Love

Once upon a time I used to consider myself a Love Guru and used to advise people on that matter. Suddenly these days I feel lost. Actually, now that I think of it's not just these days. I should say these months of an year. Esp. September. I know its the month of fall. But what does that have to do with my emotional state. I can remember from as far back as my college days. September used to be the month when I used to feel very lonely. When I used to crave someone's company. Someone's attention. Is there a relation between the month and my emotional state? Is my belief in the astrology well - placed? I don't know anymore.
Anyways, I did not come here today to write about astrological impacts. However, I wanted to pen down my confusion over love. It's started to baffle me. Earlier I used to be sure of my bearings. I used to be sure about who I like and who I don't. It was a simple matter of what I thought. But it doesn't seem the same anymore. Once I was asked : If you would want to define love in one word.. what would it be? And I replied : Alien.
My explanation to this was that Love is an alien feeling. You have no idea what it feels like till you see it. You have no idea what to do with it. And when you are in love you feel out of the world.
It still seems alien to me. But it's somehow become all the more confusing to me. So what exactly is love. If I like someone to the point that I want to spend most of my time with them. Is it love? But then again I like spending time with my friends too. So what's the difference?
If I feel like sharing everything I have with someone is it love? But isn't that just philanthropic.
If someone is in my mind all the time throughout the day. Is it love? Isn't that just infatuation.
I can have so many examples and so many other words. Admiration. Obsession. Liking. This wordplay is confusing me.
I still remember the first time I thought I am in love. I was told that it was just infatuation. And yet I distinctly remember all the madness that came with it.
So I guess I come again to the same questions again and again. What is love? How do you know when you are in love? And how do you know if the other person is in love too?
It's just baffling. Bordering on madness. And then people ask me why everything looks like madness, insanity to me. It's because everything is so baffling to me. Why can't things be simple. Why does everything has to be made an issue of.

Insanity - III

Ever had a feeling of "What am I doing here?". Mostly its the feeling that you get when you get an invite to a meeting which has no concern to you or what you do. Or sometimes when one of your friends has to go out with his girlfriend and drags you along coz he needs company on the way.
These are one off scenarios and I believe common enough that everyone may have experienced.
But ever had the same feeling in general? As in wherever you are. Ever felt what am I doing here?
Ever tried to broaden the scope of "here".
There's this funny nonsense we used to do. In this one person asks questions and the other answers and it goes something like this:
I need water.
It's in the Pitcher
Where's the pitcher. It's in the room
Where's the room. It's in the school
Where's the school. It's in Sector 13
Where's Sec 13. It's in Hisar
Where's Hisar. It's in Haryana
Where's Haryana. It's in India
Where's India. It's in Asia
Where's Asia. In the world
Where's the world? In the water(as everything is surrounded by oceans)

It was silly I know.. But it was fun to see the conversation returning to the same point again and again.
However my point is not the silliness. I wanted to point out how the scope of here is broadened in each step. We are actually referring the water in the pitcher at all times but the scope is widened with each step.
So have u ever felt "What am I doing here?" on a wider scope. I do so a lot.
When I was in Mumbai. I used to question "What am I doing in Mumbai?" Sometime it would be What am I doing in TCS. But based on my tendency to swell the scope everywhere. Each question would soon become What am I doing in this world/universe. And where is here?
Here on a macroscopic level is a minuscule point in the pattern of time and space. So is it for some purpose that my dot coincides with the dot of here at that moment. Or is it just randomness playing with my dot. And similar dots of millions of other people. Is it random that two people who dont know each other earlier, meet in college and fall in love within a short period of time. Is "Love at first sight" a random feature. Or is it purposeful. Was Bill Gates specifically chosen among the babies to grow up and become one of the richest persons in the world. Or was he the target of randomness. Or was it not decided until that specific moment.
People dont tend to fall in love with everyone who surround them. But with a specific person. So is the couple destined or is it a play of randomness. Probability. All these questions storm through my mind. And I have no idea about any of them. I wonder if normal people have such questions. If yes then how do they deal with them. If no then why not. How can they go on in life with so much things that are blanked out in the mind. With so much understanding still lost out somewhere. Ready to be discovered. How? Why? What? That's all I think these days.....

