short conversation - Lila

2005-12-31T18:36:00.000+01:00

M (in a low, soft voice; His eyes were constantly moving, avoiding her eyes) : “How are you?”

Lila (head slightly bent, eyes almost closed): “I’m fine. And you?”

M (His hovering eyes finally found a tree conveniently placed behind and around her face. He stared vacantly to the left of her face at the tree. He found the position of his face ridiculous but couldn’t think of any better position. He answered nonchalantly): “I’m ok. Life’s going on.”

There was an awkward silence in their conversation. Both were frantically searching for topics of conversation and couldn’t find any they both would be comfortable with. Lila bit her lips – emotions and words competing painfully within her. M looked at his watch.

Lila (She raised her head slightly and sighed with visible effort): “I-I’m going home now for the vacation.”

M (Moving his eyes from the left of her face to the right, stealthily looking at her face and again fixing it at the tree behind): “Ah. Ok. How is your health?”

Lila (pleased by the question that came like a milestone on a highway giving direction to the journey): “My health is ok. What about yours? And, how is your work?” (She risked looking at his face now)

M (irritated for having continued the conversation): “I am all right. Work’s ok. Everything is just the same.”

Lila (Tears clouding her mind): “What else?”

M (He said something and was surprised to find his throat choked and the words inaudible. With more control and deliberation…): “Nothing much has been happening. Life’s quite monotonous.”

Lila: “I gotto go. See you later.”

The stammering words were battered by the emotion she couldn’t conceal and as she turned, her head hung down and she walked away hastily. He saw her hands bending up to her face as she sat in the car and shut the door. The car raced forward and stole itself away from his vision.

He stood staring as the car turned to a vacant moistness. The corpulence of his friend slowly filled his aching eye.

C: “Hey, I’ve got the coffee. Who were you talking to?”

M (Shaking himself up and putting on as wicked a smile as possible): “My Ex!”

C (delectably sipping in the aromatic coffee): “You still in touch?” (Ending with note of surprise)

M: “No.” (with a wistful look)

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

2005-12-18T16:04:00.000+01:00

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;
Labour and rest, that equal periods keep;
"Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep;"
Desires compos'd, affections ever ev'n,
Tears that delight, and sighs that waft to Heav'n.
Grace shines around her with serenest beams,
And whisp'ring angels prompt her golden dreams.
For her th' unfading rose of Eden blooms,
And wings of seraphs shed divine perfumes,
For her the Spouse prepares the bridal ring,
For her white virgins hymeneals sing,
To sounds of heav'nly harps she dies away,
And melts in visions of eternal day.

from "Eloisa to Abelard" by Alexander Pope

My Story

2005-11-21T15:49:00.000+01:00

I am old and forgotten now. But I have had quite an adventurous life; and a long one too. This is my story – not in entirety but only glimpses of it.

Every life is shaped by the environment in which it develops and I was no exception. My formative years were inundated with varied emotions and experiences. I was, and in fact, I am a huge bundle of emotions. And, I loved observing the emotions within and around me. When I looked I found curiosity, fervor, affection, joy, grief, fury, passion, misery, anxiety, fear, apprehension, malice, jealousy, greed, shame, lust, pride and betrayal – each thread of emotion intertwined with many others and all the threads defining my very existence. The experiences which life threw at me every day further embellished the diversity of emotions within me.

The wanderlust within me enriched me with knowledge of the world and exposed me to the beauty of life’s inscrutable contradictions. My life was never static – with every new encounter I changed. I reveled in the joy of my own maturation! As I grew, my faculty of observation – observing both inside and outside of myself - matured. I enjoyed the drama of life and its actors. I had this innate ability of absorbing the histrionics of life around me and presenting it in a convoluted, disguised form which appealed to others.

My first encounter with love left an indelible impression on me. I had seen her in exulting times when she would dance in joy. I had seen her in times of depression when she would weep bitterly, hiding her face in the pillow. She was a bubbly, caring, sensitive girl who grew up to become a charming young woman.

The transformation was gradual. She was softer than ever, calmer than ever and dreamier than ever. She was in love and she had not experienced anything like this before. She would talk to me about him for hours at a stretch, looking at me with eyes that were vacant – lost in his thoughts. She would think of the long, ecstatic hours spent with him, incessantly dream of their future together – until past, present and future became one undivided stretch of phantasmagoria. Even a few days of living apart due to their callings, were times of agony for both of them.

How it could happen, nobody knows. One day when he went to meet her, she wasn’t home. He waited for her to call on him but minutes turned to hours and hours to days and still there was no sign of her. His anxiety turned to desperation. His days were spent in searching for his sweetheart and nights in Kafkaesque deliberations. It was a blow which devastated him not only because it was severe but also because he had absolutely no clue about its why or how!

After innumerable quirks of fate the details of which I shall skip, two years later she was found talking to some of her acquaintances. She was more pensive. She was talking about him. She had not betrayed him. She said, “I have exhausted all my emotions for him.” All of a sudden, all she felt was a void. What triggered it, she herself couldn’t understand. She wished she could explain it to him but refrained from doing so because she knew that he wouldn’t understand it. This tale of capricious and transitory human love and all its mystifying intricacies has remained etched within me till today.

After I was no longer impressionable, the only thing that changed was the outlook of others towards me. I felt that everyone saw me in a different light and I would always wonder what I really was, or rather, what I really am.

But that happened after that great day! Yes, it was a great day in my life – for that day I became famous. My name was on the tips of the tongue of all who mattered. Newspaper and magazine articles, drawing-room-conversations of the elite – I featured everywhere. I felt I was omnipresent then. One moment I felt that I was in the hubbub of New York and the very next moment I felt cozily lapped in the tranquil shores of Goa. Fame was wonderful!

But fame transformed to anonymity and pride to jealousy. Soon I was forgotten and replaced by others – some known to me, some unknown. I remained only in the dark shelves of forgotten memories. Oblivion exasperated me; it paled me with rage and jealousy. Some did utter my name in passing, but seldom was there any hint of my past glory. I was as transitory as the emotions within me.

Oh, my fervent apologies, I haven't introduced myself - I am a story.

Story Tree

2005-11-08T02:18:00.000+01:00

He thought it would be an ordinary journey. Standing behind the pillar he watched the train snort arrogantly into the station. With each snort he was reminded of his grandfather's words "You will fail in the city and return penniless"; with every heavenward whistle, he heard his cousin, "Don't worry. Come here and I will get you a job at the construction site." Now he had a 34-hour journey to prove one of them wrong, and he expected the excitement at the end of the journey. He looked at his ticket once again: compartment S9 berth 23.

He would preserve this ticket. When he would succeed, he would frame and hang it for all to see, as a reminder of the fact that greatness had humble origins, of the day when he set out to seize his destiny. His lips quivered with emotion as he carefully counted the money in his wallet, yet again. Four crisp hundreds and two crumpled fifties. At seventeen, it seemed like a fortune to him. He would carefully plan his expenses. He felt as energetic as the strong breeze that hit his face. He stumbled backward, as the wallet slipped from his hands.

