synosure

Invocation

2011-06-14T09:26:00.005+05:30

i am a lie, a mirror, a blank
canvas at your hands, you make me
try and be, you or your wont
i change, for i know no better,
moulded, muddled by the hour, i lose.
i unconsciously fail your conscious
deed, kind and principle
none i own, yet i worship
i please, for there is no me
everything, everyone you are
what i am, what i am not

Freely Bound

2011-06-10T08:01:00.002+05:30

these are the lines
the lines you dont see but
i am drawn, strewn, bound.

these are the lines
they hold me together
guide my chaos, restrain my peace.

these are the lines
mad, mythical and mystical
humour, these lines define me.

these are the lines
the lines you dont see but
they liberate me, i break them free.

Change

2009-08-03T12:08:00.001+05:30

i hear something that changes another bit of my life.

Predictable Choice

2009-01-24T15:02:00.002+05:30

so here i was talking about random things in life when i went into a soliloquoy. the subject of my angst this time dealt with directions we "choose" to take in our lives.

like take the example of the cohort that graduated in the summer of 2008 to which i belong. a 150 fresh mbbs graduates came out into the real world. so it was yet another crossroads and time to make choices again. what gets me thinking is how many of us actually stop to think of what we are to do next. the obvious choice for many would be to move on to postgrad in a specialty and further training to be a specialist doctor. and there is nothing wrong with that. i would love to be one too. the problem arises with the way we think that we choose to do it.

i have often observed that we dont have to do too much to live life well. life has a way of taking care of you. all you have to do at your end is perform life's current task well enough. thats all and everything else is taken care of. i finish mbbs and the obvious questions arise and life has an answer. do a pg. there is not so much thinking involved in the choice, ofcourse the details are different.

when i say life, i mean what you have around you. you have a certain upbringing in a certain household with a certain way of life in a certain society with certain social, cultural and economic sensibilities. and if you choose to sit back and relax, then these have a way of being your cushion. they have conditioned your behaviour enough to make whatever is next obvious. just dont ask too many questions and everything will be laid out in front of you.

your life is the environment around you. it is the nature around you not your nature. it is what nurtured you, not the ideas you nurture. every idea you have, every trait you claim has litttle to do with you. it is a response you have conditioned to an external stimulus. and the beauty of our societal environments is that there are inherent feedback mechanisms to keep track and if necessary weed out the unwanted. and may be even recondition a response into a more suitable one. thats the purpose of your society. the thinking has been done for you. you have a role to play. just do what you have to well enough and everything will show up in front of you. its almost like life is offering you a step at a time what you need . you could be blind to where these steps lead and still you wont be lost. and if you were to deviate and sidestep, there are inherent protector mechanisms in this society that will try and bring you back to the mainstream that life has charted for you. if you persist, then you are marginalized, obscured or even ostracized. every once in a while there are few who can reach the destination through their own charted paths and they stand out. society explains them to you as extraordinary or freaks. its almost like they are pushed into being the cases falling outside 2 standard deviations of your normal gaussian curve. even maths is taught to teach you the oddity.

now when you do dare to sidestep, you are making a choice. now what governs this choice. the reason you chose to sidestep is so that you can take the reins into your own hands and lead life the way you want it to go. but then if you were to chart the new directions based on previous conditioning of the very same society you come from then how far are you really stepping out. all you know is what you have learnt, that is responses to those stimuli your environment has given you. the eyes can see only what the mind knows holds true here. the limits of your thought are more or less defined by the boundaries of the stream you are hoping to leave. then what do you do. do you even have a true idea of your own that can help? is any response your own as all the stimuli coming are that from an environment you are trying to abort and therefore detrimental to the search of your new direction?

society teaches you to dream of a destination. the final outcome of your efforts. yet it very successfully limits them temporally. therefore any average joe being led down his path sees satisfaction in stepping onto the next step. but he fails to realise that the next step will always be there. there is no stopping. whatever your effort, action, there will always be an outcome and you will move on. such a joe will never realise that it is never going to end. walking through the mall he is inspired to dress like an icon and purchase a particular brand. then a car, a house, watches, holidays and the list is endless. he runs after another everytime. does he ever stop and think about what it is about the next thing he desires that will make it all come to an end? i dont know. will he ever realise that such a scramble is perpetual unless he stops it. i dont know that either.

some say it is not the destination but the journey that is important. but society teaches you the contrary. you belong to a certain social class and therefore there shall be certain endpoints that you shall aim to achieve. anything else is crushed.

we all are eventually aiming for the same thing. yet how many of us realise that we are all conditioned beyond imagination such that we limit our own choices.

choice is an illusion. they let you pick a flavour when all you know and see is chocolate.

Yes We Can

2008-11-16T09:08:00.001+05:30

Nov 8th , 2008

Watching Obama say these words gave me goose bumps. For the first time after a long time I actually cared about America and its people. I don’t know when I forgot them. Must have been sometime through those eight forgettable years that have just gone by.

The earliest memory of America, though I have never been there, was the fateful night when I sat huddled in front of a TV set with a bunch of other Indian kids while the grownups watched from over their couches and dinner plates. The Iraqis on the streets couldn’t do enough to deter a resilient Indian soiree. Bush Sr was talking about the goings-on in the middle-east, the invasion of Kuwait. I still remember his wrinkled, meditative words heavily pouring out. War it was.

I am a child of the Gulf War. Americans were our heroes. Play and chatter was abundant with the imagery of good-evil transferred to the America-Iraq scenario. America was the good guy. That was 1990.

Operation Desert Storm. Bosnia. Somalia. Kosovo. Operation Desert Fox. The ten years that followed were a series of conflicts relayed in a carefully reconstructed manner always readily identifying the bad guy. Of course we knew who the good guys were. Didn’t we? Growing up to these events brought on some questions. Yet one never doubted the intention. America meant no harm. They fought for the people, their rights and their good. Well there were other ways of doing it but no other would step up to the task so readily. That was America doing what it did best, playing the good guy.

