Random Muse

The electron is at two different places at the same time.

By accident? Probably not. Interestingly, this line which I happened to read from a book on Richard Feynman's work set me thinking in a new direction. It's funny that I started thinking about accidents because of an accident accidentally. The influence of accidents and ‘randomness’ and ‘random events’ in our lives quite amused me.

As I started to think more about the idea of 'randomness' initially, I began to feel drawn into a liking for 'theorizing' it. However, I managed to come out of that tendency soon. I wanted to experiment with accidents in real life, apply my ideas and see how it worked. It's a little strange for the reason that applying it requires you to not apply anything at all. It was as simple as skipping the usual lunch and going for a stroll on a busy street on a Sunday afternoon. I started from my home with great excitement and greatly hoping for something fascinating to happen. I couldn't think about the best thing to do, but that was supposed to be the whole idea. I went to a roadside juice-shop and grabbed a cup of butterfruit juice. I continued walking. It began to get a little tiring. I had been walking for about half-an-hour under a scorching Sunday afternoon sun like an idiot with nowhere to go. Then I saw a church nearby. I entered the church deciding to spend some time and even try and take a nap. A virgin choir was rehearsing as I entered the church. They had beautiful voices. I felt happy that I finally landed a good accident. Then I decided to try something nasty. I started staring continuously at one of the choir girls. Not an approving behavior but the intent was to have fun. I was enjoying it. A few minutes later the girl noticed me and started indicating it to the other girls. It was funny, but she probably got embarrassed and left the room.

I started walking back to my home happy with the random fold of events unfolding with no planned intention guiding them. But more was in store. As I walked back, an old man about sixty years old approached me. He looked like a well-educated and adorable old man. He walked up to me and started narrating his situation. I was a little surprised. He told me that he was a resident of Bahrain and that he had come to Bangalore to bury his father's ashes according to his father's wish. Some local hooligans robbed him of his belongings and money. So he had no money to travel to Cochin where he knew a few people and from where he would leave for Bahrain. He really appeared desolate and desperate. He promised to return me my money back as soon as he reached his place. I trusted him and gave him the money he needed to reach Cochin.

The random afternoon worked quite well for me. It gave me more than what I expected from it. I tried more such random strolls following this experience. Some of them were dull, others were just fun. Exactly the reason I call it 'the random experience'. The old man kept his word and also sent me a digital camera as a gift. Most of us would see this as a kind and humane act. I see this as an act of randomness.

It sounds like the butterfly effect, doesn't it? Our lives are governed by such abstruse, hidden forces that it makes foreseeing events an amusing and often an intellectual and a spiritual activity. However, I do not much appreciate the thought that one's life-plan is laid out on her palm or lies emblazoned among the constellations. I would rather love to go out and make my own 'random' events and let life do the rest. I do not much appreciate a lifestyle wherein one runs tight on her schedules or boasts about living an organized and disciplined life. There is so much 'randomness' around us to grab. My theory about randomness says that one needs to let go of herself in order to see more of life. Purely unintentional and perfectly random events might be a more interesting alternative. And does that answer the question about how we landed on this planet as living souls? Someone up there already knows about my theory. Sigh!

Give-Up!

