Looking through a Microscope

So Mahendra had this to say, in his recent post:

“Each of these human beings is a tele­scope, if only one were will­ing to watch through the eye­piece. The eye­piece, in this case, is the human abil­ity to lis­ten, which we most often abuse — or in other words, don’t use at all.”

(Via Telescopes | An Unquiet Mind.) I urge you to read this beautiful post, wonderfully written.

Curiosity makes us want to see beyond what the naked eye perceives. So we invented telescopes and microscopes. And now we have X-ray vision, thermal imaging and night vision and of course many other ways to look. So we have been able to do a lot with increasing the depth, breadth of seeing, overcome seeing through obstacles, yet we seem to have done little to increase perception or insight.

In the context of Mahendra’s post, we seem to be using the microscope more than we have need to use the telescope. In a way, I feel that we look so often through the microscope that we fail to use the telescope for a change. And what we see through the microscope gives us (not so valid) reasons not to use the telescope. Because when we look through a microscope we see limited data, often devoid of context.

We’ve looked enough and even know more than we need to – perhaps it is time to see.

PS: In a different context, a series on Ways of Seeing

The Secret’s up in Smoke

I know something.

It’s a secret. So, obviously, I cannot tell you what I know. But it does bring me to the thought about how we deal about secrets, and, perhaps (and therefore) what makes us vulnerable.

I know folks who will take secrets to their grave; I know a few others who will blurt out what they know at first possible context that they can think of. One (of the many) classifications, in which we think about people, is how they manage secrets. I use the word ‘manage’ with some purpose. I could have easily said, ‘keep’ secrets.

I am not the person you want to confide, if you do not want anyone to know what you are up to. Especially, if what you confide in me is happy news. I am, perhaps, melancholic in a way. If I know something about you that is not worth sharing, I’ll take it to my grave. But we do have to deal with the aspect of “what is worth sharing” – is it how you see it or is it how I see it. There is a difference you know.

*-*

Flashback, circ. 1989.

A young healthy body is shivering. Guts are in short supply. I gather them as much as I can. I proceed. I gingerly walk up and inform my father that I smoke. The response is factually receptive (if that phrase means anything). He accepts my confession (my perspective) as a statement (his perspective).

“Good, you told me.”

“Well, I didn’t want you to hear it from someone else.”

“Anything else?”

I hover around and he has sensed that my bigger problem was not the confession (my perspective) but, something else.

“Please don’t tell Mom.”

“I won’t, for the sake of it, but if it come down to a conversation, I will tell her.”

I don’t know if you have ever experienced a feeling that the world is made of paper and it starts crumpling around you, but it was a similar experience. He didn’t say, “I have to tell her,” he said, ” I will tell her.”

I left the room; he did not look up from the paper that he was reading.

*-*

Of the things that people confide in us – there are things that are good, and there are things that are not so good. I am given to hold, protect and preserve secrets that don’t show folks in good light. I will, also hold, protect and preserve secrets that have not yet become the well-known truth. However, I have to find someone to share good news. If you want to suppress good news about you – I am not the person you should be speaking with. Never trust me with “good” secrets. I am, usually, unable to hold tight, the secrets that show the wonder of great people. Overall, that makes me a person who cannot keep secrets half the time.

There’s one more thing about how I deal with secrets. If it looks like someone is about to confide, I ask them to wait a moment. I tell them that by the fact that you (may) confide in me, my wife will know it. By choice or chance, but she will know it. Unless you agree to that, do not confide; I am better off not knowing. It’s my rule; it’s not my wife’s rule, so, perhaps you are better off confiding to her.

But it does all come back to the nature of secrets and their purpose. To tell someone something that they aren’t supposed to know in the first place, is the first violation of a “secret.” However, to tell something to someone, means that you want to be heard. Which, to my mind, violates the essence of a “secret.” Yet, secrets are exclusive bonds between people. Some secrets bind people for life. Even if none of them ever want to or need to “out” a secret. Whatever the relationship, secret-management defines a relationship. Venn diagrams, Sub-sets and Super-sets, is the one concept that I am very glad to have learned in school.  Are we vulnerable because we know something or because we do not know something? Do we seek secrets? Do we avoid them?

And, therefore, if more than one person knows that one thing, it is already not a secret, no?

PS: Here’s a secret for you; my Mom knew I smoked, long before I knew that she knew, that I smoked. That other secret, I am trying to hold back and ‘manage’ it for as long as I can. It’s a good secret. If I do hold back till the right time, perhaps I will be better at secret management.

March Schizophrenia

It’s never the case that thoughts do not flow; it’s usually the case that we try and file the thoughts for later use, but because of their transient nature, when we search for them later, we usually do not find them. We need to trap them before they evaporate.

*

It’s often difficult to survive in a crowd; it’s suffocating, especially if there is a shade of a bigger entity over you. Doctors attribute it to lack of Vitamin D. As one tomato sapling discovered, with dire consequences, we need to find our own place in the sun.

*

It’s not that people don’t want to talk, perhaps your availability is scarce. Real conversations cannot be slave to schedules, they will occur when they want to occur, and both – talker and listener have to be present when the conversations feel like happening.

