I: Musing on writing and such matters....

This had started out many weeks ago as a mini-comment for a blog on the right...but I started messing with it and it kept growing and I kept writing. I wonder what I would have done with it had there been no blog...

At one point in time I was absolutely sure I was going to be a writer by profession. Now I know that won’t happen. Not only did I not have the required gumption, which would have been one thing, but I sorely lack(ed) the imagination and skill. And then when I discipline myself I realise that there are holes in the way I imagine things, and there isn’t much of a fertile, brewing imagination - no paths, forking or otherwise - with which I can fill in the gaps. I think it’s what Arthur Koestler pointed out in his The Ghost in the Machine (a book recommended to me in the first year I was here by the only mentor-friend I've ever had). The ‘things I see’ seem to be one whole fabric but then when I sit to put them down there are holes and I don’t know how to fill them. I know I can string words together - yet there is more to writing than stringing words. I know I can describe things but there is more to writing than mere description. Sure, I sometimes have grand ideas/images – but I concur with Asimov and with all other intelligent people who think the same way. It’s the writing that is the real thing – the ideas, well frankly – everyone has ideas. Asimov narrates that a boy once sent him an idea for a story and told Asimov that he wanted half of the royalties once Asimov published the story/novel. Asimov shot out a reply – I’ll give you fifty ideas. Write out the stories and keep the royalties.

I remember when I was in college there was Pakshi Vasudevan who used to write a column for The Telegraph. Little snippets of daily life. Not outstanding but sometimes quirky and sometimes amusing, often times thoughtful and observant, and sometimes uninteresting. I wonder whether I’d like re-reading the columns if I could find them now or whether it was just a phase. I think I would have been able to handle writing a column of that sort. Nothing too strenuous. Nothing too jarring. Just pleasant writing. How pleasant....?

A bird hopping by. An abandoned cat who is dying, but loves being near human beings. A stray cat, with one bad eye, who doesn't trust humans but has befriended the neighbour's black and white tabby. Two cats sleeping in one basket. A giant spruce that is supposed to be about 50 feet or even 70 feet tall but is less than a foot and seems to be growing by the millimetre every year since I've seen it, and how people in the neighbourhood fear that it's never really grown much in all the time that they have seen it. A creek with frozen water. Trees with icicles all over, which make everything around look like a scene from a fairy-tale with no fairies. Grey skies and a faint lemon yellow sun, a sweeping snowstorm, a remembered story, and a walk through the town and over the bridge with the river below, which is filled with happy ducks and flapping ducklings, missing people so far away.....

The homeless man near campus who talks with himself, and whom I've seen every year for every year that I've been in this town. The girl who looked like an 11 year-old who talked with me breathlessly one evening saying that she had run away from a foster home and that she wasn't going back and that they didn't want her back. The boy who had leapt from the 10th floor of a dorm room, and whose body was found half-hanging out from a garbage dumpster. A clever student who died in a car-crash just some hours after he had sent an e-mail with a question about an assignment....

What does it mean to know something? At how many levels can knowing happen? What happens inside and then that which happens again? How does one know that knowing can be trusted or believed? What is knowledge, wisdom, or awareness? Where does conscious awareness come from? What's truth? What's the meaning of life? Who brings/gives meaning? Is it all a mistake? Some kind of a terrible game? Can unkindness be done away with? Can fear really be banished? Where really is God? Whose God? What is life without love? What is anything without love?....

Anything that requires thought I don’t seem to want to write about any more. I won’t go so far as to say that I don’t think about other things – but why I won’t write about them is something I never can quite understand. Is it because I don't really have any thoughts? That I don't even know what questions to ask. Or is it because that real writing takes a lot of concerted effort and determination, and most of all it requires a well-ordered mind so that one knows what one wants to or desires to write about and writes exactly that. I guess the last one is useful while facing lots of things in life, and as Dumbledore pointed out, and beyond.

I don’t remember exactly when I read Fulghum’s classic – All I need to know I learned in Kindergarten. Was it in school? In high-school? It was sometime then. I don’t remember very clearly but I remember the friend who told me to read the book knowing that I’d love it. And I still do. I remember the friend and I still love the book. I would have been happy writing one ‘something of that sort’. I’d have felt quite smug too – knowing that I had made my contribution to the world in some way and for making the money – and I know exactly what I’d do with the money. Chickens and eggs.

I read The Little Prince on Saturday for what has to be the hundred and seventh time – and I know for sure that I would never be able to write something as simple, as magical, as imaginative, as real, and as bizarre as that. It takes a different mind to spin a story of that kind…

When I read Ursula LeGuin’s The Wizard of Earthsea (because a friend had been pestering me to read it for months) some days before I turned 30, I experienced a similar feeling. She has spun a world with characters that is simultaneously unreal and real - and the manner in which she lays out her world and presents her characters as they grow makes me feel as though she has lived in the minds of these characters and in that world – it is a world that I carry around with me. Ged will be with me. And while it is a series written for young adults – she doesn’t seem to think that everything needs to end on a perfect note or at a point where everything is saved with The Chariots of Fire music playing in the background. It is a muted series where something terribly important, the most important I would say, unfolds and comes through in a subtle and almost ‘always known’ manner apart from all the adventure and the horror. Yet other things – some broken things, which do pain one, are never repaired. It’s a series that I would have loved if I’d read it in school but would have also known that imagining a world and its people in the way LeGuin does was beyond my ken. That now is imagination – yet I’ve never heard her thump any drums about it….

I write I now know because I have to. But I write only the minimum – the bits that I must. The rest stays inside my head mostly rolling around and getting mixed up with other things and sometimes when it reads something it recognises – it does some head-nodding and head-shaking, and then it goes back to what it was doing – rolling around. The bits that are written are written because otherwise I get crotchety. The bits written are something like coffee, cigarettes, and bread, and communicating with some real human beings, and the friend in my head…

I like knowing that some person somewhere likes what I write…and as self-centred as it may sound – I like re-reading some of what I write. I even like re-reading some bits that nobody else happens to like. I don’t like re-reading my gushy mails or gushing diary entries, which embarrass me to no end when I chance upon them later (and I have the unfortunate habit of gushing) and I dislike my academic writing, which never sounds smooth or informed enough or remotely interesting and sounds somewhat, excuse me, constipated. I don't think I write enough to like or dislike what I write - but still. Hmm.