Insanity - II

I believe so many voices - so many thoughts - so many illusions - lucid visions come to me because of books. I have read so many books and still keep on reading that they all make a mess in my brain and cause me to think differently... I guess.
Lot of times I am not so sure whether something I did was in my dreams or in the real world. Or maybe in the world in my brain. Pisceans are actually well known for creating a separate world from their thoughts and living in it. So Am I just another dreamy piscean? But then why do I sometimes feel so lonely? Why do I pine for someone who would be with me at every step?
I was in my second year of college when I first saw the movie - The One - starring Jet Li. The movie had a huge impact on me. Then in my final year I started reading The Wheel Of Time series by Robert Jordan which as per me is one of the best fantasy ever written. It's a class in itself. The movie and the series has one concept in common. The common concept is that of alternate worlds. Of alternate lives. Of different choices that you make. Both are handled differently in the book and movie. But when I think I feel that both are incomplete without the other. I feel that both are fantasy unto themselves. Which is why I propose a merge for the two to myself.
As per the movie - in each alternate universe there is a person that's you. In some it is an expert cook. In some its an expert athlete. In some it may be a beggar. And again in some it may be an assassin. It can be anything and is everything. Here's the connection I make. I believe that knowledge is already inherently stored in our brain and our life is a process of not learning but discovering the knowledge within. When we say we learnt something knew, we actually have discovered something. But have you ever felt that the outcome of something that you are trying for the first time is way beyond your expectations. It may come under any natural/unnatural circumstances. eg. If you go into kitchen and try to prepare a dish for the first time and it urns out to be too good, where did u get the skill from? If u r being chased by a dog and u manage to outrun it where did you get the stamina from? If u start painting/sketching and create a really good image, again where did u get the skill from? All this time I'm talking about part time things we do. Not the things we do professionally.
So my explanation to this phenomenon is that u derive the skill to cook from the "you" in the other dimension who is actually a cook and knows everything well. But that day when u borrowed his skill for just one small moment. The dish he was preparing does not turn out to be good. A one off incident in his life. And that is how u maintain a constant level of skill, stamina, energy, dexterity etc in the entire multitude of universes. Same goes when you outran something. Or suddenly found courage in the face of danger.
But unlike the movie I believe that it is not possible to physically touch the other universes. This part of my theory I pick up from The Wheel Of Time. And my probability theory. One of the mostly debated theological topic is the existence of God. Lot of times people ask me if I believe in God or not. But well.. that may be a topic for another day. So I believe that probability is the law in this world. What choice you make, what will you eat today, whether you would have an accident or not. Everything is ruled by probability. Your actions and probability go hand in hand. Probability for something happening changes with the amount of effort you make towards that. But still probability always has a say in your choices. So my theory is that everytime you make a choice a new universe is created with the other choice. And the strength of the universe is dependent on how strong the probability of that choice was.
There's a famous saying... A man is what he chooses to be. And I believe that to be true. I can look back at my life and see how each choice would have impacted me. I cannot see what would have been the consequences if I would have made another choice. That knowledge is hidden from me and that's for good so that I wouldn't lament. But I do understand that different choices would not have led me here, where I am sitting and writing this blog. When I now look back I see how each choice I made has contributed to me being me. How some of my friends are the result of choices I made years before I even met them.
I believe I am rambling again.. I'll leave it here and continue in my next blog maybe...

Insanity

I am an escapist. I guess... That is probably one of the reasons I am able to find loopholes or counter arguments everywhere and so quickly. Even if they are weird.
So this actually comes from something that happened last Thursday. I was having a lunch with a couple of teammates and as usual a topic came where we started debating things. Now, something that I know about myself is that for most of the topics I can argue from any side. For or Against. So the argument was actually on whether human brain is mapped differently in different individuals or not. And I was arguing against it even when I don't believe that every human carries the same brain. There are examples galore of this phenomenon and most common is autistic people. However this is not a blog about that topic. Rather this is something I have been thinking a lot lately.
Lot of times, I question myself. I question whether I am still sane. And as soon as I start trudging down this track it grows deeper and deeper into a vortex. I still havent found an answer. Maybe I am after all an insane person.
So mostly the question comes after I do something and all that's left of it is a memory. So for eg. I just no returned from an awesome trip to NY. During the return trip I was reading a book on the plane. So when I finally left the book and got hold of my bearing, everything I did in NY was a past memory. But so was the book. And so are a thousand other things. Some real. Some not. But everything having voices and pictures. Like a movie scene.
So I wonder, when people think, do they hear themselves think? But thoughts should not be sound. So why does it feel the same like hearing voices. If no one else does and its only me... Am I not insane?
I wonder that, how, when I read a book I am so immersed into it that I see everything actually happening in front of my eyes. So when I have just read something how is that text converted into pictures that I have actually never seen?? Same goes for dreams. Why do I see something that's not actually there? Am I insane?
It doesn't stop there. A voice pumping ideas and weird theory in my mind. All complete with sound logic. Why do I hear those? Is that again my thoughts.
And why is it that only I think about such things. Why not others?
Why do I always chose the path that has less traffic/crowd?
Why do I tend to behave in a way unusual as compared to others.
And mainly why do I have such extreme moods and swings?
There are so many whys that need answering. So many things still to be discovered. So many things to know about.
Well, am suddenly feeling sleepy. Will continue in next blog maybe.