*

Staying away from people or people staying away from (there’s a difference) teaches you more about them than you ever learn about them while being with them. It doesn’t matter how long; two hours, two years or two decades.

*

It’s good to dare yourself once in a while to do something you wouldn’t have done, otherwise. The results can be surprising divine or devastating. Either ways, you’ll have more courage, the next time you take a leap.

*

March is a dangerous month.

Dreams of a Long, Really Long Drive

It may not come as a surprise to most of you that Google Maps is one of favourite sites and has a pinned position in my Top Sites. When I upgraded to iOS 6 a few months ago, my biggest fear (and eventual loss) was having Apple Maps instead of  Google Maps. Of course, Google released their independent app soon after, but it does not help, that the default Maps in iOS is still Apple Maps, which is far from a usable product.

But of course, this post is not about that.

Google Maps is my favourite site (and app). I’ve helped the map become better with many edits after I’ve been misled by it. (I’d be happy to do the same for Apple Maps, but apparently you cannot.)

So, I was a bit surprised to see that the National Highway markers, on Google Maps, usually seen as NH17 or NH3 etc, were now labelled as AH47 or AH-some other number. First, I thought this was new nomenclature for the Golden Quadrilateral. On closer inspection, I noticed, many of the roads labelled AH were not a part of the Golden Quadrilateral.

The cat started dying with curiosity, and searching AH in Google, for some reason kept showing Ahmedabad. As the dying and curious cat was breathing its almost last, the answer revealed itself and the cat was saved!

AH stands for Asian Highway. Surprise, surprise! (Well, at least for me, some of you may know about it). Wikipedia has a full article about the Asian Highway Project, also known as the Great Asian Highway – a cooperative effort between 32 countries, including India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, China, Japan, South Korea and Bangladesh. Reading the article made me feel worse, knowing that this project has been going on (and off) since 1959, though for practical reasons, it really started in 2003. I still feel bad, that I wasn’t aware of this project for almost ten years!

After reading the article, there was newfound excitement. There exists a definite possibility of a “very” long drive.

I’m thinking Mumbai – Tashkent – Istanbul – Ulaanbaatar – Tokyo – Bangkok – Dhaka – Mumbai should be a good drive. Exotic places, all of them, and I haven’t been to any of the places, except Tokyo, (where I’ve seen only the inside of Narita International). So I proceeded to map the itinerary on Google Maps, but it was unable to do that; I guess, some roads are yet to be built (huge JPG; display patience); so that gives me time to prepare.

And no, you do not have to remind me that I still have to complete the Golden Quadrilateral. It’s not that I have not tried; there have been quite a few false starts, but I’ll do it – soon – on my own terms. Folks who can contribute a month or so, are rare.

But a drive is always wonderful whether it is a couple of hundred kms to Alibag or six-thousand-odd kms around the country, or (soon) many more kms around the continent.

Because traveling is like writing; and writing is like traveling – and I love them both. That’s what dreams are made of!

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.

The House Must Mean Something – II

I owe an apology to my readers for the previous post. Of course, I’ve already apologised, at the end of the previous post. So, this apology is for those who gave up before they could reach the end of that post. It was a post full of possibility that was, unfortunately never converted.

But this post is not about the apology. It’s about the last post. So, it’s a post about a post. Or a non-post, if that’s what you would call the previous post. (which is potentially a non-post).

A long-lost-and-now-found blogger friend offered an insight into what the actual content of the previous post could have been. Well, she didn’t actually suggest that it could have been the content, I made up that part for myself. It was about Going Home. There is envy when you see such beautifully written posts, but there’s happiness in equal measure, because you were able to experience it.

The House, for me has always been the predecessor to a Home. A home is an existent experience of many a splendour and wondrous things. A house, not so. The only thing it can mean anything is a possibility — of being a home. You know what I mean – the oft-quoted cliché: “four walls make a house and four people make a home” and the various permutations of that idiomatic expressions. And while I still cannot put a finger on the genesis of the title of the previous post, the house does mean something. Just one thing, actually – a possibility. And in that, there is much we can do; much we can achieve.

And, of all the things that we can do with it – is that we can make it our own; make it our home. That is what a house means. But we will have to be open to that possibility, give it due consideration – walk around in it and see where we can hang our dreams, how we will fix our hopes, and with what hues we will paint our joy. Some houses are easier to consider than the others. They are stencils that provide a sneak preview of how our home could be. Some other are blank canvasses. They are a little difficult, yet full of opportunity.

And when the house is your home, it can mean much more; much, much more.

The House Must Mean Something

It is not always necessary that the title of the post has to have significance to the content of the post. At least not when it’s on your own blog. If you are writing for someone else and the success of that post will get measured in some form, then perhaps it’s a good idea to have a title relevant to the post.

Long time ago, there used to be meme’s asking if you write the title of your post before or after writing the post. I don’t remember what I said. Nowadays I don’t bother. I write the title when it comes to me. Sometimes in the middle of writing the post.

