iDoctor

I love my eye doctor.

Ophthalmologist.

He is seeking his seventies. Or at least his late-sixties; I wouldn’t know. He has that demeanour where he can camouflage his 60-70 age-range. At least, I have the range right. He has a worthwhile theory of small, fashionable spectacle frames. He wears the ones that dent your cheeks.

Generally, you wouldn’t trust a dentist with bad teeth; I somehow trust my ophthalmologist, even though he is myopic. He is old school. Prescribes medicines, eye-drops and the sort only as a last resort. That is what I think. But, really, he prescribes only when there is a need. A mild hypochondriac like me can take a plethora of symptoms to him – explain them in a way that would never have occurred in his text-book; I have the power of Wikipedia and WebMD with me; to use his language.

I love my eye doctor. He does not relent.

He easily acknowledges my understanding of motility, myodesopsia, vitreous humour, and other retinal phrases. Gives me a patient hearing; makes me feel important and validates what I have to say. Then, he suddenly stops being a doctor; becomes a teacher; uses analogies from daily life and  brings down my guard. Optics 101. Reflection; refraction; angle of incidence and such. He does not compromise on the tests that he does and then tells me reassuringly that there may be something wrong with my eyes, but not to the extent that I have allowed my imagination to cover. He accommodates my fears.

A wise man once indicated to me, the use of experts. “It has got nothing to do with expertise, actually. Yes, the expertise may exist; but unless you can trust the expert, it is no use hiring the expert.”

“It is obvious you have hypermetropia; but there is no need for you to invest in reading glasses. You’ve crossed 40 now; it’s natural. Just remove your myopic lens and read. No need for reading glasses.”

Sometimes I see your face
As if through reading glasses
And your smile seems softer than it was.

Paul Simon ~ Proof

Sigh. The romance of reading glasses will not be experienced, after all.

He has to do more tests; a few eye drops and minutes later; my pupils are dilated to the size of a saucer. Calls me back in. Sharp lights behind lenses are layered. The light seems to penetrate.

Eyes are the windows to the soul. What’s he looking at; does he know all that I seek and all that yearn and all that I fear?

All’s fine, apparently. And, remember, he is old school? There is no way he will let a mild hypochondriac without a prescription. He gives me one. I suspect it is a placebo. I can always Google it when I get back home. A doctor who can have a conversation and drill-down the most complex conditions of the human body to the least-common-multiple analogies is a good doctor, as far as I am concerned. (I’ll still Google the prescription) But I am already sure he is smarter than me.

He advises me that I should not be driving with my pupils dilated so much. I wait for a while and then, take off.

Romance is in the air. The streetlights are all star-bursts, everything is in soft focus. I think of Gautam Rajadhakshya. The world just seems like a brighter place. Ghostly, yet romantic halos surround every light. I know when I get home I won’t be able to read or work on the computer or watch TV. The world becomes empty, except for her. I think of her; my guiding light.

Back home now.

I haven’t yet Googled the prescription. Now I wonder, if I should. I don’t think I will. This doctor has ensured that we see things right since I was in school. From prescribing spectacles to performing cataract operations; he has been our lighthouse. In good times and bad. Many years ago, while prescribing for me, he pulled out his prescription pad and wrote, “Carrots,” and handed it over to my father.

Just because some people aren’t your friends or family, doesn’t mean that they do not care about you. You have to decide *and* understand what some people mean, in your life.

Needless to say; I hate carrots.

Dangerous Decisions

Michelle Martin has an excellent post (and I have contributed to it, yes) about dangerous things to do. She lists seven things – but as you read it – you will find your own. Add to her comments if you can think of one (or two, or a few).

There are quite a few articles out there that will tell you the scientific reasons for living dangerously. Frontal lobe thingies, adrenalin pumping, brain atrophy prevention etc. (See the TED talk in Michelle’s post, for example)

But all the scientific reasons in the world come to a nought, if you have been already consumed and further enveloped in the fear psychosis that governs our lives in these times. In such a situation, any list I point you to, may seem merely (and academically) romantic. It is not something that we will actually do, but a thin smile will cross our faces as we ponder and live each dangerous thing in our imagination.

