Thursday, December 13, 2007

1 sem in Retrospect

Most of the things a human does are just imitation of things that are happening around him/her. One of the most important subconscious factors for me traveling from Ambattur to America, was that 50% of my friends back home did that.

But the more important reason is to explore the horizons of my knowledge.. it is not just tat.. for some stupid reason I believe myself to be capable of expanding the horizon of mankind's knowledge about stuff.. Though the very thought of doing something that great is too cool.. am i really up for it?

I have decent grades, a job , an assistantship and a bunch of good friends. What more can I ask for? I want to study the subject for its own sake and not for the sake of grades.. which I do not do.. I want to do "something great" with life.. just dono wat!!

And there is this eternal loneliness that I am destined to feel within myself till death comes and frees me.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Love: The apprisal

Love is a an interesting thing...

it wouldn't be an overstatement to call it the most interesting and exciting thing in life..

Everything about love is pure and gr8 - just like being repeatedly described and exaggerated in the movies.

There is one downside of it - THE STARTING PROBLEM. Love like parental love, or brotherly love is generally always there (at least in my case :) ). Since the family love is always there - it is not that exciting and it does not have the starting problem! But the love in the context of lovers has this starting problem.

Its the ultimate appraisal.

I hate appraisals coz it has to judge at least one of the team mates as a loser, which can end up subjective to a great degree.

To prepare to tell a love is much like preparing for the ultimate Appraisal - The most common complaint about appraisal is "IT IS TOO SUBJECTIVE" - But in the case of decision about a lover, the subjective nature is inherent and cannot be complained about!

This problem is engulfed in a web of so many other issues like ego,fear that it doesn't surface that easily.

But without all theses problems the process of love will be so mechanical that it will not be exciting.. In other words, only when u r ready to risk it all - can u reach the fruit of being Happily ever after .. or ?

Friday, November 16, 2007

Absence

The non-existence of an entity.

I am concerned abt the transformation of existence to non-existence. This transformation is dealt with by loss, death.

One strange type of absence - denial is haunting me. u look at something and can clearly see that it is present- but still deny its existence - this is denial. Many practice denial in many forms.. some deny the existence of hatred in glorifying humanity.. some deny the existence of ambiguities in glorifying religion..

but can i deny the existence of a person (or the most important person!) in my life and carry on my life??

Obviously I CAN, as long as i am busy enough so that i don think abt my life!

The simpler way to answer the question is that there is no one important enough in my life to be the most important person. Writing the above statement gives me a (false?) sense of comfort and power.

The denial is denied by me writing this abstract.

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Am i alive?

I am trying hard to figure out the answer to the above question. Defining the state of being alive as the ability to act at my will, i will have to face the fact that I am not alive anymore. You can predict my exact state of mind, sitting/lying position, amount of food waiting for digestion in my tummy etc..etc.. to an amazingly accurate level of precision given my assignment and exam schedules.

But still all your predictions about what I did last Saturday are bound to go wrong. There was too much work on a Saturday evening and all my room mates were immersed in their laptop monitors when a GR8 news spread. There was free food somewhere in college. This is too good a news coz no1 was interested in cooking and no1 ( at least) me was interested to stay in the gloomy room.

We started off to hunt down the spot and where we ended up was a dance floor like the ones they show in those movies! There was snacks instead of meals which diminished our hopes of getting our tummies filled. After entering a dance floor for the first time, and having never danced before, I was standing there in a corner trying to figure out what to do next.

After 5 minutes, nothing changed, the music was foreign to me - so was the entire place. After 15 minutes, I started to shake my body in seemingly haphazard fashion which provoked quite a few comments from my friends - negative ones of course :). I closed my eyes and let the music sink into my body. My thought process was so simple and so lucid. I danced for my own fun without even considering how i look to an external entity. Considering the fact that the room was dark and no1 is there really looking for me or assessing how well I am dancing - it was totally up to me!

The music consumed me - though I never even moved my hands or legs in any way closely resembling any acceptable definition of dance- but i danced !! I danced for so long that the night seemed endless and still I haven't learned a new step or found a new friend .. I was just lost in the beats.. I tried to imitate a lot of steps in vain.. but overall it was more fun than I was hoping for!

Take aways : 1)Never miss an opportunity to dance!
2)Do something crazy! Or else how will u know that you are "Alive"??

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

A reason to be happy!

I have done a lot of things.. somethings big somethigngs tooo small

Most ,if not all, actions of my life are insignificant and inconsequential by any reasonable analysis.

Its good to do things which make me happy.. isnt it??

