So what do I expect?

Sometimes one can be rather mystified on days when one really gets going with the walking and the thinking...it is not an unpleasant thing even though one wishes that one could solve some of the puzzles and say, 'a-ha', and then go and share them with some folks (without sounding like an unhinged bat). Without sharing some of life's puzzles there's absolutely no meaning in the 'a-ha' moment.

It's been said that one must expect nothing. Not goodness nor kindness nor commiseration nor gratitude nor respect nor praise nor rewards, and certainly not - God forbid - love in life. I'm sure this makes absolute sense at some level and if nothing else one can be assured that if one doesn't expect anything one will never wonder, even if one is a fairly average person, about some of the things that pass for sanity and one will very rarely wonder whether one is growing silently but surely madder and slower and stupider with every passing day and for sure one will never be saddened or hurt or feel lost or lonely or disappointed or restless. But as a friend once said in a different context, I can intellectually accept this but emotionally I resist. I know that one must expect nothing when living in the world and when I think of it (as I do) I think that it is but a stroke of luck or karma (or something else?) that I have, for the time being, cigarettes to smoke, enough to eat, clean water, a roof over my head, and functioning limbs and physical organs and a temporary job that lets me pay the bills - so how can I expect for more?

But if truth be told: after accepting or at least resigning oneself to the idea that one is more or less an average person - with seemingly common desires and tries as honestly as possible to do minimum harm - it seems impossible to expect nothing.

For one thing, there are some very mundane expectations. One realises at some point that the very least that one expects (and sometimes with no feeling attached to the expectation and sometimes with great annoyance and sometimes with liquid joy and sometimes with a matter-of-factness and sometimes with a listlessness) is to wake up the next day when one falls asleep at night even though one does know that one will die one day. Bizarre example it may well be but how many everyday expectations then are simply hidden and how many are we blind to simply because we don't really think about such matters? We don't expect to suddenly be in the middle of a violent war. We don't expect to be brutalized. We don't expect to get into an accident and be maimed for life. We don't expect to lose the ones we love...regular middle-class people don't expect to go hungry at night and don't expect to be without clean water and don't expect to not have a place to sleep at night. And all of these are expectations, and rather big ones too. And these just barely skim the surface of our pot of expectations. We know very well (or at least some people do) that things might change in the snap of a finger and we know that for countless people and lives these things are real but we are able to, for the most part, not think about the same happening in our own lives (which includes the lives we love). In short - we don't expect such things to descend on our heads.

It is also true that some people worry and some people brood and some people go mad when they start keeping a tab on even the very basic expectations that we carry around like an invisible cloak...yet other people wonder and worry and brood and enter God-knows what dark chambers and are still able to maintain their wits about them, and some of us pay no attention because maybe not questioning the basic expectations is the way to get on with this and lead at least a somewhat normal life, and the only times that we sometimes realise that we hold certain expectations is when some of our expectations are violated, and this can happen at the real and at the surreal level.

And to make a leap but not an unreasonable leap - we also expect some things from our own selves (we expect to be honest, we expect to be civil unless otherwise provoked, we expect to enjoy meeting some people, we expect to work well, we expect to be punctual, we expect to love some people and to be annoyed by others...). And one also expects certain somethings from others (similar things actually: we expect other people too to be basically honest, we expect them not to be gratuitously rude, we expect them too to be punctual for meetings, we expect some people to love us and some others to be annoyed by us...).

We expect some things from, of, and for ourselves and we expect some things for, of, and from others and we even expect others to expect some things from us. And the specific expectations may differ depending upon the relationship we share with the specific others.

So what is it that I've had to accept (and somewhat reluctantly)? Do we expect certain things in life? Yes, we do. Do we expect certain things from others? Yes, we do. Does the expectation itself mean that it will be granted? No, that it certainly does not. But as one writer said, one should learn to expect the unexpected ! - and that goes for the good, bad, and beautiful.

I have not been able to understand the ebbs and flows and the turning of tides in the lives of creatures great and small even though I have been affected by their mysteries. In some other age and time I may have gone around singing around the countryside, and have people chasing me out with stones. Sometimes, in rare moments and in flashes, the nature of life has made perfect sense. God only knows why. I know this only in terms of recollecting the feeling. The feeling came and it passed leaving only a couple of remembered points, and those are the points which glowed harder. Yet the points themselves expect me to act upon them. It's one thing to gaze upon mysteries and these odd points and be utterly fascinated and captivated by them and it would be fine if I were satisfied doing just that (while my monthly bills magically paid themselves or if I could live in a barrel or a tub, eat, and drink what I could find with no other requirements needed nor wanted among other important things!) but I am expected to act upon the bit of knowing that stays. I expect it of myself.

And I think that almost all (if not all) human beings have this sense at some points: a knowing, and a knowing that is peculiar to each human being and a knowing that is unique to a particular human being, and a knowing which is related to (a) do-able expectation(s). And there are do-able expectations although difficult ones that float through or appear as dots. Whether one will fulfill these expectations is a different matter. One cannot predict the future and sometimes by the time one gets to untangle the mess from the meaning one seems to have less and less time left - but one still can't give up without doing one's best. It's one thing to never know what one expects of oneself but to know and then to say that there's nothing to be done about it is somewhat imbecilic.

One can't even say, "I was completely ignorant". One has to stand up on Judgment Day and say after the first round of questions, "I'm sorry Your Honour but I knew a bit but was too lazy and too despairing and kept thinking that time was running out by the time I was 16, so I didn't ever want to try and do the bit of good that I could have. No, Your Honour I'm not trying to impress you by being truthful - since You know all there is to know. No, Your Honour I'm not trying to be a smart aleck. No, Your Honour I'm not giving you excuses. I'm actually trying to explain what happened. No, Your Honour I realise this is not a confession box. I thought I was on the right track...Yes, Your Honour, I realise I did do a lot of navel gazing. Yes, Your Honour I wasted time even when I knew that I wasn't meant to. Yes, Your Honour I kept wanting to keep my cake and eat it too even when I had the suspicion that that is what I was doing. Yes, Your Honour, I did get very tired sometimes. No, Your Honour I didn't think that I had created the world - oh well, Yes, sometimes I thought I might be able to until I realised I was hopelessly incapable of even fixing the whole world - leave alone creating one - even if I were given the power. Yes, Your Honour I did think I had a role nonetheless. No Your Honour I didn't do everything I could. No, You're absolutely right Your Honour I didn't do my best and give my best...Yes, of course Your Honour You're never wrong..."

So there is this obmutacious expectation which lingers...

30th December, 2010

December 1st

Today is the 1st of December. And since somebody reminded me that the first decade of the new century (and millennium) is about to come to an end...I might as well add: Today is the first day of the last month of the last year of the first decade of the twenty-first century and the second millennium, and I can look up and thank God for a working sewage system in the place I live...among other things.

And to be less facetious: it snowed today, and I couldn't help but smile and smile and smile some more in spite of thinking that it was a little mad to feel so ridiculously happy.....

P.S: Today is the 4th and the silent snow is really coming down. I would have taken a photo or two if I had a working camera. It doesn't look real and it doesn't feel real and when I'd gone outside early in the morning it didn't sound real....

Silence and Solitude...

The first time I heard of this word was when I was in Class IV. Solitude. It was a three word moral science exercise - silence, solitude and prayer - and I still remember how quiet I felt inside while doing the exercise. Among other images - I see the tops of very tall trees swaying in the wind and their green leaves are silently swishing...there is a forest. An image of tall trees in a forest. That's one of the things I see when I hear or contemplate upon the word solitude.

I find it both gratifying and disconcerting that so much now is being made of silence and solitude. I haven't looked lately but I'm sure even social scientists are talking about the benefits of solitude and silence and "being alone" and I'm quite sure that we'll be reading a fancy article in Science or Nature one day, not too far off into the future, extolling the virtues of silence and solitude.

I'm all for silence and solitude, and so it's not that I find the value placed on them as odd. What I find odd is people talking about them. And of course I am too. When we have to start talking about some things as being valuable and as being essential and when we have to harp on their value not by re-affirming their value but to state that such-and-such has value to begin with - I start wondering whether their value has already been sullied and how it is that such invaluable aspects of life started losing their significance. I've been deeply curious about values and the things that humans and different humans value (but about that another day) and I'm back to wondering how some parts of life can be made to be seen as being valuable. If a human being has never really been alone or has hated being alone or has been deeply distressed by the experience or has found it discomfiting or unbearable or useless or mind-numbing - I wonder whether there's anything anyone can do or say to make the person suddenly see silence and solitude as being valuable.

While I'm on the topic maybe I'll ramble a bit about how I see silence and solitude. This is biased. I can't talk here about the millions who cannot afford silence or solitude because they are busy everyday trying to get food and water and basic amenities or are merely trying to exist because of terrible life-circumstances. That would be a different question requiring a space of its own. But there are people who even though they have the possibility of engaging in quiet moments, don't want to be alone....not that being alone or the ability of being alone automatically makes someone superior or better or deserving of praise but even that is something to think about.

One may argue as I often do (with myself) that being alone can be a precious experience only if a person has certain likes which go well with the experience of being alone. Reading - unless one is reading out aloud to somebody else (which has a time and a place, and that too only if one can read well!) must be done alone. Related to reading, I do have some reservations and some strange musings....but about those, another day.