(Continued from Meera )

The train saw an exciting demonstration of Raju’s reflexes. Falling backward, he extended his hand, and although unable to leap forward, caught his wallet by its edge. Years of wicket keeping had made him alert and nimble. His head fell on his bag and pushed open the cap of the bottle of flavored milk which he had meticulously prepared the previous night. The milk flowed happily on the platform and until it gushed down to the tracks creating a spectacular waterfall for the insects below. He rose, picked his bags and walked through the milky way to board the train.

I would like to pass on the Story Tree to Pratibha & Srinivas.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Everything below the dashed line above should be copied and pasted with every accepted tag)
This is a Story Tree and is best nurtured as follows:
1. A blogger can add only 90-100 words (not more or less) at a time.
2. All previous snippets of 90-100 words need to be copied before the new set of 90-100 words are appended.
3. Each entire snippet should be linked to the respective author (and not just the first sentence or so)
4. Characters, scenes, etc. can be introduced by an author
5. Bizarre twists, sci-fi, fantasy sequences are best avoided.
6. A tag must be accepted within 7 days else the branch is a dead branch
7. After appending 90-100, the Story Tree can be passed on to at most 3 bloggers.
8. If more than 1 branch leads to a blogger, s/he is free to choose any one of them but cannot mix the snippets of the individual branches.
9. The Story Tree is best left to grow than concluded10. Please attach the image of the Story Tree above with each accepted tag (the link address can be copied and used).

The Evolution of I/O Function - Computers and Us

2005-10-15T10:26:00.000+01:00

In the first computers, the processor directly controlled peripheral devices. The processor used to be busy with I/O most of the time. Then an I/O module got added to the architecture and the processor started using programmed I/O but the processor still was busy with I/O. Interrupts came in next followed by DMA making the processor more and more efficient and making I/O devices more independent and intelligent. Now, I/O devices are mini computers with processors and memories of their own.

Perhaps similar phenomena happened in the human body. Cognition is far more complicated than what most super computers can do today. But, imagine, what will happen if the brain starts making our sense organs more independent. Right now, the sense organs gather data and the brain is responsible for integrating the data and making sense of the impressions. A first step towards making the sense organs more independent would be to integrate them because cognition is almost always the result of a combination of sense perceptions. So, there will have to be ONE sense organ that can touch, see, hear, smell and taste. Lets assume that the human skin is that organ. It assimilates all the sense perceptions and transfers the data to the brain. Lets look at how our lives as these evolved human beings will differ...

Our vision will be panoramic and phenomenal. If naked, we'll be able to see 360 degrees all around. Our concepts of back and front will be altered. Back stabbing won't be possible anymore! Eyes will not be as delicate and vulnerable. After all, if you lose a part of your skin, you can always see from another part!! But yes, skin diseases will be the biggest problem of our lives. Looking into dark corners will just mean fingering around!

Of course, it'll naturally force us to shed our clothes, since we can't cover our eyes all the time!! And the parts that are covered will have to see the back of our clothes all day!! That'll probably start off a new fashion trend - clothes with pleasing designs on the reverse!! Or clothes with books or movies on the reverse, so that part of the skin is reading or watching movies while its clothed!! Scope for new technology as well!!
Touching an apple will tell you how it looks closely, feels, smells and tastes! Selecting fruits and vegetables will be easier!! For the first time, you'll be able to look into your shoes while wearing them! And, after a long day's work, your legs will have to suffer their smell and taste!! Aaaargh!! Shaking hands with another person will involve not just knowing their touch but also their taste and smell!! And sex will really involve "perceiving" your partner deeply and completely!!!

Our face will not have ears, nose, mouth and eyes. Probably just an opening for chewing and swallowing. Heads will be much smaller - only small knobs resting on the shoulder and containing the brain. All humans will look more or less the same - only changes being in the size and shape of the body and the color of the skin. That'll have tremendous impact in fashion, advertising, movies and all industries that need human faces!! Well, identification might become a problem. A person's identity will then consist of his/her shape, size, smell, texture, taste and sound. The face will be an insignificant part.

More can be thought of - I request readers to add more. Overall, I feel it will be a better I/O model!!

Of, relating to, occurring in, or appropriate to winter - Lila

2005-10-13T08:34:00.003+01:00

When I look at Lila now, I wonder how I had ever fallen in love with her then. She is talking about things which I don’t want to hear now. She is telling jokes and laughing and I am responding by smiling my arrogant smile – only to let her imagine that I am with her in the conversation. Perhaps she knows that I am not listening and she doesn’t care either – she never cared anyway. I don’t even know why I came here when she called me. Despite all that had happened between us, I have come. Her face has not lost her radiance; she is still as attractive as she had been. But, it’s lost. The feeling just isn’t there. I actually feel strange at the thought of my sitting and talking to her. But, that’s what I am doing. I feel disgusted at myself and the fact that circumstances have led to this. I really don’t know how to describe it. I have thought about it for about six years now – the thought of how it happened almost made me crazy.

After those two months, I always loved her only in her absence! Or, perhaps I only loved those two months – the time, the place, the atmosphere, her. But I loved those two months after those two months…

Her sweet smell used to drive me mad. The soft, freezing nights, fog fragrant with blooming jasmine - enchanting and still vivid in my memory - Our first train and jeep ride; the mellifluence of her voice; our walks together in beautiful moonlit nights –
when we discussed dreams, philosophy and coffee! Her special treats only for me; her relief when I came alone to meet her without my friends; chocolates for attending her concert; her calling my name aloud in her shrill voice; our emails which determined when we would meet next and where – despite the fact that we met at the same place everyday and at the same time! Her songs sung only for me and the stars in the romantic quiet of the temple garden; her standing close when I was sitting on the parapet; the warmth of her touch – her hands on my knees; her reading my fledgling writings; her prophecy of my writing, my dreams of her – real and fabricated, her piety and my atheism, our only photo that I lost, my dreams, my dreams, my dreams…

Those two months I didn’t realize what was happening. I was in a trance. Everything had changed. My only pastime was to wait for her evening calls. My only thoughts were the cumulative memories of our togetherness of the previous days. Each day only added more memories. I was dormant, I did nothing – she came and there was magic… everything happened effortlessly – like an intoxicating fog coming from heaven, enveloping my helplessness.

And then, it snapped. The fog lifted. The sun blazed the plains but froze the memories - neatly casketing and locking them up. There was nothing more to be filled and yet there was enough for a lifetime of agonizing recalls. All of a sudden, there was a callous wall between us. We met, but not the same way. We talked of the same things and yet, the feeling wasn’t the same. It was as if the curtain had been suddenly raised and the chilling suspense and sweet anxiety evaporated leaving an annoying vacuum. It was maddening. I just couldn’t figure out what had happened. And my confusion led to bizarre behavior. I acted stupid – behaving like a spoilt child, nagging her sometimes indirectly and often, directly. That furthered the rift.

Life moved fast. It took us to different places, led us to different circumstances. Our paths didn’t meet of its own like the earlier magic. And when forcibly intersected, it only brought to the fore the saddening absence of harmony. All the while, I kept thinking about what had happened. How? Why? What did I do? What did I not do? Each time I met her, I went with an expectation. Outwardly I put on an angry, stoic front; deep inside I wanted those two months back. They never came. I never discussed it with her. It had to happen by magic like in those two months. My conscious efforts in the past had only ruined it further. I tried for two years and then I was sapped out. Hope has a limit.