"Give Up!" ..
"Totally Give Up!" ..
Mr. Honcho's favourite line. He says this maybe, let me count.. give up! hajar times a day. Show him Limit's latest Tissot watch or Astro's newest iPod, you know what he's going to say. Or for that matter even when he sees monkey's digestive residual at the edge of the corridor while walking to the bog once ..hmmm.. maybe in a couple of days.. you again know what's he's going to say.. "Give Up!" ..
"Give Up!" .. This is Mr. Honcho, the "give up" guy of the great Ganga 4th wing. Mr. Honcho used to be called "the walking encyclopaedia" not so long ago. They stopped calling him so when they gave up on Mr. Honcho, or rather Mr. Honcho gave up in life. It's a sad story. Mr. Honcho was almost in tears when he came upto me one day and told me about how unfaithful "females" are.
"Yaar ladkiyan give up hoti hai!"
Ahem.. Mr. Honcho and "females" ??! I never knew Mr. Honcho had a girl. But you never know what people hide beneath their eyebrows. Anyways, I had to console him in the same old 'bada-bhai' fashion..
"Ek ladki gayi to kya hua Honcho.. hazaroon aa jaayengi.. "
Given the sentimentality in the air... all oozing out of Mr. Honcho's randhra(orifices), I couldn't stop imagining myself in his situation and I was amazed how well it fit me. Sad but true. But I never wept. Mr. Honcho made me weep that day.. Three cheers to Mr. Honcho..
"Yaar ladkiyan totally give up hoti hai".
It was me saying it this time. As the pain trickled down from my heart down to my solar plexus, I recollected all the beautiful moments I spent with my lady angel and how mercilessly she sent me a rakhi, by post, with beautiful lines of poetry written in ink of emotionality..
"pyaare bhaiyya..."
Give Up! It was as if my heart was trying to pop out of my chest and die bouncing on the floor like a fish thrown out of water.
"Honcho tu ne mujhe rula diya yaar.. "
I don't remember much of what followed that day.. I am not sure who was consoling whom in the night. But for the first time I established a dil ka connection with Mr. Honcho.

Mr. Honcho is a patient listener and I like that. I bet nobody would listen to my 'long and sad' stories for free. Not only did Mr.Honcho listen to me for free, he would always, in the end, shoot deep and thought-provoking questions that almost always proved that I had been an hassole.
"Honcho.. sahi sawaal poochta hai be tu.. "
That is why I never felt relieved sharing my stories with Honcho. But that never made me tell him lesser stories though.
"Uske birthday pe tum ne pen bheja? Give Up! Woh rakhi nahin to kya phool bhejegi tujhe.."
Mr.Honcho was right. I never had the 'kala' to charm a girl. Honcho says, I am a selfish, unromantic, idiotic and a "give up" character. Wait a minute! Honcho infact abused me. Nevermind. Mr.Honcho must be right anyway! And how does it matter now that I have no girl to charm anymore.
"Honcho.. main ne decide kar liya hai.. Main aajse koi ladki ke peche nahin joonga.. Yaar naseeb mein arranged marriage hi likha hai.. ye sab cheezon se kya milega.. ?" ..
Honcho retorts, "Tere liye wohi sahi hai.."
Give-Up! The transition was smooth and fantastic. In the first year I had the impression that Honcho was a dumb guy, good for nothing. From being such an idiot in my opinion to becoming my sole funda-god and the way he turned it around was amazing. In three years he indeed became a 'pseud guy'. Co-ord in Shaastra, Saarang to an intern in Switzerland to infinite contis in India and abroad, you would feel an itch in your throat calling him the 'Give Up' guy now. The news that Honcho had a girlfriend in Bangalore was doing rounds in the campus. I never really bothered to ask him because I knew Honcho had "given-up" on girls long ago, the day he wept in my room to be precise.

Honcho's birthday followed soon.
"Tera 21st birthday main kabhi nahin bhoolonga.. "
Honcho got a gift from Bangalore on his birthday. He wasn't in his room when I collected it on his behalf.
Guess what the sender's address was!

Deepika N
#220, 5th Main
Rajajinagar
Bangalore.

Givv-Aaaap!
I could not believe my eyes for a moment. I thought Deepika probably sent the parcel to a wrong room number. But I could see no reason why she should send me a parcel now. Honcho's birthday and a parcel to me makes no sense.
"Bhaad mein jaaye etiquettes.."
I teared open the parcel. The first thing I saw was a greeting card. I opened the card. "Love you hamesha.." in beautiful curvy strokes and I was like a flake of titanic that kept sinking for ever. How could Honcho do this to me? Hocho stole my girlfriend from underneath my banls!
"Kya acting kiya saale ne mere saath.. "

Honcho was all ready to explain everything to me. It did not matter to me anymore. Deepika was never meant for me anyway. But what pinched me in the heart were the chronicles of the give-up guy of our wing.

I am the newly crowned "Give Up" guy of the great Ganga 4th wing.
Give-Up!


