Images & Words

Untitled (acrylic on canvas)

2010-07-27T04:06:00.000+05:30

Cycle of life (acrylic on paper)

2010-07-23T12:52:00.005+05:30

My friend's Girl (ink on paper)

2010-04-15T10:02:00.003+05:30

Untitled

2010-04-07T20:48:00.000+05:30

Energy

2010-03-09T18:35:00.001+05:30

The single largest source of greenhouse gasses is our energy generation – energy in the form of electricity, heat, transportation... And almost all are fuled by fossil fuels with the result that for the first time in the last 650000 years the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has crossed the 250 ppm mark. Any guesses for where it stands now? 300? A staggering 400! And it is rising. This is a very disturbing fact. Geological studies have shown that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is directly proportional to the temperature of our planet. More burning of fossil fules, more the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere, which in turn further increases the temperature of earth.

Our energy requirements have risen constantly since the industrial revolution, and given the present population growth and our living standards, it will continue to grow at a higher pace than it is today. We cannont prevent that. How then, you may ask, can we prevent more greenhouse gases from entring the atmosphere? The answer is simple – stop using fossil fuels altogether! You laugh, thinking it is not feasible. It will require technological breakthroughs and will hamper the economic growth. It is feasible, even in the present technology.

It is possible to meet the entire energy requirement of our planet using just 4 renewable energy resources – solar, wind, water and geothermal. True that tapping these resources are costly in that they require heavy installation costs. But given that once they are installed they provide limitless energy almost for free, they are capable of paying their installation costs in a few years' time. In addition to that, take into account the rising fossil fuel prices and the cost to install new powerstations to meet the growing energy need and you have an option that is not only clean but profitable even at the current technology! And if the governments subsidise the use of renewable energy and levy taxes on old technology relying on fossil fuels then the industries would innovate new methods to tap energy from these resources more efficiently for further economic gains. At this stage I did not mention the fact that billions of tons of CO2 will be prevented from entering the earth's atmosphere per year if we go ahead with this.

Skeptics may say that I am painting a rosy picture. We cannot hope to power our planet with just sun, wind and water.That installing the equipment to harness these powers take up a lot of space that simply is not sustainable. But I am in earnest. And I am talking sense. The latter shouldn't be a problem. There is plenty of surface area on earth where wind mills, turbines and solar panels can be installed. Tubines can be installed along the coasts and wind mills can be installed in the shallow seas where there is constant wind, day and night. Solar panels can be installed in the deserts. Households and offices can install solar panels for their basic needs, relying on the grid only to compliment their supply. Farms can install wind mills and turbines and continue with the farming in the spaces between the individual mills. Series of small dams can be installed in the mountain streams and rivers without damaging the ecosystem. Wind turbines can be installed in tall skyscrapers like the trio installed between the two towers of the trade centre of Bahrain. At the same time energy efficent appliances can be installed – CFL, for instance, instead of incandescent bulbs. Buildings can be designed to use natural daylight and can be insulated to cut down on heating or cooling costs. For transportation we can have electric cars running on electricity. Better public transport system can be designed for comprehensive coverage and energy efficiency.

There is a problem though – the sun does not always shine, the wind does not always blow. However, it is more or less true that when the day is clear, the sun shines and when the sun is not shining, it is windy. The key is to use all 4 resources at tandem. Hydroelectricity and geothermal energy are available at all the time. These can be complimented by solar energy during the day along with wind energy. The morning and evening tides can provide additional source of energy. It is seen that the highest consumption of energy is during the day at the peak office hours. Incidently, it is also when the sun shines at its brightest!

It is clear that we have the resources and the technology. What we lack is a political will. The fossil fuel lobby is a very strong one and they would not easily let go of the power and money that they are used to. They pressurise the governments into forming policies that are advantageous to them. Some governments even subsidise fossil fuels (ours, for instance, that subsidise diesel and kerosene). The need is for strong iniciatives by the governments of diferent countries and not succumb to the pressure of oil and fossil fuel barons.

Untitled (Ink on paper)

2010-02-15T15:17:00.000+05:30

Reducing your carbon footprint.

2010-02-13T08:36:00.003+05:30

Here's how:

turn off the electrical devices when not in use – lights, tv, dvd players, computers and don't leave them in stand-by. They continue to consume power in that mode.
Cut down on the use of heaters and air conditioning. It is stupid to be wearing shorts inside your homes in the middle of winters and sleeping in quilts in summer. One way could be switching them off at night before sleeping once the room has cooled down enough in summers or warmed up in winters.
When doing laundary, make sure your washing machine is filled to full load. Do it once a week if you have to. This will save electricity as well as water.
Use pressure cooker for cooking. Cover the pans with lids. Heat up only as much water in kettles as required.
Travel less. Do your weekly shopping in a single trip. Car pool. Use public transport when possible and walk or cycle to the public transport station. For short journeys walk or cycle. Ask your employer if it is possible to work from home once a week.
Buy energy saving electrical appliances. They may be more expensive to buy and install than regular appliances but they will prove economical in the long run.
Use fuel economy cars and bikes. Turn off the engine at red lights. Try to Drive at a constant pace and don't brake or accelerate often. Maintain a good tyre pressure.
Don't buy bottled water if tap water is safe to drink. Install a water filter at home other than relying on bottled water.
Buy fruits and vegetables that are grown locally and are in season. Transporting exotic varieties and varieties that are not in season leads to consumption of energy directly. And indirectly as a result of storing them in cold storage.
Follow the 3 R's – reduce (your consumption) . Reuse (materials that has once been used, like a plastic bag or bottle). Recycle. Try not to consume use and throw products.
Cut down on use of paper. Read newspaper online if you can. Don't print your emails unless necessary. In fact don't print anything unless necessary. Use electronic medium as much as possible. Like that idea ad!

solid waste management

2010-02-13T02:15:00.004+05:30

Save our planet. Sustainable development. Green technology....we hear these phrases and terms more often than Tiger Wood changes his girlfriend. And yet we take them at their face value and not think over them. For example, how many of you have heard about the use of jute bag instead of plastic? I congratulate you if you haven't. Why? Simply because using jute instead of plastic is just not sustainable. How, you may ask. It's simple math. Jute bags are made out of jute. Which is a crop, which like other crops needs land for cultivation and, if not organically grown, fertilisers, insecticides etc. So far so good. Problem is, we are a nation of over a billion people. Growing jute to meet the demands of such a large population is simply not sustainable. Jute needs certain specific geographical conditions to grow, the most suited of which is the Ganges delta. The Ganges delta is also most suited for another living thing – tigers. It is either them or jute bags.

A more sustainable approach would be to use artificial materials (plasitc?) and then recycle or reuse them. Waste management is what we should be looking at instead of lobbying for something that only looks good on paper, pleases a few environmentalists and fools people into thinking that they are going green (ethanol, anyone?). Alomst everything that we manufacture can be recycled – metal, paper, glass, building materials and even plastic. And when i say recycle, i am not talking rocket science. The technology exists today to seggragate materials from a heap of junk, collect them together and recycle them. Plastic bottles can be made into high strength bridges. Your discarded cd player can yeild gold and mercury – some very precious metal. The waste news paper can be turned into dazzling white photo print paper. All we need is a will to do this. That and political support.

And if you think recylcing is too much of a trouble then how about creating electricity from your waste? And for doing so you don't even need to seperate materials into different stacks. All you need is a chamber where you introduce high voltage eletctricity that can heat up the waste to disintigrate it into its elemental form, and in the process produce electricity. It does not discriminate between different types of waste – hospital waste, baby diapers, toxic metallic wates, radial tyres...they are all same. The process i am talking about is “plasmagassification” and it works on a simple principle. You create in a close chamber an artificial lightening by introducing high voltage electricity between two electrodes. The heat would instantly transform any material that is in the viscinity into plasma – the fourth state of matter (you heat up solid and you get liquid. You heat up liquid you get gas. You heat up gas and you get plasma – the same material that is in the sun, and all the stars). And in doing so releases emmense ammount of electricity that not only helps the incinirating plant to be self-sustaining but also produce excess that can provide electricity to the second party. Whats more! The end product of this process is miniscule ammount of slag – a material that can be used in buildning, roads and even jwellery. A ton of waste leaves a little more than a kilo of slag. Thats 0.1% residue.

Think about the acres of arable land we can save from unsustainable land fills. The precious ground water we can protect from contamination due to toxic metals and greenhouse effect we can abate by checking the release of methane and CFC into the atmosphere...

a thought

2010-02-11T09:43:00.011+05:30

this is a view of a mayan pyramid which was lost in the forests of mexico. the civilisation existed merely 1000 years ago and this same spot was site to over 50000 strong human city. now barely the remains of that great civilisation exist. in its place has spawned a dense tropical forest. the rise and fall of the mayan civilisation might be an important event in human history, but not for the earth. this same spot has witnessed something much more dramatic. some 65 million years ago a meteor struck our earth at this spot which was instrumental in wiping out the entire population of dinosaurs. but there is no sign that tells us that such an event took place, not to an untrained eye. and even the paleontologists had to really scratch the surface to discern that. the earth is more robust than we think she is. so is life. she has witnessed more destruction and worse calamities than the present climate change. and she can deal with everything that we throw at her for she has something that we don't - time. we can cut down all her forest, burn all the available resource of fossil fuel, fill her atmosphere and land and seas with toxic wastes, wipe out entire populations of wildlife and yet she will take only a few lakh years to repair the damage that we do her. and new species will evolve to fill the fresh environment. only, we don't have that luxury (of time). we should protect our environment not for the sake of earth and our fellow living beings, but for ourselves. earth is more than capable of taking care of herself.

Untitled (acryilc on paper)

2010-01-11T08:38:00.001+05:30

Untitled (acrylic on paper)

2010-01-11T08:37:00.000+05:30

Untitled (acrylic on paper)

2010-01-11T08:36:00.000+05:30

Nude (acrylic on canvas)

2010-01-11T08:35:00.000+05:30

King and Queen (acrylic on canvas)

2010-01-11T08:34:00.000+05:30

Shades of Grey (acrylic on canvas)

2010-01-11T08:33:00.000+05:30

Abstract (acrylic on canvas)

2010-01-11T08:15:00.000+05:30

Two suns in a sunset (oil on canvas)

2009-10-25T12:44:00.000+05:30

Syd (Ink on paper)

2009-10-25T12:40:00.000+05:30

Nude (ink on paper)

2009-10-25T12:31:00.000+05:30

Guitar Player (Oil on paper)

2009-10-25T12:28:00.000+05:30

Gift (ink on paper)

2009-10-25T12:24:00.000+05:30

Hurt (oil on paper)

2009-10-25T12:17:00.001+05:30

high

2009-10-08T23:46:00.001+05:30

ok. i shouldn't be doing this. but i am high. grass makes you so. and i have been stupid enough to be rolling joints in the middle of my exams...nah. i don't have a paper tomorrow. hence this. state of mine. you know there might be truth in the phrase "don't drink and drive but dope and fly". i feel like i am 10 kgs right now... you must be thinking. here is a chap. who was all prety sane when he last corresponded. what could've happened in all this time? aha! but you are mistaken. rememeber curious case of sanki at nighttime? by the way you become very smooth when you are high. not only in your movement but also in your action. all this while i did not once use the "backspace". it is true. your senses become very strong in a state of high....trance...perhaps this was the reason for budhha's nirvana...i don't know. i am blabbering shit. i should go back to pink floyd and not bother you anymore. so long and thanks for all the joints (i am a geek and so is my humour. live with it)

Eve

2009-07-30T21:57:00.000+05:30

Shrouded in black

she hops after

the dark seeds

encased in apple flesh.

She stands and caws,

one foot gripping

apple skin.

Her beak pokes,

brings up

a sweet offering.

Awkward effort

to retrieve

the pebbles

at the core.

Black tear drops

she has never shed.

Lose Yourself

2009-03-27T17:43:00.002+05:30

Why fear the unknown? Why fear the heights? Why fear death? Why fear loss? Why fear embarrassment? Forget the world, do what you do best, live your dream however silly it may seem. Dare to say NO. Dare to face your enemy. Dare to appologise and Dare to say I love you.You know you're good. You just assume the opposite. Who cares what they think.Who gives a hoot what your partner thinks. Wake up, quit the damn cigarette, quit the alcohol. join a damn gymn. get new wardrobe. dump your annoying partner. Tell your mum you've grown up. Tell your bestfriend he's a pest friend. leave everything, everyone. take your life in your hands, start afresh. Find yourself... Be somebody.

the curious case of sanki at nighttime

2009-03-20T09:11:00.001+05:30

i am going to drop dead any moment...drop sleep, nonetheless. been awake for 40 hrs straight, and in that period i was traveling in a sleeper compartment of a train during a journey that took me 38 hours to complete. i was also making arrangements for the art exhibition that was due the next day (today), drinking beer. drinkng more beer with friends atop the highest building of the campus (dept of fuel and mineral engg's water tank which is situated above the 5th floor. now that episode is interesting in its own right. we snekaed into the building, laden with beer and grass, around the closing time of the department. we managed to reach the top of the building, our haven, without any incidents. and we happily drank our beer and smoked our weed. however, it was when our time to leave the building when the problem arose. the buggers had locked it up! at first we rejoiced. being locked up in the building we did quite crazy stuff...along the lines of things that a person does when he is locked up in a building. we didn't not panic though, not yet. instead, we re-arranged the interior of the building. flower pots shifted. banners exchanged. chairs and tables stacked atop each other. and other random stuff along the same line of action...though some cannot be told! this is when panic struck. here we were. locked up in a foreign building, waiting to be shot like a fish in the barrel. then one of us had this crazy idea. i think it was me. but anyway. one of us had spotted a tall bamboo ladder attatched to the southeren face of the building. it went from roof to all the way to the bottom, well almost. but thatis inconsequential. however there were some minor problems. a: it was made in the manner of those used by construction workers. so it was shaky. and quite loosely attached to the building by thin jute rope. the bamboos themselves were thin and looked doubtful of supporting our weight. not even mine (the lightest of the lot). b: the distance between one step of the ladder and the next was bloody 7 feet! so we had to literally hang on our hands so that our toes barely touched the next step, drawves that we are. so inebriated as we were, we climbed down. the other alternative was certain death. in a manner of speaking, of course. we climbed down 5 stories, with no harness to protect us. nothing but our hands and feet, mind was already out. you are not supposed to look down when you are climbing down 5 stories via a shaky makeshift ladder. and survived. with minor cuts and brusises which we didn't mind then (but which became a terrible pain the next day (today)). our sense of adventure did not stop here. we got more weed. and we had a car at our disposal...

to be continued.

