Musings

I'm currently not in an overly "writerly" mood. What brings me to the blog then, is a lack of anything else to do on the Internet. And the reason I have to compulsively be on the Internet rather than indulge in any of the million other time-killers that humanity indulged in before the advent of the Internet (including some as shocking as picking up a book and reading it) is that I have a new laptop. Yes! A shiny, silver, sleek, light new laptop. I have to use it, and I am yet to transfer any files onto it for fear of transferring a couple of viruses. I can assure that my old laptop, after six good years of service across ownership by myself as well as my sister, has more than just a couple of viruses (or is it virii?).

Surprisingly, once you're done with your daily football columns, a glance at the news and a scroll down facebook, the Internet is quite a dull place. I have not yet reached the stage of boredom where I Youtube search "Random videos" so I turn instead to this blog, a way to kill time while I download the .mobi files of the Lord of the Rings Series of books, thus heralding my entry into yet another fandom.

I have seen all the Harry Potter movies and read all the books of course, read the entire Song of Ice and Fire Series (thus far) and of course, 56 short stories and 4 novels on the travails of Mr. Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I find the Game of Thrones TV Series too gory for my liking and I don't think the other little series I've completed (all PG Wodehouse Jeeves novels, Foundation by Isaac Asimov to name a few, Friends) really count as a fandom. A fandom, by definition, is somewhat tribalistic about their sense of belonging. Then there's Arsenal, a fanaticism rather than just a member of the fandom.

The mistake I committed was to crash a tad earlier than I usually do, giving me about an hour of rejuvenating sleep just before the beginning of the ungodly hours rather than an 8-hour blackout these aforementioned ungodly hours. If only Browsers could sense just how much I'm cheering them on to download stuff faster, they'd have all the self-belief in the world.

The download failed and my resistance has broken.

Good night then.

Mildly Upsetting

Have you ever had THAT "mild" illness, a soreness of the throat or an easily irritable stomach perhaps. A light fever that ever so slightly tires you out, but not enough for you to go rushing to the doctor, wait for a couple of hours for your appointment. What would you tell him anyway? "So doc, everything is fine with me, except that everything isn't, there's this small thing." Awkward conversation on the whole. You want to be a whimpering, sniffing, shivering, shaking mess when you want to go to the doctor really. Surely, the biggest fear after the oft quoted public speaking and death, have to be the doctor saying something is badly wrong with you followed by the doctor saying absolutely nothing is wrong with you. Life is hard.

I digress though. It is in the middle of one of these little bouts of illness that I write this blog. My stomach is upset, not quite Gordon Ramsay upset but not exactly Mahatma Gandhi calm. My throat is sore, not quite Napoleon's army after Waterloo sore, but sore enough to be noticed after about a week of soreness. And the fever is probably at 98.61 F.

At this juncture that my sister, at whose place I'm staying, found it fit to thoroughly bathe my scalp in coconut oil with a little herbal, home-remedy magic thingy highly recommended to her husband (my BIL of course) by some Ayurvedic doctor chappie for exactly this kind of malady. And being the open-minded, anything-that-works progressive minded young man I am, I dutifully let her oil my scalp,

Here's the truth though, it's not about whether the oil can take away the ill-health down the drain with it when washed off; I'm enjoying the beginnings of a long vacation, the time of a vacation when you stare dreamily at all the time you have rather than pelt stones at it because it makes you feel bored and aimless. If someone wants to massage my head, well who am I to stop them? The ideal holiday.

Then again, all this time makes me restless. I'd love to travel somewhere, go on a trek or something. Run arrraaaand a bit. I'm torn between these two choices of an ideal holiday. One says life is short, sweat it out, sleep less, do stuff, go places. The other says life is long, leg work is unpleasant, sit back, do nothing, it's very easy to do.*

It is all about the mood though, the psyche, the frame of reference mind. It's hard to switch from one mode to another. When I go to a new place, I sleep little, eat whenever I'm given food and have boundless energy. When I'm in a known place, I can laze forever. And a balance is hard to find,

Right now though, typing out a blog aside, it's all lazy mode. In some relatively heavenly Bangalore weather, a cool place in the tropics.
Cheerio

*My friend has a T-shirt with the words "Doing nothing is very hard, you never know when you're finished". Good stuff!

