Amuzed ...

Sometimes I think, that there are two different types of people, provided they read Calvin and Hobbes.

Some who think of Hobbes as a stuffed toy miraculously coming to life when no one but Calvin's around. Or, they might think of Hobbes as the product of Calvin's imagination.

And some others who when asked this question would respond, "What?"

:-)

In My Book ...

...........

Sadness ...

Sadness is mine, he was just a messenger
Oh how I'd cry, when I would.

Leaves of Autumn ...

Stray birds of summer come to my
window to sing and fly away.
And yellow leaves of autumn, which
have no songs, flutter and fall
there with a sigh.

-- Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds.

Talk to her ...

Talk to her , by Pedro Almodovar was a lovely movie shown by collective chaos.

"I'd cry when I saw something that moved me, coz I couldn't share it with her."
Marcco Schulago says.

Unlimited Freshness ...

Bright morning after the rain.

It should be good to pick words, form sentences and speak about what you are feeling. And after it has left your mouth, as it hangs around in the air, still be able to feel that thats indeed what you are feeling. And have someone listen to you.

Its good to try and learn to speak your mind. Sometimes, it will make everything feel much better to everyone than when you try to doctor things around.

I may not know how life should be, as clearly as I used to. But it can be .... an unlimited freshness.

Love .. Fun .. Life ...

Wallowing in the great rolling ocean inhabited with the countless fish of many-faceted half truths, he looked up and saw wisdom. They were shaped like shining drops, dripping down from the kindness of the blue sky. He eagerly listened, for them to reveal the deeper beauty of love, of having fun, of life. The drops struck water and poppled in joy. He wanted to tell them about that which he was seeking, from when he was a kid.

  -- Gurusagaram, O. V. Vijayan.

Electric Blue ...

Why would I want to watch FTV ? :-D

No, I don't think its just for ogling at the not so infrequent flash of skin, but rather something more enticing. More often than not, that fresh looking young girl walking down with brisk movements, in sync with rhythmic beats, and clad in chic wraps exudes a lot of energy. At times almost to the level that you can literally feel it in your heart.

Raining Change ...

Flying termites in a wet nightfall.

Change is like rain, everywhere, flowing down from the invisible. The endless droplets crashing and splashing, forming puddles, streams, rivers and bottomless oceans.

That makes things to squeeze out from cold earth, to flex dainty wings and hop up in search for unknown suns. That lets a man going up in a hot air balloon see the flat world bending and rolling up into a huge ball miles down. That lets the night fliers leave no shadows.

Fossil ...

Dragonfly on a distant clothesline, against a bright noon sky.

What will a movie actress who is old, grand mother of a few children, and doing only motherly roles now, feel when she sees a very old, black n white movie song of hers in which shes a gigglish teenage girl, and in which her group of friends are teasing her for daydreaming?

Will she be able to 'remember' what she was feeling when doing that thing? or will the video clip be just a fossil, a dangling reference to memory, written onto many times over?

Can we 'remember' or 'recall' exactly what we where 'feeling' at a point well lost in time? Or are the 'feelings' fossilized by layers and layers of new ones dumped over?

Dig up one of your childhood photos and stare at that innocent looking strange being.

Pronoia ...

Porters at the Dalhousie hill station attending to a little dog who broke his leg.

For weeks I haven't looked at the night sky. It's been cloudy, I've been indoors, or I just did not look up. Walking out from home at 7.00 in the night for something, I look up homeward and see, an unexpected delight, among the frail branches of a tree, rising with lots of mist around, an almost full moon.

Its one of the very blue Mondays and the traffic seems to have gotten worse by just the week thats past, stuck among a long line of vehicles I look sideways. The little girl, who used to beat the make-shift drum, they're not performing now, she's sitting by the wall and is weeping. Tears rolling down her cheeks spotted with some red paint. The little boy, much younger than her, who would twist the fur ball on his cap to her drum beats, is looking on. Slowly he walks up to her, he can just reach her forehead, he leans and plants a firm kiss on her forehead and smiles. She looks up, smiling through her tears.

After having dinner, I am walking back home, alone, and through the buzzing night crowd on the sidewalk. It must have rained and the roads are wet, all street dogs curled up and dozing. And as I walk, it surges up my nostrils sending a warm pleasant wave through my head; roasty smell of fresh ground coffee beans. That coffee powder shop, they're not closed yet.

Am standing at the rails of this mall's floor and looking down. A cute, jumpy little girl, with a teddy bear bag on her back, is pulling her dad along to come to the railing. She perches herself on the railing, looks down and shouts, and shouts, but I hear a lot of bells clinging. It seems her mom and grand mom are standing at the railing a floor down and opposite to us. Her mom hears her but is not quite able to place where its coming from, she's looking in every direction, up, down and sideways, with an eager face. The lil girl, she wouldn't give up. Finally, the grand mom spots her and prods the mom to look at her. Mom looks up at her, laughing. The lil girl's eyes sparkle, and she yells, in such pleasure.

I wake up at 2.00 O' clock in the night, startled, from a wild dream ending in a furious machine gun fire. Eyes opened now, I listen - it's raining outside.

I smile.

The Angel's Call ...

Angel with her trumpet, Victoria memorial, Kolkata.

When you take life, melt it, let it drip into cold water, thread the frozen droplets and form a string of thus derived glass beads, what do you see?

