Winter fell

The first episode of Season 8, "Winterfell", begins, reminding us of the sweetness of the Pilot episode of Game of Thrones, "Winter is Coming" its name baring the similarity it admits to portray.. a young Northern boy running to see a king and a queen arriving at Winterfell, Jon hugging Arya, lifting her up, this time in a long awaited reunion, as they both discuss Needle, his gift to her.. A glimpse of Winterfell, and a short interaction between Sansa and Tyrion, this time with those beyond the fourth wall relating with each face seen on screen, their eyes, quite like Arya's, as they look upon their favourite characters walk back onto the screen one last time.

These pleasant scenes do not put our hearts at ease. Perhaps the scenes themselves know that they seem to be dim reminders of the past that made us fall in love with these people, and that their attempts to tranquilise watchers of GoT before they suffer being told the terrible ending that's lurking are failing miserably

"Winter is coming".. "What is dead may never die".. Quotes of famous families now seem statements that reflect the inevitable doom that is about to befall the great Westeros, and, perhaps all of civilisation. We watch, with bated breath, to know the magnum of the tragedy that is about to befall the already broken Stark family we love so much, and all the others.

One is reminded of the grim prophecy Harry's old Snitch revealed, "I open at the close". Like with that line scribbled away by Dumbledore, Season 8 is more the final reckoning of what was bound to come, than some twisted, edge-of-the-seat interpretation of a prophecy misinterpreted by all. It is the arrival of dread, the manifestation of the most terrible of our fears, and it's here.

While the stories that are read to us through an audio-visual voice in April have been long-awaited conclusions to sagas we have followed for a decade, Avengers, kicked off by another hero named Stark, whose possible death we wait to behold, merely promises to add to the morbid experience we are all going to face, with the characters that've shaped our stories. And while the gloom promises to be as long as Winters last in Game of Thrones, a strange feeling of belonging engulfs our souls as we sit, in solidarity, with the rest of the world, separated by a million factors, but our hearts beating as one.

Who said we need wars to bring us together? This millenium stands testimony to the quote that the pen is indeed mightier than the sword, not merely in bringing harm to others, but in bringing souls together. Fortunately, the writers of today are extremely sensitive to this, and while they battle fiercely to dodge theories and speculations to deliver the high that fans desire and deserve but are so willing to let go, giving in to the incessant dance of their restless intellects, and still deliver a poetic and justified end that a great story must have, they smile, weaving treasures with their fingertips, crafting legends that shall be remembered for all time.

And as a fan, I put my pen down and curl up in front of the screen that so easily touches my soul, and hit the play button to see my favourite story unfold. One last time.

The Sound of Music

It was yet another of those solitary nights – one of the gloomier ones when I walked slow, sans purpose or thought – but it wasn’t a quiet time. Unlike my surround that night which was still except for the scratching sound of a stray dog far too busy rummaging through garbage to mind me, my insides were agitated, flinching at the prospect of thoughts that were plummeting towards me. Questions I had hurled at the universe had chosen to boomerang back towards me, promising to put me into that seemingly endless abyss of pointless brooding.

I decided to stab the mood in the back – to busy myself in finding out where this thought train sprang from – and arrived at the answer before I could arrive at the road crossing I was heading for. It was a simple question a friend had asked earlier that day at a cinema – why are our days, our lives so dull?

My mind went back to the movie we had been watching – do we need edge-of-the seat stunt sequences? A terrible, dark arch enemy with a horrifying motive who sits all day planning our end? Nail biting twists at the possibility of anything good happening? Or a clingy love interest who’d push me to be a better version of myself. Well, I’d be lying to myself if I think I’d say no to a little romance, but, no, honestly, I’d love to pass on all the drama, for peace does indeed lie in the simplicity of everyday things, but the question remained.

I plugged my beloved earphones into my itching ears and played my favourite background score by Hans Zimmer. It was “Imagine the Fire” from “The Dark Knight” from Nolan's Batman trilogy. It is said that walls at least 17 metres apart, within a closed region are required for the human ear to discern an echo, but even through the distance between my head and feet wasn’t even half that number, my whole body was suddenly shaking in inspiration from the echoes that spoke volumes of the greatness of this cowled, dark, brooding fictional character. And somehow, perhaps since the music was being played for just me, I sort of identified with him. Suddenly, all that mattered was that I was in action. My pace quickened. My feet, longer craving to get to my destination, took a longer route, just so that I could uninterruptedly continue to listen till the track ended.  And then it hit me. What was lacking from life, what filled the dullness of life was the lack of music. That’s what we need more of. A background score. Or, like the Indian films, at least a song now and then to distract us, to lose ourselves in.

As I took off my earphones, I started wondering as to what role music truly played in our lives. From greeting us with familiarity in an alien place, to forging relationships, why, to even calming our temper when we’re waiting for an agent to pick our call, it was all music, single handedly holding onto the ropes of our emotions. Why, even newborn children unanimously fall asleep when they listened to a lullaby!

I had read of people’s heartbeats synchronising with the beats of a tune while they listen to it. It all seemed very poetic, and perhaps even had some scientific backing to it, behind all the pseudoscience that it smelled of, but that wasn’t what I was looking for. I was looking to see the effect of a tune on a mind. I thought of how a simple tune could take one back to their childhood, or bring back the memory of a loved one. Of how a mere sound could invoke in one, fervent devotion to an unseen deity. It was both strange and beautiful. How could beats from a percussion instrument inspire one into action, and how could the melody of a flute subject a formless soul to a soothing ache, even move someone to tears? How could some beats push a person to stand up and dance? Or at least nod in phase with it? How could some tunes aggravate/intensify passion? How could it light up the eyes of lovers looking at each other? How could simple notes make one relive and forget pain? How could the simple pursing of strings play with the very fabric of time that wraps around all that we know – the personal time that we are all prisoners of? All this achieved by a collection of frequencies that can be generated by the simplest among us?

Perhaps science fuelled by mathematics wasn’t the way here. Perhaps, like the scale of quantum and the scale of relativity, the human emotional realm was yet another phase where the physics of common sense – in this case, perhaps physics itself, as we’ve known it, ceased to exist. Perhaps dry philosophy littered with pseudo-jargon terminology was indeed the way to go. Even if it wasn’t, something told me that subjecting surreal music, this apparent engine of life, to the mundaneness of blind math was a blasphemous disrespect its sanctity. Perhaps leaving it unanalysed and to treating it the way it has always been, with the occasional stare of wonder, of awe, was a means of worshipping its grandeur.

And so I let go of the compulsive instinct to subject this phenomenon to the microscope of cold logic, and decided to immerse myself into the positivity it radiated. And then science swam towards me, picking me up in all its warmth and holding me in a tight embrace. I felt the thrill that filled me, with the Lagrangian method of swimming with a tune, and the fulfilment I had, when, like the Eulerian approach, I lay back and let the tune slide across my soul. I witnessed interference of waves, forming crests that lifted my spirits and troughs that held me tight. And Doppler’s effect when listening to “Yeh Dil Deewana” on a long drive. It was liberating beyond any words could explain.