Painting is something I used to engage in quite often at one point. Now, almost never. If I were an artist with some skill (not too much - only some) then maybe it may have been like writing but as it stands I cannot paint much and if I am able to paint something that looks like what it's supposed to - it's more often due to sheer luck than any aspect of skill or talent or ability. Yet when one does paint, and this is about great artists and sculptors - from the bits and pieces that I've read about them - they liked and indeed required solitude in order to work; and even people who paint well but are not great and/or famous artists like the time spent alone with their easel, paint-brush, paper and colour palette.

I've noticed that I cannot read as I would like to nor paint (as haphazardly as I do) unless I'm non-fidgety inside. There has to be some semblance of a non-chaotic mind and non-chaotic innards to be able to focus in order to read a piece of writing as it is meant to be read. But there is something not quite black or white about the whole process - at least insofar as reading is concerned. For sometimes I search for a piece of writing - an essay, a story, a book - because my mind is blowing around aimlessly or very purposefully but without any release or relief, and reading the half-remembered piece provides some clarity. Sometimes coming across a piece of writing at the right time somehow pacifies the mind in giving it a fruitful path to pursue rather than just letting it toss and turn on nothing. It may be a delusion of calmness that is evoked and the fruitful path sometimes may not turn out to be very fruitful. Nonetheless there is something that happens that makes one feel less fratchy and somewhat less hopeless inside. Sometimes one chances upon an amusing piece and one is able to laugh, and so laughing one may realise that one is taking oneself too seriously. At other moments one may be able to read something which simply and eloquently speaks to one like a blood-and-bones human being responding to a question....and sometimes it's impossible to read. It really is.

Then there's listening to music. Different kinds of music can be listened to when there is company but sometimes I cannot listen and do not want to listen to certain pieces when there is company. Some pieces must be heard alone sometimes. I'm not dismissing the possibility of experiencing the fullness of music in company - but in most instances and on an average - I'd say listening to music too is something best done on one's own. I don't play a musical instrument - but people who do, whether gifted or semi-gifted, like playing on their own to themselves. I've seen that in one close friend. He used to play his violin whether or not anybody was around, and he didn't like being bothered when he was playing. Musicians might like and even love playing for others but if nobody's around, that's perfectly fine...and even when musicians play with people around - they seem to not really notice. I'm not talking about noisy rock musicians, here.

Then there is walking around a forest (provided there is a relatively safe, quiet forest or a wooded area or some trails where one can go for a walk). Sometimes one needs to go on one's own, by oneself. Walking briskly, taking one's time, listening to the trees rustle, hearing the river or the stream for a long time before actually going and sitting near it or sticking one's toes into it...listening to the mighty babble of birds (which I would be hard-pressed to identify when I'm by myself) and the trees swishing and swaying - trees that one can hear in fall and in summer with the wind - even before one sees them. Can be lovely with the right company. That is true. It can be sometimes. But I cannot bear walking with people who insist on talking nineteen to the dozen at the top of their lungs when they're walking with me through a forest. The voices bear down on my head like a helmet. I think I'm an auditory person - maybe that could be the reason - and while I'm quite sure that I'm hard of hearing I also have sensitive ear-drums and auditory nerves (which is why I've entirely stopped singing to myself), so while a walk through the woods may be a lovely or a joyous or a beautiful experience with the right sort of company - whether real or imagined - the walk is completely spoiled and soiled with company that yaks.

Now all of these above mentioned activities and some more - like going to an art gallery or going to hear live music or going around a city to visit historical sites or a temple or a cathedral or a monastery, or the mountains or a book-shop or a library or a quiet sea-beach or even having a quiet meal...and other activities - like gardening, carpentry, cooking, and so on can be potentially very fulfilling in select company, although some people really do enjoy doing some activities on their own and by themselves. There is also a time and a place for silence even when in company...there is the aspect of companionable silence. There is a stillness. Although these days, companionable silence and stillness probably means five people sitting around the table with everyone fiddling with his or her phone and sending text messages to god-knows-whom.

Thinking, for the most part, is a personal activity requiring one to exert one's own mind and to gather one's own thoughts and to be with oneself. Introspecting, reflecting, looking over, and wondering have to be done on one's own with one's own mind. One can argue with other people later. One can ask other people later. One can have conversations and discussions later....yet there is a time and a place where one has to sit with one's own thoughts, one's own images, one's own consciousness (or lack of the same), one's voice/many voices, one's own acts of omission and commission...one can argue with one's many selves or just sit and be with oneself or be appalled with oneself or be very confuzzled or be quiet but the activity has to be done in comparative silence, and there is no substitute for this sort of thinking. And it has to be done - for better or for worse. In sickness and in health till death comes in and takes one away. Maybe there will be no enlightenment at all and at no level. Maybe there will be less and less that becomes clear. Maybe one will stubbornly hold fast to one's tiny bit of light and know nothing more. Maybe one will be no better than what one has been or maybe one will be the same. Maybe one will be a better and balanced human being, slowly and steadily and gradually. Maybe one will, at least, not forget what one needs to remember. Or maybe one will die a dolt. Who knows....but it's still something that has to be done, and done alone. And I know how difficult it is to be silent inside. It's a madhouse in there. One can hardly listen to what's important because of the mindless, senseless, idiotic chatter.

I can't talk much about meditation. I have tried it many times over but there is very little I understand about meditation. I don't know whether I am doing it right or what exactly I'm supposed to be doing. But I'm assuming that it's something one has to do by oneself and on own's own and in silence...

What else? There's writing. One can show the written bit to another later. One can ask for a response later. One can push it into someone's face later. One can be embarassed about showing it to anyone...but when one is writing - that is what one is doing. There really are no other thoughts, no other feelings, no other anythings really. Painting for me is always a matter of being able to gift the hopefully recognisable and not-too-bad finished product to someone else. Writing however is not done with the solitary intention of sharing every bit of the written word. Maybe if I could write fiction....I'm quite sure I would have loved sharing the tales but most often when I write what I do, even when I'm writing for no clear reason but that I need to write, I have a strangely fulfilling time. While writing one lives in another world and in another state-of-being for those moments. One is quite alone and not even with oneself and somewhat disembodied. Maybe that's the reason that one sometimes experiences an equally intense need to communicate with some human being with whom one can relate to after something is written.

I am quite convinced that somewhere inside one always knows what one is...it's a matter of following the course if one can and if one has the motivation and the drive and the discipline to do what one is. As I keep reading the experiences of those writers whose writings I enjoy reading I am still surprised and somewhat alarmed to note how prolific and at how disciplined they were in their work (i.e. writing) habits by their late teens. That's when I raise my eyebrows at myself. My interesting seeds never got planted and now they have, as somebody once prophetically and rather poetically predicted, been blown away by the wind or have been pecked at by the birds. It's true. If one doesn't follow an idea for whatever reasons - it really does disintegrate at some point. But I digress...

Then of course there is dying. I don't know too much about the experience of death but I'm assuming one dies alone. I hope one isn't lonely while dying but it's something one does alone.

I know I've missed listing all the different sorts of activities that people engage in when alone but others are most likely to have their own lists...

The loneliness and meaninglessness that one experiences are other matters.

On Haitch-es and...maybe Mr. 'iggins?

Hullo. 'ullo?

Here's something from last week that may be interesting to some and may even bring a couple of laughs and/or raise some eyebrows - both the article and the video-clip. The boy on the right in the blue shirt reminds me of someone I know and the woman is priceless. The clip and the news story brought my own mongrel pronunciation home to me.

In the third school that I went to (and remember of) as a kid - I'm almost absolutely sure that "h" was pronounced "haitch". I used "haitch" in my head, dropped it after a point and then forgot all about it, and at some point I started raising my eyebrows when people said "Haitch" instead of "aitch". "H" is never pronounced in "history". This I learnt very late - sometime in middle-school. I always see the Wren and Martin when I read something to the effect of - "an historical examination of some of the theories demonstrate...wugga-wugga-wugga". Back then I'd chewed on the pencil and stared at the example on the left page of the book until I realised why the example used "an" instead of "a". (Even after "history" had been sorted out satisfactorily, I used an 'an' for "iron is a useful metal" for a class-test). How on earth is the pronunciation of "harass" changing though ? It can't be "arass"...!

I've got to say I don't remember ever hearing "ate" being pronounced as 'et'. Whoever's heard of "I et a biscuit?" Whoever says that apart from the very propah gentleman in the little clip? I can hallucinate "ate" rhyming with "bet" in "I 'et' an egg with toast" but I don't think I would ever say "et", and if I did I'd quickly correct it to ryhme with "bait". "Says", in my book, should rhyme with fez, and as the gentleman points out "there is no 'i' in mischievous" (between the v and the o, that is)! I'd have gotten all the pronunciations from 1928 incorrect apart from "pristine" (only because I know I used to pronounce it otherwise just a decade ago). I remember though a friend telling me in school that "house-wife" was actually pronounced "huzzif". I used that for a bit but I never could get used to it. And "cumbat"? It can't be "cumbat"! And why "respit"? Respite should rhyme with despite, shouldn't it?

