QUIXOTIC: DEsIRE iS A ReaSON IN ITsELF

Madmen of Kingsbridge

2011-11-28T09:26:00.003-05:00

Most often when I would go out of the building or come inside, I would see Ronnie hanging around, either sitting with a beer can on the three steps that divided the lobby in two parts in two levels or standing or striding outside on the small section of the hedgebound walkway that led to the street or on the street outside. Well he was always hanging around be it day or night because he was mad or mentally unsound, "The guy is crazy" as I was told by the superintendent cum janitor the only guy to whom i ever inquired about him. Ronnie would always be doing something, drinking beer, smoking a cigarette, or walking behind people in long marching strides and talking to them without expecting them or allowing them to reply. sometimes he would not realize that he is scaring off people specially woman who would get afraid of his persona clad in loose and slightly dirty denim trousers and matching denim jacket, coupled with his wide wild eyes and violent and exaggerated movements albiet harmless. He had a pale long face, sunken cheeks and prominent Irish nose. The craggy wrinkled face that always sported few days grey stubble looked as if he has recently suffered a great anguish that was affirmed by the corners of his eyelid that were folded on his eyes like a dog eared book. He was small and thin and the heavy snow boots that he wore made him look even smaller. He had long hair with tufts of grey sideburns pulled back neatly and banded in pony tail, which made his face look longer than it was....and when he stood gazing in infinity with his beady baleful eyes..... that time if only the face would be visible, someone might take him for aged samurai warrior.

Inactive, Ronnie would look just like anyone. You can see him sitting standing or walking just like anyone, it was only the touch of urgency and instability that accompanied these actions that made him look abnormal. Ronnie was not at all like the young boy I used to see in number one train always beyond 135th street. The guy with wheatish complexion but curly short hair and pouted lips often frightened commuters so much that the unpretentious one of them mostly woman and old men would move away from him leaving their precious seats. This boy had a routine. He would board the train almost running and enter briskly as if looking for someone, just like the actor or the cop or the sleuth in Hollywood movies entering a crowded place behind a fugitive. He would then move to this door to that door with a broad grin, sometime chuckling and squinting with his tongue out and a very very wild eyes. He would then find and take the empty doorway. They become empty any way if he chooses a space. He would then throw his specs and overall mostly a hoody on the floor paying attention to no one and then take a striding pose facing the door as if to jump outside and lurch wildly forward and backward in rapid succession. He would keep doing that for some time and then if he sees any empty space or a seat he would pick up the hoody and specs and keep them there and will resume his swinging. He would look at people without seeing them in eyes or registering their presence and after one or two stops he would get down leaving commuters with a sighed relief. People would start looking again at each other and freely move their eyes that was mortified till then and avoided each for having a mad one amongst them, creation of gene gone haywire from their own pool and accusing them of not doing anything or worst accusing the entire society for having done nothing for likes of him.

Nausea 2

2009-05-28T22:07:00.008-04:00

It's been quite a while, that when I get up in the morning I see vivid dreams of things I have to do that day, they occur in such detail and in so properly spaced episodes; breaking and resuming again coinciding with my frequent wake ups to check the time on the wall clock or to drink water from the amber yellow glass streaked with hand painted vertical lines kept on the white enamel painted wooden windowsill and sometimes to go to bathroom to spit the mucus that accumulates in the upper regions of my throat due to perennial cold, that I don’t feel like getting up, I keep on sleeping, changing positions on the old mattress, trying to neglect the slightly nudging pain that prolonged sleep has plastered on my body; thinking that the day has started and so the work I intended to do.

I don't know exactly when this started happening but if I have to pin it down on events rather than times, then I can say it started happening when I started getting worried about my life and time in NYC, I mean it's significant to me since after may be 17 years it's the first time that I have started getting worried. I have never been depressed since that log time in my life either. My way of dealing with depression is sleeping it over since it's the same condition we try to acquire when we meditate to reduce the beta waves in our brain. And I can say that it has been helpful but the only problem is that all the time I sleep, I consider it wasted, which I would not do so if I spend even double the amount of time meditating, but I guess methods that are approved to achieve a result no matter what, they give you a sense of achievement while if you achieve same result by any other method, not approved, you feel bad about it.

These supposed dream sequences which makes me feel that I have already started my days have replaced my earlier and much uglier episodes of nightmare, where I constantly saw myself falling from height and hence never slept for more than an hour or two at a stretch....I always used to wake up once within that time. So I can’t say if the situation has improved with me.

