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

Eventful to say the least

Arseblog.com. Yes, it is two words, "arse" and "blog". What if I told you that I read a blog named so.

Despite sounding eerily like exactly the kind of website you would be wary of your 12 year old son coming across and like the kind of content that one does not speak openly of reading, that too on his own blog, I confess, I read it almost daily. Because the subject of the blog is not the "Arse", it's something bigger. Bigger by three letters in fact. The Arsenal. Arsenal Football Club from Islington in North London.

To say I follow keenly, the club and the team is something of an understatement. Perhaps it is the entity that occupies my cranium for the largest proportion of time in the holidays and surely comes a close second to physics in similar statistics for term months.

About a week back, I was basking in the glory of The Arsenal winning the FA Cup, football's oldest knockout cup-competition, thus ending a tumultuous period of nine years without winning a single competitive trophy, in the middle of which run I began to support the club and join the family of "Gooners". Despite it being more than 10 days ago, I recall perfectly what happened on that Saturday night; probably will do so for the rest of my life.

It is hard to explain. A gush, an absolute tsunami of happiness. At that instant everything else feels insignificant. All else is in fact insignificant. I'm not really sure what I did, just sure what I felt. Having subdued a yelp of happiness (for fear of drawing the entire neighbourhood to my doorstep), I clenched my fist, held back the tears when THAT goal was scored with ten minutes of the game left and anxiously continued to watch the final of the FA Cup.

Ten minutes, and about 7645349834 minor as well as major cardiac-arrests later, the referee blew the whistle that signaled the end of the game, thus sounding like the end to all suffering humanity endures, giving way to unmitigated delight that had me retaining a smile on my face for nearly three days. The tears flowed, then stopped, then flowed, then stopped. My skin resembled the Himalayas, the Alps and the Andes combined. All was glee, my friends, fans of rival clubs grudgingly registered their congratulations.

That summed it up for me. I didn't do a thing. Yet they all congratulated me. And all my fellow Gooners. They said, "You guys deserved to win the trophy". I didn't win a thing; but it was a victory for all of us. A feeling of belonging that is unparalleled. No wonder that sport has captured the imagination of humanity for time immemorial. And beyond a point, it isn't about success, winning, patriotism, ideology or particular individuals. The beginning is mysterious. And after that, the sense of belonging simply endures. To quote two great footballers, Arsenal, Ajax and Dutch legend Dennis Bergkamp and some Manchester Uniter Player Eric Cantona :

"When you start supporting a football club, you don't support it because of the trophies, or a player, or history. You support it because you found yourself somewhere there, found a place where you belong." 
Dennis Bergkamp 

"You can change your wife, your politics, your religion, but never, never can you change your favourite football team." 
Eric Cantona 

The week following the cup has been eventful, to say the least. It was followed by a five day trip to Himachal Pradesh, the land of the Himalayas. After that, meeting up with old friends, rolling back the years back in Bangalore. Yet it is the memories of a Cup victory of a wee football team 8000 kilometres from my home that rightfully should have absolutely nothing to do with a young Indian boy that is still fresh in my memory.

Thank You Arsenal, and Thank You Arsene Wenger.

Refresh

Earlier today, I found myself in that state of half-sleep and half-consciousness, when one alternates between questioning the workings of the universe, brain-storming for solutions to cross-border infiltration, wondering at the implications of a BJP government or feeling a hypnagogic jerk to startle you into waking up and saner thoughts.

In case you are wondering, a hypnagogic jerk is not a psychotic snobbish individual, as the name would suggest, but rather is the phenomenon where one experiences the feeling of falling down just as he/she is about to stroll into the dREMland. (Ok, that's a horrible pun) 

Going back to what is germane to the issue at hand, I was wondering where I was a year back, in the summer of 2013. And a year before that. And where I am today. It's a refreshing exercise. If your life has not changed overwhelmingly, if the intervening 12 months have not held surprises, joys and stories to tell your grand-kids, something is amiss and you must strive, I think, to ensure that the next 12 months don't find you rotting in the same monotony. 