Two blonde women, a little boy, and a '?'

Something happened after 10 years yester'. Not the first bit.

Armed with reading and writing stuff, I went over to to a coffee-shop, which I used to visit for long hours during the very first year that I was here. I got myself a cup of coffee and settled down comfortably on a nice long couch made for five people, took out my stuff and started making notes in my head and wrote down almost all of them in my notebook, having a nice quiet and almost splendid time, which was broken every now and again by the very loud voice of a woman with an interesting accent and her sometimes loud hoots of laughter. She had curly blond hair, was wearing some bright make-up, and was slightly on the heavier side although she carried herself with a confident swagger. She was sort of gently flirting with her ex-students, treating them like her willing slaves, and sharing stories from her love life in an unnecessarily loud way. Sadly enough, deaf as I am, I couldn't pick up any interesting bits - and the harder I try to hear, the less I can - and so I just kept hearing her rather raucous voice with some clear words in between. I wouldn't have minded at all of course if I'd taken a liking for the woman but there was something about her manner and demeanour that I simply didn't like. She wasn't wholly unpleasant but I've known people of the same sort. After a while I went out for a smoke and then visited the restroom. When I was washing my hands, a loud and importunate knocking made me jump out of my skin. I always find it odd yelling 'Yes - who's there?' while inside a restroom (I don't need to know and I'm not letting you come in...so kindly wait), and I didn't want to grunt so I pulled out a paper towel to wipe my hands when I saw and heard the door handle being furiously manhandled almost as if someone were trying to break through the door.

I flung the door open, and a bespectacled woman of indeterminate age with a bright shock of blond hair looked at me, and with a fuzzled, frightened, shocked and somewhat righteous glare in my direction, she spluttered "...but...but..this is the women's...." I peered at her and stared at her with a stare (I actually could stare down at her for she was a rarity. Someone shorter than I happen to be). Her voice petered off. "I...I...knocked twice....there was no-no answer. Nobody said anything....So I tried the door-handle." She still stared at me not able to make out any longer 'what' I was. I gave her yet another 'look', swished my skirts and thumped off in my boots without a word.

I always got the 'looks' while in Calcutta - on the buses and on the metro - but I'd never before been mistaken for a member of the opposite sex while dressed in a printed blue skirt, an obviously female cardigan, and a bright blue scarf. Maybe she missed the billowing skirt or maybe she thought I was a cross-dresser. I don't know.

*******

In summer something completely different happened. One of those things that I'll remember with fondness. There was this charming little brown-haired, thin, bespectacled boy of 7 who had come for a barbeque hosted by our neighbour. Guha and I had gone outside for a smoke after almost everyone had left. I had earlier noticed that the little boy had been the only one who had been glancing at me with enormous curiosity and bright eyes, and I knew he would say something. Sure enough he came over to me and with a disarming frankness, asked, "How old are you?" I grinned and said, " I'm 679 years old." He fidgeted and mumbled and hanging from the stair railings, said "Nu-oh." "Really." I said. "What's your name?" he asked me. I told him, and he repeated it after me. I asked him his name and he answered. Then, a little more urgently, he demanded, "How old are you?" I grinned and said, "Okay...okay I'm 98." Guha ventured in on our conversation, when the little boy asked him, "How old are you?" Guha asked him, "...and how old are you?" "I'm 7", said he. "I'm 6", said Guha. "No, you're not. You look old." The little boy turned around and asked Guha, "How old is he?" Guha looked at him and then back at me, and said, "Oh, she's a 1000 years old at least." The young un pointing at me furiously said, "She? She? No, him. She's he. Not she." I looked at him with a huge grin, and said, "No, I'm a she. Really. I'm a girl." He looked at me and said, "No, you're not. You're a boy..." With the grin now threatening to split my face into two, I managed to say, "No, really I'm a girl, and I'm 33 years old." The boy looked at me, and with a terribly disappointed air, that made me want to give him a hug, he turned his back to us. His mum or dad called out to him at that point. He looked back at me and said, "Got to go. Bye..." "Bye Daniel, and take care..." "Grunt" came a reply.

Books are no fun....

Yesterday, while on the road, Guha, directed my attention to an advertisement on the back of a van. The van was a University store van, no less, which proudly flaunted the ad:

NO books. Only Fun Stuff.

To drill home the message - the word 'books' was framed within a red circle and had a black line running through it.

A faintly ridiculous sport

I think I'm more like a bear. Hibernating during the winter months would have suited me well but since there is no way to go into complete hibernation - I stick around physically but go to sleep inside my head, and then feel disgruntled for feeling so slow and sluggish in the head.

There had been some half-written posts but they still need work - so I'll leave those aside. Every time in the recent past that I've thought about writing a post - there is this one odd thought that simply clamours to be written.

I had a quiet Christmas, and some time during the Break - before or after Christmas Day, I don't know - I started thinking about different sporting events. Now many of them make intuitive sense. Running, jumping, even the hurdles race - they make sense, and are sensible sports I think (not the hurdles as much as just plain running - but still...)

Others, such as gymnastics, swimming and diving, inspire a sense of awe within me. To think that the human body is capable of such incredibly complex, lightning fast and smooth motions.

But then I got to pole-vaulting, and I stopped. Growing up when I did it’s hard not to remember the name of the gentleman most closely associated with this 'sport'. The sport itself seems quite ridiculous because it involves agility, coordination, speed, lightness and flexibility and must involve even a certain amount of grace, I'm sure - but to put it in mildly - it is not a graceful sport. Far from it actually.

Who are the folks who decided that pole-vaulting would be a 'sport that made sense'? Run along with this long pole at a great speed. Okay. Throw the pole? No. Keep running. Reach a maximum speed and then sharply, if not smartly, thrust your sturdy pole into the ground - and then use it to spring your body clear over a bar and then land onto a foam mattress.

Then one wonders about the evolution of the sport. Sure, I realise there is some history to it, and that history would not involve men being used as hailing pellets to squash 'the enemy'. One can find if one wants to, information on the net about how men used poles to cross canals instead of taking long-winding routes - yet those poles from so many centuries ago were hard and inflexible - and most importantly where did these brave men land exactly after springing over the barrier that they needed to cross? No foam mattresses were strategically placed on the other side to cushion their fall. Did they break their limbs? Did they break their backs? Did these men receive special training? Could all men perform stunning and ridiculous pole vaults? Was it something as natural as walking and then whistling and saying, 'oh yes, time to grab and run with the pole now and leap over the canal, and then land on my feet...'