Going beyond myself, the city doesn't help me much either. Though it is almost onset of the summer, the days that start with bright sun light are still infrequent and the dreary, cold, overcast sky that I see through my dusty double paned glass window adds a heavy, foggy, condensing burden on my senses. The bare and simile red brick apartments that have become familiar to me, fail to cheer me, even the one way rattling sound of number 1 subway fails to convey motion of the day, dynamism of the city or the fact that other people are up and about, people who must get up and do certain duties that are mood independent. I wish I had been one of them, who can’t avoid getting up and opening shops, running trains, buses and taxis, or serving in the restaurants.

But alas! I have more liberty with my day that even an existentialist will be afraid to handle!

tbc....

Pub Culture Vs Whatever

2009-02-05T16:55:00.002-05:00

Western culture as perceived by eastern people or the right wing nationalist party in most country is a culture of decadence, something that pollutes other culture.

What they don’t understand is that western/American culture is a culture of convenience. And the westerner invariably come out with things to use in every aspect of life that are much better or convenient to accept than any attempt made by right winger (if they are doing it) and hence are bound to be liked by general masses worldwide. So why don’t they for a change come out with more attractive things than just rejecting guiltily all things western?

Also, why these right wingers are selective in their rejection? Right from the first thing used by them in morning; the toothbrush to every other thing used by them throughout the day is mostly invented by these westerns to make modern and progressive life easier and yet they take some ‘symbolic’ things as polluting and try to vent their guilt at.

Why don’t they grow up? Contrary to evolutionary creed explained by Darwin they refuge stubbornly to do so. I mean even if you are believer and creationist you can still guess that humanity due to its mental capability is destined or doomed to keep on progressing so why not aid it constructively than try to abate it foolishly?

Again taking Darwin’s theory (can’t escape this grand old man) let people choose (even I choose selectively of all the tempting things that exist in a ‘place’ like New York) to do what they want to do and let the survival of fittest theory prevail. Even the dandy dapper English hat went out of fashion since it was not convenient so does Hippy movement, drugs and free sex of sixties. More things will phase out even the idea of ‘convenience’. Don’t worry, if chastity belt, al-Qaida, blowing up people in name of religion and religion itself is convenient it will prevail and jeans, noodle strap, valentine's day, right of abortion and idea of happiness will fade if its not convenient, but let it happen by itself don’t force it.
I can go on but don’t have time. May be some other time I will complete it.

Enemy

2008-12-06T17:05:00.001-05:00

" The more powerful you become, the more powerful enemies you create."

2008-10-25T22:43:00.003-04:00

The Butterfly that could not go beyond the glass!!

Aimlessness

2008-10-10T21:37:00.002-04:00

Aimlessness is a passion that is rarely accepted by ordinary people. In fact I can very well say that the solitary, aching, dreaming and musing heart is the only candidate who can claim such wafting-like-smoke characteristic; since he is someone who is not ordinary and, is someone who is rare too, to this, and accepts this rare condition and blithely get lost in it.

Otherwise, why do you think that someone with myriads of activities to do will seek this aimlessness? The mind if not the visible body, in this modern world is so full of activity that in absence of something to do, one gets panicked and rushes to do something lest he is caught sitting alone and staring nowhere in particular in a park or drinking coffee and just sitting, forget about holding an open book without reading a single line and, no matter how much you stare it refuses to yield to the entire history of etymological training ….such joys!!!

Yes, joy! Because whenever I am alone and not plagued by demands of my environment and the inextricable social entanglement that comes from knowing people (though I know less people), what come in my mind most often is the abstractedly fleeting moments I have encountered while apparently doing something else. Like the lazily drifting string of soot coming out of an incense stick (which she often lights) that get disturbed shockingly in a perfectly still sunlit bedroom when I walk in to it to fetch a mundane article, or the cascading shadows of the rumbling number 1 train passing over the rickety metal bridge that I see through the double glass window pane; hot from outside with the persisting sunrays and cold from inside with the condensed water drop that evaporate from the Tulsi that she has kept on the wooden window sill. Though I have rarely wondered about why the sunny day of a winter looks different than the same sunny day of summer from inside the house, I feel that I have spent years coming to the realizing that the difference is not the temperature which I can’t feel from inside the room but the change in the suns position and hence the shadows of the things that absently keeps bothering me. Or the isolated events and places that keeps popping up in my mind anachronistically, as if by some power I am rushing through them at the speed of light!

