Everything remains unchanged. Except perspective.
If you are bracing yourself for a tirade of upbeat oneliners; relax! I am not that optimistic. Too much optimism has always made me feel like too much sugar in a cup of chocolate - it is rather pointless and it kills the chocolate. I hate everything that kills the chocolate. I would not have believed it if someone told me that I would be discussing about killing chocolate today. But tomorrow is a newer day. Interestingly, I cannot make a list of five things that I positively will not talk about tomorrow - for the moment I mention it, I am sure I will find some way to talk about it. Such is the way of the human mind. But since life is a sine curve, things will always be improving, one way or, literally, the other.
The beauty of being at the bottom of the pit, is that there is only one direction to go up from there - Oops! I have already given away the punch of the line. Getting back on one's feet, can be a bit of a bitch at times. Particularly, when it is an absolute must you do. But the bottomline is, you do. And that is the only thing that counts. That, and an abacus. That counts rather well too. If you want one piece of advice that you can get buried with; just remember this - never, NEVER deal with a guy who plays for broke when he knows he is spiralling down. I am one of those guys. When the times go tough, I know that it is sometimes the smartest thing to lay low and wait for the tides to turn around... But I somehow find myself addicted to this fighting the hardest with the back to the wall scenario. Having perfected the art of writing without an audience (not in the TS Eliot way, but in a more-broke, nobody wants to read me kinda way), there is little else that an aspiring writer can do. Apart from giving up the aspiring and starting to write. Yesterday, all my troubles seemed far away. Because the day before, I had wanted to comfortably call it quits.
Yet, today, everything remains unchanged. Except perspective.
And perspective alters vision. That changes everything!
15 August 2009
13 August 2009
Creatures of Habit...
Am I a misanthrope?
I often wake up in the morning and wonder about this question. Then I go back to sleep, for there are dreams waiting for me to complete their stories. Haven't we all been in dreams which seem so compelling and well-knit, that we wish to wake up, remember and make a story out of it? I have, so many times; but most of the time, I forget the dream. Sometimes, I forget they are dreams. It is not my fault that they seem so real. What if life is but a waking dream? We think we are living through the passages of time, being a part of every action we encounter and working with a specific end in mind. When it happens, we are happy and when it doesn't we brood over it for a while before moving on. But what if all that is an illusion? Maybe everything has already happened and we are witnessing them without any control over the way of things?
Is life a great show that we are watching only the re-runs of?
I do not hate people. I think I really appreciate so much that has been created because of the human impetus. Mathematics is probably the purest of human conceptions and language, the most muddled. That is why I sometimes wonder if I should have studied Mathematics. Four years ago, I would have jumped up and said, it is not too late; change your stream, study maths. The knowledge of literature will not go to waste. It was just four good years in coming to terms with what you really want. Ironically, four years ago, I would not have to undo four years of activity to choose a different path. I come to the cross-roads of the same paradox that H G Wells describes so well. If the girl never died, you would not have had the desire to create the Time Machine in the first place. So, the fact that the time machine exists, implies that the girl has died. Mathematics has such lucidity. There are no two ways about a single idea. Sometimes, there are stupid ideas that appear apparently true. But it is only a question of hanging on till you come upon the right way of things. You remember a story when you read when you were twelve. But you cannot reproduce a mathematic problem you had done four years ago. It is not the collective error of the human; a mere shortcoming of the single human.
Am I a misanthrope?
I often wake up in the morning and wonder about this question. Then I go back to sleep, for there are dreams waiting for me to complete their stories. Haven't we all been in dreams which seem so compelling and well-knit, that we wish to wake up, remember and make a story out of it? I have, so many times; but most of the time, I forget the dream. Sometimes, I forget they are dreams. It is not my fault that they seem so real. What if life is but a waking dream? We think we are living through the passages of time, being a part of every action we encounter and working with a specific end in mind. When it happens, we are happy and when it doesn't we brood over it for a while before moving on. But what if all that is an illusion? Maybe everything has already happened and we are witnessing them without any control over the way of things?
Is life a great show that we are watching only the re-runs of?
I do not hate people. I think I really appreciate so much that has been created because of the human impetus. Mathematics is probably the purest of human conceptions and language, the most muddled. That is why I sometimes wonder if I should have studied Mathematics. Four years ago, I would have jumped up and said, it is not too late; change your stream, study maths. The knowledge of literature will not go to waste. It was just four good years in coming to terms with what you really want. Ironically, four years ago, I would not have to undo four years of activity to choose a different path. I come to the cross-roads of the same paradox that H G Wells describes so well. If the girl never died, you would not have had the desire to create the Time Machine in the first place. So, the fact that the time machine exists, implies that the girl has died. Mathematics has such lucidity. There are no two ways about a single idea. Sometimes, there are stupid ideas that appear apparently true. But it is only a question of hanging on till you come upon the right way of things. You remember a story when you read when you were twelve. But you cannot reproduce a mathematic problem you had done four years ago. It is not the collective error of the human; a mere shortcoming of the single human.
Am I a misanthrope?
11 August 2009
Who's afraid of swine flu?
Two million people in the next two years...
Thousands dead. Thousands infected.
Say hello to the next Kala bandar.
Be afraid; be very very afraid.