PS: it was written yesterday in the gallery. i was too tired to post it and i slept for 13 straight hours.

Audrey

2009-02-28T00:48:00.001+05:30

Dream

2009-02-25T22:18:00.003+05:30

Sisters

2009-02-22T22:35:00.002+05:30

Norma Jean

2009-02-21T18:58:00.001+05:30

Tree of Life

2009-02-21T18:53:00.000+05:30

Portrait of a Friend

2009-02-18T13:19:00.001+05:30

Void

2009-02-17T00:22:00.001+05:30

and another one

2009-02-12T23:24:00.001+05:30

Untitled

2009-02-10T23:54:00.000+05:30

Ink!

2009-02-04T23:45:00.001+05:30

This is what i do when i am supposed to study. No wonder my grades are in pits.

Mandolin Player (oil on paper)

2009-01-27T19:44:00.001+05:30

Abstract (oil on paper)

2009-01-26T19:33:00.000+05:30

events of the night of 14th january and the mornming of 15th january

2009-01-24T12:54:00.001+05:30

last night was crazy and i am still feeling as if the world is going round in circles. it started at 6 in the eve. got 2 liters of cocktail. equal portions of vodka and pomegranate juice with some ginger and lime
there were 5 of us. later, the same set went and had 2 beers each. then we realised one of us was born on that day, which meant whisky. lots of it. which also meant a lot of stupidity.

at three in the morning there i was, in front of the girls' hostel lying on the road with two of my friends and a bike. the chap who was riding it decided to do a wheely with 3 of us sitting on it. it went a teeny bit higher than he had anticipated. it was bloody full 90 degree lift! and you can't balance a bike which is standing straight on it's rear wheel with two other people on it, let alone trying to do that drunk. so we fell. and bruised our elbows. And also busted the silencer of the bike. which made it sound like a bullet. anyhow, we got more whisky (the reason we had taken out the bike in the first place). doing something like 80 kmph on a bike that was sounding like a bad record and had no brakes. someone also slapped the guard of the girls' hostel. someone had dared one of us to do that.

we came back. to my room. and decided to listen to mohd. rafi. there is certain quality to mohd rafi that only surfaces when you are reeling under the effect of alcohol. you actually start believing in what he sings we believed we were a bunch of junglees (remember yahoo! chahe koi mujhe junglee kahe...?). and behaved like them - jumping on top of each other, dancing to the song and generally laughing to death. all this jumping and dancing had made us sweaty (remember, it was the middle of winter...at 3 in the morning) so we decided to come out for a breath of fresh air.

my room's on the 2nd floor. and we got dared again. this time to jump on to the roof of the hostel mess, which is 10-12 meters down from the balcony. i was about to jump, but then decided i am not drunk enough. but we did stand on the railing, drunk as we were and peed on to the ground below. more revelry continued....along the lines of above narrated program. we ran out of water so we started taking whisky shots. more slapping. and then i decided i need a fag and some tea (i was planning to attend lectures in the morning). so this chappie and i went to the railway station. again doing 80 kmph. no breaks. this time on a busy road. our feet froze, so did our entire body. we were brainy enough not to wear anything warm and go in our bathroom slippers. anyway we went, had our tea and sutta, got stared at by every passerby (including a policeman) and came back. by the time we were back, the other 3 bastards had gone to sleep. but we decided to go for the lectures anyway. it was about time too. so we went, smelling badly of alcohol...and sat in the second row (we never sit in the second row) with the entire hall spinning in front of us.

prof was teaching something about 8086 chip. and the ladies in the front row kept looking back at us. i have a feeling they could smell us. so there we were, in the second row. with only 15 people in the class. and trying bloody hard not to laugh. which was hard, particularly for me, for my friend there was banging his head on the desk. one thing bad about alcohol is that it makes you believe in yourself. so we started giving proxies for all our friends, shouting yes sirs at the top of our voices. which was not a good idea considering the thin attendance at the lecture. we were lucky the prof didn't catch us. at the end of the lecture we decided we are in no shape to attend lectures.

a: we hadn't slept the night.
b: we were up getting ourselves drunk as any fish had ever been
c: we were still inebriated.

we all had a feeling we were gonna die but we went back to the room and finished off the remaining whisky anyway. we made life hell for our neighbours, but i don't think they complained. they were treated to free live entertainment. thankfully no one got killed except for the silencer of the bike which didn't belong to us anyway. it was a senior's. throughout the day we were cursing ourselves and drinking water. haven't eaten anything since yesterday afternoon. and i still feel a bit wobbly. not gonna touch alcohol for a long long time...but there's a party tomorrow. sigh!

Being in the Twenties

2009-01-13T18:21:00.001+05:30

The following is an email forward which is pretty much accurate and i thought I'd share it with you

It is when you stop going along with the crowd and start realizing that there are many things about yourself that you didn't know and may not like.You start feeling insecure and wonder where you will be in a year or two, but then get scared because you barely know where you are now.

You start realizing that people are selfish and that, maybe, those friends that you thought you were so close to aren't exactly the greatest people you have ever met, and the people you have lost touch with are some of the most important ones. What you don't recognize is that they are realizing that too, and aren't really cold, catty, mean or insincere, but that they are as confused as you.

You look at your job... and it is not even close to what you thought you would be doing, or maybe you are looking for a job and realizing that you are going to have to start at the bottom and that scares you. Your opinions have gotten stronger. You see what others are doing and find yourself judging more than usual because suddenly you realize that you have certain boundaries in your life and are constantly
adding things to your list of what is acceptable and what isn't. One minute,
you are insecure and then the next, secure.

You laugh and cry with the greatest force of your life. You feel alone and scared and confused. Suddenly, change is the enemy and you try and cling on to the past with dear life, but soon realize that the past is drifting further and further away, and there is nothing to do but stay where you are or move forward.

You get your heart broken and wonder how someone you loved could do such damage to you. Or you lie in bed and wonder why you can't meet anyone decent enough that you want to get to know better. Or maybe you love someone but love someone else too and cannot figure out why you're doing this because you know that you aren't a bad person. You want to settle down for good because now all of a sudden that becomes top priority. Getting wasted and acting like an idiot starts to look pathetic.You begin to think a companion for life is better than a hundred in the shack and for once you would not mind standing tall for that special someone which otherwise you had never thought of until now.You go through the same emotions and questions over and over, and talk with your friends about the same topics because you cannot seem
to make a decision. You worry about loans, money, the future and making a life for yourself... and while winning the race would be great, right now you'd just like to be a contender!

What you may not realize is that every one reading this relates to it.We are in our best of times and our worst of times, trying as hard as we can to figure this whole thing out. Send this to your twenty-something friends.... maybe it will help someone feel like they aren't alone in their state of confusion...

We call it the "Quarter-life Crisis"

Boxers (oil on canvas)

2008-12-16T11:44:00.000+05:30

Existentialism

2008-11-02T10:05:00.000+05:30

WOODY ALLEN: That's quite a lovely Jackson Pollock, isn't it?

GIRL IN MUSEUM: Yes it is.

WOODY ALLEN: What does it say to you?

GIRL IN MUSEUM: It restates the negativeness of the universe, the hideous lonely emptiness of existence, nothingness, the predicament of man forced to live in a barren, godless eternity, like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void, with nothing but waste, horror, and degradation, forming a useless bleak straightjacket in a black absurd cosmos.

WOODY ALLEN: What are you doing Saturday night?

GIRL IN MUSEUM: Committing suicide.

WOODY ALLEN: What about Friday night?

GIRL IN MUSEUM: [leaves silently]

["Play It Again, Sam", 1972]

Existentialists believe you should live in a way which made you feel real, and that the real thing to do was the right thing too. The selfish man who never once put himself out for another -- not even for his wife -- would have approved of existentialists, and they of him. It was very existentialist, perhaps, to go out to bars every night while your pregnant wife stayed at home, and even more existentialist to go off with girls -- young existentialist girls -- you met in bars. It was a good life being an existentialist, although not too good for all the other, non-existentialist people around one.

In the 1988 movie Beetlejuice, we meet a young couple (Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin) who have met an untimely death and find themselves involuntarily haunting their own home. They eventually discover that they have access to a kind of administrative center for the afterlife. As they enter the waiting room for the center, through a one-way turnstyle, we notice that a sign over the door says:

NO EXIT

This is an allusion to another story about the afterlife, a play by Jean Paul Sartre (1905-1980) called, indeed, No Exit (1944). The allusion is apt since neither version of the afterlife is very appealing. In Sartre's play, a man and two women find themselves trapped in a hotel room. They have been escorted into the room without knowing how or why they are even in the hotel or what they are supposed to be doing in the room together. Once they are in the room, however, they discover that they cannot get out and that all their efforts to summon help are fruitless. They also discover a rather unpleasant dynamic among themselves. The man is attracted to one of the women, but she happens to be a lesbian and is only attracted to the other woman. The other woman, however, is not a lesbian and is rather attracted to the man -- who, of course, does not find her attractive. Soon they realize that they have died and that this is the afterlife, the wrong kind of afterlife. They are in hell, and the lesson of the play is nicely summed up as, "Hell is other people."

Existentialism proper is a movement of the 1940's and 1950's, literary and artistic as well as philosophical, with Sartre himself as probably the most famous representative. Sartre is also a convenient representative because for a time he actually acknowledged being an Existentialist and offered a definition for the word. It was unusual for Existentialists to identify themselves as such, much less define what it was all about, so Sartre is a convenient place to begin.

What Sartre did was to contrast a divine viewpoint on the world and on human nature with a human viewpoint where there is no divine element. Thus, when God thought about creating the world, he conceived it first -- he had in mind what the world was going to be and what human nature was going to be. These were the "essences" of the world and of humanity, the things that will make them what they are. Then God created everything and gave existence to the essences. Thus, to God, "essence precedes existence." Now, Sartre did not believe in God, so there was no place for the essence of humanity to be before human existence. To us, existence comes first. The essence comes later. Indeed, the essence is whatever we decide it is going to be. So, from our point of view things are just the opposite of what they would be for people who believed in God. Now it is "existence precedes essence." Hence, "Existentialism."

The most important thing there for Sartre is not so much the distinction between essence and existence but the absence of God. For Existentialists like Sartre, the absence of God has a much larger significance than the metaphysics of creation: Without God there is no purpose, no value, and no meaning in the world. That is the foundational proposition for Existentialism. A world without purpose, value, or meaning is literally senseless, worthless, meaningless, empty, and hopeless. It is, to use a favourite Existentialist term, absurd.

To be without value and meaning is also to be without standards for behaviour. A favourite quote in that respect is from Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881), a novelist who himself was a Christian but who has characters that often display what later will seem to be Existentialist attitudes and ideas. One of those characters (in The Brothers Karamazov, 1879-1880) says (in effect), "Without God, all is permitted." Indeed, if the loss of God means the loss of all meaning and value, then actions are without meaning or value either, and one cannot say that it matters whether actions are "right" or "wrong," since those words, or the corresponding actions, don't mean anything more than anything else.

Now, when Existentialism was popular, it struck many people as liberating and enjoyable to think of the world as absurd and behaviour without limitations. But the real value of Existentialism as a philosophical thought experiment was to understand the true consequences of such a world. It would be a nightmare. An absurd world, and everything else in it, is actually empty and pointless. There is no reason to do anything, even to continue living. Thus, in Woody Allen's 1972 movie Play It Again Sam, in one scene he is trying to pick up a girl in a museum and asks her about the dark abstract painting that she is looking at. She answers with an Existentialist catalogue -- "void," "emptiness," "horror," etc. When he then asks her out, she answers, "I am committing suicide." That, indeed, would seem to be the obvious response to such a world.

