Post 4, An obvious observation

As another week comes to an end, I find myself thumbing away at the keypad of my blackberry, late in the night once again.

The other night, I was thinking how my blog seems to be more of an escape rather than the real me. My daily life deals with things such as dealing with my father's cancer, handling a million minor tasks at home and not finding the time to take care of a zillion more, my work and so on. Somehow, I seem to get away from all that when I begin my writing. Here, I can dwell on Quality, the Universe and whatever else I choose to.

So my blog is a lot about what I think and how I feel about things. It is however not quintessentially me or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it does not really represent me as a whole. More often than not, my posts are far removed from my current situation in life.

But that would make this blog a diary - something that I never intended this to be in the first place. So, it being disconnected from my daily life should not be of any concern.

Interestingly enough, while I understand this of my own blog, in retrospect I realize that I have sometimes ignored this when reading other blogs. Extremely naïve of me one may say... and quite obvious one may condescend. But that is how it is (with me) often.

I wonder whether this is a common mistake that a lot of readers make or I am more of an exception. I also can't help wondering whether there are blogs out there that quite accurately paint a picture of the author as a whole without just opening a small window to just some of their facets.

Hmmm...

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Post 3: The Universe

I don't know why I always do things in the last minute - but here I am again writing a post in the wee hours of the morning on the last day of the week to meet my self imposed deadline. On the brighter side, given my hectic and erratic schedule, I am glad that so far, I have managed to maintain this commitment to myself.

Well, getting down to the post itself, have you ever thought about the universe? How big is it anyway? Does it have an end? If so, what lies beyond it?

I still remember the feeling I had that morning in class 3 when I bumped into these questions for the first time. If you've ever tried riding the superman at six flags on a full stomach, you should know.

These profound questions were introduced by an innocuous diagram on the right hand side of the page in black and white that had an Alfred Neuman look alike (coincidental no doubt) peering over an edge of some sort and asking: "If this is the end of the universe, what lies outside?".

So what are the options really? There is a lot of literature out there but frankly, since there is no way of knowing at least in this life time which of these (if any) are correct, my theories are as good as any.

The simplest is that the universe has no end. Which is sort of difficult to reconcile with the big bang theory - which you would tend to believe given that there is plenty of evidence for it - such as the cosmic background radiation, evidence of an ever expanding universe and such. Though you may be inclined to wait another couple of millenia for an alternative theory that throws some light on dark matter, dark energy, why the expansion appears to be accelerating and so on.

The other option is that our universe - and perhaps a zillion other like it are contained within a bigger universe... Which in turn is contained in another in another in another ad infinitum. And what created it? Let us not even get there ...

The fact that neither makes much sense is something you will eventually reconcile with once you realize that no matter how long we survive as a race and how advanced our technology gets, we may never really be able to answer these simple questions.

Why try to answer these questions at all you may well ask. And really, there is no reason why you should or shouldn't just as there is no apparent reason why this universe should exist or shouldn't ...

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Magic: full moon and a smudged lens!

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Post 2, Week 2 - The Night Sky

Having lived in rather remote places for most of my childhood, I have always loved watching the night sky. In the evenings, my parents would settle down on the veranda for a cup of tea and my brother and I would continue playing till it got too dark. Then we would sit on the stairs and invariably my gaze would turn to the stars above.

I remember one evening when we were walking over to the EACs house for a dinner party. I had the torch in my hands and much to my parents disapproval, I insisted on flashing it at the sky every now and then. I thought, if everyone is there on those stars looking down at us they could see the flashes. Then again, I thought if earth looks as bright from out there as those stars do from here, then this must be a futile exercise. But then again, I reasoned, since it is night here, this side cannot be shining. So, if anyone happens to be looking, they might still see the flashes. Naïve.

Growing up at Shillong, when I was in class 1, I remember almost every other evening, we'd go over to my Mama's house. On our way back, I'd be skipping and hopping down the steep road with mom holding on to my hand to keep me from stumbling as I tried to spot the little bear between the swaying pines.

High school brought me to Delhi. A landscape so different from the hills and pines I was so used to that I might as well have gone to Mars. Between voracious reading, rehearsing for the school play, some reluctant studying, bunking out to watch movies, falling in and out of love and a million other things, I still found the time to look up to the skies. I missed the zillion stars that light up the skies over Shillong and the other small hill towns but realized that this made it much easier to pick out Orion, the big dipper and most of the other constellations. I watched them move with the seasons. I noted where they stood in the middle of the dusty summer and where they shone as I felt the first dew drops of september on the grass under my feet.

Even to this day, almost invariably, I spend some time out on the balcony before I sleep, watching the stars. For the last fortnight or so, the skies over bangalore have been clear enough for me to clearly see the little bear again. It reminds me of Shillong, the swaying pines and my Nani.