Love only touches for a moment. And then, nothing lasts – neither love, nor the moment; only memories of the moment – tender and haunting memories.

Once in a while, we meet like today. I don’t like these meetings. Yet, the ghost of hope lurks within, gnaws inside and brings me to her. The safely hidden casket in my heart opens. Those two months flash through my mind along with the absurdity and nausea that followed. I try to keep the latter away from my precious casket. That’s my secret treasure that nobody can comprehend or see – not even Lila. And yet, even while I write this, I am hoping that she sees this and…

Hope never dies. Fortunately, love does! Does it?

Morning walk

2005-10-11T18:44:00.000+01:00

On the left, is a towering apartment block. It has huge gates well guarded by dark, thin men, elegantly dressed, with proud faces adorned by moustaches. They have a separate room at the side with a window through which they can peep with irritated, raised eyebrows at every passer-by who looks at the gates. There are hundreds of flats in the block, the windows and balconies of each flat overlooking the road - each room looking identical but encumbering a distinct fascinating tales of human lives.

The footpath in front of the apartment bears men and women jostling to begin their day. Most have blank looks which betray some expression only when they see their watch or an irregularity in their attire or some curious incident on the road - like the motorcyclist hurling abuses at the autorickshaw for having rammed into him. Meanwhile, other two-wheelers are busy strenuously finding ways of moving ahead - some move into the footpath, they tilt at various angles to squeeze through gulleys, furrows and other formations created by the traffic.

A pirated-books seller is busy laying out the books on the footpath, dusting each book before placing it. Bevies of young girls continuously cross the road to reach the college gate on the opposite side. Most of them are giggling at each others' gossip. Some glance at the books. Each glance diverts the attention of the book seller, frustration quickly following expectation from both sides.
Some men with company tags hanging out of their pockets also stop to look at the books. Most men wear formal clothes, have a briefcase like bag and a serious look. The tags unite them like dogs of a pedigree. With men possessing similar tags, they share a common future and common jokes. [Different tags only change the names and some jargon - the essence of the conversation remains same among the tagged men!]

The bus stops are thronged by many colors and dull faces. Eager faces pop out of every bus that arrives, each face yelling - announcing the route and the destination. Most people want to go where the most packed buses go. Empty buses seem to be going where nobody wants to go and there are so many empty buses and so few packed buses!

The shopping mall looks lifeless. All the shops are closed and the mannequins stare eerily from the dark backgrounds. Coffee Day has woken up and are serving the morning dose of MTV to the cleaners of the mall. A sharp turn after the mall, and my office comes into my cone of vision.

At the railway station - Lila

2005-10-08T06:36:00.000+01:00

He had boarded the train with four other companions. The din of the railway station had started boring him nowadays. Looking around, he saw people of all kinds with one thing in common – the dust and grime of the railway station. He remembered the time when he was fascinated by crowds especially on a railway station. So many people, each one with so many thoughts and ideas, would it be possible to look into the minds of all these people, know their thoughts…thus he would muse often. And now, having thought of the same thing over and over again, he had got exasperated and was daydreaming about his past daydreams.

“Coffee!” he yelled out. The man carrying a huge container of coffee came rushing to him. “One cup,” he said. While he was searching for a five rupee coin, the man quickly handed him a cup of coffee and was ready to sprint to the next customer. The coffee soothed his dry throat. ‘Perhaps I am about to catch a throat infection. Better drink some coffee to prevent it,’ he thought. He looked out of the window and could see an amalgamation of floating colors. The rush was so terrible that he did not want to distinguish the people it comprised of. He preferred to imagine a “bird’s eye view” and just observe the illusion of colors rushing to and fro. Suddenly he felt a torrent of grey and brown and green almost overwhelming him. Something else also perturbed him – noise. It was more irritating than the din of the mob. It was someone, rather a group of three or more people talking near him.

He shook himself mentally and focussed to perceive what was happening. Just on the other side of his window, on the platform, stood an elderly couple. His hair was grey and her sari was green. He turned and saw a man of about forty sitting in front of him with his glorious paunch celebrating his existence. The man with his paunch was verily the embodiment of feast and gaiety. His thoughts were now interrupted by simultaneous invasions of a sweet-smelling perfume and feminine chattering. On his left, was a girl who was bending to look out of the window to talk to the elderly couple.

‘She is so engrossed in her talks that it appears that she hasn’t even seen me. My presence is obviously a hindrance to her conversation. I have to get up but I don’t want to. I like her smell! And it’s not daily that I have the opportunity to sit beside a sweet smelling female!’ He quickly made the chivalrous decision. He looked at her and made some movements in order to get up. She looked at him without any expression. ‘Maybe that’s an expression which signifies a little bit of irritation and a little bit of worry. After all the biological self is the first to react. An unknown male moving in the direction of a female is bound to inspire biological apprehension and fear!’

“Please sit comfortably and talk,” he said to her and moved to sit beside that epitome of mirth. Her expression changed in an instant. She smiled at him and quickly resumed talking to the elderly couple. Her smile instantly changed his mood. ‘Wow. I hope this girl travels with us,’ he felt delighted at the prospect of spending the next two days traveling with this sweet smelling creature. He began to observe her carefully and was ecstatic at being engaged in his favorite pastime. She was thin, very thin indeed. ‘I guessed she considers her emaciated self slim!! These girls are too much.’ She was his age or probably older. She spoke Tamil fluently and indeed buoyantly. She appeared to be a bubbly creature with a body capable of withstanding the gymnastics of her exuberance. Her face was pleasing, not really beautiful. But all of a sudden, an ornate smile displayed a lovely set of teeth and made her immensely beautiful. ‘Oh! Come on. Nowadays I have started finding excuses to make every girl beautiful!’ She had a large forehead which made her look old as well as wise. ‘Her eyes! Yes, that’s why she appears so beautiful. Her eyes sparkle when she smiles and gives her a divine beauty!’ Her thin eyebrows and extremely thin lips accentuated her feminity but when one looked at her below her face, it seemed to accentuate her rather gaunt features. Her nose was sharp and small.

He immediately felt a dichotomy in her being. There was something of a contradiction between the face and the rest of her body. He wasn’t fully aware of what it was. He realized it only days later. Her body radiated vibes of spirituality. The thinness of it reminded him of yogis of ancient India!! Her sweet smell further added to an ethereal, mystic aura about her. Her broad forehead seemed to be fighting this spirituality, trying hard to come out of its grips into the mundane world - a world where a woman had to be beautiful to succeed if she didn’t have any other talent or skill. The battle lines seemed to have been drawn at her chin which was small and pointed and from which seemed to emerge her lower spiritual body. The face had been able to resist till this chin and not beyond that – the broad forehead and the small, strained chin gave this appearance. Of course, he just had a vague notion of all this. He was able to articulate it better much later.

Moribund (1)

2005-10-08T06:31:00.000+01:00

The first rays of the sun tore through the clouds and burst forth with all their might. The night put up a struggle and was unwilling to leave. Strands of day and night adorning the dawn sky lit up the struggle. Below on earth another encounter witnessed the divine play of light above. It was an encounter of unequal foes – life and the will to perish.