And I’ll agree with you that your conviction, by itself, to live dangerously is hardly ever enough. It’s the family, friends, and environments that we live in that makes us hold ourselves back. There is said and unsaid convention to adhere. When (and of course, if) we break that convention and the recommendation of our environment – we may be left with no support system. I can assure you – it is a struggle from then on. But it is an immensely satisfying struggle. Newness abounds and there are interesting things to discover round every corner. Even things that you know seem fresh and abundant of perspective. Your instinct and intuition is fired up; highly sensitised.

The same environment in the new perspective will amaze you.

Few Flavours of Fear

I am afraid. I like it.

I wonder if like and enjoy can be mutually exclusive. Meaning – can I like something I do not enjoy and vice versa. I am not sure. I am usually alone in the red corner, who advocates fear as something that motivates. In the blue corner, the cacophony of the crowd shouts me down. They never listen to me.

Fear, like ice-cream, has flavours.

There is fear in the form of terror. Not the terrorist-variety which airport security gives in to. Terror, that threatens more than life. A sense of powerlessness that threatens our very sense of being. I am not talking of that.

Then, there is numbing fear. It sucks out all possible responses we can offer as humans. It attacks and paralyses our ability to respond – renders us zombie-like – makes us tolerate all without acceptance. I am not talking of that.

There is, then, an everyday variety of fear. Where we build a multi-storey of what-if floors reinforced with home-grown-anxiety. It just takes us to places where we will possibly never be, but we travel nonetheless. I am not talking of that.

There is a variety of fear which is very positive. It pushes us out of our comfort zone. You may argue that it is not fear – but it surges from the same place where every other fear originates. Only, this time, the threat takes birth within yourself. It is not instinctive, this flavour; it is intuitive. It does not appeal to the base, it appeals at a higher order. It is not physical – it is philosophical. That’s the reason we often ignore it during its first appearances. We are better qualified to attack and win over instinctive fears – those that challenge our existence. The fears that challenge our being are often supplanted by those that challenge our base instincts.

It takes a while to understand this fear. Someday, we hear its charge. On the horizon we see, its annihilating force and prepare ourself for a life that is beyond our primary instincts. When we fight any flavour of fear, we hardly ever enjoy it.

But there are times when we like that experience.

Oh, Just a Conversation

It has been a while since someone has ever challenged my thinking, my thoughts. Along comes an old friend. We are separated by geography, but neither one of us gives a damn.

We spoke of the world we live in. We spoke of the world that will bind us to a way of living. We talked of revolutions that we need to cause, to ensure that this country’s promise lives true. It is so easy to be a rebel, with or without a cause. I can parade my slogan and make you slave to a cause by being a predator on the very emotions that you seek release from. I can penetrate your innermost sense of helplessness and be the icon of your most suppressed expression.

For the most of us, our call and support of the unstudied cause is our re-shares on Facebook and retweets on Twitter. Our understanding of the constitution of this country laid wayside, we are flag-bearers of an unknown colour or emblem, just a current flavour. Our dismay of a prevailing situation overcomes our sense of right. Our call is simple – an uproar. Only on the basis of an inherent outrage that we experience; yet feel completely neutered to act against it.

You see, convenience trumps right – hands down, every time they face each other. These are enemies. Staunch. They will never shake hands. A person I respect a lot, once told me: There are ethics, and then there are ethics, and then there are ethics. I suspect, he was on the side of righteousness, but he was warning me about convenience. I have yet to decipher the meaning of his statement – I believe it was multi-layered – but I hope to get there, someday.

We need to put things in perspective.

For  a millionth time – I am grateful for all my friends out there – irrespective of their ideology. They make me a better person.

A Non-Post

This one post is difficult to write: The only way I can write it is — to deny content, in the post.

This peasant of a post has only context to offer.

The emotions that wrap around you at a time when you are most vulnerable are the very emotions that cannot be expressed. If you bring your rational head above the water, you could find a few words, scourge the thesaurus, and express in words what that emotion really makes you feel.

This one, isn’t one of that.

Perhaps because it is the confluence of a million smiles and tears. And every intersection of a smile and a tear has a unique meaning, a unique context. It is almost a complete life.

Therefore I confine this one to the only higher abstraction that it is capable of.