So let me refresh. mid-May, 2012, where was I? Literally and figuratively. Literally, it is quite probably I was exactly where I am, in my room, on the bed. Not staring at a laptop screen, probably was staring at a mechanics book. On average, the title of the book was probably "Classical Mechanics for IITJEE". Arihant Publications. My insides cringe when I hear the name : Arihant Publications. It took the soul out of the quite beautiful science that the syllabus for the Senior Secondary School designed by the Central Board of Secondary Education contains, by turning it into a mere exercise of learning to get through "competitive exams" instead of encouraging us to develop a critical eye for science and to peer into the depths of the beauty of the science of how the world works. No book ever caused one to dreamily stare at the roof, wondering at the philosophy of why the attractive force of gravity has to follow an equation described in the language of mathematics. It is like God (read "chance" if you are an atheist) made the rules and then left things by themselves to assemble into something meaningful, and the precise balancing of centripetal force and centrifugal force caused a planet of just the right size, with just the right particles, with just the right period of rotation at just the right distance from a star of just the right brightness at just the right time period in the right universe (in case of the existence of a multi-verse) to support life, and hence us, and hence our ability to dream and think about it.

I was probably talking on the phone for extended periods of time (you do not see the twinkle in my eye), was probably watching an Arsenal match on the telly. Life was focussed on one thing only, academics. All else was secondary. 

Mid- May 2013. Actually, I know exactly where I was on May 12th, 2013. At the Dayananda Sagar Institute of Technology, some dozen kilometres from my residence, sweating over problems in maths, physics and chemistry (that books of the Arihant Publications avatar had taught me to tackle) while also trying to keep my keep my urethral sphincter closed to the gush of urine desperate to exit my system. Not a pleasant balancing act. 

The period of time was the home-run of a protracted exam festival, all "competitive". I have no idea what that word means. What is so "competitive" about them, which is lacking in every other exam. It has simply been institutionalised. (Listen to Morgan Freeman say the word)

Now, here I am, in the summer of 2014, middle of May, the warm Bangalore night air, after two days of sun which were preceded by a week of rain. Still pleasant, still inspiring all that is good. I'm reading voraciously, sleeping peacefully, roaming around town in my favourite blue-white BMTC buses (sometimes the red Volvo) and now updating my blog. Surely my zenith. Will I ever get such ample free time again in my life? It's a shaky ground. The answer tends towards no. New college friends who have been friends long enough to share a certain closeness and bond and old school friends who have been away short enough to still retain the closeness and bond. Arsenal finally in the finals of a Cup tournament, looking end a torturous 9 year wait for victory in any competition, apart from the Emirates Cup, which if you remotely follow football, will know is a little more prestigious than the "my street vs your street" cricket matches played in younger days. 

I like to take the view that right now, these two months of vacation, will be the last extended period of leisure that I can enjoy with age on my side. I hope to make it a time of unmitigated joy, new experiences, deep introspection and most importantly, full of memories. Time that is lost, never comes back, and my dreams are waiting for me. 

So if you will excuse me, I have to go and be a huge hypocrite, aimlessly surf the internet, "like" some memes, watch old Arsenal videos, while away two months. That's a lot to do! 

Interwoven with Intricacies

He nearly ripped off his hair in frustration. Life seemed unfair, this cascade, this abyss. A lack of inspiration, motivation. He felt suffocated, the periodic little tremors by his wrists the only evidence to suggest life, of which his eyes betrayed none. He felt his wrists, his chest, confused that the heart still beat defiant. He thought of himself as a poet, a romantic. A patron of everything classic. A purist, wise and unflappable. Not to be overawed, not to be intimidated, not by any situation. 

He thought of it as determination, perseverance and all other high ideals of human endeavour that he still sat opposite his type-writer decades into the age of computers and digital typing, stroking his chin in apparent thought, the rough ends of his overgrown beard reminding him of his current squalor. 

And despite burning the mid-night oil for three nights on the bounce, the stimulus to write, to create something beautiful still eluded him. He sought encouragement, sought to extricate clarity from the depths of his cluttered mind, he sought freedom, he sought all that was not forthcoming. It just wasn't meant to be. Probably tomorrow, he thought. A reassessment. 

He stepped back for the hundredth time. Where had this left him, It had been a race between a letter of resignation to his boss' desk and a letter of dismissal to his desk. Three days since he won that race, he was losing the one he intended to run. 

For the past three months it was the same. The glow in his eyes when he wrote - which swayed scores of class-mates and teachers alike into proclaiming that his was a talent that would ignite the minds of the world - was long gone. He was disillusioned by his corporate life then, longing for the time and energy to write. Several hours of unethical office-desk-day-dreaming had given rise to stories, sub-stories, characters so deep and plots so interwoven with intricacies. But he had to work; work so someone else could become rich, pocket a minute fraction of that man's riches every month and then feel grateful for being given the opportunity to help that someone else becoming richer with little relative personal gain. In the smaller picture though, his pay-check was ample, fat. Almost extravagant. 