I had assumed that "wrath" was pronounced the same way as "cloth"...But I'm not sure what "off" and "north" and "wharf" are supposed to rhyme with. Is there something missing in the sentence or is it me who's missing something.

I am reminded of my squabbles with Beth (a friend who is now a proper professor). She pronounced "soot" as rhyming with "foot" while I rhymed "soot" with "boot". I'm reminded of Bean who used to growl every time he heard someone say "or'njyoos". "It's not one word." He would say. "There are two words. Orange-juice." And then there was the little incident when a student from Greece told Bean, who was from the U.K, that Bean was mispronouncing words.

Grammar, pronunciation, spelling - at some point in school - became one garbled heap. I had a sense for idiomatic English and I had a sense for grammar - I'll give myself that....but for the latter - my senses weren't always right. I didn't know any grammar and I never did learn much of grammar while going to Carmel. I taught myself the fundamentals of grammar - including subject-verb agreement - when I was 24. I never quite understood punctuation or the phrase-and-clause bit...I still make subject-verb errors and dangling modifiers are sometimes left to dangle if I'm not carefully re-reading what I'm writing and re-writing, and I can't even quite spot the problem with the clause and phrase bit even when I sense that a sentence does not quite sound right.

And what of words which I didn't know how to pronounce? I simply pronounced them how I thought fit or "bleeped" over them, and went on reading. This reminds me of a lovely little cartoon that I found on the net but wasn't able to download. There's a boy who's snuggled up in his bed with a book, and he looks all comfy but he has a bemused look on his face, and he's looking up from his book. There is a blaring "announcement" from within the pages of the book: "Alert: you mispronounced a word in your head. Would you like to hear the correct pronunciation now or hear it later?"....

It would have been nice to to carry a pronunciation-perfect guide in the head even if one didn't have the luck to meet a Mr. Higgins everyday.

P.S: November 7th - and here's a link that Beth sent me....

Winter and Fall

With Giant Spruce. From Last Winter.

Last weekend the temperature was hovering at 36 degrees Celsius. And now it's dropped. It's some 3 degrees outside. It feels like winter has come. And I am not complaining about the weather. I love the cold even though I feel somewhat strange inside when the cold first descends. One winter, when my nose was freezing and tears, which had nothing to do with my emotional state, were streaming down my eyes and I had to give in and wait inside a building for a few seconds to get out of the wind, I still said out-loud, "I love winter."

I know that it's not really winter that's come. It's just the sudden and abrupt cold that's going to give way to some warmer and startlingly clear, crisp, and sunny days with the leaves changing colour but in my head it's already white and icy and snowy and windy...

The giant spruce outside my apartment died a couple of months ago. It was a stunted tree, people say. This time when the snows come I won't be staring at the miniature tree and pretend that I'm looking in on a snowy landscape with nothing but a giant blue spruce.

The sudden chill triggers off memories of a haunting story, one piece of music, of other times and other places and sometimes of other times and of the same place. I realised some days ago that I've been in this town for a long time, and have hardly left it. Considerably curious is that I never quite feel that I should visit other places because I still feel like a traveler or a visitor somehow. I've been to the airport about four times to drop off and pick up friends over these last some weeks, and every time I've been gently startled by the fact that there are other places and real people on this planet....

P.S: Over the last couple of days the leaves have started changing colour.

P.P.S: When winter really comes, this year - maybe, I'll put up a proper post on the season.

Oddities

This post here, by Suvro da, reminded me of some gaffes I've made and still make and also of some other assorted oddities.

In small towns here, people smile, nod and sometimes even ask another "How are you doing?" The first time that happened, when I was out on a walk, I stared, looked behind me, all around me, and had passed the friendly stranger before realising that the greeting had been meant for me.

The "how are you doing?" is something non-committal. It is a polite way of saying "I've noticed your presence and now it's bye-bye." The question itself, spoken everywhere, is not really something that demands or requires an answer...nothing more than a "fine, thank you. How about you?" is expected. How non-committal is this very polite question? Sometimes one will hear the question while half-running down the corridor. The other person too is half-running down the corridor. Nods and smiles are exchanged. Maybe even a very quick "hi" by the time one is within five feet but nobody is changing his pace. Nobody has any intentions of stopping. Then suddenly the other person will raise the discomfiting question, "How are you doing?" or "How are you?" By this time both people have crossed each other. So it is a feat of speed to lodge in one's "I'm fine. How about you?" before the other person completely disappears around the corridor. Nobody turns his head. Heads are still directed ahead. Eyes are looking ahead. And every now and again, one might just hear the disembodied, "I'm fine, thank you" coming from the corner around the corridor.

I have to say I have not mastered the art of this quick exchange. First, I can never quite say "I'm doing fine" when I'm not. Secondly, sometimes I'm known to have said the idiotic, "I'm good." And that does stop the quick exchange in its tracks and stops me in my tracks while I berate myself in my head, which makes the other person do a quicker march than otherwise. Thirdly, even if I manage to get a non-committal "I'm all right, thank you" out of my mouth fast enough - I have never been quick enough to raise the question, "How about you?" in that single sweeping graceful motion. I have already passed the person. The person has passed me. The only way the person can now come up with his "I'm fine too, thank you" is by hollering across the space that now separates us. I don't mind the smile and the nod. I think both are civil. Even a "Hi" is a fine thing...sometimes the "Hi" turns out to be a mish-mash of "Hi", "Hey", "Hail", and "Ho"...but the "How are you doing?" in these speedy encounters still leaves me feeling rather sub-human. Less sub-human than what I felt in the first semester when I actually told people "exactly" how I was doing but still somewhat stupid....The "how's it going?" also puts me in a bind but in less of a bind. I believe the "it" refers to "life in general" so I simply say, "It's going" although I'm sometimes tempted to say "I have not the faintest clue".

One student from India, so I heard, while taking the driving test had come to a stop at a road "Stop" sign. He waited. And he waited. The examiner finally wryly enquired, "So how long are you planning to stay here?" The Indian student very earnestly replied, "Four years. I'm on a student visa. Five years tops."

At coffee shops and at most of the fast-food places the typical question one encounters after one places one's order is "For here 'r to go?" One student on hearing this rather odd question for the first time replied, "I'm here for five years. I'm on a student visa. After that I'll go back to India."

At coffee-shops and bakeries there are free and sometimes plentiful samples of cakes and other goodies. One sunny day, two hungry students had had some coffee and for once decided to try out the plentiful samples that had all been arranged in a basket. The arrangement did look a little odd because normally the samples come on a platter and they are small bite-sized pieces (which would still be larger than the size of a good sized sandesh) while the basket in question contained gargantuan muffins and cakes and cheese bread rolls. The two hungry students simply shrugged. They got a muffin the size of a human head and shared it. It was very good and they wondered whether trying out a cheese roll would be pushing the limits of civil behaviour. It was at this point that one of the students knew there was something definitely odd about the basket. Quite what it was - the student wasn't quite sure. So instead of trying out another sample - both of them went up to the counter and asked the young cashier, "I say, those free samples in that basket, there - we got a muffin from it." The cashier's face fell and the colour went out of her face. Horrified, she replied, "Those are day-old goods. They're only for display. They're not meant to be eaten." The two students were duly embarrassed and one of them said, "Oh, we're so sorry. We'll pay for the muffin." The cashier waved her hands and said, "No, no. You don't need to pay. They're day-old goods....they're not meant for eating....you ate the whole thing?" "Yes, a muffin. It was a blueberry muffin." The look of horror was still pasted across her face when the apologetic students walked off. Never again has that particular bakery in question displayed its basket of goodies.

At another coffee-shop, a student once saw a bunch of perfectly good bananas about to being thrown away. Horrified the student leapt up near the counter. The student knew that the whole bunch could not be saved but said, "I'll take one. I'll take one of those." The cashier said, "but the stem is missing." "Yes, but it's not the stem I'll be eating." The cashier shrugged and handed the banana to the customer and charged the said student for it!

...Hmm...there are some others. But some final thoughts. I hate it when I let out a demented, "Huhn?" when I can't quite hear what people say. I wish I could get rid of this habit and say a civilised "Beg your pardon?" The other horror-habits I have is either to yell or to mumble. There's nothing in between. I am happy to say though that I have never used the word 'cool' unless I am describing the temperature or being sarcastic. And I will never use the word "awesome" - not to describe anything.

It's not that bad...

For three months now, I've been wondering whether to write something but I haven't. But this latest article from the BBC is something that rankles something else in me. The only thing this article doesn't actually come out and say is that it may not have (had) adverse effects at all....(if any). Mind you, it's "devilishly hard" to answer whether 4.9 m barrels of oil spilling into the ocean, might actually just have been really bad, and the question is whether it's the worst one yet, see ....and it's upto the "vagaries of the winds and tides" now, and new green stems are sprouting, see?

I don't know whether this above article is better than another one by an expert in which he compares the spill to buying some iffy chicken tikka masala from a supermarket store and getting an upset stomach. Who is responsible? Do I hold the supermarket responsible or the company that made and sold the iffy chicken tikka masala?...Same things, see? Iffy chicken tikka masala and an oil spill.