I wish I could start an aimless day and wander on the streets or sit somewhere without pretending to do anything no matter how badly I want to do it. Or have the temerity to brush away the nagging idea that doing something like everyone else is the only way to get accepted by the suffering miserable lot, from whom I want to run away in the first place. I mean how many times when I just sit quite somewhere even in my room, I do not get perturbed by the idea that I am not doing anything and spoil the very idea of inactivity. Why don’t I just sit in an obscure café, may be something named silver moon and enjoy the aroma of boiled bergamot orange without milk and meager amount of sugar and watch my brown brown reflection and, not think that the reflection I am watching will stay with me and not melt in the background of my thoughts? I mean even that reflection ask me question after sometime – “what am I thinking?” Even the muse gets perplexed if the artist spends more than few minutes absorbing the existence of the muse. While for me, In front of that perfect muse I would want the day to pass in the same place in front of me and I should not do anything but let it pass. Sometimes I think what if I can perceive the time as a thick mirror that slows the speed of light so that the time will pass slowly or what if I can jump in and out of those mathematically existing parallel universes, and stay at same place and keep sitting doing nothing but watching every activity in every universe. It overwhelms me, I mean the idea that I won’t get bored. Since, I am so much accustomed to the idea of this world that, I will get bored.

It’s not like that I am framing this idea of inactivity or aimlessness on myself or anybody in particular since these same habits have given me the greatest joys of my life. Someone will say that I got lucky even if he has to acknowledge that, that luck has been persistent. And that’s why I seek that aimlessness and an empty day.

So what do I do when I get confronted with this futile idea of activity even when in company of perfectly singular and subjectively personal entity?

I should do nothing.

PS: a poem " The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot that i often read when i feel like this....which has few things that i missed in this blog....here is only a portion of that....

..........And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
It is perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?.............

The Dying Animal ....was Incubus

2008-07-11T19:00:00.002-04:00

Roth has always been shocking in his writing about sex. In fact he has always written about sex as John Updike has done (Once the Economist introduced Updike to its reader as, “the write of mostly salacious books set in a fictional town of New England”). But I would say that the brainiest “salacious” book I have ever read was The Couples by Updike. One only has to read "Portnoy's Complaint" (defined as, "A disorder in which strongly-felt ethical and altruistic impulses are perpetually warring with extreme sexual longings, often of a perverse nature...") to see it. My American friends tell me that the copy of this book used to be kept away by their parents as if it was published by Heffner & Co. And they were so curious that when they started reading it was one of the first book they read.

To start with the cover painting Le grand nu of girl with that tussocky underbelly nestled between the accentuate hips and the carelessly rolled down bulbous breast by Amedeo Modigliani does the job of enticing you to take the book. Every time I took the book I sighed and smiled at the same time looking at cover before getting deeply satiated by the prose inside the book.

Roth is not like other writers to hide his motive and theme behind a plot but lashes out like a torrential rain his unabashed, frank and shockingly raw feelings on the pages be it Jews sex or blacks. While reading certain description once I thought that I am reading George Bataille but as Aristotle said about bending a stick, for a timid and so called "cultured" this might seem like an obscene book frothing on the verge of scatology and a direct anathema to Nabokov's Lolita. I found some parallels between The Dying Animal and Lolita. May be it’s the time when these two books were written or the culture in which these authors were born (while Roth never left new York, Nabokov a Russian by origin lived in France before moving to Manhattan…that’s when he wrote Lolita, so was it American culture that inspired him to write such shockingly bold book?) or lived or the age of female characters who made them approach the story in such crass and direct language and with single layer in case of Roth and so subtle, and multilayered in case of Nabokov.

Even though both book involve same fascination of young girls by older professors (this seems to be fantasy of many old writer since The Disgrace by Nobel prize winner south African writer J M Coetzee has the same theme) but having a female character of legally adult age gave Roth the freedom to transgress the civility of language while describing certain passages by which Nabokov had to restrain himself having a minor female character. Such a loss ....for Nabokov for not only shocking the literary agents but shocking the simple minded folk too (to whom these literary agents tell what is shocking) had Nabokov written something like this with a legally adult age character and at that time.