Do you see a bead-string of a treacherous, sickening, burdensome ordeal occasionally dotted with glistening glass beads of happiness, splendor and beauty? Or do you see a bead-string of an elevating, beautiful, rising, energetic magnificence occasionally dotted with apathy, sufferings and misery?

No, am not talking about counting the beads to arrive at a conclusion. But rather about the the sense of permanence, or sense of foundation that we attribute to life, abstractly, and often unconsciously.

I kind of sense, though maybe am paranoid, that most of mankind is conditioned , by numerous forces, to believe that life is not so beautiful to begin with, and that yeah, you try hard, you can achieve happiness, but yeah, your base is misery, from which you should try to get out, and of course, we will help you with that.

Take religions - quite strong elements with their mass influence - and most of them evolved to proclaim that you are originally sinners, or that many of the things you would do can be sins, that sins cause the misery that you are in, and to submit to the supreme authority for redemption, for the promised grandeur, and be thankful that you thus got redeemed.

Religions are not the sole, but just some, such conditioners, that create this image of a miserable lot trying hard to achieve splendor, happiness, well-being.

Would there be an orange color day, ever in the horizon? When the world is won over by a philosophy of life that says its beautiful, that misery is not permanence but just aberrant patches, that mankind is not a miserable lot having to try hard to be good.

Berserk ...

Horse on a brass relief.

Sometimes its like a wild horse running amok in a vast ranch, defying the many attempts to rein him in. One rouge, intense, processor hungry thread running berserk in my brain, never relenting, never letting the neurons to relax. It feeds on all the energy that my body can channel into them, and is never quite quenched nonetheless. Not having a thought train of its own, it acts as a hosting artifact for any, hoping from one thought train to another, randomly, as if its sole purpose is to just keep my brain burning.

Do I catch it ever ? I do, and only then I feel, for a few minutes, what being peaceful is. But it takes a lot, and my hold weakens, and it runs loose again.

And I fall into sleep, tired.

The Oracle ....

"I'm sorry son," ... The Oracle told Neo ... "but in your next life, maybe."

light left on the sky ...

Barbed wire against a faded wall.

He hated dusk, and the faint light left on the sky then. He hated it, for it was the only window that split the day, the unreal day that was the mirage of being, like being submersed in water with an air supply tube in your mouth, and the night, the unreal night that was the mirage of getting lost, like floating weightless in an air-tight dark chamber. But the dusk, the twilight was horrifyingly real whichever way he tried to look at it, and he hated it for being so real.

Come, lets argue ... :-)

umm ... how things slip your mind ... :-)

Good things for granted ...

Mystery Smiles ...

How many emotions can a human being express? :-)

Can we assume that all emotions felt by a human being are expressible? If that is not the case, what is the connection between the expression she has when she is feeling those un-expressible feelings, and the feelings themselves? Does the influence of 'feelings' on 'expressions' get disconnected when un-expressible feelings are encountered, like the clutch of the Kinetic when it senses the engine can't push the bike? Maybe people use a controllable clutch in contrary when they want the 'expression' to be something not at all in line with what they are 'feeling'?

And again, do we have names for all emotions that are feelable? Aren't they rather like a spectrum, just like the spectrum of visible light, gradually varying, upon which we have imposed labeled diffusions of color names? And in the case of emotions, I don't even know if we can postulate them to be linearly arranged, as in the light spectrum.

Did civilizations not having connections with India talk about 'Nava Rasas' or the nine basic feelings? Are they like orthogonal eigen vectors which when combined can span the entire multidimensional space of emotions, if there is such a thing?

Are there emotions which can't be felt? :-D

Solomon's Song ...

Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the fields,
Let us lodge in the villages;
Let us rise early and go out into the vineyards;
And see if the vines have budded,
whether the grape blossoms have opened,
and if the pomegranates are in bloom.
And there, I will give thee my love.

-- Song of Songs 7:12-13, The Old Testament.

Calvin Ball ... :-)

Anybody wanna play ? .... :-D

Blue Water Skate ...

One among a colony of such fascinating water skating insects.

This from a small irrigation reservoir catchment area, Thumburmuzhi near Chalakkudi, Kerala. Zen is what is called for if you wanna photograph one of these things with fairly decently results, i.e extreme patience and the knowledge that you ought to have it ... :-D

But even then, I was not quite prepared for this metal sheen on its shining ballistic-missile torso, makes me wanna say that again, God has an interesting pastime!

And this guy just when you think he's gonna gently relax a while after skating down here so fast, he does indeed seem to be doing so, but in not so much of a split second he blasts off, super fast, to some half a meter forward.

How does he do that? Remember he's floating on water, without even breaking the water surface, how does he generate the thrust to shoot forward with such speed?

Collective Chaos ...

Looking at the sun, up a Banyan tree.

Makhmalbaf family film festival by collective chaos; Never before have I watched six movies in a single day, though of much shorter lengths than the more popular versions. And quite to the contrary of expectation, I did not end up with an aching head. End of the day, it could aptly be described as an aesthetic, visual, musical, provocative, sensual and semantic overload.

Mohsen Makhmalbaf's 'The Cyclist' somehow reminded me of Paulo Coelho and his novels. In the movie and in Coelho's novels I sense and feel similar kinds of expression, the connection mostly indescribable but not intangible. Probably might have to do with viewing life as something hypothetical, but not just that either. Maybe I should say it rather makes me 'observe' feelings, and hence I can't really say I felt them. Or maybe I should say the plane that splits the 'sensual' and the 'elicited' in any form of artistic expression is more tangible in them for me. And I particularly liked the way he uses darkness, and light, in so many parts along the whole movie.