Pole vaulting is something that should have been a part of circus performances. There are other sporting events that I find rather ridiculous - yet most of them seem purely ridiculous and little else. The thing with pole vaulting is that it involves the aspects of speed, agility, fluidity, and power - which normally make any other sport graceful and elegant....

Pole vaulting somehow reminds me of playing the harp. At which point does someone decide “My child shall learn how to play the harp.” When does the child say, “I’m going to play the harp, and be the best there is.” So many string instruments to choose from – why the harp? So many track and field sports to choose from – wonder when or why someone says, “Pole vaulting is the one for me.”

And following this most unsportsmanlike/ ‘sportist’ post, maybe I shall stop hibernating inside my head.

Growing Old

Two weeks ago, I had a conversation with good old darling Joe, who's in Flagstaff. Joe turned *41 this year, and he looks like he's 21.

A bit from the phone conversation:

Joe: Oh, Shilps. I'm growing old. I've been trying to get back into running, and my tooth hurts.

Me: Knees, Joe. You mean your knee hurts.

Joe: No, no Shilps. My tooth.

Me: Your shin? Yes? Your shin hurts?

Joe: My tooth, Shilps.

Pause.

Me: Ankles?....

Joe: The Tooth, Shilps.

Pause.

Me: What do you mean, Joe? You're not running on your teeth instead of running on your feet, are you?

Joe: No, but the tooth hurts when I breathe in the cold air while running. Remember the tooth?

(Pealing bouts of laughter on both sides)

Me: Oh, yes. The bad tooth. You couldn't laugh at any jokes during winter when we'd all be walking back at night...and you'd grimace instead and look like a snarling and rather hungry wolf.

Joe: Yes. (mini-giggle). That's the one. (very sober and sombre now).

Me: But that tooth of yours has been bothering you for fifteen years. What's growing old got to do with it?

Joe: I'm growing old. My tooth hurts. I have to keep my hand over my mouth while running.

Me: Why don't you keep your mouth closed? You don't need your mouth open while running.

Pause.

Joe: Oh...! But it's difficult, Shilps. I'm growing old. I can't breathe through my nose anymore. I'm growing old.

Me: You can't breathe through your nose because you're growing old? Well use a scarf over your mouth and breathe through your mouth then.

Joe: Yes. Ana gave me one. I have a ski mask too....

Me: Well there you go. Then you can keep your mouth open and keep breathing, laughing and running, but you won't have a painful tooth.

Joe: The tooth hurts Shilps. I'm growing old....

*Beth tells me that Joe has put up a note saying that he's turned 42 this year. So I guess I'm the one who's growing old....

Priceless Prayer

I read the below just yesterday on a British website, loved it on multiple counts, and have to share it.

A local minister was walking past his church when the intoning of a prayer made him stop and then leap out of his skin.

What had happened...

The minister's 5 year-old son (John?) and his friends while playing around chanced upon a dead robin, and wished to give the poor dead bird a proper and decent burial. John hunted around and found an old shoe box for the robin's final resting place. The lads dug up a small hole and John, since he was the minister's son after all, was chosen to administer the last rites and say the prayer for the deceased robin. In an impressive, solemn and sonorous voice, John intoned his version of what he thought his father always said, "Glory be unto the Faaather, and unto the Sonn, and into the hole he gooooes..."

Reminds me of the time when I was about the same age as John, and said for four straight years, "Guard India 'n watch over us".....

Spotty

I've done away with the original post because there was something that came up in a conversation some days ago. Subconsciously I rather liked the idea of wearing the halo, sprouting golden wings, and feeling righteous....but seriously - I was being a sham. I doubt that I would go out of my way to do anything for poor Spotty. I have never gone out of my way to help whole human beings I claim to care for nor have I ever done anything to make real human beings feel happy - so I dare say I should be a little more careful when it comes to publicly commenting on other people's unkind and offensive behaviour while making myself look like a docile angel with batting eyelids. I've tried to do 'no harm' - but alas, going by my record in terms of thoughts alone leave alone direct action - even there I haven't made much headway.

Who's there?

Some days ago, while going through a Readers Digest, I came across an interesting experiment carried out in 1997 by Daniel Levin and Daniel Simons from Cornell University. This experiment now joins the mini-list of clever, crisp, and elegant social psychological experiments that I would like to remember.

The experiment involved a 'stranger' who stops a pedestrian on a university campus to ask for directions. All fine and good. The pedestrian starts giving directions and the stranger is listening and nodding for good measure. All going well. Some seconds later, two men carrying a door (yes, a door) cut across the pedestrian and the 'stranger'. All is well still inspite of the rather rude intrusion. Or is it? The talking 'stranger' quickly sneaks into the spot of one of the 'door-men', while one of the 'door-men' stays back to talk with the pedestrian. Out of the 15 people they tried this little 'prank of an experiment', 7 of them noticed the change. The 'door-man' does look similar to the 'stranger' - even though in this set of experiments the two were wearing different clothes. Not huge numbers here - but rather amusing nonetheless. I'd found a neat video of the experiment but now I can't find the link any more. It's either been removed within the last couple of days or maybe I'm typing in the wrong string of words.

In a second set of experiments, Levin and Simons made the 'stranger' and the 'door-man' wear construction clothes and construction hats. Here, only 4 out of 12 people (college students) noticed the 'new-stranger/door-man' was now a different person.

While this experiment comes across as being funny and neat and even odd for many people interested in psychological and social-psychological experiments, it seems that some (crabby people?) don't like this experiment at all. They think it was too frivolous or something quite obvious, and that it's silly to think of this experiment as being of any use.....

P.S: One thing I've never quite understood: for experiments involving small numbers, such as forty people (which is probably a fairly average number when doing experiments) or 65 people - why do studies and reviews of these studies report percentages? Just reporting the raw numbers would make much better sense, I'd think.

For instance, if 24 out of 40 people while strolling around a waiting room leap up into the air upon finding a person on T.V casually talking back to them while in the middle of reading the evening news - what's the point in saying:

60% displayed 'leaping behaviour'.

15% exited the premises displaying 'fleeing behaviour'.

