Words - II

I think I try to worry myself to sadness all the time. I worry about spilt milk and the cat that snuck in through the window I forgot to latch; I castigate myself for forgetting the keys in the car and for my burnt toast. I even worry that I might be worrying myself to high blood pressure and a cardiac arrest. And the result of all this worrying is that I feel sad and depressed instead of being jolly and carefree. Most days dawn quite okay for me but the moment the first thought enters my brain, any thought at all, whether momentous and dealing with the direction my life is heading in or trivial and concerning merely the movie I saw the day before, immediately I sense a tightening in the stomach as I find something to worry about; to feel sad about. The poor girl whose flowers no one buys in the movie or the general mess that is any prospect, any outlook into the future in a murky world, both bother me and sadden me. Pathetic some might say and pitiful others may opine but I have to live with it, this morbid, depressing natural character of mine. Today, though, I am happy - I saw her face even if she does not know I exist; today I cannot feel sad however hard I try. Funny the way we float sometimes on thin air, funny the feeling that is atleast in part frivolous and mad. But that is man, I guess, flawed, funny and merely a visitor in transit determined to enjoy his visit to a beautiful place sometimes or worrying over his lost luggage in other cases.

December 31, 2006.

December 31 - a day to ring out the old and what a day it is turning out to be. I have been awake all 10 hours of the Gregorian day and I am yet to see any sign of the sun. The sky is a dull aluminum gray and it has been raining almost continuously though not heavily all morning. A good sign of the year that has been in my life: I mean fitting sign, of course. The windowpanes are clearing up in the water but there is none of the romantic pittle-pattle that one always reads of in novels. Only a dull sound every now and then signifying nothing. Still it is soothing, this depressing gray scene with the desolate trees, leafless and birdless. I hear a faint sound of twittering - maybe some birds have come back from their winter homes, knowing there will be no snow this year. It must be a pretty hard time for the birds, I imagine; what with all the trouble of migrating thousands of miles, there has been no real snow and now, a week after Christmas, the only sign of the gloomy winter is the sunless sky; it has not even been too cold, just a late fall kind of finger-freezing, nose-reddening, but essentially bearable, cold. People are getting along fine though. It will be much easier for them to stand 6 hours in Times Square waiting for the ball to fall. Closer home, there is not much life in my place, the university grounds are deserted for the holidays and the town has never been too lively anyway. The McDonald's opposite my window has been doing steady business all day. Cars of all hues and shapes, waiting patiently by the red sign to order, and collecting their bags, at the counter, like Oliver Twist and co. getting their miserable lunches; only these Macs will be eaten with relish. I have been alone the last few days in my big house, locked in actually and haven't stepped an inch outside the last couple of days. Food has been the grub I cooked 2 days back, rationed slowly, and I think it will last me 3-4 days more. It must seem obvious that I sleep a lot but there has been very little sleep surprisingly. To add to my nocturnalist woes, I have now become an insomniac. The time, though, I have spent fruitfully. A couple of movies and a few games were inevitable but I have been reading and writing quite a bit. Academic work mostly but have also spent time on Orhan Pamuk and Ellman's Joyce. Pamuk is quite pedestrian in The White Castle but more about him when I am done with his complete oeuvre. Ellman's Joyce has been totally good, however. As a general rule, I do not like biographies but Joyce is special and I wanted to understand his life so I could appreciate his art better. Pure gold this biography though I suspect it might not be the best written, even among those about Joyce. I have also been spending some time on puzzles to stimulate my sleeping brain cells. Wonderful these things but I dont know how long I can keep up that activity. I wonder what the waste management guy must be thinking of me: lights on at 5am and working at my desk. Surely someone in the world will have charitable thoughts about me. Or maybe he knows too that it is just one of those nerdy losers who cannot get out of their rooms for f***'s sake. Forgive the vituperation but sometimes loneliness gets to me. Solitude I do not mind though as it has been a strangely placid few days, the last ones that I have been alone. Unaccountably the rain has stopped now and I will too but is it not better sometimes if there were no stops? The rest is tomorrow.

