enlightened ...

Knowing that you are happy ...

Do we always know it when we are happy?

Maybe not;

Sometimes when we are experiencing happiness, we may not actually be very conscious about it. We go on through the phase, unawares. Later, sometimes, we look back at time that has flown past, and suddenly, probably with a bit of amazement, realise how happy we had been.

It's great to be happy, and be conscious about it as well, at the same time.

Probably the brain can be trained, and be equipped with happiness sensors, not to miss out on the consciousness.

:-)

Engineering a surprise ...

scene finale:

You hear footsteps outside approaching the door. Languid, lazy setps. She has been moody through the whole day. The thud of a bag being put down on the parapet, riff raff noises of foraging inside it, mettalic rattle of a key.

The key starts clicking inside the door lock.

The music starts flowing, mellow and feeble as it starts.

Slowly the door opens, she enters with tired but suspicious eyes; she has detected the music, feeble though it is, now.

Time stands still for some immeasurable parts of a second.

Her mouth opens wide. Shes trying to take in the whole scene and interpret it, overwhlemed.

Yellow light seeping in through the blinds flooding the room, reflecting off the walls and the hanging ribbons and confetti; balloons on the floor flip flopping in the gentle wandering wind; you standing with a mesmerising smile; the huge blossoming flower basket ... the cake ... the music ...

The music, it starts building up, slowly rising through the crescendos ...

You can see emotion rising inside her, like transparent bubbles from a champagne bottle when its about to be opened. Her eyes are shining brightly, beaming, bubbles, rising ...

And it bursts out.

You sense the incredible ripeness, a ripe and mellow thing you feel inside the orange vapory warmth engulfing you.

---

well now, rewinding ...

You start planning days in advance, forecasting and trying to pick the suitable day when it can work. You also have to make sure that not a hint slips out even by chance at any circumstances about your devious plans. Things change dynamically and you doubt if the day you have picked would work or not, but then you decide to go ahead with it anyway. Its difficult to buy stuff and hide them at home, so you have to wait till the very day to get everything required. All this while you keep speculating whether it will work or bomb.

The day arrives. You see her off on her way to office.

Download the music. Mmm, iPod file system has some errors, google, fix, does not work, google, fix, ah, works. Download to iPod, test, yeah works. Phew!

Now there is a chance that she might come back early and direct to where you work; so you think up some excuse, call her up and tell her that you have to go on an important off-site stuff and would be a little late from work. You plot the plan to sneak out of office and get everything and set up the show before she comes in the evening.

Oops, midway through the day she calls and says some big problem at her work and she feels all moody, mmm, ...

But you stick on with the plan, hoping things would be fine ...

Again, she calls at noon and says she's going home early! Awh! You are almost out of time to do everything now!!

Get out of office; run around; order the flowers; run around; order the cake; run around; get the ribbon, confetti, balloons, candles ... almost there, run home.

Plan, plan time efficiently, oh yeah.

Mmm, you can't park the car in front of the house. She will see that something's not right. Get all the stuff out, take the car to some bylane and leave it there.

Stitch and stick up the ribbons, one by one; Oh! only half an hour left.

Balloons, oh, balloons ... after a few, your lungs are just not able to cope up with the will of the mind and you have to give up and say, enough! should be.

Bring everything together, iPod for music, set up cake and candles ... stand there ... and wait, for footsteps outside the door.

Oh almost forgot!! lock the door from inside with key and don't bolt it!! and yeah, remove the key from the hole ...

and wait, for footsteps outside the door.

A minute ... nothing happened .. a few minutes ... and then quite a large number of minutes .. nothing continued to happen .. mmmm ...

Text her, say just checking whether you're home, I might also be able to come back early!

Ayyo! She says she can leave only in the evening!

Grrr!

Now what, hmm .. put the cake back in the fridge .. stand around, sit down .. read something .. time seems to be going extermely slow, ah, curse general relativity and speed of light .. continue reading.

After a large amount of text has been read, it would appear that time seems to have caught up ...

wake up, wake up! .. now.