This title? I wrote it before the post. I wrote it before I even knew what the post was about. The phrase came to me and I thought it would be a nice title. Actually, the original was, “The House has to mean Something” – I changed it because I was not sure if ‘has’ and ‘mean’ should be capitalised. Anyway.

I now have to retrofit some content for this title. Because the context in which the title came to my mind now eludes me. I was reading the post of a blogger who I used to follow a long time ago. She continues to be prolific and an excellent writer that she always was. A recent post by her resonated strongly. I would write about it – but as has been pointed out by some of the folks who read this blog; the gloom index of this blog has been bullish. I tried defending; what’s being considered gloom is really introspection, but I value my readers’ comments. (when they do choose to comment).

So, perhaps the phrase came to me in the context of blogging. Blogging is like home. Warm and fuzzy, elaborate, elegant and expressive. And her blog reiterated what it feels like being home. But I was not sure what the “mean something” meant, in that context. Also I thought House, not homes.

Maybe it was about homes, literally. In between switching social media sites, I saw a friend post a photograph. She recently shifted homes and experienced enough stress. That feeling is alien to me. I have shifted more homes in my life than I care to remember. But like before, people shift homes, not houses. I thought of a house.

It has been (almost) five years since I shifted homes. Perhaps it’s the itch to move. Perhaps it’s a photograph I saw on Bookshelf Porn (it’s safe) that I wanted for myself. But given that I hardly read nowadays, I wonder what would be the purpose of building a library in my house other than to serve the purpose of decoration.

So here I am, with you my flabbergasted reader, without any useful clue why I thought of the title. My apologies.

Fundamentals of a Funeral Fire

If we were able to recall our future as well as we remember the past, would the past have that much less stranglehold on our lives?

A friend was once talking about the last-rites systems that humans follow. He theorised that cremation offered a sense of closure, better than burying. Nothing remains, he said. What little remains, is cast off in the water. I’ve wondered about this, facing a few pyres, and my personal experience hasn’t been as satisfying as he made it out to be. Yet, there’s a merit to that theory.

While the physical remains burn readily, it’s the memories that refuse to turn to ashes. And the quality of the memories don’t matter at this time. The good, the bad and the ugly stand steadfastly by your side. You have to gently nudge them towards the pyre to be consumed and you realise you will have to light many more in the days to come for those that won’t go away. But they do, eventually.

With dead people you are the only custodian for the memories; you can hold on to them or cast them off in the pyre. With those who are alive, you cannot be the only custodian; if you are – then you are better off casting them away, in their own pyre.

Next to the hunger to experience a thing, men have perhaps no stronger hunger than to forget.

~ Hermann Hesse, The Journey to the East

Therein lies the cyclical irony — perhaps — because every experience creates a memory. It may be a good thing now, to satiate the original hunger rather than dragging the larder.

Magic; Belief

There’s a conversation I know of, one that I cherish. I lived it, experienced it in a way that that my entire life participated in it.

It was a while ago. I have an opportunity to reconstruct it. I am there and so are you. I live it up. I try and make the magic that you and I experienced before. I choose the same venue, I try to be myself (which becomes my undoing) and I push to recreate the magic of what we once experienced.

I fail.

Miserably.

Since that day when we experienced magic; things have changed. You have; I have. And the way we interact with our environmental variables has changed. There is no way to recreate the magic that we once experienced. That is the lore of scripted romantic movies. That is why movies make sense – we watch them over and over again – because they are a time machine of sorts – they operate without variables. The constant of the script allows us our illusions.

But your life and mine – it’s not that simple – I spoke with you – and I had no idea what I said. The time of the day, your mood and mine, what has transpired since we last met, that small angle of how you sit and therefore how I see you – it changed. The differential made all the difference. And suddenly we have nothing to say. All our previous adventures are only the markers of what made sense, then. Our today is an unfortunate clean slate where we are reluctant to scribble what we feel.

Time is the only currency between us; once in abundance – now scarce. The world has changed and I am now learning not to believe in magic.

Nine Years, I Wonder

An adventurer always starts out as an ordinary person. That day, you cannot call that person an adventurer. The first step across the threshold is tentative and heavy with excitement and dread. The next step is fueled by intrigue and curiosity. Then the next step and then the fourth. The feet become ever so light with every step as the long walk continues. As you walk along you recall the wonders that you read about, when you were immersed in the chronicles of other adventurers. You wonder, when you will face your first wonder. Events define an adventurer; not the intent. Not all adventures are made up of dragons, long walks along the ridges of mountains and fighting unknown beasts. Some are. And dragons, tall mountains and deep valleys have a way of manifesting themselves.

Time passes, you have taken many steps already but the canvas of adventure is a summer mountain-scape in the mountains of the Deccan. Sameness pervades and you wonder if it may be worthwhile to imagine a wonder that would be the first chapter of your chronicle. Stay true, you tell yourself; they will come, you assure yourself and plod along. You recall the long journeys of ancient adventurers across seven seas and seven mountains that were completed in a couple of pages – you remind yourself that the number of words or pages is hardly ever the measure of the extent, the breadth or the depth of content.

A tall mountain looms.