Everyday, you wake up, and get the feeling that if you want to live a happier life, you probably should not read the newspapers. Fears, both imagined and real are treated with the same excitement, that the idea of news gets cluttered. Is it a fear-porn which makes us feel safer with the troubles faced by our fellow humans? By knowing that seven died in a different city, are we consoling that our own city has had just one victim? Yes, my dissenters are already compiling their response speech. I will be called as a suffocator of free speech and a violator of the fourth estate. Maybe, but I do not care much for their opinions. So, what am I trying to say? That the media is creating un-truths as news? No; but I am convinced that the prioritization of news is aimed at creating a mass hysteria, keeping the people in a constant state of fear and making sure that there is only one direction towards salvation. Think of the past three years, and tell me, if one world-threatening situation was not replaced by the next... Taliban, SARS, Bird Flu, Swine Flu, Chicken Flu, Anthony Bordain Flu, Will Smith Flu... The list is rather impressive. We are not told the how of the disease. We are not informed about the do's and the don'ts. What we are reminded of constantly, are the reassurances of safety from the Central and the State governments, the allegations of negligence from the opposing parties, the sting operations from TV news channels which expose our incapacity to handle the situation. Oh, come on! Of course we are incapable of handling the situation. We have an irresponsible media which keeps a bodycount much similar to the way sporting-event scores are updated. Ultimately, only the urban population which watches an English TV news channel, gets half an idea of what they are up against. Suddenly the politics of who went to which country and the route of infection is more important than the message of PREVENTION, CURE and VACCINATION.
No, we do not need that. The more people die, the better TRP ratings.
I am not trying to slight the seriousness of the scenario. Many have fallen prey to this virus and we are told that unfortunately, many more will. But that does not mean we should be afraid to live our lives. In times of great adversity, has risen our greatest epics. A war is always followed by better human perspective. The Great War showed us our infinite capacity for hope, that we even started another. The plague of Black Death was followed by the Renaissance. The polio vaccine was invented years before the last child suffered from it. It does not matter. What matters is how you get up and keep going. The toughest of life's lessons has been expounded by Sylvester Stallone in an often made fun of movie, Rocky Balboa (yes, the sixth part!) where he tells his son, It does not matter how hard you can hit... It is about how hard you can get hit and still keep going forward. Never backing down, but getting up back on your feet and pushing the line. Stallone is right. Give us a while. We will push ourselves back on our feet and do that in style. If not for this attitude, we would not have survived a good forty thousand years, despite our hardier skinned cousins, the neandrathals and the brainier bunch of cousins, whose name I do not seem to remember. We are survivors. We are not the fastest, strongest or the highest... We are the fittest.
If you do not believe in this, shut yourself in your house and wait for doomsday. The others, hoot a cheers to life. Do not give up your inner strength, just because somebody has a statistic saying that there is a fifty seven percent chance that such a thing called inner strength is improbable. Keep walking. The dawn is near. A new day is around the corner.
Thousands dead. Thousands infected.
Say hello to the next Kala bandar.
Be afraid; be very very afraid.
Everyday, you wake up, and get the feeling that if you want to live a happier life, you probably should not read the newspapers. Fears, both imagined and real are treated with the same excitement, that the idea of news gets cluttered. Is it a fear-porn which makes us feel safer with the troubles faced by our fellow humans? By knowing that seven died in a different city, are we consoling that our own city has had just one victim? Yes, my dissenters are already compiling their response speech. I will be called as a suffocator of free speech and a violator of the fourth estate. Maybe, but I do not care much for their opinions. So, what am I trying to say? That the media is creating un-truths as news? No; but I am convinced that the prioritization of news is aimed at creating a mass hysteria, keeping the people in a constant state of fear and making sure that there is only one direction towards salvation. Think of the past three years, and tell me, if one world-threatening situation was not replaced by the next... Taliban, SARS, Bird Flu, Swine Flu, Chicken Flu, Anthony Bordain Flu, Will Smith Flu... The list is rather impressive. We are not told the how of the disease. We are not informed about the do's and the don'ts. What we are reminded of constantly, are the reassurances of safety from the Central and the State governments, the allegations of negligence from the opposing parties, the sting operations from TV news channels which expose our incapacity to handle the situation. Oh, come on! Of course we are incapable of handling the situation. We have an irresponsible media which keeps a bodycount much similar to the way sporting-event scores are updated. Ultimately, only the urban population which watches an English TV news channel, gets half an idea of what they are up against. Suddenly the politics of who went to which country and the route of infection is more important than the message of PREVENTION, CURE and VACCINATION.
No, we do not need that. The more people die, the better TRP ratings.
I am not trying to slight the seriousness of the scenario. Many have fallen prey to this virus and we are told that unfortunately, many more will. But that does not mean we should be afraid to live our lives. In times of great adversity, has risen our greatest epics. A war is always followed by better human perspective. The Great War showed us our infinite capacity for hope, that we even started another. The plague of Black Death was followed by the Renaissance. The polio vaccine was invented years before the last child suffered from it. It does not matter. What matters is how you get up and keep going. The toughest of life's lessons has been expounded by Sylvester Stallone in an often made fun of movie, Rocky Balboa (yes, the sixth part!) where he tells his son, It does not matter how hard you can hit... It is about how hard you can get hit and still keep going forward. Never backing down, but getting up back on your feet and pushing the line. Stallone is right. Give us a while. We will push ourselves back on our feet and do that in style. If not for this attitude, we would not have survived a good forty thousand years, despite our hardier skinned cousins, the neandrathals and the brainier bunch of cousins, whose name I do not seem to remember. We are survivors. We are not the fastest, strongest or the highest... We are the fittest.
If you do not believe in this, shut yourself in your house and wait for doomsday. The others, hoot a cheers to life. Do not give up your inner strength, just because somebody has a statistic saying that there is a fifty seven percent chance that such a thing called inner strength is improbable. Keep walking. The dawn is near. A new day is around the corner.
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