Samira Makhmalbaf's 'The Apple' is a crisp, sensual and poignant tale told very skillfully, which in some sense ended up being my pick of the day. Not very sure if I'm just prejudiced, but somehow I could sense a feminine charm in story telling compared to the previous one. And boy! didn't I like the background score, is it Iranian traditional songs, Quawaali, Sufi or Gypsy songs? Where will I get them?

Five in the afternoon, again by Samira, is one much visually appealing film. It's poetic in its visuals, coherent in its theme and sincere. Agheleh Rezaee who played 'Noghre' the protagonist has done a splendid job and looks just the right person to do it. I could say, the two films together made me a fan of Samira. And again, I was riveted to the background score.

From 'When I became a Woman' what do I remember; I remember 'Hava'. Hava inevitably reminded me of totto chan, and made me sad. And in some minutes something made me very happy and I smiled, it was the sparking moment when I kind of figured out how it was possible to execute those looong smoooth steady shots following the cycles by the side as they race along a beautiful coastline. I hope thats how it was :-D I'm not killing the suspense here if you ever get to watch the movie :-D And I felt something, something non-opposing, with the old lady who buys everything she ever wanted, with colorful knots tied on her fingers to remind her, and I liked the way the three strands of the film were glued together at the end. And I was ah, happy to see Hava again, at the end.

'Afghan Alphabet' by Mohsen is a very stark, disturbing, and provocative short film. One thing striking in that, the twelve year old girl who refuses to uncover her face in fear of the punishing God did not feel stupid to me; she's indeed very intelligent and she argues very coherently; she's not a fool at all. And as I kind of guessed, her face did look very intelligent to me when she finally lifted her veil. Its just that she is not initialized in a way that is consistent with what we feel is better. As a child I used to scheme of inventing a device which would change the way what all is taught and how, in all schools, all of them, across the world. Maybe everybody hopes so once, and forgets.

The last film was 'Gabbeh' by Mohsen Makhmalbaf, in close contention for being my pick of the day. Maybe the one thing that made me choose 'The Apple' is the crispness. 'Gabbeh' is rather like a flowing stream, dotted with lots of swirls and placid corners and rushes and bubbles, an idyllic visual treat. And brimming with some slow sweet pain refusing to stay still in my cupped palms. If I want to watch one of these films again, that would be 'Gabbeh', not just for the stunningly poetic visuals only.

Getting lost with a comic book, a map and some snacks ....

exploring - letting your energy carve new paths in a whole bunch of unknown frontiers, not for finding anything, but for the enjoyment of exploration. The question of destiny doesn't disturb you for you are sure to be not looking for anything. You don't care if you have stopped or are on the run as there never is any dearth of paths still unexplored. You have this ever filled bowl of energy that never fails you; and which makes you yearn to wake up each day, every day. You might very much be on the ground, but you are indeed flying for well, everything that ever matters. The world you wake upto always opens up its freshness just for you, fresh air, clear water, and a good nights sleep. You are sure you know you well, for you never really can be so much at peace otherwise. Will one day you wake up and see, that there was a whole lot of sea around you and ask yourself what made you so happy ?

exploring - to be always searching for something which you never quite find. Where though you enjoy the path, you are not quite sure of it for you are uncertain about what you are searching for. And because of that very fact itself, you don't feel the need to stop anywhere. You will not sigh at the mist you leave behind in your rear-view mirror for you don't keep one in the first place. You are free, in a purest sense, untied, and unsettled. The cauldron of energy thats brimming inside you takes you from here, to where is of much less concern as long as you are in motion. Each time you wakeup, you see different flowers and smell queer scents and thats freshness. You don't necessarily need to know you; even if you try to, by the time you are getting at it, most probably you would've become different. Will one day you stop, and think that you were running all the time, not getting anywhere particularly ?

smile, :-)

I made a big decision a little while ago.
I don't remember what it was, which probably goes to show
That many times a simple choice can prove to be essential
Even though it often might appear inconsequential.

I must have been distracted when I left my home because
Left or right I'm sure I went. (I wonder which it was!)
Anyway, I never veered: I walked in that direction
Utterly absorbed, it seems, in quiet introspection.

For no reason I can think of, I've wandered far astray.
And that is how I got to where I find myself today.

--Bill Watterson, The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes.

Lost N' Found ... :-)

I lost my black pearl .... and got her back too ...

:-)

Sleeping through moist cold night ...

Cat on the doormat, at my home.

Rain, everywhere, in an even, sedate, continuous rhythm, gleaming in the headlamps, frosting up the wind shields, drumming on the umbrellas, dripping down the tree tops, rustling between the leaves, tiptoeing over the puddles, flowing through the sidewalks, dancing on the roof tops, spraying through the windows ...... slowly wrapping the world under its cold blanket ....

and bringing back memories, moist cold nights, hugging me and lulling me to sleep ...

Sweet Child O' Mine ...

She's got a smile that it seems to me,
Reminds me of childhood memories
Where everything was as fresh as the bright blue sky ...
Now and then when I see her face,
She takes me away to that special place
And if I'd stare too long,
I'd probably break down and cry ...

woah oh oh ...
Sweet child o' mine
woah oh oh ooah ...
Sweet love of mine

She's got eyes of the bluest skies,
As if they thought of rain
I hate to look into those eyes
And see an ounce of pain ...
Her hair reminds me of a warm safe place,
Where as a child I'd hide
And pray for the thunder, and the rain,
To quietly pass me by ...

woah oh oh ...
Sweet child o' mine
woah oh oh ooah ...
Sweet love of mine

-- Guns N' Roses, Sweet Child O' Mine

Age of Loneliness ...