It’s filled with wonder, but you fail to recognise it as such. You make a note of it and it strikes you: this is indeed the wonder of my adventure. Without warning you have met with your first wonder. Does that make me an adventurer? You hope it does, but do not say it loud, lest you jinx it.

I wonder what lies beyond that mountain.

A long time and fewer pages later, you meet others like you. Some have set off on the adventure before you, some after you. You exchange chronicles and barter myths. Some seek to discover wonders together, some choose their own adventure. Not all wonders amaze everyone. From a seeker of wonders, you never realise when you have become an adventurer; till that day – when someone calls you that: an adventurer. Uncertainty and euphoria grips you on either side.

Am I?

But there is no time for you to debate and evaluate. You seek the wonders, and you walk along. You celebrate the wonders with fellow-adventurers; you speak of how long you have been a seeker. Sometimes it is not so wonderful. You do not move because you are laden with disgust and disappointment. You question the purpose and the value of what you seek. You question the authenticity of the initiative. There comes a time when you are trying very hard to stay true and you fall in a quicksand. You don’t drown because the Archangel of wonder-seekers watches over you; pulls you out. Scarred though you may be, slow though your walk may become, distress though may run in your veins, you pick yourself up. You walk. And though your eyes refuse to see clearly, the wonders don’t cease. Distracted though you may become, you keep to your path.

In the league of wonder-seekers, if you have been seeking for a long nine years, you are known as an adventurer. But, what they know you as, matters less, because after nine years you are inherently aware that the adventure is the biggest wonder of all.

To all the seekers of wonder out there, whether we still share the same wonders or not, whether our paths crossed for a moment or for years, whether you are still seeking or not – thank you – my adventure has prospered because of you.

It has been a wondrous nine years with you all.

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I’ve fought many wars in my time. Some I’ve fought for land, some for power, some for glory. I suppose fighting for love makes more sense than all the rest.

~ Priam, in Troy (2004)

To Begin, An End

I wrote once about expiry — a long time ago. It was about conspiracy theories. It was about food. It was really an excuse to show-off my experimental cooking.

We are on the brink of yet another conspiracy theory. The end of the world; I am not sure though, whether it can truly be called a conspiracy theory. It’s more of a speculative theory. But then again, those who would bother to simply read the Wikipedia entry on the Mayan calendar would know that there is nothing to speculate.

The end fascinates us humans. Whether for a positive effect or a negative one, we are all fascinated by the end.

Race. Film. Book. Exam. Road. Life. Game. Work.

We are eager, whether with curiosity or anxiety, to get to the end or at least know it before it occurs. The usual philosophical maxim of journey vs. destination will not follow. I am sure you have heard it many times.

And we know that everything comes to an end. We learn that early in life, yet we seldom allow ourselves to come to terms with the end. Depending on what the adjective for the end is – happy or sad – we speed up or slow down towards the end. Sometimes things end by themselves but we do not recognise the end. We continue to live as if the end is a long way off. It’s our way of not allowing things to end: like dragging a corpse. Sometimes, things end the way we expect them to, and we are left with a sense of void: there’s no end to get to. Some ends are abrupt; they hurt the most, I guess.

And almost everything that begins must have an end. For good reason or not.

And the things that we must end consciously, by force, are the most difficult endings of all. Because these are the things that we probably do not want to end, but have to. Because certain things have to end before new things can begin. Some beginnings are contingent upon some endings.

Le Roi est mort, vive le Roi!

Couriering Charm

“Name, signature, and telephone number.”

I complied with the usual illegible scrawls I make, on the acknowledgements slips. PODs, they are called by some – Proof of Delivery. I don’t like giving out my phone numbers everywhere, and with my illegible scrawls, I have perfected the art of giving a phone number that looks like, but isn’t mine.

As I handed the slips back to him and reached out to collect the bills, he was scrawling something on one of the envelopes, it was legible and there was a name followed by a couple of mobile phone numbers.

As I looked at the envelope, he said, “You’ll need fire-crackers for Diwali, please call on this number.” Surprised, I smiled back, and I said I will.

I have been thinking about this for a while, and I am quite amused how this person has solved the problem of distribution and marketing. It’s direct selling, he doesn’t have to invest anything (the courier company pays a salary for going door-to-door), he can isolate a market segment, and – it is more personal than dropping a leaflet (they get thrown away).

There is nothing new about using this format for market access. Somehow, this was the first time, I felt, it was personal, without the usual irritating intrusion. Newspaper vendors have been used regularly by local shops to drop cheaply printed leaflets and restaurant menu cards for home delivery. As I open my newspaper every morning, all the leaflets fall to the ground, and from there, they are picked, up only to go to the trash.

Customer irritation as against Customer delight.

Yesterday, The Hindustan Times and Volkswagen decided to put a yellow post-it on the front page. It’s a post-it — it works in a certain way – you peel it off, it comes out easily. Not this post-it, no. It was stuck over a headline about India’s role in the UNSC. And when I chose to read the headline rather than the ad, and removed the badly stuck post-it, it ripped the page.