Chetan was lying on a bench in the park. The park was surrounded by roads on all sides, rather one busy road and three narrow lanes – two of the lanes joined the road and the third lane was narrow and lonely. The bench was along this lane. The park was thickly populated with trees – so many that neither could he see the boundary walls on the farther sides of the park and nor could he discern the presence of another person. There was path that had been hemmed out from this thick outgrowth and ran parallel to the boundary walls on all the sides.

He had escaped from the hospital. He didn’t know what he was doing and where he was going. He watched the sky with a child-like expression of wonder and a moribund stillness. He felt blank. He felt empty. He was wearing a gown given him in the hospital – he had nothing but the gown and his underwear.

He could see a tent at the edge of the park. An old hag became visible as the sun started gaining in the encounter - she was sitting outside the tent. She wore a ragged gown which had been stitched together from various pieces of dull, faded clothes. The gown was too big for her and made her look bigger than she actually was. From the opening of this gown on the top a face emerged that was dark, ugly and wrinkled. Her hair was grey and dusty. Her eyes were sharp, piercing and a strange madness in them – a penetrating ferocity.

She was trying to light a fire with some twigs that she had collected. He looked around and found a saucepan beside her. He imagined tea in the pan and the smell of tea wafted its way from his mind to his nose. He longed for a cup of hot tea. One year back, at this time he was demanding tea at home and his mother was preparing tea at top speed. She had to prepare tea for Chetan, coffee for herself and her husband and then get ready to leave for office. Chetan liked tea more than coffee – he preferred coffee only before serious studies. He used to like tea more than coffee – now he liked nothing, wanted nothing and yet missed everything – he felt that it was this feeling which was the weakness of his soul and life sowed the seeds for this weakness. The dream suddenly dissolved in his tears – tears not of sadness or nostalgia - and when the drops fell on his cheeks clearing his eyes of the dream, he could see the old hag lifting the pan from the fire which was now burning vigorously.

He lifted himself from the bench with much effort. His leg where he had been operated hurt him and walking was difficult. The fire and the food provoked him to draw near. He was attracted as though by some invisible force. He had completely surrendered his mind to his body and his body moved instinctively towards nourishment, towards the burning fire of life.

The old hag saw him approaching and her features became taut. She guarded herself, her pan and her tent with a maternal ferocity. As Chetan limped forward, she clutched a branch which was shaped like a club and stared constantly at Chetan. Chetan was too feeble to speak and approached without a word. Without any warning, the old hag got up, ran towards Chetan swearing incessantly. He was shocked and paralyzed at this sudden revolt. He saw the club descending on him and the thorns in the branch scratched his head leaving a bleeding gash behind. He fell on the muddy ground with a pain piercing his leg. A stone had abraded the bandage from his leg and his wound now lay open to the brutality of nature all around. The old hag could see a deep wound stretching from his left knee to the middle of his calf muscles. Half the leg had been scooped out and the raw flesh was visible. The wound looked fresh although there was no blood. It seemed as though blood was tired of oozing out. There were stains of blood all over the wound and she could see the faint outline of his bone in the middle of the wound. Chetan was crying softly as the sunlight, having won the battle against night, sought its next victim in his leg.

The hag saw his leg and felt nauseated. She went back to her tent muttering constantly to herself. Chetan’s head was bleeding at two places - near his left temple where the branch had hit him and on the other side where his head had landed with a thud on the ground. The pain in his leg was moving slowly upwards and he could feel the excruciating radiating pain. In agony, he kicked his left leg with his right leg. His right toe touched the wound and he yelled out in pain. His head was throbbing as blood dripped from over his eyebrow and mingled with his tears on his cheek.

He felt as though the pain from his leg wanted to meet the pain from his head and his chest and torso prevented the meeting. He felt a tug of war being played at the two ends of his body. The sunlight had become harsher and he could feel each ray clawing into the two ends of his body. He could not hear his own wailing increasing in intensity. The old hag heard it and ran away from the park with her pan. There was nobody in Chetan’s vicinity. Then the wailing ceased and Chetan saw himself in a different place. In fact he saw himself in two places – lying in the park tormented with pain and standing in his house just out of bed. He knew that one Chetan was a reality and the other a dream. How he wished it was the other way round. He tried hard to concentrate on the dream. The other Chetan was now static and slowly he could only see the events of his past unfurling in front of his closed eyes...

The Reprobate

2005-10-08T06:23:00.000+01:00

There were two rival groups of dogs in that area. Both were proud of their ancestors and both upheld the values of their clans ferociously.
Actually, the story of the two groups had a common beginning.

In the beginning there were just two dogs and their mates. The two dogs had been brought up together and were friendly. How the four of them came there, nobody knows. But once they came, they never left.
Because of a misunderstanding between the two males and because of a natural instinct of possessing one’s own territory, they separated. Their territories were clearly demarcated and were fiercely protected by each pair. They co-existed as rival neighbors and never went anywhere else.

Their families grew as the females gave birth to healthy litters. The pups were schooled well by their parents and they imbibed noble virtues of love for territory, parents and kith and kin. The enmity between the two groups was now a family matter. Each group ferociously guarded its territory and didn’t allow any dog from another group to enter. A dog from the neighboring group wouldn’t dare to enter the territory of the other. And if one ventured by mistake, the unity and ferocity of the pack would soon pounce upon it. The lone adventurer would then not flee, for it was from a brave and proud clan. It would fight with enormous courage as its brothers would soon join it and carnage would ensue. Bodies would be terribly wounded and the souls would be glowing with pride. The females would have another story to narrate to their young and the unity of the group and their pride in their values would strengthen.

One day, a reprobate was born to one of the groups. The entire group cursed their stars for the puny male pup was the weakest creature they had even seen. How could a clan that boasted of its valor ever produce an animal like that! The pup grew and was different from others. It was devoid of anger – it was gentle and caring. It was despised by the entire group. The males of the group had to be dogs of valor, power and ferocity – such a weakling was a blemish to the group. He was ostracized from the activities of the group. He stayed in the territory of the group and managed to fend for himself but was a failure in school. The noble virtues of patriotism and savage strength always eluded him – he was a depraved creature.

One day, the reprobate dog ventured into the neighboring territory and was immediately surrounded by the rival dogs. Their violent barks were deafening. Their threatening canines were waiting to rip the flesh out of him. Their tongues were hanging out ominously and their blood shot eyes were piercing his soul. The difference between his life and death was just a moment. While the rival dogs were surrounding him, dogs from his own group saw him and were rushing forward eager for battle. Then the unthinkable happened. All the dogs from both the groups were stunned and stood motionless. The reprobate bent down and surrendered.

The rival dogs didn’t know how to react – they had neither heard nor even thought of such a happening. The dogs of his own group were looking, awe-struck, waiting for the reaction of the enemy. The rivals cleared the way for the reprobate and the dog got up, head and tail still drooping and made his way to his brothers who were looking at him with a look of abject disgust. The battle had ended without beginning and the soldiers returned home.

The reprobate sat with his head bent with shame while all the other members of the group surrounded him. The eldest (who were the wisest and most brutal) were together, the commoners and females were together and the only thought that was in everyone’s minds was – the group had been insulted. The thought was like a solid wave flowing (through everyone’s minds) and static – it united them and at once gave rise to a communal feeling. It was a united feeling of hatred towards the depraved dog.