He felt this occupation choked him, restricted his brilliant mind, felt it was the reason for the lack of days of inspirational free-flowing thoughts and ideas that were so crisply, lucidly, quickly and not to mention, beautifully, converted to words which transcended paper and digital screens to forever make an imprint on the mind and in the life of any fortunate reader; days which were frequent, nearly routine throughout his teenage. 

It was puzzling to him that now, with a burgeoning bank balance to comfortably satiate his needs for at least a decade and having taken a life decision to quit all to be able to set sights only on writing to fulfill what he thought was his rightful destiny, he still couldn't put his mind to it. 

To quit so soon would be weakness. He had been through all the thoughts several times. A mental reassessment of his decision happened alarmingly frequently, as alarming as that it reassured him each time, that he took the right decision. 

So it wore on and wore on, the days, the weeks, the seasons. Layers of dust over his furniture turning to mounds, symbolic and representative of his mind. He went through all his ideas, his ingenious plots. His subtle stories. He re-read his old works, the glowing praise heaped on it. It all seemed so superficial. He was average after all. He could suddenly find no words. 

He didn't know quite when it happened. And he would never know. All life was a confusion, in the midst of answering the door-bell to receive ordered food, packed in boxes that constituted a heap in a corner of his "writing room" that he rarely left despite it being a paradise for an assortment of insects and rodents, in the midst of his shaggy hair. Springs came and went, sunlight disconcerted him. The type-writer still lay bare, the imprint of nervous, shaking fingers clear in the dust on each key. Bottles of liquor thrown everywhere, his savings considerably eaten into. It did finally happen one cold winter night. 

Two days later, the usual stench emanating from within the closed windows and from behind the drawn blinds due to leftover food seemed to be noticeably accentuated. Neighbourhood gossip about the mad, grizzly man was higher than was usual. Nobody bothered, until a sympathetic writer from across the street  called the police in. The door was forced open, the hanging corpse was discovered, the debris was cleared, the report was published, suicide due to fledgling mental health was declared, the house was sold and life went on. 

Several years later, the sympathetic writer smiled. A smile fueled by success, and a seemingly endless supply of brilliant stories, sub-stories, characters so deep and plots so interwoven with intricacies from a bundle of sheets, sheets of typewritten paper. 

Nothing in Particular

Ever since joining University (it's college, but there is a feel good factor about University), the number of posts on my blog has gone down alarmingly. It was always rather low, but it is now almost unacceptable.

Rather counter-intuitively, this stems not from a stagnation of ideas but from an excess of thoughts, opinions and ideas that I wish to write about and express that gets mixed up in my head until it's an unrecognisable concoction of neuronal signals that fire of rather than the clarity of my previous posts that were single-minded in their intent of expression. It is not being lost for words, it is being lost in words and not knowing which to pick out.

Hostel life is unnervingly two-paced, the absolute rush and energy of the weekdays so suddenly followed by uncontrollable and highly contagious lethargy in the air. Even work comes in waves, alternating between having nothing to do and carrying the world on your shoulders. Whether this alternation is by design or the consequence of procrastination is up for debate.

Most disconcerting of all features of hostel life though, is the sheer unpredictability. At home, all plans were put into action. If the next weekend was meant to simply goof off, I would. And if it was meant for cramming and intense working out (working out means math for us nerd-folk), cramming and working out would happen. Despite setting equally clear agendas, the translation of similar plans to action simply does not happen in a hostel. A day meant to simply sleep off the extra boredom from the seemingly deliberate line-up of consecutive boring lectures can suddenly turn into one of the most productive evenings of writing and studying. The pitch simply cannot be gauged, something like the 22-yard patch at the Feroz Shah Kotla.

As is the case right now! What I thought would be an extra hour of precious sleep has turned out to be half an hour of useless surfing and now followed by half an hour of typing this post out with frequent, nervous glances at the clock. Class starts in 9 minutes from now and if you combine 2 minutes for dressing up (yes, just two) and the 9 minute walk from hostel to class-room, I am running 2 minutes late. Or 8 minutes early for being "late beyond reason".

So life goes on, constrained in unbelievable freedom which tells you every moment how weak you really are.

7 minutes, now I simply have to go.