With numerical markers like dates, numbers, counts, measurements, and time that unfortunately marks such moments. Unfortunate, because these moments within them hold a cauldron of boiling emotions that cannot be numerically expressed. Our education, comprehension and understanding however has been reduced to a numbskull slave of demanding science and unforgiving mathematics, rather than an a forgiving and an encompassing art.

I agree with you; this is yet another incomplete post!

Elementary Schizophrenia

For a while now, I have stayed away from my schizophrenia posts. People have liked them, asked for more, yet it has been a while since I wrote those type of entries. A while is defined as eleven months. I wonder now, what makes people want to read this level of abstraction, for a post that is so personal, what is it in the post that they identify with. Words. Madness. Form, or the lack of it.

There’s water shortage in Mumbai. Yet abundant flowing water finds a way to push through the walls of my house and eyes that try hard to stay dry and strong. This month, the city lakes are full, my empty heart finds some happiness in that.

Disaster movies, I think, are a round-about way of making us respect natural powers. I think they only cause further fear. Of all the disaster movies that I see, the ones inspired by water are the most boring. I hate to sit through two-three hours of watching water wet the screen. The ones inspired by fire, are another thing altogether. Fire has an ability to reduce things to nothing.

I have seen fire at close quarters. I have fought with it, and I live under no illusion that I won against it. That day however, it was fire’s nasty cousin – smoke – that I was really up against. If the fire hadn’t chosen to retreat that early morning, I would have lost some things.

I have a love for mountains that I am unable to explain. I have often heard from folks about how the enormity of a mountain or the sea makes the human look so small and insignificant. Earlier, when I did not have an opinion about it, I approved; considered it to be a an interesting thought. Not anymore. I always feel I carry the enormity of nature within me, for only I can recognise it. To look at the mountain or the sea as a separate reality is to distance itself from you. If it’s within you, you are as significant as it is.

I loved the mountains the most on 8th December 2009 at 6:44AM. I embraced it with my heart. It held me in a tight bear hug. We had conversations as we watched the wonderful view. There was no awe, just love – infinite love.

I have promised myself a drive. A long one. It has yet to materialise. I’d like to go alone this time. I hate the rules that confine driving when I am with someone. Their rules. The need to get to a place, to eat at certain places, avoid night-driving, worst – to close the windows. I love the wind in my face. I’d like to keep driving, if only to feel the wind in my face.

The smell changing every ten kilometres or so. The branches swaying in slowmo. The musical wailing as it passes through ridges, valleys and over the plains into the mountains.

But I am where I am.

We never crave for proof of life. That’s an axiomatic assumption, if there is something like that, well-supported by philosophical premises and academic arguments. Standing on the top of a mountain, watching the sea below, the wind blowing against us, to kindle the fire within, and being where you should be – that, perhaps, is the proof of life.

Prayer of Intention

The good thing about wandering is that you never know what you pick up on the way. Especially when you wander without agenda.

On one such wandering I picked up a prayer.

Our default prayers are those that our parents taught us, to acquire all the goodness in this world. It took most of us quite a while to edit that prayer and add our own specifics, clauses and caveats to it. Some of us let go of the prayer altogether.

One word, it’s meaning, has eluded me for a while: intention.

I have used it many times in life; I now feel, I used it loosely. This possibly stems from the lack of proof, in some way. When you intend (for, or to do) something, that is all you do. It is, as it appears to me, an orphan word. Though it is born of a desire or a wish and it dies with the action that makes the intention a reality, it truly belongs nowhere, and to no one when it exists.

Like raw, unharnessed power, perhaps?

This one prayer, I picked up recently caused a mental feud of what an intention is, really and at the same time asking me, if I have ever really wondered what a prayer really is – and what I do when I pray. Enough has been proven about the science of the power of suggestion, and perhaps all prayers are just that. Some prayers, like the one I discovered are elaborate and elegant; some are crude while being beautiful. And whatever their form and quality maybe, they serve the same purpose: statement of an intention.

However, whatever the nature of their composition and presentation, a prayer cannot be a transaction. A transaction has a shelf-life, which ends when the transaction is complete. And a single prayer cannot be reused for another transaction, because then the specifics would change.

