Monday, February 27, 2012
The Beginnings & The Endings
In few of my earlier blogs, I've outlined my questions regarding the futility of life. This one sentence seems to outline that, highlights it and then tries to answer some of the questions. So what am I thinking? Here's what :
The first and foremost meaning that comes across is the simple fact that nothing stays forever. Technology gets outdated and replaced. Colors fade, sounds dissipate, flowers wither. Materials wear out. People and animals die. Everything in this universe is created only in order to be destroyed. This is also the essence of many a holy scriptures in Hinduism and especially so of the Bhagvad Gita. Most of the ancient religions worshipped a trinity. In Hinduism it was Brahma, Vishnu & Mahesh. Creator, Preserver and Destroyer. Christianity has the Father, the son and the holy spirit. Greeks had Zeus, Poseidon and Hades. Norse had Odin, Thor and Hel. Egyptians had : Ra, Isis and Osiris. Ever wondered why? Because on a timeline everything can be divided into three parts: Before existence, Existence and After Destruction. In other words.. Birth, Life & Death. or in the above context: Beginning, Continuation & an End.
Also, all the religions agree that the trinity is not actually trinity but one power that's above everything else and the trinity in itself and as a whole represents that power. What is that power? Or what is it referring to. Maybe it refers to the complete cycle of Beginning to End. Maybe it refers to what's driving the cycle.
Anyways.. so now that we've established that everything will come to an end someday or other. Isn't whatever u do futile on a larger scale. for eg. Whether I eat meat or become a vegetarian.. how does it affect anything? The earth will still go around the sun.Whether I have a job or not impacts only my life and to some extent of my dependents. Whether Coca Cola increases it's revenue from $35 bn or goes in loss this year. After about a hundred or thousand years nothing will matter. And similarly larger events will still fade from the minds over a large enough period of time. So why are we doing whatever we are doing?
Well.. I've argued enough on one meaning for now.. And am feeling sleepy.. Hopefully I'll write more as I still haven't started on the futility and yet necessity of human relations.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Love
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.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Insanity - III
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.....
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Insanity - II
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...
Monday, September 5, 2011
Insanity
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.
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Memory
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. :)
Friday, August 5, 2011
Ram Setu - Decoded
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. :)