A Confession

For those few of you who have been reading my posts, I have a confession to make. Not that it is something that has escaped your observation but merely to ease my own conscience: most of what I write is tripe. It is not to say that there is very little of honesty in what I have written but art by its very nature is mendacious and I have merely kept with the tradition and have experimented ceaselessly for effect and for fun. Most of my writings are stylistic eperiments and this is reflected in the arrangement of the pieces, a constant juxtaposition of seemingly incongruous ideas. This would be too little for me, though, and I have laboured to introduce in each piece stylistic variations. Again, merely interchanging one transparent style for another over the course of a work is not something particularly novel, and so I have mixed in flaws, absurdities and contradictions, both stylistic and contentual. And so these writings have been the presentation of a variety of styles content to be receptacles of the mere parsimonious contents that I have chosen to convey in them. The scatter-logical aspects and the innuendoes in what I have written best be as they are now: beneath the surface. The Book of the Winds was a major experiment I have been working on, some 500 pages of variations with simplistic themes but I have lost the patience that I had assumed rashly I would possess to complete it: it was to ooze a strange allusive style with the contents flawed, in both obvious and subtle ways. Now I do not think I can continue with it; but I doubt this will matter much or to many.

Before I continue on with my experiments, it will be useful to make a manifesto of my creed:

Art is mendacity. Its source is a truth, its product a lie; and its pupose, though, possibly, the elucidation of a truth, is, oftener, merely a self-serving expression of beauty.

The purpose of the artist is to confront a hard, cold truth and to produce a lie, an expression of the truth in a direct or a twisted manner. The lie may be prior or posterior to the truth or to the artist; the artist may be prior or posterior to the truth. The only constants are the confrontation and the alchemical production.

The purpose of the reader is to confront the lie and to get to the truth. The lie could be a straightforward representation of the truth but still is a lie insofar as it is not the truth.

Truth has no purpose. It just is.

To speak unphilosophically of it, in writing, the artist tries to express, through himself, an idea, a truth. When this expression is straightforward, in that, for the reader, understanding immediately follows perception, the art is simple and there is merely a giving of alms. When the expression is a challenge to the reader, in the process of attaining to the truth through an interpretation, there occurs an exchange as reader and artist meet somewhere in the middle, forcing them to conront new truths.

More unphilosophically, in the primitive novel, for example, the story is all-important and style is merely a vehicle, an accident. The purpose is merely narration. In a more refined novel, the style is given a greater role and the reader is challenged to understand. Taken to an extreme, however, when style becomes all-important, the novel forgets itself and becomes an experiment in linguistics or mathematics.

Anyway, this was supposed to follow the previous instalment of The Book of the Winds:

Interlude

"But grandfather, surely this is no interesting story that you are telling me! I mean it is so slow and so not fun! I think I will just go and play with the bears," little Ronda piped to Beron. The silver-haired Beron laughed and replied, "Of course it is not fun. It is not supposed to be. You wanted to grow up, not I; and this is the kind of story that grown-ups are told." "But grandfather, I thought being grown-up was fun. And I don't mind the story terribly except that nothing much happens in it," Ronda complained. "Oh a lot of things do happen in the story, my child. Only it is not all told. Grown-ups aren't like children. They don't want to be told everything directly. They like finding things out for themselves," Beron replied. "I like finding things for myself grandfather. Remember the little harp that you hid under the mistletoe in the front garden. I found it out myself," Ronda proudly reminded him. "Yes. And this is just like that. Only here you do not know you are looking for a harp. Much like life. Only a lot easier. If only people kept looking for things in books and left the world to itself. But what will be will be," and Beron put the pipe that smouldered near the bookstand back in his mouth, piping away another of his sad dreams. After a while, he called Ronda back to his side, "Come child, let us go on with the story and listen carefully now. Learn to hear more than what I tell you and to understand more than what you hear and see and you will be fine. And tie the loose ends of your pigtails by yourself like a little woman. You wouldn't want me to do it for you now, would you?"

Stuff

One fundamental question: If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when? Rabbi Hillel says it all and says it well.

If I am ambitious I want more and am not contented; if I am not ambitious I will never be the man I could be. Which is the more pathetic life - an unambitious drudgery or ambitious and eternal discontent?

Which is the more dangerous - power without responsibility or responsibility without power? The first brings the worst out of us while the other drives the best of us into despair.

If I do not discriminate based on colour am I blind? If I do not discriminate based on language am I deaf? If I do not discriminate based on religion am I godless? If I do not discriminate based on nationality am I poor in geography? If I do not discriminate am I not a fool? But what would I rather be - a fool who cannot discriminate or a clever knave of a fundamentalist?