Then came the new millennium and with it brought controversy, doubt and eventually, decay. Controversy over the how the man got into the office, doubt over his capability and judgment, and finally the decay of the American spirit and also the good will that America had fostered in minds like mine. George Walker Bush had done everything humanly possible to open the wrong doors, rub people the wrong way, all the while carrying a straight face of a man driven by vision and purpose.

9/11 forever changed the world we lived in. But Afghanistan and later Iraq were hasty responses to a blow on the very face of the American spirit. The need of the hour was determination, resilience and thoughtful intervention. What has come to be does not even qualify debate. Could it have been different? May be. Should it have been so bad? Definitely not. Four years ago, for reasons unknown, at least to many outside America, Bush was re-elected to the highest office in the most powerful country in the world. The second term of W is something I can’t wait to forget, and I am not alone. Bad policy is very different from ignorance. Persistent and worsening ignorance can only be judged as idiocy. God bless America became God save America.

As with all things, the Bush years have come to pass. Every American who voted Obama on the ballot represented the hopes of the entire world. People from every corner who directly or indirectly were beneficiaries or victims, as times have it, of American policy of recent years held their breath as America went to the polls. The world was glued to its TVs, radios and computers awaiting the outcomes of their suffering, the fruit of the hopes they had invested in the common citizen of the USA. And they weren’t let down.

The words of change the new president of America had on the eve of his victory were not for his people alone but for people world over. The man on stage in front of America today was not just a leader America voted for, he was chosen by all of us around the world who wanted to see the guiding light in new hands. Watching intently, I couldn’t help but smile to myself when I saw him speak with conviction and promise of restoring America to its lost glory.

Obama is not just a man or a leader or a president. He is an idea. An image of the power and will of the people, invested in one man. America has once again beat the odds and managed to make that leap of faith. Less than 50 years after Martin Luther King, they have elected as president a young, black man who has the tenacity to challenge, the will to persevere and courage to transform. He represents an opportunity for America to try something new, to show the world a new direction and to make possible tolerant and peaceful coexistence. It is a chance to abandon a rampant ruthless barbarism, both fundamental and state-sponsored, that is scarring the lives of millions of people and bring back an era of dialogue and non-violence. A man who does not carry the weight of years of electoral politics, who is not hardened by the unforgiving corridors of Washington and entrenched in the interests of the high and the mighty brings with him a sense of honesty to the table. This alone will give Obama what few other presidents have enjoyed, the respect and adulation of the peoples of the world and above all a chance, to break ice and foster brotherhood.

Economy. Trade. Healthcare. Foreign Policy. World Peace. Obama’s mandate, rather the legacy he stands to inherit, is unenviable to say the least. Yet even the longest journeys start with a small step. And with Obama, America has taken a giant leap. Four years on, I look forward to remembering these times as a period of great change when I stood witness as history unfolded and a new paradigm shift came to be in the way the people of America, the people of the world lived.

Mr. Barrack Hussein Obama, Yes we can.

Her Quest to End

2008-11-16T09:05:00.000+05:30

She walks on, buried

By her years, the cold bites her heart

Hunched against the howl, of fading

Winds, pain weakened, her wrinkles carry

The weight of frailty, her years have rolled

On like the seasons, as she prepares

To brave the cruelty of another final winter.

Some fly, yet some wither, the fruit

Like the leaves, and the turning heavens

Grey, she has with her memories

Of the lost, hers fallen and theirs taken

By the world, with its times, have come

Clinking needles, the lonely chatter

Her yarns share her destiny.

Blessed young angels run amuck

In the warm summer sun, the crisp

Laundry, pie on her window sill, and

Her womb, for it bears more fruit, than

One, kind to her finds her, joy, not knows

No sorrows. This is to her, womanhood

A worship, for the labors.

It is a lovely morning, spring

Has found its way to the skies, to her life.

A chuckle, a subtle touch, sends the hearts

Fluttering into the chirp, the laughter of the children

To be, of infinite hope and dream. It is

In the song and dance, in the clutter of chairs,

To the bustle of kin, she has come to be, one.

As the apples redden, the cherries

Ripe, she grows, a cherubic smile

Flowing locks, in the darkest night

Dreams of moments to be, her luscious

Senses, her graceful splendor nurture

Swaying fields, her maiden youth.

She skips, falls, scrapes her knee

A bold girl she, can’t stop the tears

As she runs to her mother, suppressing

That quaint wail that escapes her pain.

In those tender arms that raised her

She rests, salt drying on her upper lip.

From dust to womb, a soul

She journeys, to another body

Endlessly yearning, to dwell in a moment of

Salvation, for eternity.

Tearless Burden of Misery

2008-10-17T08:37:00.002+05:30

i havent had the courage to cry
i put on a brave face and walk on
brush off every hurt, and march
ahead with a conviction, convinced
with my own lies.

i awake every second with a fear of caving in
of falling prey to the frailty that i am
live every minute concealing to myself the pits
the holes, my inadequacy.
i am incomplete, and that which makes me whole
scares me, for i fear the unknown

i am afraid to be free, happy
to not be bound is unimaginable
the world gives me none?
a curse of good fortune.
i need misery, even of my own making.

Disillusioned

2008-02-19T23:37:00.000+05:30

its like crack. its what keeps me going when the going gets tough. my addiction to choice and my illusion of free will. i am bound by the illusion to choose. i know that irrespective of choices i make events that unfold will shape the outcome. more things out of my control will shape the future of my choice than i as the chooser. also the mere role of chooser is a farce as the choice has already been made. if you think you can freely choose whatever you want, think again. if you are in a shop and want to buy pants, most of the choosing has already been done in the form of the manufacturer who makes only certain designs and limited numbers of each and the designers who make the design for you, and the retail outlet where you reach for the price tag and decide your budget which is of a limited range courtesy your employer, your cultural affliction which rules what you wear. and despite all of these conditions which have already reduced your scope to null, you jumped around in the joy of having purchased the pants of your choice.

we celebrate the freedom of choice, when in reality the choices have been made. at every turn the illusion presents us with a diversion. its like multiple reflections of the same object. and that is enough to sustain our interest in this otherwise boring and morbid run of events. the choices create controversy and the choice an identity.

we are nothing but mere puppets. hapless ants that crawl on a master board with predefined route maps. whether we turn right, left or keep going straight has already been decided. yet we jump in joy at the illusion of a y road ahead which is not a y after all because somewhere ahead both arms meet. what are we but fools.

