A Twitter friend asked, what is decidedly Indian?
There was no further context available, and after giving it some thought, I said – Sarees
A few other suggestions did come along, I believe: as my friend finally settled on Mughal Architecture as decidedly Indian. (Yes, she did add – go figure!). She has finally settled on “crowds”.
It is pretty difficult to identify what is decidedly Indian – given that food, culture, clothing, terrain and sensitivities change every 200 miles in every direction.
Personally speaking, Mughal Architecture exists in large parts of Asia, unless we refer to Indo-Saracenic Architecture. Still, it is not a decidedly Indian, because there are enough of other architectural styles which are fairly evenly spread across the country, which are quintessentially Indian. Even with Crowds, I’d think China would lead. (Though India leads China on population density: 29 vs. 75). Also crowds are more a city phenomenon?
I recall a talk we had with a few colleagues, a few years ago, as we were building a visual digital product that would be used by children in rural India. Someone mentioned that the scene would be “a typical Indian Village”. My very perceptive ex-boss, asked a very pertinent question – what does a typical Indian village look like?
There doesn’t exist anything called a typical Indian village. The vegetation, the construction of buildings, the dress, the climate, the greenery (or lack of it) varies – widely.
Diversity, then.
That is what is decidedly Indian. But it is intangible. You cannot take a photograph of diversity and label it as Indian. Because you can photograph people from various regions or people following different faiths. To capture the essence of diversity in a single image is very difficult.
For now, I leave you with this village in coastal Maharashtra; Decidedly Konkan.
My blog-addiction was under control for a while. Gladly, I lost control.
Defying concern that the folks at WordPress might actually limit the number of blogs I can have, I have started yet another blog.
This one is interesting. I have started learning French and have chosen not to attend classes. Yes, there are other sites out there (and I’ll link to these resources as I find them — and as my need to learn more French grows), but they are mostly structured — usually in the same way. Greetings, family, check-in to a hotel, ask for a taxi.
What if I am not travelling to France or a French speaking country? What if I want to learn to write poetry in French or watch French films without sub-titles? What if, I want to write a blog in French?
This one is a double experiment: Learning the French language and Exploring how you can learn a language through Web 2.0 — through people who are learners or teachers or just plain old you and me (who know or are interested in French). I plan to leverage all possible Web 2.0 means to learn French. Twitter. Facebook. Goodreads. Blogs. Google (I have been warned against translate.google, though).
I believe in the Web as it is today. I think I’ll learn well. I may not learn it quickly, but it will be a fun experience and more-so — a very fulfilling experience. In any case, I do not have a deadline. I am not going to France soon (but hey, I already have learnt useful French phrases).
So if it sounds interesting (whether the experiment, the language or the experience), I’ll be Learning French
Many lifestyle and self-help gurus advocate living in the present. They make up catchy lines like, “Yesterday’s the past, tomorrow’s the future, but today is a gift. That’s why it’s called the present.” That’s an interesting bit of wordsmithery, if you ask me and pretty cogent — depends on who and where you are (philosophical positioning).
When Asuph was doing the fine balancing with his comment on my previous post, I wondered about the present (not the gift but the now).
There is no present.
By the time you finished reading the sentence above and are reading this word, it is already past. The present is such an infinitely small span of time it is impossible to be in the present. I may well be accused of logical word terrorism here, however, this concept deserves staying in the present and pondering over it.
Asuph said, “Future is just present, delayed a bit.” I think we are always nearly in the future. If there is a border for the start and end of the present, we are usually towards the end-border. That is the place where we are. In that space, all actions we commit are based on past experiences and designed for the future. There can never be any being in the present. That state is always dynamic and churning the present into past, while we move towards the future. Each action instantly becomes the past and is deposited for us to access and refer, in the “next” future. With each passing moment and that instant which we call the present, we are building up our past. Even in the so called present, if you are able to identify that time, we are always referring to the past or planning for (or contemplating) the future.
The present is only a bridge between the past and the future. You are on it, for the briefest moment that links the two and makes complete, your life.
I believe in the future
I may live in my car
My radio tuned to
The voice of a star
Song dogs barking at the break of dawn
Lightning pushes the edge of a thunderstorm
And these old hopes and fears
Still at my side
~ The Cool, Cool River, Rhythm of the Saints, Paul Smon
Some friends aren’t supposed to be friends. They start off as someone else in your lives. Over a period of time they become friends — without ceasing to be who they are. The continue being both. And even if they do not remain, they always remain faithful to who they are in your life.
Even if you are Toyota, you can never be perfect. Everyone has a long way to go. Mostly because humans have a long way to go. An attempt to be perfect will always be incomplete because of man’s limitation and flaws.
Fear of failure can singularly break you backbone at every step. Life is uni-directionally planer and not multi-directionally spherical as most of us make it to be. They taught us just half of it. It’s not enough to face up to your fears — you need to vanquish them — if you ever want to go ahead.
The larger the superstores become, the quicker your checkout. Slowly but surely you will shop for ten items or less and pay in cash.
Because weekends mean the same thing to most people — your weekends will stop making sense and you will stop thinking about and looking forward to weekends. Or not. If you are most people.
Discipline won’t get you any further, faster; it will, however, stop you from going back and wasting precious time on things that you shouldn’t be wasting time on.
In the end only a few sentences from time will be the clearest memories. What you will want to hold on and cherish is the complete feeling and sense of belonging to a time. It is pretty useless to try and remember every detail from time.
What people think of you isn’t who you are. That is their perception; it emerges from their own belief systems and insecurities. If you have seen people change, use them as markers for your own: so that you may stay true — as much as possible.
The simplest questions are the most profound, said Richard Bach, in one of his books. of the four questions:
Where were you born?