PS: The wing remains.. forever.
~

(Not a true story.. )

The problem of ends - 1

He took the letter from his father and started walking towards the post office. That big cylindrical thing wearing a black cap with a gentle expression of "Please come hither" on its face, eyes bowed down in courtesy and partially hidden in the shadow of the black cap, a square mouth in the middle wide open, body painted in kumkum red, standing just outside the walls of the post office always amused him as a kid. He would wonder how the letter reached the person whose name was written on the envelope. And as he went closer to the red box, he saw the hidden hollow eyes lift their eyelids up and greet him. He simply loved dropping letters into the postbox. Sometimes, he just put his hands in and tried to reach into where he dropped his letters, deep. He knew what lay inside was mystery and that his fingers were trying to reach the skies, of another world, where his uncle lived. Afterall the letter was to reach his uncle. A nice, comforting thought, probably like 'Alice In Wonderland' that he watched on every Sunday. He loved Alice and the rabbit that carried a clock, the mushroom and the shape of its underneath and all the green of the woods. "How can my uncle ever live in such a small box?", he asked himself. But he knew things were not what they looked like, something that he forgot though as he grew up, but knew it well as a kid, before his teachers and textbooks told him that a molecule of water is two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom.

"The box that I am in must be really wonderful", he thought, when he heard his father shout from a distance, "Have you finished with dropping the letter into the postbox?". 'Alice' was in her wonderland for half-an-hour a week and he would be glued to the TV set for the few years when it was telecast. Slowly he started liking the Science and Maths courses in his school. And in school he was told by his teacher about how the postal system worked. He was convinced about the duties of a postman and of the kumkum red postbox. Nothing was a wonder anymore.


~

Untitled 1

I have been in love, for a very long time, with gloomy daylight and downpour. She is back again. As I write this down, the raindrops are already splattering and making sounds outside my window. I wonder what it is that heals my within, the everyday scars of mundaneness, they just disappear when the air starts smelling of wet soil. Everytime the grey clouds come out to play, they play the song that I like the most. They say it's mystery. Just inanimate drops of water, and molecules of air, and wavelenghts of light - no life. What if Someone filled life into these? Afterall, that is what I am - a mystery identifying with another.


.

The song of a dead poet

Lost in the world of maya. A path in every direction seems endless, infinite. Where shall I go? To where I see colourful lights like on a Deepavali night? Or where I see an oasis from a distance through a long, dry desert? I can never be sure of the oasis, it might turn out to be an ocean, a mirage. I am not gifted with such far vision. Extraordinary men are gifted with such vision. I am born ordinary and I live ordinary. I sing and that is my only solace. Through desert and rain alike, I can sing. Looking at a bird I can fly on its wings. Looking at the sky I can be the wind. Closing my eyes I can be the King of lands. I sing, therefore I am...

I thought of taking the path of colours and I thought of taking the path of the deserts. But, I take neither. I am not looking at my feet, I am looking at the sky and the clouds are moving. I do not know if they mean I am, indeed. The sky is endless and so is the land. The sky is free, the land is not. There are no thorns on the sky, no lights of fantasy glittering and drawing senses to its bosom. The sky is free, so am I...

I once followed the glitter. I felt I found heaven. I felt I found my home. I saw no direction diverging from my home, the ground was so green, the air was so pure. I smiled in happiness and sang in joy. The next day I woke up. I wondered if the heaven was only a dream. How could the land be so green and the air so thin? The land was cracked with scarcity, as many scars on its face as many thoughts that ran through my bewildered mind. I sang in despair. I looked at my feet and I cried, I looked at my feet and I had smiled. But I sang throughout, equally in heaven and in hell. Equally as the sky over.

Let the infinite directions direct themselves, I shall not be amused. Let my feet burn in the big sands or be kissed by velvet soil, I shall not rotate my eyes downwards. I look at the sky and sing. I see only one direction here. I have no choice to make. My eyes have gained sight here, I can see farther and farther. This is a way that leads inwards. My song takes me one step ahead, inward. My feet are on thorns, but the feet are not mine. The song is mine. I am the song...

I am a poet. And my feet have now taken off.