This in tribute to the song 'Age of Loneliness' from 'The Cross of Changes' by Enigma.

In the song, you hear a peculiar sound, of some weird instrument, something like a foghorn, something probably coming from a long large and hollow brazen tubing, something very coarse, something very lonely and very painful. It might as well be a synthesized tone. That shrilly tune is amongst the most distressed of sounds that I have ever heard.

It starts not so very separate from the ambient noise, like just another small wave slowly rising from a turbulent sea. Something like a faintly stirring sea of souls, of souls bearing suppressed pain. And it builds itself, rising every moment, serpenting up the pitch range, wavering gently, shaking with distress, suffering great pain in raising itself and summits to a treacherous and turbulent explosion of agony. A hollow and deeply pained cry follows. And the slow stirring of the sea again.

Flaming Red Mirage ...

An unexpected delightful surprise, 1:24 Ferrari Enzo, flaming red ...

I had this severe affinity for toy cars when I was a kid. All kinds of them, from itsy bitsy plastic ones to freewheeling miniature models. I used to build city highways and lots of traffic intersections with chalk on the floor, and mountain roads crawling up sand mounts with twig railings along steep cliffs and little rocks here and there. But as I remember, mostly I did not push or pull my cars along the roads; I will just leave them on these roads, as if waiting at a traffic intersection, or parked near a steep cliff by the side of a mountain way, like starting to climb up a rising patch of road, and look at them from different angles. And at nights, when I was alone, I used to put them up on the dining table, in bright light, when its all silent around, and look at them, standing still, tyres and all, with the faint hum of the fluorescent lamp in the background. I still can't seem to explain how it feels, its, its like a toy car standing still, on a plane surface, when all is silent around, except a faint hum of the fluorescent lamp in the background.

                   

Blue Blue Monday ...

Purple Haze ...

A pebble from the Chinese Solitaire, quite stubbornly held at my Canon's lens.

I walk up the stairs feeling the faint tremoring sensation, looking up, getting my ears to acclimatize with the roars; at the end of which I enter the dimly lit room, a small room filled densely with rolling thunder, a room filled with hazy smoke, into a frenzied and shaking crowd. In that first one tiny moment, as if hit by a huge boulder, my senses are blasted away into a zillion pieces by a deep reverberating explosion on the drums; and dragged savagely through thin electric slopes by a violently shrieking Guitar. As my eyes adjust to the darkness, I see the song dying down on the huge screen, over the hollering crowd.

Slowly my senses pick themselves up and squeeze back inside my brain, pushing and pulling each other. The screen clears to the next video. A huge drum set appears on an empty stage. Lars Ulrich, Metallica drummer, appears from behind and perches himself at his seat behind the drums. With his little sticks he starts pounding them, and makes me feel like being lifted off and suddenly dropped in the middle of a herd of charging wild Bison. Like a hundred canons firing together from a dreaded pirate ship, like I have kept my ears on the rails after a heavy goods train thats just gone past me. This is just drums, all drums, no song this, no other things, he is just beating the drums. He is making them tumble down like huge boulders of rocks in an avalanche, he gets them to pellet like mad machine guns firing indiscriminately, he makes them roar. I stand there, gently shaking, with a dizzy beating heart. He sits up there, long haired, engulfed in white fumes, like some thunder God with his little lightning rods commanding the clouds to roar.

And slowly the alcohol starts sneaking into my brain's control centers, making me sway more fluidly. I close my eyes and follow the lead Guitar. I let it fly after it amidst burning clouds, atop electric fences, on hot summer highways' fuming mirages, turning and twisting, swaying away, falling sharply and rising like a Phoenix and exploding. At times I catch a glimpse of my mind as it is flying past me, and it smiles at me.

I bang my head, I sway, I thump my feet, I sweep the air with my hands, and build up a cushion between my consciousness and its hosting physical artifacts, stepping on which it can push itself away from them, and stay that way, for some good amount of time. Slowly you sense your motor controls relaxing, your arms and legs following your orders with just a tiny micro second lag, like alien appendages you have painstakingly won over. It feels good to let go and still be conscious about it. It makes me smile.

Towering Girth ...

One bare, slippery, rocky mount gaping into the sky in Hogenakkal, Tamil Nadu.

The ritual of scaling a rocky peak begins when you stand on level ground, just at the bottom of the mountain, or cliff, or the rocky peak. And you look up in awe, in some indescribable reverence imbued by the wilder instincts. And you wonder how the wind would feel at the very top. And you see the seductress teasing you, with her fleeting coquettish giggle; come, come try me.

And some of these temptations you ward off, giving into the stern voices of your gently patronizing guardian angel. But some, are like just striding on the verge of nonsense, and a very riskable exhilaration; so you may choose to risk :-)

And sometimes when you are midway to the top, perilously perched with one foot in a shallow crack and other wedged between some frail grass stumps, your mind inevitably races with the thought, oh dear, so much more to the top now, so much more being on this high strung edge, so much more of holding on tight, so much more scrambling, and just so so much more again that I can go back down and breath at ease.