Where is your home?
Where are you going?
What are you doing?
one was missing. Where are you?
It’s a good question, like the first four to ask yourselves, once in a while and see your answers change. It is really a difficult question to answer, if you think about it. Even the most obvious answer — your geographical coordinates — to that question can get you thinking. The other obvious answer is usually where you are on the timeline of your life vis-à-vis where you thought you would be.
It is also a question that potentially transforms you into a third person searching for you. Are you lost? Are you hiding?
Whichever way you interpret the question, the answer is always the same: I am here. And then, you understand the real essence of the question.
Where is here?
I am here.
I took this photo on 23rd December in 2005.
This wall face is just next to a very small hotel in Kasal, in Konkan – on the Mumbai – Goa Highway. And this small hotel carries many sweet memories from my college days. The taste of tentative independence, being savoured slowly. I have kept going back to this hotel whenever I have been on this road.
Very recently, I was back on this road, this February. And I took this photo.
It is the same vehicle. I just felt like sharing. Enjoy.
There was a time when I used to toss utter disapproval in the general direction of a few fellow-bloggers who were lax in updating their blogs. Most, often complained of being busy. And I usually responded with a mild reproof to that response. There is no such thing as not having time; you have to make time. (Certain dialogues from a late-80s film that you watched many a time, while young and learning to shave, stick with you forever. We are all forgiven for that)
And here I am, pretty much in the same boat, except it isn’t exactly the same boat. (The boat’s the same, the same is proverbial) But I am not making the time-tested lack-of-time excuse. I just don’t write anymore. Except when I write about not writing, i.e.
Thankfully, no one chides me for not writing as often. Except a few. Actually – just a couple. One, to be frank. If you minus me, of course. But that would make that two, if you did include me.
And here I am. And I got here somehow and got back anyhow. I left this place for a while, kept coming back, got addicted elsewhere, got into rehab without knowing it and rode many adventures that eluded awareness, though the experience is present and intact.
It seems we are sometimes doomed to wander. Do things that are completely irrelevant – if only to know that there was a path that wasn’t to be.
Sometimes we are able to make it back to route that would take us to the place where we wanted to be; sometimes we lose our way and get somewhere else. It is not always a bad place – this somewhere else. But only if we allow ourselves to let go of the fantasy of the place where we wanted to be, else we never enjoy being somewhere else, even if somewhere else is a nice place to be, because we yearn for the place we wanted to be.
One way of being happy in any place is not to want to be anywhere in particular, because then there will be no aspirations. But it may not work at all, because not wanting to be anywhere will not make you want to go anywhere. And if you do not move, because there is nowhere you want to be, you will probably be nowhere, which means that you will not be anywhere and you will never value being anywhere because you wanted to be nowhere in the first place.
So it is good to want to be somewhere and yet allow yourself to get somewhere else (altogether) and enjoy that place where you are. But if that somewhere else does not make you happy, it is important to start wanting to be somewhere else (whether its the place you wanted to be in the first place or a completely new place).
Someone said that the journey is more important than the destination. Something about this sentence irks me. The purpose of a journey is to reach a destination. Enjoying the journey is an option, which you may (and should) fully exercise. The purpose of a journey can never be fulfilled if you never reach the destination. It is a state of being not-there, when you want to be-there. You cannot enjoy a journey forever. You may choose to go to a new place after you reach the place where you want to be and restart enjoying the journey to go somewhere else.
But sometimes you get so lost in enjoying the journey that you miss the the place you wanted to be and you pass it by. You cannot always return back to the place you wanted to be and you are now somewhere else. You are without a destination and without a journey (because now that you have missed the destination, the journey has no purpose and without purpose it ceases to exist).
Where you are, then becomes the destination and the start of a new journey.
*The title is a mash-up of Destination and Journey. It has nothing to do with Destiny, which is a predetermined course of events considered as something beyond human power or control.
This time around, she didn’t challenge me. But a gentle conversation was good enough to push me into writing a very satisfying post, after a long time. In recent times I have not liked what I have written, here. There is a tense tentativeness in the thoughts.
In any case, it seems that I am forgetting the advice from Forrester, and waiting for the clear thought to permeate a cloudy head.
And for the same reasons, I have begun wondering if there is anything called the clear thought, in the context of expressing one. Is this the only noun doomed to be celibate? Never to have a perfect adjectival companion?
Thoughts, at best are caterpillars — they carry within them the future expression of beauty. But unless expressed, they remain just that – ugly, creepy creatures.
Thoughts should aim to become butterflies.
When I wrote Hello, Books, a few days ago, there was that excitement of having read a book after a long time. Amply evident, I guess. It even spawned a good conversation, like most books are supposed to.
Then, yesterday, I blogged about cosmic conspiracies. The theme of books continued. I recently also called off a fiery and an impetuous love affair with Twitter. Some of you may have noticed that I have made frugal, my space in Facebook.
Today, my computer crashed, taking along with it everything that I had put there, all these years. Such an event usually triggers a tsunami of anxiety within; often in a way that I cannot contain or control. No chance of recovery, they said. Have to replace.
I do not know why, this time, I was pretty nonchalant (for me, i.e.). Even when the engineer said it would take half a week, before I got an empty computer back, things didn’t quite bother me. Perhaps, it was because, after the last time this happened to me, I mutated into a backup Nazi. In spite of this, I was randomly accessing what I had done in the last fortnight, which may have missed my backup schedule. Nothing critical came to mind. A few emails here and there, which I could manage.
A doctor and a friend (two different people) once told me that falling sick is your body’s way of telling you to stop, or at least slow down. A way of telling you to take rest.
I have to learn to put advice in context and write complete posts.