It also shares first the fear of losing such Precious Little Thing and later humiliation of trying to get it as in Lolita. While the humiliation of losing was greatly portrayed in Lolita which made Humbert Humbert first delusional and then mad it was the fear of losing the girl while Kapesh had her that makes him say that you never know old age till you are old. What really bothered me in the movie version of Lolita was the scene in hospital when one night in his sleeping gown Humbert is pushed and humiliated by hospital staff when he tries to find if Lolita has ran away. And would like to see how they portray David Kapesh’s fear of losing Consuela while he is having her in the movie version of the book The Elegy.

But, as I was describing to someone, reading this book was like having a cerebral orgasm and that was not because of that raw and un-intimidated sex but because of some of the passages (which were never lost in the sketchy plot) where he traces the 60’s sexual march to have the seeds in 200 year old incidents and famous people and in fact to entire south America.

Being an American he exhorts a lot about Philogyny that too with such force an conviction, like a god that he might have started a religion somewhere else since America has no rarity of such men and that was the reason why he wrote those things. I could trace this vehemence towards family in the existing American society where almost everyone is married twice if they are married and half of kids not having half of the parents.

In fact the first most modern dialogue kind of prose I read was Deceptions by him and while reading that first time I came to know that Jewish-ness is an issue not only in Middle East but also in America. Despite the fact that I enjoyed all racial slur against them in comic sitcoms like The Family Guy I never really quite digested the intellectual jewish-ness hysteria drummed up by Roth in his books and Woody Allen in his movies.

Why New York

2008-04-12T18:31:00.002-04:00

1. If you ever thought that you are not normal, then New York is the place for you to live.
2. People take so much trouble to look ugly in New York that if you are ugly its hardly an issue here.
3. What i don't like (after some time) about summer here in NY is that women move around with so much of unwanted flesh slipping out of their clothes like molted silicon gasket.
4. Almost all non Anglo-Saxon men (including some of them sometimes) spend as much time on their hair and cloths as women do. Men do this without realising that they cant make effort to look good without crossing the gender boundry...but then that's fine in NY.

The Serene, dark, somber and saturated colour of nature

2008-03-09T03:59:00.004-04:00

After long time it rained at around 12 degree centigrades... that is perfect for getting wet without feeling cold. It so rarely happens here in New York that for life of me i could not have missed it. Initially the bleakness of sky overwhelmed me as much as the rain overwhelmed the earth. But when you look long hard and lovingly at something, it takes the light of your love and glows...so did glowed the day when i looked out of window and felt i should go out.

And i enjoyed the plop-plop of shoes and E9 printed in yellow color on the beaten asphalt road. The day seemed normal with people shopping and walking and struggling to keep dry and failing miserably. The cars the horns the lights in day time and then the incessant sound of the hissing wind and rain. But i felt at peace walking to Van Cordtland park...it was deserted and for long time i was the only one plodding softly in mulch and mud and shifting puddles. I took my both cameras but took only one picture with Yashica. I also recorded myself jogging from under the bridge to capture the contrast.

I was nostalgi all the while i was out in rain. Then it started raining hard by 3 pm the temperature also started dropping so i had to run home. But i will remember the sound of raind drops hitting the water on earth and the hissing and the concentric circle forming in the water over and over again

The fall of the maple leaf

2007-11-21T22:12:00.000-05:00

Damn the Resetting@&^#%#

2007-11-21T03:27:00.000-05:00

Do you see this blank Cluster Map? well i hade more than 15oo visitors from around 40 countries and all that record is gone. These buggers at Cluster map reset the map every year so on 1st Nov they removed all previous record...bad..

I hope more people will return to my blog this year.

the dogs during NYC Marathon

2007-11-07T15:09:00.000-05:00

On Sunday i went to see annual NYC Marathon finish at central park. It was crowded like hell with a Beatles lookalike band singing "Pennylane" when i got out of the subway. Since i was late when i approached the crowd to see the runner i saw this Boxer staring at me amidst legs and i decide lets shoot them who have been dragged at this event. And as you can see these dogs were really pissed (not at the pole or hydrant)

I have put them on Roffs blog ...:-) enjoy

the quote

2007-08-10T15:39:00.001-04:00

"Casanova! My dear man, Casanova is not worthy to untie my bootstrings." --- Frank Harris

2007-07-11T23:25:00.000-04:00

वही बारिश है
वही पानी है.....
वही बदन है मेरा जो पानी में भीगा है
लेकिन वह गीला पन नही
जो तेरे बदन के पास रहने से
उसी पानी कि तरह
पसीने से भीगने पर महसूस होता है......