12.5 % displayed 'yelping behaviour' .

5% displayed 'peering behaviour' (i.e peering into the monitor, peering into the back of the monitor, and peering all around).

5% displayed 'sideways glancing behaviour'.

and 2.5 % displayed 'perfectly normal behaviour' (given the circumstances) but was still carried off by the men in the white coats....?

Why not say -

Out of the 40 subjects 'tested' -

24 leapt.

6 fled.

5 yelped.

2 peered.

2 leered.

And 1 person was carried off by the men in white coats (after he started chatting pleasantly with the 'newscaster' as if talking with people in T.V sets were something quite normal and something that he did everyday.... The 'newscaster' had to end the conversation before walking off the sets, and refuses to participate in any future psychological experiments...)

The Readers Digest did not use percentages, thankfully enough. They simply reported the numbers for the Levin and Simons study.

'Mamma Mia' and some memories

Today evening was fun. Guha and I went for the Mamma Mia musical. We'd both been pulling long faces about this earlier. Both of us had started watching the movie in December, and I had gagged before the movie got to the middle and then fallen asleep....so when we heard that the musical was coming to Purdue - we pooh-poohed it.

For some reason though last week when I saw the posters, all the all-too familiar ABBA songs and some vague memories of memories came back to me, and I told Guha on a whimsy that we should go for the show. That musicals are always better watched as musicals than as movies and in any case it would be fun hearing all those ABBA songs after so many years.

And so Guha got the tickets today. And so we went. And so it was. Great fun.

They were all accomplished singers and performers but the young woman who played the role of Donna was the one who had an astounding voice.

As I heard the songs there were some memories that came floating by:

1. How as a 6 year old I'd heard the song Super-trouper and I was quite convinced that the lyrics started off with "super-duper" right until I was 12 or so....

2. How when I was in class VII, I was given some of my pocket-money to buy my first cassette and an ABBA cassette it was indeed. They sang almost all my favourites from that cassette today....and I can't remember ever hearing all of the ABBA songs in one go apart from the time I was in school. And today's performance didn't disappoint me. There was my secret favourite and quite frankly risqué : Does your mother know. Voulez-Vous, which was definitely a dance number as well... Gimme, gimme, gimme! and Take a Chance on Me followed. 'Course I've never minded dancing on my own by myself, and today I was grinning in my seat and doing my "thumbs-twirl dance", which embarrassed Guha to no end - even though nobody was watching. He did join me though a little later for some very short minutes on some air drums...The performance was absolutely delightful. I'm talking about the performance-on-stage, that is.

3. There were the other quiet favourites: Chiquitita, The Name of the Game and The winner takes it all, Thank you for the Music (rather ironic that last one) and I remember listening to these as a school-going kid when I wasn't particularly cheery but was feeling not too terribly miserable either. The ABBA songs (and these in particular along with Fernando came to haunt me when I was in classes XI and XII. After I was a year into my undergrad in Calcutta I don't remember listening to ABBA much.

4. And then they performed the song I have a dream today that sent my memory bells pealing quite noisily. When we were in Class X, Sumki and I took it upon ourselves to direct the Class V play for Teachers' Day. We decided on Cinderella - which was fine. Sumki wrote the whole play on her own, which was better than fine. I was supposed to write one Act but never got around to doing that (and in any case she was the better writer). But the story doesn't end there.

We took it upon ourselves to make the play into a musical.

Why two mortally tone deaf people who couldn't sing for nuts would do that is beyond my powers of understanding. But we did. I don't exactly remember how we managed to teach the songs to the kids. Who was teaching them? Surely we couldn't have tried teaching them on our own by ourselves. The kids were exceptionally gifted. The girl who played the part of Cinderella (Moutushi) could sing like an angel, and the girl who played the part of the Prince (Debiparna) - even though she didn't have the intimations of musical greatness, she did have oodles of charisma and a brilliant clipped accent, and I think she pulled off the couple of songs that she had to sing (one being The Carpenters - I'm on Top of the World) pretty well. It was Cinderella/Moutushi however who had to sing I have a dream, and she was perfect....I couldn't help but be amazed today - and after all these years, as to how Sumki and I with such utter gall went on to direct a musical of all things!

5. The other memory comes from not a pleasant patch of a year - but the memory by itself is - oh well. Here goes.

It was my second year here. During the end of the Fall semester we had a stack of end-of-term papers to write up. Beth and I would meet up in the department on some late evenings to work, and sometimes there was more of snickering and exchanging of notes on random topics than paper writing. And on some evenings there was too much to type and there were too many papers (with some methodology and theory bits) that were thrown at my head (by Beth) so that I could fit them into my inching-along paper for any horsing around to happen.

One evening, Lorrell and Alyson - two other batch-mates/friends joined us in the department. We met relatively early on in the evening. The computer lab was otherwise deserted, and after 17 minutes or so of focused work, Lorrell started entertaining us with some songs from ABBA.

She was listening to them on her comp but was singing along as well -

Friday night and the lights are low

Looking out for the place to go
Where they play the right music,.......the swing
You come in to look for a king....

And then she really got into the lyrics and with a lot of head-shaking and air-guitar playing, she belted out -

You can dance, you can jive...having the time of your life
See that girl, watch that scene.....dancing queen...

At which point I had to join in with my voice and my dance.

Beth gave us big stares, which translated meant, "What on earth is that?"

"ABBA, Beth. ABBA. The Swedish band...."

"Muriel's Wedding. Seen Muriel's Wedding?" Piped in Lorrell before going back to her head-shaking and singing.

Beth shook her head and said, "nu-oh."

"Take a chance on me...." Crooned Lorrell some minutes later....by which time I had had to reluctantly return to my paper, which was glaring back at me from the screen. "Get on with the self-esteem bit you iijit. You've written enough about creativity...."

In the middle of the night all of us felt terribly hungry and the cheapest and the closest choice was what else but McDonalds. We all had some nasty burgers (apart from Alyson who had some equally horrific looking chicken nuggets) and washed them down with some Coke, and trudged back to campus to finish our papers. Beth kept wanting to break an arm or a leg so that she wouldn't have to turn in her paper. I kept reasoning with her that that wouldn't get her out of handing in her paper. She'd have to do it at some point so she might as well finish it that night. So much of brilliant sense coming from myself startles me at times.