The starkness and hopelessness of this problem is portrayed in an essay, "The Myth of Sisyphus" (1942), by another great French Existentialist, Albert Camus (1913-1960). In Greek mythology, Sisyphus, who had once deceived the gods and cheated death, was condemned for eternity to roll a stone up a hill. Every time he was about to complete his task, the stone would roll free back down to the bottom of the hill. Sisyphus would then have to start over again, even though the same thing would just happen again. Thus, the punishment of Sisyphus is a punishment just because it is an endless exercise in futility. Sisyphus is stuck in an eternally pointless task. Now, if the world and everything in it are also pointless, the lesson is that the task of Sisyphus is identical to every thing that we will ever be doing in life. We are no different from Sisyphus; and if his punishment makes the afterlife a hell for him, we are already living in that hell.

Presumably, Sisyphus is unable to escape his condition through suicide. So if we can, why not? Arguably, there is no reason why not. But suicide is not the typical Existentialist answer. What can Sisyphus do to make his life endurable? Well, he can just decide that it is meaningful. The value and purpose that objectively don't exist in the world can be restored by an act of will. Again, this is what has struck people as liberating about Existentialism. To live one's life, one must exercise the freedom to create a life. Just going along with conventional values and forgetting about the absurdity of the world is not authentic. Authenticity is to exercise one's free will and to choose the activities and goals that will be meaningful for one's self. With this approach, even Sisyphus can be engaged and satisfied with what he is doing.

The novel The Stranger (1942), by Camus, is set in Algeria. It is about a fellow whose mother dies but who can't stand sitting up at her wake. He leaves, and offends the community by his evident disrespect. Later, he kills a local Arab. This is not something that the French colonial judicial system would ordinarily take very seriously, but local French opinion is so unsympathetic with our "stranger," just because he left his mother's wake, that he is condemned for the killing of the Arab. The absurdity of all this is the point of the story. An Existentialist is always a stranger to others and is certainly going to have no patience with conventions like wakes for the dead or, for that matter, laws about murder.

The isolation produced by Existentialist value decisions also explains why few Existentialists are self-identified as such. Calling someone an "Existentialist" imposes an essence on them, telling them what they are. This violates their absolute autonomy and freedom and makes it sound like they actually have something important in common with some other people, other Existentialists. This is intolerable.

Sartre himself felt the moral loss involved in all this. Traditional ideas about moral responsibility disappeared when there was nothing meaningful to be responsible about. Sartre consequently tried to compensate for this by introducing a new, strengthened sense of responsibility. His view was that one is "responsible" for all the consequences of one's action, whether it is possible to know about them or not. He illustrated this in a short story about the Spanish Civil War. A young Republican partisan is captured by the Fascists. He is told that he will be executed unless he betrays some other Republicans who are considered more important. Not knowing, in fact, where they are, he makes up a story that they are hiding in a cemetery on the edge of town. He is then put in a cell. Later, the Fascists return and release him. What happened? Well, it turned out, just by chance, that the Republicans he pretended to betray actually were hiding in the cemetery, and were captured. So it's his fault.

Now, what is the point of this story? The man is, after a fashion, "responsible" for the capture, and probably execution, of the other Republicans; but the problem with this notion of responsibility is that one cannot govern or alter one's behaviour on the basis of things that one cannot know about. You may be "responsible" for all the consequences of your actions, but if you don't know what they all are, then it really doesn't make any difference. This is why traditional morality and law have the category of "negligence," that one is responsible for things that one could know about but didn't bother to find out. Things that one cannot know about cannot impose any obligation.

It leaves out the original meaning of "responsibility," which was "accountability." It doesn't really matter that you cannot alter your behaviour on the basis of consequences that you cannot know, because you are not accountable for your behaviour anyway. The man in the story is not going to be brought to trial before either God or man, much less punished. Being "responsible" for the deaths of the other Republicans just means he will feel bad about what he has made happen. That's it.

This is just a version of what the ordinary meaning of "responsible" has come to be, namely "conscientious." A responsible person is a conscientious person, which means someone who is trying to do the right thing. Now, in Existentialism there is no "right" thing, so what can "conscientious" possibly mean? It just means that one meant to do something and accepts it. One accepts and acknowledges the consequences of one's action, and "accepts responsibility," because one really intended to do the action. The opposite, not accepting one's own actions or just doing something because it is expected, is "bad faith," the only real sin in Existentialism. But this just means that any action is OK, as long as one "accepts" it, not that one should be called to account or punished for it because, after all, "all is permitted."

"Taking responsibility" has become a way of denying accountability, deflecting true responsibility, and diverting blame to others. Sartre thus can be said to have altered the meaning of "responsible" in just the way that he wanted, which is to create a lot of moral sounding talk while actually eliminating morality. This may be been convenient for Sartre himself, whose own actions may not have been above moral reproach. Although Sartre is commonly said to be have been in the French Resistance during World War II, he staged plays, which had to be submitted to the German censors, in Paris. Camus suspected, consequently, that Sartre was more involved in collaboration than in resistance. Again, although Sartre had a famous relationship with the feminist Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986), stories persist that he actually treated her very badly, and that the later years of their relationship consisted of her acting as a procuress for him -- then he left his estate to his most recent lover, not to de Beauvoir.

Would Existentialism consistently dictate a certain political attitude? One would hardly think so if "all is permitted," but one need not appeal to logic, only to another conspicuous Existentialist figure, the philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976]. The enduring, embarrassing detail about Heidegger, however, is that he enthusiastically joined the Nazi Party and somehow never got around to explaining just why he had made that mistake or why, for that matter, the Nazi Party was really unworthy of his attention. Nazism followed much more coherently from Heidegger's thought than Marxism ever did from Sartre's. That is because, as a true Existentialist, Heidegger did not impose any timeless moral judgments, let alone liberal or democratic ones, on history. Instead, events were supposed to disclose, violently, a new "uncovering" of Being, which would overthrow previous views about justice and order. This is no less than what Hitler was doing.

Although one might think this all would have discredited Heidegger in the post-War world, we have already seen how philosophers like Sartre had been busy undermining the forms of traditional moral judgment. Thus, Heidegger's influence actually grew after the War, even in France, where a celebrated philosopher like Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) said that there is nothing in his thought that was not already in Heidegger.

The Marxism of Sartre and the Nazism of Heidegger are sufficient to prove that Existentialism, which already denies any reality to moral principles, can randomly be associated with any sort of politics. Oddly, what it seems less conspicuously to be associated with is liberal and free market politics, which were despised, not just by Sartre and Heidegger, but by most other Existentialist figures and their spiritual descendants. One might think that this is because intellectuals find private life and hard work boring; but then, after the "Myth of Sisyphus," one might think that any mundane task could be valorised into the most important thing ever. The truth seems to be that Existentialists never really believed that life was as meaningless as the task of Sisyphus. They actually demanded a real world of meaning vast beyond the confines of ordinary life. Thus, Marxism probably appealed to Sartre because of its pretence that it was scientific and about facts, and, as it happens, Heidegger did not really have the classical Existentialist belief in the meaninglessness of the world. The "uncovering" of Being made for real value, however "terrible," which means that Adolf Hitler gave real meaning to the world.

Although the classic forms of Existentialism are characteristic of post-World War II philosophy, literature, and art, we have already seen, with Dostoevsky, that Existentialist-like ideas were anticipated long before then. Dostoevsky, although articulating the ideas, did not believe them; but there were real Existentialists-before-their-time. The most important was certainly Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). There are at least three ways in which Nietzsche qualifies as a classic Existentialist, all of which we can see in what may have been his magnum opus, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-1885).

The title itself is a bit of a puzzle. "Zarathustra" is a German rendering of Zarathustra, the name in the language of the Avesta (Avestan), the sacred scripture of Zoroastrianism, of the founder of that religion, the Prophet Zoroaster (his name in Greek). Since Zoroaster preached a great cosmic conflict between Good and Evil, this is perplexing: Nietzsche denies the reality of good and evil. But that may be the point. What Zoroaster started, he has now been brought back to end.

1. Sartre's thought was founded on the non-existence of God as implying the non-existence of all value. Nietzsche expressed precisely this same thing in one of the most famous sayings in the history of philosophy, "God is dead". Since Nietzsche did not believe that there ever was a God, this expresses his view that the effective belief in God was dead, but he has a bit of fun with the metaphor of dying, decay, smell, etc. Unlike Sartre, he is a bit clearer that this is a catastrophe, since it leaves nothing; it leaves, indeed, Nihilism (Latin nihil="nothing"), which is the condition of not believing anything and having nothing to live for. Life cannot be lived like this and it is intolerable. Thus, if Existentialism in general is more profound than the thoughtless souls who think that an absurd world is fun, Nietzsche is a more profound thinker than the Existentialists who think that we can do without a God. Nietzsche's replacement for God is the Ubermensch. This was originally translated "Superman" since the Latin super means "over," as does German uber. In the 30's, however, a comic strip was started about "Superman," who could leap tall buildings in a single bound, etc. This made the philosophers and intellectuals uncomfortable, so later translators of Nietzsche, like the Existentialist Karl Jaspers (1883-1969), started translating Übermensch as "Overman." This does not, however, have nearly the same punch or ring to it. The Superman, indeed, is supposed to be the next evolutionary step beyond mere man -- where we really must say "man," and not "humanity" or any of the politically correct alternatives, since Nietzsche was not very interested in women and clearly despised the sort of liberal culture where equality for women was coming to hand. When Nietzsche says "man" (Mensch), he means it -- someone egotistical, brawling, aggressive, arrogant, and insensitive. The Superman is not vulnerable to taming and domesticity. He has broken free of it entirely.

2. The Superman is free because all his own values flow from his own will. This is the second thing that makes Nietzsche an Existentialist-before-his-time. Value is a matter of decision, a matter of will. Because the Superman is free, he takes what he wants and does what he likes. He is authentic. And since what everyone really wants, if they could have their way, is power, the Superman will seize power without remorse, regret, or apology. The Superman, indeed, is like the Sophist Thrasymachus in Plato's Republic: Justice is what he wants, and he will take it. The "slave morality" of altruism and self-denial, which the weak, miserable, crippled, envious, and resentful have formulated into Judeo-Christian ethics, in an attempt to deceive the strong into being weak like themselves, is contemptuously rejected and ignored by the Superman, in whom we find the triumphant "will to power."

It is astonishing that this nasty and contemptuous philosophy has become the darling of the Left, who actually want a society very precisely of the "slave morality" of altruism and self-denial. Perhaps it is because (1) leftist intellectuals know that ordinary people don't actually read Nietzsche, and (2) that they see everyone else as slaves to them, where the masters' duty, noblesse oblige, is to arrange everyone else's lives in the proper way. This is certainly the most common use of Nietzsche from Adolf Hitler to Bal Thackeray – to imagine one's self as the Superman, floating above others, dispensing justice, or wrathful punishment, to them. Nietzsche's own critique of Christianity, that the doctrine of love of others actually translates into resentful hatred of others, applies with full force to his most ardent devotees, whose talk about freedom and creativity translates into constant assaults on the freedom and preferences of others, and deep resentment for those, the industrialists and inventors (as Ayn Rand understood), who have created the modern world and a better life for all.

What Nietzsche's Superman gets is a little more durable than the decisions of Sisyphus, since Nietzsche always saw systems of value, like traditional religions, as persistent and living, endowing things with real value, if only for a time. The Superman thus need not suffer from the nausea and dread that are characteristic of later Existentialists, who are always poised on the edge of oblivion. But making up values doesn't make them so, and Nietzsche himself made it possible for this to be felt so intensely later. After the Superman has "transvalued" his own values a few times, he may begin to detect an arbitrariness and emptiness in them. As Nietzsche himself said, you stare into the Void long enough and the Void begins to stare back. Thus, by the time we get to Camus, we get the Stranger, not the Superman.

3. The third point, which is advanced as the greatest teaching of the Zarathustra, does the same job as Sartre's redefinition of "responsibility." This is the "Eternal Recurrence." The doctrine is based on a kind of metaphysical parable, that in an eternity of time, all possible things will have happened, which means that in the present, with an eternity of time behind us, everything has already happened, including what is happening now. Since every point where a time like the present has happened, or will happen, itself also has an eternity of time before it, then what is happening now has already happened an infinite number of times and will happen an infinite number of times again. Since actions to Nietzsche are no longer good or evil, he feels the same loss of weight as does Sartre and wants some way to make actions seem more serious than they would be for your ordinary Nihilist. With the Eternal Recurrence, actions become weightier because one must be prepared to do them over and over again for eternity (like, indeed, Sisyphus). This still doesn't, after all, mean that they are right or wrong; it simply means that before you do something, you must determine that you really want to do it. Woody Allen jokes about this in Hannah and Her Sisters [1986] that Nietzsche's Eternal Recurrence means that he will have to see the Ice-Capades over and over again. Unfortunately, it is not hard to imagine that the greatest criminals of history, from Jack the Ripper to Adolf Hitler, would be perfectly happy to repeat their crimes endlessly. So, as with Sartre again, Nietzsche's doctrine does little to make up for the loss of real morality, and the Eternal Recurrence has never been as sexy or popular a doctrine as the Superman or the Will to Power.