So have I backed down? Of course I have, remember the guardian angel? Yeah, She's indeed a life saver at times. But I would mostly try to go around and find a less steeper trail.

And one thing I so very predictably end up doing when I manage to scramble to the top is to stand erect, very still, feet apart, arms stretched out wide, open palms, and close my eyes. And feel, how the wind actually feels at the very top.

And my friends make fun of me for posing like the Titanic stance, of course.

Err, wouldn't it feel so good to hold your girl, her arms stretched wide, against a vast, very wide, open calm sea, and when she could close her eyes, trusting you.

:-)

Night Beetle ...

A little night beetle who visited my bedside in one of the warm nights.

Its such a small, very frail looking thing. But if you look carefully, you will see how exotic and exquisitely adorned it is. With a menacing Voodoo like mask a little above its forehead, and even a tiny white dot on top to go with it. The front wings evolved to thicker shells covering the light and delicate back wings that are folded in and invisible. And on its shells are carved some queer looking Gothic patterns, parts of which have very finely refined and curvy edges. Altogether an epitome of splendid seductive art.

Who sees this beauty?

It should mostly be a male beetle, given that except homo sapiens, in most species the male is the fairer sex. So maybe the female ones. So this, this appearance, the way this looks, should be something attractive to them. And it seems a generally acceptable fact that beauty attracts.

Are there any characteristics of beauty that is independent of how we sense and perceive it?

Say like the golden ratio, the ratio between the length and width of any pleasing looking rectangle, the ratio between the height and the height up to her navel of a beautiful looking woman and so on. You can find this ratio coming up in most normally beautiful looking creatures, things, patterns and all. And like the Fibonacci sequence, which again can be found involved in many natural patterns like leaf patterns, arrangement of seeds on the sunflower, the beehive-like patterns on a pineapple and more.

One is made inclined to believe that there can be found some attributes, or characteristics of beauty that not necessarily lie in the eyes of the beholder. One could at least hypothesize that there are some characteristics of beauty, or being beautiful, that hold with respect to the collective consciousness of life as a whole, life as it exists in this planet.

I have never seen an alien picturized in a normally beautiful looking manner ... :-)

And Calvin to end this :

Why the whys can't/can be answered ...

Why is the setting sun red ?

Because the atmospheric particles scatter the sun rays. Different colors of the spectrum are scattered differently, the blue end of the spectrum encounters more scattering and the red end encounters lesser.

During daytime, the amount of distance the sun rays have to travel through the atmosphere is significantly lesser than the same when the sun is setting. Thus the scattering effect becomes prominent at sunset and the color tends towards red, gradually becoming very red.

Why are sun rays scattered ?

The rays are scattered by minuscule particles that are suspended in the air. The light waves, as they are traveling through the atmosphere, tend to bounce off these particles in different directions.

Why aren't all colors scattered the same ?

The white sun ray consists of electro-magnetic waves of different wavelengths. The smallest wavelengths perceivable to the human visual system generate the sensation of the color blue and bluish, and the largest wavelengths generate red and the colors near that. Small wavelength light has more chance of encountering particles of size comparable to their wavelengths, and are blocked and scattered away. For large wavelength light the chances of encountering particles able to bounce them off are less since larger particles have less chance of being suspended in the atmosphere. Its similar to how a log floating on water can block a small ripple but would only oscillate along when facing a large wave.

Why do sun rays have lights of different wavelengths ?

Am sure you can explain this. And probably the many whys it will engender further, but eventually you will realize that you are hitting some that you don't know how to explain yet. But my point is that your why would have been answered fully, or should I say to your satisfaction, if you had just accepted this as a fact or as something true or as thats the way it is.

Doesn't the same happen in any answer finding process? You will stop when things are answered to your satisfaction. And it will always imply that somewhere deep in the chain or not so very deep even, you encounter acceptance.

Is it that the why is more correctly answered when the acceptance is very many levels deep? and is not so well answered when the acceptance is not so far deep?

And wouldn't it also mean that enlightenment, whatever way you choose to interpret it, is also just a form of acceptance ?

Quote from Stephen W. Hawking to end this:

A well-known scientist once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the Earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy.

At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise."

The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?"

"You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down."

-- Stephen W. Hawking, A brief History of Time.

Date with a Sunset ...

A winter sun sets splendidly at Kalatop, Himachal Pradesh.

I date the sunset often, on each day if I can, from eight floors up in my office building; leaning on to the railing of an open terrace.

Each day, everyday, one sunset is never quite like another. From a tainted red fireball slowly descending behind a thick veil of clouds, to a splendid orange-yellow ballet dancer spinning around to a halt on the dance floor. On a clear day with no clouds at all, like a shining gold coin being dropped into a piggy bank and on a day of razor thin sheet clouds, like a ripe red apple cut into slices and slowly eaten away.

And just when I'm thinking this would be the most beautiful it can get, I look up and around and get simply awestruck at the ineffable beauty of mere sky above. Sometimes a vast blue sky with little pellets of cloud puffs and rivers of soft wispy white streams, sometimes like a huge garden of slowly billowing monster chameleon flowers changing colors from milky-white to molten yellow to dusky red and sad orange.

And mostly as I enter the terrace with a cupful of black Earl Grey tea, a strong gush of wind on my face slaps me out from the work-day to mutate into a serenading lover smiling stupidly at the sight of his sweetheart. I lean on to the railing, sip a mouthful of black tea; The breeze kisses me, musses my hair up murmuring softly in my ears, and I smile. Oh well, and I almost always end up saying Oh dear, I love you.