In the early 1920s, a sociologist, W.I Thomas, came up with the Thomas Theorem, which states, "If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences." I don't know why but I never quite got the hang of this during my undergrad days wondering how on earth something could become real, at the social level, just because people believed it to be so.

And BP has come out with another over-200 page report...not surprising that. And no surprises as to how blame is assigned either. There were other corporations involved, see? And who can blame BP really when back in May they pointed out that they needed to drill? There is a demand for oil. They are merely satisfying the rising demand.

And we talk about future generations, our moral responsibility to nature, to animals? How can we even begin to think about these with the commitment required when we aren't even thinking about ourselves ? Where are we going to be/go when our planet becomes inhabitable? Even if we were seriously concerned about ourselves, wouldn't we stop and think some before acting or saying what we do? Or does that never really matter? We can push the limits with our new-fangled technology, not really understanding what we are doing, cut some costs here and there (how much are the piddly amounts that are saved when we are talking of over $400,000 a day for the leasing of an oil rig?), never bother about criminal negligence, and keep ourselves well-fueled and if there are some disasters here and there (and share prices fluctuate) - we can talk about the costs of cleaning up, assign some blame, and then keep walking along while making plans of where to drill next. And of course we must never get into slightly deeper or more uncomfortable questions. Never question the need for more and more oil. Never question whether we can do something about how much we use. Never question whether we could have, by now, switched over to renewable sources while clamping down on our consumption.

For an almost forgotten chemical disaster, some of the people affected were paid some $500 and the PR of the company responsible for the disaster is noted to have said that the amount was more than enough. BP, early on had gone around trying to sign agreements with local fishermen promising $5000 if they would promise not to sue BP.

Some two years ago, I was wondering whether human beings, as a whole race, have some in-built way of forgetting what horrors we wreak. It increasingly seems to me that maybe there's no reason to forget anything because we can convince ourselves that what we do isn't that bad....

I might as well not talk about this. I've been sickened by the whole thing and most of all else that comes as news these days.

P.S:

Here's something amusing....

And here....

Teachers

For the longest time I’d held as a basic assumption that no other person could really teach one anything. Nobody could teach another how to live, how to think, how to see things, how to understand. I was quite sure that teachers could teach one facts in better ways (facts in terms of numbers and figures, and how the human body works or how light is refracted and reflected, how to do a litmus test in the lab). They could teach one math in interesting ways or provide one the space to do math by oneself. They could teach one grammar rules, and how to write a language correctly. So I'd maintained that teachers could teach one the technical stuff, and the better the teacher the better they were at teaching one how things are in the world. Every now and again I wondered about this fundamental belief that I had because I did have very clear memories of the Headmaster of an old school and a teacher in high-school who had a significant effect on something more about myself than merely having an effect on the way I learned technical matters or facts or how things were – but I was able to brush off these instances as being unusual and they didn’t last for long enough, and I was never really sure as to what sort of an effect these teachers had on me or whether it was simply my own hare-brained imaginings that had me thinking that they had had an effect on me beyond the pale of the normal.

It took me till college to realise that a good teacher was one who got one to think effectively. And sometimes not effectively – but still, never to stop thinking and most importantly, to keep thinking. Never mind if it helped nobody else for those moments. A good teacher was one who got one to think about an interesting problem. Observing and thinking were better balanced by reading what other people had written. It was in college that I came across a teacher who stressed the importance of understanding what one was learning and/or thinking over. It wasn’t that the teacher told me to do badly in exams but he didn’t come and teach in the class so that we could sit for exams. I’d never not taken a class where one didn’t have to take notes unless (one were not paying attention, which happened often enough) or if it were the Bengali class in school (and only in specific years) where I could simply take joy in the class because I loved the class and maybe it wouldn’t be too far-fetched to claim that I most likely loved the teacher as well. But there in college I knew I was wasting my time completely in trying to write down without thinking – because it actually made sense to listen to what the professor in class was saying.

It’s been said before that when one is going through a lived experience, it’s very difficult to see what exactly is happening. It has to do with being too close to what is going on – and one can’t really understand what, if anything or everything, is happening. It was obvious to me by the second year in college that I was not making any significant contribution to my society. I was also utterly convinced that there was absolutely nobody on this planet who could teach me anything that was worth knowing or learning. And if there were anyone around – there was no chance that I was going to come across such a person. And really, if there was no way of contributing significantly by one’s own merit and if there was nobody around who could teach one something worth knowing – then there was very little point in sticking around for many, many years surviving only because one was too stupid and mentally challenged to do anything else. Deep down I’d always felt that people who’d had the advantage of having some material security in their lives owed it to society and to themselves to do better than just surviving. They had to do something – in a little way or in a medium way or in a big way if not in a great way – to make the world somewhat better than what it was when they had arrived. While in college the thought that struck me, and not on infrequent occasions, was that a lowly crocodile living in the Sunderbans was doing much more good for the eco-system while I, being a human being, with a conscience (apparently) was contributing nothing significant. I can’t say that this thought has disappeared – it has merely changed form.

This and that happened in the meanwhile - nothing earth-shattering. What I did find out all of a sudden though was that I had some excellent teachers.

They came from books or they were dead (and were certainly wiser than I was), and for the most part, therefore, did not exist in the real world. They weren’t just teachers in some detached and impersonal sense either. I got quite furiously attached to at least a couple of them and they showed me certain parts of myself that I didn’t think existed. They showed me, and rather unhesitatingly, the different things that a human being could ‘want’ or ‘desire’ or ‘experience’. They made me see myself, other people, and the real world out-there, and the shock of seeing was not something that I could always sanely absorb. For many times since, I have wondered about the extent to which “regular” human beings must blunt themselves or numb themselves or train themselves to think of only certain things, to see only certain things, to feel about only certain things, to know about only certain things while inhabiting the everyday world. It’s not possible to function normally otherwise, one may argue - although I wonder.

Then there was one who not only got me thinking but got me thinking and seeing myself and the world from different angles. It was seeing that a human mind is somewhat of a microcosm of all that exists on the outside. I seemed to carry parts of the world in my head. Even parts that annoyed me and irritated me and horrified me. I even realized that I harboured many beliefs not because I really had any good enough reason to believe them – but simply because I hadn’t thought them through. Are there any axiomatic values for living life?....There may well be (not without some ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’) but unless one is sure that it is an axiom that one has reached – maybe one should keep thinking and reading and reflecting over them as much as one can. And if the matter is something that is simply a matter of taste and preference maybe one should admit to that too and not try to make it into a universal matter of morality…

The interaction apart from other things, eventually involved what I wanted to do and with my life. Did I have any ambitions? Did I have any dreams? Did I have any realistic do-able dreams? It was all right to have fantasies about beautiful worlds and beautiful lives but what about the here-and-the-now? It wasn’t enough to be tormented by the world with its living horrors and its capacity for beauty - what did I intend to do in the real world? So it wasn’t just about things beyond or about the delightful and the bizarre in some fantasy land. It was also about seeing the world and to keep seeing myself and to be incapacitated by neither. It’s not a terribly easy thing to do and I know that I have still not succeeded in doing this but I don’t know whether people would say that it’s an essential thing either. I know what my response might be for that but a more justified question might be – “so what on earth did you do with all this ‘seeing’ that you are talking about?”

And in the meanwhile I remember there was other stuff that came up – stuff like Marxism, Feminism, Socialism, individualism, the environment, the economy, poverty, problem-solving, education, teaching, learning, time-saving, reading, laughing…and also literature, poems, stories, The Buddha, God and love….and about each of these things – my views shifted. Seemingly they didn’t. But they did.

Whatever the reasons may be – I know I’ve changed, and not insignificantly in the way I think about the world and its people and (even?) myself. I’ve realized what an exceptional teacher does – and does so charmingly and innocuously and with the Holy Spirit. The teacher quite gently gets one into choosing the way to think or to see. An exceptional teacher is one who makes one think, and he makes one think differently about things – but most importantly the teacher helps one see the many paths that seem to co-exist within one's mind, and gets one to choose the way. An unusual teacher gets one to purge oneself of the many bad habits – of the mind at least – and by asking questions, and sometimes through a series of questions or by making a statement which hits something very deep. It’s a curious feeling. The moment something hits – it is absorbed either in a flash or else so gradually that one starts believing that that is the way that one did indeed always see ‘such-and-such’. And one believes that one had always harboured a balanced view of ‘such-and-such’ or an open view of ‘such-and-such’ or a careful view of 'such-and-such'. But that’s not true. One never would have seen if it hadn’t been for that statement or the series of questions or the lengthy conversations with the exceptional teacher.

One changes within. One’s way of thinking, one’s beliefs, one's fundamental way of seeing is what is affected by such a teacher. The teacher lets some of the chaos be….The swirling questions remain. Some of them may be satisfactorily sorted out (and some may not be), and yet unerringly, the teacher, picks at the things that need to be picked on and fixed. Yet all along one is quite utterly convinced that one is doing it all on one’s own until one realizes one day that one isn’t. It is the teacher. And one hadn’t even seen the individual as one’s teacher. It takes a lot of humility to be able to acknowledge that there is finally one being who does know more and knows more about what matters and can sensibly transmit this knowing - no matter what else, and the nicest thing about all this, at least for me, is that the teacher is also wholly real (although sometimes I wonder about that too). Maybe it is only one’s own batty perception of how the interaction unfolds but what cannot be discounted is that one knows that one is hooked and doesn't want to be unhooked.