Existentialism has often been expressed, as we have seen, in art. Probably the supreme Existentialist movie was the 1958 film The Seventh Seal, by the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman. At the beginning, we have a Knight and a Squire returning from the Crusades. They find that the Plague is raging. This is anachronistic, since the Crusades ended for most practical purposes in 1270 (Acre itself was lost in 1291, the latest a Crusader would actually have been in the Holy Land), while the Black Death began in Europe in 1346, arriving in Sweden in 1350. Be that as it may, after landing on the beach, the Knight is confronted by Death himself, who informs him that his time is up. Since the Knight does not want to die because he feels he has not found the meaning or purpose of life, he challenges Death to a game of chess. Death accepts, and through most of the rest of the movie, as the Knight and Squire travel back to the Knight's castle, the chess game continues in the evenings, with Death invisible to all others. There is an exception to that, however. The Knight and Squire begin to collect a group of travellers, and among them is a family of Players, a husband and wife (interestingly named Joseph and Mary) and their child. The husband plays the Fool in the performance we see. When we meet them, the Fool has a vision of the Virgin Mary -- as visible to us as to him. This ends up being an important factor in the meaning of the movie. Later, as the group approaches the Knight's castle, the Fool sees Death playing chess with the Knight. He tells his wife that they better get out of there, and they do. Meanwhile, we have been learning about the mentality of the Knight and the Squire. The Knight wants what, in Existentialist terms, he cannot have: A rational understanding of the meaning and purpose of life. The Squire has no such illusions. He is the type of the atheistic Existentialist, who knows that life is meaningless, and the universe empty, with little but horror for us to expect. The very night that the Fool sees Death, the Knight loses the chess game. Death tells him that the next time they meet; he will take the Knight and everyone with him. The next day they arrive at the Knight's castle, where his wife has been waiting for him many years. At dinner that night, there is a knock on the door. No one is there, and everyone now knows that it will be Death. The Knight again prays for knowledge, and the Squire tells him, in some detail, there is none to have. The Knight's wife tells him to be quiet. The Squire will be quiet, but he says he protests. Again, this is the type of the atheistic Existentialist, who recognizes but doesn't have to like the absurdity of the world.

Frames

2008-10-22T22:22:00.004+05:30

A certain fishing village

2008-08-30T17:40:00.003+05:30

The nudes were getting boring and repetitive. hence some boats. I drew this in extreme headache which is result of a night of rock and booze. I will write about it later. For now, it is the painting.

untitled

2008-08-28T18:19:00.000+05:30

Nude (inkwash on paper)

2008-08-13T18:25:00.000+05:30

Artemis (ink on paper)

2008-07-31T20:47:00.001+05:30

A question

2008-07-30T01:28:00.002+05:30

Who am I? This question, though simple superficially, it isn’t so. On the contrary, it is one of the most profound questions any introspecting person can ask himself. Who am I? All of us have multiple personalities. While I am an ignorant student in teacher’s eyes, I am all knowing and wise young man to a particular friend of mine. I am a carefree, independent, and epicurean young man. At the same time I am a deep, introspecting philosopher. I am stoic and emotional...I am someone in presence of a particular person or a group of persons, and someone else with another. It all depends on whose company I have at the moment. So where amidst all this is real me, if at all there is anything called me?

Let us consider this waiter in the cafe. His movement is quick and forward, a little too precise, a little too rapid. He bends forward a little too eagerly; his voice, his eyes express an interest a little too solicitous for the order of the costumer. And there he returns, trying to imitate in his walk the inflexible stiffness while carrying his tray with recklessness of a tightrope walker. All this behaviour seems to us a game. He applies himself to chaining his movements as if they were mechanisms, the one regulating the other. His gestures and even his voice seem to be mechanisms. He gives himself the quickness and pitiless rapidity of things. He is playing. He is amusing himself. But what is he playing? Of course, at being a waiter. The game is a kind of marking out and investigation. The child plays with his body in order to explore it. The waiter plays with his condition in order to realise it. This obligation is not different from what is imposed on all tradesmen. Their condition is wholly of ceremony – the public demands of them that they realise it as a ceremony. There is the dance of the grocer, an auctioneer, a tailor. A grocer who dreams is offensive to the buyer, because such a grocer is not wholly a grocer. Society demands that he limit himself to his functions as a grocer. There are indeed many precautions to imprison a person in what he is as if we lived in a perpetual fear that he might escape from it, that he might break away and suddenly elude his condition.

And what can be said about the waiters and the grocers, can very well be said about the whole lot of us. We are what the society demands of us. There are very few of us who can be what they truely are. As for the rest of us, we will continue with our lives carrying different, and more often than not, conflicting personalities within us. So who we truly are?

Empowering Women

2008-07-25T00:56:00.001+05:30

The world (at least the female part of it) is abuzz with noble words such as ‘feminism’, ‘gender equality’, ‘women empowerment’ and the likes. However, not many realise the actual meaning of any of these. Of course you’ll ask (those belonging to the fairer sex definitely) what is a male member of the society doing teaching the proponents of the feminist movement meaning of the words they themselves have coined? Well, I undertake the task because I am an ardent supporter of feminism myself (yes. A man can be a feminist). This I don’t do to win the approval of my lady friends or to get into the pants of unsuspecting ladies, but because I have been brought up in a family in which a woman (my mother, for the benefit of those who don’t know about my family) is the bread winner, and symbolises everything any self-respecting feminist fights for. I respect and honour most members of the opposite sex (the exceptions being disliked by their sex alike) and I seek to address this issue so as to clear the misconceptions associated with it.
First of all, feminism is NOT about male-bashing. As much as you (the ladies) may hate us (the gentlemen), it is hardly fair on our part to be criticised for everything that we do (or don’t do) simply because we are fortunate(un?) to be born male. Feminism vouches for gender equality – equal rights, equal opportunities, equal say in matters pertaining to all the walks of life. Feminism is about fighting gender oppression. It is about dowry free marriage. It is about right to live your life the way you choose (without being illegal of course). It is about her right to live…this is what I understand from feminism. Correct me if I am mistaken.
Now, wherein lays my dissatisfaction? It is in vogue to criticise men for showing courtsey towards women – we are easily labeled MCPs for opening the door for a lady or pulling the chair (or vacating one). This is not a sign of weakness on the part of the lady in question but her social superiority! We do the same (at least it is expected of us) in presence of a man who is superior to us in the social hierarchy (think the Prince of Wales for example). While it will seem fashionable, even witty, to joke about Mr. Cliton’s sexuality, God help the poor soul who commits the blasphemy of saying something similar regarding Mrs. Clinton. He will have to face the wrath of feminist lobbies from across the globe. Reason? Mrs. Clinton is obviously a lady, and a sexual remark towards a lady is tantamount to sexual harassment! This brings up another point in case, as far as India is concerned. There is absolutely no provision for men who are sexually harassed by women. Of course, on would say, that this is a figment of my imagination – no woman would abuse a man sexually (and isn’t this a fantasy of many a men?). But no. This does happen in the country that boasts of culture and tradition. Only recently a Bihar MLA was charged with sexual abuse by her guard. Then she threaten him with life if he went to the police. He did go to the police and lodged an FIR. But the FIR was lodged for threat and not sexual abuse. The case is pending in the Patna High Court.
There are other instances as well where women are treated as more than equal to men - child custody, maternal holidays, divorce & alimony…even reservation in govt. offices. Do they deserve to be treated as some OBCs. Surely they are more self-respecting than this. It is like appeasing a child with a candy bar while the parents feast on a gourmet meal. Many rape cases are judged on testimony of the ‘victim’ herself, without a fair trial. As a result there are a number of men who are doing their time in prisons. More than 60% of the rape cases that were reported in Bihar in 2007 were false. I am not saying that rapists should be let off. They should be dealt with the most severe of punishment – but the innocent should not be punished. This, after all, is the guiding principle of the Indian Judiciary. Thanks to the lopsided laws, we frequently hear about ‘husband-abuses’. It seems that the balance has swung to the other end the spectrum. This is what happens when the law ceases to be equal.
For centuries women have been oppressed in almost all the societies. And it is for the first time in the history that there seems to some hope for them to overcome this subjugation. However, their goal can only be achieved if the men cooperate with them in their struggle. Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that the women are weak and cannot empower themselves on their own. But lets be rational. If women could've got freedom from their enslavement without the support of men, they could’ve got it long back. Even India did not gain freedom without the support of the Brits. The question is: how do you expect us to work with you if you reackon us your enemy?

A few ink washes

2008-07-13T20:08:00.001+05:30

Lord Murphy and his Laws

2008-06-30T02:56:00.003+05:30

Murphy's Law is one of the fundamental laws of nature, even more fundamental than, for example, the law of Copyright. It is a very optimistic law, stating if anything can go wrong, it will. If it can't go wrong, it will go wrong anyway.. Although, it has been proved that god is actually behind Murphy's Law, and that Murphy is blamed incorrectly.

Murphy's second law

More commonly known as "the law of probabilities", Murphy's second law assures that a 50/50 situation will always end badly.

A 50% chance of becoming sterile during a vasectomy actually means 95%.
When playing Russian Roulette, all 5 other people will get lucky.
If half of your songs are good and you put your iPod on shuffle, you will hear Aap ka Saroor until your iPod battery has exactly 4 seconds left.

Murphy's third law

Murphy was on crack to think the first law, and either law #2 or #3 is completely false. But #1 looks even more false. Murphy did all he could to prove the 4th law, but failed. Was that a proof or a disproof? This depends on whether *you* wanted the law to fail or not.

Murphy's Law, redux

Murphy, short for David Bowie, is an influential Irish politician. He's credited with another version of Murphy's Law, one that requires Murphy's Irish Red be imbibed at least once daily, twice on Friday. The law was passed without any votes against, critics mention that anyone who would oppose had been out on town the night before, and in a Murphy's induced stupor. Those for the law cite the same incident.

Einstein enjoys a good Murphy's, and packaging will change in the near future to reflect his posthumous endorsement of the brew.

Incidentally, Murphy's was also invented in a bath.

Amendments to Murphy's Laws

The First Amendment

If anything can go wrong it sometimes can and possibly will.

The Second Amendment

Thou shalt sometimes miss the first bus, and usually have to wait half an hour for the next one to arrive.

Teh Thurd amendamint

if zoo heet your zelf un ze heeed weeth a freyin paan zu weel bezomme stupeeder and stupderr. theiz waz foist tezsted ooon tha whitar oof thezi farticle pection.

The Fourth Amendment

The chances of the toast landing buttered side down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.

Murphy's Paradox

Murphy's Law says that if anything can go wrong, it will. But, this stupid law applies to itself: itself can go wrong, that is, there must be a situation where something can go wrong and it won't go wrong. So, Murphy Law is paradoxal, and by reductio ad absurdum, I boned your mother.

Late Night Musings

2008-06-28T17:23:00.003+05:30

I sit here, Waiting for sleep. And while I'm at it, I can't help but wonder why I feel so philosophical at this hour, pondering over nitty-gritties of life? Is it only me? Or does everyone suffer the same way? One plausible explanation that comes to my mind is that at night one is often alone. And if one is also awake, then there are very few things one can do to amuse oneself - can't watch TV for the fear of waking the household up; can't read books as one's attention span, as well as one's grasping capabilities are frighteningly low at three in the morning (I say this from my personal experience, there may be exceptions); can't listen to music for the aforementioned reason, and also because music nowadays is not used for listening, but for hearing in the background while we busy ourselves with more pressing agendas...like chatting on gtalk. So with no one to pester and nothing to do, we think. We are also not very good at being alone with ourselves for longer than a few minutes, so we fiddle with 'day dreams', if they can be called day dreams for it is the middle of the night. First, in which there are a lot of happy chappies and love found. However, soon these happy dreams transmorgify into retrospection and then into thoughts on life, the universe and everything. And we philosophise. Bah! I am bored of this piece...Am off to do something more entertaining. No. Wait. it is four in the morning. Sighhh!

PS: Yours truly went back into his thoughts, cursing the internet company, for rendering broadband useless, and waiting for the day to break

PPS: my first not in over 8 years in fountain pen...and i didn't get my fingers messy.

Water colours and other random things

2008-06-20T21:22:00.001+05:30

Journey of the Faith (water colours and ink on paper)

Nude sitting (ink on paper)

Mrs. dalloway

2008-06-19T13:54:00.003+05:30

She would not say of any one in the world now that they were this or were that. She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged. She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on.She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day. Not that she thought herself clever, or much out of the ordinary. How she had got through life on the few twigs of knowledge Fräulein Daniels gave them she could not think. She knew nothing; no language, no history; she scarcely read a book now, except memoirs in bed; and yet to her it was absolutely absorbing; all this; the cabs passing; and she would not say of Peter, she would not say of herself, I am this, I am that.

Her only gift was knowing people almost by instinct, she thought, walking on. If you put her in a room with some one, up went her back like a cat's; or she purred. Devonshire House, Bath House, the house with the china cockatoo, she had seen them all lit up once; and remembered Sylvia, Fred, Sally Seton — such hosts of people; and dancing all night; and the waggons plodding past to market; and driving home across the Park. She remembered once throwing a shilling into the Serpentine. But every one remembered; what she loved was this, here, now, in front of her; the fat lady in the cab. Did it matter then, she asked herself, walking towards Bond Street, did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely; all this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely? but that somehow in the streets of London, on the ebb and flow of things, here, there, she survived, Peter survived, lived in each other, she being part, she was positive, of the trees at home; of the house there, ugly, rambling all to bits and pieces as it was; part of people she had never met; being laid out like a mist between the people she knew best, who lifted her on their branches as she had seen the trees lift the mist, but it spread ever so far, her life, herself. But what was she dreaming as she looked into Hatchards' shop window? What was she trying to recover? What image of white dawn in the country, as she read in the book spread open:

Fear no more the heat o' the sun

Nor the furious winter's rages

Water Colours

2008-06-17T00:22:00.002+05:30

Venice (water colours on paper)

Morning Catch (water and ink on paper)

Post Surgery Day Dreaming.