Van Cordtland Park

2007-06-29T13:59:00.000-04:00

Rains are same everywhere when it comes to the mood they impinge on a mind that is obsessed with its dark, fluid, ever encompassing and pervasive nature. When I came here in New York last august, I longed for rain at normal tropical temperature, the way it has in India, but the September and November rains are just too cold to be enjoyed on body. But now with more than 25 deg C in NY rain is much more soothing and appealing. These pictures I took on a Sunday evening when there is practically no one around and that's what i wanted to shoot in my photographs....the utter desolation of landscape, the solitude and loneliness at it's silent best. In fact the dark saturated colors are the best thing my manual SLR Yaschica 2000 (1983 model) does best.

I went to Van Cortdland Park last week when it was raining to cut blades of grass for Missy and Ion and was pleased with myself for coming out and seeing the dark somber tree-caped park with all its natural glory. It's located on the 242nd street on # 1 train from where Jack Kerouac started his Beat Generation road trip to the wast somewhere in 1940's. I jog in this park whose track has perimeter of 2 miles and i do 4-5 rounds its very heady and exhausting. I have even mapped it on www.sanoodi.com

The earth freshly impregnated by gentle New York shower was moist and warm with musty smell and dark look. Foliage was growing surreptitiously like a young girl growing under the warm desirous eyes of boys who watch her every once and often. And whenever I see the dark rainy landscape of park I realize what Frost might have though while writing those words, “The woods are lovely, dark, and deep” for I can see the bark of heavy old and big oak trees seeped to the core with water like a woman in love.

The entire landscape of park was dark and somber dotted with solemn light even at 8 O’clock in the night, falling from the sky wherever tree tops opened up. The green grass of other side color and the distant sound of water falling incessantly from the satellite pond in the concrete chamber nearby like a man under the spell of cannabis repeating same movements again and again without realizing, everything felt as if I am seeing something again after a long time and feeling happy about the déjà vu effect.

But this déjà vu is something that I feel every time it rains………

Window Vista

2007-05-27T12:41:00.000-04:00

media is message

2007-05-27T12:33:00.000-04:00

I am reading Manufacturing Consent by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky. Though I am reading them very late, I had heard about it and its proposed theory long back and believed in it too. Their analysis and proposition that media is programmed by people who are powerful (either by wealth or intellectually) is very rational and one does not find it difficult to believe in it.

I have been always worried about how the misinformation by these people even in very subtle and minute way might have deflected thinking of people in general in a great way if we have to believe in butterfly effect. How regrettable that a pristine linear progressive line of thinking get deflected by such carefully constructed misinformation and strays away from it course as long as it keeps on progressing …..going totally out of sync skewed forever? Or may be the discount factor I apply on the information I get itself is “flake” and I myself skew that line of thinking feeling that the original line would be incorrect and hence taking the skewed line as something rational and true while the original line of thinking was right?

I often think if the elaborate musing on Maya done in Bhagvadgita is just too true to be a mythological scripture? Or if I have to give a better postmodern explanation then what Marshal MacLuhan said about “media being massage” is correct? Or even the complex explanation by Jean Baudrillard abut Simulation and Simulacra is more fit to explain this all? While I find these authors very difficult to read, I loved the visually appealing metaphor given by the Wachowsky brothers in the movie Matrix very lucid. Baring the ubiquitous black phone to get back in the so called real world the whole concept Matrix is just too right to accept and believe in totality.

The only thing that gets simple in the world is physic (like water flowing down) and laws governing planets and universe in macro level. But same can not be said about biology, human and society which grown complex from simple ever since eons when they started their march.

We only have to have certain basic facts on human nature, biology, functioning of brain and nature which are exceedingly and exponentially complex, ever changing and unreliable to know the staggering amount of total probability available in the world. While the nature and functioning of brain are real, unbiased and truthful in itself, human being (who are very complex in themselves and create society which is even more complex) can feed the total social system with misinformation is though real, is not biased and false.

Why just about the whole system or the world? I am worried about the coffee mug with a design that does not exist. Just because I can not make it, I have to choose among the one designed by someone. I always feel why someone decided that only a few dozen designs are enough for people to choose? What about the number or design that does not exist? Why I do not have that? In same manner I feel why this information or some information or this argument or that argument. What about the third side?