Perhaps we are all like Captain Von Trapp from The Sound of Music who need to evolve from whistlers to the singers we were born as. And perhaps we can grow with the nourishment of music. Perhaps we needn’t find out this way. Perhaps all that was needed was to give in and let the tune take care. What could be better?

Sandwich Writings

At times I wonder if, over time, a writer truly evolves - writing is an eternal spiral, whose centre is the life of the writer and arms form his imagination - and successful writing boils down to maintaining it as a circle. It is all about keeping it as far from the centre as possible while keeping the radius low enough for it to touch readers' hearts.

I initially prided myself with being able to put myself in imaginary situations and write the woes of someone in that position pretty accurately, and thereby considered myself a vicarious writer. Now I find that when unaware, the distance between my heart and that of my imaginary self diminishes to naught, turning every stroke of my pen into a diary entry that I'd sometimes cringe to read.

My mind, it seems, tricks my pen into writing my own story, my own feelings instead of an imaginary one. If I let my pen wander, and the flow set in, the heart bleeds itself, into the ink that flows from my pen*.

And with writing taking more and more room in my mental space, I find myself suffocating in my attempt to run away from the emotions that my soul secretes, and feel imprisoned within the non existent claustrophobic walls of my mind, formed by my imagined limitations.

Funnily, more often​ than not, my pages are wetted and hence permanently coloured by at least a few drops of the feelings that my soul spits and soaks itself in.

With each writeup is attached an emotion, if not many, a memory, a feeling that I can relate to.

I do not remember words that I spill when in one state, yes, but I remember the feelings that I bury with them - they come back to me when I re-read my work, like a long forgotten dream, turning into spades that dig deeper into the soul of my web pages, finding tiny, peculiar yet familiar rocks of emotions that've hitherto touched the roots of the vegetation which has sprouted over the months I'd left them buried.

Has my blog turned into some encrypted diary? One that makes sense in one plane to my readers, why, even to myself - and on another to a select few, and perhaps on a third one to just me?

Those who claim to know me or who wish to try to decipher this bundle that they call Raam might perhaps add a few more layers to these already multilayered 'sandwich' writeups.

Two dimensional writing on a screen does seem to have gone beyond the paper, perhaps finding more nameless dark levels within the souls of my readers to whom I am ever grateful. Without you my work wouldn't even be ink on paper, it would merely be a little magnetic data stored alongside zillions of bytes, forgotten long before it was written, receiving attention from Google's dead computers but heeded not by a single, living, breathing soul. Whether there is life to my writing or not, the fact that you read it honours the words that my spirit generated. And if it does have life, know that a portion of your soul rests in each word I have written, alongside the portion of mine that I sealed with it, when putting it down in writing.

*At times there is the lack of a muse which stimulates a muse hunt, but to be honest, there is no dearth of muses in my life, considering the number of films I watch or the number of times I step outside my room.

Reminiscing our Days as a Republic

Sixty years of being a democratic republic, and we don't seem to have matured at all. Democracy is supposed to empower each citizen of a nation purely for the reason that they are a citizen. I find our citizens, however, choosing to be matchsticks ready to light up at the slightest indication of a flame, and that too, ready to colour their flames to match their source just because - I don't know the real reason.. Is it because it looks trendy? Perhaps they feel important when they participate? Do they feel left out if they don't participate? They get nice pictures though.

We seem to have grown downwards like roots, but, ironically seem to  destroy the roots that keep the administration steady. The calm of the population seems to be upon a razor's edge, ready to slip and fall at the slightest touch. And they're proud to be so. Our sensitivity is at a peak and we seem to be ready to react to the most trivial of affairs, to the silliest of words spilled out by a seemingly important person, to every single move made, or not made by our ministers, why, even our celebrities.

Our country became a chaotic mess long back, and I've always wondered, touching the little wood that's left, of course, as to how we've managed to sustain the peace that exists, still staying at the top of the list of large democracies, and I feel it was because people knew to mind their own business. We knew to respect our leaders - for the post they hold, at least, if not for the person(s) they are, knowing fully well that the government cannot function without the aid of its people. Non awareness of the possibly less intellectual (forgive me for saying so) played its part too, with the foolishness of some raising its despicable head only during elections. In spite of all this, we've been able to pull it through.

The current generation is marked with the advent of social media and its infiltration into every intricate portion of our lives so much so that it seems like we have taken a headfirst plunge into it, to never come out. In the past decade, we have developed gills to get acclimatised to this aquatic life. While this has given opportunities for recognition of genuine talent, providing them with audience from this ever increasing population, thereby not letting them get lost and unnoticed in this anarchic realm. On the darker side, however, social media has given microphones to the most pathetic of voices, amplifying the gabble of idiots and even providing them with listeners, even followers who are flexible enough to let themselves be swayed by their nonsense.

The heavy magnetic field of craziness we live in eventually induces its field upon every soul which dwells in it, sucking our every last ounce of sanity left and rendering them all oriented towards the twisted directions it points towards. Even the most sensible among us go by the outcry of angry tweets and offensive memes, falling for the loudness of their voices, no matter how senseless their claims might be.

Such immaturity and childishness cannot be the result of a change in medium of communication - it can only imply that we have been foolish all along. Our silence has tricked us into considering ourselves to be rational. I regret the unrest that is rising, the narrow mindedness that is spreading (ironically, yes) and the outbreak of this political epidemic of pointless loud-mouthedness upon this great soil, but perhaps it is a positive sign after all. Perhaps it is a sign for us to retrospect and deepen our roots.

For starters, each citizen of this country should begin to realise that we are, indeed one country. Yes, we are a place where even the people of the smallest minority feel at home - they consider this land as home as much as any other world, but we need to take another step forward. We must defend and take pride in every single aspect of Indian culture - we must embrace the literature, the art, the language, the beauty of every single region of this country. Oh we needn't spend years learning about it, but the mention of it must fill us with pride and a sense of belonging. Let our spirits feel that every grain of this soil is ours, and that our hearts beat as one no matter what our differences are. Let other people sit and argue as to whether we deserve to be one country, but politically there's no denying it. We are one country as much as Pakistan's states aren't ours. Our citizenships speak for us.

Logic isn't half as effective upon humans as examples are - we are indeed descendants of the monkey clan. So let us step in front as role models for the future generations, holding hands and breeding peace and unity opon the completion of this 67th year as a Democracy!

Jai Hind!

Another rant

Facebook seems to have become more of a threat than I'd ever imagined.. Madness can spread across it like wildfire...

The jallikkatu thing is something I'm still not very clear about, but it is very clear that some anti national statements were made with ease, sprouting State-istic (read: Nationalistic towards State) feelings in a manner that it threatened the linguistic and political secularity of the country..