What is the half-life of a modern secret? What is the half-life a modern truth? What is the meaning of a modern lie? What is the purpose of modern facts? Nobody seems to have a private life any more. Nobody seems sure of anything any more(except the Republicans and the fundamentalists). Everybody seems to be conspiring - for what they don't know. Everybody seems to own a dictionary and an encyclopedia.

Mysticism is not the answer; Formalism is not the answer; Idealism is not the answer; Realism is not the answer; Pessimism is not the answer; Empiricism is not the answer; Existentialism is not the answer; Philosophy is not the answer; Science is not the answer; Religion is not the answer; Contentment is not the answer; Ambition is not the answer; Happiness is not the answer; Despair is not the answer; Atleast nothing is answer enough; But what is the question, do we know that any more? Does it matter?

(Somewhere in between, always something in between, or maybe not that)

(I have elucidated for myself for now a principle of the almost arbitrary)

Tell me someday, if you can, what patriotism means; tell me also what affection is. What is love? What are those long words that we remember from the dictionary when we see a boatload of wretched black men transported whipped and bound across choppy seas by guys with handlebar moustaches? What is that lump of meat clogging the pipes when everyone rises to say "I am Spartacus"? What do the words that men give their lives for mean? What is the cold hand that drives men across continents to die in unfriendly shores for things they don't see, for men who don't care for them, for promises they haven't heard and are not meant for them anyway? And when you have explained all this to me, tell me why, if you would.

Random Thoughts

Existence is presence in Space and Time(apart from other possible dimensions); existence out of Space and Time has to be explained in the abstract or the as yet absent - which is sometimes called non-existence.

Sole causes and effects are not possible(are not observed).

Everything cannot be known; everything cannot be understood; everything cannot be expressed. Everything cannot be experienced.

Everything does not matter.

The present is; the rest we dont know about.

There are children and adults; men and women; humans and beasts; animals and plants; life and things.

Children dont know; they dont understand; they dont feel; they dont care. Children stop being children and become adults to do these things.

Adults dont learn; they become children to learn. They know, understand, express, feel and take responsibility.

Men stand up, hit one another, and take hits; women dont see the point in fighting.

Beasts survive and become human when they create a world for themselves in their piece of the earth; humans create (private and social)worlds and live in them and become beasts when they have to survive.

Animals move; plants are transplanted.

Life leads; things are led.

---Whereof one cannot speak thereof one must remain silent/There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy

Note to self

I have been wanting to say something profound for quite sometime now but dont know exactly what I can say. Everything seems already to have been said and I have nothing more to add. Except maybe this:

This is the one comforting thought to the man in misery -
When tomorrow's sorrow comes to find me, I will not be.

Or is this taken too already?

Occam's Razor

Occam's razor is a thorn in my flesh. I sometimes get pained with the beautiful and simple statement of intent that the razor is: "Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity." Most of science and philosophy swears by it and it has really worked wonders in clearing up thought through history. When confused, with many possible hypotheses to explain a set of facts, pare away those that rely on excessive external entities and whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth! Basically, it is a whole philosophy, this principle of parsimony - a refusal to believe there can be wastefulness - which has become an aesthetic and ethical theory as well, saying what is wasteful is ugly or bad. Anyway, this has worked beautifully in both information-complete and information-limited systems where we might or might not know everything that is to be known(there are exceptions as there always are but very few on the margin). All that has to be absolutely known is that the system to be analyzed is complete - that there is nothing else that will come in like a deus ex machina and cause radical changes like, for example, a teeny-weeny new fact. This, of course, is a direct consequence of the chaotic nature of life/complex systems, which are highly sensitive to initial conditions and can be affected to a large extent by small disturbances(butterfly effects!). Take the case of Newton's theory of light - it was nice and explained a lot of things until diffraction was observed and suddenly it was no good. And the wave theory(which was actually the older one) went the same way after photoelectric emission and Planck came along. Anyway, the point is, the razor is good when we know what to cut - just throw away the entrails - but if the butcher should reveal a new piece of breast-meat hidden near the leg, what do we do? get a whole new chicken? Scientists and philosophers have embraced the principle so very happily in spite of this basic robustness problem with the principle. Acceptedly the problem arises not internally but as a result of external factors and new data, which can again be carved into a new theory using the same razor. But the fact is we need a more robust principle and, for example, not believe in the superfluity of god just because we have very few facts and invoke William of Ockham vehemently and learnedly!

hmm.. life.. hmm..