Posting without proof-reading.
Sorry reader.
If you exist.
Adios

Long time, no Write

So, it has been an eternity since I took up pen and paper (laptop and earphones more like) to string together a meaningful sequence of words for the sake of writing. Just writing (typing more like). And how much has happened in this eternity. I completed my first semester at my new college, enjoyed a month long break, came back to college, completed another week, went home again, came back, completed a couple more weeks and now I finally feel free of the massive writer's block of untraced origin that seemed to weigh me down all these days more than a sack of lead. A sudden clearing of the symbolic clutter in the mind, though I'm not quite sure how, lead to me actually taking the load off my overburdened buttocks to lend my hostel room a semblance of tidiness and it has also lead to my personal epitome of mental clarity and sharpness concerning vocabulary, free flowing words over pondering and pausing after every sentence inked.                                                                                        

The elusive adjectives, adverbs and the unnecessarily fancy words are back in my mind, ready to be used, like one of those wonderful packets of palak paneer. Yes, MTR provides ready-made packets of palak paneer. So let me ramble on about a happening period between this post and the previous post, which the records show was a shocking 3 months back. 

Well, my sister was here all of December. And all of December was a holiday for me. You can imagine things worked out well there. The second semester has brought exciting new challenges, an altogether higher level workload (which my merciless seniors assure me is tuppence. All taken with a pinch of salt) and new interests. 

The first weekend of the new semester saw us restless undergrads in a state of general unemployment, leading to a section of this crowd deciding to go on a trek, and a smaller section deciding to tag along. A mind-blowing first time experience found me asking for more and more and from here on, I will ensure that I accompany everyone on every trek. It's just the fun of getting out of your routine, your comfort zone, an exceptional physical exercise and a way to expel the city from your lungs. Few joys can match that lent by the trickling of beads of sweat trickling down one's cheeks just 2 hours after thinking of the best choice of last words in the cold night before the tropical sun comes out to bathe everyone in heat and raising mercury levels before one could say "quidditch". 

As the Bible so aptly puts it, "For His anger endureth but a moment, and in His favour is life; weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning". 

I haven't read the bible, but this particular line is extolled in its virtues by the namesake book, "Joy cometh in the morning", by P.G Wodehouse, a part of the excellent "Jeeves" series. 

I continue quizzing, continue being passionate about anything physics, continue studying and continue living this life of which I couldn't ask for more. Busy, happening, sporadically strenuous but always enjoyable. 

Hope you are living the same. 

Perturbation Theory

Perturbation theory comprises mathematical methods to find approximate solutions to problems in mechanics. Even though the only maths involved is the application of the three equations of motion and the Newton's Second Law statement (f=ma), it is impossible, in most real cases to find the exact solution to a problem in dynamics.

Case in point, the Coriolis force. Due to the earth's rotation, a body experiences a force that is proportional to velocity in a direction perpendicular to it's velocity. Consider a body freely falling at the equator from a reasonable vertical height, say a kilometre. Even with the usual, almost unreal simplification of assuming that air resistance is absent, it is impossible to find the exact position of the body, theoretically, when it reaches the ground. Here's why.

The Coriolis force acts on the body towards east, increasing linearly with the velocity. Now, the Coriolis force slightly changes the direction and magnitude of velocity, which again changes the Coriolis force, which again changes velocity. This goes on back and forth infinitely, and simply cannot be solved without an approximation.

We take care of the big force, the gravity. Then consider Coriolis force once only, assuming the effect of the force itself doesn't cause more perturbation. We find the deflection to be very small, and using this fact justify the neglect of the next order application of Coriolis force.
Ha!

Sounds like life doesn't it. You consider all the big factors. The ones that have the largest consequence. Try some smaller things. To a level. Justify avoiding other small tasks. Hobbies. So many things we can do but of little consequence. Do we have to do them?

The facts of the matter is the small factors, at least in mechanics, don't amplify, or consolidate the large factors. Instead, they perturb it. Actually come in the way of what would otherwise be smooth, neat, and mathematically elegant motion. With all associated mathematics straight-forward and explicit.

Life differs there though. The small things clear our minds. Refresh us. Allow us to elegantly perform the tasks higher on the priority list.

And those are two things I've learnt after joining university and beginning my life in hostel.

Not all analogies make sense. Not all analogies are true. There is no poetic brilliance in comparing anything to anything. The way my lectures assume you can draw analogies between large lorries trying to pass each other with electron clouds sterically hindering each other. Not everything goes, even in the liberal world of poetry and/or teaching.

Second, the small things are extremely crucial. The creative aspect is essential for clarity in thought. Without physical activity, something to transiently distract you from the burden you carry, sustained effort is nearly impossible.

Writing this blog gives me immense pleasure. And helps me study as well.

Win-win, no perturbations.