I find it disturbing that increasingly, almost all newspapers have progressively started devaluing the front page. There used to be a sanctity to the front-page that has steadily degraded. I wrote about this earlier, so I’ll let go now.

So, as selling becomes more ignoble, irritating and intrusive, this initiative by the courier boy was quite amusing and charming. Moreover, it’s a chance to support local entrepreneurship.

All the best to you, kiddo!

As I was, for the Future

All the drafts have been either refined and posted or ruthlessly deleted. The emptiness of the drafts folder is scary. When the mind was blank there was always this folder to turn to and you could always pick out a draft and make tiny changes and entertain yourself in the false comfort that you were writing something. I never used to save drafts. If I did not complete writing something, I used to trash it. Recently, I have been saving drafts – for those times when I would come here empty-handed and gloomy.

The drafts were a faint reminder of a bygone inspiration and were reluctantly agreeable to being remixed like the re-hashed work of an outmoded music director. Now, even that thin thread has disappeared.

But, not the need to write. That has not disappeared. It nags. And even though the tinsel of readership statistics and social influence has long been discarded as worthless, the need to write is strong as it was, if not stronger. Its character has changed slightly, though. The urge is not to write more, but to write better. And the better seeks a dive deeper than the words that are written.

My birthday is coming, says my blog. Give me the gift of being myself, once again, for ever.

Goodbye, Ramzan Ali

“The usual,” I said, as a slid comfortably into the second seat

“It’s been a while, right – almost six weeks.”

“Six weeks? No, it has been the usual – three weeks at the most.”

“Nope. At least five weeks. I know better,” he said with an air of finality.

He must be about fifteen years younger than I am, but that kind of authority amused me into silence. I thought I’d argue a bit more; try to at least insert a doubt in his calculations, if not convince him.

“I’ve been doing this long enough and I’ve known your hair for more than six years now,” he said, almost reading my mind and putting to death any devilish desire I had of furthering the argument. It struck me after a while that he expressed his good acquaintance not with me but my hair. He didn’t say, ‘I’ve known you for six years’.

Barbers probably know your hair more than they know you. The typical barber probably knows you equally better – with his constant chatter, but Ramzan Ali is not your typical barber. He doesn’t talk a lot as he goes about shedding the load off your head, but he seems to notice and remember his customer’s preferences. Once, during the IPL matches, the salon was empty, he asked his colleague to switch the channel and put on some music instead of the match. He changes razor blades in plain sight where I can see them; reminds me of scenes from Ocean’s Thirteen, when the dealer is changing that white ball at roulette.

Ramzan is from a village called Durgwalia, which doesn’t exist on Google maps. It is close to Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh. There, in Durgwalia he has a large family – he is the youngest of a few brothers, married with a kid.

“Don’t you miss your wife?” I asked, regretting instantly my choice of words – maybe I should have used family, instead of wife.

“Life’s like that – I can provide better, working here.”

I didn’t want to ask any more questions, but he went on about the porous Nepal border and how he and his friends often cross into and out of Nepal in a single day. He spoke about his uncles and the varied professions that his family was involved in. Every time, with every haircut, there was a story or another.

I called the shop the other day to confirm that he was available for a haircut.

“Saudia ka plan bana liya usne,” came a stranger’s voice. (He has made plans to go to Saudi Arabia)

I didn’t go for a haircut for another week, wondering what I will do. Missing Ramzan, but wishing him well. I am now in the process of training another person at another place, but I often remember his sweet smile and his animated stories.

Goodbye, Ramzan Ali, you will be missed. Fare well.

Walking over Corpses

Happy Dussehra!

I almost know what you are thinking. He’s steadily losing it, choosing this title on such an auspicious day. For those of you who do not know Dussehra, it’s one of the big festivals in India; comes just before Diwali, which is a bigger festival in India. Dussehra is celebrated all over India and various states have a very specific definition about why they celebrate this day. There’s God, a king, a demon, a Goddess, some specific events and such. In glorifying the act of the God or the Goddess, we hold public exhibitions of the achievements of our immortal bosses, outdoing our neighbourhood representations by a foot or so.

Every third Indian will tell you that festivals in India are just a way to outdo the neighbouring festivities in height and decibel levels. The communal celebration of festivals was a pre-Independence phenomenon designed for awareness and political debate. Six decades later, all communal festivities have been reduced to an excuse for public display of alcoholism. The communal purpose has been abstracted and instantly made discrete to serve personal agendas.

Today is Dussehra. A festival to celebration the victory of good over evil; irrespective of the versions of the story that you will hear all around the country. It is still a celebration of good over evil.

Wait.

It is not a celebration. It is an annual reminder. To yourself. To identify the evils and your personal demons. Internal and external; a call to: first, identify them and second, to vanquish them. And you would do a disservice to yourself if you thought that the demons were out there. Those that you really need to fight and defeat are within. The challenge, to my mind, when you prostrate yourself before a deity is not to submit before a higher power, but to look within yourself and look into the eyes of your personal demons. Whether you can fight them or not, is secondary. To face them in an achievement by itself. The path becomes obvious after that. Indian history and culture is replete with rituals. Rituals were defined for those that couldn’t grasp the philosophical premise, and today we are slaves belonging to the lowest common denominator; further we have bastardised the ritual to street-class debauchery.