Can changes within change how one deals with the world and the real-world independent of one’s inner projections?...I am stumped here. I don’t have an answer for this, not even now - sadly enough. But if an exceptional teacher can’t make a difference – then maybe one really can’t be any better. If one cannot be the best one is capable of being even with a teacher who cares, who listens when nobody else does, who loves wisely when nobody else knows how, who scolds when everybody else has given up, who talks when the world is silent – then maybe one can never live how one is supposed to live. One then does become a loser and a pitiable loser at that. It's something like the horse and taking the horse to the water stand. Gently, innocuously, and yet firmly the horse is taken to the water-stand, and the horsey thinks he got there all on his own…what happens then? Does the horse drink or not?

One has to live one’s life. Even if one knows very little one still has to engage in living life – mistakes and all. There’s no way around this. And there are holes that I can’t fill, and don't know how to fill. For when it comes to living life I honestly don’t know whether reading, writing, thinking and reflecting and thinking hard, and all the dialogues within and without can make one live better and run with all one’s got. I don’t know how else one can do it but I don’t know whether engaging in all of these activities makes one regret any less. For when mistakes are made they seem to be made inspite of what one knows…I’ve never been able to understand this.

I don’t know too much about God but I’ll take the exceptional teacher who also happens to be one’s best friend. Cranky, moody, unpredictable, amusing, witty, brilliant, bright, sensible, knowledgeable, whimsical, temperamental, balanced…and with warts and all and one who is profoundly human. What happens in the ever-after is something I have no idea about, and that can wait. In the meanwhile, one realizes that one owes a debt. Not because it is imposed upon one by anyone else or by outer mechanisms or by some external agent but because it is imposed upon one by one’s very own soul. And in the meantime, one trundles along with a weighty albatross (or maybe a couple) and with some walks during dawns and dusks and noons along some paths not frequently traveled and keeps walking and running into an uncertain future.

Outer Space and...flying....

Ever since I can remember, the universe has fascinated me. As a kid, I spent long minutes "contemplating" on the universe wondering about this apparently infinite expanse of space and I loved looking at different pictures of the universe in encyclopaedias. I learnt the names of the vegetables about the same time as I learnt the names of the planets - but the former didn't seem half as captivating (something I've mentioned elsewhere). After that initial burst of enthusiasm and the initial excitement of learning and seeing what I could about the bits and pieces - I've forever scratched my head about outer space. Now my fascination isn't what anyone would or could possibly call a scientific understanding. I would have loved to understand more of what they talk about these days - I really would - the physicists with their big bangs and the black holes and the point of the beginning or the moment of beginning. I've tried reading but little of it do I understand. Once upon a time, I fantasized about being an astrophysicist. And not one who just understood the physical and chemical properties of the universe. Oh no. Not a piddly one but a great one. I knew it was never going to happen so it was nice to fanatsize about. Anyway...

Outer space seems to be a world far, so far away from the here and now. And what I harbour for it is still a fascination mixed with a deep and silent awe. The thought of the universe sometimes trickles in when I'm sitting in a somewhat noisy coffee-shop working on something peculiarly mundane, over-hearing one young girl telling another that she's going out for dinner, a group of people talking about different matters, someone laughing softly, another noisy one talking loudly into his cell-phone, some sort of music playing in the background, people walking by the coffee-shop. In that sudden moment - time freezes. I look around and peer and stare and I wonder what it is that we humans are doing here. I can't help it. Sometimes I want to burst out with a laugh or a cry or a shout - "Look. Look at us. We're here. We're on a planet in a very modest solar system of this Milky Way, floating around in the Universe..." Of course I don't do anything. I just sit and peer and stare and go and look at whatever it is that I'm supposed to be looking at with a grim look of determination. Sometimes then I might think of a snowflake or something else, and smile. The breathtaking beauty and the grottiness and the staleness and the surreal - I don't know what to make of it all when I think about the universe and our world....How is it all possible? - for one thing ! One of the side-thoughts that my meagre mind sometimes wonders over is, what (on earth?) happens to those astronauts when they get "lost" in space... "And why should it be any different?" - My brighter self retorts. They end up the way any and all human beings do. But it must be different living and looking and breathing and dying in space somewhere. Being able to see the Earth as a "pale blue dot". Please watch this video with Carl Sagan's famous speech in the background. The sound on this one is a tad unclear though....I show it to my class every semester and the students are silent for some seconds after it is over.

Sometimes a strange emotion fills me when I hear of those scientists working and living and researching in the Antarctic and Arctic...they come up with these little news clips on the BBC every now and again. I don't know whether I've ever seen myself doing any of that - although when I first read about the great explorers of the early 20th century, in primary school, I did think that they had indeed been heroic. Once when a friend asked me, via e-mail, where I was and what I was doing I had told her that I was in Alaska (that's about as far North as I can see myself...). I also said that I was working on animal-human interactions (reindeer - what else) - or maybe I didn't but I told her that I was in one of the unusual places (not Fairbanks nor Anchorage). I got so absorbed in the telling of my tale that by the time I sent off my e-mail I honestly believed that I was in Alaska, roughing it out - and felt rather sad that I wasn't. I've never wanted to be an astronaut though. The idea of actually living in a tube with some 7 others and living in those smelly body suits for months on end - doesn't appeal to me now and never did.

But I rather like the idea of flying...and some minutes ago, while outside, I got a wistful little jolt after many months upon seeing one of those bi-planes flying low. I got wondering about Amelia Earhart, that rather amazing woman, who was a visiting prof/career counsellor at Purdue in the mid 1930s. In fact she was on a leave of absence from Purdue when she made her "final" flight in 1937. In the first semester that I was here, a friend, who also lived in the dorms with me, used to egg me on to take flying lessons because I would whoop every time I'd see those bi-planes flying low. The only thing that I didn't do was physically run "after" them. While these and some other aeroplane-related thoughts and images were swiveling around in the morning, a thought caught me by surprise. I really could join the Purdue flying school for some flying lessons. It may not be a bad thing to watch the Earth and be suspended in air somewhere while actually flying a plane....Don't know where I'll be next. We'll see...back to the real world for now.

P.S: A hundred thanks to google. I didn't even know about Matilde Moisant. She was born in Earl Park, Indiana, and she was flying around in 1911...Here's a link.

9/11/2010

Another Fall

Another Fall semester is going to begin from tomorrow, and I’ve been feeling somewhat nostalgic, in spite of my "cold, fratchy, and unfeeling self", and in sudden bursts (with Beethoven’s Ode to Joy playing in my head and Ami Keboli Swapano playing from my comp. every now and again) because I’m reminded of the first year that I came here. That’s the only time of my life that I feel happily nostalgic about sometimes. When I first came here and for some long months after.

There is no point in brooding over the past but giving a little time for the good memories does no harm. In fact letting in the good memories might even make one feel better and more hopeful about some of the good things that may come to pass still. And in the end – well, there will be an end. But in between there may yet be some good laughs and some bliss-filled times.

The first time I came here I was filled with an unearthly, trembling, delicious and divine hope. I was convinced that good things were going to be done by me. I can’t think of anything good that I did but one good thing, did happen. If anyone scoffs at miracles – I can shove one in his/her face.

It was 8 years ago that I first came here. Eight years is an awfully long time. Eight years in school in India would have been between classes 2-9. Yet sometimes it feels that only two years have gone by or maybe two and a half considering the things that I’ve done and not done and un-done. Calling myself stunted does no good – but it isn’t an entirely misplaced label. Last year I was convinced beyond doubt that I was going to be done here and get on with things. Now I’ve gotten alarmed about still being here.

I wonder whether time passes differently as we grow older or whether our perception of time changes. Does it slow down or does it speed up? I know in some ways, I now measure time by the seasons (and sometimes not too accurately) but that’s because the seasons are discernible. Otherwise there are only clumps of time in my head. In school, every day seemed different. Every day was a different day and I could remember what had happened a month ago or even two months ago. Now I remember nothing of some years and some other months seem to have been stretched out to cover large expanses of space in my head.

Wonder what this year will bring. Some good luck, like during that first year, would be nice along with some military discipline. A couple of laughs, here and there, might do no harm but I don't want to push luck too far.

I harbour the greatest admiration for writers who can write seamlessly, articulately and dispassionately even with billowing mushroom clouds in their heads...I’ve been reading in snatches, from here and there, and from very lovely pieces. Some lovely bits that I read in recent times come from a letter that Tagore wrote to Jagadish Chandra Bose – unstinting and unfettered in his admiration, praise and love, and unabashed in expecting nothing but Bose's love in return – and, another some bits from the many that he wrote to his wife. It’s one of those visceral experiences that makes one laugh sunnily for those minutes, no matter what else one is feeling. Come to think of it, more than a couple of the lovely bits that I've been reading are snatches from letters.