Please answer...

Going through the first few pages of a book on Neural Networks, I felt a surge of discomforting thoughts in my plexus. Thinking about what neuralcomputers have set out to achieve, I could not further imagine what the world would be like when they were ready. Speculations and speculations. That would indeed take us to the beginning of another civilization. We would be in a different role though, totally out-of-civilization. The role of 'a-one-who-controls', the Almighty. The machines shall construct an universe around themselves(why not?) and start questioning things about it(If I can define an universe as the biggest pattern that an intellect can conceive of). They would start thinking and asking. Let's somehow make an assumption that they cannot feel our presence, rather we design them in such a fashion. They will certainly go nuts about why and from where they came into existence. Given that they are ideal pattern recognizing machines, they would start making sense of things that they 'see' and come up with theories and ideas. They would create knowledge, no matter how big they would, it invariably has to be a subset of the human knowledge. The machines would however be unaware of the fact that they have set out to achieve someone else's purpose, never knowing whose. That would be fantastic, why not? We humans would bask in admiration of our own intelligence and creativity. If it happens some day ... as I started with. But what makes me go nuts about this idea of neural computers?

Am I a neural computer myself? Is there anyone one notch higher up? My architect? Please answer ...
Maybe I first need to finish reading the book.

Kanaso Nanaso..

It was a silent town - somewhere in North India, maybe Uttar Pradesh. It had a distinct landscape. Big old havelis and mohallahs and warm people. The whole thing looked very strange to me and I really enjoyed being in such a place. It was a new experience and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Was there someone else with me? Maybe a friend of mine. I guess it was him who took me to the big-haveli. And I don't know where he disappeared after that. Or maybe, the aura of the haveli took me over and I did not notice him enough. But what a grand house that was! It had a very huge entrance-room. On the walls of this room were hung larger-than-life size portraits of men in grand clothes. They looked like kings. What the hell was I doing in this grand haveli? I came looking for something? I was let in - inside the house. I cannot call it a house though. It must have been a palace in the past. The people living in the house should be the descendants of a royal Muslim family, I guessed. The house was old but grand. The interior of the house was exquisite. It had pillars with intricate glassy curves. Everything in the room was so illuminated. This was a smaller room, but more beautiful. There was so much light in the room, pure white light, like the light of the Kohinoor. As I glanced through the old vases and royal decorations, velvet-carpet underneath my feet, I saw books, a lot of books placed on shelves in another room whose door was open. The sight of books was very pleasing. I decided to have a look. As I entered the room, I found that it had an amazing collection of Urdu literature. I knew Urdu? Who maintained such a wonderful collection? Then I saw something very beautiful. In the corner of the room, a beautiful young lady was talking to an old man. She was wearing a yellow salwar-kameez with beautiful designs on it. I cannot describe her sight but she was in all essence what the word 'beautiful' could ever mean. Her sight was so compelling. I tried to avoid looking at her but she was so beautiful that I could not help stealing glimpses of her. Then she came up to me and asked what I wanted. I don't remember exactly what I spoke to her, but I did speak of literature. She was impressed. Then she told me that she would like to introduce me to her grandmother. She had immense knowledge in Urdu literature. She had the calmness and serenity on her face that I had never seen before. They looked a very dignified people. Indeed they belonged to a royal family. They seemed to be very well cultured. Her grandmother was a grand lady. I spoke to her for a very long time. I spoke about so many things, from literature to pythons. Her grand-daughter was standing in the corner and smiling. I was offered to stay in the house for one more day. She told me that her grandmother was very impressed by me. The next day she asked me to have a look at the small temple in their front-yard. I went to check it out. And I found a letter near the shrine. The most beautiful lady in the world had fallen for me. She spoke her heart out in the letter. I said, this is a disaster. I never acted in a way to impress her. She was beautiful and possessed all virtues a man like me would ever want to see in his beloved. But, I said I can't fall in love twice. I knew it would hurt her, but I ran from that place. I came back, but still wondering if I did the right thing.

I opened my eyes to see that the Sun had still not risen and I could afford more such sweet dreams.

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