Why is my happiness based on most trivial things and not on more secure REAL things. Is the pursuit of happiness eternal because of the ficklenss in happiness itself??

If only i need wat i want can i complain about not getting it!

Today I am happy for the simplest thing I did.. Wish the miracle always works.. or like everything else will it subside with time?

Sunday, August 19, 2007

Death - The art of dying!

Death is a full stop to our life. When we reach a full stop of a sentence it is logical to look for the meaning of the sentence. But a life by itself has no meaning attributed to it - coz it means nothin but the act of staying from death.

Even though death cannot give meaning to us it sure gives us a kind of motivation to live. Death is assured- so we do not have to continue our stupidity for eternity!

My encounters with death are few and far between as I have never been that much of a risk taking person. All the events described below are some of the situations where i have tried to surrender my soul to carelessness n stupidity!

1) In park town railway station,I was crossing the railway track by foot even though I knew I was breaking some laws here. I was also sendin and receiving sms in my horribly used torn apart mobile phone. Concentrating more on the phone and not on my steps I fell down across the track as if I was prostrating myself before some idol. I was quick to recover and walked past the track as if nothing had happened.. well nothing happened anyway!

2) One dark rainy night,I was a pillion rider in my best friend's bike with him. He was uncharacteristically slow and careful in his driving. We traveled a lot without any destination as we usually do. When we were returning back home, the bike slided on uneven road and we were laying in the middle of the road. Seconds later a tata sumo parked itself, and I learned that these things have tires twice as big as my head! That was again a bad anecdote - coz nothing really happened again!

3) I completed doing gre,toefl,applied to univ, quit cts, cleared visa,tried hard to fall in love- but failed, flied to florida, enrolled courses and jumped into the swimming pool. I am good at walking in swimming pool pretending to swim than actually swimming. I tried to swim in the deep and was hoplessly drowning when one of my friends came to my rescue. I was alive again- nothing happened!

In either of the 3 cases (and in a few more which I cannot quite recollect), if something had happened- u couldnt be reading such a wonderful blog!!

In each of the above scenarios, I ask the question of what would have happened if I were dead. I see answers like people who like me very much will be sad(for a few days or so). The next question that comes to my mind is, what would happen when i really die in the future? Again I get the same set of answers- nothing different.

Just because death is the last act in life do not expect a conclusion there. Life is not a long journey where the road leads to paradise- its just a series of small picnics to enjoy and forget about.

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

denying "nothing"

A baby is born. We tell it tat its going to gradually learn how to talk walk cry lie read write ... all by just imitating what everybody around it does..

Then we tell it , to learn all the "nuances" of life by "experience" by which we mean, it would get screwed in all walks of life.

Then we tell it , but by this time the weird brain of the baby starts working and it wont listen to anything anymore... The baby (not a baby anymore) will not listen to what anyones got to say and will make its choices through free will (even though everything it knows was learned through imitation).. But we got to tell it something right? How do we do it???

This baby will not listen to us if we are in the realms of reason because the baby itself is in that realm and the first question it shall ask is "Why should i listen to it?" So we cannot convince the baby by putting in something tats "reasonable"

If we should have any say, it is only possible by confusing the baby. Now then there are a million ways to do it.. Bring in some real scary terms like god,honor,freedom,revolution,equality,humanity, .Neither do we nor the baby understands these stupid words.. but these words are the only way for us to exercise a fleeting control on the baby..

so.. without these confusing words the baby can know that everything is meaningless

With all these confusing words the baby can lie to itself that everything is meaningful.

Both ways the fact remains that the baby is not and will not be any closer to the ultimate truth!

Word of experience

Dont feel happy. Thats the root cause of all real and imagined troubles. Whenever u are faced with a sense of primitive joy ( the same feeling a kid gets when given a bag of choclates).. ask the following questions

1) Who / What is making me happy?

2) Will this prolong for the near future? If not, what will be the course of my actions? If yes, how long in the future do i have this secured?

3) What is the "real" source of the happiness?

4) Do i really really wanna be happy because of this?

After asking all these queries, there will be no "trouble" left, because u would have sucked out the happiness from the whole scene - which is exactly what you should do..


The reasons that i learned the hard way


If you are made happy by an external source, u r always liable to loose it and everything else u had with it.. u ll be in a state from which all ur fundamental assumptions are lost and questions like why all these things are "happening" to me would arise.

The reason is u invested ur source of happiness in the wrong place

Well. if u follow everything i had jus said u would become the biggest killjoy ever walked the surface of earth- so... the only take away from all this crap is

Invest ur money carefully
Invest ur love more carefully, coz thats wat counts!