Almost simultaneously it was decided and then the elders proclaimed – the reprobate is no longer a part of the group. He is exiled. Being their brother, he will not be attacked by any member of this group. However, no responsible member of the group will allow him to eat anything within this territory.

The reprobate heard the pronouncement calmly and then, slowly walked away. He loved his country and didn’t want to go anywhere else. He was just averse to the violence which was a part of the lives of the two groups. He sat dreamily basking in the sun. He was sad and forlorn.
Then hunger shook him up and he wandered about to swallow something. He found a piece of meat and was about to pick it up when he remembered the morning’s pronouncement. There were two dogs staring at him angrily on the other side of the meat. He turned away and went in another direction. Wherever he went, he always saw the same sight – food and beside the food, his brothers guarding the food from him. Hungry and tired he sat under the shade of the tree. He slept without food. After some time, the hunger was intolerable. He got up and wandered again – in vain.

Then he saw some food that was not guarded – it was in the neighboring territory. His mind was delirious and it saw nothing but the food that was a few yards away. He ran towards it and just when his teeth were about to touch the meat, it vanished. In its place he saw three dogs – enormous and frightening. One of them had the meat in its mouth. They knew him – for the news of his surrender had spread far and wide. They didn’t attack him. He turned under the threat of their cruel glower.
He went back to his land. He waited and slowly life oozed out of him. Insects and infection were devouring him. Agonizingly he starved to death.

On the way...

2005-07-29T20:09:00.000+01:00

He could see a blur of whiteness on his side. There were shapes forming one large mass and then fragmenting into two or three or four blobs of white and then again uniting into one continuous shape. Only when the shapes came very near and bent over him, did he realize that they were nurses meticulously and anxiously exercising their skills. He had to concentrate hard to make sense of all his sensory perceptions. He slipped back to a daze with a welcome effortlessness. The rattling of the ambulance van became a rhythmic motion cradling his imaginations and moribund thoughts.

Lying down, he could see the balconies and terraces speeding past and the clouds scraping the electric poles. He could see the clouds funneling and trickling onto the roofs. He could see figures dancing on the electric lines – figures from the deepest recesses of his minds, faces he had long forgotten. Every figure balanced and danced perilously on the lines and on the balconies – some abruptly falling down and vanishing and others joining newer figures and forming an ever expanding procession that was following his thoughts, trying hard to keep pace.

Beams of light reflected from regions he would never see again sparkled in front of his eyes – each ray gained an indescribable strength, became an invigorating attempt, but in vain. The rays pushed the houses, uprooting them from their foundations. The houses merged with each other and the clouds pulled them from above. The houses formed images that were a jumble of his memories.

A ruined fort in a desolate desert became a temple with a mellifluous garden, an enchanting dew drop turned into a towering inferno. He heard whispers echoing from the sweetness of togetherness and shrieks from wild carousals. The gables turned to turrets, the soft sounds of flowing rivers melted into the smell of rain. It was a cumulating of sensations – sights, sounds, smells – that slowly faded into a blissful darkness.

Disease

2005-07-23T09:44:00.000+01:00

Have you ever been so completely sick that you feel you are entirely a disease, an anomaly? Your head throbs with pain, and so does the back of your neck. Your knee feels like it is the abode of living scorpions that are waiting to be released in either direction, eating up the flesh of your leg. The acids in your stomach surge with wretched vengeance and your eyes are moist, blurred and fatigued. There is infinte exhaustion in your limbs - you try to stand up and your legs tremble crushing all hope and the desire for hope.
There is dullness, a debilitating delirium in your mind, a loathing for all that is human. You look at the mosaic on the floor through your tired eyes and you can see the small patterns crawling, bumping into each other like the millions of men and women on earth. Oh! How you despise the human body - the grime, the rotting flesh, the scars, the pus, the offal and sickness! How you despise the human soul - the miserable sorrow, the restlessness, the wickedness, the treachery and deceit!
You look at the light streaming in from the ventilator into your bleak room. You raise your hands to reach the light, to see if the light is real or is it an illusion born out of darkness. The light pierces your eyes and yet the light is beyond your reach. The light is the contemptuous laugh of life.

Book tags

2005-06-10T17:00:00.000+01:00

Meera - this is for you! :)

Last book I bought:-
The short stories of Anton Chekhov
compiled by Robert Linscott

Last book I read:-
The Trial by Franz Kafka

Currently reading:-
1. The Short stories of Anton Chekov
2. Uncommon Wisdom: Conversations with Remarkable People by Fritjof Capra
3. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
4. Discrete Mathematics with Algorithms by Albertson, Hutchinson
5. Bluetooth Demystified by Nathan J. Muller
6. Computer Networks: A Systems approach by Peterson, Davie

Books that have had an impact on me:-
- Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham
- Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
- The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
- Jonathan Livingstone Seagull by Richard Bach
- Commentaries on Living by Jiddu Krishnamurthy
- The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
- The Adventures of The Wishing Chair by Enid Blyton
______( the last two hooked me onto reading! ) ________

Total books I own:-
Lots - thanks to my GrandDad, Dad, Mom & me; the number is probably 600-800.

Some classics, fairy tales, some contemporary (pulp) fiction, prose anthologies, a medley of authors, children's books; Hindu philosophical & religious texts, Jiddu Krishnamurthy, Ayn Rand, a few Western philosophers, Osho, contemporary in-vogue gurus :) ;
Mathematics, General Science, Health, Comics, miscellaneous - biographies, history, geography, puzzles, arts & craft; and text books on Computer Science, Biology and Architecture.

BOO

2005-06-07T04:29:00.001+01:00

The young boy was sitting with his elder sister on a wayside restaurant. It was a dry, dusty day. They were in the outskirts of the village and arid lands were all around. The vegetation consisted chiefly of dry, thorny shrubs. Once in a while, a vehicle passed them on the road - a state highway - moving towards the city. Every time a vehicle passed them, the dust on the road swirled up and appeared to dance with the tune of the engine, settling down slowly only after the vehicle was out of sight. The midday sun shone with blinding resplendence – not a speck of cloud was visible in the azure sky.

There was no one in the restaurant. After serving them, the waiter, who was also the cook and the owner, had gone to his house as his buffaloes could be heard bellowing for a long time. The boy was looking at her sister as she was scraping the last morsels of food in her plate. There was a playful wistfulness in his demeanor. The girl was chewing the food and the mingled dust without feeling either - apparently. Between two consecutive sessions of mastication, the girl was chattering incessantly in a drawling voice and the boy, without paying any heed was looking at her and day dreaming. He saw a thin red line appearing on her neck. The line was lengthening and encircling her neck. The girl went on chattering without the slightest hint of discomfort or pain.

The thin red line had become a full circle and a liquid – red in color – started oozing out from the line. Flies from the surrounding filth started buzzing around her neck – many of them sitting on that circle and devouring the liquid. The liquid was now flowing like a stream and her neck, below the cut, was completely red. It was like a grand necklace with flies carved into the design. She had been talking without a pause. Then, she let out a sigh, brought her hands near her ears, clasped her head with both her hands and with a soft groan, pulled her head off her body and placed it on the empty plate. A fountain of blood gushed out through her neck and her body fell backwards along with the chair. Blood streamed all over the place and mixed with the filth all around.