Bring everything together, iPod for music, set up cake and candles ... stand there ... and wait, for footsteps outside the door.

and then,

You hear footsteps outside approaching the door. Languid, lazy setps. She has been moody through the whole day. The thud of a bag being put down on the parapet, riff raff noises of foraging inside it, mettalic rattle of a key.

Touch Another Life ...

Next time when a grass hopper accidentally flies into you and sits on your forearms, do not shriek and violently shake it away.

Look at it.

Look at its legs. Slender legs. Tiny horns on the legs. Legs, green and bent, moving at the will of the grass hoppers brain. Look at its antennae waving in the air, feeding its brain with a plethora of sensory inputs probably unfamiliar to you. Look at its compound eyes, a thousand tiny eyes, and the grass hopper looking into the world through the thousand of them. Look at its filmy wings, that gives it flight, so that it can move from one point to another without touching the earth.

See how all these fit together into it, see it moving slowly on your skin; as a whole being.

Its another life.

The Universality of Logic ...

Stephen Hawking in his book, 'A Brief History of Time' writes,

"Now, if you believe that the universe is not arbitrary, but is governed by definite laws, you ultimately have to combine the partial theories into a complete unified theory that will describe everything in the universe. But there is a fundamental paradox in the search for such a complete unified theory. The ideas about scientific theories outlined above assume we are rational beings who are free to observe the universe as we want and to draw logical deductions from what we see.

In such a scheme it is reasonable to suppose that we might progress ever closer toward the laws that govern our universe. Yet if there really is a complete unified theory, it would also presumably determine our actions. And so the theory itself would determine the outcome of our search for it! And why should it determine that we come to the right conclusions from the evidence? Might it not equally well determine that we draw the wrong conclusion? Or no conclusion at all?

The only answer that I can give to this problem is based on Darwin’s principle of natural selection. The idea is that in any population of self-reproducing organisms, there will be variations in the genetic material and upbringing that different individuals have. These differences will mean that some individuals are better able than others to draw the right conclusions about the world around them and to act accordingly. These individuals will be more likely to survive and reproduce and so their pattern of behavior and thought will come to dominate. It has certainly been true in the past that what we call intelligence and scientific discovery have conveyed a survival advantage. It is not so clear that this is still the case: our scientific discoveries may well destroy us all, and even if they don’t, a complete unified theory may not make much difference to our chances of survival. However, provided the universe has evolved in a regular way, we might expect that the reasoning abilities that natural selection has given us would be valid also in our search for a complete unified theory, and so would not lead us to the wrong conclusions."

Richard Dawkins in his book, 'The Selfish Gene' gives a thorough analysis of the theory of evolution and how evolution functions to create better surviving organisms. He emphasizes the completely relative nature of evolution, and survival,

"For example, a number of attributes are desirable in an efficient carnivore's body, among them sharp cutting teeth, the right kind of intestine for digesting meat, and many other things. An efficient herbivore, on the other hand, needs flat grinding teeth, and a much longer intestine with a different kind of digestive chemistry. In a herbivore gene pool, any new gene that conferred on its possessors sharp meat-eating teeth would not be very successful. This is not because meat-eating is universally a bad idea, but because you can not efficiently eat meat unless you also have the right sort of intestine, and all the other attributes of a meat-eating way of life. Genes for a sharp, meat-eating teeth are not inherently bad genes. They are only bad genes in a gene pool that is dominated by genes for herbivorous qualities."

This leads to a question,

Is the way of logic, which mostly is considered a universally applicable method of interpreting things, really universal and absolute?

Can't it be just a product of evolution, evolved in accordance with the ways in which we sense our environment, so that it fits us, suitably, like the sharp cutting teeth in a carnivores body? Other possibly un-relatable logic can exist? and be good for survival? like flat grinding teeth, that look like an incredibly stupid way of approaching food, for us carnivores?

Can nitrogen breathing alien organisms that sense the universe not through electro magnetic waves think that 1+1=3?

... :-)

Brutal Lack of Love ...

The backhoe excavator growled like a savage demon. It flexed its muscles. It extended the yellow girth of its trunk and shook it, dropping sticking mud and debris from past exertions. From its throbbing engines it let out dark black puffs of smoke occasionally. It rode on huge black tyres, crushing stone and grass beneath.