So, is a prayer just a statement of intention of a continuous purpose? Compare, “I need to touch an average of 500 page views on my blog in the next three months”, with, “Let there be a continuous abundance of readers on my blog.” This is obviously a bad example, for it sounds frivolous. But, I suppose it serves the purpose of explaining one defining characteristic of a prayer.

But then who is to fulfil the prayer, be it the one about the page views or of the abundance of visitors. Because the prayer is only a message, and without an addressor or an addressee the message is an unmarked envelope gathering dust somewhere.

But there is no addressee.

There isn’t “someone out there” who actually takes up the job of fulfilling your prayers. And it makes sense that no one entity is taking that responsibility, else it would be a conflict management issue — attempting to fulfill prayers from around the world. Our prayers are addressed to ourselves — only a reinforcement of intention then, of dedicating to the action that fulfills the intention.

The Portal

Sometimes all you need is a point from where you can look out. When what’s in is disturbing, depressing and dissonant to your beliefs and values, all you need is a place from where you can look out.

For one, it allows you to ignore the dark of inside. And for another, it allows you to see all that is possible — whether in reality or in imagination.

And though you can’t do it forever — because you cannot escape and you will eventually have to do an about-turn and see inside — it allows you to go quiet inside and consider the possibility of forgiving it, rather than fighting it.

Being Free

Happy Independence Day, all you proud Indians, slightly belated, but it is still Independence Day as I write this.

Freedom has come to mean a lot more than just the notion of being self-governed. It has started gnawing the innards of the self. A mere declaration of independence does little in achieving it. And Tagore’s words resonate:

Obstinate are the trammels, but my heart aches when I try to break them.

Freedom is all I want, but to hope for it I feel ashamed.

I am certain that priceless wealth is in thee, and that thou art my best friend, but I have not the heart to sweep away the tinsel that fills my room.

The shroud that covers me is a shroud of dust and death; I hate it, yet hug it in love.

My debts are large, my failures great, my shame secret and heavy; yet when I come to ask for my good, I quake in fear lest my prayer be granted.

– Rabindranath Tagore

This is, surprisingly, the same person who wrote, “Where the mind is without fear…”. I say surprising because, while I am not quite familiar with the chronology of Tagore’s poetry, he has obviously experienced the clutch as as well as the release.

Tagore is not, or has evolved from being, the patient that Sheldon Kopp refers to when he says:

He prefers the security of known misery to the misery of unfamiliar insecurity.

So, apart from the notional freedom that we all experience on this day, there is an arduous journey we all will have to undertake before we can be truly free. Free from what? That “what” is a personal trammel that we will need to identify and cut through each layer before we can swim free to the surface and gulp in fresh air.

We are often blind to that obstacle that holds us back. We think we are free, yet somewhere our heart does not accept it. That mildly nagging feeling of slavery never leaves us alone. We walk with our heads held high, yet the thud is our heart is nervous. It is almost Matrix-ically Neo-tic where you do not know if you are dreaming or awake. And we cover ourselves with more tinsel, that perhaps may blunt the unwavering call of freedom that keeps softly beckoning.

And we get weighed down by the tinsel that promises false safety.

Yet, we want to be free.

Notes for the Future

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.

Destiny*

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.

Theory of Comfort and Ownership

Change is Constant. Yes, you have heard that before, here on this blog, (and, I am sure various other places) when I wrote of how we are Victims of Comfort.

I am amused by the “Ten Million Against The New Facebook, Change It Back Campaign” on Facebook, asking, obviously, to change it back. I am not a sceptic, I don’t deny that the campaign may actually get Facebook to change its look, or at least provide an option to select which look you want to set for your Facebook. Starting from its Terms of Service, Facebook has always been in some sort of controversy or the other. Long time ago, there was this “warning” about Facebook. Most of us happily ignored it and signed up anyways, or continued to use Facebook.

I am amused because this is the nth invitation to a campaign against social sites. Needless to say, I haven’t joined. I vaguely recall a similar campaign when Facebook first changed its look and got a status bar at the bottom of the page. Then, there was this campaign against videos on Flickr. I am amused because we use these services for free. We use these services because we like them. There is always the option of walking away from something when you do not like what’s going on there.

Yet.