The head kept on chattering. The boy was delighted. He let out a yelp of joy, picked up the head of his sister, holding it with the short hair above and went out of the restaurant. He threw the head up lightly. The head went up in the air till his shoulder height and then started falling down. The boy gave a light kick and the head rolled forward into the field, scraping the shrubs as it moved. The boy steadily moved in the fields, kicking the head along. The head chattered incessantly.

The Persistence of Memory

2005-06-07T04:23:00.000+01:00

Surrealist art by Salvador Dali

Murder?

2005-05-31T04:18:00.001+01:00

The wind was howling into his ears. The lashing rain colluded with the wind with a brutal ferocity that was terrifying all earth. From the window, he could see coconut trees swaying helplessly in the cruel, capricious storm. The fierce lightning and thunder could have petrified the bravest of hearts. The storm had been raging for hours now and beloved trees that had provided shelter to many had been uprooted with an unnaturally fierce callousness. The silence of doom was impending in the raucous drama of the elements.

He was staring vacantly out of the window. The stillness of the dark room seemed like the eye of a ravaging twister. His wife was lying on the bed in the middle of the room. The room was like a hospital ward meticulously inserted into a bedroom. There was a strike of lightning and the woman, who was on oxygen from a ventilator, convulsed and her body appeared to be writhing in pain. However, her face was as tranquil as ever. He looked at her impassively and made no efforts to move towards her. She used to have such convulsions frequently and each attach would last only a few seconds. In the last 12 years, this had been the only sign of life in her apart from the relentless, rhythmic breathing. She was in coma.

His face was calm and pale. The dim light in the room did not betray his emotions but the tempest outside was a perfect depiction of what was inside him. His countenance bore the signs of intense decision-making. He had lived with the eerie and miserable condition of his wife for more than a decade. Her rock-solid stillness had frozen all memories of his past life. He saw a dazzling fire-play of lightning that lit the whole atmosphere. He saw rain drops falling like a torrent and coconut leaves swaying like monstrous fans, sweeping all life forms into oblivion.

He walked to the bed and disrobed himself. He flung the blanket that covered his wife and unbuttoned her gown. The icy wind charged into their flesh. He removed her oxygen mask and lay on the bed embracing her limp, unresponsive body. He kissed her lovingly on her colorless, pallid lips and slowly life oozed out of her body. His eyes were full of tears as he lay clasping her death. The strident yells of the wind went on incessantly. With changing directions, the wind brought some rain into the room as well. The thunder was deafening.

Quotations - an optimist and a cynic

2005-05-19T04:02:00.000+01:00

A man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.

- Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and The Sea

Love is a dirty trick played by nature on us for the perpetuation of our species.

- W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up

Loneliness

2005-05-09T14:02:00.000+01:00

The silence was intense and heavy. He stared at the dull, grey clouds, sitting by the window. He was alone in the house. The clouds were dark and gloomy. The stillness in the air was ominous and unnerving. There was stillness, numbness in his mind too. As though involuntarily, his hand hit a pen-stand on the table and the sound cut through the silence. It lasted for a few moments – the silence made every detail of the sound audible, visible. The sound rang in his mind again and again, echoing, trying to enter the innermost recesses of his mind, unflinching in its persistence. He could see the sound, colorfully entering every cusp of his soft, jelly like brain, the sound wringing his nerves from the ear to the brain and squeezing out a painful, poisonous fluid that he could see enter his system. The pain was excruciating and he held the pen-stand firmly in order to stop the incessant and incisive sound.

The pen stand was clasped firmly in his hands and slowly the sound stopped. With utmost caution and minimum sound, he got up from the chair and started walking. He was scared. He looked around and saw every item in his house with dread. He saw the fan rotating slowly above his head. He concentrated his attention on the rotation. The fan looked tired and yet it went on and on. The tender buzz of the motor fell on his ears. As he fixed his attention on the fan, the buzz became louder and louder and the agony in his ears started again. He saw the fan slowly descending – an inch with every turn. From the centre of the fan, a wet, sticky fluid started dripping – the drop could not reach him. Before the drop could touch him, it would become a bee that would buzz away out of the window. The fan started rotating faster and the drops of honey were falling faster. More and more bees were moving out of his window. The fan was also descending faster. He stood transfixed in fear and was dreading the moment when the drop would touch his face and sting him. The next drop became a bee only one inch away from his face. He had turned to ice. The next drop emerged from the fan and started falling – he could see its trajectory with utmost clarity. The drop shaped like an almond, the cohesive forces keeping the molecules together, the air around it applying pressure on the drop, the breeze of the fan swaying it, the dust particles that were being displaced, the force of gravity between the drop and every other mass on earth, the passage of light through the drop and the golden color – he could perceive everything. The drop was moving straight towards his face and then just before touching his forehead, it moved along the contour of his face and went into his right ear. “No,” he gave out a blood-curdling yell, “Grandma had asked me to put oil and not honey.” He lunged to the switch board to switch off the fan and he could feel his entire house, every entity in his house vibrating with the sound of his yell. The fan was switched off and he could see the fan – silent and benign – hanging from the ceiling.

His grandmother had died 3 years ago; his grandfather, a year later. He scarcely remembered their faces. But he used to have sudden flashes of memory when he would recall their most insignificant words.
He looked around the house again with the same alertness of body and numbness of mind. He moved out of his room and saw the Tiffin box lying on the table in the drawing room. He had never given a thought to his food. Everyday, three meals used to reach his house without fail and he used eat them perfunctorily. He didn’t know who would bring them, how or why. It never occurred to him that he should think about it. (Perhaps, his mother had arranged for it when she was in the hospital before her death. His father, of course, wouldn’t have had the opportunity since his life had ended abruptly in an accident 10 years back.) He had always liked his solitude and the feeblest sound had always disturbed him, agitating him beyond his patience. He had removed all sources of sound in his house – the telephone, the radio, the television, the sound of the external world. He kept his windows closed at all times except in the sepulchral silence of the nights and he had not seen a human being since the death of his mother.

He had none for his company but for the sounds in his life. He was aware of every sound in his daily life – the sound of his urine on the toilet pan, the sound of the water trickling from the tap, the sound of the curtains brushing the wall, the sound of the switches, the sound of the breeze moving through various objects in the house, the sound of the clock ticking, the sound of papers flapping, the sound of beetles in the dead of the night, the sound of a distant automobile horn, the sound of the creaking doors, the sound of his breathing, the sound of his teeth chattering in the cold, the sound of his swallowing and even the sound of his feet on the floor. He lived with them, and yet despised them. Because he keenly observed nothing but these sounds, they were larger than life and louder than they usually are to others. In fact, he could also hear what others couldn’t. He knew every sound intimately. In his world, a sound had life, it had a shape that he could see, he could touch and feel the texture of every sound and what he heard would always be nothing but a miserable and maddening agony to his mind. They constantly disturbed his mental peace by intruding in his life. And alas, he could never get rid of them.