I am getting used to life. Slowly. To cars passing outside my window in the narrow stretch of road that I can see between McDonald's and the Hacienda. To the cars that queue up below my window to order drive-throughs from McD's. To the Waste Management people coming at 4-5 in the morning and making a ruckus just beyond the fence that I can see below my window. To the morning light glaring at me at 11 in the morning and doing what the alarm I set in my cellphone couldn't do - wake me up. To checking mail every now and then and browsing through cricinfo, soccernet, atptennis, espn, cnn and an assortment of news sites. To reading the blogposts of a few friends and commenting on them sometimes. To orkutting ceaselessly, well, not really, but still spending enough time on it checking on the profiles and scrapbooks of lots of people I have no idea about. To having a bowl of cereals at 1-2 in the afternoon for breakfast and then lunch at 3-4 - rice and dhal and curd or maybe a sandwich or two. To the occassional games on my gamecube and the documentaries on History. To going to school late in the afternoon and holding conference calls with my advisor, discussing my research. To coming back early in the evening and calling up people to play football(soccer ye tainted by the greenback!). To getting back late in the night and cooling down with a glass of gatorade or cold water. To eating dinner often after 12 in the night and sometimes at 3-4 in the morning. To sleeping late in the night/early in the morning after a couple more hours of browsing. And then the next day again. I am getting used to life. Slowly.

pOptimism

It is never too dark for the sun to shine through some small clearing in the dense jungle. Never too late for the cock to crow the new dawn after an Arctic night. Everything in its own time and everything even if not when expected, will happen as it has to, as it always has. And even if the siren does not sound when the train enters the tunnel, the little blue light at the end of it will show the way to where we all need to go.

The rest is peace.

More Questions

What is the one thing that makes me trudge this weary path, full of thistles and deadweed, leading perhaps to infamy, or worse, to oblivion? Or is there any one such thing ever in anyone's life? What is it that makes me wake everyday to live again the previous day's hundred mean dreams, to hear the unforgotten music bitter, meaningless to the ears, the mindless cacophony that I wish were sweet music to someone else's ears atleast, that I wish someone else told me was sweet? Why all the sweat when it means nothing but to me; why all the tools when there is no work today that will mean anything tomorrow or the day after? What is the purpose in all that has been when there is nothing that has to be; that will be? What am I doing? Where am I headed? What is the meaning of life? What is the point of it all anyway?

Of Taxes and Toothaches

Nothing like a good toothache to teach a true sense of perspective. And I have been in enough pain the last few days to understand that tax cuts should not be given to the ICC for the Champions Trophy thing that they hold every now and then for fat bonuses. The GoI of course refused to give 100% tax cuts twice earlier and the venues were changed but this time they have relented and the tournament is all set to start October 7 later this year in India. I dont mind having to watch 22 matches in 21 days but it sure irks me that a monstrosity like the ICC should deem itself worthy of being awarded tax-free revenues of something like a few hundred crores or whatever the final figure is bound to be.

And it brings up related incidents where sportsmen and celebrities walk away with their millions in their pockets because they have "brought fame to the country": Sachin's Ferrari and Bandra flat and a host of other such things. I accept that these people bring pride to the country and make their countrymen believe in whatever needs to believed in according to their party line. They also offer free propaganda and advertising services for the government by doing what they do in the eyes of the world audience. But the pay and the patronage should have bounds surely and we have to consider that atleast some of them do not need either at an advanced stage in their careers where they can easily maintain themselves in luxury. I am not suggesting that we tax them inordinately but atleast get what is due by law or a percentage of it to show people like me that fame does not mean never having to pay for lunch. The other side of the question is all visible to me and I know poor Sachin can't expect to earn his millions the 50 years of his life after he retires nor did he have to spend little to get to where he is but there is the rub, I say. Prasanna languishes somewhere forgotten, Sania struggles and finally finds sponsors; and how much of all the money that flows goes to help needy sportspeople if not the general needy?