So there we were. I don't remember how much of my paper I had done but all of a sudden I heard the noise of squeaky wheels over the whatever-song I was listening to on the net while working. I looked around at Beth who was looking back at me with her eyebrows lost in her hairline somewhere. Through the corner of my eye I saw a chair (with someone on it) swinging and making its way out of the computer lab. I took off my headphones and heard Lorrell telling herself, "Coke. There has to be some coke in the fridge....coke. Gotta get some coke." I left the computer lab to see that Lorrell was sitting on the chair and rolling along on it all the way down the length of the corridor to the kitchenette, which houses the rather ample-sized fridge.

What happened after that is ridiculously silly. Lorrell came back on her chair and then (the exact details escape me) she and I decided to have a wheel-race on speeding chairs down the corridor. Alyson, quite excited at the prospect of a race came out to be the judge and as soon as she said, "Get, set go!" both Lorrell and I were off whizzing down the corridor like wheely-bullets. We were in splits of course but we took the race very seriously as well. I got ahead of her quite soon and just as I was nearing the end of the corridor - quite the clear and easy winner, Lorrell lunged forward and tried grabbing me. She was trying to cheat! Well I was having none of that. I gave one mighty swing forward while fending her off...and I don't know whether I was partly responsible for what happened next - but she went crashing into a recycling bin (which according to Beth is still the only recycling bin in the department to have a massive dent). There was a mighty ruckus in that building as Lorrell banged into that bin with her chair. We waited and stopped in our tracks to see whether we could hear any sirens but that was that. Lorrell was unhurt, and the recycling bin while it wasn't that lucky, and had suffered some damages still stood straight - sort of squashed up against the wall. Laughing hysterically we rolled back down into the computer lab. Alyson and Beth, if I'm not too badly mistaken were also in fits. As far as I remember I didn't get off the chair but wheeled back down the corridor as speedily as I had come. At some point Lorrell and I noticed a couple of fairly largish cameras (or what looked like cameras) near the ceilings and we hoped that nobody had recorded our antics.

These were only some of the memories that came back on being there at the musical today.

For the encore the cast performed three of the songs Mama mia, Waterloo, and Dancing Queen before the curtains went down for the evening. Oh it was marvelous fun and I'm glad Guha and I managed to kick our lazy habits for the evening.

The show was pretty packed but for the entire evening there were three empty seats on my right, and I kept looking to see whether they were going to be taken all of a sudden.

Now, that would have been something.....

*Note: I've provided the links for all the ABBA songs just in case anyone wants to hear them*

Saturday late-noon II

The weather too is absolutely outstanding (better than the grapes...).

Cold, crisp, and sunny.

The photo does not do justice to what's outside.

It's a lazy Saturday late-noon. One of those late-noons, which seem almost perfect.

As usual I've taken my lazy shot - a shot of the trees opposite to my apartment.

Some of the leaves have started changing colour.

I shall go out for a walk in a bit.......

Saturday late-noon

Got the goodies on the side from the Farmer's Market today. The local farmers sell their goodies some five blocks away - fruits, vegetables, breads, cakes, cheese, eggs, meat....every saturday (morning-ish), from late May till the last week of October. The coming weekend I might actually take a photo of the farmer's market - and put some comments by way of explanation.

The grapes were outstanding. There were more than double the number of grapes in the basket. I finished the ones that do not appear in the photo. I'd forgotten that grapes could taste so real, sweet and slightly sour at the same time, so flavourful, and so abominably good. Fuzzy, pearly purple on the outside and a translucent white on the inside. Two apples have been eaten as well (not by me) - two remain. The cake on the right, which does not look like much - I'll admit (it looks like some lumpy unsightly mass of half-baked dough) - is so pleasant and wholesome that it needs to be tasted to believed (I had err...more than half a cake last week - so I know). It's moist, soft and crunchy - all at the same time and it's not too terribly sweet. The uneven, ungainly '8' shaped hole in the front right-hand corner is there because I dug out a piece just to make sure that the cake could be consumed by the other human inmate of the house. The bread rolls in the back taste very good (either as grilled sandwiches or with some jam) but this particular batch has not been sampled as yet. They are challah rolls made I believe with some bit of honey.

Oh, and yes - some jam was bought too today and a cabbage roll. A jar of apricot jam, which is inside the fridge. The cabbage roll, filled with vegetables and minced pork (somewhat like a momo is how I'd describe it) is inside my tum'.

Oh dear!

I must say that I was very surprised and my brain fairly boggled when I saw the * BBC frontpage today. (*this isn't a link to the frontpage - since the frontpage changes everyday - it's a link to the main bit. The video is rather erratic in a funny way. The only thing that would play yesterday is the 32 second clip on 'Ardi' from the Discovery channel). I thought it was some sort of a prank but I've never known the frontpage of the BBC to be pulling pranks of any sort (unlike the Calcutta edition of The Statesman, which many years ago had pulled a hilarious prank, which wasn't a personal prank, and that was on April Fools Day. The BBC radio once did pull a prank in the 70s I think it was, on April Fools Day...but about that some days later!).

This instance (not a prank) comes very close to the instance when another gentleman was given the award for making a documentary. A documentary!

In the current instance I actually feel rather bad (and sorry for him actually) on a couple of counts at least. 1) It must be embarrassing (since he knows...) 2) His detractors are going to be laughing their pants off and will not stop jibing him for a while now.

But on another note: who knows what The Committee may yet do in the coming years? Award a to-be-writer who is very articulate and has a good imagination in the anticipation that she may write the grandest book ever?
Boy, oh boy.

A Quote and a Picture

Photo from Suvro da's collection. Taken at the National Gandhi Museum, New Delhi.

"One cannot follow Truth or Love so long as one is subject to fear. As there is at present a reign of fear in the country, meditation on and cultivation of fearlessness have a particular importance. Hence its separate mention as an observance. A seeker after truth must give up the fear of caste, government, robbers etc and he must not be frightened by poverty or death."

------ Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

Three experiments

There are three experiments in social psychology that have horrified and intrigued me ever since I first read about them. These are - The Stanley Milgram Experiment, The Stanford Prison Experiment, and The Solomon Asch Experiment.

(*There are plenty of other websites other than the one that I've highlighted, which deal with these three experiments.)