The box lay on the table, motionless. Its unobtrusiveness pleased him. He went to the kitchen to get a plate and some water. Moving slowly and feeling everything in his house, he reached the kitchen. Suddenly, he saw the figure of his mother standing by the stove, placing the whistle on the pressure cooker. He was stunned to see the whistle there for he knew that the shrill noise will rapaciously claw his ears apart in a few minutes. In his fear, he looked helplessly at the chimera of his mother. His mother was about to utter a word when he jumped forward to cup her mouth. His mother vanished with the pressure cooker from his world and he saw the empty stove with some knives hanging above. The past, the present and the impossible were inextricably woven in his mind.

Tranquility was restored and he gazed at the knives vacantly. He saw them growing into swords and piercing into the stove. He saw it expanding and contracting and with each expansion it was cutting the gas pipe that connected the cylinder to the stove. The cylinder was empty and there was no smell of gas. He saw the shreds of the pipe on the floor. They were cozily embedded in the heavy layer of dust on the floor. He saw the knife in his hand, with a changed shape. The knife was smiling at him since the blade of the knife had curved a little too much. He returned the smile. The cold breeze of winter wafted slowly into the kitchen and the knife was shivering. He saw all the containers in the kitchen shivering, chattering in the cold. He walked back to his room and brought a blanket to cover all the containers. He then kissed a few of the containers good night – they were his favorite since his childhood. (They were his favorite because of their content but he could not recall that.)

He finished his dinner and went back to his bedroom. He wanted to sleep but didn’t see his blanket. Without that, he could not sleep. He tip-toed back to the kitchen and was pleased to see the blanket. He climbed into the shelf and slept with his favorite containers. He closed the door of the shelf lest the containers would fall and hurt themselves. The damp, suffocating air of the shelf was noiseless and he slept peacefully.

In his sleep, his face was tranquil, completely devoid of fear and agitation.

My Theory of Maya

2005-05-09T13:52:00.000+01:00

When a man ‘interacts’ with (for example) an apple –

he can “see” it,
he can “touch” it,
he can “smell” it,
he can “hear” it (when the apple touches another object)
he can “taste” it,
he can think about it.

Apart from these six ‘sensations’, man cannot be sure of anything else. In fact, that all human beings have the same sensations (?) on seeing the same object only shows that the human beings in question have similar methods and apparatus of perception (his senses and mental processes). It does not prove the existence of the apple.

Hence, existence of an entity is relative to the existence of perceptions that can form mental constructs corresponding to that entity. Different animals and plants perceive the apple with different kinds of percepts. Even non-living things perceive the apple (due to forces of gravitational attraction etc.). These percepts differ from each other, sometimes contradictorily. Again, only these percepts exist and not the apple. The same logic can be extended to every entity on earth – animate as well as inanimate.

With the advancement of scientific measurement techniques, man can perceive an object in different and more powerful ways, thereby increasing the range of his perception. Thus, the apple can be perceived through other quantifiable measurements (like the electron density of the apple,…). That only increases the number of “percepts” that man has with respect to the apple. It still does not prove that the apple exists!

Reality

2005-05-06T14:23:00.000+01:00

It was dark with the faint moonlight straining to illuminate the earth. The silhouette of the mountains was visible in the distance - silent and majestic. A mud path was carved along the edge of the forest in the shape of a semi-circle. There were not many stars in the sky. The sound of beetles penetrated the stark silence of the night and made the silence more conspicuous. After some time, the sound drowned in the silence and the vacant silence engulfed you again. The view of the forest with the mountains in the background was spectacular and the darkness was eerie and astounding. I was standing at the edge of the road.

Suddenly, I heard the sound of hooves. A knight riding a glorious white horse came, riding along the road. As he came nearer, I saw that he was dressed in a steel armor, black in color. He was holding a spear and was crouching forward ready to attack and impale his opponent to a gruesome death. As he came galloping forward, his speed seem to increase. I stood petrified on the turn of the road - the ghastly forest in front, a steep cliff behind and death coming closer every moment. My heart was thumping in rhythm with the sound of the hooves - the pace of both mounting rapidly. I was drenched in cold sweat and fear. He was just ten feet away from me and he lifted the spear further up, ready to thrust it forward into my flesh.

I got up. It was an awful dream. My forehead and chest were wet with sweat. I looked around and saw my room - I felt secure and comforted. Through the window, I could see the moon shining bright and the coconut trees in my neighborhood swaying the cool, silent breeze. The night was soft and beautiful. I lifted myself and sat on the bed, staring at the sighing coconut leaves. My hand groped for a bottle of water on my table. I took a sip of water and waited for my heart to become steady. The breeze peeped into my room and touched me as and when it fancied. There was a sensuous quiet in the atmosphere which was almost spiritual.

And then, what happened was incredible - I got up! I was bewildered. What was happening? Didn't I wake up from that Kafkaesque dream some time back? I looked around and saw my room, the moon in the sky and the coconut trees - the same limpid night and the soft breeze. I shook myself in complete disbelief and a horrifying confusion. I threw myself out of the bed and walked around the room. I saw a bottle on my table. I then sat on my chair and thought. I then realized that the dream had not ended when the rider had vanished. It was a dream within a dream! Splendid! But then, I was very, very sure that I was awake when I woke up last time - the sweat, the fear, it was all real!! And, I am very sure even now. Am I?

2005-05-06T14:21:00.000+01:00

Beach

Karwar Seaside

2005-05-05T11:39:00.000+01:00

The silence is scorching and the tranquil sun is speedily westering. The wind is howling into the ears of the waves. The waves are lapping the golden sand and there are vultures croaking (like frogs) in the air, hovering anxiously in search of prey.

We are in Karwar beach. Karwar is a small, sleepy town - still untouched by the smoke and din of fast paced modern city-life. We are staying in a squalid lodge for just Rs. 150 per day. The fish curry I had for lunch was fresh, tasty and just Rs 18 per plate!

The sea is vast and petrifying in its enormity. There are liners guarding the horizon not very far from the beach. It looks like the sky and the sea would meet and rejoice at the horizon but for these ships. There are hills flanking the beach on either side. The hills on my left are covered with dense forest and those on my right are too far for my eyes to notice the details. Trees lining the beach are constantly dropping dry twigs on the sand.

The vastness of the sea and the sky belittles the physical self of man but not his spirit. It challenges him, provokes him - to explore, to seek, to conquer. It drives him in his quest to comprehend the profundity of existence. Human mind, vain that it is, seeks the meaning in the humdrum affairs of life, in the tranquility of life, in life's pleasures and in life's miseries. Desire after desire, quest after quest! Thousands of years! Oh, the insatiable spirit!

Is the human mind as vast as the sea? Or, is the sea vast because the mind is not?

"Its difficult to believe that this astounding beauty is meaningless!" says my friend Ashok.