Land trembled. The growling yellow demon rolled into the field scattered with bushes and pale grass. Great toe like projections extended from its underbelly. The machine sunk its toes firmly into the land and stood on them, raising itself.

The pale grass bush rattled in the breeze, as if from the great fear evoked by the massive machine. The breeze kept on, trying in vain to calm everything down.

The huge yellow machine extended its trunk, and brought it crushing down on the pale grass bush.

A rock lying nearby splintered with a soft thud.

The machine dug its large sharp teeth, on the trunk, deep into the red soil. It mercilessly and effortlessly uprooted the grass bush. It carelessly swept the carcass wide, and pushed it across.

Great toe projections rolled back in. The machine thumped its yellow gnawing trunk hard into the ground, and stood on the backhoe trunk and the loader. It pulled itself yanking against the sunken trunk. It did not use its tyres. It swayed to the side and descended near the next pale grass bush; like a huge menacing mechanical spider.

Again, its long yellow trunk started going up.

The breeze kept on. But it could not help me from being hit hard by this,

brutal lack of love.

Soldiers Killing Each Other ...

...

The Surf ...

We walked, hand in hand, into the brightly lit sea, towards a warm genial sun, that was starting to set, slowly turning itself crimson red.

We felt the sand, under our feet, soft and squishy,
We felt our toes, digging into the kindness of the sand,

The sea scrubbed us, with her gentle waves,
Salting our lips at times, splashing her playful froth at us.

We walked, deeper and deeper, into the surf,
The sea throbbed around us, giggling, laughing, gently rocking our bodies.

And when we felt like looking, the sun beamed at us,
Now red, and orange, and red, and almost drowning into the embrace of the waves.

The surf started from far, gently holding on to the hands of the wind,
shapeless at first, rolling, rising, creaking and gathering mass.
The wind pulled it on, the surf rose, like a newborn baby,
turned its head around and round, looked at the sun, in wonder.

The surf rose, in a large column of throbbing sea,
rolling into us, from far, coming near, around us.
The surf towered in front us, drooping down,
It looked into our eyes, hands held together,
eyes, in awe and delight.

The surf jumped down onto us, from the sky.
dwarfing our jumping bodies,
rolling us over with it, embracing us,
covering us with salt, and froth, and a blanket of sea.

We fell, we kicked, we felt its fingers running,
across our bodies, its waves, throbbing our hearts,
We rolled, under the sea, as it pushed us.

...

The surf returned.
I looked at her.
She was smiling, scared and full of glee.
I looked at the sun.
He was smiling, kind and amused.

The April Witch ...

like the girl who twists and twists the swing ropes ...
to let go ...
and swirl and scream ...

The Totem ...

Suppose you are fighting.

At many a point in the fight, one party might feel: "Oh, God, this is all wrong! this is unnecessary, I want to stop this fighting!"

And he blurts out a common place: "I'm sorry, lets talk this through?"

But does it get through? No, it goes like: "What do you mean you are sorry?! you were supposed to ... "

What is happening? The common place message does not have anything on it to differentiate it from the countless rigmarole that is being exchanged back and forth in the fight. The mundane sound packet carrying the message takes a direct hit on the now charged up firewalls of the Ego that is fighting and is destroyed to pieces before making an inch of progress into the Self hiding behind it.

How to deal with this?

Enter the 'code word of truce'. Which should be a minimal, quirky, absurd sounding word, that has nothing to do with being sorry, or fighting, or listening to each other. But it should be unique, to you, something you can feel, but others can't, something to help you get back to reality, which is the real you hiding, behind the fighting Ego.

Like a Totem.

'Open Sesame'.

Now you know that when that word is uttered, all the charged up personal firewalls of the fighting Ego are supposed to let that sound packet through, unaltered, directly to the Self. The message means,

"I'm dropping my fighting Ego. I'm ready to listen to you, the real you. Let's cancel the fight."

And you are supposed to tell me what exactly you really felt or are feeling.

And I'm supposed to listen to that, with 'brutal honesty'.

It takes a certain level of conquest over the Ego to make this work :-)

Importance of Reproducing ...