Faceless meme makers of popular sites have received enormous public support and do not understand its value.. It is always the norm that when one finds people listening to them, they think can get away with saying anything..

Perhaps the sound of applause injects madness into lesser minds..

Meme makers are supposed to be comedians, not leaders. I wouldn't have used the term "lesser minds" if they had made good use of their popularity..

There is a difference between using freedom of speech to criticize a politician and merely speaking against the government.. The government is more than a political party. We, the governed, are a part of it. It is a system that can work only if we cooperate. Along the lines, it was blasphemous to speak against the PM. Criticism during the tenure must be constructive. Such maturity is expected from people of a democracy and ours send to have become demo-crazy..

We may be mature as individuals but we are childish blabbermouths and utter idiots as a society..

If memes are going to be the next youth inspirers, so be it, but we want a self conscious, aware bunch of leaders who know the repercussions of each step they take and are sensitive to the interests of the country at large and specific regions too.

We have forgotten that the Indian Army helped us during the floods - which state does each of those soldiers belong to?

(India saw opport)

Retrospection

I realise that a note, quote or poem scribbled in some notebook and put away is a lot better than one staying on an active blog page - it might've been written in a state of mind that might have changed now, but it stands as a pointing finger directed at me.

I feel responsible for every word I write on my blog - and I shudder to think of its implications.

The advent of poetry - a genre that started nearly a year back has drilled holes upon the walls of my literary world, and built doors that I'd never dreamt of - I have come a long way from considering poems as utter melodrama to appreciating the emotions that words embody - writing poems has fueled me with boldness to touch upon such sensitive topics with ease - topics that one would cringe to think of - I have done so, with an arrogance that gloats when I am praised, and there are times when I wonder if I deserve it. Perhaps this isn't boldness, perhaps it is foolishness.

I have been told by an experienced writer that even my innocent, seemingly harmless writing can touch a life, perhaps more, and that I should be careful with the solutions I provide for problems, but I fret not for the impact it might have on another's life, but on my own..

The writing on my blog seems to stare at me like a bag of karma with fearsome eyes.. My more recent writings have been backed by a greed for recognition, hiding behind the emotions that stimulate them, and I am constantly haunted by the fear of its repercussion - the repercussions of boldly writing about emotions that I pretend to have understood. Words once spilt are indeed unpickable, and I dread the result of my blind (deaf?) talk.

I will try to think twice before I put something in writing but that isn't easy either - when words come gushing out your fingers, they itch to capture it upon a film of paper, to be read, admired and enjoyed, not only by a set of readers, but by yourself, particularly on a day when you cannot remember writing it down - the surprise that you were the one who wrote something beautiful is one of the most pleasant feelings in the world.

A Writer's Little Stumble?

A recent discovery of mine is that when my mind doesn't have a grip, its creativity is at its best: it has nothing to do with me, the guy who takes any initiative: it is my mind, yes - a bundle of thoughts of which I am sure, I am the only witness, but my mind - it has a,well, a mind of its own. Perhaps its movement is controlled by some law of inner nature that is yet to be discovered by science. Creativity when under pressure seems to be a corollary of this fact. In recent times, half sleep states have churned out some pieces of writing that have surprised me. to the extent that I end up wondering if it was indeed I who wrote it. But thankfully I have been conscious at those times and possess the memory of writing every word - albeit on another plane, and that puts any doubt of whether I am possessed, at rest. The most noteworthy example would be "Come, visit me by my grave" - a piece I woke up thinking I had written in a dream. Specific details were new to me when I re-read the article - I supposed that this is what writing hangovers felt like.

At such times, I gladly hand over custody of my pen to my mind, letting it do as it pleases, giving it the authority to google synonyms for words as well (yes, I do that a lot). There are times when I go through what is written and then correct it, and those when I consider the words far too holy (forgive my impertinence) to be tampered with. I believe the state of my mind can be fathomed by those who read the work - at least the ones who know me well.

During one such unguarded moment yesterday, my unsteered heart took a turn that I had been consciously avoiding - one that had never forced itself upon me - a dare that I had sort of given myself but had chosen to not take up - I expended some ink on writing in Tamil. It wasn't a great piece, just a couple of cliched lines that are usually passed as dismissive statements in my mother tongue laden with philosophy but often never meant. I wasn't particularly proud after I wrote it - it had sounded better in my mind, but not great on pape- well, on the screen. I still thought I'd let it be.

I often disconnect with my writing once I publish it on my blog (that'd explain the spelling mistakes in my old articles) but this one stayed on in my mind - not its content but the fact that I had written something in another language. Well, you can laugh, but you've got to understand this: it takes quite a bit of tuning to get into the mode of writing, especially when it is poetry. Language isn't natural but feelings are - it takes a lot of canals to force formless, shapeless emotions to form phrases that truly represent them, in a way that every reader, irrespective of the era, should be able to connect to exactly the same feeling. Such channeling takes a while to adapt to, be it in any language. Command over the language is secondary. You need to think in words. Yes, it's a sacrifice to be a writer. We don't do it only because we like it - I like to call it mental pregnancy - the experience needs to be delivered. And I've tuned my mind so well that it's one big slut - it gets impregnated by every silly sight these days (I'm probably the only happy guy to say that).

Tuning the mind is similar to tuning a radio - each language is a frequency and once you're tuned into - each commercial frequency value is a language, and once you want to tune out of a frequency, it takes a lot of effort to tune back into it. Tuning into a different language takes a lot of time too. People unable to express themselves are the ones who aren't able to hear anything other than noise on the radio - ultimately, it's all a question of right training and so anyone can become a writer. Anyway, so, this Tamil thinking that generated Tamil writing got me - um, thinking. I worried that English had deserted me. At least I wasn't guilty since I hadn't initiated this transformation.

Yeah, Tamil is my mother tongue - and for the record, I like it, but so what? Does that mean I should only do "Tamil" stuff (whatever that means)?

Did I disturb the membrane? Burst a bubble? Start a sequence of ripples? Ok, I think I'm blowing up a simple matter. I guess I'd rather not speculate, and instead, sit back and watch.

Written at my room on 20:57 on 25.7.2016

A page from my diary

The past few months have been, well, different - starkly so, in terms of a lot of things, and, in particular, writing. The discovery that I could write poetry has certainly been emotionally rewarding, and has raised my literary confidence to levels that I never knew, existed. I feel truly free in the apparently two-dimensional but truly multidimensional world of words. Poems come to me at ease, flowing forth as a fluid would flow when there is a significant pressure difference.

However, poetic as this experience with poetry may be, it has taken a toll on my writing. There is now an urge to dramatize every little thing, and I spend my time involuntarily looking for metaphors to describe them, even worse, desperately trying to rhyme words. I find that while this poetry phase has brought out a couple of good (sorry) poems, what I've incurred substantial losses. Strong opinions have now almost completely been replaced by strong emotions that overwhelm me. I tear up more easily than ever, and even otherwise, have become quite sensitive. My vocabulary in speech has received a blow, and I find it difficult to frame full sentences, at least on paper. This post itself stands testimony.