The first experiment looked into the problem of 'obedience', and how far people would go to obey orders coming from someone (a 'scientist') working in a respectable university.

The second looked into roles and their 'power' over individuals - even when the roles adopted were essentially 'fake'.

The third of the lot seems on the surface to be rather staid in comparison to the other two, since it wasn't ostensibly looking into the underlying aspects of cruelty and abuse but was simply investigating the aspect of conformity and how far people would conform to what a group (of people) was saying even though the individual had all the reason to believe that the group as a whole was dotty, blind or had at the very least severe visual deficiencies. There's one very short video clip available on youtube here, and there is something grimly humorous about it.

Each of the experiments raised many contentions and later on ethical concerns as well, and of course some people may say that the 'samples' were not large enough. There may be some seven hundred and seventy-seven other problems with all three of the studies. That's all fine.

Yet there is enough in the world to show us that the experiments were not completely off the mark. Yet while the aspects of obedience, roles, and conformity do provide clues as to how and why humans act the way they do - what still remains a mystery to me is why/how some people choose not to engage in barbaric, cruel, and inhumane behaviour no matter what. What accounts for this difference? It's all very well for sociologists and social psychologists to be looking into environmental factors in order to explain why people act in horrible ways, and to say that good people can be bad because of external factors. But that's precisely it. Good people - really good people do not go and torture human beings. That's what being good means. Not being a goody-goody two-shoes but being really good. And being really good takes an enormous amount of courage. Standing apart from the crowd takes some doing.

I could keep writing but I'll end this post for now. The next couple of posts (at least) will break off from this path.

Evil...?

To go along with the fruitless series:

1. If there is evil that exists in the world - in the form of human evil - what can we do about it? Should evil human beings be allowed to roam around free? Should they be subject to capital punishment? Should they, if they are caught, be kept locked up in a place where they are unable to harm other human beings?

....we don't on the whole seem to care much though one way or the other as long as we are safe and if we ourselves are evil, we are able to rationalise (and if 'we' don't - I do).

Sometimes I wonder....!

2. How would one deal with brutal people? Are brutal people just 'born' brutal and evil? There are some kids who like hurting animals and kids smaller than they are, and there's no point or sense in saying that little kids who are victims themselves victimize others. It might be the case for some but there are kids who are victimised and yet they grow up to be kind and sensitive.

3. I've been reading Fromm's The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness again - there's little point in saying that I don't agree with everything that Fromm has written but there are parts there that have made me travel through the corridors of evil and abuse. Add to that Scott M. Peck's People of the Lie - and Peck isn't given to being dramatic or over-the-edge just for the sake of being thus. He seems to be a calm and quiet person but doesn't seem shy of saying things that are seen as being politically incorrect in many circles, such as - 'evil people' exist. The other books that I've been reading and some essays too and their rather perceptive authors are goading me along. Haven't read an Agatha Christie in the last one month - but then I don't need to read her to remember her. I can hear her in my head alongwith Poirot and Miss Marple, thank you. I can't but feel that people who think or try to think the best of human beings regardless of how they behave are a little gullible if not downright foolish.

4. I guess all of the above would require me to define evil....or at least describe what I mean by the word. For all that - some other day.

6. I say the above is fruitless because I don't think I can really know for sure whether evil exists. I had been utterly convinced at some points that the idea of pure evil is something that I must have constructed to scare myself even though I've seen some evil myself in this world. I've seen more of hypocrites and liars and just plain vacuous people who are pompous more often than I'd like to and these sorts are no better really - but evil....I've seen it more in specific actions of people - which seem to be motivated by nothing other than evil. It really couldn't be anything else no matter how hard these people may rationalise.

7. Sometimes I am quite sure that I sense evil within me, which has nothing to do with anything on the outside....

So much for now.

Wandering and wondering

The following is related to a series of rather improper thoughts I have been having lately (or not so lately). ‘Improper’ on a number of counts I guess but here improper just because it’s seemingly such a non-social way of viewing people and their behaviours because I’m wondering whether people are just ‘made’ in a particular way – fixed and unchanging and if they change – it’s almost as though they were ‘meant’ to change like some almost non-conscious creature.

….

Every now and again I wonder: so I like wandering around in the forests, and I really love nothing half as much as wandering around a forest (there are some things that I may have liked even better in connection to walking around forests, like living in one up on the hills, but that’s not the point) but then I always end up asking myself, ‘but who wouldn’t?!’ Reluctantly and with disbelief of course I have to admit that there are people/morons who would probably choose walking around in a mall over walking around in a forest. I like to think that people who don’t like walking around in a forest don’t deserve any further thought.

But then I wonder about something else. It’s nothing new, and I myself have had similar versions of the same thought erupt in my head on different occasions: but maybe they can’t help themselves. Maybe that’s just the way they are made. They love mall-hopping and they love shopping but they hate walking around in a forest or they hate splashing up and down a creek. I know too that there may be some who love walking and trekking even more than I do and who also love shopping with a vengeance. But maybe, they too are just the way they are. They are somehow given to liking this odd combination of things. They just can’t help being the way they are.

What would make people love shopping or walking around in a mall? I do of course love book browsing (and it’s sometimes even better than book buying) but one doesn't ever go to the mall to do that and browsing through/for specific music (something I haven’t done in a long time unless it’s on youtube). But maybe this too is just the way I’m made. I remember that at as a kid I had this horrible fixation for shoes (of all things). It sounds terrible – but I did although I don’t know why considering that the Cinderella fairytale did not appeal to me one whit as a kid (this may have something to do with reading the original Grimm's version, which is quite a nightmare and nothing of a fairytale). I don’t have a shoe obsession anymore although I have the quirky (if not downright silly) habit of looking at the shoes that people wear, and these days even grocery shopping sounds better, much better than any sort of shopping that requires a trip to the mall. But I know of people who love visiting or roaming around in the mall. Why would anyone want to go there?

Yet how on earth can people be asked or forced or made to like the forests? I know of kids who never learnt swimming no matter how many times they were taken to the pool. I know of kids who read books because their friends were reading...and for many years they read and even bought books but stopped reading for fun and pleasure as soon as they 'grew up' and weren't living near those friends any longer. Some people like music, some people are tone-deaf, and some think or like to think that they like music. Some people love climbing mountains and will do anything to climb the next peak and others are afraid of heights and yet others are scared of heights and will keep climbing mountains so as to conquer their fear....