2008-06-13T23:20:00.004+05:30

So here I am...after a long period of inactivity. But really I couldn't post anything, what with operations and stuff. Now, if you don't know, a lot of preliminaries have to be taken care of before the big day - blood tests, CT scans etc. And all of them involve needles, and the person in-charge of needling me invariably fucked up the first time in finding the right vein. So i was pricked twice. And it is not a pleasant feeling. So anyway, i was operated on (3 hours in OT), given antibodies thrice daily for 3 days (injections, again) and let off, only to return 5 days later as my nose became blood faucet with a leak. So there I was, a litre of blood, and painful vacuuming of nose later (3 injections of local anesthesia in each nostril and yet i cried out in pain) in a familiar room with two beds, green walls and no windows. I was depressed, so say the least. Anyway, I survived. And here I am - alive and blogging. Here's my new painting - first one post surgery. I hope to be more regular now. But the humidity, heat and bugs make me want to just sit back with a tall cool drink. More later.

Abstract (oil on paper)

2008-05-12T16:59:00.002+05:30

These days i am mighty bored. and the boredom reflects in my paintings. sigh. just grab a brush, some paint and dribble them on paper....

Ink wash (ink on paper)

2008-05-01T01:24:00.001+05:30

Winter and Games

2008-03-21T00:28:00.002+05:30

Missed

2008-03-19T18:02:00.000+05:30

Night

2008-03-17T17:43:00.001+05:30

The dark black shadowy night, stretched tightly over deserted streets and empty doorways, stuffed between alleys, almost touching bumpers of parked cars, glittering dark black in the eyes of the lost people standing on December highways, silent between hosts of industrial sirens, riding with psychopaths in the accelerating cars, rattling in the purses of street-side vendors, interleaved in the papers of the lawyers defending serial killers, breathed into lungs with angrily puffed cigarettes, trampled under the feet by walking no ones, hanging by weak threads over social holocausts, is alive and on the horizon there is a tinge of vermilion.

Valentine's Day

2008-02-12T22:32:00.000+05:30

I genuinely believe that all the “days” are a result of conspiracy between card makers, confectioners and the florists to make some extra sale. Valentine’s Day is no different. On the contrary, it is the festive season for aforementioned vocations. Though, it is also true that V-Day makes for a great joke amongst the wise singles. In a few days time, you will be able to laugh your asses off at the feeble attempts of the emos to chat up that Goth girl they've been eying for weeks.

Typically, the emo in question will spend even more time in its room than usual while making preparations for the big day. Such preparations may include actually cleaning the bloodstains off their sleeves; an act rarely recorded by the scientific community. They usually buy a card or bucket (it's pronounced bouquet) of flowers off the internet, as they don't want to risk going outside to the local florists and getting beaten up by the bajrang dal. Another commonly practiced ritual is to buy a box of chocolates, darker the better (Goths love black). But most crucial part is the poem, which is usually along the lines of

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Sugar is sweet
And so are you.

But the violets are wilting,
And the roses are dead.
The sugar bowl's empty,
And my wrists are stained red.

A less morbid variant reads something like:
“I love you. There, I said it. Now let me do it up your bum?”

After sending the love poem to the girlfriend anonymously, the two emos will meet, usually in the local cafe (which turns out to be 5 miles away), or the erstwhile secluded spots of campus, which do not turn out to be so secluded after all, what with vigilantes waiting for their prey. The female emo (femo) will feel sorry for the male emo's (memo) desperate attempts at winning her heart. Luckily, the femo has her hair fringe so far below her eyes that she cannot see how pathetic the memo is. Hence, the two get along pretty well. It's best to just leave them alone at this point, as they can lash out extremely violently when provoked, and wait for the femo to cut her hair.
Incidentally, as i was writing this, my gtalk notified me of an email from e-bay informing me of special Valentine’s Day offers...

Random works

2008-01-26T22:39:00.001+05:30

The Fall of Adam

Morpheus' Musings

Summer

Reclining Matron

Mother and Daughter

Patriotism

2008-01-26T22:35:00.000+05:30

ai'm sure you've noticed that come 26th january or the 15th august and everyone is suddenly playing patriotic songs (they are also heard blaring from the loudspeakers). there is a sudden surge of patriotism in every indian, almost. but i can't help but wonder at the emptiness of these gestures. if you are patriotic, you should [i]do[/i] something for the country, rather than shout out your feelings. there was a parade in my college this morning. i was asked whether i'll go or not. i gave an honest answer - if i wake up, i'll go. the person was infuriated and labeled me unpatriotic. i asked a simple question. if, during the placements, schlumberger (one of the leading oil companies of the world) offers you or those of you who are going for the parade a job, who will decline? schlum usually employs people in foreign soils. so taking the job means leaving the country. most of the people who say they are patriotic will take the job (no one has declined schlum till now in my college).

i love my country as much as anyone of you. but i don't believe in blank show of it. i listen to patriotic songs when i want to, but usually it is not on the afore mentioned dates. i also know one thing. i won't leave my nation and waste the resources she has bestowed upon me on XYZ. patriotism doesn't mean going to the parades. it means respecting your country and her citizens.

Hangover Cures

2007-12-21T22:52:00.000+05:30

What is it we are all going to be trying to make next Tuesday? New Year's Resolutions, if we are halfway sane.

In fact - if i may digress for a moment - it turns out that there may be a very good reason why we fail to keep our New Year's Resolutions other than the obvious abject feebleness of will. It's this. We can't remember what they are. Simple. And if we actually wrote them down, then we can't remember where we put the piece of paper, either. Oddly enough, the piece of paper has known to turn up again again exactly a year later when you're casting around for something on which to write the next year's abortive attempts to pull your life into some kind of shape. This is not, it turns out, a coincidence.
Incidentally, am I alone in finding the expression "it turns out" to be incredibly useful? It allows you to make swift, succinct, and authoritative connections between otherwise randomly unconnected statements without the trouble of explaining what your source or authority actual is. It's great. It's hugely better than its predecessors "I read somewhere that..." or the craven "they say that..." because it not only suggests that whatever flimsy bit of urban mythology you are passing on is actually based on brand new, ground breaking research, but that it is research in which you yourself were intimately involved. But again, with no actual authority anywhere in sight. Anyway, where was I?

It seems that the brain is affected by alcohol. Well, we know that, of course. and those who don't yet are about to find out. But there are different gradations to the effect, and herein lies the crux. The brain organises its memories like a kind of hologram (it turns out). To retrieve an image, you have to re-create the exact conditions in which it was captured. In the case of the hologram, it's the lighting, in case of the brain it is, or can be (it turns out), the amount of alcohol sloshing around in it. Things that happen to you or, frighteningly enough, that you yourself say or do while under the influence of alcohol will only be recalled to your memory when you are under the influence of that exact quantity of alcohol again. these memories are completely beyond the reach of your normal, sober mind. Which is why, after some ill-advised evening out, you will be the only person who is completely unaware of some barkingly stupid remark you made to someone whose feelings you care about deeply, or even just a bit. It is only weeks, months, or in the case of New Year's Eve, exactly a year later, that the occasion suddenly returns to your consciousness with a sickening whump and you realise why people have been avoiding you or meeting your eye with a glassy stare for so long. This often result in your saying "good grief" to yourself in a loud voice and reaching for a stiff drink. which leads you up to the next level of inebriation, where of course fresh shocks await your pleasure.

And the same is true on the way back down. There are certain memories that will only be registered by revisiting exactly the same state of dehydration as the one in which the original events occurred. Hence the New Year's Resolutions problem, which is that you never actually remember the resolution you made, or even wrote them down, until the exact same moment the following year, when you are horribly reminded of your complete failure to stick by them for more than seven minutes.

So what is the answer to this terrible, self-discipline. A monastic adherence to a regime of steamed vegetables, plain water, long walks, regular workouts, early nights, early mornings, and probably some kind of fragrant oils or something. but seriously, the thing we are most going to want on New Year's Day, and be desperately trying to remember how to make, is a good hangover cure, and especially one that doesn't involve diving through ice in the Arctic. The trouble is, we can never remember them when we want them, or even know where to find them. And the reason why we can never remember them when we want them is that when we heard about them we didn't actually need them, which isn't any help, for the reasons outlined above. Nauseating images involving egg yolks and Tabasco sauce swill through your brain but you are not really in any fit state to organise your thoughts. Which is why we need, urgently, to organise them now while there is still time. So this is an appeal for good, effective methods of freshening up the brain on the New Year's Day that don't involve actual cranial surgery.

Indian School Of Mines

2007-10-09T00:01:00.000+05:30

The Indian School of Mines is another name for ISM, which is the acronym for Indian school of matiyaos. This institute of national importance was set up by the British in Dhanbad, a town famous for clean environment, fantabulous infrastructure and the only international airpot in the state. It was the mastermind of The Indian National Congress to reduce the average intelligence of Indians. Just like Zion in Matrix, where 3% of the people who do not accept the Matrix are gathered together to prevent dissent as a whole, ISMU was formed by the Government of India to gather at one place the 2% of the intelligentsia of the country, and dumb them down.

Admission

The geeks and nerds of India start preparing for IIT-JEE just after 10th standard of schooling. A very effective test of whether a guy is fit for clearing JEE is asking a very simple question: "Do you have a girlfriend?" A guy who says anything else other than "What's a girl?" would not get through the test. Girls are considered unfit to get into ISM, though some girls manage to get the application forms as they look like guys. To make sure no girl gets through the system by bribing to get the application forms, the applicants are required to specify their gender and affix a photograph in the application form. Those faces that resemble anything girly are not selected.

The entrance exam, IIT-JEE, is an extremely selective undergrad admission process (accepting less than 2% of their applicants). As they say, if the input is right, the output is automatically right. The six-hour Joint Entrance Exam held, as the name suggests, jointly conducted by IITs, ISMU and ITBHU, consists only of questions on Physics, Chemistry and Maths and not on other exotic details like booze, drugs, crime PrOn etc. which severely affect the quality of the incoming students. Since the Indians are well known for cramming up loads of information, questions in JEE are never repeated.

Education

The ISM curricula are carefully decided so that there is no scope of learning anything. The students, then, take up alternate learning routes, most common being Pr0n. The ISMU alumni on knowing the tremendous potential of internet, provided all hostel rooms with free and unlimited internet connection. The ISMites are also forced to eat mess food that prepares them for the worst they can ever face in their life.

The guys also learn how to make 50 palladins in 25 minutes and get three terrorists per shot. Some of the creative minds also make a quick buck by selling MMS clips online. Since there are assignments to be submitted every now and then, the guys also learn how to use Google adeptly. Photocopying centres are provided for every 100 metres of road so that time wasted in photocopying assignments is minimized. Lecture classes are held from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. IST (Indian Stretchable Time). It has been established by years of testing that the time can be stretched to as much as 30 minutes beyond provided it is backed by a cardinal excuse.

Life and culture (or lack thereof)

When entering the ISMU, a guy has two options. The first is to take up the common learning route described above. Since IIT-JEE makes sure a lot of mavericks are selected, many of them also end up being happy among them. The girls in ISMU, usually refered to as Non-Males and measured as parts of girl per million parts of guy, have to struggle keeping their identity as girl secret throughout their stay in ISMU. Sometimes they are forced to tell the truth, like when a gay ISMite proposes mistaking them for a guy.

Alumni

The alumni of these institutes have been very sucessful across the world (more in USA than in India). Most of them either get frustrated or leave technical education to study management at IIMs, or start a company of their own totally unrelated to their major discipline. There are also a select few who develop a fetish for studies and end up in institutes like Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Quotes on ISMites

“These guys are total studs. Just like me.”

~ Oscar Wilde on ISMites

“I love those guys.”

~ Oscar Wilde on ISMites

“Shhh....Meet me at the Mining dept. later tonight”

~ ISMite on Oscar Wilde

“ISM is t3h 133t

God on ISM

“We are 'GAWDS'.”

~ ISMites on themselves

“Fuck”

A girl on seeing the IIT-JEE question paper

“DISCO? Fuck!”

~ An ISMite on DISCO

“You think getting into ISMU is difficult? Try getting out, bitch!”

