A toast to 2008
Happy New Year y'all. How ya been? :D
Okay, so if there IS anyone left around here that still reads this blog. Apologies.
Today:I am high. On life. Completely. I have just rediscovered the joys of solitude. My mental faculties are at an all-time high. All my room-mates have left for a holiday, and I'm all alone in a 2BR apartment. I feared depression, but I'm loving this. Playing music aloud without having an annoyed room-mate demand that you turn the volume down. Piling dishes in the kitchen sink in wanton disregard. Forgetting to put my coat up in the closet. The prospect of leaving the faulty shower pin down on 'shower' mode guiltless (and without getting yelled at).
I am at peace. I am in love with myself all over again. I like solitude.
Yesterday:All my room-mates are leaving to different places on vacation by tomorrow. I'll probably be left staring vacantly at cartons of used books and empty closets. And sepia-tinted memories to get me by. I'll have to make dinner all alone - serving only one. There won't be laughter and loud conversation ringing at the dining table anymore.
But I've graduated. Yay! I'm going to receive my degree (written in Latin - fancy that!) in May. Do I have a graduate degree? Really?
Three weeks ago:I'm a believer.
Six months ago:I forgot I could write. And how therapeutic it was. I hate myself for that.
Strange Bedfellows
They had been multiplying steadily. In the crevices of the bed-frame, under forgotten layers of foam, on hardened corners of the box-spring, between undone sheets fading with laundry washes. Or maybe it is the spray of rain.
One. One two. One two three. Sometimes four. That's how they feasted. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. They call it. Sometimes a midnight snack? The irony of it was that they were ALL midnight snacks. When you squish them between your fingers, or beat them to death with your bed-time book, they spill blood. Full and red. Like the lifeblood that gushes out of the man's throat in her dream. Or was it a nightmare? The one where she orders Cobain's throat to be sawed. No. Not head to groin. That was quicker death. She saw blood gushing like a fountain. They stuff it with his shirt. To keep it from bleeding. He's still alive. Laughing and waving at her, while they embalmed him. Not his voice.
She opens her eyes. Relief. It wasn't her that killed him. It was the gun. And the guitar.
Then she sees it. The bedbug, that's what. Small. But it grew in size and engulfed her vision as she drew closer. Until it was large enough to block the doorway. Like another Gregor Samsa. Should she play Grete? But they kept leaving trails of mess on the mattress corners. All the Gregors. One is hard enough to keep. She wonders if he sold anything yesterday, the manager has had enough to complain about anyway. And now there are so many of him.
But she is patient. Maybe the Lysol will work. She rubs the Calamine into the welts on her arms. The pink blobs smear and spread into swirls. Of a reassuring coolness. Then she sees them, the tiny scabs. And calls in the cleaning woman.
Fitting the bill
My supervisor pointed me to
this today. He said, "This is UNBELIEVABLE!!". I read it and thought.. "Well, maybe this is how it felt during the Emergency in '75?"
Maybe I should start imagining Bush with black hands, green hair, black teeth; within green walls..
Conservation of Energy
If there's any scientific law that has made most sense to me, it has to be the Law of Conservation of Energy. Besides being the basis of my favourite set of Physics problems, it also seems to me like a fact that can be universally applied. Although we have moved on to instances where Classical Physics is often defied, and more complicated laws have been introduced to explain even more complex phenomena, I still associate this law with a wider range of my ideas and understanding. In its simplicity lies its allure, so I've developed this near-compulsive habit to THINK on the same lines.
For example, I have this inclination to try and
guess how energy is skipping through various forms. But I often reach this point where I don't know where the energy's going.
I run water into the kitchen sink, it's falling to convert its kinetic energy into potential and sound energy. The potential energy, I guess will now shake the sink up a bit. I can hear the sound, so the sound energy vibrates my ear-drum. I dont know how things work after this, so I'm stuck here. I stop playing the guess-game and move on another physical 'occurence' now.
Sometimes, the law can be applied to meta-physical entities. One of my MOST solid beliefs, of Karma, sort of draws from it. And although I can think of anomalies in that association, I also know that those can be smoothed out by clever dissection.