Do you know how to swim?

I'll confess, I still don't.

Earlier today, I was tracking all my dreams regarding my career from when I was young. Very young. A journey which I thought would make an interesting read.

I vaguely remember, in about the 3rd or 4th grade, telling my uncle that I want to be a deep sea diver. And I remember that by then the dream was carefully formulated, at least a year old. The reasons I think were multiple. First, an excess of National Geographic and The Discovery Channel led to a love of wildlife. Then, vivid photographs in "The Big Book of Knowledge", a quite beautiful book, drew me to underwater wildlife.

When I was young, I have been to the Savannah on a Safari, though I recollect very little, a pride of lions here, an elephant there, peering into a far away water body to find something moving; mere flashes mainly. Watching these channels later, I was able to appreciate the magnitude of my life experience at that young age, but it also brought with it the feeling of "been there, done that", so terrestrial wildlife was not an option.

Another story I remember vividly, related to wanting to be a deep-sea diver again, is the origin of the large collection of sea-shells my family possesses. Having lived in Tanzania for a bit, (thus enabling the Savannah trip), my father brought back some exquisite Ivory carvings and a large number of quite beautiful sea-shells. Again, I vividly remember asking the same uncle how they brought these shells and from where, to which he replied that people specifically dive underwater with fancy equipment and find these in shallow ocean, something that thoroughly fascinated me.

This dream was shattered when, one day after enthusiastically describing the things I would dive and see to my father, he cryptically asked me, "Do you know how to swim?" A crestfallen, little me saw all my dreams come crashing, as the answer to the question was a negatory.

My next dream was to be an environmentalist. I can't quite remember how it all started, though I do remember being part of a play for Earth Day in 5th grade. Somehow I felt it would be becoming of me to be the green crusader who would single-handedly save the earth from certain doom with a few well planted trees and closing taps everywhere. It even got serious when, around the 8th grade, I searched online for various colleges around the world that offered courses in Environmental Sciences or Environmental Engineering, but the dream suddenly faded away, I can't put my finger on why or when.

In the bigger picture, I'm not sure if it is just me or the world as a whole, but the environmental issue seems to have fallen by the wayside off late. Or maybe it was just that the emphasis on this issue was quite large in my school.

Over the next years, it was Aeronautical Engineering. My father, knowing some of the right people, arranged tours of the HAL factory in Bangalore and then, in tenth grade, a dream trip to the Sukhoi factory in Nashik! The Su-30 Mki was at that time the most advanced fighter jet operated by the Indian Air Force (probably still is) and it was an absolute dream to see the planes being assembled, piece by piece, bit by bit. Here, I thought I met my destiny.

National Geographic played a part here too, the amazing "Air Crash Investigation" series was a huge factor in getting me interested in planes. At a point of time, by simply looking I could identify most aircrafts of the Indian Air Force, and all the famous ones from around the world. I even knew the difference between Boeing 737-700 and Boeing 737-900, though it's long gone from my memory now. Again, with this dream, I simply cannot put my hand on why or where this dream faded away, though it is so recent. An innate fascination with planes remains, though.

After this point, everything is a blaze. A short flirtation with the idea of being an author or a journalist apart, I was quite clear that the research dream was the highest. It was at this point I spoke to a cousin of mine, who suggested that Engineering would be a great way to get into Physics Research. Mechanical Engineering was a brief thought for a few months before I got too busy studying to be dreaming.

And then it all happened suddenly. At a Science quiz, the answer to a question was Richard Feynman, and I had never heard his name before. I was ashamed of myself, having considered myself until then to be a knowledgeable student of physics, my favourite subject for a long time in school. With this at the back of my mind, I came across the name Feynman again in a textbook on physics, decided I'd had enough, and went on to Google "Richard Feynman".

In a couple of weeks, I was watching the Feynman lectures, reading about the history of Classical Mechanics, starting from Tycho Brahe, Kepler and wondering about the mysteries of the cosmos. Coupled with the TV show Big Bang Theory, which prompted me to Google String Theory and Loop Quantum Gravity, soon I was a relative Physics aficionado.