Watching the night sky fills me with a peace that I find hard to explain. As I look up to the stars, I feel a connection with all my ancestors and with all future generations to come. I don't know how many of them looked up at the stars but these were there then too... And will be there long after I am dead and gone. I may not have gone to Egypt but when I see the belt of the Orion, I know that the architects of the great pyramids must have looked at them too.

Standing on my balcony, sheltered, I bask in the star light from thousands of years ago from distances so great that I cannot even begin to comprehend them. I am filled with wonder at the universe. I am filled with joy at having been given this opportunity to experience this ... and humbled ... so truly humbled by it.

Try it some time. Take some time out to just stand and stare at the heavens.
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Post 1, Week 1 - The resolution

Here we are, in the New Year and in the blink of an eye, we are almost at the end of the first week as well.

My blog has been languishing for quite a while now and it is time perhaps to get it up and running again. Previous attempts to resuscitate have failed over the years, leading me to adopt a somewhat cautious approach this time:
The plan is to ensure that I publish at least one post every week.

Who am I kidding?

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Blame it on inception – I guess

It is raining. In the dark, I do not see the rain falling – but I can hear it as it falls on the leaves. I can hear the water gurgling through the gutter and the distant hiss at the outlet towards the back of the house where it gushes out into the drain. In the darkness ahead of me, every now and then I catch a glint as a blade of grass bounces in the rain to catch the light from some distant street lamp. The air feels moist and cold.

A clap of thunder breaks the silence. In the light I see the towering columns of clouds threatening to continue the deluge for an eternity. The cane chair I am sitting on creaks in protest as I settle down more comfortably, lean back and try to catch a glimpse of the ceiling.

Above me, I can barely make out the wooden paneling of the verandah ceiling painted white. The roof above slopes down low – to keep the incessant rains from spattering on to the verandah. My feet feel cold on the dark red cement floor and I prop them up on the wooden railings, polished by age, as I reach out for a cup of tea that I know to be there on the table.

The warmth is comforting. Instead of taking a sip, I hold it in my palms for a while, soaking in the heat. The aroma of the tea wraps around my head – it is almost a physical presence – warm comforting. I take a sip and let myself sink deeper into a state of emptiness. No thoughts. No feelings. No desire move – blink even. Only breathing. Just sitting. Just being. Comfortably numb.

Blame it on inception. I dreamed last night of such peace. I could almost smell pine in the air.
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Moon and Venus

A photograph taken from my cell phone yesterday evening showing the Moon and Venus. Saturn wasn't bright enough to show up with this camera so didn't try to include it either!
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World Cup 2010 - last take

It takes some getting used to - no football on TV to rush home to at breakneck speed during the crazy evening rush hour.

But life goes on. And whether you are Paul the Octopus, Iniesta the golden goal scorer or just the plebeian TV viewer from a country that never makes it past the qualifiers, sooner or later the euphoria passes.

The final this year shall be remembered for a long time to come. I personally intend to acquire a recording of this game so that I can teach my children (when I have them), what football is NOT supposed to be and how football should NOT be played.

Thanks to Spain, I should be able to give them some pointers as to what football is and how it should be played ... as well using the same example.

This game is a must for value education classes as well. Values like sportsmanship, decency and honor are so much a part of most games that you don't even realize what part they play in making a great game - till of course you watch a team playing that is totally bereft of each of those qualities.

To be fair to them, the techniques that the dutch used are definitely not unheard of. But to see them being employed at a world cup game - and that too the final - was a little too much to stomach. I tremble to think what football would transform in thousands of school grounds around the world had they won. Despite them having lost, I shall not be surprised if a lot of kids come home complaining of chest pain from school because someone on the field played a "dutch tackle" on them and kicked them on the chest.

I guess it is easy to forget in this age that the ends don't necessarily justify the means. Footballers are almost worshiped around the world by kids because they are perhaps the closest you get to super-heroes in real life. Sadly for a lot of kids, the line between the super-heroes and super-villains might just be a little blurred thanks to the Dutch.

Well, for now, we can thank God that Spain won and we can pray and hope that the world cup will be better in the years to come - a true showcase of football magic instead of mere hooliganism.
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Witches on beaches?

Or in deserts perhaps. An interesting sign I came across while at Mangalore:

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An idea regarding malaria eradication

All of a sudden, we have been invaded by mosquitoes and that gave me an idea about malaria eradication:

There isn't much that I know about this. However, whatever little bits I pick up form here and there appears to indicate that a lot of effort is focused on trying to eradicate the breeding grounds of the mosquitoes. Now, mosquitoes being mosquitoes do not get the bigger picture and continue to breed - in places that are difficult for us to reach and clean - such as city sewers etc.

I am sure that there is something fundamentally flawed with my idea - which is why it has not been tried before. Or perhaps it has and I simply don't know about it. My fear is that it may have been overlooked because it is too simple.