To return to the point of the post, lateral and direct employment benefits, the government hopes, will far outweigh the cost of letting the ICC and the BCCI do their thing but it sure can get some more from the taxes and avoid being held up to ransom by an inconsequential world(busy)body. And anyways I think it a travesty to let people get away with such an awful lot of money under the excuse, "This is a very important tournament, generating a lot of revenue which is being used for the development of the game in associate member countries and elsewhere. We have distributed over 100 million dollars from this tournament's revenues from 2002 onwards". Ouch!

Juvenilia

It is a good thing we have each our own definitions of who a fool is; each man's genius is someone else's fool.

It is not necessary to assume that others judge us all the time just because they do.

God is not an infeasible hypothesis; He is just an expensive one.

Happiness and Sorrow: twin pricks destroying the mellow bubble of Life.

A lot of fun can be had on a full stomach and full pockets.

Two words, a smile, a kiss, two sighs, a few moans and an eternity of groans.

Art affords the ordinary person pleasure without the pangs and pain without the hurt.

Thomas Aquinas proved that God cannot make a man an ass.

Science for centuries has been about the removing of fleas from a dog's back.

It is not allowed to die of small-pox in this century; AIDS is OK.

The world will go berserk one person at a time.

Read this, this and this for people who inspired this post.

Can a blind man paint?

Can a blind man paint?

Yes he can: Painting is the act of imprinting on paper

No he cannot: Painting is the re-presentation of a visual sensation on paper

Yes he can: Painting is order in space, time and colour

No he cannot: Painting is the expression of ideas perceived through sight presented for analysis to the visual imagination

Yes he can: Painting is the communication of ideas using colour and 2D space as medium and the eye as receptor

Can a blind man paint?
What is Painting?
What is Music? Poetry? Language? Life?

Laws: Prescriptive and Proscriptive

Laws and lawmaking is an interesting(and exhausting) subject of study. Not surprising given the variety of ideas as to the nature of public association people have held over time. There have been hundreds and hundreds of legal systems, each in a different time and place practised as the "true" and perfect system by thousands of people. Thorough analysis needing a Montesquieu to come by, a simplistic picture can always be drawn: the major systems can all be classified under two heads - the "Prescriptive" systems and the "Proscriptive" systems. As the name suggests, Prescriptive systems tend to list out all the possible things that can be done legally. They are the manuals the television company prints out so you know what exactly can be done with the black box on your table. Most ancient laws, being in essence laws derived from religion, including the Hindu Smrithis, the Hebrew Torah, the Islamic Koran, all fall into this category; while modern examples include the Fascist and Communist Constitutions, which are similar to the religious books in that their purpose is to exalt a demigod in the form of the State or the Dictator. Proscriptive Laws, on the other hand, are not mere rulebooks or manuals but serve an altogether different function. Their purpose is more cautionary than hortatory and they tend to serve like the maps a pioneer uses in his exploration of new land: marking off whirlpools and quagmires while leaving large tracts blank and open to investigation. Modern laws, on the whole, tend to be proscriptive rather than prescriptive, given that it is unrealistic to make a codebook for all the variety of human experience in modern life; ancient republican laws, secular and mercantile aspects of medieval justice and most practical private transactions belong to the class of Proscriptive laws where certain acts are forbidden under penalty whereas any others may be chosen freely unless they are themselves forbidden as the system evolves. The development of Science and the spread of a questioning and agnostic intelligence has ensured that Proscriptive Law seems obviously rational whereas there are pros and cons to both. The biggest advantage that Prescriptive Law has over its Proscriptive counterpart is that it is comprehensive. It is extremely simple and complete. This is also is its biggest disadvantage as there are only so many things that are possible. On the other hand, the Judge cannot possibly err and there can be no controversies once the system as a whole is accepted. X has to do Y and if he does anything else he is punished. The punishment itself might depend on what he does actually but really it is that simple. There is no need to change the books except, if necessary, to add or modify the penalties for specific acts. Proscriptive Laws, on the other hand, are very general and nebulous. If X does Y, he is punished but what if he does Z? The potentialities of man being practically boundless, there is constant need for revision and updating of the rulebooks. Subjectivity becomes key and decision-making abilities in the Judge are tested severely as he effectively becomes Lawmaker or his accessory(in the other system, there was need for just one Just and Able Lawmaker). This idea is inherently logical in a democratic system where the Law is made by the people and it is absurd to expect an unchanging Law to be accepted over succeeding generations along with unending progress. New situations do and will demand new regulations and any imaginative Prescriptive Lawmaker will be hard put to provide for everything. There are thus things to be said for and against both systems in their simple elemental forms. In practice, however, any system is bound to be an admixture of both philosophies, the dominant element merely serving to help in classification and giving an indication of the tendencies of the judge and the judiciary. These dominant elements are what jar and clash in the march of time as progress brings in new problems to be solved and a necessity for uniformity is recognized as part of the new global community. Details can always be modified and adjusted to suit new discoveries within a system but an international law will have to address the fundamental difference in philosophy between, for example, predominantly Prescriptive Islamic Laws and the predominantly Proscriptive Western ideas of Democracy. This is a problem that needs to be solved before integration can be achieved across cultural legal boundaries.

