Here Comes the Sun

Here comes the sun. Here comes the sun

And I say, it's alright

Little darling, 

it's been a long, cold lonely winter. 

Little darling. 
It feels like years since it's been here. 
Here comes the sun,
Here comes the sun,
and I say, it's alright. 

As I listened to George Harrison's pleasant and melodious voice sing these words to a nice slow beat, it conjured images of the warm rays of the sun dispelling fog, snow-melt trickling into the gushing brook, greenery, falling dew and most things nice. You could argue that proclaiming everything to be alright simply because winter has ended is a tad overly optimistic, but you get what The Beatles wanted to make the listeners feel.

Of course, having read only English literature through my life (unless you count Hindi textbooks as "literature"), the aforementioned images were conjured easily, as the Americans and Britishers of the temperate regions repeatedly allude to cold, snow and beauty of Spring.

I, however, found the images a little harder to connect to. Being a pure-bred son of the Tropics, sun rays do not represent warmth to be bathed in, but a blaze to be sheltered from. The sun is a necessary evil, not the sweet messiah it is at the temperate latitudes, if generations of British authors, PG Wodehouse and The Beatles are to be believed.

Here in India, it is the monsoon that bring about that natural deliverance from bad weather to good weather, bad times to good times. The parched and cracked ground turning wet and then green, the dust settling after the first drizzle; these are the images that the monsoon brings, as the winds of change sweep in from the Arabian Sea to mark the end of the summer, when the sun is not the sweet radiance but the sharp-edged knife cutting into life.

My association with monsoons though, is more than simply a summer ending, rumbling thunder and downpours that cause the mercury to plummet. Being an avid watcher of wildlife shows on National Geographic and the Discovery Channel in my younger days, the monsoon excited me a lot. These shows knew how to build it up, the young boy that was me shuddered when he saw the majestic lion or tiger panting, exhausted by the sun, too weak to even swat away the mosquitoes that buzzed around them, awaiting the imminent death they probably could sense. The forest or the grassland was brown. The deer were tired too, only saved by the tiredness of predators. They rummaged in vain for green and water. The carrion eaters, those scum of nature, flourished. The harbingers of drought and bad times. Then, the announcer would proclaim with concealed excitement, "There is change in the air". Thunder would rip through the sky and on the next frame, the whole forest is green, the lion is suddenly chasing the flies away and deer is grazing merrily.

This kind of sudden change, obviously for the benefit of gullible and easily awed young folk such as myself, always had me believing in the magic of the monsoon. The agent of change, good change.

The real benefits of the monsoon is tangible, our economy, livelihood and life depends on it. A good monsoon on the whole means a prosperous India. It fills our rivers and fields with water and wipes the sweat from our brow; the sweat of heat and the sweat of worry. Yet, the image that stays with me is still the majestic tiger looking up at a green forest, content and ready to roar again with the downpour. Beautiful stuff. 

What's in a book?

It's been really hard to think about something to write, I'm not sure why. This is perhaps the 12th time I'm starting a post and I'm hoping it isn't unconvincing, disconnected and ultimately incomplete like the previous posts. I have many topics in mind, but the ideas seem reluctant to stick around in my cranium until they are neatly formed and digested enough to be put seamlessly into words and eventually, a nice little blog post which my family and friends will read and tell me all about how well written it was and give me the little ego boost that everyone loves but few admit it. Of course, the cynical and the honest brethren will hand out criticism, which is perfectly fine, if not more reassuring as it shows that they think it is worth critiquing rather than a waste of time that can be put behind with a "yeah it was gooood" and an insincere smile.

Well, let me just go on with what I'm doing in life, in general. It's the vacation and there is a lot of what is termed in Kannada as "beedhi suttadu", colloquial for roaming the streets, usually in the context of someone doing the aforementioned roaming aimlessly or while neglecting responsibilities. Well, I'm shirking no work with my roaming. In fact, I'm able to run several errands for my parents on these little sojourns on my bicycle.

It's my cousin's wedding in a few days, meaning a lot of shopping, getting things ready, planning what is to be worn and lots of things I don't enjoy too much. The flip-side though, is a festive mood and cousins and favourite uncles and aunties in town with a lot of good food. You win some, you lose some.

Other than that, as is with a vacation of significant length, I'm attempting to delve into some books. The Lord of the Rings series I downloaded somehow never kick-started. It's been long since I read properly. I re-read the entire Harry Potter series last month and before that, the last months of 2014 found me completing the five books of "A Song Of Ice and Fire" written so far by George R R Martin, the books that inspired the creation of the show "Game of Thrones". I can't remember which book I read before that, but I'm sure for a whole year I hadn't read anything. Dark times Harry, dark times.

Now though, I've got my hands on a 800 page book, a collection of Science Fiction literature from the 1950s, 60s and 70s, edited by none other than Isaac Asimov himself. Science fiction got me through the last years in school and to finally find a book that I couldn't put down with Asimov's seal of approval was a god-send.

Last night, I was reading the story of an astronaut who left his space station to explore some debris from another satellite when he felt movement within his space-suit. Praying it was a trick of his imagination, his wild mind remembered that an astronaut once died in his space-suit on this same space station and then remembered that damaged space-suits are usually repaired and used again.

As his mind went into overdrive, thinking of the possibility of recurring problems in space-suits and then souls of people trapped in space-suits latching on to living beings, he surely felt something warm tap the back of his neck. At the exact instant I reached this juncture of the story, a towel fell from a table a few yards of me. The story, the lateness of the hour and howling of a dog outside combined to give me the biggest fright I'd ever had in my life. My heart absolutely lurched, I felt like my chest and limbs dissolved in an instant and the book nearly fell down when, as quickly as it came, the fear disappeared. Logic, cool and calm, came to the rescue and I had a hearty laugh at myself two minutes later, when my brain had finally succeeded in coaxing feet to stop shivering.

It left me thinking on the magic of a book. For a second I was in a space-suit. So engrossed was I, that a towel falling from a table, which at any other time I'd have given a quick glance and a quick shrug, scared me out of my wits. I was not on my bed in my room: I was transported into orbit around the earth. Yes, you may say it was all in my head, but just because it happened in my head doesn't mean it's not real, does it? (That's my second Harry Potter reference)

For now though, I just say, from outer space, "Oh gravity, thou art a heartless witch".

PS - The story is "Who's there?", by Arthur C Clarke, in case you're really curious about the ending.

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