I realize now, that I have tuned myself to write poetry, and why I stay in this frequency, it is extremely difficult to come up with prose. 60+ poems seems like a good number, and I am considering tuning myself back to the prose frequency - but I do not know what the repercussions will be. I'm slightly tired of putting commas after phrases and starting new lines with capital letters. My more recent poems have become soulless and stale, and this can definitely be counted as a sign. I miss writing long articles where I digress to point out something totally different and then connect it back with the big picture. I miss framing sentences that have poetic metaphors.

But then again, what if my natural current state is to compose poems and not articles? I did not choose poetry - in fact, I believed that I wasn't capable of it, and it came to me of its own accord. Am I disturbing that equilibrium by attempting to go against the flow? Will this result in me getting stuck in a no man's land where I'd be incapable of writing anything? I'm not sure if I can handle that - oh, I'm not talking about missing the appreciation - with all due respect to you folks, I have only a handful of readers, but you people appreciate me even without my writing. I'm worried about there coming a time when my heart is filled with content and my fingers refuse to budge.

This might sound silly, but it feels like a big step to me - perhaps I should write a few more poems? Perhaps touch a hundred? No, the quality is bad already. There are quite a few poems that I've written and kept to myself on a personal medium, for I find them far too sensitive to share - and  then there are half baked ones that I am incapable of completing. I feel inadequate to compose now - perhaps I should take a break. At least from poetry. And I must be ready to digest the fact that I might never be able to compose another poem - that doesn't hit me badly, I feel pretty satisfied with the poems I've written. I couldn't bring myself to write one as good as, say "The Admirer", or "On the Partition". My poems have become dull and repetitive. I'm not dejected or something - I don't need a pep talk now, I'm just weighing the options before making a choice - an obscure one at that. To you, it, I might seem melodramatic - why would there be the question of a choice between one form of writing and another? Well, there is. And I'm not looking for suggestions, I'm just thinking out loudly. And choosing to publish my thoughts. You may choose to ignore this post - in fact, I might tak it down some day, but as of now, I'm just letting it be.

And I don't have to tell you when I make my choice. You'll know.

Sharing a meal

I have often wondered as to what can be the greatest bonding between two people. To my pessimistic - or perhaps, highly opinionated eyes, no person is selfless, and any activity - well, most of them at least - that they may involve in, seems either pretentious or one that caters to the selfishness of one or both parties.

A meet - particularly one between two leaders which signifies a link being forged between the groups each represents - should at least be honest, if not entirely selfless. The selfishness, while being minimised to the requisite amount, should be admitted openly - and I feel that no better activity than sharing a meal achieves this.

Eating signifies not only the mortality and, to an extent, the vulnerability of each candidate - it also signifies an honest catering to hunger, that one innate feeling all organisms have, thereby instilling humility in them and subtly urging them to consider the well being of fellow organisms in their decisions. I'm sugar coating it here - some such meetings could result in even terrible decisions like (just picking some extreme examples to defend my claim insensitively) waging wars or killing someone - but there is almost always an element of compassion, however  narrow the leaders may be - compassion for their countrymen, soldiers, or for other terrorists in their organisation, for instance.

Another advantage of having discussions over meals is what I like to call satisfaction spillage. Several of our decisions, much like our tone, and, as my father often points out, even our writing, are influenced by seemingly irrelevant factors, one of the most influential one being hunger. The satisfaction accompanying a sumptuous meal is quite overwhelming even to the most heartless of people, and is one that can 'spill' into the purpose of the meet and help mellow down several outbursts, particularly words, and sometimes even major decisions to much less cruel ones. Agreement and settlement of disputes is relatively easier when accompanied by food. Who'd want to go through the trouble to argue with a mouthful of food?

Discussions carried out alongside eating reach the heart, chaperoned by the food that enters the stomach. Further, an inadvertent connection is forged between the people who eat it, and cook who prepares the food. A connection is also established with the land on which and the roof under which, it is eaten, thereby capturing the heart of the visitor(s) among the two (or more), making it a sacred bond that will prevail for all eternity.

Seeking a Source

No, this isn't a philosophical article. And I hope the image doesn't make you think this is comic book fan talk either. Do bear with me and read on.

Gone are the times when man's basic needs were merely food clothing and shelter. In fact, there were times when I wondered why clothing had to be mentioned as a need, but now there is no room for such debates - with extravagance "evolving" into comfort and comfort into necessity, the aforementioned list has grown from merely three items to several. As one wonders which of these needs to be mentioned at the top, one's eyes involuntarily look around, scanning for an unoccupied plug point.

Man invented machines to simplify life - to reduce effort - and to eventually become independent, but today, man has become pathetically dependent - a parasite, greedily looking for electricity. Ironically, this pursuit for power, in addition to mocking man's desire for 'power', points to the fact that technology has turned humans into emotionless robots that feed on electricity. We have films that explore the dangers that can be brought about by the advancement of technology but hardly anyone stops to see the detrimental effect that it has already had.

Machines have gone far from being helpful little tools that simplify our lives - they have become little goblins that drain our attention, our energy and - well, our electricity. It is disheartening to see people in shopping malls, airports and, well, pretty much anywhere, hunting around for a plug point to connect their devices to. Battery backups and power banks are rampant, but they seem to only make things worse. The care we once had regarding packing for trip has now reduced to merely charging our devices. Of course, is an advantage that our tickets, among  several other documents can be carried by electronic media, but the attention our devices demand is much more than that which our paper documents did. Smiles and other expressions are fast being replaced by emoticons that seem to me, to merely mock true emotions, and people seem to have forgotten to emote.

I thought it would stop, but the transition from bad to worse - or rather, the unending race towards the worst, is only accelerating. Texts have replaced phone calls, and expression of affection to mere sending of images, and it doesn't seem long before humans forget to see each other's faces. I wouldn't be surprised to see newer disease names coming up in the near future, further complicating the already complicated human life.

Change is needed badly. People should want to see people's faces, hear friends' voices. Our interaction should be with living, breathing people, not with devices that heat up.

And now, clicking the publish button, I am shutting my devide down to go out for a nice walk.

On Music

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who couldn't hear the music

- Nietzche

Putting on headphones is a symbolic indication of - why, to quite an extent even literally amounts to cutting the rest of the world off - to take a dip into the emptiness of one's soul - a feat that would seem impossible to the lay man without the aid of this magical entity called music. Without it, who would have known that so much bliss can be experienced in one's self?

Be it during travel, a short nap, a break in between work - at any time, in fact, listening to music is one of the greatest activities of pleasure that man has known. The glamour of watching music being played or sung and the like is not what I wish to talk about here. In fact, for the time being, let us suspend the grandeur of lyrics as well, and concentrate merely on the tune - that magical collection of frequencies that soothe the ear, the mind and the heart. A tune that is produced from the vocal chords that we know so well, perhaps a bamboo stick with holes, a stretched skin or some complicated instrument. Whence it comes is immaterial - the output, the sweet sound is all that matters.