The idea is that in addition to the conventional method of trying to remove breeding grounds, we should perhaps create breeding grounds that can be controlled. I don't know whether mosquitoes look for some characteristics ... Such as stagnant water, a water body with sufficient water that won't dry up before the eggs/larvae mature, a water body small enough to limit the number of natural predators and so on. The controlled breeding grounds can then be created to these specifications in places that no self respecting mosquito would miss. The water can then be filtered at regular intervals to clear it of eggs/larvae etc.

Does this make sense?
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Hmmm this could be fun

Till the novelty of it wears out that is.

I am hoping that will take some time though ... And in the meanwhile, I can keep posting pearls of wisdom, pics and what not to my blog.

After twitter, this seems to be a lot of typing though!
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Test Post

This is a test post from my mobile device. Hoping that this will help me get started again!

another year

And before I know it, it is a new year.

As usual, I am caught out in the cold looking over my shoulder and bidding farewell to the receding year... just a wee bit too long ... long enough for the new year to come rumbling by and bawl me over. So, here I am, just getting up and dusting the earth off... getting used to the feeling of the new year as it picks up speed and starts to whiz along.

Wish you all a very Happy New Year. May this year be better than the best that you have had so far. Let this year bring peace and prosperity into your lives. May all the good things that you wish for this year be granted...

Peace.

Have a terrible cold ... for close to a week now.
It has been hectic at work as usual and around the house as well for a change.
That doesn't leave me with much time to take a breather.

Sometimes I wish I could take a break.
Just sit back and relax for a month or so.
Without having to worry about anything at all...
Not that I worry about much anyway.

The pizza we ordered for dinner is here ...

a sign of life

how does one resurrect a dead blog?
i don't know.
i could wait for judgement day perhaps ... and have the blog write itself ...
sitting ... chin on palm ... watching ... waiting ... reading

but then again, isn't it a lot simpler to write a short post ...
no matter how short ... no matter how hurried ...
no matter how meaningless or formless or mindless even ...

a pulse is a pulse ... a breath is a breath ...
a spark from the dying embers is still a spark ...
a post is a post ... a pulse ... a breath ...
a sign of life.

been lazy

The number of posts have dried down to a sporadic trickle ... like a the water from a lot of around the country this year I presume ... given that the monsoon hasn't been all that generous this time.

You think I cannot blame the monsoon for the dearth of posts? You have no idea just how interconnected everything in the world is. It is the monsoons I tell you. The mind wanders ...

Now, my city has been bombed too. About 7 blasts ... the 8th one was defused before it could explode. Not too bad given the condition of Ahmedabad. The news channels almost forgot my city as soon as it was over. The death toll wasn't high enough to keep up their TRP ratings I suppose. "Only" 2 people died. None of the channels provided any of the details of the people that died. Except for the fact that one was a woman.

Not sure what is so "only" about the 2 that didn't get home last Friday. They never will again.

As the world has shrunk, there seems to be a personal connection to almost every tragedy. When a bomb goes off anywhere or a flight crashes, there is always the possibility of losing a dear one ...

Life goes on though.
More later.

a lot's been happening

Well, to begin with, there is "the happening" ... according to mr. shyamalan himself though, it isn't quite all that happening ... what happens next? we'll have to wait and watch.

And then, there was the 3G iPhone ... which hasn't quite been released yet ... but bloke that heads the operation confirmed all rumors. Come july, the release will happen!

Just connecting dots here ... it is only happenstance that our spiral galaxy lost two arms recently. Apparently, our galaxy doesn't quite look the way we thought it does. New data confirms this. I am sure we'll get quite a few different pictures as time elapses, and more and more data pours in.

Should we happen to live long enough, perhaps some day, we can actually have a photograph from outside the galaxy showing what it really looks like ... for us to ogle at and wear as a pendant perhaps ... how many of the interim pictures that shall send to the shredder remains to be seen.

Last but not the least, there's pluto ... the planet that was ... guess what it is now?
It has reincarnated as a "plutoid" and has brought with it a whole army of such critters ... plutoids all! And you thought pluto was gone ...

And then there is Phoenix ... on Mars ... quietly jiggling its pots and pans ... sifting through the dirt ... ploughing it up ... it just happens to be called Phoenix I guess ... or has it been named as such because the idea of life on Mars just refuses to die down? Reincarnated from the ashes ... the hope of finding life ... possibly already found by viking and disregarded then ...

Yeah ... a lot has been happening awright!

there go the smoke alarms again

Yup ... it is that time of the year when the smoke alarms go off ...
Not because I am smoking too much ...
And not because I left the food on the stove and sat gaping at the TV.

Something a lot more mundane really ... on this day, some 3 decades ago, on a cold, rainy morning, I came into this world.