Memory

And here comes the next in series of my weird theories. So I had just started watching this movie called "Sorority Wars" and within the first five minutes I started thinking. A scene sequence shows the mom of the female lead reminiscing on the stage about her time in the college. Which made me think about how we store memories and recollect them. Being a software engineer I of course looked upto my IT vocab to explain the phenomenon.
So we say that brain stores memories, facts and directs the actions etc. I would call the brain a CPU and maybe in a later blog entry go on about it in more detail but right now just wanted to talk about the memories part. So i started wondering how do we reminisce. We reminisce when we see something. Even if we were not looking for those memories they come back flooding. Objectifying this I would think in database terms that if u are looking for some data a lot of other data that was not needed comes flooding. And with that comes more data and more and more until you just cant handle that much or give attention to something else. This is what we call the train of thought. In IT terms it seems to be a query that continuously runs on the params it finds till it has the CPUs attention. The only way to stop the flood of data is to divert the CPUs attention.
Now as per one of my great teachers', A mind is like a filing cabinet.. Each memory is like a file and if you have too many files the cabinet starts getting cluttered.
When I think the same in IT terms it's like a huge relational database. Rather something like an object oriented relational database. You have objects and you have properties. Objects can be anything or anyone. A person, a picture, a car, a location everything is an object as well as a property. So if you are thinking about a person, all the properties related to the object get loaded into your mind. Birthdate, locations where you met, common persons you know which infact leads you to a memory of the person. Now the memory can either be the latest or it could be the one with the most hits(something which we call "etched in our memory"). With the memory comes more attributes and hence the train of thought continues.
It's something like some of the music sites now offer. You like something and it will look up the genre, artist, album etc and then recommend other songs with similar properties. Similar is the memory structure. Just many times bigger and many times more complex. I don't know what my point of writing the blog was. Just that I thought something and so I put it down. :)

Ram Setu - Decoded

I sometimes just love how wild my train of thought runs. This morning I was listening to the song Dhan Te Nan from the movie "Kaminey". One of the lines in it says "Koi chaal aisi chalo yaar abke samandar bhi pul pe chale, phir tu chale uspe ya mein chalun shehar ho apne pairon tale" listening to it I imagined the sea water flooding over the bridge and two people walking over the water. :P

Anyways from there my mind wandered off to the concept of water-walking and the first instance of people doing that - "The Ram Setu"

And I thought how can people be so naive as to believe that it was a miracle. But then stones floating in water can do that to people. However u also need to keep in mind that Nal and Neel were engineers and engineers do a lot of cool stuff!! :P

Nyways now as they were engineers they are bound to have a good knowledge of physics. And hence would know that if air is trapped within a shell of silica it would look like a stone but would actually be very light and would thus float.

Pumice is one such stone that floats on water. Infact as a recent example, after the explosion of Krakatoa near Indonesia Pumice rafts were seen floating for over upto 20 years. So that resolves the mystery of floating stones. But from where did so much Pumice come? Not sure how many of u know this but the Andaman & Nicobar Islands contain three big ancient volcanoes. One of which is Active even today. And the prime source of pumice is... Yup u guessed it right.. Volcanoes. So during the volcanic eruptions from those volcanoes pumice must've formed and floated to the coast of TN. Lucky for our heroes rt.

Half the mystery is solved. But then there's another rumour that it was the name of Ram that made the stone float. From a layman's perspective if I would've seen that I would go and tell : "They wrote something on the stone and the stone floated!!!" But here's a perfectly reasonable explanation. There were just two engineers who knew the difference between what'll float and what'll not. So how do they make the labourers know which stone to use and which not to use? Simple.. write something on it to differentiate.

And rest as they say was a miracle so big that people today are ready to cut each other's throats for it.