Then a family friend of mine, also a school senior, told me about the Science institute he was just passing out off, where you could directly get an MS in 5 years straight out of school, with primary focus on research, and it felt like the stars aligned to break this news to me at the right time, the perfect culmination of years of dreams; and I had finally found the one that fit.

Right now, the Physics research dream has stood for a couple of years. And I suppose it will stand forever, given how much I love it right now, but who is to know.

Maybe if school was a year longer, a career in Physics might have just been another dream that flitted in and flitted out of my mind. Perhaps all our lives are that way, we think many things are meant to be, but it's all circumstance and timing, when you have to take the decision and what you're thinking at that instant. Perhaps the circumstance and timing are things meant to be.

Then there's the added aspect of impulsive decisions, a little something that suddenly catches your attention; a colourful advertisement, an overheard conversation, subtle stimuli are all around. It's impossible to know why you're drawn to something. It is best to simply go with it, nothing is in our control anyway.

Testing Times

It was almost in a canter that I arrived at the exam hall, unaware that such complacence was misplaced given the speed at which the clock was ticking and how close it was to the starting time. As I laid my bag down outside the hall, I heard the fatal ring of the bell signalling the beginning of the exam.

Having been brought up to believe that being late for any event was an affront to humanity, a lack of punctuality always makes my conscience churn, though with age and an increased ability to rationalise, the churning is getting easier and easier to ignore.

There is something beautiful about a room where an exam has just began; the silence is pristine, there is none of the otherwise tangible pre-exam apprehension in the air which invariably rubs onto you and you are whisked to your seat as if you are an extremely important person. You don't have to wait anxiously for the question paper and answer sheet and you can put your head down and begin writing immediately.

The fact that it was the last exam after an entire week of exams on consecutive days had left me in a bend of mind that was sunny enough to think of these profundities as I was escorted to my seat.

Two hours later, the world seemed aglow, resplendent and full of endless possibilities. The hardest task ahead was to plan how much I would sleep, with "the more the merrier" being the answer that won out in the end, a true no-brainer if there ever was.

Then it struck. All the rosiness vanished, all the dreams faded and my world came crashing down. The planned slumber was not to be - other tasks awaited. A chunk of the work for a magazine whose responsibility was mine still remained. My Physics Lab notebook still looked like it wouldn't write itself, despite all my prayers. I had to talk to my parents and sisters, after a week of reduced correspondence due to the exams. My tickets for a weekend trip home had to be booked. All that had been put away to the "after exams" time frame came back to haunt me big time.

There is something definitively gloomy about entering your room and not finding your roommate there; a partner to share the joy of the ending of exams with you. Even though one of us entering the room is punctuated with a casual Hi!, I am always genuinely thrilled to see him, and I would hope the feeling is mutual. Though our room seems like it is silent apart from two laptops running and keyboard keys being keyed, in hindsight, the amount of conversation is in fact very large, often very deep.

And so, with the whole whole post-exam workload, when I walked in to find my roommate sleeping so peacefully, the injustice of it all struck. The constant workload, the immense responsibility you take upon yourself to no avail, the plethora of tasks that for some reason, are always at your doorstep, your blog that has to be updated; all of it!

I will fight it, I thought to myself, prove that the world is simply giving me my due while I lag behind, procrastinating, excusing myself, distracting myself and eventually paying the price.

All the thinking made me tired, and before long, I was asleep, as blissfully as my beloved roomie. Good times, I say!

Quaint

Quaint! Quaint! Over the last couple of months (maybe more), this word has for some reason echoed in my head frequently.
Have you ever been in that situation where you know a word, and you think you know what it means but one day the sky collapses on you, your whole life is a lie, and the word means something absolutely unrelated to what you thought it meant?

I like to console myself by saying that it is inevitable for someone who knows a larger than usual number of words, my vocabulary being something I pride myself on, but still it shakes the very foundation of your existence.