Our investments in making something a part of our life hold us back, make us almost fanatical about how things should be. If it is a thing that you own, I would understand. But whether free (or not), after a while we feel that all things belong to us and we have an inalienable right on all things we own.

This extends beyond just Facebook and Flickr.

A Life in Between

There is a life we plan to make, and live it.
( )
Then, there is a life that happens and we tag-along.

Where I put the parentheses between the two sentences above, is that very small world, where we dwell; our reality. This world is a tense space, a continuing pulsation between the push and pull of the two sentences. Yet, somehow, that space never breaks, in spite of the pressures that surround it.

The space is an important separator between the two sentences — without that space, one of the sentences has to die. The two sentences cannot coexist.

We often threaten the second sentence. We sometimes ask the first sentence to go away. Nothing happens. We continue to live within the parentheses. More often than not, this is what happens with most lives.

But, some lives resign. They kill the first sentence.
And, some lives rebel. They kill the second sentence.

Their world becomes meaningful. Not just an empty bracket.

Sorry, Prannoy

I am really afraid of you now. And, no I am not being sarcastic. At all. I am afraid to write about the world around me as I see it. Which is the same as what you do; only, our mediums are different. There are others in my community that are willing to stand up and tell you why you are wrong or more such things. Not me; I am afraid.

I promise, that starting today I will not watch any NDTV channel, lest I see something on it that I feel like writing about.

You see, I have huge respect for you, since I have grown up on The World this Week and your election specials. That was, of course, a long time ago. You and Vinod Dua were our champions when we were trying to get a grip on the Indian political system. We learnt a lot from you, then.

I promise, that starting today I will not watch any NDTV channel, infact, I will block it on my DTH, lest I accidentally browse through it.

There must be a word for it, for sure. I am not quite sure if it would qualify as media-terrorism or legal-terrorism. But terror has struck our hearts for sure. Bloggers around the country will have to measure each word and qualify each post before they click “Publish”. Funny, that it applies to bloggers but not to mainstream media, but I digress.

I promise, that starting today I will not watch any NDTV channel; I do realise it may harm your TRP, but then what does one blogger viewer mean to NDTV?

Jump Off the Fence

It’s like being a double agent; a milder version.

Sitting on the fence, watching two sides.

One sits on a fence because he likes to watch, without being involved, which side is doing what (or perhaps which side is winning).

Another sits on the fence because he likes both sides. It’s that simple. When you do not want to take sides, you sit on the fence.

Someone sits on the fence because he doesn’t want to hurt either side’s sentiments by being seen as taking sides.

And yet another sits on the fence, fuelling both sides, misleading them — making both believe that he is on their side.

It is a safety and comfort zone thing, this, sitting on the fence. For some reason, I have always visualised this as a picket fence. Must be painful. But then, that’s me. People who do that irritate me to no extent. Because it crosses your ability to allow such humans to be as they are.

When multiple situations in your life pose the same answers, answers are easy to come by. Everywhere the answer seems to be obvious, yet you end up on the fence, wondering if each situation should be dealt differently or if there is a celestial conspiracy somewhere that is just giving you many examples and demonstrating how obvious the answer is.

It is painful; should get down from there. Take a stand.

A Change of Religion

Posts like these will need to move to a different location. Not that they affect the genre of this blog in anyway, but these are precious, in the sense that they will need a platform of their own for them to transform into action.

My previous post has received some interesting feedback — emotional, even if it is.

In the previous post I was wondering what would fear (instead of resilience) in our hearts mean to the rest of country, especially the spineless Centre. More, an expression of, the heart crying out of the disadvantage that this city faces due to its resilience (Ironic, that in such times resilience has become a four-ten-letter word. One tight slap is due from Anumita, will take it willingly). The post was probably misleading, in a way. But then coherence wouldn’t be he hallmark of any expression in the last three days, would it?

Amit recently started a conversation on Facebook, which has the seeds of becoming something significant in the days to come. I spoke of political activism in that note. Not participation, necessarily. Joining politics is not the only answer. Being aware and active is they key. How many of us really know where we stand as citizens? Apart from our arm-chair views and our deep-hidden desire to shoot all politicians?

I am faced with a very interesting situation in the place I live. There are a few problems in the community where I reside. A microcosm of this country, run on similar precepts that keeps this country on its feet. These problems have been ongoing for a while. And now that I am residing here and becoming more aware of the intricacies of the situation, I realise why we haven’t ever been able to solve the problem.