Howard Bloom wrote in the book "You Are Being Lied To" that "Individual perception untainted by others' influence does not exist." He should have also considered others' misleading influences.

Am I coherent? Or even rightly worried?

2Gether aGain

2007-03-17T20:36:00.000-04:00

the train to banaras

2007-02-19T22:17:00.001-05:00

I was wide awake at three o-clock when the train stopped at Mirzapur, a small town station before Banaras. Sitting on a RAC seat (Reservation After Cancellation, where two people sit on one berth, normally on that one birth one person can sleep since all such trains travel overnight) with my uncle, who was half crouched in a vain attempt to sleep swaddled in a kambal. I was not in a much comfortable position either to sleep either because I was not having any thing substantial to cover me and save me from the incessant chilly air sneaking through the nooks and corner of the window and door of the badly designed and old sleeper class Indian Railway compartment. It was a dead winter night of late January and I had to board this Mahanagri Express from Victoria Terminus in Bombay to attend the cremation of my Grandmother at a very short notice. Needless to say that she was somebody for whom i can't bother about my own convenience and try to get a better mode of travel. Anyway the place i was traveling to was the one place where comforts of live and luxury is last thing on mind of those bohemian Banarasis. And what better way to go there but the ubiquitous Indian railway? where even in reserved second class so many people get crammed up without complaint, though all of them pay more than the price of valid ticket to get in. Its the idea of not worrying about ones own convenience that make valid ticket holders also to accommodate people who do not have valid ticket. For i have seen only a city dweller resent the idea if anyone request him to share his seat in train but a small towner and a villager will never never do that, he will always give the place. I travelled all across the country to to Environment Impact Assessment for one year and i saw this thing everywhere from south to east to north and west. Its amazing to see such resilience among people for each other.

And later on when i mused the i idea of Moksha, i came to understand the reason behind this acceptance of a fellow traveler. In Hinduism most people know that they are visiting this life in body or on this planet for short period of say 60-70 years and then they will move on to embrace the everlasting peach with the Brahma and that why they do not bother about the comforts of life, then what is for them an hours or a days journey? Nothing.

I was uneasy and cold, and had a very serious book as a companion on which I was not able to concentrate. I always felt that summer is a better season than monsoon or winter. For one is always busy saving himself from chill in winter and water and dampness in monsoon but in summer, one can bear heat with much ease without panting like a dog. There is other reason too. In a country like India if one looks from a poor man’s point of view, during winter and monsoon one has to spend money and resources to save himself from cold air and rain. While in summer one only has to shed whatever ragged cloth one is wearing to be comfortable.

I was occupied in my own mental rambling when somebody shouted at her. I turned and saw the most miserable sight. There was this old lady, scantily clad with just one layer of old faded sari on her frail bony body, with crumpled skin hanging from every corner and edge of her body and blisters in her hands and feet. She had melancholic look on her face as if she was perpetually perturbed by the severity of her fate but without any such shed, which might say that she was experiencing any hardship. This is because, I did not see her anxious or troubled in least degree by being shouted at in such extreme cold at 3 O’clock in the morning, carrying three huge (three by four feet) sacks of disposable eating plates patravlli; almost bigger than her own height, in crowded reserved compartment, probably without ticket. Watching her I felt as if I have been seeing her in such suffering for so long that I can see the whole history of creation of unfortunate people like her, their incompatibility with the society, there existence; not even measured on the smallest scale of the life in which we live but all the same dependent of their labor in same degree as we depend on nature to provide us resources.
I was intently watching her, pondering on her situation and ashamed of being part of the society which can allow such a condition to exist and force people like her live this kind of life. I was thinking what makes her go on living this life at her age? Is it because she is unaware of the alternate facets and comforts of modern life,?,…or does her life becomes irrelevant because of these facts…..? Is she living an inferior life just because she is being compared and is not taken subjectively? Or does she really feel this way about herself? She may not ponder about any other kind of life just because of the absence of experience of any other kind of life. And is she really missing something? Probably she is not being reminded directly of other kind of life by any one since the people with whom she deals are only one economic stratum above compared to her own life. And for them she is not a sight of the human misery but another one who is engaged in the business of struggle to make ends meet. What if she comes in contact with someone who is several layers above her in economic condition? Will then she feel something?

Somebody complaints that she is blocking the way to the bathroom, although many people were sleeping in the narrow ally near the toilet. The constable whose voice I heard shout at her, started abusing her since to him it was a matter of another case in the myriad incidents in a train where everyone is reduced to inconsequential object and event. He shouted at her poking those huge sacks with his baton, citing the amount of inconvenience she gave to the people in reserved compartment.