Happy Days?

2007-10-03T21:28:00.000+05:30

first thing i am not stupid. i dont live in a fantasy and i am grounded in here and now. with that stated lets get on with it.

i just got back from a movie that i saw. it was happy days by shekhar kammula. a decent filmmaker, he always portrays very life like characters. none of the usual pomp and show of the bigger megastars of tollywood. and in course of the movie which revolves around the college life of a bunch of youngsters, there was something there that struck a chord within me.

funny thing is that i always knew college was not just about fun. but more importantly fun was a big part of it. yet it sometimes seems that tiny piece of wisdom was lost on me several crucial times.

i often feel that my mind was not made for my head. what? wll it is just that i feel that my mind grew faster than my head and bigger than it eventually. and that some portions were on steroids. in an age when most kids are lost making choices and finding ground on what is right or wrong, i was already well versed on such finer nuances and obssessed on making use of such a knowledge. in the process sometimes i stole from my life the very important property of chance, risk and mistake. the fewer i made the more i regretted not making them. and the ones i did make always seemed to loom larger than they actually were. left in doubt, i completely engaged in the quest of never having to make a wrong call. humility, cowardice, diplomacy and many such things saved moments where i would have caught myself on the wrong foot.

the very growth of mind and mental prowess started stifling the very essence of my being, creativity. critique became my hobby, and conformity an unconcious obsession.

what i say is different from what i do which is different from what i believe.

i want my innocence back. i dont want to know already what is right or wrong, the consequences of actions, risk of chance and the likes. questions such as these and thir answers have caged my being in an invisible bind. the very idea of reverting back to ignorance, carelessness and carefressness when i already am done debating all corners would again be a self-deafeating effort.

wisdom is the property of one who has earned it, a boon for one in search of it
and a burden to one who does not realise it.

all i can do is pray that soon the burden of knowledge will become the boon of wisdom and free me from the clutches of my own prison.

i am a slave of my own thought, my ambivalence, my hypocrisy.

my mind is caged and i want to be free.

Questions

2007-09-22T00:34:00.000+05:30

life is a funny game. i have made it all yet i suffer from it. there is nothing in this world which is not my own creation. the pleasure, the pain, the anger, the beauty, the illness, everything including the very perception of the things themselves are an elaborate creation of mine. i permeate everything. thus i suffer from the stimulus. for had it not been so, there would be no cause and effect. that cause and effect are inseparable is known. so every single day everything from the coffee mug to the lady next door are all a part of my intricate creation. creation i say because, since i permeate everything there ought not to be any differentiation of any object whatsoever. thus no attachment, no loss, no pain, no profit, no happiness. yet i feel all of these. so what i have in effect learnt to do in this human life is create an intricate design for everything. so detailed that it becomes impossible for me the creator to identify the sameness. its only until i scratch this upper that i will see the constitutive similarity of all my existence and the search for an end ceases.

the illusion of this difference i create is so endearing that it is painful to consider otherwise. that senses, there stimuli and the responses are all the same. i often am engulfed and overwhelmed by my own creation. a great example of how my invention gets the better of me would be to examine pain. pain is something i felt is essentially what makes this illusion almost believable. it is because of this phenomenon that my determination to undermine the creation and question its origins arises. pain along with other negative emotions threatens the senses and their well being. pain destabilises the creation. yet it on its own is so overwhelming that the opportunity to see through the creation remains hidden. for example pain of loss takes away from me the pleasure associated with the company of a 'loved' one, though this person may be a part of my very own being. now the person is my own creation and so is the attachment. the pain of separation or loss is my own too. and all this a part of my illusion. but this pain serves to strengthen the veracity of the sense of well being and stability provided by the illusion. so all energies are spent to revert back to the calm serene picture than towards understanding the illusory nature of this pain and the reinforcement effect it has on the need for the illusion.

now once the existence of this illusion has been acknowledged then arises a question.

what is the need for illusion?
why do i have to awaken, why do i have to eat, sleep or do any of the other things i do?
why do i have create a complete universe around me so intricate to engross me for a life time when all this is an illusion created by me?

it is often the most troublesome thing to do. to ask a question.

yet i should never cease to do so.

I Will Rise

2007-08-17T02:52:00.000+05:30

i have given my all
yet i never felt this void
that comes and swallows
like death over the forsaken
and deprives me of my dignity

i have lost
lost to you and and to myself
this fight to be one
yet to be not together

the desire became the want
and then you became the need

yet i will live without you
without your shadow by my side
in spirit i will last forever in a union
that was to be unborn

leave me to my peril
and let me rise from the ashes
to serve my own and myself
the remains of the soul left from the lost
this wound shall heal the pain shall remain

it is but my nature to ask
so i will till i find the true undoing
for the painful riddle of this attachment
i will make my need my want
then my desire and i will have learnt
to live without pain of desire
want you i still may
need you i will not
you will see the new the old
and then you will see me

it will unfold for your eyes
this veritable untruth

Give A Shit?