Unfortunately, science fails to quantify the pleasure that man experiences - perhaps pleasure is too obscene a term to describe the pure joy that fills a man when listening to music. As a listener, I am not very keen on seeing the performer; I'd rather close my eyes and hear it radiating (convecting, rather) from within. The key to truly enjoy a tune, according to me is to listen to it long enough for it to sink into your self: and then, the soul sings along. Music is the one entity that can reach the heart straight, for it s not the lips, but the heart that sings along, beating in rhythm to the beats that are heard. Perhaps that's why they're called beats in the first place. I read somewhere that music can make your heart beat in synchronisation with it. Such is the level of acceptance that accompanies music - it is so intense that an involuntary muscle beats in tune with it and the pleasure of listening to is needn't be explained.

To me, a tune is like an amusement park ride that the heart takes. It could be a nice, simple swing or a roller coaster ride - if you pick the ride you like, you'll love the experience. A field that involves just the heart and no intellect can be extremely emotional - overwhelming indeed, but that's the point of it.

In vocals I love how lyrics and tune support each other, with the tune being a springboard of sorts, catapulting lyrics into your heart, and the lyrics being a skeleton for a composer to make his tune. An aerodynamicist will agree with me when I say that with listening to instrumental music, you can have Lagrangian and Eulerian approaches: in the former case, you let your heart follow the tune, stretching and wringing itself in sync with the rhythm, while in the latter you stand by as an observer, merely drinking in all that you listen to. In any case, be it any form of music, love is occasionally at first, um, listen. A listener, and the tune he listens to, evolve relative to each other with every listen - even if one dislikes a tune in the beginning, he slowly begins accepting it. I have heard people say otherwise, but this is my experience. The tune, being insentient, cannot exactly evolve - it is the listener's heart that evolves, getting stirred at its depths by the beats at the background of the tune, and on its surface by the melody - all this makes me wonder if the heart is liquid. The acceptance phase is akin to one starting to like a book, because he tells (reads) the story to himself - or like people accepting their own point when trying to convince another because they are listening when they themselves say it. Upon listening to a tune for a sufficient number of times, one sort of 're-composes' the tune for himself, albeit in a subtle manner, not unlike a professor re-discovering a theory subtly while explaining to his students or while understanding it. This, I believe, is the crux of the process of understanding itself.

Some tunes, I find are natural: if the beginning of a track or song is hummed to me, my heart would want it to take it along a particular direction - a route, if you will, and I find some compositions taking the exact same route. This has happened quite often with AR Rahman, Illayaraja, Hans Zimmer, Salim-Sulaiman, Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy, Vishal-Shekhar, Anirudh Ravichandran and Mani Sharma among others. Hans Zimmer has sometimes surprised me with tunes that take a route that enjoy much better than what I would have chosen to. Some tunes seem forced- a noteworthy example would be John Williams' track titled 'Buckbeak's Flight' from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban's OST. It sounded unnatural the first time I heard it, but I fell in love eventually. A lot of AR Rahman's tunes, particularly in the 90's seemed to connect to tunes that I had unconsciously hummed to myself as a child long before those tunes were released, and I have, hence, always considered him a natural composer. Pretty audacious of me indeed, I truly apologise: this is straight from my heart. There are cases when a tune I could never conceive or relate to, collides tangentially with me, subsequently becoming one with my heart - such as Noor-e-Khuda by Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy. Augmented repetition in a tune, such as in Bommani Geesthe and Manwa Laage capture my heart. And then there is the case of the ticking clock - a trick used to indicate the critical passing of time in a film scene, by composers like John Williams in Forward to Time Past, Hans Zimmer in Mountains and AR Rahman in the background score of the upcoming Tamil film, 24. Another repetitive feature is what I like to call the pleasant scream - a tool I find, used by ARR in particular. One can find it in songs like 'Endrendrum Punnagai' (Alaipayuthey), 'Ae Sinamika' (O Kadhal Kanmani). I found another instance in 'Dil Dhadakne Do' (Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara) composed by Shankar Ehsaan Loy.

As a child, I remember having wondered if there were only a limited number of tunes in existence, and, if one day, all of them would get used up soon (I used to think of the limited number of swaras or notes which would impose a limit on the number of tunes that could exist) - quite like I had thought about concepts in science, and even inventions. I have felt a keen desire to have born earlier, so that I could have composed a couple of tracks to have in my name, (and made some scientific discovers too), but today's composers are proving to me time and again that beautiful tunes can always be composed.

However, I don't see myself as a composer in this life. I am, and will always be - an avid music listener.

A speck in the crowd

"That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse"

                                                                                               - N.H. Kleinbaum, Dead Poets' Society

It doesn't take long for a man to figure out how much a part of the crowd he is. He needn't even step out of his work-home prison - all he needs is a walk to a colleague's desk or a peep into a neighbour's house to realise that he is doing nothing new.

Everyone is doing the same work, listening to the same music, making the same tax calculations, having the same conversation with his family, making similar plans for the future - buying a house, starting his own business, whatever. Each one, however, is so lost in the process of doing it that he forgets that he is nothing different. Another ant in a colony of thousands. Invisible. Lost.

Our lives have been designed by businessmen, the media, engineers, doctors and people  a thousand other professionals. The toothpaste we use, the courses available for study, the books we read, the procedure for a passport, treatment received in a hospital, a product we buy - whether we want "the best" or "something average", lives of people aren't really different. One man struggles to pay for his daily bread while another, his son's college fees, but the struggle is unanimous, why, omnipresent. It's all just one big template.

All this sprouts from the fact that one man cannot do everything for himself. Further, from an administrative point of view, it is good to have standards, but there are disadvantages. What if someone wants to be something that doesn't all into the list of things he can be? C'mon, you say? I must be crazy right? I'm the guy who says passion is a term coined by people on watching movies and reading books - a term they use to get away with doing anything they want to. But, humour me - don't you think someone has a skill that is not accommodated in the list of things that people do? Have we tied the hands of people from truly doing what they want to - perhaps what they should be doing? Of course not, right? Don't we read success stories? People who do random things and get their names into the Guinness Book, who come on TV shows, people who start companies? Are we being honest with ourselves here? Failure story numbers are exponentially larger than their success counterparts, aren't they?

But should we do something here? Something to improve this? Perhaps something we can "learn" from another country or state? I personally don't think a country can learn from another - countries, why, even cities are like wild weeds burgeon out of nowhere in an abandoned land. In fact, I am only surprised at the similarities. It is virtually impossible to incorporate something at the grassroot level - at most, we can copy points from another Constitution.