Questions

Two questions keep plaguing me: What has life given me that I did not pry out of unreluctant hands for myself? What have I done for myself that was not given me by helping hands and friendly hearts? The first makes me despair of life, making me the centre(and everything) of my world, erasing all meaning out of life; the second makes me despair of ever doing anything that could not have been done by anybody else in the same position. Every so often I feel glad of having accomplished something and then I realise that either I merely am a parasite feeding off others, or horribly worse, it is all merely another short respite from a meaningless trudge towards the top of a hill knowing the rock will roll down any minute. The life of Sisyphus on one hand and that of a swaddled baby on the other. Which do I choose for my greater glory? What ring of thorns do I devise for myself to get out of all this holy mess? Who will I forgive and by whom forgiven? That makes more questions but they do not plague me.

Encyclopedia Satyrica Vol 33: Tragedy to Travesty

Just figured this one out: When people talk of a tragedy, what they actually mean is that things did not go as they expected; or, more strongly, what happened was completely unexpected. Sounds more like the definition of a surprise or a mishap, but I guess the difference is one of degree and what we are ready to condone as a minor mishap is but the seed of what could have been a modern Rape of the Lock. What is good about my definition of a tragedy is that it is neat and carries all the way from the minor tragedies in the life mundane - as when the neighbour's cat frolics all over the patterned India tablecloth minutes before the guests arrive - to the more elaborate ones involving Denmark and something rotting in it.

No tragedy is expected except by the front-seat bore, who was force-fed Shakespeare while his brothers were out painting the town red, and takes it out on his bored-and-snoring neighbour with all the vengeance of an enthusiastic pedant. Nor is any forgiven for the inconvenience it causes mice and men whose plans go all awry. The only sensible difference is in perception of, and reaction to them. The simple tragedies are almost all similar and involve, in their resolution, merely the shaking of the head and muttered disbelief; the complex ones, like unhappy families, are each tragedies in their own special way. Would have been much better had it been the other way - then every tsunami or earthquake would be handled professionally by men in white aprons and yellow batons.

Nothing can quite rubbish the amount of feeling that spouts out of the lachrymal glands of stone-faced men and powdered women when the earth quakes and indulges in postprandial eruptions - indeed they are all minor miracles, what with all the lack of exercise, in decades, of the delicate muscles that have atrophied past their expiry date - but is man so much the centre of his small microcosm that he is all that matters. Silly question that. Of course man is all that matters and whatever happens without man's consent is unacceptable. We will train ourselves to expect certain things like rain in the first week of Wimbledon and a quake every year in the Japanese archipelago but that does not mean we are fine with finding the neighbour's laundry in our basket or water bodies rising at will against our express instructions. We will label them all tragedies and file them in our drawers, wet ourselves in the right places according to the magnitude of the tragedy, console oursleves and others involved directly and indirectly, enquire after the families of friends who might have been forced to take part in the unfolding, take stock of market movements and our weatherbeaten lives, shrug, pray, perform, converse, and act, and so acting, add to our stock of life.

Too much out o'the sun

Summer has been around quite a while now but nothing much done to savour the sun before the Notre Dame winter creeps in. Bound to my work, I haven't had much time to move around except for the odd couple of days off. Tennis has been a welcome respite each day and I have come to consider the two hours of sweat and slow dehydration the highlights of my daily schedule.