Do we change, I wonder. I don’t know whether I have changed very much. I like to think that I have in some ways. I have to say that for most things I can’t see how I’ve changed, and for other things I don’t see how I could not have. Not just in the last 8 years but from the time that I was 5 or thereabouts and through school and all…Sometimes I feel I haven't changed a whit and in other ways I feel like a different person to myself. Been putting the little scraps together in between this and that, which appear, in no rigid order, in the previous never-ending post.

Bye, for now. God bless...

Colours, Numbers, and Letters

They talk about people seeing 'things', normally neutral, in colour. This 'process'/'condition' is known as synesthesia (other connections are also made amongst things that are normally seen as being disconnected). Days of the week are always a particular colour and so are numbers (unless numbers are seen as characters), among other things. Some see these and other 'things' in colour. I was reading this and that and I was wondering whether all people possess the trait - like most things - to a lesser or greater degree. I have a feeling that this is one of those 'traits' that run along a continuum rather than existing as a binary (yes/no) trait/condition.

I don't see each day of the week as being a definite colour but some days are filled with a hazy or a lime-green air and other days are filled with a pale wispy mountain blue or a deep, dense blue. Some days are a shimmering and dazzling grey. Some days are grey puffy mushroom clouds - polluted and polluting and ravaged (or maybe it's me who is the walking smog-cloud?). Other days are filled with white light else I am the one immersed in an expanse of silent white light. Never had a rose coloured day although some days come across as greyish-pink and others as reddish and angry and bruised. There are pale lemon days with grey specks and some are lavender. Some sure are colourless. Sometimes washed out, sometimes translucent, and sometimes transparent and liquid (with or without colour).

Numbers aren't imbued with any specific colours in my mind but they do seem to be characters, and these don't shift but only 'grow' (as characters do). Double numbers are characters of their own. I won't go through all of the numbers (haha) but to take some -

7 is serious, quiet, brilliant and somewhat shy, and thoughtful and quick-witted, and given to a sudden somersault, and is boyish.

9 is a little like 7 here and there (...actually 9 is 7's elder brother), and has a temper and broods and is given to deep laughter ( '9' should never be written with a curvy end but should end in a long and straight line).

6 is graceful, fast, is musically gifted, and is a blithe spirit.

5 just sits there, and is slow, and lazy, and dreams too much and is rather pudding-y.

2 is alert and quietly bright, sometimes noisy and sometimes quiet and lonely in a corner near a window.

1 simply is - observant and smiling - either it's enlightened or high or maybe both...

and the 0 is as it should be - perplexing. It is everything or nothing or both or what? The 0 feels empty and feels full.

...Some of the numbers make faces.

Letters don't seem to have specific characters for me (nor are they filled with any colours) apart from the usual sharpness or 'curviness' or in-between-ness that comes with each letter - especially when hand-written and the colours of a day become blurred when I think too much of them. They seem clearer in the passing or in one sudden blast when I'm in the day. The numbers are the sharpest and remain constant in that sense, and have well-defined personalities and come with their quirks and manners and all. They remind me of people.

Each year is always set as it should be - in an *elliptical circle (*and sometimes like a horseshoe), and one travels around with it (and one is sometimes 'late' in 'placing oneself in the right spot) and the cusp between one year to the next is arranged like a spiral....there is a mini-leap between one year and the next and then begins another one and another one (*wonder what I saw when human beings believed in/followed the geocentric model). But take decades and they are stacked but stacked in shelves that slant downwards to the right (the centuries all merge in my head, I can't deal with centuries. No wonder I have difficulty remembering dates, I say). One's own age and that of others come arranged in neat columns.

There is, I'm sure, some sort of a nice story that has to be lurking around amongst these numbers and days and colours...but I can't find it. Not even with my poking forks and prodding prongs.

Talking of colours, I'm also reminded of that interesting experiment on coordination where you have one colour written in another colour. So for instance - for the following list one has to rattle off the actual colours and not the words that are spelt out.

GREEN,

YELLOW,

WHITE,

BLACK,

PINK,

GREY,

ORANGE ...

It's not impossible but one does trip. It's apparently to do with one part (of the brain) being more involved with reading (and all our linguistic abilities) and one part being involved with visual perception.....

The River

The river near-by, is less than a mile away. I used to go there in the very first semester that I came here after discovering it by accident, while out on a long and winding walk. I would have found it anyway. It is hard to miss. I've kept going back there - through magical times, good times and other times and it's seen me many-a-times and in many-a-mood, and over too many years. I think it's fair to say we have an understanding of sorts. It's there where I went again.

I've claimed a spot for myself.

Somewhat hidden, dipping down the banks into the edge of the river. Off from the main trail. I tramp over some soft sand, half-slide down the slope of the bank, and find a place to sit. It is quiet here. I settle my bag. There is an odd shaped mound of concrete. I don't know its purpose. It slopes and it too is broken, here and there, like so many other things including the bank. It is right next to the river bank of sand and pebbles and loose soil. The concrete slab disappears when there is a flood. I move away from it and go down closer to the river. I sit there on the sand. I look and I can hear. The breeze - it rustles through the trees. The sudden wind gusts through. The water rustles. It rustles over pebbles and the stones and the rocks. There are soft splashes as big fish jump out of the water and leap back in. The sunlight reflects off the surface of the ripples. The ripples are radiant. I close my eyes for a second. The sounds rush through. The murmur of the river. The murmur of the breeze playing lazily with the ripples, and the water lapping against the shore, against the bank of sand, and over the pebbles and the rocks. I smile and open my eyes.

The trees on the bank opposite cast their reflection on the ripples. I used to go to the other side at one point, especially when the river was very low. The bank on the other side merges with the river and one can sit very close to the waters and walk along the sandy and "shrub-y" stretch for a while. I was looking at those banks now from this side. It wasn't the same spot - not even close - but I was wondering what it was like on the other side. I had to chuckle at the thought. Were there people a bit like me with more courage and initiative who made boats or rafts to go exploring? I could only sit on this side, looking at the pulling currents and wonder what lay beyond that particular stretch of the forest on that side.

It's awfully peaceful here. One can sit and sit and smoke quietly, and drink some coffee. I know I could. I don't think any brilliant idea would come, no matter how long I sat - sad that - I'd probably grow woollier in the head and forget almost altogether how to communicate with people but I could sit and sit. Sometimes it's nice to think about somewhat more pleasant what-ifs while sitting near that bit of the river or not think at all - which is very difficult.

Maybe I am somewhat of a "regular" misfit - not good enough to be a rebel with a cause and please some non-normal folks and neither normal enough to fit in placidly and smilingly and normally. Maybe that's part the reason that I sometimes dream of living in the middle of some forest with a waterfall. I'm sometimes more wary of human beings than of wildlife of the raccoon and the wildcat sort. Bears, I'm not so sure about. I don't particularly want to meet them face-to-face and I hardly think I'd be living somewhere where there might be any mountain lions left. This is not the 'more pleasant' what-if though...

Thoughts come in and leave only to return when I'm looking and listening. The sun shifts. The ripples glow silver and gold. The reflections of the trees grow longer. In my head I can see masterpieces of paintings of golden green trees falling into the rippling river. A couple of songs play in my head...I do give one a try. But there's the gruff hiss followed by the flat note. I can hear it perfectly well in my head though. How can it not come out the way I hear it? What breaks down between a tune in the mind and it being released by the vocal chords, I wonder. I chuckle in the breeze and shake my head.

There's a silent long-legged graceful heron flying almost slow-motion over the river. A noisy and heavy duck on the other hand arrives not a second later, making that strange desolate gawking that those ungainly ducks do, swoops down and skims the surface of the river and starts 'sailing' along and bobbing up and down at top speed - still gawking away and rather frantically. Another heron and another duck join the graceful and the rather frantic. Some favourite dreams have been swirling around in the air, and for the time that I've been sitting there...

Now it's time to go.

I look down at the waves lapping the shoreline. The shoreline is deceptively safe. The slippery shore, however, takes no weight whatsoever. The waves are always a little cheeky just when I'm leaving. They sort of draw one in and before one knows it - one is splashing in the river, and trying to drag oneself up a slippery and slipping muddy slosh. I stay away this time wagging my finger while the cheerful innocuous little waves slosh teasingly near the banks, saying "Oh, wet your feet. Oh, wet your feet. Just wet your feet. You know you want to do it." I wag my finger again, saying "Oh, no. You got the better of me the other time. I know better now." "But you liked it. You liked it. It was exciting." So it was. I couldn't argue against that. "Yes, that it was but I don't want to slip all in again. And I nearly didn't get out." "Oh we'd spit you out. What would we do with you? Wet your feet. Wet your feet. You're wriggling your toes. You're wriggling your toes!" "Bye". I holler. "Cowardly custard." Say the waves. "I'll be back again." The waves have gone silent. "I'll be back again." I say a little softly this time, crouching near the shore-line, keeping a safe-distance... "Gmmfh." That's all I get in response. "Well I'll be back all the same!" So saying I let my fingers skim the waves, turn around and start climbing the river bank.

I walk back. I come back. I don't know what good the river walks/'sits' do for me. I have absolutely no idea. I don't see what would have changed in anyone's life if I were unable to go and sit beside and walk next to the river. I don't know what changes in my life with the sittings. I miss the river. I go to the river. The river calls to me. I go to the river. And I stay away sometimes till I run all the way to it. That's all I know.