Note: This also explains why the Ram Setu is under water today. Pumice doesn't float forever. :)

The Blind Sheep

I was in four minds for the title of this entry...
1. The Jan Lokpal Bill/Anna Hazare and the hype created
2. Bhedchal
3. Andhon mein Kaana Raja
and 4. The Blind Spectators
and somehow I mixed up everything and came up with the above...

Why u ask? Maybe it's just me.. I have a tendency to look for areas of criticisms in everything... Maybe it's just because I try to think on lines different than what the rest of the world is. Even if the possibility or the reasons are completely alien to this world... Maybe.. I am wrong.. Maybe...
But I would still write.. Coz... This is MY BLOG!!!

I dare you to ask any college goer who's supporting the Jan Lokpal Bill, "What Anna Hazare and his movement is actually standing for??".. And a majority would have the answer that it's against corruption and corrupt politicians.. Ask a How or a Why? And there would be silence or maybe a meaningless retort. Facebook is filled up with news and statuses ad what-not related to this. I log into facebook to see what my friends are upto and I see status messages which tell me that I should support Anna Hazare if I am a true Indian. Are you kidding me.. U want me to stand up for something that shouldn't be there in the first place because I am an Indian.. It's like asking a Vegan to eat meat because he's christian... Whrs the sense??

After trying to ignore this for a couple of days I finally thought "Whatever! If so many people are supporting this.. maybe it's an important thing and finally we, the Indians have got the senses to stand against the govt. for a rightful cause. So maybe.. it's time for me to support instead of just thinking that it's nonsense once again." So I went to the site that describes the bill in salient points. The site that's now been on almost every alternate Indian's profile who's been active on facebook for the last week. What I read there got me thinking on how the Indian youth is like the sheep. You give them some nice sounding reasons and tell that what you are doing is going to benefit India and they will join you. Especially if some of their peers are already doing that. Not because they think it's right. But because you tell them it's right and it's the in-thing. Pick any from the following list: Corruption, Terrorism, Pakistan, Cricket, Bureaucracy, Red Tape, Politicians.. and a lot else. I know you have noticed that I added Cricket in the list too. That's there not because it unites us. That's because that too is a platform where we vent our anger and frustration. Pick the world cup matches and try to see how much we Indians have abused other teams/players. There is a thin line between making fun and abusing. And we are slowly finding it hard to notice that line and frequently cross over. This whole concept is actually exploited a lot by politicians these days. Instead of promising the growth they now depend more and more on the blame game to get votes. And we just like the sheep we are, blindly follow that.

Coming back to the topic of Jan Lokpal Bill. How many of us actually know what is it. It is trying to introduce a Lokpal who has full and complete authority over the politicians of today. It sounds like a good thing because the politicians of today are corrupt and need to be curbed. But it's also giving a full and complete authority to the Lokpal. My bro asked the perfect question after reading this... "Qui custodiet ipsos custodes?" : Who's stopping the Lokpal to become corrupt by the power. The Lokpal would be in a position to manipulate any politician and in turn anything and everything in the country. Would there again be someone above Lokpal?? Or do we believe Lokpal won't be corrupted by the power because "WE, The People Of India" have the right to choose the Lokpal thanks to Anna Hazare now. But another question.. who actually chooses the corrupt politicians into power?? Isn't that us. So isn't the solution to the corrupt politicians actually in the way how we elect them. Instead now we choose to elect someone else to supervise the corrupt politicians once we've chosen the corrupt politicians into power. In my field it's called a Bad Fix.. Not fixing the root cause of the problem but instead adding code that just overrides the problem for some time. Some unforeseen byproducts of having a Lokpal that the so educated and aware youth of India have chosen to ignore are the huge expenses that would accompany the Lokpal Elections. Huge salaries and retirement plans that would need to be provided to the Lokpals so that they can not be swayed for monetary reasons. And of course the security and what not. It would be like a govt. over a govt. In terms of the days of monopoly.. It would be a king of kings.
And my last question... Do we actually need this??

Destiny & Probability

This afternoon I was talking to one of my friends and we were discussing an achievement when he said that it was just plain luck. As usual.. my mind immediately picked up a thread of reasoning that I had started some time ago. It centers on luck. Destiny. And believe it or not.... Probability.

I had read this book by Scott Adams called God's Debris a couple of years ago. The book broached the same point. What we call luck/destiny... is it not just probability playing it's part. One of my favorite arguments in the book happens something like this:

A delivery guy Y delivers a box to the person X. X starts the argument saying that the box has delivered the person. Y believes that it's the opposite. He's the delivery guy so he delivered the box. And it's revealed that the box was posted by X himself to his own address. The purpose of the box was to make the delivery guy come to his home. So the question hangs.... Who delivered whom?