Distributed computing - runtime polymorphism

2005-05-04T14:13:00.000+01:00

A: You must minimize object creation to make your java code efficient.
B: How can so many people have so many different thoughts. If there were a comprehensive mental space of all the minds in the world, then surely it must be humongous and chaotic.
A: My eyes are itchy - nowadays roads are horribly polluted. Some wretched dust particle must have gone into my eye.
B: AHA! At last I had pineapple juice after so long. Its been ages!
A: Day before yesterday, my sister came back from Normandy. She's really gone down. Must have had a tough time at work.
B: I read Jonathan Livingstone Seagull last night. The pictures are beautiful but I couldn't make out much in the story. Whats the whole point in glorifying flight??
A: Train no. 4568, Guwahati - Bangalore express, scheduled to arrive at Bangalore at 6:30 pm is running 3 hours late and is expected to arrive at 9:30 pm.
B: Why do come home so late nowadays, dear? And you look so exhausted!! I'm really concerned about your health! Don't you think you need a break. We should go out on a holiday - How about Kashmir? We haven't been there since our honeymoon.
A: Fifteen men on the dead man's chest! Yo Ho Ho! And a bottle of rum! Drink and devil had gone for the rest! Yo Ho Ho! And a bottle of rum! (courtesy: Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson)
B: Children! This is the fourth time I am teaching you the concept of percentages. Yet not one of you can solve this simple problem!! You must be ashamed of yourselves!
A: Oh my God!! Our house has been stolen! Look at the mess! And my jewellery! Everything is gone!! We are doomed!
B: The realization of one's self is the greatest bliss one can have on this earth. Once you have understood the nature of your soul, you will no longer be unhappy or perturbed. Yoga is the path to realization.
A: The town you are seeking is just across the bank. You will get ferries to cross the river. Ask the ferry man and he will show you the way.
B: Good bye! My time has come!
...

Words and meaning

2005-04-29T05:25:00.000+01:00

A word and its meaning are inseparable in common life. Utter a word and its image, its meaning is in your brain. Well, its not always an image - it is a mental construct which has images, sound, feelings and other sensations. So, every word is associated with its mental construct in the mind.
The interesting thing about this construct is that it varies from one person to another. For example, the word "computer", could produce one or more of the following constructs in a person's mind:
1. The desktop PC, black colored monitor, dusty keyboard, mouse wheel stuck, smell of old books lying beside, black coffee while emailing, yahoo!, ...
2. Intel x86 architecture, Motorola micro-controllers, embedded systems project, boring classes, beautiful gardens outside the class,...
3. An incomprehensible box, stupid pop-up messages, mysteriously located data, pots of money for software engineers, none for me,house in a mess, unpaid bills,...

My hypothesis is that when we recall a word, all the mental constructs associated with that word are "loaded" into the current, active part of the brain. As life progresses, the number and variety of mental constructs for the same word changes continuously.
Now, the meaning of a word is very closely connected to the set of mental constructs one has for that word. And since the mental constructs differ from one person to another the meaning of the same word differs too. There are some of the mental constructs that are common among the vast majority of the people who use the word. For example, the word "bucket" conjures at least one common mental construct among the people who use the word - i.e. a kind of container with a set of shapes. (that in turn is made up of quite a complicated set of constructs)
But, what is meaning? If it is a set of mental constructs that vary from person to person, then it something much more interesting than a dictionary listing.
How does someone understand the "meaning" of a concept? When a child is shown a picture of 2 sheep in order to teach the child the concept of numbers, and in particular, the number "two"- observe the number of concepts impinging on the child's mind - the green background color of the picture, white sheep, all the various body parts of the sheep, wool, and the fact that there are "two" sheep. How does the child understand the concept of the number "two" in the mess of all the concepts presented?
I guess, it doesn't happen with just one attempt. The child is presented with a number of such examples with so many different concepts. And then - this is the wonder of the human brain - it abstracts the concept of the number "two". Probably, it recognizes that the construct corresponding to the concept "two" is the intersection of all the mental constructs derived from all the various examples.
But then, still the concept of meaning is not clear. What is meaning? Lets take a look at the computer. What is "two" for the computer? It is a binary nibble - "0010", which in turn is a a particular combination of voltages in the electronic circuitry. When you write the number "2" in a text document, the computer understands (of course, because man programmed it to) that it is the same "0010".
I noticed a splendid semblence. The meaning of "two" is merely a representation, a particular pattern, beyond which it has not esoteric "meaning". Could that be true for the human brain as well? Our concepts, meanings, understanding - they are all patterns that have been formed through evolution. The moment we encounter a concept, the associated pattern is recalled. Nothing has any meaning implicitly, its just the collection of mental constructs that are stored physically in the brain. Meaning has really no meaning!

Motivational stories or fables

2005-04-28T15:14:00.000+01:00

Is there any theory on how and why motivational stories and anecdotes affect human minds and why they are created at all?
They are usually an account of a specific experience. They are narrow in scope and many a time cannot be generalized easily.
(Extrapolation - the boon of engineering and the bane of science - are fables an engineering approach to moral science :)) )
There are two parts to a fable - the story and the moral. The leap from one to the next is the most interesting aspect of a fable! For example, consider the story outlined in my previous post. (See below)

I can think of the following morals that I can draw from the story alone:

For man:
- Do not decide your course of action without complete knowledge of the situation.
- Mind your own business. Leave moths alone.
- Its high time biology found the way of way of forcing fluid from the body of the moth into its wings so that it would be ready for flight anytime during the moth's life cycle so that man can help a moth whenever he wants!
- Define "help" based on the definition of help of the person you are helping and not your own.
- Create moth simulations that allow man to help moths without harming them.
- Do not waste time gaping at moths.
- Beware of scissors!

For moth:
- Find other ways of cocoon-exit without hampering your flight.
- Its high time moths start studying the structure and physiology of moths.
- Beware of man!
- If a hole is made on one side of the cocoon, abandon exit from there and start making another hole.
- Learn artificial aviation (Create society, universities, and phd programs on artificial moth aviation which extends to artificial moth life itself. Start by experimenting with various other creatures e.g. the attempts of man to fly - frenetic algorithms,....)

Jokes apart, the leap from story to moral is indeed an absurd one (absurd as used by Albert Camus in "The Myth of Sisyphus"). The story usually has a sprinkling of pointers to the moral and thereby the story leads to the moral at the end. If the story were to be stripped to its bare-bones and then viewed distinctly from the derived moral, the absurd leap will be apparent.

A logical way to approach the fable would be to inquire whether the story really justifies or is enough proof for the moral. Indeed, in most cases I have found that it is not.
Just because a moth (a creature that is way behind in the evolutionary path and hence, if the theory of evolution is correct, inferior to us) struggles its head off to come out of a hole at its birth, why should we conclude that (even sometimes) struggle is good for human beings!!

What about morals without stories - aphorisms. Well, lets see it next time.

Struggle

2005-04-28T15:13:00.000+01:00

A man found a cocoon of an emperor moth. He took it home so that he could watch the moth come out of the cocoon. On that day a small opening appeared, he sat and watched the moth for several hours as the moth struggled to force the body through that little hole.

Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could and it could go no farther. It just seemed to be stuck. Then the man, in his kindness, decided to help the moth, so he took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon. The moth then emerged easily. But it had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings. The man continued to watch the moth because he expected that, at any moment, the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support the body, which would contract in time. Neither happened! In fact, the little moth spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings. It was never able to fly.

What the man in his kindness and haste did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the moth to get through the tiny opening was the way of forcing fluid from the body of the moth into its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon. Freedom and flight would only come after the struggle. By depriving the moth of a struggle, he deprived the moth of health.

Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our life. If we were to go through our life without any obstacles, we would be crippled. We would not be as strong as what we could have been. Give every opportunity a chance. Leave no room for regrets.

-Author Unknown

2005-04-26T16:22:00.000+01:00

Michaelangelo's Pieta