~ disguntled ISMite on ISMU

Nightout

2007-10-01T03:03:00.000+05:30

It was one of those nights when you wish you were asleep, keeping in mind that you have a lecture to attend the next morning, which you cannot miss as you had already done so a lot of times in the past. But my body didn’t want the sleep, what with the Sunday I slept through. So here I am sting at my desk, sipping at a hot mug of black coffee, and occasionally glancing through the window looking at the dawn breaking. I shall soon go out and enjoy the cool morning freshness. It is not something new to me. But it’s definitely a rare event in college. I am one of those guys who sleep early enough to wake up for the lectures the next day.
I watched Anatomy of a Murder.
Preminger shows a willingness to shake up the status quo with this trial drama – it feels bracingly realistic. Packed with astonishing dialog and bristly performances, this is essential cinema.
Paul Biegler (Stewart) is a small-town Michigan lawyer who agrees to defend a young soldier, Manion (Gazzara), who killed the man who raped his wife (Remick). The trial pits Biegler against a shrewd big-city DA (Scott) and a visiting judge (McCarthy hearing lawyer Welch) who's both smart and witty. Surprise witnesses, back-hallway dealings, unexpected flirtations, outrageous revelations--they're all here, although the truth always seems just out of reach.
This is expert filmmaking--beautifully shot and brilliantly written with a complexity and a sense of detail that we rarely see anymore. Yes, it's a very long film, but it's so compelling that we hardly feel the time passing. Characters are all layered and fascinating, with dark shadings and hilarious asides. Even the side roles have a life of their own. And the entire cast is flawless. Stewart’s was an intriguing character, and Remick's flirtatious minx is unforgettable (Jodie Foster's Oscar-winning role in The Accused, 30 years later, is a direct copy). And of course, one cannot ignore Duke Ellington's gorgeous jazz soundtrack.
In addition to technical and artistic excellence, the plot itself is utterly engaging. Sexual tension gurgles everywhere, along with a constant threat of violence and a gnawing dread that the truth will never emerge, regardless of what the jury decides. Preminger brings an assured gravitas to the screen as he explores the complexity of humanity – no one is all good or all bad. He intriguingly avoids the lawyer's opening and closing arguments and only shows the string of witnesses – just the facts, as it were – while quietly turning the screw tighter and tighter until the final subtle surprise. Perfection.

Dream

2007-09-15T11:58:00.000+05:30

Stumbling back to wakefulness the dream already fading into nothing, just fragments, like shapes seen through thick mist; eyes blear and head and body feeling the muzzy numb that comes from over sleeping. I had dreamed of a house that was, in some way a poem, written by a poet who had killed herself for love, long ago. The coffee in the percolator is stone-cold. I pour myself a cup-full of dregs anyway, put it in the microwave and set the LED for 70 seconds. As the coffee goes round in the little metal box, I realize that the poem in my dream was both beautiful and true, and that it was genuinely important. I feel sleepily proud of myself. I add cream. The house was the poem. I remember hovering disembodied about the house's exterior, while the sonorous words licked around me in marvelous mellifluous cadences. The coffee is foully bitter, but it serves to drag me further into the waking world. Transitions. I was about to find a pen and scribe the poem down, when it occurs to me that I’ve lost the words. I don't even know what it was about. Oh well, easy come, easy go. I don't know why Sam Coleridge bitched so much about his man from parlock: he got 55 killer lines on paper before he got distracted, didn't he? And the stuff you bring back from the dreaming is free. "And wide this tumult Kubla heard from far ancestral voices prophesying war..." later I was unable to categorize the events that followed. Certainly I smelled gas. But by the time I smelled the gas I was already running through the bedroom, towards the fire escape. a sudden feeling of sheer disbelief as I realized that I had grabbed my wallet from the table, and that I was already shielding my face with my arms, as I jumped...a shattering of glass. I landed on the fire escape, my face stinging, my right arm wet with blood (the pain would come later), and over the side, hang down as far as i could...and then let go. Smash down jarred and shaken, to solid ground, bones aching, skin all scraped, bleeding and just run for dear life, and just run...just. Shit. That was too close...adrenaline-giddy, i stumble into the supermarket. Clothes first. Then shoes. Then out.

Relationship Blues

2007-09-09T17:14:00.000+05:30

There’s a new fashion in my college, definitely in my batch. A sudden spurt of blogs talking about a mature and sensitive topic like a girl boy relationship can be seen, so much so that it would seem to an outsider reading them that nothing less than a full fledged war is being waged within the boundaries of one of the most prestigious institutes of the country where students are reckoned mature enough to understand the complexities of life.
Let me begin by defining the term ‘girlfriend’ (the definition of boyfriend will follow). Is it merely a girl who is your friend? It is not. She would then merely be a ‘friend’. There is a certain amount of lust, eros, involved, which is not so with a friend (of course, it is a different matter if you have a feeling of lust towards your lady friend but are afraid to confess it, or if that is one sided). By lust here I don’t mean lust alone, in most cases love too is involved, but that love is predominantly erotic, as against agape, love that a friend feels towards another, a mother towards child and so on.
Now let us come to the point under consideration, the whole issue of girlfriends and boyfriends. Is keeping a girlfriend in fashion? A status symbol? More often than not it is, especially at present when teens are committing suicides for the sake of love not knowing what love is. However, let us not foil the genuine love between a man and a woman by saying that all lovers are following in a trend. Did Romeo think of impressing Mercutio when he fell in love with Juliet? Or was it Krishna trying to show off his Casanova skills to Balram when paying suit to Radha?
No one says anything when a boy talks with a boy, but then why do we hear Chinese whispers when he talks with a girl? Maybe because it is a taboo to talk with the members of opposite sex. Maybe because most children from the very childhood are taught that a friendship between a girl and a boy is not healthy. But is the discrimination justified? I don’t think so. On the contrary, I believe that a friendship between a man and a woman is one of the most beautiful one. They complement each other. I personally feel that women are emotionally more mature than men, and I go to them when in any crisis, be it a friend, my sister, or my mother. Similarly, I’ve heard from many a friend that men make better friends than women. Not every friendship is based on lust. There are numerous cases of platonic relationships, but somehow the society can’t comprehend it, and it brands them as ‘affairs’. Ridiculous! But the multitude can be pardoned for their anachronistic beliefs, but what do you do when a bunch of young intellectuals behave in a similar fashion? It is nothing short of blasphemy!
Now the question remains: is a physical relationship between a man and a woman wrong? No, it is not, given that the parties are legally sanctioned to indulge in such an activity. Sex is one of the basic needs, and lust one of the basic instincts of the animal kingdom. Indeed, Freud placed sex, along with food and shelter, at the bottom of the pyramid of success. Without them, no person can achieve contentment, and emotional security, unless of course he or she is a saint. Only recently a young lady belonging to this institute was found in a compromising position with a few male friends of hers in a hotel room. A lot of resentment was shown, and the institution decided to expel the lady in question. It is not only ethically, but legally wrong to do so. Ethically because an institution has no right to moral police consenting adults, legally because the act was done outside the premises of the institute with the permission of an adult person. Nowhere in the constitution does it say that threesome is illegal! What point am I driving at? Simply this: whether a man shows off his trophy, whether a man is in a relationship only to satiate his carnal desires, or whether a man is in it for emotional and intellectual support, as long as he is not harming his friend it should be no one else’s concern but his. The same goes for a woman. As for relationships, no one can define what a good relationship is, for if you get down to it, you’ll have to come up with a billion definitions, for every person has a different need which he seeks to satisfy from it. Of course the ones that are most readily shattered are the ones based on ‘trophy love’. But that doesn’t mean that it is bad, for there is no good and bad when it comes to relationships.

Nature and Us

2007-08-19T12:02:00.000+05:30

You desire to live "according to Nature"? Oh, you noble Stoics, what fraud of words! Imagine to yourselves a being like Nature, boundlessly extravagant, boundlessly indifferent, without purpose or consideration, without pity or justice, at once fruitful and barren and uncertain: imagine to yourselves indifference as a power - how could you live in accordance with such indifference? To live – is not that just endeavouring to be otherwise than this Nature? Is not living valuing, preferring, being unjust, being limited, endeavouring to be different? And granted that your imperative, "living according to Nature," means actually the same as "living according to life” – how could you do differently? Why should you make a principle out of what you yourselves are, and must be? In reality, however, it is quite otherwise with you: while you pretend to read with rapture the canon of your law in Nature, you want something quite the contrary, you extraordinary stage-players and self-deluders! In your pride you wish to dictate your morals and ideals to Nature, to Nature herself, and to incorporate them therein; you insist that it shall be Nature "according to the Stoa," and would like everything to be made after your own image, as a vast, eternal glorification and generalism of Stoicism! With all your love for truth, you have forced yourselves so long, so persistently, and with such hypnotic rigidity to see Nature falsely, that is to say, Stoically, that you are no longer able to see it otherwise – and to crown all, some unfathomable superciliousness gives you the hope that because you are able to tyrannize over yourselves – Stoicism is self-tyranny – Nature will also allow herself to be tyrannized over: is not the Stoic a part of Nature? . . . But this is an old and everlasting story: what happened in old times with the Stoics still happens today, as soon as ever a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always creates the world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical impulse itself, the most spiritual Will to Power, the will to "creation of the world," the will to the prime cause.

tum tada tum and other hyms

2007-08-19T11:49:00.000+05:30

Nostalgia

2007-07-13T18:52:00.000+05:30

Icy wind of night be gone this is not your domain
In the sky a bird was heard to cry.
Misty morning whisperings and gentle stirring sounds
Belied the deathly silence that lay all around.
Hear the lark and hearken to the barking of the dog fox Gone to ground.
See the splashing of the kingfisher flashing to the water.
And a river of green is sliding unseen beneath the trees
Laughing as it passes through the endless summer
Making for the sea.
In the lazy water meadow I lay me down.
All around me golden sun flakes settle on the ground.
Basking in the sunshine of a bygone afternoon
Bringing sounds of yesterday into this city room.
Hear the lark hearken to the barking of the dark fox Gone to ground.
See the splashing of the kingfisher flashing to the water.
And a river of green is sliding unseen beneath the trees.
In the lazy water meadow I lay me down.
All around me golden sun flakes covering the ground.
Basking in the sunshine of a bygone afternoon
Bringing sounds of yesterday into this city room.
Hear the lark hearken to the barking of the dark fox Gone to ground.
See the splashing of the kingfisher flashing to the water.
And a river of green is sliding unseen beneath the trees,
Laughing as it passes through the endless summer making for the sea.

Madman

2007-07-11T18:14:00.000+05:30

One day, long before many gods were born, I woke from a deep sleep and found all my masks were stolen, the seven masks I have fashioned and worn in seven lives, I ran maskless through the crowded streets shouting, "Thieves, thieves, the cursed thieves."

Men and women laughed at me and some ran to their houses in fear of me.

And when I reached the market place, a youth standing on a house-top cried, "He is a madman." I looked up to behold him; the sun kissed my own naked face for the first time. For the first time the sun kissed my own naked face and my soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my masks no more. And as if in a trance I cried, "Blessed, blessed are the thieves who stole my masks."

Thus I became a madman.

And I have found both freedom and safety in my madness. The freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us.

The Storm Within

2007-07-10T20:50:00.000+05:30

On Pleasure

2007-06-16T22:29:00.000+05:30

Pleasure is the only reason behind anything a man does. Either that or the absence of displeasure. Pleasure is the only thing which is good. This is not to be taken in the narrow sense of the word. Good food and good wine is all very pleasurable, but not good. What is implied here is the long term pleasure. You study hard for a test, which is good. How is that possible as you did not find that pleasurable at all, but on the contrary? The pain that you endured was short termed, but it ensured that you get good grades and thus a good report at your graduation. This would ensure you a prosperous career, hence a long lasting pleasure. On the other hand, eating a gourmet meal will give you pleasure at the moment of consumption, but no doubt a serious gastronomic illness will result as a consequence, which will be painful. Even the saints and the monks are driven by pleasure. They endure pain in their lifetime, only in the hope of attaining nirvana or heaven, which is nothing but an eternal pleasure. Thus seeking pleasure is the only thing worth seeking. It is the only way to happiness, and makes our lives so much simpler! Epicurus should be given more respect for his philosophy. The dictionary meaning of the word ‘epicure’ does him no justice, and has misled people into believing that he was the preacher of pleasure in the very narrow sense of the word. In fact, he was very temperate.

Random paintings

2007-05-26T10:47:00.001+05:30

bilateral maxillary sinusitis

2007-05-24T21:59:00.000+05:30

I had a headache. And it wasn’t a sort of headache you get when you hear the ranting of an agony aunt. I had it for the past 2 years. A mild heaviness that I suffered 24/7, until 3 days ago when I realised that it isn’t normal to have this inconvenience for this long. So I underwent a lot of tests – x-rays, MRIs , eye checkups, even a session with a psychiatrist! And when the x-ray result came out, it turns out that I have ‘bilateral maxillary sinusitis’ – pus had accumulated in my left antrum, in a layman tongue. My mom was amazed, so was my doc, as to how I managed to suffer as long as I did and not realise that it wasn’t normal! She even joked that had I told her earlier, I’d have done better in IIT-JEE. Well! So I had an appointment today – I was going to be ‘operated’ on, at least this is what I was led to believe. So I took my toddy to the clinic where I was injected with a local anesthesia in my nostril. And notwithstanding the pain of the needle prick, it was awesome. Better than any marijuana! And as I was contemplating the state of moksha I was ushered into the OT where the doctor stretched my nostrils apart, shoved a pipe up the left one, and squirted some liquid through it and voila! Down came the yellow gel mixed with the white liquid and blood. I’m sure Calvin would have loved it, and packed it in a plastic bag for his show and tell. After repeating the process with the right nostril, I was done – it was all over in 5 minutes. So you see it wasn’t really an operation. and how light headed I feel!

By the way, ward elections are on in Patna. As a result of which we are forced to hear the loud speakers chanting the patriotic songs and the election propaganda of the candidates, which are really the same for every party, with very subtle differences.