She took all this very calmly there was no reaction in her sad unmoving eyes and on the face, already covered with as many lines as the stilt root one sees on the old Banyan tree. She moved her bag around to one corner and stood again looking at the policeman and then to nothing in particular. I saw only few people noticing her and that too with the most nauseating and pathological expression on their faces. As if they were cursing her because, she being so miserable and coming in their path, was causing moral consternation in them and thus tempering the fine sheen of civility that causes people like her to exist. Her blank stare fixed nowhere in space, told me that she has been traveling like this all her life, in summer and monsoon too without complaining and she knew full well that she can conduct her business like this, only if she neglects everyone as everyone, and even god has neglected her.

Though traveling in India and seeing slums of Bombay I had seen many kind of deprivations I had not seen anything like this. I wondered if I would ever be comfortable eating on those patravlli plates when I go to my native place and attend any ceremony.

PS: is she nihilist? or odes she prove that nihilist are right? or still further am i looking at this whole situation from a nihilist's point of view?

for i am nihilist.

Random thoughts and letters....written long back

2007-01-18T19:11:00.000-05:00

Dulcinea mmm well the things I notice everyday are changing now that winter is here again with all its sublime glory but I still fail to get up early and enjoy it everyday. Since I take bath with the cold water irrespective of the season I wait for winter morning and brace up myself to plunge in the cold water shivering before even before I enter. It has become a sort of ritual to me entering the bathroom and trying to evade or delay the first bitter assault on my body. Though Dr. says that for some joy I loose lots of energy ‘cause body has to keep the temp. at 37 oC and water of 15-16 oC takes most of it.

I have never taken bath with hot water. I remember when I was child one day I was waiting for hot water and complained to dad and he said “don’t be sissy, why don’t you bathe with cold water like a man?” from that day onward I never took bath with hot water. My father himself never used to use hot water.

And now It’s a ceremony for me to stand under the shower as if to anoint myself by pure crystalline liquid. Though I wish that this water should have had more viscosity, then... it will move ever so slowly on the body suffusing me of its coldness and purity. I remember seeing milk being poured on Shivlinga in temples and I used to get mesmerize by the sight of white liquid shivering and lyrically covering black glistening rock. That’s what I want to feel while taking bath though its only for 10-15 minutes, in that moment standing naked under the shower I feel that this is what a baby must be feeling , floating in the amniotic fluid connected with the umbilical cord, getting all his supplies and listening to the thumping heart of his mother. But here I have no protection of that womb no divine cord to satisfy my earthly need, no tranquility of beating heart.

Standing still for few moments gives me great relaxation but at the cost of cold. May be that’s why I suffer perennially from cold and slightest amount of dust or the coldness gives me sneeze.

And right now it’s a sort of deja vu when I look out from balcony and see the fog winter is already here.

Last few days and every time when you are not there at evening I get restless as usual. I try to do something but fail miserably. I have found that whenever I plan something and don’t do that I am unable to do anything else at that time. And it gives off itself in the form of growing sense of anxiety. Then I start thinking what else to do and finding nothing of importance I use that time to go over various things I do. During such introspection I am able to detect the pattern of rut in all days. Even having change everyday is also becomes boring. I think Plato had said that “ All things which have opposites are generated from opposites” I also see that there is some or other sort of ‘pretense’ in few things we do. Though its terrifying to have no pretence about oneself, yet I feel that’s what gives us the psychological resource to question all the things we do, all the conventionality surrounding our lives? What do you say!!

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Write me back
Lately you have not written much to me or in the diary which is lying with me

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beside you and anything that happens around me....there are so many other things, which passes through my mind while doing totally remote things. I feel that the ratio of uncertainty in my life has decreased. It’s very much akin to the feeling of love where you see whole universe encompassed in one moment hence you live infinite stable life. But that kaleidoscope never stops churning newer images out of all the thoughts in word and forms that we have assembled in billions of neurons. In a fraction of seconds sometimes I see the images which have no relation to each other. Like I saw a picture of old Red Indian tribal chief with gun in hand with old rickety Mackintosh over his head in National Geography (of which I had made a charcoal sketch) and I imagine him as the old guide from the book “For whom the bells Toll” by Ernest Hemingway, because the description in the first chapter of the book was so evocative. I remember my uncle since he resembles in look and then the shots of my village in the photographs which I took last winter over there… somebody calling my name while in sleep I was persistently being bitten by mosquitoes ..may be my mother and it was my full mane “b h o l e n a t h” while she always used to call me only bhole….. resounding songs which I heard when I was very young and the scent of the body so closely drawn to me that I can see the fine wrinkles beneath the eyes ..rolling eyes in ecstasy …and my trembling heart at the edge of sexual precipice ..so eager to jump ..and still wanting to jump for thousands of time.