In order as they occur to me:

One. There is no direct statement of the problem. We seem to be going around the symptoms again and again. We seem to be cursing (no, not looking to eradicate) the virus that causes the symptoms. Not even those that can solve the problem can do anything — they do not know what to solve.

Two. There is too much of noise. So much, that nothing can be heard. Chaos prevails according to choice and the reigning emotion. Any soft sane voice is drowned in the din. Anger spews out where it isn’t deserved. No one knows where it is deserved, it is just randomly spit in all directions, hoping the cause of the problem will stand somewhere in the line of fire; die.

Three. There is no participation. There will always be someone else who suffers as much, who will pick up the gun. From behind the cordons there is strong condemnation; or cheering. No one is willing to pick up the gun and go in; search the problem; shoot it down. Someone else will do it.

Four. No one wants to be the bad guy. We want cordial relations with everyone; we do not want to hurt anyone. Every person is willing to stand behind you, no one in front. Everyone agrees with you, no one is willing to stand by you.

Five. There is no knowledge of your own standing. Who are you in the community? What authority, representation do you have? What are the responsibilities of the office bearers? What is the method for communication? Decorum?

Six. Solution Fatigue. The most important one — the ability to resign to fate and manage a problem in a nuclear way. The easiest way out. Because the community cannot solve the problem, I will solve it for me, even if it is at the cost of other community members. A short-term solution. Call everything shit and walk away. Instant-ness of the world we live in is seeping into the way we look and approach and walk away from problems.

I?

I refuse to resign to fate and the possibility of someone acting on my behalf, unchecked, while I remain ignorant of my duties and rights in a noise that deafens a sane voice that works towards a better future, without fear.

I have a new religion and I follow a new book.

Make it Matter

In the mix of emotions that gripped the city for the last three days, one emotion stood out bold.

Anger.

I am hoping for another emotion to stand out high, in the days to come.

Fear.

It is the almost stupid bravado of this city that is cause for the repeated assaults on this city. Fear must grip this city hard and bring it to a halt. At least once. When the lifeline (Read: Money) to the Centre is cut off for good, I think they will realise that this is a city that needs to keep working; kept safe.

And if you are not willing to be afraid of terror, be very afraid of being ignored till yet another event unfolds.

When Digital Disaster Strikes

What is the degree of possibility (I know, degree is associated more with probability than possibility, yet) that your life is contained in the binary notation of a hard-disk? It will vary. From you to me. As lives become more digitally stored and lived, a hard-disk crash can account for a major event in your life.

Funnily, an “Invalid Node Error” occurring on a hard-disk is covered by a three-year warranty through an email residing on the corrupt hard-disk. Talk about irony.

I can almost imagine the dialogue when I take the machine to a service centre.

Losing access to your digital self can be daunting. And I have experienced it twice in the last three months. After the initial seven-minute itch, this time however, I was very normal. So here I am, back on paper, writing for an online medium, staring at a handwriting that has gone really bad.

In my mind, I pose a few questions in front of the mirror.

What is the value of an identity? Is it itself or does it become the medium that makes it possible? Do you travel the world from the confines of your desk, or do you go to the world? The classic hardware/software supremacy argument. When and how did the vehicle become more important than the passenger? Why do we admire the vehicle more than the one who drives it? Why do we decide the character of a person by the vehicle he drives, rather than (for example) how he drives it?

My camera wails for a day out.
My books scream to be out of cardboard boxes.
My movies beg to be seen.
My self yearns to live in my land.

In a single day I have experienced a wild roller-coaster of emotion sets.

From a crashed hard-disk to owning my new car in a span of four hours.

The evolution of verbiage in this post and the metaphors, you will acknowledge are just a natural coincidence.

Of Imagination

A friend on Facebook ponders “if consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative?”

In a broad sense I agree. Except, if it was me, I would replace “consistency” with “routine”. Words, as treacherous as they are, permit a chameleon-esque nature to meaning and interpretation. Consistency somehow, for me, is a more about character than behaviour. Consistency and lack of imagination, therefore are not necessarily opposites, or in a cause-effect relationship.