A while ago, I called it: Lost in Translation

Every philosophy, reduced down, is a call and a vision to live a happy, fulfilling life. That happy life lies some distance away – and to get there, we will have to walk over the corpses of our very personal demons, who inhibit us; make us live a lesser life than we deserve. Those demons.

Find them; vanquish them.

The Small Bookshop Survival Guide

A small bookshop has opened up, a couple of months ago, on the other side of the street I live on. I was there when it had opened: was offering huge discounts for the opening week. Not a single discounted book was on my wish list. After a very quick browsing session, I walked out, slightly unhappy that all relatively tolerable bookshops are far away or in the cloud. I miss Waterstones. Crossword has become a stationery shop that sells books and Landmark is a hassle to get to.

Quote from The Journey to the East, Hermann Hesse

My interest in bookshops grew sometime when I was seven, I think, when my father used to take the entire family at least once a week to the CLS Bookshop, in Nampally, in Hyderabad. We all had our aisles. I think my mother was the only one who used to get a bit bored there – she is a voracious reader of Marathi literature – and they didn’t stock those. I used to be glued to the comic book section. My father didn’t believe in buying comics. So, while going to the bookshop was always a pleasure and excitable event, leaving the shop (empty-handed) usually was a disappointment. Somewhere early in life I decided that I would never own comics and that all my life I would have to read borrowed comic books. It seemed to me he was against that too.

In 2001, I was in Hyderabad for a day, and after the meeting, I insisted that my friend take me to the CLS shop. I couldn’t recall that it was in Nampally, then but I described the entire surrounding area to her (in case and as if nothing had changed in 25 years). We did find it, it is derelict now, and it doesn’t seem to have as many books as I remember, when I was younger. And I was surprised, that in all these years that I have been nostalgic about the shop – I was never curious what CLS stood for. (It’s Christian Literature Society; I discovered that in 2001)

But we had a lot books. He used to buy many books, except comics. So we had Aesop’s Fables, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Robinson Crusoe, Bal Bhagvatam, All of the Panchtantra and Hitopadesha series.  And many more. Very few of these books had pictures in them and they had many difficult words. So our father got us the Kingsway Illustrated Dictionary and a few years later, he bequeathed his Oxford Concise Dictionary to us. The Kingsway Dictionary, I have fond memories – I liked that because it had many pictures in it – the paper was glossy and the pictures were fabulous. I am sure one of my younger cousins or a niece or a nephew is still using it somewhere. I was not very keen relinquish my favourite dictionary, but the Oxford Concise was too tempting. The word “set” I had been told, had a hundred meanings, and my Kingsway had only twelve. And of course, we were growing up – it probably had meanings of words that I couldn’t imagine asking my parents, my teachers and definitely not my sister. We got a big fat dictionary, yes, but still no comics.

I promised myself, I’d have all the comics when I started earning. I told my father that – and he encouraged me to do that, and he wasn’t sarcastic. In the meanwhile, I was graduating from the Secret Seven to the Hardy Boys to the Three Investigators (library only – my father wouldn’t buy these books either). My father’s bookshelf was ever-growing – with titles that didn’t make sense. And because of sheer curiosity and the cover pages of the books on his shelves, I was drawn into the world of Richard Bach, Hermann Hesse and Martin Buber and RD Laing. Not much was understood, but it was still read. I stayed away from Demian, because of the cover. For a very long time, I did not buy books. The library circuit was flourishing in Pune and in Mumbai, when I was a student.

Then, I started earning.

I still did not buy comic books, but was raiding my father’s bookshelf more often. I think age made a lot of difference, and we now could talk books, not just read them. A few years later, he passed away and that entire bookshelf was now mine.

My father rarely borrowed books. Even his use of libraries was limited to reference or research. We never understood why he couldn’t do what we did – subscribe to a library. We ended up reading more books for a tenth of the money he spent on books. And when we moved homes, which was often, at least three crates were of books and such. Once, reading through a book that he owned, I saw many notes in the margins. Blue ball-pen. Pencil. Black ink. Darker blue-ball pen. Thinner Black pen. Faded pencil. Even the handwriting was slightly different in each of the notes. He had read his books more than once. I smiled, as I read the text underlined in faded blue:

I, whose calling was really only that of the violinist and story-teller, was responsible for the provision for the music of the group, and I then discovered how a long time devoted to small details exalts us and increases our strength. ~ Hermann Hesse, in The Journey to the East

I think I know now why he did not buy comics for us. In his mind, perhaps the re-readability of those books is limited. In the last ten years, my bookshelf has been stacking-up with alarming consistency. It has swelled to the limit of spilling books, when my mother with her easy air of finality, warned me that I was not to buy any more books unless I bought a bookshelf. For many years now, I have not joined any library, except a sweet birthday present – a subscription to the British Library – and I don’t borrow books nor do I lend, with a few exceptions.