Right, so, what do we do about it? Dismiss is as a negligible shortcoming and move on, back into our stereotype, boring lives that we deem unique and important because, well, we do need to survive? Perhaps we should take a little something out of this thought and, well, "live for ourselves" for a little while? Perhaps develop a strong value system - a set of principles to abide by? Others do that as well, don't they? So what? What does it matter that our lives are similar?

Yeah, well, that would certainly close this discussion, and would even dismiss the need for this article, but I can't help but think that we are chained in this life.

I guess life will end long before we find out. Unnoticed but by a few, and long forgotten before long. Yet, I hope it will mean something. At least to me.

Milking my heart: My experience with poetry

This post is not intended at bragging. I am posting it here as a mere diary entry to describe the state of my mind - more of my heart at this time. This is an investment that might serve as a reference to me at some time in the future, and, hopefully, also be something for people to relate to.

Channelised emotion is poetry*

Poetry.

It's a membrane to rupture..

A hymen, jealously guarded, if you will.. It is a question of it breaking once..

And once that happens, the flow continues, for as long as it does. It would be audacious of me to say that after that you can write at will..

Writers, why, any artist will agree with me when I say that there is little choice in art.. It happens when it does..

An artist has no right to be proud of his work.. It flows from somewhere through him out into the open.. I have found myself marvelling at my own work occasionally - amazed, surprised that I was able to do it.. The truth is that I never did anything.. It flowed through these hands that I deem mine..

So, yeah, poetry.. I always thought one had to be extremely emotional to be a poet, and for a very long time, I considered myself a cold, heartless man.. After the rupture, I realised that those meagre tinges of emotion that occasionally possessed me were sufficient to churn poems out of my heart.. All that was required was a tiny squeeze - not unlike that given to a wet sponge to release water.. Of course, one needs to be very comfortable with the language, so that there is no hindrance to the flow of thought as words - the translation should be so smooth and so swift that the writer is unable to notice it happening. And for that, he has to pay a price. Thoughts in the mind arise in sentences - or at least in phrases - as words, not as fragments of mindstuff. This can be a serious illness - perhaps others have ways to work around it, but it is something I suffer from. I think in words - perhaps that deters my thinking - inhibits, or at least slows it down. Perhaps I can be faster. I spend fractions of seconds in framing grammatically acceptable sentences even when thinking to myself - a cross I have to bear, I'm afraid. Aah, this is getting deeper than I imagined. Very well,..

In another plane, however, writing amounts to siphoning milk from a cow's udders - but it is to be remembered that whether to secrete or not is the organ's choice. Milking the heart for words doesn't sound very ethical - perhaps a case of taking undue advantage of something sensitive - self manipulative, in fact, but sometimes it helps one deal with the emotion. Sometimes you record it for future reference: as harmless (or harmful) a a diary. Sometimes the flow is unstoppable: you just have to write it, that's how I started.. The beauty is, this actually happens - but on its own, it cannot be forced. I, for one, never saw myself writing poems (I wouldn't call myself a poet even now) in this birth, but it came to me at a time when I least expected to write. In fact, some of the articles/poems that I consider my best ones came to me at times when I had tried to give up writing, at least temporarily, not unlike the shy lover who looks at the woman he loves when she is looking away.

Writing something down creates a potential difference that triggers the flow of writing that surprises the writer.. Yeah, and that's why my articles are long. Once the writing reaches the outer world from the inmost recesses of the universal Soul, it is labelled with the name of the medium it took to travel through - not the pen, not the sheet on which it is written, but the name of the man who held the pen. Yeah, another one of those ways in which the world works. And we do what were best at - we get used to things and "teach" our offspring that this is how things are.

No writeup on writeups can be complete without a word on the pride that fills a writer upon listening to genuine appreciation. Art for the sake of art is one thing, but a work of art is incomplete without its admirer. And the artist wants it too. If Sherlock Holmes can "flush(ed) up in pleasure" at "earnest words uttered" by Watson, I'm sure it cannot all be wrong.

And now I read this write up again, with my lips curling into a smile.

*Yes, I wrote that. A more generic definition would be, "Emotion channelised into words is poetry". (Quote appended on 21.4.2016 at 1:51am)

The Magic of Company

The human being is someone I am yet to understand - yes, the same thing applies to every other creature in nature, but I am choosing this particular being because, apparently I am one. I sometimes catch myself being surprised to look down and see a body - or to see a weirdly shaped being staring back at me from something called a mirror, which apparently reflects this body in which I am wrapped - the same way as "others" see it. Luckily, this state dissolves as swiftly as it comes, and the mind slides back to "normalcy" - if such a thing indeed exists.

And now, I'll move on to the topic.

I'd find this article incomplete without Saint Thyagaraja's line in his famous Telugu composition, "Entha nerchina", describing man as" కాంత దాసులే" (Kanta Dasu). While the statement labels man as a slave of women in particular, I will interpret it, albeit in a slightly erroneous manner, here as one who is desperate for company.

So, well, company. Um, right. Well, what's there to say? What is the .meaning of company? Why would a man crave another's presence? Social animal, obvio. Duh. But hang on, is it that obvious? Don't we also crave solitude? Don't we pick that silent corner in that restaurant, or a vacant seat on a bus or train? But then again, we also want people. When we want them. When we want people, we crave for them.

Craving for food, sex even solitude can be understood but what exactly does one gain in the presence of another? I am not talking along the lines of entertainment, dismissal of boredom or something. I am looking at a much deeper aspect of it.

What happens to a person in the presence of another person? There are cases of meeting a person changing one's life permanently. A meet between two people is beautifully described in English as 'sharing time' - a phrase that, when dived into, can be interpreted as the intertwining of moments from two lives, which stimulates a set of effects - positive ones being the generation of better ideas, an unconscious impact on on or both souls, a temporary (possibly overwhelming) flow of emotion, a change of perspective - or possibly none of these. Even in the absence of any lasting effect, there is a marked change in the two people who interact. They become something different from what they are when alone - it isn't merely pretence - a real change occurs, perhaps akin to the appearance of interference drag in aerodynamics. Scientifically safe statements would be to say that gravitational, electrical and magnetic flux lines between the people rearrange themselves, but that seems pointless to me now. At the very least, I'd say that the metaphysical is far more intriguing than the physical here. The biological is cliché, so that is out of the discussion here. The metaphysical is mysterious, and deserves to be admitted as being so.

I, for one, feel that emotions cannot be dismissed as merely electrical signals of brains or secretion of fluids. The living being sees it all, the insentient is the playground of science (as we know it) no doubt but it is limited and needs to be transcended. Generation of specific hormones is merely a convenient effect (thank you nature) for science to measure something, and I find it a dishonest when it is stated as the only event. Right, sorry about that.

So, yeah, meetings. If meetings are so useful why are work related meetings seldom useful? My answer would be this: a meeting has less to do with the brain, more with heart, and employees expected to be trained, heartless 'resources' when at work, hence defeating the very concept of sharing time - soultime, rather.

With all that said, I'm off to spend some time with people..

Another of those rants

Tough world to live in, I always thought. Sometimes I still do.