Yet maybe human beings are ‘made’ in these different ways. Someone likes going to the mall. Someone else doesn’t. Maybe it’s got something to do with internal states of being or with something like reflexive knee jerk reactions? Maybe it’s like a purely physical pleasure? Some people like ice-cream and others like chocolate bars. So some idiots like malls and some people like forests and maybe there are some messed up ones who like both. But maybe that’s just the way people are somewhere inside and there’s nothing much one can do about it?

I don’t know whether this is a depressive thought or whether it’s ridiculously insane or whether it's just plain hogwash. ….I can’t help but wonder and wander along this rather fruitless series of 'improper' thoughts.

P.S: I don't know what happened to the birdies at the water fountain. It hasn't gotten that cold but all the birdies seem to have disappeared...

Birds, boys, girls, and a water fountain

I was sitting in front of a water fountain on campus the other day. This is one of the quaint water fountains (I'll put up a picture if I ever get around to taking one) and it looks older somehow. It has a deep enough base and the water goes high enough through a pillar in the centre and then trickles and splashes down into the base, which forms a mid-sized pool.

I was rather distracted that day, and as I went over the class material in my head, organizing my thoughts, wondering how to make sense of what seems to be increasingly senseless, and how to present 'the social construction of reality' in class without sounding pompous or inane or just vague. I sighed, drank my coffee and smoked, and then finally started looking. The pillar of the water fountain had a main base which formed a pool of indeterminate depth but half-way down there was a mini-base where there was some water that collected and the sprinkles made mini showers all over and into the main pool. As I looked I saw these fat little birds that were all happily sitting on that semi-base getting drenched in the showers from the fountain. They kept fluffing their wings every now and again and then just settled right back in again, looking very happy, content and cheery. I couldn't help but smile as I saw some nine of those fat little, ridiculously content, and very wet birds. I was wondering whether the water was cold or warm or cool and was wondering how it would be to sit on the edge and dip my feet into the pool. I even wondered how it would be if I let out a war whoop and leapt into the pool with a running sprint....

Not five seconds later some four boys and three girls came truddling along. They must have been high-school kids or maybe fresh undergrads who didn't have a class at 4 on Monday afternoon. They had just finished running around in the big water fountain (about that some other day) from the looks of it. They were all drenched and soaking to the bone but looked very happy. They walked over to the fountain where I was sitting and were contemplating on the merits of jumping into the pool. One girl stuck her toe in and said, "brrr....freezing."

One of the boys with an impish look on his face looked towards me and said, "You're going in after us, right?"

With a grin I said, "Sure. And you can go and teach my class."

A couple of them giggled. Another girl stuck her foot in and said, "wow - it's deep." The boy looked at me and said, "Don't know whether we should go in..."

I said, "Go for it. You're drenched anyway."

Even before the words were out of my mouth I saw one of the girls and two of the boys leap into the pool and swim two laps and then with mighty whoops they came out. "Cold. Cold. Cold." Two of them grinned hugely at me and said, "Have a nice day." And with that the noisy little bunch was gone.

The fat little birds had flown away some minutes ago.

I trudged off too for my class while wondering about 'the social construction of reality' again with a last look at the fountain.

Von's: books in the basement

There is a lovely local book-shop near campus called Von's, which I used to visit an awful lot in my first year. These last some years I've gone there less often and I have some reasons for that. Every now and again when I do drop in - I spend a considerable amount of time there. I go and settle myself in a comfy couch in the children's book-section with a pile of books to browse through. I'm never bothered and no one chases me away. I do feel wistful every now and again when I'm there inside the book-shop.

For a while now I have known that Von's has a used book section down in the basement. Somehow I've never prodded myself to go down there. I know that most likely sounds odd. Why ever not, one may ask....I am not really sure whether I want to share the reasons (batty as they are). Today I did go over to Von's. And I did go down into the book-filled human-empty basement. I ended up buying four books. And as I went in and out of the aisles looking and fingering and leafing through the old books (some older than others) - I wondered (among very many other things) how people can find reading books on a kindle half as satisfying. Some comparisons come to mind - but let me desist. I did feel wistful all the while down in the basement and some book titles made me gulp loudly.

On my way in and on my way out I saw one occupant - an elderly gentleman at the far end of one of the aisles who was quite comfortably sprawled out on the floor with his head resting in one of his palms reading a book, completely oblivious to the world. He could have been reading at home - he looked so comfy. I didn't travel up and down that aisle because I would have felt like an intruder.

Middle of the Week

"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.
Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

I'm tempted to write nothing but put up the above quote but of course I'll go on (with what will become I am sure a gloomy rant. It may be otherwise but I rather doubt it).

Some weeks ago, was it, or days - never mind - I came across that liner again "life is one damned thing after another." I don't know whether the original quote actually starts off with 'life' or with 'history' (I’ll check once I finish writing the post) - but even that matters not much for the purposes of the current bit. I wonder more whether life is the same damned thing over and over again. I will try as I sometimes do, not to ramble. But after weeks of not writing here, all the thoughts start banging against each other demanding to be heard and it becomes very difficult to stay on track. So I apolgise to the few readers who do visit this blog and read my posts.

Yet another semester has begun. The first week is always my favourite. Almost nothing goes wrong even in a class of 90 students packed in, in a-not-too-large of a space. I am focused (don’t ask me why or how), I don’t ramble, I make jokes (but in context – at least not out of context), and I form some coherent sentences of my own but I keep asking leading questions so that the students themselves come up with the answers, which I then write on the board. The students seem happy and engaged on the whole. I am happy and almost prancing around the whole length and breadth of the classroom. Something of course starts going wrong somewhere after that magical first week, and I’m not really sure even now what all the factors are. Part of it I know is my tendency to ramble, my unpreparedness for a sudden question or a sudden strand (which I don’t know whether to ignore or whether to somehow incorporate into the discussion), my mind blanking on me and a whole lot has to do with the way I start approaching the class after that one magical week or so. But all that can wait too for another day.