Since I am being so vivid about this matter, it stands to reason that I probably experienced it recently. I shudder when I look back on the moment when I realised that my faithful companion, "quaint", doesn't mean what I so surely knew it to mean. All my plans of writing an eloquent blog post on the world not being quaint came crashing to my feet. I think I have even (mis)used the word in a previous blog post. Blimey!

How I thought it read - "Quaint - The belief that large, great, monumental things result from comparatively very small, minute and apparently insignificant events, actions or things". A classic example is the following story. The wise Chanakya failed in his first attempt to win the throne for a certain Maurya, who would later become king. Dejected, the scholar returned to his home, and continued with his life when he saw a boy consuming piping hot soup by carefully removing the soup from the sides and drinking it, while the wise man burnt his tongue like a common fool. Thus enlightened, a brain-wave struck and instead of directly attacking the current king, he planned a campaign to slowly eliminate all those around the king, "wait for the soup to cool" and then attacked the king to help his friend of Maurya to usurp the throne. While I cannot account for how much of the story is factual and how much is anecdotal, (what does drinking soup from the side mean anyway!), I thought believing that a boy drinking soup lead to a successful attempt to win a throne and overthrowing a ruler is to be quaint. Apparently not.

Dictionary.com defines quaint as "having an old-fashioned attractiveness or charm; oddly picturesque; strange, peculiar, or unusual in an interesting, pleasing or amusing way."

The smell of old books is quaint then, not the flap of a butterfly wing leading to a tornado.

Then again, it intrigues me why this word spent so long in the confines of my cranium. I raged against it. The world isn't quaint. They ignore all the work Mr. Chanakya must have done to eventually remove the reigning king. The popular (probably exaggerated and untrue) story of Archimides figuring out all those equations by seeing some water overflow his bathtub (something he'd probably seen everyday) does grave injustice to all those hours he surely spent meditating on the problem of the king's crown (the problem he solved following his Eureka moment). I, for one, am certain, that those hours of brainstorming were essential for him to see the everyday occurrence of water overflowing from a bath from a new perspective.

Humanity likes to believe that life is "quaint". Not really quaint of course, my kind of quaint. We like to believe that ever since "that performance", that sportsman's career was uphill all the way. Never mind the hours and hours in the gym and in the practice sessions; it was that one thing. Like to believe that this big small thing (small big thing?) is coming our way. We never like to hear the hard part, always the fairy-tale for us. Grown-up fairy-tales, with equations and diagrams and bad words.

It isn't. The ugly things, grime, sweat, toil, these are the things that take us through. The moment of inspiration is an effect, rather than the cause of the same.

To quote Lionel Messi, arguably the best footballer ever.
"I start early, and I stay late, day after day after day, year after year. It took me 17 years and 114 days to become an overnight success"
Kudos Little Argentine Magician!

Obligation

Good evening. Given the promise I made several days back, I find it almost an obligation today to update my blog once again. Hopefully, the zest doesn't fizzle out like crowds in a gym from January 3rd to January the 15th. Then again, I am hardly confident of it not fizzling out. Just doing my best while I am doing it.

Today is an Arsenal matchday. When it really comes down to the game, after all you've read and built-up to the games, watching your team play is almost insufferable. Probably down to the fact that you are so emotionally involved and intertwined in the fortunes of the team that anything other victory is a hard pill to digest. It is the ever so rare, comfortable victories that are really fun to watch; pre-match jitters even before games against supposedly weaker games can get you sweaty and praying. Not ideal in any world. Perhaps writing about these pre-match jitters will soothe them, or else aggravate them. Bring it down to the bare bones though, and my attitude is "as long as Arsenal win this evening, I don't really care".

A couple of months back, when life was gushing swimmingly past and everything seemed rosy, an incident occurred which in my opinion, should be made an example of and the Oxford English dictionary should employ it as the standard in their definition of the word "nuisance". Basketball in hand, I was confronted by an opponent and looked up to find no one to pass to. Not an overly gloomy situation, it was a friendly game, nothing at stake and I could try a couple of tricks and flicks until space cleared up or a teammate offered himself for a pass. I went for a rather simple maneuver, dribble to your right with ball in left hand, and immediately switch hands, direction and gears; quickly dribble to the left with your right hand to leave your opponent, if not beaten, then at least a step behind and then assess your options.