I seriously am missing home, Indian movies, cricket and loafing around in the Madras summer with friends. Missing the NatWest Series final hurt and am crying over not being able to watch what promises to be the most competitive Ashes in a long time. Federer though made my day today. Woke up late due to my chronic inability to understand timezones and TV schedules, so had to rub my eyes hard before I could register the statistics of the first 2 sets: 33 winners and 3 unforced errors for Federer. Of course the women's final provided enough entertainment so the men's final could be about class and the distance between the best and the rest in grass-court tennis.

Also watched a couple of movies the last couple of weeks: The War of the Worlds and Anniyan. The War of the Worlds was disappointing to say the least. The movie aside, what is with our portrayals of aliens? I hope alien science fiction writers don't imagine me as being slimy and green and oozing slush in their novels. The other movie was better but somehow Vikram seemed to have overdone all his parts. And of course there was not much in the story line to speak of. Anyways that was perhaps the one break from the monotony of my sad life as a grad student the last couple of weeks. Hope things change soon and I get to do something real and actual before the summer leaves start falling off leading into the next semester.

Off the line musings on online friendships

Man, says the sage, is a social animal and Agent Smith assures us he is a virus. Both ideas seem agreeable and we often see man aspiring towards that characteristic peculiar to a virus, 'immortality in culture'. Another aspect both man and the virus share is the tendency to cluster close together, creating unforeseaable affinities. 'Friends', my friends, is the name of the game, and making and keeping as many as you can is what it is all about.

In my schooldays, friendships were made only in playgrounds and backyards. Sure there was an occassional friend made out of a fellow-sufferer at the dentist's, but the more modern innovation of the penpal was something one in his real senses just frowned at. A friend, by definition, is someone who is there for you, someone you share the details of your life with; and a letter can get only so far in real life unlike in movies. The friend across the seas, a person after your own nature, someone to lean on in times of trouble and the first to rejoice on a happy occassion, was only a mythical beast the lonely had dreamed up. But all this was destined to change with the arrival of the internet and yahoo, among other things. Myth became legend, then history, and finally seeped into everyday life, as messengers carrying friendship-tokens became ubiquitous and smiles and tears alike were simulated and the mythical beast realised in a jumble of wires and machines. And people were hooked.

It was not entirely surprising given the near universal reach of the internet; but what beggars belief is the number of adherents the internet has found in all classes and ages. Kids who can't spell 'connectivity', and grandfathers who obstinately refused to give in to modern innovations like the vacuum cleaner or the washing machine, were alike into it and the net just grew wider and wider. The internet itself is a much huger proposition, but friendship got a new meaning within this context. People found new 'thingies' like the yahoo messenger and hotmail to make friends with and get to speed with others they had lost touch with. And it was a boon for all those who couldn't get to know their neighbours better as it was easy as a click to add another friend.

The latest craze, at least in circles I move in, are the make-a-pal-online sites like orkut, which are exclusively devoted to friend-making. These sites allow people to get to know others and keep tabs on what is happening with one's friends and acquaintances. They also foster in some people a new fever for number-of-friends and promote vicarious relationships where login-name and login-name share intimacies. The trouble, and this without malice aforethought I say, is that this new development weakens as much as it strengthens our friend-making abilities. For an old-timer like me, it is economical to have a few friends to offload my emotional surplus on(and receive that of others), but as the numbers grow bigger, it becomes difficult to maintain and cherish an unseen friend(though I indeed have many valuable friends because of the internet).

It is hard, I say again, not impossible; and often a flesh-and-blood friendship seems more 'real'. This is reflected in the logically sequent occurrence of online friends attempting to meet in real-life and continue from where they left off in the world wide web: a consummation, so to say, of the ritual began online, miles away from each other. Here the friendship-sites play to their strength as facilitators and catalysts to friendship. They function as forums where like-minded people meet and get to know each other - friendship is facilitated as people are encouraged by initial exchanges to meet and understand one another. And then a friendship is supposed to have begun; at least so it says in my ancient handbook.

Where the economics of money and time hinders an actual meeting, of course, these sites are the ultimate sanctuary. They open up vistas that are hidden deep in the mad superstructure of our world and connect people who cannot afford a 'real' friendship. They redefine friendship and make people like me sit up and notice that we inhabit a changing world: a world where the old dog has to learn new tricks. And in learning to adapt ourselves, we learn too that life takes its meaning through change.

Anyways, it is a fun thing and new(read cool). After the bubble burst, something had to come out of it all and I guess this is one direction that it was always predictable the net would take. Let what comes next try to be as successful.