Fawning a Cat ...

A flashy feline in passing, from my Himalayan winter trek '04.

How tough it is to fawn a cat? ... :-)

It's a daunting task, at the very least. If you go by the popular saying, cat's are not loyal. But I guess its not like that. It's more like they, cat's, are such self absorbed creatures. So it's more like, Did ya say low-yell? How d'ya pronounce it by the way? Well, so the question of whether they are loyal doesn't make much sense as opposed to with a nice lil dogie. Dogs are much more social animals. As a wild pack, they have much elaborate social etiquettes; to display obedience, leadership, territories, submission, protection and all that sort. But cats are more hermetic in nature. There's a certain flimsy air of abandon about cats, if you look at the way they sleep lazily, eyes half-shut. So they don't probably care, unless they have to.

But cat's can love, very much maybe. And obviously it is different from a dog's love. A dog's love is a sure thing, for him and you as well, and both know it, as in you know for sure where you stand with a dog. So may be it's like cruising gently in a sturdy Bullet, The motor cycle, enjoying the breeze, and the majestic grunt of the 350cc engine; stable and sure. But with a cat, I should say it would be like the key maker perched behind Trinity on the Ducati, as it swishes through the freeway traffic at break-neck speeds. Every strand of your hair stands upright, but you never know what you are gonna head into, the next moment. Might be stretching it a bit, probably. But definitely you can love a cat, and its soft purr as you scratch behind its ears is as enjoyable as the tickling sensation of a dog licking you up.

A chance quote to spice this up:

ChrissyCat used to lie lengthwise along my chest as I lay on the couch, her face very close to mine. She'd sniff my breath and then bite my chin very, very gently, purring so loudly I could feel the vibration, the pinpricks of her teeth making my eyes water (or maybe the latter was from allergies). I was genuinely sad when I heard that she had died.

Ok, so maybe I'm not as much of a cat-hater as I try to make myself out to be. Maybe cats just make me feel insecure because they seem to know everything. Maybe it's because they seem to know that they own us, instead of the other way around.

--Anonymous.

Full Circle ...

.... :-P

The Art of Running ...

Running, to put it mildly, is one most aerobic and invigorating activity. With your heart and lungs pounding; Your body in such free streamlined flow; Your arms and legs swinging in instinctive rhythm; And your breath, an exhilarating magic.

So what do I feel when I get out to run in the morning ? I feel light. My feet feel light, joyous, delightful, inside my running shoes. And I tend to bump off the ground each time I lift my step.

Yes, the place where you are gonna run indeed has a bearing on how you would feel. Not in a stuffy, open room with glasses all around and on a tread-mill. Not on the pavement of a buzzing road full of dragging machines coughing smoke. Yeah, the chances of you feeling delightful rather than like toiling in the sake of a commitment is tough on those aforesaid terrains. But surely, in a lovely park with it's sky covered by trees and foliage, yeah.

So you start gently, you walk around the park. And of course, you don't choose the paved walkway to run, hard surface running can damage your tendons. You walk around the park, hearing the wind tickling the tops of a bamboo bush, seeing two squirrels running about; one after the other in a serpenting spiral up a tall tree, and listening to the lone cuckoo. I wonder how it manages to sound so happy when I'm almost sure that it's a lone cuckoo.

And then you run gently, at first taking a little effort to make sure that you indeed are in rhythm, and not just throwing your arms and legs about. Your heels taking the impact when your feet hit the ground and your toes pushing you off the ground when you thrust forward. And your arms swinging in harmony with your legs. After a few minutes you can take your attention off the rhythm; it maintains itself. And you can now look amused at a few sorry looking folks trying to chug on alongside; mostly obliging to stern medical recommendations, of course. And maybe feel smiling at the other few, who are actually enjoying what they are doing, few, but indeed there is beauty in this world. And admire the other few, who are, yeah, toiling for the sake of commitment.

And you run, round after round, you start to sweat, your lungs begin to ache sweetly, and your breath starts striding, on to the magical parts of the spectrum. You lift your gaze up, and drink the sun rays drizzling through the green sieve above.

You jump at random and aim your head at a few hanging bunch of leaves. A moment of flight; and when your feet touches the ground, they are reminded with slight reproach that they are not inside an Ipump by Reebok.

And as you turn the corner and glide into a straight patch, with a little practice you can visualize the scene flying past you as visuals sent back by an on-board camera from a Formula One racing car, just above the driver's head. You can later morph it into what is seen by a running gazelle; The world flowing past its field of vision, undulating, and blurry.

And you stop gently, gently, slowing down, descending into a walk, and walking, walking as your heart is still pounding, your breath still slightly lagging behind but following, and your lungs relenting, slowly, your body beats mellowing, calming down. Now you can breathe in deeply, and smile.

Powerhouse ...

This in tribute to the story 'Powerhouse' from 'The Golden Apples of the Sun' by Ray Bradbury.

Obligatory excerpt :

She traced the half-seen tubing up and up into the ceiling, and she saw the machines and heard the invisible whirlings. She suddenly became very alert in her drowsiness. Her eyes moved swiftly up and up and then down and across, and the humming-singing of the machines grew louder and louder, and her eyes moved, and her body relaxed, and on the tall, green windows she saw the shadows of the high tension wires rushing off into the raining night.