Simple Joys

2007-05-15T02:58:00.000+05:30

Without getting into preliminaries, i'll just state what comes to my mind...feel free to make additions:

1. smell of rain on dry ground
2. morning coffee while listening to shiv kumar sharma
3. long, leisurely walk with your friends after dinner
4. sitting by a river, lake, or a sea
5. reading sunday newspapers
6. lying in arms of your mother
7. pink floyd
8. walking bare feet on dew covered grass
9. looking at the stars on a clear night
10. Looking at the gulmohar trees in spring
11. Sleeping on the cool country grass in summer under the stars
12. Running the senior cross country with your best friend
13. Standing on a peak and taking in the panoramic view
14. Getting wet in the rain
15. Taking a walk in a zephyr
16. Buntiks and house drinks after boxing workouts

Evening

2007-05-15T02:53:00.000+05:30

The evening was beautiful. As I stood at my balcony gazing at the gulmohar tree across the street while sipping at my tea, I couldn’t help but notice a pair of squirrels playfully jumping the branches and chasing one another through the flaming red flowers, when an eagle scooped away one of them. The survivour was perplexed for sometime, but presently it was joined by another, and they continued with their play.

Utopia

2007-05-15T02:52:00.000+05:30

It is all very poetic to dream of utopia – a world that knows only happiness and no sorrow. But is it practical? Certainly not! Duality is the basis of the universe. Without light there is no meaning of darkness. Without love there can be no hatred. Lies exist because there are truths, sorrow because there is happiness. Black can only be contrasted with white, violence with peace. Death makes life meaningful. Even God needed Lucifer to make Himself complete.

Window

2007-05-12T03:30:00.000+05:30

Whoever leads a lonely life and yet now and then wants to attach himself somewhere, where according to the changes in the time of the day, the weather, the state of his business and the like, suddenly wishes to see any arm at all to which he might cling – he will not be able to manage for long without a window looking on to the street. And if he is in the mood of not desiring anything and only goes to his window still a tired man, with eyes turning from his public to heaven and back again, not wanting to look out and having thrown his head up a little, even then the cars below will draw him down into their convoy and tumult, and so cast him into the human harmony.

Despair

2007-05-12T03:15:00.000+05:30

Her eyes are grey

Her hair is straggly and wet

Her fingers are stubby

The nails are chewed and broken

Her teeth are crooked, jagged things

There is a vacancy in her gaze,

A feeling of absence when you are

Near her that is impossible

To put down into words

Her sigil is the broken ring

Loneliness of a long distance runner

2007-05-12T03:04:00.000+05:30

There is this sudden emptiness surrounding me. I can’t express it in words. Then again, one word is sufficient to explain it – nostalgia.

The school has been my home for six years. In those six years I have cried, laughed, made friends, and made a few enemies. Had moments that I never wanted to end, had those I wish never happened. I won, I lost. I discovered, and I learnt. Life can never be the same again.

How short it is! I realized that when I crossed the finish line of the 68^th inter-house cross-country competition. With that I crossed the finish line of my school life. No longer will I be part of the school. No longer will I be responsible to the HM or the HSM. I’m a nobody to them – a person who just eats, and sleeps there. And occasionally writes a paper or to which is mandatory. A luggage.

How relevant it is to have this ‘crossie comp’ right at the end of the year. For me it was doubly significant. It not only marked the end of the race and the year, but my tenure. And now that I look back and reflect on the last six years, and the competition, I can’t help but find the similarities between the two.

When you start the run, you jump into the battlefield with the typical ‘josh’ and enthusiasm of someone starting on a new adventure. Doon was an adventure. But soon the josh wanes, and in its place comes pain, agony, breathlessness – temptation to give up. Many do. Many fight pain with pain. Their will is strong.

And soon the pain is forgotten. Your limbs take you forward effortlessly. You start enjoying the run. You take notice of your surroundings – the trees, the road, the bikes whizzing past and the lazy cyclist, the people running behind you and those in the front. Though we started together, half way through we are on our own. No two persons have the same will power, speed or stamina. So we run alone, towards the common end. Most have only one aim – to beat the person ahead of him. That is a strong motivation, but not good enough, because then you’re running someone else’s race. I run for the sake of running. I enjoy it. My aim is to beat myself. To conquer my mind and body with my will.

Running alone has an advantage. It gives you time for some introspection. I have always been a loner. I am happy to be one. It is a choice that I have made.

However, you can’t run the entire race alone. A few catch up with you, while you do the same with others. You run with them for sometime, then either you leave them or are left behind. There are those who help others on the way to the finish line. A few words of encouragement, a gentle pat on the back. Life isn’t about winning only. It’s about sharing. It’s about human bonding.

You approach the finish line. You remember the pain and agony you endured throughout the race. Once you cross that line, it’ll be an end to all. This anticipation sends a sudden rush of adrenalin through your blood. You act as if in a frenzy. You increase your pace. You fly in the air. You feel light, almost weightless. And it’s all over. The race is over. So is the most memorable phase of your life, yet. Now what?

Now what? This is the question that bothers me. Chase other dreams, achieve different goals? Your entire life is ahead of you, beckoning you. But what do you do after you have fulfilled those fleeting dreams as well?

Puneet Verma
Ex 400-OA

too bad

2007-04-26T23:41:00.000+05:30

I was invited to a birthday bash tonight, so I went. When I arrived, they were in the middle of giving the ritualistic bumps and notwithstanding the fact that I barely knew the birthday boy (a mutual friend invited me) I joined in the fun. But to my horror, their attention somehow turned to me – I think owing to the fact that I was the only person there from the other wing, and that I arrived late – and they proceed to do what they had been doing to the unlucky kid. Besides, they even tossed me! And being light as I am, I almost crashed my skull into the ceiling, what with a dozen hyper buggers tossing me as if their life depended on it. And that was not it. My friend had a brilliant idea of bathing me in beer. Of course I didn’t mind that…I only resented the loss of a good bottle (it turned out, though, that they weren’t short on booze) I fail to understand why me! And that too when the exams are going to start on Monday and no one’s prepared! I’ll let it pass as a result of many sleepless nights spent in books. I need my coffee, and I need to start with ‘C’…wait. What is the syllabus?

Hungry?

2007-03-31T23:24:00.000+05:30

It's three in the morning. You've been in the pub since lunchtime. You just spent five minutes trying to unlock your front door before you realised you were using your car keys. You finally stumble in, reeking of 100 pipers. You know you should drink some water, then go straight to bed. But you're hungry.

Time to hit the kitchen!

Hygiene

Tip: Silicone rolling pins are more hygienic, easier to clean and longer lasting that wooden ones. They also hurt a lot less.Remember: with cooking, the most important thing is hygiene. So before you begin, stumble into the bathroom. Then pick up a bar of soap and stare at it for about thirty seconds while rocking backwards and forwards. Try to remember why the fuck you are in your bathroom holding a bar of soap. Leave bathroom.

Enter the Kitchen

You now need to find the kitchen. Think hard, you must have left it around here somewhere. Stumble in its general direction, placing your hand against the wall. This will help support you and maybe if you're lucky you'll find a lightswitch as well. Light could help at this point. If things are rotating, try rotating in the opposite direction to make them stay still. After entering the kitchen, turn on the light and stare blankly. After a minute or two, realize that this is not the kitchen, unless you recently put a bed in the middle of your kitchen. A bed which seems to be occupied. By a woman. If you can call that a woman. Man, whoever dragged that skank home at closing time is going to be seriously traumatized when he rolls over and sees her tomorrow morning.

Keep stumbling from room to room until you find the kitchen.

Care in the Kitchen

If you are single, you can skip this. If you are married, you need to remember that loud noises in the kitchen could wake your spouse, and you're in no condition to try to win an argument with anyone sober. So it's important to move with exaggerated caution whilst inadvertently making loud noises anyway, in order to preserve the precarious delusion that you're being considerate.

Now you're ready to begin.

Recipes
Soy cheese on Burnt Toast
Get some bread. Uh-oh, someone bought unsliced bread. Try to find bread knife. Fail. Find electric carving knife. Wrap knife in tea towel to muffle it. Cut two rough slices of bread, approx 2mm thick at one end, four centimeters at the other. Put bread in toaster. Try harder. Shit. Well maybe if you put the thin end in first. Yeah, that did it.

While the bread is toasting, get some cheese from the fridge. Fuck. None there. Never mind, there's that soy cheese that your spouse's irritating vegan cousin brought along to the picnic that time, but no one ate it. Find cheese knife. Well, just use the foil-cutter on your bottle-opener. Slice soy cheese. Is soy cheese the same as tofu? I mean what can the difference be? Does it even melt? Never mind - you smell burning, so the toast must be done.

Place unevenly burnt toast on griller (or broiler, for Americans) then place soy cheese on top. Melt soy cheese, assuming soy cheese actually melts. Drop grill (or broiler) on floor, waking your spouse. Suffer consequences.

Huge Sandwich
Open fridge, and lean on door while contemplating contents. Continue for up to ten minutes. Decide that you'd like a huge sandwich like Scooby-Doo or Dagwood Bumstead always has. Look for baguette, fail to find one. Use frozen garlic loaf instead. Cut length ways. Look in horror as bits of frozen garlic bread go everywhere. Painstakingly reassemble bits using toothpicks. Now we're in business!

Assemble filling - some lettuce leaves, some pastrami, some hot sauce, some pickles, some tomato slices... uh oh. Is that red stuff on the chopping board tomato juice, or did you cut yourself? You don't feel any pain, but you're pretty well anesthetized... never mind, if you get some blood on your sandwich it's just extra protein, isn't it? Or vitamin D or whatever blood is made of. Where were you? Oh, yeah, cold chicken, mayo, bok choy, hoummus... wow, everything looks kind of funny... mango salsa, salami... like kind of monochrome, you know, all black and white and your ears are ringing and...

Cake

Cheap instant cake (drunk chef's impression)Preheat oven to whatever seems appropriate. Get packet of cake mix. Try to focus on instructions on packet of cake mix. Hold a hand over one eye, so you stop seeing double. Ah! There you go. Gather ingredients. Realize that you don't have butter, decide that mashed potatoes has similar consistency. Realize that you have no milk, use beer. Realize you have no eggs, improvise egg substitute from weet-bix soaked in milk. Shit. Looks like you did have milk, after all. Too late now. Attempt to grease a 30cm (12 in.) cake tin. Remember that you have no butter. Grease tin with garlic flavored stir-fry spray. Mix ingredients in what you hope is a bowl, then pour batter into tin. Cook until bored. Eat immediately, regret soon after.

Two Types of Leftovers
Right, you've learned from your mistakes. No more complicated meals. Just have that leftover pizza. Or maybe that Chinese takeaway. The pizza looks kind of inviting... but it's just plain cheese, and you want something spicier... hey, wait a minute, why not, like, put the chow mien on top of the pizza, and put it in the microwave?

Mmm... not bad, but it needs a little something... got it! Potato salad! But wait, the potato salad is cold. You could put it on top of the pizza-mien and microwave it, but then the chow mein will be too hot and the pizza base will go soggy. You'd better fry the potato salad separately. Crap, where's the fry pan? Oh, well, you can always use that pressure cooker you got as a wedding present and never used.

Place potato salad in pressure cooker and place on high heat. Get bored, and finally forget about the potatoes. Finish chow mein pizza, which is now cold. Go to bed. Awake early next morning to sounds of spousal screaming coming from kitchen. Hide under pillows. Await inevitable.

Cheese and Mushroom Omelet

Omelet, omelet, omelet, omelet, omelet, omelet, omelet, omelet, omelet, omelet, omelet, omelet, mushroom, mushroom. Break three eggs into mixing bowl, miraculously not getting any eggshell in the mix. Add a dash of milk, pepper and herbs to taste. Do not add salt to uncooked eggs, as this can make them tough. Beat eggs until light and fluffy. Slice 4-5 medium mushrooms. Heat a tablespoon of butter or margarine in a frypan or skillet, then fry mushrooms until brown. Remove mushrooms from butter.

Turn down heat and add egg mixture, occasionally lifting edges with a spatula. When nearly cooked through, place mushrooms and cheese on top. Put under a hot grill, until cheese has melted. When cooked, fold over and turn onto a plate. Marvel at how well the omelette has turned out, even though you're hammered. Take omelet to TV room and sit down in favorite chair. Remember that you left your drink in the kitchen. Balance plate on armrest of chair while you get your drink. Return with drink, and sit down, overturning the omelete into the chair. Contemplate hot cheese congealing on your best trousers. Sob uncontrollably.

Two minute noodles and Tomato Sauce

Add hot water from the hot water tap to a medium-sized pot.
Bring to boil.
Add noodles and flavour sachet from two packets of Maggi Two-minute Noodles.
[optional] crush a clove of garlic or two and add a pinch of salt
Boil until noodles are soft.
Strain. Put noodles back in pot.
Add Tomato Sauce.
Add fat - butter is best, margarine acceptable, or a little olive oil.
Eat out of the saucepan.
[Optional] Cry.

Cleaning Up

Don't. It will just make matters worse. Just make a note to buy flowers on your way home from work tomorrow hope that your spouse... HOLY SHIT! WORK! You're due at the office in three hours! WAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Mid-sem Blues II

2007-03-29T18:35:00.001+05:30

It’s funny how the world appears to you, the way you are feeling at any given time. Right now the world is a hard, cold place. Nothing is right. I failed. Again. Agreed that nearly everyone did badly in the mid-sems, but that’s hardly an excuse for me not doing well. There’s something wrong, and I know what that is – I have stopped caring, and stopped working. This is a very bad sign. To think that only till last semester if there was one thing that never gave me trouble was academics! Never mind. I shall not go on cribbing about how everything around me is unpleasant. It is not. The problem lies within me, and I shall solve it myself.