PS : As a technical aside, I have been wondering if these sites actually tend to work towards their own destruction. Promoting the creation of a fully-connected set of friends, the records in the site databases must tend to grow as the square of the number of users if everyone tries to become everyone else's friend. This is only vaguely possible but a super-linear growth in space required to connect everybody seems a distinct possibilty. And I suppose the designers of these sites will have only a linear growth in space with users for reasons of economics, which means there has to come a point in time when there are more records to handle and not enough space. (A friend says space-constraints are no longer critical in the computing world, but I persist, as space and time constraints are interlinked and the scenario I predict is bound to occur as an asymptote with high probability).

Who said only cockroaches are nocturnal?

It is official now: I have become completely nocturnal these days and no joking. There were forebodings of my predilection for the darker half of the diurnal span even in my high-school days; but never has it been so regular nor persistent. It is a rare sun these days that finds me asleep when it rises, or awake when it is at its zenith. And, very often, when I have some work to do in the day, my body-clock adjusts itself so that I revert back to my nightly life as efficiently as possible. A party animal's body I possess maybe, or maybe an ascetic's, but neither shoe fits me anyways. And the best I can hope for is that I possess a certain(unrealized) greatness of character(though most people who know me would discount the possibility), for Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita,

yaa nishaa sarvabhootanaam tasyaam jaagarti samyamee|
yasyaam jaagrati bhootaani saa nishaa pashyatho muneh||

which, in the vulgar tongue, translates to "The sage(who controls his whole being) is awake when it is night to all creatures; and when all creatures are awake, then is it night to the sage who sees(understands all)."

Pretty neat huh! Only I hope I can withstand the pressure that my father says I am burdening my body with, not letting it lead a normal life :-).

The Way I Write

Following on the resolve to blog regularly, I next have to resolve on the style that I will use in the writing of my blogs (as also my general writing style) . This is an important aspect for me as content alone cannot suffice: I have promised myself to learn to use language; as I feel language is as much a process as it is a medium. What I write is important but the way I write it is not much less so: a good deal of time is wasted in writing and reading interesting stuff in an unilluminating manner.

In the course of my writing career, I am bound to explore diverse vistas and I know I oughtn't to prescribe to a uniform style for all occassions. This blog, and the one before it, being in the main reminders and pointers to myself, I have chosen to write in a didactic style, heavy, stilted and reeking of a Milton or a Carlyle ever so often. This style is odious to most but useful in situations where the ordered cadence of a sequence of sentences provides inspiration to the ordering of thoughts in the mind. Where I write about an incident or an amusing anecdote, I will assume a more bantering note designed to evoke participation in the merriment from the reader. Each occassion has as its prime concern a particular emotion or state of mind and my writing should reflect it in the highest degree possible; but in this blog I intend to provide general pointers to myself on the way I will carry my subject through.

I have to write spontaneously and extemporaneously often, as long thought may modify the pregnant impression an incident leaves in my mind - pregnant, for the impression achieves fruition only in expression. The style has to reflect the nature of the impression and convey much of my mood when I felt it. Words, malleable and suggestive in their import, and providing insight by means of their connection to certain phrases and occassions, will afford the reader burrowing into the warren of sentences I write, a certain pleasure, both on account of the industry and achievement of the reader and the use of language to suggest beyond the mere surface of things. Every now and then, even a slip is advisable, and, in hindsight, I will declare my errors to be volitional, and pass on as the brook that babbles on leaving stones unturned on its way to the ocean.

Flowery language has been my besetting sin and I will work on scrupulously avoiding the style that I have used in these last two blog, viz., embellishing little content with much adornment. I will paint on the canvas the virgin impression as I felt it and let the reader make of it what he will, myself paring my fingernails in the background and asserting every now and then an unvoiced assent or dissent at an independent interpretation. I will foist on the reader the burden of drawing conclusions as often as I can, and, even in the conclusions I seem to draw myself, often hide another possibilty. I will use the parchment I write on as a palimpsest, overlaying one idea over another and obscuring in the brightness of a conclusion a hidden and more luminous flame. I will portray but never caricature; illuminate but never delineate; assert but never to justify; and learn more than I venture to illustrate.

In all, I will learn to write so I may write to learn more than I know and achieve a synthesis in my writing of the thoughts, the perceptions and the acts that define my relation to the external world.