2007-08-15T02:26:00.000+05:30

i was talking to a friend today and in due course of the conversation i was making a forceful case for my belief in universal health care and the failure of successive american governments to apply a workable solution to the medicare issues there. this is do every single time with the same conviction that every human has the right to health. and thus follows what better a case to examine than the most powerful and richest democracy in the world. at some point my friend probably lost patience and broke the silence and my soliloquy to say something that rather puzzled me. you know that everyone has one or two of those things that they strongly believe in and feel the need to criticise or defend, but you just seem to have a problem with evey single thing in the universe.

well may be i do. i do agree that for sometime now i have had time aplenty to while away doing nothing but entertaining a lot ideas, some interesting and others plain trash. and also i do realise that maybe i have made it a fashion to just go down defending a standpoint when afterwhile it would probably be more mature to learn rather than be stubborn. somethings i definitely need to work on.

but what worries is the fact that more and more people around me seem to be more absorbed with their own petty existence. i say petty not because they are but because of what becomes of them. i feel that in today's world more time is spent in the pursuit of one's own guarded welfare
that even a mere thought toward the greater implications of our actions are considered a waste
of time. i may be wrong assuming this but it is an observation which is appearing with an increasing frequency.

i am stickler. for a lot of things at that. and i do like to entertain thoughts on matters well beyind my control becuase i believe thats what leads to discussion and probably change. i am often accused of several things, increasingly favourite among which is the habit i have formed of trying to constantly highlight the need for all of us, specially my peer group and the generations that follow, to start applying some kind of a reality check on our goals and ambitions.

reality check? well simply that we all want riches yet how many of us are willing to be responsibly rich. i support that there is nothing wrong in rightfully earning one's fortune and then even rightfully spending it. but often the lines between comfort, luxury and stupidity are becoming thinner. it is now hard discern what is a need, want, desire and whim. the strata of needs and desires have been long surpassed. these are the times of the whimsical buffoons. golf carts to ride around your house, plasma tvs in every room, multiple exotic cars, private jets etc. once the domain of the capitalist leech, these are now the aspirations of the broader many.

simple things amount to a bigger change. if only each one of us could ask of ourselves that in this rat race to the fancy desired life, can we do something within reach to better those less fortunate around as well.

i am compelled to rethink what i choose. because in its own way small or big, my luxury of choice can potentially do some greater good.

i dream. i desire. for me. for us.

Yes I'm Brahmin

2007-08-08T12:51:00.000+05:30

stifling hot. deafening sounds of the road. a couple of feet away is the mahaveer jain clinic where i sit. wedenesday op. seems almost like a geriatrics department. 17 cases cleared. next.

female, 70, joint pains and backache. knee pains had worsened since the last visit.
i examine to see any possible signs of tenderness, effusion or injury around the knee. negative.

rx tab diclofenac, tab rantac, tab bc, tab calcium. the routine.

you are going to be fine amma, i say. take the tablets everyday and come back if the pains arent relieved.

with folded hands, thank you doctorgaru. and she hesistates to leave. turns to me.

you touched my leg, are you brahmin?

Recent Events

2007-02-24T03:13:00.000+05:30

a pictorial of the recent events around here.

bowling. faking it.

sports day. i won zilch.

whatever.

yama for the college day.

my band. bad sam. mickey in green

the forgotten snazz in jazz. the bowtie boys. backstage.

Reflections

2007-02-24T01:26:00.000+05:30

there is a lot going on right now. in my life. in the lives of those i know. in the world. it just surprises me how much things have changed over the past couple of years. i am sitting now in final year and i cant help but gawk at the speed of time. i am stickler for the past. i am an advocate of change yet i am the great resistance to it. to understand that something is absolutely essential and yet oppose it is quite a common oddity. anyway as it seems my times spent here have shaped me in several ways. my life's being spent desiring something and yet getting something else. or maybe it is just my nature.

recently i was watching an episode of scrubs and it amazed the qualities i share with jd, turk and perry. all three guys each reflect certain aspects of my life. cheesy as it is, i do understand the drawbacks of comparing my life with a sitcom. i wonder if anyone ever would take it seriously enough. but it is undeniable that these charaters are often a refection of what we are.

i was reading a friends blog today. it was very impressive. i realised that she had a couple of readers who were quite regular and every post had comments to it. i found myself wondering if i had the capacity to write like that.

another instance was when i read a conversation between two of my
friends one of whom was going to london over the summer. yet again i relapsed into selfdoubt. i am quite a narcissist which may be quite apparent by the amount of text i use to understand myself. but for someone like me it has become a habit to try and understand myself than to actually make headway in some other sphere of thought. it is something i have to work on. maybe its time to realise that there are better things to do right now than try and understand oneself all the time.

anyway on other issues now. life is rockily smooth. i am headed for the toughest exams so far and i have to work doubly hard to sail through successfully. personal was is and will always be tumultous. atleast not open to discussion now. i need to go out there on a holiday soon.

Stolen Thunder : Trust Blunder

2007-02-24T01:10:00.001+05:30

hah. the rhyme. the past couple of days have been quite a rocking experience for me. joy and disappointment have come together and have taken me for a ride again. quite recently the hullabaloo over a certain academic prize doled out to the scorer of the highest marks in the university examinations had come to an end. well the story goes this way. back in june last year, i found out that i had scored the highest marks in social and preventive medicine in my university exams along with another girl in the batch. according to the prevalent tradition, an endowment award is given out each year on this achievement. i was not too familiar with this because for various reasons i had not attended the last two college day celebrations, the occasion for such an award. well anyway as luck would have it the clerk concerned with the job of creating lists of results messed up and left me forty marks short of my original score. so on that day, the award was presented only to the girl much to the bewilderment of my friends. and to be honest i was a little disheartened myself. unaware of such a clerical error i set out to find the reasons for such a decision. and in the process discovered the mess and got down to the process of setting things right. a week later i had the certificate minus the endowment money handed to me by an attendant at the principal’s office. it is shameful. not only did they commit a mistake, they also hadn’t had the decency to set the records straight. the principal was oblivious to the certificate he signed. well anyway a lot of things don’t work the way we want them to. so here i was half let down yet ecstatic because the people i cared to tell would actually bother to appreciate the achievement. or so i thought. i meant for it to be a surprise. and when i came out with the story of how i went about the whole week trying to set things straight, it dawned on me that something unintended had happened. my travails were to get the award to hand so i can officially declare myself a winner to all those who mattered. yet it turned out to be a trust issue. some said i didn’t trust them enough to have let them known earlier. much explanation later, with only a fraction of the enthusiasm i realised that much more and different was expected of me than i thought. it was a moment of glory gone awry. the award had been overshadowed. yet it did not matter because i value trust. and to me the first priority was to set that right. well anybody can guess how successful i might have been at doing that. it was of no use. a futile attempt.

trust i seek and i find in you - metallica

each of us learn the game of trust by trial and error. i may have made more errors in the process so i deal with trust very carefully. i try and make sure that the trust placed in me is well served and at times i plainly refuse to be entrusted. likewise, most people would have their own way of showing trust. for some it is trivial matters while for others more important ones substantiate their trust in another. if this was better understood then maybe i wouldn’t have faced the situation i found myself in.

trust is a wonderful thing.