P.S On some days the river doesn't want me near it. Some days ago, I went down to my spot. The river was heavy, sluggish, slow, stagnant, smelly, and scowling, and it shooed me away. There were hundreds of little flies/mosquitoes and I couldn't sit for more than ten seconds. I'm glad though in a way. That means, on other days the river does want my company, which is gratifying to know...

9/11/2010

On "Inception"

I've been itching to write about a movie I watched yesterday in a movie theatre after a very long time. I can't write reviews - and never having written a movie review - so I'll just write a bit about the movie without giving 'anything' away (now that can't be done so that's a lie). And here's a solemn warning: my friends in school and a couple of my cousins were always wary whenever I said that about a movie or a book that I'd greatly enjoyed. In my enthusiasm - I would break my word. I would tell them all about it and finish it off with: 'err..well, I guess you don't need to read that anymore...it's much better though than what I narrated.' This is a habit that I have not gotten out of. I did that a week ago with the film 'About Jane' (and I didn't even enjoy it 'greatly').

The film was Inception (but of course). I didn't know anything about it not having watched any trailers nor having read a word about it. A couple of friends urged Guha and me to come for the show, and so mid-week though it was - we met and watched it. I haven't much cared for the previous Christopher Nolan films. (I did know it was a Christopher Nolan film because my friend told me). I have watched The Following, Memento, and The Dark Knight. I have to admit that I liked that last movie for about two weeks and then 'saw' through it. (I watched it with jaws gaping and then found it ridiculous when I thought about it two weeks later). In fact this happens to me every now and then with movies and sometimes with books, which is why I don't like talking about them unless some time has passed. Memento had one fatal flaw in it which I wish I had jotted down, The Following I barely remember and I remember not thinking too much of it when I watched it, although I did like ...the movie with the magicians (not The Illusionist but the other really good one).

The movie is worth a watch. Not because of the fight sequences and the special effects and not even because of the 'central' plot of getting one man (played by an actor I admire - Cillian Murphy) to break up his father's empire but because it travels through dreams and 'shared-dream-space' and explores the idea of being able to create and control one's dreams, of people sharing and controlling dreams together and of traveling through multiple dreams in layers (the idea of a dream within a dream within a dream...), and of influencing others through dreams. There is one innocuous scene in the movie where di Caprio's character and the diminutive architect roams around in a 'dream sequence', and there's something unnerving about the scene because it comes across as being very real - not the physical bits - but the other part with the people.

Makes one wonder about real life, it does, and about daydreams. Do we "live" them somewhere when we daydream or are they just bits remembered/bits missed or do we "dream" them because they are "happening" somewhere? Do we "choose" the people that we meet in life? Do we decide that we will meet? Do some people barge in without the permission of others? Do some people on seeing a stranger simply remember all of a sudden 'oh, I know that person. Need to go and talk with so-and-so.' Is it because we already know some strangers that we think they are familiar while passing them on the road and exchanging, on cue, a sudden and rather embarrassed smile? Those "dreams" unfolding somewhere - are those that fill us with sudden and unbearable and sometimes lasting longing and yearning? (I have to improvise since my regular dreams are as mundane as my regular life and terribly uninteresting unless they're annoying or frustrating, and I have never quite gotten the hang of "lucid dreaming" - which Nolan was/is capable of - so there's nothing in it for me to ponder over my non-volitional dreams).

To return to the movie: there is the neat bit of 'extracting' an idea/information from another while in a dream but there is the even more intriguing bit of planting an idea into another's mind so that the unsuspecting person wakes up from the dream thinking that it's his own, and also acts upon the idea. Thankfully enough (for me) this was more about planting an idea that wasn't a demonic idea or a purely evil one (although there is one instance of 'planting' an idea which doesn't have a happy conclusion at all), for one of the ideas that Cillian Murphy's character walks away with was, most likely, far more precious to him than the purported idea (which was somewhat weak as the central plot around which the movie revolves but strong in its execution) that was planted into his head. And as a viewer, one can run with that idea somewhat further...was it actually his 'old man' who from the other side 'implants' this idea into the 'heist' organizer's head?....

The film is made along the lines of a 'heist' movie (so I later learnt) but it's much more than that. And for me there was some satisfaction in that the end wasn't left completely unfinished and 'unresolved'. The ending is left somewhat loose but not so loose that one wonders which side is up. There was some resolution and it depends on the viewer which way s/he leans. Some uncertainty is fine - but the Memento like non-resolution just leaves me feeling unfulfilled, and the unresolved circular ending from 12 Monkeys leaves me feeling distressed.

The film reminded me of The Matrix, and like a good sci-fi gets one to question reality itself. It's not particularly bizarre to walk out of the theatre feeling somewhat discombobulated because the film jolts one into thinking of the question that one has been trying to sit on: 'what really is reality'?This dominant theme is there (whether the director intended it or not). Is life but a dream? How does one wake up? Can one wake up? What is the 'kick' that wakes one up in real life? Could it be a lasting kick? And the all too delicious question: what would waking up mean?...and to run along with the idea "implanted" by Nolan - has one received one lasting kick, at least, if a kick can also symbolise 'remembering'/not forgetting?

That theme of the film is wrapped up in the 'cultural' elements of the times. The Matrix was made in the middle of the computer super-world with computer viruses and 'codes' and the theme of 'how far the rabbit hole goes', and the questions regarding reality and 'the illusion' were grounded against the backdrop of computers (replacing the machines of earlier sci-fi stories). The illusion was broken only with the courage to see the truth. There was also the oracle and the notion of 'destiny' and the will to act on what one believed in even though one did not believe that one was 'The One'. (Only the first one from The Matrix trilogy is worth talking about...) Inception, being a film of the 21st century is grounded against the backdrop of a corporate 'empire' that needs to be dismantled (appropriate one may say. This part was somewhat airy-fairy...but that is not too terribly bothersome given the other themes) and it's against this bit that those questions regarding reality and layered dreams (illusion?) are brought in. And films of this sort make me wonder: will one wake up? Is one awake? Are we awake? How many dream layers need to be peeled off?....and how long will it take?

The cast was interesting. There wasn't much acting required from the cast - I don't think - although most of them 'looked' (very) good and 'fit' their roles. I started liking de Caprio (for his acting ability) after watching The Basketball Diaries, and he isn't too bad in his role (even with his extra chin that's come from God-knows-where and his voice which sounds somewhat rusty, which would have been fine, but also a couple of notches too high). Ken Watnabe (who reminds me of Chow Yun Fat) fit his role to perfection, and had a couple of amusing liners (although not many people let out a chuckle because his accent and his inflection need some getting used to). I did grin in delight and let out a happy 'Oh' when I saw Cillian Murphy in the role of Fischer. I was also pleased to see the little boy from 'Third Rock from the Sun' (a TV series I used to watch every now and again while in India), who played the part of Arthur. He's grown up very well (although he still looks like he's stuck in a particular age). Then there was the amusing 'Forger' and of course Michael Caine who plays the part of the understanding father-in-law (de Caprio's). There is one amusing and appropriate line in Ebert's review regarding Michael Caine (normally I don't care too much for Ebert's reviews to be honest, but this liner about Michael Caine got me chuckling). The two women (one looks like a tiny slip of an animated school-girl actually; and the other looks very beautiful, I would think, and does have a major role but she somehow didn't come across as being very real...) I didn't recognise.

I will say that some other American actor of Indian origin (I believe is the correct way of putting things in) may have been taken for the role played by Dileep Rao (and notice he does not appear in the 'cast' pictures - sadly enough) just as the pretty woman may have been replaced by some/anybody else.

If I sound vague about the special effects - it's because I don't know too much about such things. I either like them or think they're over done or badly done. The special effects are all right here, and some are bizarre (but interesting, for instance -a city folding over, a city crumbling against the sea, time slowing down, the Escherian bits with a 'paradox') in their execution and I did gape. They were well-done and were not misplaced. The time-line/dream/reality bits are messed around with furiously but always kept 'clear' (so you do know where you are at some point and at other points you simply have to keep running around with the members to know where you are) and there were indeed more than a couple of places/times where/when I was hanging from the edge of my seat - wondering even before they had traveled through a single dream layer how they would or whether all of them would ever get back to the 'real' world or whether one or more would be trapped in limbo. And that's one thing about the cast....one gets fond of all of them - so one wishes for the whole lot to "get back" to planet Earth.

Where a couple of them end up - as I said - is left to the viewer to an extent. For me, insofar as the film was concerned, there was a certain bit of peaceful resolution and I came out of the theatre blinking rapidly and staring at the milling crowds, feeling disoriented, and quite 'unresolved'.

P.S: And sure enough I've given away every bit of the movie worth giving away!

I've changed my my mind about di Caprio. He was quite, quite bad in this movie but that didn't make a difference.

I still like the movie when it crosses my mind, in brief flashes, as it does. It reminded me too of an interesting book I happened to read a year ago. The title was 'The Years of Rice and Salt' by Kim Stanley Robinson. It wasn't about dreams but it was an (alternative) historical fantasy with reincarnation and the bardos and it captured the intuitively appealing idea of human beings belonging to a group of connected kin-folk who keep meeting over and over again across life-times....towards the end of the book and in some of the parts it got a little tiring as far as I remember but I found it an interesting and unusual read on the whole.