..... or so I am told!
Personally, I have no recollection of this most important day in my life. So, there is no way I can confirm that any of this is true. For all I know, I may have been born on a different planet and dunked on this planet in a spiky glass bowl like superman. This is unlikely though ... since somewhere in my hoary past, I remember realizing that no matter what the color and orientation of my underwear might be, it has no impact on how I relate to gravity!

But then again, the fact that I can actually think this up and write it down, does imply the possibility that I may have been involved in a brain jarring impact as a child - the kind that you'd get when the spiky glass bowl thudded to the earth ...

Skeptical as I may be about my origins, this skepticism can hardly be reason enough to stop me from having a good time ... so, I guess I'll call it a day and go light a little bonfire over the cake and make myself a roast something or the other ... hopefully my martian cousins shall celebrate too ... and not mind too much the fact that the Phoenix is baking and raking up their most arable land in the name of science!

Hang on a while and the next post shall be published as soon as sanity prevails ... hic!

Darn!
You think the burning candles on a b'day cake might lead to pollution? Green house gasses and stuff ...

world environment day

Yup ... I am back ... took a while though ... didn't I? So, here I am, married!
I am not sure whether it has all sunk in as yet. We'll talk about that soon enough though.

Today, however, there are more important things at hand - such as World Environment Day.
Maybe I am just reading too much into that but the acronym is "WED" I just noticed!

I am not sure how to react to this WED. The feelings are sort of mixed.
On the one hand, it is a good thing that we have a special day when we actually remember the impact that we are having on the environment and how we can do something about it.
On the other hand, it is just our arrogance again. One can think of it as a continuation of the thought process that classifies "man-made" as being significantly different from "natural". If a beaver dam is natural, so is Hoover for all I care.

But then, as we all know, man is a "thinking" animal. And it is good that we are putting some thought into what we are doing. While a beaver cannot change to stop building dams (not true strictly speaking - we all know about evolution, adaptability and all that HS), a human can think of alternatives.

For all our thinking, we did not think enough and we did not think far enough into the future. The only reason that most people are actually taking notice today is not because any of that has changed but because they can finally see the effects first hand ... and seeing is believing.

Typhoons, baboons and blue blistering barnacles ...
Sorry, typhoons, cyclones, earthquakes and tsunamis ... and of late, the rising fuel prices that have fuelled inflation blah ... blah ... when it kills your folks ... and more importantly perhaps, hits your pocket, people tend to notice. So, welcome to world environment day.

So what do we do today? If you spend some time googling, most of it seem to be knee jerk reactions.

Here folks ... calculate your carbon footprint ... we have a calculator (praying that it increases the hit count to my site) ... and oh! you eat meat? Don't you know that increases your carbon footprint? You have to stop eating meat so that the world stays the way it is. Switch off the AC and use a fan. Stop the car and take a walk.

What next? Eat salads and save on cooking gas? Some backsides need to have some footprints on them ... that's what!!!

The problem as I see it is that we are trying to undo the damage that we have already done. Somehow, everyone is in ostrich mode.

Hello!!! Even if everyone were to go vegetarian and eat only salads at that and walk to office and stuff, the fact is that change is inevitable. I don't see too many people trying to understand exactly what is changing and planning to live comfortably with the change.

It is just not reasonable to think of a world where no one uses a car or a plane. People need to travel. It is not reasonable to think of a world where people change their eating habits. While it makes sense to do things better, it is also necessary to understand that we are doing too little too late ... as far as the change in the environment is considered. And frankly, do we really believe that nothing on earth would ever change if we were not to change it?

So, while it is a good thing to spend your time today, thinking of how you can improve your energy efficiency and reduce your wastes ... and even reduce your carbon footprint ... it is important to look ahead. Instead of blaming folks from the past hundred years for the change or the developed countries or whatever, it is important to anticipate the changes to the environment. It is important to accept that this change is now here and we are in the middle of it ... and figure out how we can still live well with the change.

How can we grow enough crops to feed the nations if the weather changes?
How can we build better houses that can withstand earthquakes?
Can we design our cities to withstand tsunamis?
How can we design our transport system to be more efficient?
How can we make clean energy?

And what can I do?
How can I help?

And then again, is there much point in any of it any way?
Why not enjoy what we have while we have it?
Perhaps it is time to take out that car and go on a long drive ...
while the gas lasts and burgers still have meat ;)

more post per post ... apparently

Yesterday, it was a month to my wedding. Today, it is a day less than a month. This post, is unremarkable but for the fact that it is a marker of sorts. Let it speak for itself.

Here lies buried,

Under the pretext of a post that really isn't;

In a format that is neither poetry,

Nor prose,

Nor text;

More thoughts, emotions and turmoil;

More happiness

And

More hope

Than all the other posts

Put together.