I broke up with my computer#@$%

2007-02-23T03:14:00.000+05:30

whats funny is that these days anywhere you go the computer is always right. i know i once used to laugh at those old timers who would complain about computers and how they couldnt stand the button pushing. i also would defend computers with almost religious fanaticism and pride. yet these little or not so little number crunching, graphics spewing excuses for technology have done more than enough to let me down. they have devoured my patience, robbed me of my dignity and caused a good amount of material harm. all while just sitting innocously on a crowded desk.

my angst is fuelled by the recent spate of mishaps wherein my former best friend(the computer) would delete some important piece of information putting me at the mercy of whoever cares. well for example it was my internet account, with the ignorant bastard from sify(isp) telling me that they would not entertain my claims as it conflicted with those of his computer. a couple of more heated exchanges and i had the honour of a call centre employee tell me that the computer was always right and disconnect the call. i mean i got dissed by a cc employee.

adding to the many more such misfortunes, i am now caught with facebook. my account was nonexistent, overnight. vaporised! the facebook helpdesk had only one thing to give me, a detailed guide to re-registering with them. sweet!

there is a conspiracy. someone's watching.

Times Gone By

2006-12-26T01:29:00.000+05:30

time seems to have a greater significance in my life than i ever imagined. i realise that everything i had ever done is gone and that much of what i wanted to do still remains to be done. life is rolling past me. it seems that i have been left in a void.

i have a very old trouble in life but something i have discovered only recently. i dont know. those three words are on the verge of ruining my life. i have found that this was the most convenient answer i was giving to all questions sometimes even without thought.

this is my status. i am in the ninth semester of medical college with practically four months left to train and venture into the lions mouth, the final year exams. well some part of me says they may be slightly overrated but a greater portion agrees with popular opinion that this might be the toughest of periods i would be enduring in these five years.

i am listening to atif aslam's yakeen. the opening lines take their toll.

i have often had these subconscious images stuck in my head. i can never really identify them, but certain objects, images, words, circumstances bring them out. they are so strong that the emotion is often overwhelming.

reading the book 1984 by george orwell. the man was sheer genius or more appropriately a prophet. a modern day prophet, to have sat back so many decades ago and to have identified this path of decadence that we seem to have so boldly endeared. we are not yet there. but the time is not far away when total downfall will be the only recognizable pattern left to human existence. and that this existence shall be plagued by ignorant grim futures is not an impossible idea. anything contrary would actually be surprising.

...

2006-12-04T02:22:00.000+05:30

they are all that i have
all that i can give to you

they can inspire you
change your life

give you love and sorrow
steal from you your pain

show new worlds that you never knew
where moments last forever
yet, ages gone by in a wink

they are my weapons, my strength
they are my refuge

i am nothing
i have nothing
yet, these are my precious gifts.

words.

Confused

2006-11-18T12:14:00.000+05:30

it is sad. really sad. i am dazed, confused, and what not and i have cant tell anyone. the only person i could i am losing now. my mind can't take this anymore.

how am i supposed to be able to know aht to do? i am not god and god surely isnt giving me any huge signals. the choice being left to me is the biggest problem. i hate making choices. it is the most useless thing to do. an absolute waste of time. but then again it cannot be done without.

human relationships are so fragile. even more than this very perishable three and a half cubits. i am lost. i have lost. yet it is not my loss that worries me. i will live.

i cannot make choices for others. and my choices are to be respected and similarly so are theirs.

am i too practical for this world? lots of people have told me live for the moment. may be i spend too much time thinking that the actual needf for action just passes me by.

i am becoming irrelevant without ever having been relevant. obscurity is haunting me. the only thing i will be soon is an indecisive wreck.

my fault is i have a deep sense of conformism. though i display liberal views subconciously somewhere a fixed picture haunts me.

i dont want to speculate. especially on something so fragile as life. who where and what i am is so relative. more so valid in the structure of our societies. whether or not i care to abide by the rules, they will haunt me. maybe there are some elements in my upbringing that make me dependent on such useless things as rules.
may be i lack that individuality.

i feel useless. my life is tied up between what i want, what i dont, what i may want, what i may dont and what they want for me. it is the last three that bother me.

also the burden of approval from them of my actions. what use is that? yet can i renounce it? can i denounce it?

curse all.

Thoughts

2006-10-31T03:09:00.000+05:30

is this all a game? or is it that my perception of the nature of this worldy life is so volatile that i cannot ground myself to the much touted realities of life. to deal with the burden of understanding this complex interplay of life's institutions is a challenge beyond comparison.

to each his madness. to me my thoughts. thoughts are the intangible treasure which shape and direct the action sought. but often they can be persistently misleading and baseless. this leads to an intensely anxious indecisive state at the crux of the moment when action is the need. sometimes these plaguing thoughts are the sole reason for lack of spontaneity. the thinking mind has become the bane of my existence.

time lost, cause lost, meaning lost.

envy do i those who can rest their minds in peace.
envy do i those quick in choice.
envy do i those who live here and now.

my inaction is of my own making.

i am the master of my choice yet a slave to its luxury.

i seek freedom from this bondage. if knowledge was to wash away the dark abyss of ignorance, it can also shroud the active mind into indecision. i seek the freedom from having to condone my thoughts and life to tailor the needs sought by others.

from a man of thought to a man of action.