I keep wondering if I'm a man who was far behind his time - a man who should've probably been born in the 70's or 80's. As an engineer I would've preferred to have died before the world wars.

I've felt insecure, worried, incapable - of proving my worth in a planet with billions of similar beings whose mere presence reduces me to less than a speck.

Maybe I should just talk about my existence in my country. Still no more than a speck - perhaps I still don't qualify as even that. This is just among people - then there are achievers - in every possible field.

And then there are these people. These pointless parasites who waste the time of advocates, judges, professors, their families - and that of several million people across the country.

Am I talking of Kanhaiya Kumar, the man who was a pawn in the age old clichéd chess of politics? Well, not directly.

I'm talking about those who talk about him - and about thousands of other such creatures. These people have been paid to do exactly this. Waste your time. Do you even realise you are playing right into their hands?

Your angry talks, your social media posts, your reports on news channels and papers, your open letters that receive likes without being read - all these are just crap - just like this post of mine is going to become. Pieces of muck and garbage that swarm the internet like termites on old, wet wood.

But there's a difference. I'm not writing to be heard. I'm not trying to become famous.

I'm just venting out.

Get out there, people. Throw away those billboards that you hold without reading, those candles that you carry without knowing why. If you really care, go help someone. Or, maybe pray. It's not so bad, you know? Looking at how you waste your life away you have nothing to lose.

Get out there. Help someone live their life - just one person, just one day. Or keep quiet and live yours.

Get a life.

The H phenomenon

Among the several differences I have noted between North and South Indians in the pronunciation of words, one of the most vivid examples is the pronunciation of the word 'Dosa'. The first time I heard a North Indian pronounce the 'd' as in day instead of 'th' in 'thus', I was at Bangalore, and corrected him. Little did I know then, that this particular pronunciation was one that was spread throughout Non-South India (do correct me if I'm wrong).

Almost all restaurants in Maharashtra that serve South Indian food spell Dosa as "डोसा" (instead of "दोसा" which is the right spelling) in addition to its waiters pronouncing it in that manner. It didn't take me long to realize that this was a result of English's incompetence in expressing the right phonetics of a word from another language (sometimes even in itself). Due to the lack of Hindi knowledge in several parts of South India, especially the lack of four variants of the letter "க" in Tamil, English has been the only medium of communication and transliteration between Tamil and the rest of India - and needless to say, English has served its purpose rather poorly. Another stark example of this problem can be seen when Tamilians pronounce the word Dhaba as दाबा (தாபா) instead of ढाबा. The issue is that letter combinations such as "th" and "dh" are used in Hindi to indicate sounds of ठ and ध respectively while the same combinations imply त (த) and द (த - yeah, this is again the same letter, with only a variation in pronunciation). In Hindi, the difference between ट and त is not indicated in its English translation - it is understood based on usage. And this difference, if at all noticed (most notice it, thanks to WhatsApp's forwarded messages), is only ridiculed.

This merely shows the incapacity of English to connect two languages of a land which its people ruled for three centuries. Funnily enough, this is a language known to borrow heavily from other languages - I can't help but wonder why they couldn't - well, um, never mind.

It is not that the British didn't notice it - but they chose to change things in India rather than improving their language - clearly a case of wanting to change a mirror to look better. This is quite known, thanks to the fact that the names they gave to Indian provinces and towns still remain, notable ones being Bombay, Madras, Ooty, Travancore, Tuticorin and Cawnpore among others. The re-renaming of cities and states seems to be a futile attempt by India to regain total control over itself. It is just painful to see that even over six decades after British influence exited India (or rather, merely the Indian administration), the policy of divide still exists (thankfully the 'rule' portion doesn't), albeit totally unconscious of itself.

It will not be wrong to say that (the) English (pun intended) is (are) the reason why the North and South don't "get" each other. I cannot help but say, "Well done, Brits!"

And while I hang my head in shame at my forlorn endeavours to convince my fellow Indians to pronounce things the right way, I am filled with delight when I say that Dosas made anywhere in India are as authentic and delicious as the dishes served at Punjabi Dhaba in Chennai.

Well, we've got something right.

Now that I'm done ranting, I'll let you brood over which is better while I go and help myself to a delicious Mumbai dosa. Or dhosa. Or whatever.

Malleswaram - The soul of Bangalore?

The night's coolness penetrates into the core of my being, engulfing my spirit in a tight embrace. It is nothing short of an albeit shallow spiritual experience.

Sometimes someone or something comes into your life for a very short while, but fills it up in such a way that even in their subsequent absence, their memory can whisk you away irrespective* of where you are, invoking emotions associated with abstract, incomprehensible feelings that perhaps only you can understand. Even the person who understands you the most can only know that you’d prefer to be left alone at such times. Such is my relationship with Malleswaram, my Bangalore home. Well, not too far away – a mere 350 kilometers from Mylapore according to Google maps. Well, that is far enough for me, but I didn’t want to get too close either. My solitary days in Bangalore (ok, dear friends, I liked being with you too, please don’t stop reading my blog) were some of the best days of my life, and this sacred area certainly tops the list of things that made them so.

Malleswaram, having nurtured me during my first month at Bangalore, catering to both my dietary and religious needs, is, to me a mixture of temple and home. The very sound of the name, "Malleswaram" makes my heart skip a beat, triggering emotions in me that I associate with divinity and.. home. Flanked by Mantri mall and Sankey tank, this area is a home away from home for a Mylapore-bred, curd-rice eating, religiously inclined brahmin like myself.

Though an area spanning around 10 main, and 18 cross roads, the heart of Malleswaram, according to me at least, lies on Sampige and Margosa- two roads which happen to be 2nd and 3rd Main roads respectively. These two are certainly the busiest roads of Malleswaram, forever bustling with activity. The ratio of pedestrians and vehicles is such that it is hard to decide whether the road is busier, or the footpath, serving as a live example of choked flow at street junctions.

Named after the three-century-old Kadu Malleshwara Swamy Temple (also known as Kadu Mallikarjunaswamy Temple) which stands between 15th and 16th cross roads, with its entrances on 1st main road and Sampige road, Malleswaram houses scores of temples, and, unless I'm much mistaken, the number touches a hundred. The grandeur, however, lies in the fact that many of these temples are old enough to have stories that can be called history. Bangalore's temples are relatively far too small when compared to the several-acres-spanning temples of Tamil Nadu's temple towns, but that results in a far better maintenance of the place. Each temple is unique in its own way, evoking a special emotion, in me that I find impossible to explain. While Kadu Malleshwara houses a shrine for Lord Subrahmanya whose shrines are relatively rare to find in Karnataka, the adjacent Sai Baba temple is a completely different experience, with its marble architecture and peaceful silence. Walking further down Sampige Road toward the lower numbered crosses, one comes across smaller shrines including one for Ganesha and one for Shiva, before stumbling upon a Raghavendraswamy temple near 12th cross. To the right is a Yadugiri Madhwa Mutt and a right turn adjacent to it leads to Venugopalaswamy temple on 11th cross road - yet another spiritually uplifting place that is often seen to host spiritual discourses and the like.