Comfortably Numb

2007-03-22T20:50:00.000+05:30

It always happens. Whenever I watch the recording of pulse, a shiver runs through my spine. I actually feel I was there at the Earl’s Court, present at the time Gilmour was strumming away at his Fender Stratocaster amidst the dazzling lasers. I become completely oblivious of the fact that my friends are raising hell in the corridor, or that I’ve got to take my dinner before the mess closes. Imagine what those thousands would have felt who was actually there. It is a bit of a cliché to say that it’s once-in-a-lifetime-experience. But it is true. Agreed I’m slightly inebriated right now, but that is no excuse. PULSE was the greatest rock concert by the greatest band ever. I am falling in love with Pink Floyd over and over again.

mid-sem blues

2007-03-12T01:14:00.000+05:30

i have mechanics today. and i don't know which paper i have tomorrow or the day after for that matter. i spent the entire sunday playing counter-strike, looking for ways to bypass the proxy server of our college, discussing the best speaker systems, downloading music and killing my roommate (this is roughly what everyone else did, with slight variations). guys are giving someone birthday bumps in the next wing, and in mine they're simply screaming. apparently a game of cs just got over and the terrorists are fighting the counter-terrorists in real life. it's 2 in the morning. no one that i know even pretended to study. engineering college is fun!

of human bondage (i'm not very imaginitive when it comes to titles)

2007-03-02T03:12:00.000+05:30

Finally finished reading ‘of human bondage’, and what a huge volume it is! I quite enjoyed it in the middle, especially the parts in which Philip was leading a wretched life as an aspiring painter and his relationship with Mildred. My heart went out to him. It became monotonous towards the end though. I could almost predict its end (he finally settled down with Sally, which was the only diversion). Of course it has depicted the human psychology very well. It is very realistic, but of late I don’t care much for realism. We’ve got too much of that in our lives in any case. It was not poetic as a Shakespearean tragedy (I don’t like happy endings), nor was it fantastic like a Wilde or a Kafka. But I must also confess that I agree with Maugham’s philosophy in general, in most of the cases. All said and done, it has all the ingredients of a Hollywood drama (I’m sure there’s already a film made on this novel!).

ps: i had posted a quote by oscar wilde a while ago. it's queer that maugham should mention him in this book and also agree with that particular quote of his. the quote's still there if you look for it

The Diaries

2007-02-21T19:31:00.000+05:30

Einstein had precisely defined relativity: when you are sitting with a charming lady, hours seem like a minute. And when you are sitting on a hot stove, a minute seems like hours. This is exactly what I feel during the lectures. I feel I’m in an oven, and I impatiently glance at my watch to know when the eternal hour will pass. And here I am in my room. I just watched this movie (Motorcycle Diaries) and didn’t know when it was time for dinner. The movie is captivating! It’s a biographical of Che Guevera, the famous Argentine doctor who became the icon of revolution in South America. The movie is not so much about the life he led as a revolutionary. Rather it is about the road that led him there, and is based on the diary he kept during his journey through South America with a friend on a motorcycle (he called his notes ‘the motorcycle diaries’).

The movie has brilliantly portrayed the life of Che. But more importantly, it is beautiful even as a stand alone. I had watched a part of it with my mum (had to leave half way against my will as I was getting late for my train). My mum didn’t know who Che was. Nor did she know Spanish (we had to rely on subtitles), yet she appreciated it. This is a proof enough of how impressive the movie was! Be it the frozen roads through which they dragged their broken down Norton, or the fling Che had with the mechanic’s wife; the poverty of the common folks and the coolness with which the rich pick out a handful of miners out of hundreds of aspirants; Che’s asthma attacks and their treks through the Andes; or their conduct at the missionary where they cured the lepers – every incident is an art piece. It was a pleasant change from a Hollywood thrash. Then again, I have taken to liking foreign movies. Of course art knows no language. Of course I rely on subtitles.

The next village

2007-02-18T04:46:00.000+05:30

My grandfather used to say: “life is astoundingly short. To me, looking back over it, life seems so foreshortened that I scarcely understand, for instance, how a young man can decide to ride over to the next village without being afraid that – not to mention the accidents – even the span of a normal happy life may fall far short of the time needed for such a journey.”

More headbanging

2007-02-18T04:39:00.000+05:30

This was even better. Booze and rock all night long. Literally. There were college bands competing in the last round of ‘the rockers’, but they were nothing less than any pro. I forgot all my pain when they started playing numbers by iron maiden and ac-dc, and of course metallica. And what a place I chose for myself to stand – beside the speakers! I was leaning on them! And I could feel the music – the beats and the bass. It was an unbelievable experience. The single best part of the cultural/tech fest that we had over the last three days. And I am looking forward to more concerts next year, but before that I hope to make it to the ‘rendezvous’ – the IIT Delhi cultural festival. I LOVE ROCK!

heandbangers

2007-02-17T10:31:00.000+05:30

My neck is broken. So are my arms and legs. My voice is gone. My eardrums are damaged. I’m totally dehydrated and sweating like a pig in this cold. I have no energy left in me…still I never felt more alive thus far in my college! This is what Parikrama can do to a person who worships rock. I had a ball of a time screaming, jumping, dancing and head-banging right in front of the speakers which were blasting away classics like purple haze, another brick in the wall, comfortably numb, highway to hell…it was awesome! And tomorrow there’s another band playing…

String Theory

2007-02-12T22:25:00.000+05:30

[this is what I do when i get bored waiting for a train at a railway station]

The string theory was proposed in an attempt to unite all the laws of the universe to give ‘the theory of everything’. It simply states that the visible matter is nothing but the energy produced by the vibrations of ‘strings’, which are very much like that of a violin, or a guitar, but are very small (of the order of 10^-33 cm or Planck length). If the atom were the size of the solar system, strings would be the size of an atom. Just as vibrations at different frequencies produce different notes in a guitar, vibrations of different strings give different matter.

Two main kinds of strings were theorized – open and looped. Both satisfied the mathematical equations. So far so good, but then the physicists encountered a problem. They came up with five different variations of the theory. This was a major problem – how can different theories explain the same universe? And if there are five, there can be more.

Then Edward Witten, the scientist/physicist from the institute of advanced science, came along and proposed that these theories are just images of a single theory (people believed him because he is said to have the highest IQ of all living humans). He went on to propose his own version of the theory called M-theory. According to this, the strings are not one dimensional, but three dimensional, and can be stretched like a membrane (simply called ‘branes’), few of them vast enough to cover the entire universe!

He also said that all the strings are open looped and are attached to this mega brane. But gravitons (the particles responsible for gravity) are closed looped and can roam around freely. They can also leave our universe and enter another and vice-versa.

If the above theory is true, then it may be able to explain the phenomenon of ‘Dark Matter’, which has puzzled the physicists for a while now. May be the extra gravitational force that the astronomers are detecting is not being exerted by some dark matter from our universe, but from the gravitons that escaped from a neighbouring universe and entered ours! In that case, there would be no need to look for dark matter, but other universes.

Scientists at CERN are conducting experiments to detect the gravitons that escape our universe in the particle accelerator. They crash two atoms at very high speed and detect new particles produced. If gravitons do have aforesaid property, then it will show it by its absence, i.e., experiments won’t be able to detect its presence.

Then three things will happen – it will be the first experimental proof of the M-theory; dark matter puzzle will be solved; and presence of multiverses will be confirmed. We live in interesting times indeed.

The Trees

2007-02-07T23:57:00.001+05:30

For we are like tree trunks in the snow. In appearance they lie sleekly and a light push should be enough to set them rolling. No, it can’t be done, for they are firmly wedded to the ground. But see, even that is only appearance.

hatred

2007-02-06T02:13:00.000+05:30

I hate my college. I hate the shallowness that prevails here, all the chatter about fraternity, love, respect, honour, dignity. I hate the seniors the most, who don’t know how to treat a human being, let alone knowing the meaning of these words. They are still ragging us (understatement) – and it’s been six months since we’ve joined the college. Name me a college in India where this happens. You know (ruch, dax, richa di, or whoever is reading this post) you are better off than I am. And dax thank your stars that you didn’t qualify in jee and land up in this asylum, instead you got into Miranda. Studies ain’t that great here. In any case, what they teach in an engineering college in India is a junk (profs claim that). So what really matter are the experiences you earn, opportunities you make use of, friends you make and people you interact with. And if these be the stuff one goes to college for, then all of you are at an advantage. Remember the names of your batchmates and seniors. Report to the senior hostels at their whim. Attend all the junk events that take place everyday (almost) Why? Because that is what makes ISM alumni association so strong; it grooms your personality. To hell with that! I was never made to memorise the names of the Doscos (I don’t think anyone was). Is it just remembering a few thousand names that makes one old boy society strong and the other weak? But for a handful of friends, I’d sure have considered it a hell. But I didn’t know these people before I came here. So it really wouldn’t have mattered had I gone somewhere else. I know one thing for sure – I wouldn’t send my son here, and I wouldn’t have anything to do with this godforsaken place once I graduate.

Ps: I just wanted to cool down a bit. I’m not depressed. I’m not on drugs. I’m angry, thats all.

IIT KGP

2007-02-04T12:42:00.000+05:30

I had a very interesting weekend. And I don’t know where to start. Should I begin with our train journey to kolkata in which we had to bribe the TT to get a berth? Or the onward journey to khadagpur in a local train, which the ladies of our group made miserable by their constant chatter? (thank god I’m not dating anyone of them). But I think the best start would be to begin at the moment I reached khadagpur – I fell in love with the town! It’s green, clean, and quite with almost no human activity. And IIT KGP (that’s what IIT khadagpur is called) reflected that quality (it’s huge), except it was buzzing with students from all over the country and abroad who had come there to take part in the ongoing tech fest organized by them.

Our team had made a robot which broke after qualifying the prelims. We were of course mighty upset, but I for one was cheered up by the lecture I attended by a Nobel laureate Kevin Warwick. He gave a talk on cyborgs. It was both enjoyable (somehow these physicists have a good sense of humour) and informative. They also distributed a DVD free of cost. It was of a soon to be aired Discovery Channel documentary on future living. Then we attended a musical show performed by some American band. It was a disaster. I’d rather listen to Parikrama.

Anyway, since we had nothing better to do, and the accommodation was hard to get, we decided to go to kolkata and spend the night there. So we did – in a dingy three bed hotel room which had ancient fittings (the hotel itself was located on the 4^th floor of a shady looking building). Someone had suggested we go there. He even booked the place for us.

The next day we went to ‘aquatica’. For those who don’t know cal, it’s a water park. And we did what you do in such a park – had fun! We bathed in various slides and wave pools for almost four hours and then we decided we had had enough of that to last a year. So we went back to the station. But the earliest train would not leave before until 5 hours. So I decided to kill the time in Park Street, where I had awesome beef steak and a much needed draught of beer. That was the last thing I did in cal before boarding the train back to Dhanbad. And the return journey was no less interesting. We traveled in a general compartment where there was literally no place to stand straight! I kept my sanity only because I had my music plugged to my ears. I actually managed to sway my body to the beats even though my lower half was numb with pain (it’s a 5 hour journey and the train was an hour late). The other passengers could not believe I could be so cheerful - they were all fighting over place to sit/stand. Thus I (and my friends) journeyed to Dhanbad. we reached there at 2 in the morning and to our luck found a dhaba there. And we hogged like starved pigs on butter chicken and tandoori roti before going back to college and collapsing on our respective bed.

What an experience!

My recent works

2007-01-03T08:05:00.000+05:30

The father, the sun and the holy ghost (oil on canvas)

lady in white (water colours)

Nymph (water colours)

it's my first all black painting, which led me to do more experiments with that particular shade!

untitled (water colour)

it's my first 'coloured' painting after a long time. i had been experimenting with black for a while

Yet another new year (...i'm bored already)

2007-01-01T07:25:00.000+05:30

Click On The Thumbnails to See The Bigger Image

Yet another year passes by, and we are here again welcoming a new year....we have new resolves, new determinations......though i have this uncanny feeling that this year will be the same as the one before. it always happens. the problem with the future is that it keeps turning into past. so make no resolutions (you know they will be broken before you know it) and party away! cheers.

The greatest invention after sliced bread

2006-12-29T19:34:00.000+05:30

Notpron! no it's not porn. it's the saddest thing that happened to me. the damn riddle! i can't sleep, can't drink, can't eat - i only think of how to find the chicks and what is the meaning of 279943359. of course there are many other digits as well. 13,59,22,d7,33,93.....4|48|21|25|74|57.....what is the meaning of it all? maybe ascii and hex has the solution. but believe me, it's the best entertainment to be found on the net!
What made this riddle so fascinating is that it took a whole butt load of skills to complete. You needed to be aware of computer functions such as how to find that sound program in system32 folder (which I didn't even know was there), decipher maths and codes using hex, ASCII, and binary, you needed to learn a little about music, know how to Photoshop, how to hunt, how to do word scrambles, anagrams and such, learn foreign languages, make an origami number figure, and learn how to cheat at minesweeper (which I didn't know was possible). Usually people are good at one or two of those things, but you had to get good at them all to succeed.