Crossroads

2006-10-31T02:09:00.000+05:30

pragmatism. practicability. foresight. probability. these are plain speculative tendencies of human behaviour. if life were a stock exchange then my life index is heading south and the bear is pulling me down with it. or may be the bull wasnt ever really there. i have come to lead my life on highly uncertain and empirical methods of speculation. once i begin to base my choices on these speculative tendencies, risks come into the equation. how now will you ascertain the risks for a still incomplete structure. i know not what i hold now and in the near future so it automatically makes it inconvenient for me to bear the responsibility of making predictions regarding my life let alone those of others.

as in a business, if i were to analyze my resources, my strengths, i have little practical knowledge of what they are worth in the real market place. i have no idea what my value is, no idea of the structure or course of action, the time factor, miniscule knowledge of the risks involved, and above all i am unsure of the result and its magnitude. thus i realise it was a fallible idea to start an enterprise, let alone put out on the market for investors. then we have the angel investors. i have had mine. the eventual venture capitalist who is willing to see you through the risks. but now conditions have it that after a failing idea and immense effort you are still the startup that sank.

this essentially can be extrapolated to a few ventures in my life, never yet in the realm of business. i have learnt as every entrepreneur the pitfalls and the agony of seeing an idea fail. yet it leaves me unfazed. i am not sure when the next vc will fund the next fledgling, but i am better prepared. it will certainly face similar uncertainties and may even fail but yet again i am willing to accept it.

Ignorance

2006-10-30T01:14:00.000+05:30

the man, a little more than a slave
of senses, powers, desires to crave

the thought, a useless act
defeats not the fool, but the fact

the question, not yours to ask
for the knowing man, a tiresome task

the meaning, forever a distant dream
forever lost in the elusive gleam

the end, a timeless fruitless search
the eager quest to be left in lurch

JK

2006-09-03T23:36:00.000+05:30

"Observation without evaluation is the highest form of intelligence."

something there got me thinking. there is nature in me which questions the nature around me. why? i find myself asking all to often. the anatomy of this inquiry probably is as deep as evolution of the human mind, if such a thing were to be agreed to exist, and sometimes is the principle on which all forms of thought is based. inquiry is the most consistent offering of the human race. irrespective of the environment you are in, it is a question you ask sooner or later.

it does sometimes help me to wonder where all this came from. and the beauty is that the mere act of wondering leads to inquiry. all seeds of thought can be traced to an act of inquisition. but since only a diamond cuts a diamond, it is inevitable for me to ask a few inquisitons.

it is very frequently that anyone asks the question where did all this come from and very similarly i do too. the unique qualities of the sorrounding, the self, the very act of observation are amazing.

uninitiated, it is helpful to start on a hypothesis to examine the entire premise. let us assume that there is one big truth. this truth that everyone seems to be running after shall be the explanation for everything. a grand unified theory of the existent and the non-existent, of all that be. then this truth should also offer the reason to why i am here writing this, whats making this computer the way it is, why if anyone is actually reading this.

now when i assume the possibility of such a truth, it leads me to wonder what follows knowing that truth. it sure can be agreed that such knowledge would obviate existential values like place, time or event. the future has no meaning nor does the past. there is no present. the material and immaterial are all derivatives of this truth. it would constitute everything.

now if such a truth were to exist. then my existence, the computer, some guy having sex in brazil and the thoughts in my head are all the same thing. this means we are all the same.

is there a possibility of knowing such a truth?

let us consider this example. a child asks his father why a balloon rises into the sky? the father replies that the balloon is lighter than air. why is the balloon lighter than air? it contains, say helium, which is a lighter gas and that which is lighter rises above the heavier. to a child this is incomprehensible unless he receives some more explanation regarding the nature of matter, density so on and so forth. all of a sudden with a few hours of some formal lecturing, the incomprehensible explanation is very much understood.

now to understand from the above example, only truth is the observation, the answers are relative. they are relative to the fathers knowledge, the knowledge of science as we know it. every man has observed and tried to reason, where the observation is an independent act while the reason is built on deductions. 5-2 = 3. a deduction can be made from only something that is known. how can 2 be removed if you do not where to remove it from. similarly, how can any deduction be true if the very truth is unknown. in making so called informed deductions, we base ourselves already on what we know and then reason out the most plausible theory to explain it. we did not know at the outset, we do not know when we theorize and finally we lead ourselves into an answer based on ignorance to be the explanantion. in science we create empirical situations to study and then support our explanations. in this whole process of understanding firstly what has remained true is the observation. secondly, all thought, understanding and deduction was based on preexistent knowledge.

you and i as we know it, have always been fed into our minds. in lighter matters it is often agreed that a fresh perspective is the key to solving a problem. but where is the problem and who has a fresh perspective? each one of us from the moment of ourbirth have been illusioned, conditioned, fed, groomed, taught all that is not ours. for example, a baby boy on an isolated island grows to play with a stone and learns that when he drops it it falls to the ground. observation. now what is to be seen would be whether the answer he finds to his problem is the theory of gravity.

how do you expect to find this truth unknown to you, anchoring yourself on a world of knowledge and experience of reality all of which are meaningless with your taught and conditioned perceptions. all these entrapments are the creation, reason and result of everyone around you, before you.

we all, each one of us, are trapped. we are trapped in a world where each discovery into ourselves is preconditioned by external influence. this conditioning will forever keep you in the dark about the underlying truth.

what if all was rejected in this search for true perception. you will have to unlearn what you know, what you think, what you are. from here to ignorance is a difficult jouney. it could be the key and yet it could be another beginning of falsehoods based on prior knowledge, experience.

what if one were to stop asking thinking reasoning?

i know none of this is my own. it is dangerously revealing. these thoughts are not my own nor are these words, nothing around me is my own. if there were such a truth we would all be the same. words, thoughts, lives, you and me. before will be after. there is nothing but the truth.

then if everything is the truth then there is no truth. the lie will be truth, the truth the lie. the assumption itself becomes the truth. our ignorance, deductions, our reasons will be truth. there will be no truth left to discover.