A visit to Malleswaram is rudimentary without a walk on 8th cross, particularly the portion in between East and West Park roads. This is the busiest part of the area excluding Mantri Mall, its peak hours being between 6:30 and 8:30pm. Adorned by boutiques, fancy stores and the famous Hotel Janata, and sanctified by the Kannika Parameshwari temple, this road is my personal favourite. It is impossible for one to come here and not have his/her spirits lifted. The fruit and vegetable market on the East Park road adjacent to the Mahaganapati temple is, again a visual treat.

No writeup on Malleswaram is complete without mentioning its remarkable restaurants - each is special in its own way, and a handful of them deserve a dedicated chapter each in a book on Malleswaram. If you are a veggie in pursuit of good food, Malleswaram is your paradise. Restaurants - old and new, fill each row and column into which the locality is so beautifully arranged. The old ones include Shri Sagar - or as it is better known, CTR (central tiffin room) famed for its authentic 'benne' masala dosa, Janatha for its vada sambhar, Veena stores for their early breakfast (from 6:00am, yeah) and throughout the day tiffin, two branches of Asha Sweet center for their mouthwatering rasmalais and basundis, and, of course, a branch of Adyar Ananda Bhavan in case you have a tongue for the Tamil version of sambhar. And that isn't even half of the list. There are three independently managed "Iyer" messes to which office-going bachelors throng, particularly on weekends. The culinery Malleswaram is known to have new shops and restaurants opened at least once a month. I have found it difficult to recognize even my most frequented roads, on turning up after a month, owing to a couple of unfamiliar shops (Sudarshan Silks, for example), restaurants (like the new one opposite to Venugopalaswamy temple) and occasionally even entirely  new buildings (the aforementioned Sudarshan Silks again).

The compulsive non-veg eaters need not be dejected. A Chung's restaurant near Veena stores in 16th cross has received good reviews. The erstwhile purely vegetarian 8th cross is now guilty of a small placde that serves chicken. Malleswaram also has branches of Shanti Sagar, McDonalds and Adiga's which plague the rest of the city. There is a branch of Papa John's pizza opposite to Shanti Sagar (Pizza Corner used to have a branch there back in my time).

While I believe I have already caught the attention of shopping freaks, there's more. A little over a year back, a branch of Khadi Gramodyog Bhavan opened at 7th cross. I consider Sampige Road the T.Nagar of Bangalore, with shops for clothes ranging from small apertures to a five floor building for Reliance Trends, stores for pooja items, condiments, country drugs (nattu marundhu) and more. Second hand book sellers at 9th cross Sampige Road and Malleswaram circle (5th cross) attract hundreds of bookworms every day. Bangalore's only branch of Giri Trading Agency stands at a humble, almost unnoticeable corner of Malleswaram circle (note the pun). The flower and fruit market on 13th cross Sampige road is a must visit.

For others, the area is also home to a government library (City Central Library) and a BJP Party office.

I could go on and on about this holy environ - and I often wonder if this place holds the soul of Bengaluru.. Some may argue that areas like Basavanagudi and Ulsoor are quite similar too.. I may not be able to give a convincing answer, but Malleswaram surely is one with my soul - forever.

*This article is long overdue. Blogger indicates that my last edit was on 5.10.2014. I was worried that I might not be able to relate with Malleswaram any more, but the memories - rather, emotions are fresh.

The B/W delusion

I'm tired of watching films portraying the past in black and white, or in primitive colours.

I expect these films to show me what life was like back then, and all the pictures in my head are either black and white or pale yellow/pink backgrounded. Films are supposed to help you understand those times, but all one can see is how films looked back then.

This is a cliché, probably introduced by the West, but one that film-makers all around the world are afraid to step out of, even today, and it really needs to change.

Black and white photos look awesome, though.

Real-ising conditions

With English greedily accepting new terms coined by literally anyone (and the law being opulent in loopholes perhaps?), several "conditions of the body, and more importantly the mind, have received cool names. While some could be genuine problems owing to the ever-increasing pressure in today's era, one cannot help but wonder if some of these are just outcomes of melodrama.

And then there are long discussions about how such a person feels - particularly psychopaths, now that the media is projecting them as being cool.

Enough said.

A rant regarding the 'Passion Cliche'

The past 4-5 years have been all about following one's heart, realizing one's passion, and doing what makes one happy. I will not be so harsh as to blame solely the film, "3 Idiots" for this, but their contribution to what I call the "passion revolution" can not go unmentioned. It was a message from a film - a good one, no doubt, but one that has been blown to enormous proportions, causing a lot of irritation to the few level headed citizens of this country.

The current generation, though extremely mature in some respects, are pathetically misguided in others. Logical thinking is one arena where our generation scores, but we seem to have almost completely neglected the learning - wisdom, rather, that comes from experience. And for youngsters to be wise enough, they need to learn from others' experiences - and this is what I find lacking in today's youth. Being sceptical is good, but there are some things which should be accepted without questioning.

Life is too short for one to rediscover old knowledge for oneself. There is no better example that Newton's famous quote, "standing on the shoulder of giants". Acceptance is the best display of humility, and this, in my opinion, seems to have been lost somewhere in the most recent stage of the ever-happening, inevitable modernization. One can, however, not complain that people aren't listening to their elders these days, now that the latter have ceased advising their progeny. Older, experienced people are now seen merely as unconditional financers,

It surprises me when some people argue about looking at every aspect of life "scientifically", but upon observation, one can clearly see that logic governs hardly any activity, let alone a path one chooses in life. Birth and death may be considered as far fetched points in this context, but things even as simple as man's instinctive desire to get intoxicated and to temporarily suspend his intellect makes one wonder if man is entirely intellectual. And my answer to that is no: man is a mix of emotion and intellect - each portion trying hard to deny the existence of the other - few have achieved harmony between the two.

Funnily enough, no questions are asked about the recent (in my opinion, twisted) definition of fun as being alcohol consumption and/or sex is unanimously accepted (too cool to  be questioned, perhaps?) - and so are scientific articles that explains how "the brain" perceives things*, among scores of other such ambiguous areas that are coolly brushed aside. I feel that one must be humble enough to admit the fact that things aren't truly crystal clear, and a certain amount of arbitrariness is inexorable.

With that said, I'd say that while following one's heart sounds not-so-bad-ish, a little input from experienced elders in addition to the brilliance of one's own intellect will go a long way in ensuring that one's heart doesn't lead one into a gutter.

*It is said that a pain in the leg, for example, is communicated via some nervous system to the 'brain' which perceives it. One never asks how a perception by "the brain" ends the article. One might always ask, "How does this realization of the brain reach 'me'?" After all, a person who is brain dead isn't considered completely dead in the biological sense.