And what is it measuring?

Here are the results of the Greendex for 2010 on the National Geographic website. The first time I saw them I was surprised but in a suspicious sort of way - sadly enough. India at the top of the list in 'environmentally friendly behaviour (and consumption patterns)' in a 17 country survey? I would like to see India at the top of the list of some survey which isn't looking at population explosion or the highest incidence of some deadly disease but the idea that Indians, by and large, are engaging in behaviour that is environmentally sustainable seemed to be a little improbable. A look at the details of the study reveals some basic problems in the study design. It embarrasses me to point this out because this study has been conducted by a global organization alongwith highly trained specialists from the National Geographic.

The detailed report from the Greendex 2009 survey states that it is a 'comprehensive measure of consumer behaviour in 65 areas'. The major areas that the survey covers are questions on/related to housing, transport, food, goods (everyday items and big items). I'll not go into the details of every category. The report mentions that through 2008-2009-2010, rising costs were reported as one of the reasons that individuals engaged in environmentally friendly behaviour. But over and above that - the report states and repeatedly states that rising costs alone were not the only factor. People engaged in the behaviour they did because they felt it would be less harmful to the environment.

The 2009 study report states (as does the 2010 overview) that consumption is measured by the Greendex in terms of 'choices that consumers actively make' and 'choices that are controlled more by circumstances'. Even this distinction poses to be a problem. Choices actively made include: 'repairing rather than replacing items, using cold water to wash laundry, choosing green products rather than environmentally unfriendly ones'. Choices controlled by circumstances include: 'climate [consumers] live in, availability of green products, and public transport.'

To take some specific examples:

Repairing items: in the United States as far as I have seen repairing is not feasible. One, most of the times I can't even find a repair-shop or an individual who does repair-work (unless it's on a car) and two, more often than not it is cheaper to buy a new product than to fix what is broken (I won't go into the details of this). So 'repairing' is not really a choice that a 'consumer' can actively make.

Then take washing laundry with hot/cold water: I'm not sure who the respondents were in India - but it's a rare thing, even now, that houses have running hot water (I'm not sure which houses have running hot and cold water), and somehow I think the idea of filling buckets and buckets of hot water to do regular laundry (unless it's a bucket of whites or clothes that need to be germ-free) will most likely make people raise their eyebrows. It's not even a matter of choice (even if/when the possibility does exist) because the choice itself doesn't make sense.

Take transport, and in no distinct order: One is the matter of availability. Two is the desire. Three is the convenience(in terms of time)/costs. Fourth is the idea that using my own car and using bigger cars and 'better' cars and newer models means a perky feather in my cap. So is this a matter of choice or a matter of favourable/non-favourable circumstances? Does it not go back to the issue of what is being valued and by whom? And these issues exist just as much in India as they do in the United States although the problems are indeed of completely different levels. Whatever the 'choices' are or whatever the circumstances are - it's certainly not just a matter of the distance.

And then take all those aspects, such as, running hot water, heat appliances, and constant air conditioning? How does it make sense 'measuring' these in India? (Or in Brazil for that matter?)

Using personal lawn mowers? And other small engines? Indians don't use lawn mowers and what small engines are they talking about?

And finally to take one last item: 'choosing' to live close to places where one needs to travel? People, in India, live where they do/where they can and go to work....to specifically live in a place to minimise one's impact on the environment? The problem with the question is not that it measures/does not measure environmentally friendly behaviour - it indeed may do so in a country like the United States (where some aspect of choice does enter the action depending upon one's profession and class) - but raising this question, as far as I can see, does not make any sense in a country like India.

In fact the basic problem with the study (apart from the sampling issues) is stated in the study design itself. 'No allowances are made for consumer behavior that is determined by geography, climatic conditions where respondents live, culture, religion, or the relative availability of sustainable products. The Greendex is intended as an overall indicator of one's environmental footprint.' (And if this is the case what do they mean when they say earlier on that they measured consumption in terms of choices that are controlled by circumstances?)

And if none of those above-mentioned factors are going to be taken into consideration - then how can they say that the study is measuring 'environmentally friendly behaviour'? In order to measure environmentally friendly behaviour, a study would have to be designed keeping in mind the culture and the region and also, like it or not, the levels of economic development and poverty and also distinguish between the sort of behaviour that can be practiced/is practiced because of climate/availability of certain goods/services and because of an element of real choice. Now if people have no choice but to engage in behaviour that is less harmful to the environment there is no problem with that - I am all for it as long as it's wisely thought out - but there is a problem when one obtains the figures one does simply because of the levels of poverty in a country or because the questions do not measure what it claims to be measuring, and because of the problems (related to the environment - for instance - littering, waste disposal, terrible pressure on land with the ever increasing population and no strict means of legalizing birth control, over-congestion in cities, the problems of increasing gaps between classes just to mention a handful of factors that do not appear on the list) in one country that are of a very different nature from the problems of a wealthy first world nation. And secondly, and more importantly, my suspicion lies in that the high figures for India (and for two years running) in 'environmentally friendly behaviour' is on the whole not because (the 1000) Indians (interviewed) were/are particularly environmentally conscious but more likely because they are aspiring for the big car, the big house and the running hot and cold water. It's just that they haven't 'gotten' there yet.

Now if the study were measuring one's environmental footprint - that is the impact an individual has on the environment in terms energy use, consumption of different types including food, travel, housing, and also the amount of garbage produced by an individual - it would then have made sense to be asking the questions that the survey asked. The page which gives an introduction to the study does mention that the 'Greendex is intended as an overall indicator of one's environmental footprint.' And that is the truth. That is what it is measuring. And if one looks at the mini questionnaire - here - and if one reads the basic details of the study - one realises why the study lacks validity insofar as the study claims to be measuring 'environmentally friendly behaviour' of consumers. Also, by interviewing 1000 people from each of the 17 countries (no matter the sampling method, and it seems that the survey was conducted on-line), I cannot see how the study can be taken seriously.

And take the issue of 'environmental footprints'. That the 'ecological/environmental footprint' will be 'larger' in terms of resource use, energy consumption, and general consumption in more developed countries - and especially in countries that were driven by large appetites for consumption is not something that is unknown. It's been much talked about since the 1970s, at least (if not earlier), alongwith the problem of the bursting population of Third World and developing countries - and even now the two groups that argued about the two perspectives seem to be at loggerheads for the most part.... The Greendex indeed does courteously point out right at the onset that the study 'reminds us' that people (who are renamed 'consumers') in 'wealthy' countries have a larger impact on the environment. Do we need more reminding though?

And the point remains. If the study is measuring environmental footprints - that is what it should say that it is doing - and that is all that it should say that it is doing. What it is not measuring is environmentally friendly behaviour.

The 2009 report concludes on the upbeat note: 'The message to those that supply the products and services that [consumers] consume, and to those that make the rules about how they behave, is a clear one: Make the right thing, provide the right opportunities, and consumers will do the right thing.'

Nothing that I read from the Report leads me to believe the same. I don't understand how the results of the report lead to this conclusion. And what does 'right opportunities' mean? What does the 'right thing' mean? Do more things have to be made?

The 2009 report, which is available here is 14 pages long. The 2010 report, which I wasn't able to open until now, is 230 pages long (although it's been formatted into slides). For the most part, I can't see any changes between the basic study design.

However, there are a couple of interesting results in the 2010 report: a whopping 140 Indians from the 1000 Indians interviewed said that the environment was the most serious national issue; 370 Chinese felt the same way whereas not a single American believed that the environment was the most serious concern. For most of the 'global' concerns (economy, cost of energy/fuel, air and water pollution, global warming, loss of species/habitat, war/terrorism, spread of infectious diseases) close to 500 of Indians interviewed seemed to be 'very' concerned (measured on a 5-point Likert scale) about all of the global issues (apart from the spread of infectious diseases) and about 200 Americans seem to be 'very' concerned....unless the matter was regarding the economy(and Americans should be concerned about this) or rising costs of energy and fuel or terrorism. There one notes that 740, 470 and some 360 Americans are 'very' concerned about these matters. I don't know whether it's just me but terrorism in the list seems to be a very odd choice. And if one looks at the Indian response rate for all these items close to 50 % of Indians think all of the specific issues are of grave concern. I don't know whether the concern itself is being taken as signs of 'environmentally conscious/friendly behaviour'. And that number of 1000 individuals from each country...that remains quite distressing.

According to the report - Americans seem to be at the bottom of the list and yes, the Indians are at the top (now I can't say I'm too terribly surprised about the Americans being at the bottom but it's the Indians being at the top of this bizarre survey that is unsettling) of whatever it is that this grand survey is measuring. I somehow think that the specialists designing and chalking up the survey were going along with the idea of sustainable behaviour and resource use as measured and as relevant within the American context with less of an eye to the facts that plague a nation like India. When one considers the fact that just the rising middle-class in India accounts for almost the whole population of the United States, and that our 1.3 billion is living on land that is approximately 1/3rd the size of the United States - one has something to think about....

Note: There are lots of interesting articles and stuff though on the website for sure.....