Illusioned

2006-09-02T01:50:00.000+05:30

around and round, sense misleads you
the decadent confusion of this magic
its only chaos because you dont understand it
its random when your mind is closed
if you see what your eyes did
your illusion pales
to reveal what lies beneath
the secret reason of the beauty
the peace of truth

Life

2006-03-18T02:18:00.000+05:30

another day.
another time.
that’s where i live.
never here.

lost in dreams.
starry eyed.
lazy blinks.
gaze at the sun.
sit by the river.
breathe.

walk like there’s no tomorrow.
walk in the moonlight.
savour a delicacy.
sip golden wine.
dig my fingers into the earth.

roll in the hay.
sail a boat.
talk to the wind.
beat the tide.
shoot the moon.

feed a poor man.
play with a child.
learn to play the violin.
appreciate art.
smile.

desire nothing.
envy none.
love my enemy.
have no fear.
know the truth.
be at peace.

Dried Exithole

2006-02-05T02:06:00.000+05:30

i arrested and rested.
i churned and turned
still came no water like a lover spurned.
it gurgled and gargled
at me it spat
leaving me to dry over the shit i sat.

For What It Is Worth : Love

2006-01-27T00:48:00.000+05:30

most of us at some point or the other in our lives are initiated into the world of love. for most it is the fluctuant adolesence that brings the spring of this new found emotion. others are a little late. but nonetheless it is assured that all of us know that we have been or will be there.

love, it should be agreed, is the one of the most overrated, overused, least understood words of our time. for different people it elicits diverse emotions. as diverse are the varieties that are out there for you to get. all you need to do is ask. there are the traditional varieties like motherly and fatherly loves, the sisterly and brotherly loves, and there are also in the same family, products of more exotic kinds like the sexual love, platonic love and spiritual love. if only it could be put in a box, walmart would have made a killing. $50 a kilo. well the way the world is headed, the days aren't too far away when people will bid to buy love on ebay. and some of us cant wait for that!!

but what is this word that we throw around? is it a sin to use it in vain (alongside the lord's name)? should there be a code for its usage? is it guaranteed by law? foolish as it may seem, this thing(love)can cause more agony than george w.'s union address and more joy than cold water in the sahara. listed with the merriam-webster are more than 24 entries for love and they range from the motherly mushy definitions to the more exciting amorous sexual episodes. but what i found most apt was " love : 8. a score of zero (as in tennis) ". those four words captivate the beauty of it all with a simplicity only god and the guy who invented tennis could think of. love as a score of zero symbolises the state of nullification of the intellect, the senses, the wisdom and not the least the freedom of the individual spirit. a little harsh? well, bluntly put people in love make stupid decisions(and you thought it was only in the movies). we can lie but cant deny the truth. we have all been there and those that have not as yet will so be there. and as for the senses, the diktat of love is such that for that rosy period of your life when you think you are in love, nothing can get better. yeah right! and finally all my fellow beings who have entered the bond of monogamous commitment to a fellow being will know that the freedom lost, though also in the sexual plane (homo erectus zindabad!), is more importantly of the emotional, private, social, professional and rarely spiritual kinds.

well all this said, is love a bad thing? let me characterise love for you. simply put, love is a syndrome not a single entity. it encompasses several mental and physical states which together lead to the more subjective notion. undeniably, it is first a physical attraction to a fellow being, therefore placing first the need for physical compatibility. the next step is that of personal compatibilty, the nuances of which have been elaborated time and again since the birth of society and its order. these include the usual social, professional, familial and the likes. these satisified does not yet constitute love. there has to be an essential commitment, no matter how brief, and an out-of-this-world feeling to go with it. tada! you are in love.

is it worth the trouble? well let me tell you, ideas like falling in love or that love just happens are far fetched. love or any such phenomenon is all about subconscious calculations based on comparisons of the like with like and a measurement of the unlike and how much of it one is willing to consider. this, for example, simply explains the success of arranged marriages. the couple have a wide bandwidth within which they are willing to accomodate the differences. this however is not universal. all rules have exceptions. other type of marriages, the love marriages, work a lot of the times too, provided that the participants in such a relationship subscribe less to romantic imagination and are adaptable and compromising enough to enable creation of a similar understanding. highly individual choices and independence bring with them the inevitable clash of personalities which is often shrouded by the cloak of love. once the rose coloured glasses come off, these formerly subliminal bombs surface to create all havoc.

life is all about getting what you want, making most of what's available and being content with what you have. these are the lessons learnt over millenia of civilisation which brought with them complexities of communal life, society and identity. an adaptable, understanding relationship based on mutual trust and respect with adequate scope for individual expression is the ideal foundation to experience the higher emotions of conjugation, cohabitation and coexistence. two voices come to sing as one, each retaining its unique beauty.

Crash (and Burn)

2005-11-21T16:06:00.000+05:30

For those who havent yet seen it or for those who are oblivious of what i am talking about, crash is one of the better movies to be seen. for once there was something close to what might be an honest potrayal of what people are like. i say might be because this movie especially deals with the issue of racial behaviour dissimilarities and stereotypes. the very first scene in the movie is a mockery of what we have made for ourselves. whats is it that instigates us, drives us to belittle our fellowmen? with or without concious knowledge, certain thoughts and words are allowed in our heads that spitefully get back at our imaginary threat not with our intellectual superiority but with a cowardly jibe at the character of the minority (which it truly is not). is there a hidden satisfaction for a human mind in such actions? do those words provide a apt replacement for that jab one could not take?

what darwin would have said...

in this world. there is no place here where one is free from prejudice. each nation, state, community, society. each to itself a standing example of human behaviour. looking back, there may be evidences of such discrimination, disapproval and conformist tendencies right from the very beginning of society. it is an essential behavioural pattern. a dominant gorilla has to employ aggression, subordination and submission to establish its superiority over the other males and thus gain exclusive mating rights to its partners. this is a fundamental evolutionary function of human behaviour. over generations man has evolved from stone age when mating and feeding were paramount to an age when power, ego and lust define need. but this change in behaviour does not effectively change the hardwiring in the brain for certain processes. when in face of danger fight or flight. it is widely agreed that this is a valid and proven phenomenon with a strong evolutionary background. well is it then too hard to believe that our discriminatory skills are a similar phenomenon honed through thousands of years of struggle to be the dominant individual. well the stimuli which elicited such responses in the neanderthals are long gone. but the emotion now pours out in response to the changed challenges to the being's authority. such an authority is known to be addictive and we have seen in the history of time that it has helped into existence some of the most well known historical events. the struggle to be on top only begins when you get there. once o top the view is brilliant. sort of like a condo in the trump towers. once you have been there you dont want to go back to the street. so you resort to means, good or bad, lawful or otherwise, to stay put. this holds true for the village in the most rural extremes of the developing world as well as the cosmopolitans of the self-proclaimed developed world. none are different. and zooming out even further onto the world stage this translates into the big brother(bully?) and 'allies'.