That small book shop, which opened up, a couple of months ago, on the other side of the street I live on seemed to want me to step in yesterday, if only to waste a few minutes of my time. After about an hour, I put six books on his counter and asked him to process them. I asked him to give me good neighbourly discount and even informed him the price of these books on Flipkart, to give him a benchmark of expectations. He asked, “Are you going to return these?”

I looked at him with surprise.

“If you return these books after reading them, I’ll buy them back at half price, else I’ll discount them, almost to the Flipkart price.”

This is a great survival tactic for small bookshop owners, I thought, notwithstanding my proclivity to keep books in my bookshelf. I have many books that I have bought, read, and not liked, but I have never returned them. They are in the lower shelf, stacked up, not sideways. Perhaps this was a good way to make shelf-space and avoid being admonished by my mother.

“Give me the discount, I won’t be returning them,” I said.

Statistically Speaking, Ms. T.

 

I remember her name clearly. I am not going to post it.

She was our statistics lecturer. She had a pronounced rural accent when she spoke English – the medium of our instruction. Some of us – who had studied in English medium and believed that we understood pronunciation and sentence construction better – used to make fun of her, after her lecture, at the college canteen.

It has been a while. Twenty-odd years; when I was twenty-something. She taught us the basics of statistics and some complex methods of using data – in the context of computer programming. I remember one influence distinctly. Our journals used to be checked sheets. To this day, I work better when I work with checked sheets. Now you know, why I like Rubberband Products. (No, I am not being paid to say this) Of all the things a teacher can influence us, she had an impact on the kind of paper I like to work with.

I seek those kind of writing pads, but they are rare.

Statistics was a holy subject for me, when, I was trying sincerely to understand what makes a computer work. If it was in our syllabus, it had to make sense – because according to our syllabus and objectives, we were destined to write the software that would change our lives. Like all of us, I held lofty objectives and visions of changing the world to make it a better place. We were at some point in the year, dealing with Near Sets, I recall – and I was wondering if I could use Near Sets and the Five-colour Theorem in developing a colourful  rubber-band algorithm. (It really does not matter if it makes sense)

The rubber-band algorithm requires you to write a code that enables you to ‘draw’ a line at any angle and of any length. The mouse was not an input device, then – we had to make do with the arrow keys. If you are still confused, think of a line that you drag-draw in PowerPoint. We were required to write code for that to happen. 

She said, “That’s out of syllabus – and in any case, you do not have colour monitors.”

“I could test it on Prof. Datar Sir’s Computer?” (Only our CS teacher had a colour monitor and 20MB HDD. It was a super computer for us.)

“No. It’s out of syllabus,” she insisted.

My statistics teacher was a gold medalist from Pune University. The fact that she was an OBC, highlighted her achievement. I never wanted or want to take away the achievements from her, but I wish she was more receptive to my questions.

I am, recently, dealing with a situation that is looking to optimise human resources based on the density of users to define an optimal investment to help run a specific process. (Yeah, jargon and all – that’s not important) Not much from her lectures and learning is lost. But, if she had taken a bit of time to satisfy my curiosity – even if it was ‘out of syllabus’ I think, it would have helped me in what I am doing today – to solve a real problem.

And yet, when I am working and solving this problem, I cannot but help thinking of her. Most of us had written her off, because we believed she had got the job because of reservations that were rampant, then (and still are). Yet none of us considered spending time with her and seeking the knowledge she had.

It is unfortunate, that we had categorised a teacher by the manner in which she got her job, rather than what knowledge she had to offer us. Nothing, I am almost sure, has changed her life significantly. My classmates and I, however, have lost much. At the very minimum, we have lost contact with her. Today, our work and client requirements need us to extract the fundamentals of our education – unfortunately we wasted an opportunity because we were influenced by petty politics (Mandal Commission happened when I was in college and I say it with much regret; that I was carried away by the rhetoric.)

A young student may have the facts to develop an opinion; but often, doesn’t have the context.

I miss you, Prof. T, and I wish I had then, the inclination to learn more from you. I wish I had maintained my identity with you as a student, rather than the imposed hierarchy that our ex-prime minister Mr. VP Singh defined. It is unfortunate that I have to Google almost everything that you taught us, and remind me of what I already know.

It’s too late, after all the ridicule we bestowed on you; for what it is worth, I am sorry.

In that late morning lecture when you introduced us to Null Hypothesis, I was perhaps, far away, imagining of a date with the girl who sat on the third bench in the second row. The girl is long lost and married to someone I don’t know, but I am now having a torrid affair with Null Hypothesis.

Maybe I did pay some attention to that lecture.

I am proud of some work that I have done recently, and for what it is worth, let it be known, I owe it to you.

Sign/Post

It’s 23rd July. I update my Facebook status: A beautiful post finds a place in my head. Now to find the time.

Three people like the status; the post itself does not form, for a long and indeterminate while.

I am thinking of friends. Actually, I am thinking of their absence. The fact that I am thinking of their absence illuminates their presence. They are here, in my head or heart or whatever component, physical or spiritual – that makes them present before me. The make-believe is exhausting. I give up.

This post is not that beautiful post that found a place in my head that I mentioned on Facebook.