Anyways coming back to the intertwining of probability and destiny. A Hindu holy scripture says "Karm kar. Phal ki iccha mat kar" Meaning that the duty of a person is to do the work assigned to him in the best way possible. But the person should not expect the outcome. The outcome may or may not be in the person's favor. Doesn't the second part sounds like probability. But then you ask.. why even work if the outcome is not in our hands. Well.. Probability is strange. But being a part of mathematics. Still follows some rules. Whatever work a person puts in goes towards improving the odds of the result being in the person's favor. But probability being probability sometimes it's the less probable thing that happens.

I wanted to talk a lot in this blog. About how probability has worked for me. But well.. maybe later.

Water and Me

So this Saturday when I woke up after a 16 hour Sleepathon... it had just stopped raining outside... The first thing I did was tp pick up my Cam and run to my window. I knew I'll find water droplets still hanging on the tree outside my window. I clicked around 5-6 photos with various zooms and shutter speeds. As soon as I was done I transferred them to my lappy to have a look at them without wasting any minute.

And here's one that I captured...

Now why am I posting only this.. you ask?
Well... looking at this pic elicited a thought chain that has been in my mind from quite some time.
Which is... Are we connected with the basic elements in different mythologies/fantasies in some way. The elements that I'm talking about, if you don't know, are: Earth, Water, Fire and Air. Some myths/fantasies add Spirit as a fifth element.

Not sure how many people would know or believe this... But I am very much into zodiacs/astrology/myths and their relation to the us, the humans. The year 2010 has infact been very helpful to me in this context. Some wud tell me that it's just a perspective or my way of looking at things and may not be completely true... But well... it's my blog.. so my view rules. :D

So again.. from the past some time it has been my belief that I have a relation to water. I am somehow connected to it. My being a piscean just kind of confirms the relation. Pisces is the only zodiac sign amongst all 12 that is truely and completely water. The other water signs namely cancer , scorpio and aquarius are half water. Cancer and Scorpio are primarily water but carry Fire and Earth with them while Aquarius is primarily Air.

Coming back from the detour. So 2010 confirmed that I feel a lot better if I have a natural source of water to visit often. In absence of natural source, lot of times a shower does the trick. In Hyderabad it was lakes, Mumbai it was the sea that I loved. Rain has been a common factor in both the cities. Now here in Louisville it's the river Ohio which my office window looks upon.

But what does this have to do with the pic you ask? Yes.. I detoured... So coming back from my memories into today's world.

When I looked in the pic above I saw the water droplets glowing like beads of light. And my brain took a train(oh! that rhymes... Cool!!!) to the glow within someone's heart. And then I thought that the glow in the water droplets is not coming from themselves. But they try their best to keep the glow. Give them just a ray of light... and they'll start glowing. Isn't the heart same. Give it just one ray of hope, one ray of something good. And it catches onto it with all it's strength.

Going back to other forms of water. The flowing water represents the life. A lifeline of a river... is also the lifeline of a human.
Starts in the mountains rushing down, with so much energy.. Isn't childhood the same? Trying to cut down the rocks to carve a new path.. Some are successful in that and some aren't... Beating against each rock that is in the path... Learning something from each rock.. each hurdle...
the river reaches the plains... The major portion of a rivers lifeline. The working age. Working.. sometimes giving.. sometimes gathering... sometimes flooding with emotions.. sometimes feeling emptied of everything.... The ups that are more and more difficult to climb with each passing hurdle... The downs which give just that little boost that makes it going on. Sometimes merging with other's lives creating a new one... Others just continuing alone.. making its own path...
the river reaches the last stage... the deltas... or the old age. After losing all it's energy it just wants to reach and merge with the sea. But still there was a lot of work it did during the plains. And it's time it deposits the good work done in the form of sediments, minerals before it drains whatever's left of it into the sea and dies....

The calm waters represent stagnancy in life, the whirlpools are the emotional vortexes that we find ourselves in a lot of times.

Rain.. isn't it a form of giving.. Without condition... Love... which infact if goes overboard turns into obsession and is as dangerous as the rain that pours down more water than is needed by earth and brings floods. Some areas.. arid areas desiring rains desperately while others have it in abundance....

For now I think I'll stop here. Lots of threads were running in my head while writing this. On zodiacs, on elements, on life.. Hope some of the above does make sense to you....