The dribble to the right worked well, the swivel was executed in one swift motion and my feet switched rapidly to carry me right and before I knew it, the ground, wet from rain, seemingly offered no friction and my left leg slipped to leave me sprawled on the ground. I thought I heard a crack in my knee, but the pain was hardly intense. I hobbled off the court (to the delight of the waiting substitute), with a mind to sit for a few minutes, slowly jog, run off the little bruise and continue playing.

In hindsight, it wasn't the brightest thing to do. Not playing on. Playing in the first place. The rain had just stopped, the court still damp at several places. Puddles were present sporadically. And then not only did I play, I injured myself and played on.

Now I'm stuck with a Grade 1 Signal Injury to the Posterior Horn of the Medial Meniscus. Classically, this injury was called a crocked knee, but with all the fancy MRI, X-ray stuff that they put you through, they were probably forced into giving even the injuries fancy names befitting the methods of diagnosis. Apparently, the ol' "twist it and see if it hurts" is out of fashion.

My vendetta against these MRI machines is inspired by being ordered to stay motionless for a half hour inside a half cylinder shaped, small vessel which sounded like Planet Earth being invaded every few seconds. At the end of it, you're given some diagrams which only the Radiologist can make any sense of, after which you feel lost and frustrated. You're the one with the bad knee, and here is everyone speaking Latin, writing Latin and even making fuzzy black and white diagrams in Latin. My hairline probably receded an inch during this whole ordeal.

When my orthopedist finally translated all that transpired into a mix of English and Kannada, the prognosis wasn't overly tragic. A couple of months with no jumping, running etc., some physiotherapy and muscle strengthening and soon I will be strong enough to play basketball and go trekking. Now I've taken to playing Table Tennis, the one sport which I can play while almost only standing, and I'm quite enjoying it. Turns out I'm half-decent at it too.
Cheerio

Chronicles

Interesting. I start every blog thinking how long it has been since I last updated my blog. On this occasion though, I'm thinking about how at the beginning of the creation of a new post, I think about how long it has been since I last wrote on this blog that is rapidly declining in my list of priorities. A fall I wish to arrest immediately.

As a (now) sporadic writer, I cannot really judge how well I write but I certainly can look through my previous chronicles to compare my pieces of yore. It is to my alarm that I my writing has turned to mundane and disinteresting even to myself. I don't know who shares that opinion, and I hope several people do as it would be embarrassing to a degree if I were unable to judge my own words.

Then again, the reason I began to write my blog was not because I thought I was good at writing. Two main factors account for that, the fact that my sister has her own blog, and the fact that it had been oft repeated to me that I write well. I continued, and I still continue, because I like writing. It is of no small significance that on days I feel particularly breezy, perhaps after long conversations with an old friend or a sibling, or just returning home and hugging parents, that I suddenly feel the to write.

It cuts both way in fact. If I do force myself to write, despite whatever writeresque struggles with word and sentence structures, I feel much the better for it, braced and invigorated. A certain serenity. It is something like a mathematical double implication, serenity implies writing implies serenity. A particularly benevolent cycle in fact, but one exactly in contrast to a vicious cycle, is hard to get into and easy to exit. Weeds grow without effort, roses need to be tended.

Did I take up pen to write and ramble about writing and what I think when I begin to write? No. Though I'm not quite sure why I wanted to write. Am I subconsciously at peace and happy. Probably not; a large workload and miserable courses have comprehensively eliminated that possibility. Do I intend to try and feel subconsciously at peace and happy. I guess.

You see, writing doesn't feel the same again. The serenity post-writing that I spoke about previously is from the past. It has been a long time since it has felt the same. It is, however, a feeling I wish to rediscover. And I write this rather directionless peace in the hope that relentless and continuous writing will help rediscover the feeling.