This is a different post. It is, I think, still a beautiful post.

-*-

Of the many men who have contributed in creating the most definitive art are the ones who never signed their work. There must have been one, of many like him, that contributed to the construction of the wondrous fort of Sindhudurg. Of the men and the women who worked tirelessly at this engineering feat not a single one is mentioned anywhere. Not one of them felt the need to carve his or her name for posterity.

The brave Marathas built this fort.

Every identity was engulfed in the single identity, in that one single statement. We know of the architect, for that is documented somewhere. We know of the administrator, for that is documented somewhere.

Not a single person who contributed to the erection of this fort is known; documented  - to be precise. Not one of them ever felt the need to document his contribution. Where art has now succumbed to the identity and the pathos of an artist, this is a glaring example of art for art’s sake. A fort? As art? You would be right to question the construction of a fort as art. I will not argue on that.

*

If forts don’t convince you enough, consider Madhubani paintings or Warli art (Not the one that your cousin sells commercially; the ones that were the original)

*

A few hundred years later, young men in gaudy shirts hopeful of participating in popular love or similar such, exhibiting a deep identity crisis, have a compulsion to use chalk or whatever means to carve or inscribe their identity on the stones that an unidentified artist slaved to compose a masterpiece.

While the ones who built the masterpiece never felt a need for recognition, those that visit have a craving to inscribe their identity on a heritage that they are wretched derivatives of. Fie on those wretched souls!

Graffiti psychology has been studied enough, so I shall not even begin to make an attempt to discuss that further. Feel free to Google.

-*-

My best friend and I have a talk about this. She says  that I have made a wonderful statement in saying, “Those that built it did not feel the need to express a personal identity; those that visit someone else’s creation feel the need to display their inadequate identities.”

We – and no surprises here – move to a discussion on contemporary art. I do not know for a fact, where the concept of a signature on a piece of art came from. The need to sign art is a need to express a human equivalent of the God-complex. “I created this”. In contemporary times, to my mind, it is like proprietary software vs. opens-source software. Signed and unsigned. Belongs and doesn’t belong. Those that want to posses art are not much different and the symbiotic relationship between the artist and the audience is perpetuated through the signature. You possess a traditional unsigned Warli and I possess a Souza. Of a few square feet of canvas, my pride is often reduced to the few square inches on the bottom right of the canvas.

Not so long ago, my father used own a seal. A red sealing wax bar, burnt – their crimson simmering droplets on the lip of the envelope and ‘sealed’ with a calligraphic press of his initials. Nothing is more personal than that. Nothing more one-to-one. Only the recipient can see what’s inside the envelope. History is witness of seals. The question therefore is; if signed art is as personal? Unlike the geometric casts of tribal women of Warli, whose representation is available to all of us? Is signed contemporary art available to the privileged few? Not really – we know that. They openly exhibit their expression with gay wanton yet sign it for an unknown exclusivity.

This post has no conclusion.

-*-

That post about friends; I don’t think it will ever get published.

Wax Has to Melt

We all have dreams.

Well, most of us do. I am not talking of those abstract blobs of irrationality that we usually cannot control when we are asleep. I am talking of those that we live when we are wide awake. The kind, when they are the most lucid when we are in a classroom where the lecturer wishes to be elsewhere as much as we do; or in a meeting where everyone except the person who has convened the meeting, knows that it’s a waste of time. What goes in our head during such events is a mash-up of dreams, thoughts, ideas, plans – and they seem to effortlessly slide on a plane which defines what we really want. And as tangible that plane is when we dream – soon after – it becomes an abstraction of nothingness as we are sucked into our deigned zombie-like activities.

Today is a special day – and my love-hate relationship with milestones notwithstanding, I am happy.

A year has passed after a certain event – and I am able to discriminate where I stand vis-à-vis where I thought I stood, once upon a time. This GPS-kind of activity has not been easy. Enough shock, hurt, pain has been encountered and endured before finding the absolute location of where I am. There has been much difficulty in letting go and even more difficulty in denying the questioning brightness of the truth that has harshly scalded my eyes. The asking heat, without malicious intent, asked me if I would confess that I was living in the wax-world a-la Indraprastha; I said I was not. I fought it for a year.

It’s slow, but I see the wax melting.

And those grandiose images of false comfort burned down to their bare element. The bright light smiled, I think, as if saying – I was always on your side, but I had to sit on the other side of the table – because you were gone for far too long, and lost to me. I would have preferred to sit with you and look together – but we were looking in different directions. Therefore, I had to confront you, said the wise light.

“I am glad, we can now look in the same direction.”

As I stand where I am bereft of the wax palace, I wonder. It must have been the light that, with its heat – melted the opaque walls so that I could see beyond.

It’s late now, and what I see is an even darkness. I stand where an impressive palace once stood. I see nothing of the grandeur that once made me believe I was king. I find myself on the top of a hill here, though. Alone. But I feel the breeze that the faraway sea brings and finds its way through the valleys to where I stand. It has a gentle sting. It does not matter that the wax structure is no more, because, soon, it will be morning. I know one thing: I will see more than I ever did.

And, I will see clearly.