whats in a word

why are racist comments a problem? why isn't it a state offence to abuse man with the choicest of expletives putting to shame his pedigree while a comment on the colour of his skin or country of origin leads to such intense debate and forseeable destruction. an arab is an arab, a mexican a mexican. a brown man is brown, a black man black. the inflammatory substance to these otherwise commonplace adjectives is our on creation. a perpetuation of debate on these issues continues to keep open old wounds and pepper them as well. what one asks for is not for laws on usage of certain words and certain actions but for a true and honest attempt to foster among people a sense of mutual respect. this is not possible so long as the phrase 'politically correct' has any meaning in society. society dictates politics not vice versa. because such a thought process only leads to perpetuation of what is not correct. if the chocolate is not good for the child, dont let him know it existed. let it be forgotten altogether that there were slurs and abuses. let there be an only word.

aliens? who said so.

the blatant problem of racism is being faced in the advanced countries of the world because of their own creation. the countries where immigrants come from are projected as inferior. an assocation with what is identified as inferior leads to expulsive behaviour on part of the host citizen and this followed by the retaliation. the immigrant should be identified as a citizen not just legally but also socially. uk with a sizeable muslim population could do better to identify them as an integral part of society and work toward better integration by simple directives like a public holiday for eid, inclusion in brief of their history, habit and importance in curricula, and an over all aim to not teach the budding citizens of the future any reason to identify them as alien. once such a truly global assimilation is allowed into society, it automatically becomes receptive, tolerant and understanding of diversity of cultures. this is but an example. every state today is no longer what used to be a semihomogeneous group of people with a common agenda. a nation is no longer defined by the language, religion, appearance or history. today's nations are a mosaic. each with different elements in different proportions but all together exhibiting the same common feature. diversity. so as a rule it is imperative that human society makes an attempt to redefine itself to become a more affirmative, humanitarian and tolerant being.

Hurricanes in the Mind

2005-10-04T14:37:00.001+05:30

had a mini cyclone here. trees uprooted and roads trashed. my room on the third floor flooded through the windows. it was an amazing experience. spend over 36 hours in the dark of the rainfall. wonder what it might have been in katrina.

wonder what it might have been to be lost in the rainy seas of our rainy cities. none were spared. new orleans to navi mumbai. first or third, in either world it seemed help wasnt as forthcoming as one would want. not from some outsider but from within. what made the ruling class seemingly in different to the needs of the suffering. we are democracies india and america, one the largest and the other the most powerful, but still we treat our masses much like the coal for the societal engine.

thankfully the all "powerful" vote bank in india is not subjected to the kind of betrayal served to the orleaners. people are just a picture, a moving frame, an illusioned mass given an elusive choice. they are governed but never by themselves. they are robbed and robbed. and above all they know it. the despicable acts of those demigods are not invisible to them.

while on the other hand, there seems to be a certain mirage created on the other end of the earth. people choose, people make, people break. but the carnivore atop the chain remains the same. disposable is the man who makes the law but the one who lobbies it, who impregnates the greedy desires of those already fortunate, who bears the fruit of those countless hours of contemplation is eternal.

is greed so strong that it can cause one to turn a deaf ear to the cries of suffering. is it power of lust or lust for power that defeats the conscience of the creme de la creme? or should it be creme de la crap? todays world, it seems, is not run for the progress and benefit of the human race. rather seems more a like an unending race for the most powerful human. these are the days when foreign policy is dictated by oil companies and trade agreements brokered by pharma majors. everything is for and because of the corporations. may be it is time they redefine what a nation is or who its citizens are. for a start, a nation should be a consortium of the largest corporations and the employees it citizens.

these pseudonations have their own constitutions with only one rule, duty and fundamental right. "the right to profit. this is reason enough to change the world, go to war. if there is a saturation of markets make new ones. and if there are no new ones, destroy the old ones and start all over. the green bills are more important than human lives. so take some if you have to. and if blood has to be spilt make sure its not yours, preferably buy it. if you want it grab it, all that is there was meant for you and you alone. there is no place or another. there is only one economy in this world and that is yours. only one people need to be happy and those are here."

under this clout, responsible governance is seen as food for the dog and responsible leaders mere puppets. gone are the days when policies were made and changed for the common good, where one nation was responsible not only to its citizens but also to the other peoples with which it shared this planet.

do we see what we do or is democracy a figment of a mad world's ever maddening quest for the ultimate illusion of choice? because what we pursue is to have control, to have established an association, to have made a decision. we make rules, we make laws, we create society and habit, and we pass diktats. either we have control or we dont. and when we dont we create for ourselves a shell of illusion where we seem to control everthing.

i think it is inherent in humans to think they know what they are doing while in most instances it is the opposite. like now i think i know what i am talking about but have no absolute idea where i am taking this. i am unhappy. angry to say the least. where are we headed? there was always the question. its only the shape of the answer that begins to worry me.

Tempora

2005-09-28T01:24:00.000+05:30

this rueful rustic rusts
from within outside in oblivion.
this time spent is time lost
as each morrow becomes the day and each day the past
in the wait to be awakened
from the morbid web of silence.
life now is a cycle
of events that are meaningless.
the incertitude of this aimless mind
thoughtlessly constructs to lucifer.

And i said

2005-09-19T14:54:00.000+05:30

to be or not be
is not just a question
sometimes it is the very answer
it is the choice one has to make
a choice someone has to offer
it is a luxury of the one who knows
and the curse of the ignoramus

Alas!

2005-09-18T13:38:00.000+05:30

Greed.
Of it born, of it bred, of it dead.