What goes around, comes around. But, if you thought of yourself as a 'system', and
goodness &
badness as forms of complementary energy; if you spread 'goodness' around you, you'd be filled with 'badness' until all that good was returned to you. But maybe my assumption of good and bad as complementary forms is flawed... maybe some systems are solely good, and others sole-ly bad. However, THAT theory is no good either. So, I've finally evolved this theory (which is open to criticism :P), that it is in fact the UNIVERSE which is the 'system', and we the 'particles'. [Which btw, reminds me of what Benjamin Franklin once wrote: "
I imagine it great vanity in me to suppose that the Supremely Perfect does in the least regard such an inconsiderable nothing as man" - that's how tiny and inconsequential we really are! **Sigh**] So maybe the universe is just this neutral system, where there is as much good as there is bad. They say the world gets more and more wicked every day, so where's all the good going to? Maybe it's being sucked into some inchoate galaxy.
I sometimes wonder, if we combined everything in the universe, and melted it together, what colour would it be? Being led by the conventional theory of 'white light'; I always come up with 'white'! So we're all better off being a non-homogenous system. Else, we'd probably be white and neutral. If there was a theory that suggested a universal 'form' as well, we'd know exactly what our combined molten mass will look like. :P
However, we all know, that white is a conventional representation of 'good' and black of 'bad'. So is our all-encompassing white a grim reminder of the fact that 'good' can be regular and boring? Then we all NEED the shades of grey [and all other 'secondary' and err.. 'primary'(?) colours].
The same theme goes for 'ideas'. I'm now taking this stance that ALL ideas borrow from one or more sources. A lot of instances have led me to believe so. The moment I start celebrating someone's novel idea; I start upon the realisation that it wasn't SO original in the first place...
I used to be a TOTAL fan of Rushdie's, and would be immersed in wonderment, at his smarting style and intelligent, but subtle literary allusions; until I read James Joyce. Of course each author must have his/her influences, and everyone borrows style. And it definitely does not, in any way, diminish awe of the influenced writer's ability to deliver BEYOND just the 'borrowed style'. But it certainly is a slight let-down to have 'Grimus' be a heavy reminder of 'Ulysses'. I don't know if Joyce borrowed too. :-|
So I once tried to trace the earliest invention. I'd assumed that the earliest 'innovation' that revolutionised humanity was the wheel. But a quick check on the internet yielded pottery as the first human invention. I guess I'd crossed that out because pottery is done on the wheel... well, maybe they intended it to be more like clay-modelling?
Anyway, so there I was wondering HOW anyone would've thought of the working of a wheel. I must admit that my mental faculty proved to be quite limited in this case (atleast). So I exclaimed to a friend, "How do you think our ancestors thought of making a wheel?!". He didn't skip a beat, "Must've seen a round stone rolling down a slope". Which left me in utter disappointment of my own thinking abilities. :-|
So it finally dawned on me, that there is NO 'original' idea. We all draw from the universe and give back to it. The law of conservation of energy.
My dearest dreams come true
Alright, although this might seem a little too juvenile, maybe my fortune cookie wasn't so wrong.
Here's something that could get SOME of you jealous: I got a hard-bound copy of 'The Satanic Verses' from the library. And oh! Shalimar the Clown too. :D
Now I can read ALL the books I want.. If only I could OWN all those books, have them leather-bound and stock them in a rose-wood panelled library! 8->
I remember reading this article in our college magazine (fondly or rather,
de rigueur-ly named '
Belles Lettres' - and in the bargain, massacring another of the 'Romantic' [to those who understand what romantic with the capital
R means. :P] languages), written by an alumni member - do I also qualify as one now, btw? It certainly sounds like a HUGE onus anyway!
So, this article was about how each of us 'evolves', and correspondigly, encounters 'advancements' in our identities. How we're just individuals in school, and are recognised and stereo-typed by our own personal traits. Then we move on to college, where almost everything you do is characterised by WHERE you come from - which I think is unfair. So you're now representing your town/city/state. You know what is now coming - you move out of the country, and you now represent INDIA!! Although this might not be a very rigid rule, you WILL agree that each of us has undergone one or more of these transitions already.
Having to 'behave' Indian has now put me on a more ponderous track... and in almost everything I do, I "compare" notes with life in India. And I still would go back to India. For the pani puri AND for all the sentiments that 'Swades' stands up for - I figured citing a movie for an example would prove more effective. :P
My fortune cookie yesterday said "Your dearest dreams are coming true". Whatever that means!!