... :-D

Dancing with the ...

A soulmate is someone who
has locks to fit our keys,
and keys to fit our locks.
When we feel safe enough to
open the locks, our truest
selves step out and we can
be completely and honestly
who we are; we can be loved
for who we are and not for who
we are pretending to be.
Each unveils the best part
of the other. No matter what
else goes wrong around us,
with that one person we're
safe in our own paradise.
When we are two balloons, and
together our direction is up,
chances are we've found
the right person.
Our soulmate is the one
who makes life come to life.

-- Richard Bach

Gender Bias ...

... :-)

Black and White ...

are they? ... :-/

The Biscuit Thief

Coming back from office on a rather long day, I was opening the door to my apartment that was sleeping in darkness. As I stepped inside, to my shock, something crackled under my shoes. It almost made me jump. I quickly reached for the lights, flipped it on, and looked for the mysterious thing that crackled.

Well, it was a half eaten piece of a Good Day biscuit.

In many a bachelor pad this may not qualify as something strange, but I, do, keep my apartment clean. Also, till date, I have not seen or detected the presence otherwise of any rat in this second floor apartment where I dwell. So this was, well, strange indeed. But I dropped it at that. I definitely was not feeling Holmes enough to investigate the matter at the moment after having played cat and mouse with hairy software bugs all day.

Next morning when I went into the kitchen, I saw one of the Good Day packs I had on the rack was torn open and the biscuits strewn aside, couple of them missing too. Ah, bad indeed, seems like a rat has really made it to this second floor. I stood for a minute musing upon Mousehunt. I dropped the leftover biscuits into the trash can, pushed the matter into a recess of my mind and went about my routine.

Couple of days later, another morning, as I was entering the kitchen, something made me jump again. A violent flurry of wings and feathers. I was completely taken aback. What in the world is a dove doing inside my kitchen?!! She was struggling to escape through the window sills through which she apparently came in and falling all over the place and trying again, causing all the ruckus and frenzy. She managed to get out finally. I was left wondering; A dove sneaking into a kitchen and stealing biscuits?!! That is far stranger than what I expected. All the same, I considered the case closed and freed the memory that was allocated in the aforementioned recess.

No more biscuit incidents happened for next couple of days.

During the weekend, after having had lunch, I was lying on the couch practicing the skill of doing nothing for which there was not much opportunity during the week. Suddenly a queer face appeared on the ventilator grill above the front door.

A squirrel.

Cute thing, I thought. What does he want? Will he come in? Squirrels usually I have seen keep as far away from humans as possible. I lay absolutely still so as not to scare him.

But he did not seem to be in any kind of confusion. He slipped inside through the grills, tiptoed through the curtain hanger, skillfully glided through the hanging curtain, jumped to the floor and scuttled straight to the kitchen!!

At this moment it dawned on me that the closing of the case of 'The curious incident with the Biscuit' was horribly wrong.

I did not move from the couch. He seemed to be ruffling some plastic wrapping in the kitchen. Probably it was the one more packet of Good Day that was left. I waited to see how long he spends in the kitchen. The ruffling went on for some time. I waited. No sign of him coming out. After around thirty odd minutes all went silent, there was no more ruffling. Probably he went out from the kitchen? I got up gingerly from the couch and tiptoed silently towards the kitchen.

Oops, he was still sitting on the rack! I stopped dead on my toes. I think he saw me. He snuggled into a corner of the rack and stood motionless. I tiptoed back to the couch as silently as possible.

For a few minutes nothing happened. Then his face slowly edged out of the kitchen door near the floor. He looked all around for a full minute weighing the situation. Then it was a dash. Burr! through the floor, Swoosh! up the curtain, Tap Tap! across the hanger and Slipp! through the grill. I could not help laughing! :-)

I went into the kitchen to take stock of matters. Eh?! the Good Day packet is intact. What did he eat then? Then I saw. He has torn open a packet of wheat and eaten a handful from it. Hmm ...

Squirrelhunt? Uh oh ...

PS: I give thanks, that all the construction, pollution and greed has not yet managed to eradicate the doves and squirrels around me.