Assorted Thoughts

(This post was written by me about a month back. Something clearly distracted me while writing it and I have forgotten about it. And now the events are too far back for me to remember what I wanted to say. So I will simply publish it half-written, without editing, grammatical and spelling errors in all glory)


Recently, for a certain reason, I found myself in a hospital, reading in bold letters at the entrance to the ward, "Tender coconuts not allowed." Tender coconut; the nut of life, as Bear Grylls called it before going on to extol its virtues. With a high potassium content and a host of other nutrients, minerals etc. etc. it is an extremely healthy commodity. In India at least, doctors recommend tender coconut water to relieve tiredness and dehydration during a stomach upset. There exist accounts of people marooned on remote islands in the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and living for several weeks and/or months on solely the extracts of coconut, namely the pulp and the water, and returning as healthy as ever.
Why would someone ban tender coconut in a hospital.

"Achche din aane waale hain". Hindi for "good days are coming" was the tagline for the successful election campaign of the BJP in India. Subsidies abound in India, more so during elections. For a nation that imports petroleum, whose currency is struggling against the United States Dollar, it makes sense to hike the rate every now and then to reduce the burden on the coffers. Rates are never hiked in election season, so a rate hike is inevitable once elections are done to restore a semblance of sustainability. To protest hikes in Diesel prices and Rail fares (trains run on diesel mainly) and label the government anti-poor is ridiculous. My political allegiance is not what prompts me to think this, but my common sense and my incredulity at the fact that people are so short-sighted and seeking to make political mileage out of everything.

More nationalistic stuff. The word secularism is probably the most used as well as the most incorrectly used word in India this election season. Each person, each organisation has its own take on this most controversial word. I happened to come across a person (belonging to a certain religion, call it XYZism) saying he wasn't too unhappy with Narendra Modi as Prime Minister but was worried that the fact that the intersection of the set of members of parliament belonging to the ruling BJP and the set of followers of XYZism in India formed a null set would lead to insufficient representation of the dreams, aspirations and desires of the XYZ people. In my book, secular means the state recognises no religion and sees every person as just a citizen. What exactly are the dreams of XYZ people? Jobs? Money? Water and power? Higher standard of living? How is that a dream of the people of XYZism. It is the dream of every citizen and has got nothing to do with any religion. I sincerely wish that all Indians, followers of every faith, are happy under the BJP regime and beyond. But to prioritise religious issues over pressing common issues, such as development, weak rupee, inflation etc., which affects all religions the same is not in the interests of the nation. And secularism is nation first. I wish religions weren't viewed as vote banks. And talks of the "Dalit vote" or the "Muslim vote" would be more and more replaced by socio-economic concepts such as "urban vote" and "middle class vote".

I may have touched a nerve or two with the above paragraph (Well if anyone read it), so I would like to say I am not against religion, or any particular religion. I just think it should be superseded by human welfare, which surely unites all religions.

The Beas river tragedy, in which more than two dozen young men and women were swept away by the sudden rise of the River Beas due to the opening of a dam(n) gate left us all shaken. Why weren't authorities more vigilant of activities downstream while opening the water? Why weren't the tourists warned? The rather unprofessional video a passer-by took (which is now, quite obviously, on youtube) is quite traumatic. After the initial shock of watching people being swept away by the ferocious current, I went back to rationalise the events. Yes, the authorities in question should be taken to task for their lackadaisical attitude, but the students, well over 18 years of age; clearly old enough to be responsible for themselves, had no business, and should have several qualms over venturing so far into the river channel. It is one thing to be standing at the side of the river and being swept away by the surge, and quite another to be placed precariously on a rock in the middle of the absolutely gushing river. It was just 3 weeks back that I was exactly there, by the Beas river near Kullu. An avid watcher of National Geographic and The Discovery Channel in my younger days, it was obvious to me that straying too close to the rapids is rather unwise. To see adults going right to the middle of the river, with a sheer tsunami right beneath them, was befuddling. It is probably a measure of how much we have lost touch with nature, how in our shells of concrete we have forgotten the power of flowing water.
Maybe we need a dose of this
http://randomblogishere.quora.com/The-man-who-lives-without-money-and-believes-in-Gandhis-quote-%E2%80%9Cbe-the-change-you-want-to-see-in-the-world%E2%80%9D