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“You are condemned to be free”
When Sartre said these words, world was ruled by the determinist idea. Where everybody thought that everything and every event in this world is predestined. That everything happens with a purpose and no one can change what is bound to happen. In short no one was free to do anything but follow some omnipotent force which designed and controlled everything.

Obviously it was the result of a collective mind, that was afraid to take the responsibility for the things happening in this world. It was the weakness in man that was reflected in this doctrine. After all who will like to blame himself for his failures? To save ourself of our inactivity and moral and other shortcomings we came out with the idea of fate. And with this one word we got all excuses we want.

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The glint, which sparks at the upper corner wall of the room or on a glass windowpane, is a teleporter of senses. It takes me to my school classroom where my immature but jovial mind bored to death by the incessant droning of be-spectacled teacher, tries to find a solace. And while squinting around I see the shadow of wavelike iron bars of the huge customary municipal building window moving slowly on the wall from on side to another, with the faint horn of the car from whose windshield the reflection that being formed. I still remember very clearly the corner 3rd floor room of the building. I can see the road going straight and on right side there were few shops and a big temple with old men flocked on it with dogs, goats, kids and icecreamwallahs and then that stinking fish and meat market whose gate was always strewn with rickety wet basket and pieces of dry wet prawns. After that one open patch and then settlement again. While on the left side there was community hall hosuing a nursery in morning and sewing class for woman in afternoon, then a detour going to the one of the oldest railway track and then Muslim slum adjoined by a bar a post office and kathiawadi tenements called teen (three) bungalow.

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Positive thinking has lots of bearing on the psychology of human being for they are the only one endowed with such faculty. Many times we tend to feel miserable for one reason or the other. And once in that mood we derive a kind of sadistic pleasure in holding ourselves responsible for things, which dose not emanates from us. We feel sorry for ourselves and feel that the pain thus derived or felt is something, which is not disposed to everybody and hence is special. We silently cry at the wretchedness of our being, and take it as an excuse for whatever we are lacking or whatever that is giving us pain.

Sometimes we simply fail to see that by not getting under pressure of that situation, and by simply taking lessens from it and moving ahead, will save us from lots of unnecessary emotional stress. We fail to remember that we had been in similar painful situation before, which passed, and we were again normal for long time before arrival of this new sadness. We ought to remember that there will be time when we will be happy again, when we will be having coffee just like any other day and reading newspaper and seeing silly kitsch serials on TV again and all this will be nothing but a faded memory in the vast landscape of our mind.

But I feel solace does come easily. For in the greatest difficulties of my life I clung to them fiercely believing that they will not remain with me. I will pass this testing time no matter even if I loose something precious from my life because, eventually, these are the part and parcel of life every one of us living on this planet. Another obscure reason was that even if that situation persist, it will become the standard for me and then I will get used to it and I will be needing even greater stress to make me stressful. And I have indeed lost so many things and I lulled in the memory of it for longer time then necessary but I lived through it.

The S P A C E beyOnd me....... and the emptyness within me

2007-01-16T21:20:00.000-05:00

I am not everything

I am not everything
For her
I am,
But a small fraction of
All her desires.

But when she feels that
certain things
Should come to her
Without asking
That is what I am to her

She is everything to me though;

‘Cause I am fathomless
And empty
But She can fill me
With tiny part of herself

I’m wide
And border less
But she can encompass me
Even if she just open her eyes.

Neurons Outside III

2006-12-10T03:20:00.000-05:00

I shot this pic lying on the ground beneath the pedestal of this replica of Thinker by Rodin in front of our Philosophy Dept. This one is named "El Pensure"

the other Rodin i like The kissers

Neurons Outside II

2006-12-10T03:18:00.000-05:00

Neurons outside I

2006-12-10T03:06:00.000-05:00

The Life Force: Cronicle of the sEEdEr

2006-12-10T02:50:00.000-05:00