Now the humming was in her, her eyes jerked, she felt herself yanked violently upright. She felt seized by a whirling dynamo, around, around in a whirl, out, out, into the heart of whirling invisibilities, fed into, accepted by a thousand copper wires, and shot, in an instant, over the earth!

She was everywhere at once!

Streaking along high monster towers in instants, sizzling between high poles where small glass knobs sat like crystal-green birds holding the wires in their nonconductive breaks, branching in four directions, eight secondary directions, finding towns, hamlets, cities, racing on to farms, ranches, haciendas, she descended gently like a widely filamented spider web upon a thousand square miles of desert!

The earth was suddenly more than many separate things, more than houses, rocks, concrete roads, a horse here or there, a human in a shallow, boulder-topped grave, a prickling of cactus, a town invested with its own light surrounded by night, a million apart things. Suddenly it all had one pattern encompassed and held by the pulsing electric web.

She spilled out swiftly into rooms where life was rising from a slap on a naked child's back, into rooms where life was leaving bodies like light fading from an electric bulb - the filament glowing, fading, finally colorless. She was in every town, every room, making light patterns over hundreds of miles of land; seeing, hearing everything, not alone any more, but one of thousands of people, each with his ideas and his faiths.

Her body lay, a lifeless reed, pale and trembling. Her mind, in all its electric tensity, was flung about in this way, that, down vast networks of powerhouse tributary.

Gaudy Butterfly ....

"Bees sip honey from the flower and hum their thanks when they leave.
 The gaudy butterfly is sure that the flower owes thanks to her."

-- Stray Birds, Rabindranath Tagore.


:-)

Perpetual Construction ...

From a visit to the Export Promotion Tech Park in Whitefield.

All around that place, almost wherever you look, its full of buildings under construction. Office complexes, Apartments, Trade centers and all. Full of huge half-finished concrete structures with protruding steel skeletons and little men moving about them in yellow helmets.

I remember reading somewhere, of someone sitting on his rooftop in a distant suburb of Boston and looking at the dusty sky above Boston far away. Dust rising from the perpetual construction of Boston, like a distant herd of buffalo charging in the planes.

And whenever I see huge structures being constructed, the first thing that comes to my mind is Howard Roark, and The Fountainhead.

Good day to me ... :-)

Talk about a good day ! This Saturday was one. From morning till the last minutes of midnight ... :-)

When I woke up at 7.30, from a much deep slumber, like waking after months long hibernation, a soft yellow morning sun was seeping through my glazed window pane; playing on my sheets, at times bright, then dimming, then bright again, making me smile, and telling me that it's gonna be a day of billowing white clouds.

And I just realize that I had a lot, a huge lot, of dreams last night. Sort of how you make out that a painter has been working furiously; seeing the color spills, the soaked cotton waste and bits of torn paper. But am not able to recollect much, save for two or three great knights hacking at a huge pillar with their swords, songs being played in I-TV in strange and unknown languages, a group of people in search for a guy called Sumandra Ravindran, and a large procession of millions of people and a deep drumming voice rattling over them. Gee ... :-) ... just to know that you had so many dreams, even without being able to remember, makes one so happy.

And then I made it to my morning run at the park. Sometimes I feel its becoming like and addiction, but I'd count it a good one if it is ... :-) ... I like how my feet feel inside the running shoes, all jumpy and high spirited delight and raring to go. And the park was great, with the lazy morning still trapped in it's tree tops and it's sky covered with trees and green foliage that you can run there and treat your lungs to cool moist air even at 9.00 in the morning. And I have just fallen in love with the cuckoo there, always taunting me to answer its call, taking it to higher and higher pitches as if to tease me.

Then my bike had to be serviced. After all the daredevil-ery she had to act out to save me from knee deep water logged roads on the night when the rain Gods decided to lash out at the City. She seemed to have caught a cold, and her brakes were locking, and her tyres wobbling. She's too tyred ... :-D ... Did I tell you that she's a black Kinetic and that I love her?

And breakfast was great ... :-) ... I think 'Adicha Chaya' is to me like Tequila is to the Mexicans, Green Tea to the Chinese, and Beer to the Australians. Its a heavenly potion to have in the morning, with its white froth floating on top and the hot, punching, Getafix mix underneath. Until I set foot in Karnataka I didn't know that it too can be made to an ugly, brutal, log headed mockery. Sad that I have to travel a bit to enjoy it, from the place where I stay, and a bike to be serviced is just a perfect excuse.

Back at home, now that my Bike was away, I decided to try-ride a blue Pulsar left at my place who actually belongs to a friend who has gone abroad and practically settled there. She was dusty, so I gave her a scrub and she gleamed. She has gears .. |-) ... but, she's a great ride. She's 150 Cc and 12 bhp. And when riding her you can almost feel her raw power fidgeting under your arms. And she just takes you to air and punches your head if you let her go. She's someone who for sure likes to be on top ... :-), and taming her is a thrill ride. Now I don't want to be caught between this tussle of two mistresses, but I think my black pearl is becoming a lil old ... hee ... :-D

And lunch was a blast, owing to the sudden decision by three of us to go to Chung's. Its an Indianised Chinese restaurant, where everything is fiery, not to mention ones with the thumbnail of a chilly by their side on the menu. And I dig the Malaysian noodles, Koi Thai, a flat and slender one that tastes really good. And and assortment of fiery fried chicken along with it. Out from there and a succulent, thick Mango juice from Sree Ganesha's to put me straight into sleep again ... :">

And I wake up at dusk ... browse through the TV and sample a few of the movies playing, some hilarious ones are on today, and settle for a far second rated Kannada Chaya on account of laziness. No rain today, just white billowing clouds. Night fell slowly, and I walked under the yellow-orange Sodium vapor lamps. They create an out of the world enigma on deserted silent roads coupled with the silent hum of an occasional fluorescent lamp and stage the perfect setting to discuss philosophy if you are in the company of one so aligned, and nostalgia if thats the pick rather, or fast cars, or mountain peaks, or kangaroos, or love, or life the Universe and everything, as you like it.