I can’t help but be reminded of my own first encounters with sociology when I was in college. I can’t say that the whole discipline fascinated me equally (it still doesn’t). I never got a hang of stats (sadly enough) and I never really could for the life of me remember dates and many related strings of information that would have helped immensely, and these days more than most of the research papers I read leave me unimpressed and untouched. However, I still remember one of the topics that fascinated me when I had started on the discipline and the topic holds my interest even now. I don’t however know whether that interest has become any deeper or whether it has matured some over the last decade and some years. That topic was “freedom and determinism”.
Many years ago I read some liners which had made me chortle. A black woman was told, “But you have to stop smoking…” and she had replied, “On this earth – I am born and I have to die. The first one’s happened. I’ll have to do the second. Ain’t a thing more that I have to do. I choose to do the rest.” Hmm.

During my years in college and a year or two prior to them I remember watching a lot of programs on the Discovery channel which talked about the brain, the mind, and behaviour, and those programs brought in hundreds of other questions and musings – most of which got carefully written down in my diaries. At that point of course I fancied that I would take up something like clinical psychology in later years somehow…The question of freedom and determinism would haunt me in very many more ways (and some bizarre ways) over the next many years but I didn’t know that back then. I was also madly, blindly and absolutely feverishly reading anything and everything that Ayn Rand had written, writing about most of it in my diaries, arguing with myself and disagreeing and agreeing. The real thinking over would happen some years later. Not then. I read some other books too (I think) but I was nothing in my college years if I wasn’t an Ayn Rand fanatic. I was a Richard Bach fanatic too during the same time.

My professor in college – one of the finest teachers, in fact I’d have to say the finest teacher that I have come across in a formal setting – is the one who introduced the topic of ‘determinism and freedom’ in class and got me interested in a focused way, and for months and two years I pondered more on this question than anything and everything else combined. I had discussions and debates with my professor in the class, and he would answer and sometimes throw back a question at me. Not once did he ask me to shut up nor did he tell me that I was holding up the class. I have no idea why or how he had the patience to answer my questions (some of which must have sounded quite silly and uninformed) and I don’t have any idea how he never got distracted with my endless questioning and sometimes vehement and mutinous badgering. Nor do I know how he finished the syllabus. The same professor was forced to send me out of the class once. But only because I had stopped asking questions and stopped paying attention in his class. Come to think of it, I don’t know whether I would have stuck to sociology if we hadn’t had this one professor when I was in college.

Many years later (sometimes it feels like a lifetime although it couldn’t have been more than five years or so) I came across a human being who was even more patient, even more interested in what I had to say and ask, even more painstaking and for a whole year, through letters though it was (and humongous letters at that), he managed to nudge me into taking a closer and more refined look at things. Of course if anyone had to tell me that back then I would have snorted. I didn’t like to think that this one human being had managed to nudge me into taking a tempered view regarding many issues – social and non-social ones. I don’t know why. Maybe it was my colossal ego for I know I had one – a much larger one some seven years ago. I even happen to remember how in one snap he stopped me from being the rather indifferent agnostic that I had been. No sermons. No flashing divine insight. No. But the message was contained in a couple of innocuous liners and a nudging reminder of Meerabai for some reason made me remember that I did believe in God.

How free are human beings? What is freedom? Are we determined? By what/whom? At how many levels does freedom exist? What about determinism? At how many levels are we controlled and determined? What forms of determinism exist? Political, economic, cultural, and social too (and if one wants to set up a neat little barriers one may add blind habit, custom, and tradition maybe to the list)? Maybe genetics? Who knows? Why leave out fear? What other elements control us then? Where does it end then this control? What does it mean to be free in an enlightened way? Can human beings really be free? What would that order of living be? And no matter how ‘unacademic’ it sounds – what about karma? And what about love? Doesn’t love both control us and make us free ? And what’s the point in freedom really or any state of exalted grace – no matter how glorious or however absolute – if there is no love that is fulfilling and absolute contained in that state of being?
....Limited vision and grand questioning probably never were meant to go together.

I had told a friend in college that if I ever taught sociology – I would talk about two things in the first couple of classes and more: one would be to talk about and elaborate upon the words and the meanings of the words “social” and “society”. The other was to talk about determinism and freedom. And as a graduate instructor I have done so. These classes are still my favourite ones after so many years – even now when I am the one who is still asking all the questions.

And I really still am doing just that. Asking questions still and going around in circles and coming out of the same damn door that ‘in I went’. And it’s rather cruelly disappointing in a way. Things could be far worse I know. I know nothing if I don’t know that. But I don’t know what it is that I’m missing while going through the days and nights that have all started looking alike. All I know is that there is something that I’m missing. And since this is not a mystery story - what do I mean by missing? Not looking or seeing carefully enough and therefore overlooking something vital as well as the yawning feeling that something is absent.

Every now and again I have felt as though I were suspended somewhere in-between waiting….the wait comes. Time hangs. For some moments it feels as though there is no movement at all almost as if the utter timelessness within my own senses will be followed by something incomparably magnificent and absolute. But I am a wise fool and I know all that follows is the unbearable sadness and the just about bearable and the quotidian. They come in and swing. The glory is most likely for those who have already paid their dues.
For now I am determined by the dues I must pay and I shall and will.

Tomorrow or the day after there will be some other post - maybe even a funny one...

Last day of Class

Last day of my summer teaching as a graduate instructor was the day before. At the beginning of class, while I was just about to go upstairs to get some coffee for myself, a couple of my students running down the stairs handed me a cup of coffee and a blueberry muffin. They walked towards me with the bag and cup in their hands and thrust both out towards me with me looking no doubt a little blank. "Yes. We got it for you. A little going-away gift. Thanks..." I was so touched that all I could say about five times and more was "Thank you so much. That was awfully nice of you..." They seemed equally gleeful and one of the boys informed me "...and we were worrying whether you'd beat us to the cafe." "Yes, so we ran upstairs as fast as we could..." said the other.

And on the same day right at the end of that last class on that last day, I'd barely said a proper good bye to all the students...there were a couple of girls who came up and wanted an A instead of a B for the course. One of them plaintively inquired why she hadn't done well in the last quiz even though both of them had studied together till 3 O'clock the night before the quiz. There were more comments. They wanted me to increase the number of points for their class presentation. They accused me of not having enough assignments (which is why they hadn't done well). And then one of the girls made the mistake of saying, "I didn't know that I'd get a B if I missed 11 points." That was it. I told her that the information was in the syllabus and that I hadn't kept it a secret, and if she had wanted to get an A so badly then maybe she would have done well not to have waited until the very last day of class.

That was that more or less.