Routine is behavioural. It is a safe-house of sorts. And, unless you are willing to cross the boundaries of routine, there is no scope for imagination. Discipline, for example, though more respectful than routine, has the same effect. If you do not cross boundaries, there is no way to explore.

Role models, unintentionally have the same effect. Seldom do you find anyone willing to explore he essence of what makes a role-model a role model. Most people choose to emulate the act of a role model in hope of achieving a similar status. In doing this, they never consider the insignificant variable that was applicable to the role model that may not be applicable to them. That one insignificant variable that had a significant effect.

Imagination is possible in a mind that is not bound by routine or role-model emulation. A bound mind always knows the path to its destination. Imagination, then, is not necessary.

Imagination is an adventure. Those that live by acquired rules and precepts need no imagination.

A Thirteen Day Schizophrenia

I have a draft post, titled Pride and Prejudice. It will show up here soon, I hope. I cannot tell you what it is about. Because if I could, it would be here already.

A moth inspects my keyboard and decides against it.

I have spent a bit over two weeks back in Mumbai and people in India notice my British mannerisms and nuances and point them out. My British friends say that I have quickly gained back my Mumbai mannerisms and nuances and point them out. I observe both with excitable amusement.

My world is exactly as I left it, yet I fail to recognise it.

What was supposed to be a thinking job has amazingly turned out to be full of action — but then, thinking is an act in itself and in every act is contained a thought. The new maxim, then, is: I think, therefore I act. (Not the stage-or-film-like acting)

I smile when I am supposed to be laughing out loud. LOL doesn’t mean much now.

I think I will do a Ph. D. on “Reputations and Perceptions,” I think I have a body of knowledge that no one can compete with. If I just write the two words a million times each, in no particular order, I should be awarded a doctorate. I wonder, however, who would be qualified to confer that degree on me.

There are no means, nor a method to thank someone for an education. Just let go.

Dreams have found a new respectable position in my life. As conceptual and abstract (or discrete) as they may be, they have a tendency to come true. They do, however, have a mischievous nature, in that, they never reveal themselves blatantly.

To question or rationalise an innocent, open-ended wish is akin to cold-blooded murder.

Friends remain and continue to be a central theme of being. Yet, how they become that and why they remain that, is a permanent mystery. One (of many) true tests of being good friends is to share the misery of the last drink of an evening. The emotionally ignorant often mistake this for pangs of drink; who cannot fathom through their sober blurred vision the context of it all — them I pity.

Across time-zones and geography even, there is time for friends. Yet, in all the time that you have, you have no time.

Bluetooth didn’t work, else, a friend’s photograph was to adorn this post. An otherwise casually clicked photo was loaded with dense social messaging about the world we live in. If he remembers to email that photo, it will show up here, soon. If you are the “Sign a petition” kind of a person, make a request for the photo here.

We wear tinted glasses; friends help clear the coloured fog of our notions and perceptions.

I am against banning the TV. Only because I have two options that the Health Minister of India hasn’t (yet) taken away from me. One, I can choose not to have a TV, and two, if I do own a TV, I can always turn it off. Same goes for the Facebook petition doing the rounds and the amusing “No to videos” on Flickr. (interesting topic for a full-blown post). HT ran an article on consumer rights on free stuff. I just love to see how people get indignant on the most trivial of things.

I suddenly like the world. Even if it is become morbid by the day, it is definitely becoming amusing. Sarcasm’s joy lives a short life, however.

As much as I wish I was born in the early forties, I wasn’t. I was born in the early seventies. Our schooling years, therefore were obviously under Indira Gandhi’s regime. Notwithstanding her ‘bad policies’, for a child growing up in the late seventies and early eighties, it was all about National Integration. I became an Indian in my school. Not at the cost of my regional identity; in fact it helped me place my regional identity in a much much larger context. So, whatever logic you may have about regional identity, I cannot identify with your regressive and divisive politics. Have your day while you have it; you got a national icon on his knees. Once again, that reflects on you, not on the hero; wait till the movie is over.

Anger is a malefic consumer. Unchecked, it has the power to consume the good in you.

You know I am talking to you. All this anger isn’t worth the momentary satisfaction of the love that you are infinitely capable of.

Take care.