It feels nice to see Sirius shining brightly in the sky after a long stint of cloudy days.

And I went and got my black pearl back. And surpassing all my expectations, she's all chick again and rides like a dream ! Oh Boy ! :-D

And I visit a couple of friends, and see how the blue gal rides in the night. Well, she's spectacular! ... :-D

Those guys already had their dinner and hence they route me to a Dhaaba that they had tried.

The Bobby Dhaaba. All Punjabi, all orginal, and all Dhaaba ! Ki Oye ! With this tall Jatt in his long Kurtha and the small round bulbous headgear shouting all the while in starkly accented voice.

"Ji order dena Sirji Mah'raj ! ... Yaar' Oye' tabel' numbr' chaar khaali!! saf kar fatafat' "

"Ki Sirji, Do alu ke paratteh' ek' rajma, ek' dahi aur ek' mattah' ! tabel' numbr chaar pe baittiye ji ! "

Shouting is his primary apparatus of communication to the ones in the kitchen as well on the Dhaaba floor. I'm gonna like this place ... :-)

So I indulge myself in "Do alu ke paratteh' ek' rajma ek' dahi aur ek' mattah'" and reach Almosto Blastosis. Gee ... :-)

And coming back, settle down heavily in front on the TV to watch the Formula One Canadian Grand Prix qualifying. And hee .. :-) ... The Red Car comes second on the first row. And no sign of the black one anywhere nearby ... B-) I don't know why I like the Red Car, somehow I got attracted to it long back. I like Red.

And its 12.00 Midnight. Boy! You should go to sleep. Now!

And today I bought a Rubix cube on roadside for 30 bucks, as all my previous ones have been stolen by lilliputians.

Life on a Cedar ....

From my Himalayan winter trek in December'04.

A creeper trying to climb on to a towering Cedar that is more than a hundred feet tall.

Life, the phenomenon, as it has evolved through the millions of years on this planet, is an astonishingly robust thing. It thrives in the most impossible environments, it propels itself through the hardest of obstacles, and just refuses to go down. It survives; Miles deep under the sea, in ecosystems that thrive on hot magma springs as their sole energy source. Miles above sea level, on snow covered mountains, in organisms that don't need oxygen to survive. In birds, leopards, buffaloes, great sharks, salmons, bulldogs, squirrels, sparrows, cockroaches and mosquitoes.

And in the poorest of people barely surviving in slums, who really don't seem to have much reason to do so.

What is the most characteristic feature of life?

Is it that it survives, reproduces and spreads itself?

I smile in my dreams ....

:-)

Digital Life ...

Hope she falls through irradicating tubes that detox her and deneuralizing vortexes that unpluck the menacing tentacles from her back, sparkling mazes of crystal that bring back the glitter into her eyes, dove feathers that wipe her tears and caress her mind, billowing clouds that float her on her feet, fading mist to wake her up from sleep and a brilliant sun to daze her ... and a twin rainbow colored dodecohedron for her to play with .....

Hope ....

In the steep barren gray belly of the building sat the little green sun bird. All fragile and dwarfed and insecure and stirring up a discomforting alien feeling in your heart. Holding on to the rugged edge of the window sill, with its tiny legs. It's faded-yellow neck swayed as it scanned the world in its shining eyes. It looked up once, to hook its eyes with the two earnest eyes of me looking down at them from three floors above. The huge giant of the concrete building grew over and around the bird, in its deeply impersonal gray walls, and occasional blackened windows. People walked briskly below it on a tiled walkway. The sun burned down cruelly through the long vanished shade and gleamed in its little eyes.

For a moment I thought I saw an unfathomable sadness in its eyes, memories of a paradise lost, of the plight of the ostracized, and ephemeral existence.

It flew back to a skinny tree, on the single row of trees left in this concrete field, and huddled among the leaves. For only a few seconds, and it came back to the window sill, like a rallying athlete. And again its neck swayed, and its eyes flashed. The neck swayed slow, slow, slow, which never does so for a bird this small. Their world I saw was always swift, flipping turns, skipping jumps, sneaking looks and sharp twisting necks. But here indeed, I was seeing its neck sway slowly, up, down, up again and sideways, like slowed down frames of a gripping scene in a motion picture. And it's neck straightened, bent down, elongated, its beaks moved, eyes flashed; and in a split second the neck extended into a small opening under the sill and caught something from there.

A tiny leg or two flashed amidst its beaks.

It flew over to the window next to it. The faded-yellow neck swayed slowly, and an affluent sun gleamed in its bright eyes.

I smiled, and looked up. The sky was partly covered with dark clouds. Among them stood a towering precipitous peak of white cloud. It rose above the dark plateau, milky-white and blindingly bright in the sun. The wind played along its towering girth, fading slowly into the blue sky above. And on its vanishing peaks I saw someone, a kind angel, looking down, soft wings billowing on her back;

watching the world below, with deep loving eyes.