..that we sometimes choose not to

Meaning-making is an artisinal activity.

I jumped off a plane earlier this week. From 15000 feet. Had a freefall of about 60 seconds and then a few minutes of flight under the canopy. It was good, had a few moments of intense experience, including that of fear and exhilaration, but for the most part it seemed a pretty normal affair. I wasn't nervous or initimated before, nor stunned or deeply moved after. The same happened with the bungy jump and rafting in a river with apparently grade 4 rapids. Not that I had spectacularly high expectations nor an anticipation for epiphanies before signing up. After years and years of seeking life-transforming enlightenment from every unusual activity, over the last couple of years I've stopped worrying about that and started enjoying activies for their immediate, visceral pleasures. But that feeling of, if not quite meh then, only naice prompted me to question my motives for signing up for activities like these, and the marathon and the upcoming Spartan Beast. After a couple of days of mind-wrangling, I arrived at a seemingly sensible conclusion.

For starters, at this point I'm not bothered by the gap between what people portray on social media and the reality of experience itself- that is zameen aasmaan ka faraq. It is not always that the poster or the responder wants to exagerrate or embellish but I think 1. instagram, among others, is a spectacularly unsuitable medium for genuine human connection and communication, and 2. we have so corrupted our vocabulary and cultural milieu by calling many, many things awesome or incredible or amazing that in some perverse way our lives have become stunted and incapable of seeking and identifying the truly magnificent. Not that that wasn't always the case with language anyway- the gaps between what people truly felt (if it could even be stored and accessed accurately), how they communicated (both the conscious and inevitable corruptions) and how the receiver understood it (with their biases and imaginative vasanas)- but in a sense modern social media, the way we publish and consume with a proclivity for touched up images and a certain type of YOLO captions, seems to have fucked up our Bullshit Detection apparatus. Thankfully, I also think we are adaptive as individuals, and in groups, and we've managed to upend The Algorithm's hold on us by creating tools, both intellectual and social, to help us cope and thrive in those limited spaces.

Anyway, back to the point. There are atleast two aspects to my lacklustre responses. The good part is that we've advanced so far as a society that activities as mind-boggling as jumping off a plane from 15000 feet have become so commonplace that millions of people have done it. There is ofcourse the immense advances in science and engineering that have made the activity safe and predictable. But there are also advances in economics, management and philosophy, that have led me to trust absolute strangers with my life in doing such risky acts. This normalisation is not to be taken lightly. For the good and the bad, we are in many ways a hive mind. The standardisation of protocols across the globalised world, that initially made trade, then communication, now finally movement of people so seamless, interoperable, has led us to a place where people are able to plug and play their skills, ways of communication, and money to make things happen cheaply, efficiently and safely. Over the last few years of readings and listenings, I've come to appreciate and embrace trade. 

Now, to the deeper concern- If even jumping off a plane won't excite my jaded sensory, emotional, intellectual and, is this the only word?, spiritual facets, what will? Again, let me clarify. Its not that it wasn't fun or exciting, especially the bungy because there I more or less had to take the plunge myself. Its that the bang for the buck, if even that's the right way to approach it, was far lesser than what I'd been led to believe from other peoples' narratives and images. Yes, it is a problem with my expectations and seekings in life but I suspect the same is true for many other people. That led me to question why I travel and sign-up for activities like these and seek art, food and other experiences. It is undeniable that atleast one part of it is motivated by public-facing narrative-making: for some as images on instagram, for me as ramblings on this blog. What Budugu recently referred to as a Social Media Resume. That is the performative aspect. But I think there is also this attempt at meaning-making and transcendence that is provided short shrift by a certain exaltation of these activities. I don't think our lives, atleast my life and my activities, will somehow make more sense by embracing what advertising, both the industry as well as people regurgitating those tropes, is constantly exhorting me to. I was clear about it with respect to buying a house, a luxury car, starting a family etc. Now I'm beginning to think the same applies, if only to a lesser extent, to the experience-industry. It is a difference only in order not in kind. Again, I'm forced to repeat, its not that this wasn't a great holiday or I didn't have a great time. Its that when it comes to finding whatever it is that I'm seeking most intensely (In typical millennial fashion, I don't know what it is but hope to recognise it when I find it), this is not the way to go about it. Investigating that a bit further, I think that at some point these things held something more than just pretty pictures and simplistic tropes but they've been sucked dry because of commodification.

This connects with my earlier point. If things are cheap, easily available and reliable because of commodification, then they also lose any semblance of personality, serendipity and mystery because of the same process. It is not a bemoaning as much as observation. Maybe it is not the smooth processing as much a residual desire for something magical that is the culprit here. Yet, if I do want feel something rawer, unprocessed, as-yet-uncommodified, then the onus is on me to leave the comfortable contours of the socially acceptable and celebrated (atleast my social-circlely lauded), and move into the deeper, unmarked waters. Ofcourse, it could end up horribly wrong (was my stumbling upon Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild in a Queenstown bookshop yesterday a beacon or an omen?) but that is the nature of that journey. 

In an appearance on Infinite Loops, Venkat Rao said that all the lamentation about the loss of meaning and a desperation for spiritual succour that people feel and that sends them to shrinks and gurus is, for the most part, a failure of nerve. To truly walk the uncharted path, one must be willing to be brave, to be wrong, to be reviled. That is where truly radical acts and new narratives come from. Ofcourse its worth questioning why I want to end up in places where no one has before. While there is definitely signalling, there is also the prospect of finding something valuable. For the most part, it is about touching something unsterilised, unpolluted, something firsthand rather than the normal way where I'm doused in people's opinions and judgements before even approaching the activity at hand, where I'm not walking in with my head, to use Sheldon Cooper's memorable phrase, preblown. 

Maybe it is a problem that only I have and everyone else is able to intuitively solve or mitigate it; Although I don't think other people don't see what I'm trying to get at here- it does seem like a pervasive feature of our culture. Be that as it may, I'm coming to the realisation that making sense of my life, finding clarity for my actions in an attempt at self-fulfillment, is a highly artisanal act. All the conveniences and mechanised productions that society has to offer will not solve that problem. I do think it is a good for society as a whole, we're better off as a species after every discovery, but as an individual, I'm forced even more to confront the interchangabiltiy of my being in the whole. Sometime ago, I said only half-knowingly that, "We are defined not by what we do but by what we resist". Rationality is a wonderful thing but by nature it can be transferred into a machine. It is irrationality, my particular kind of irrationality, that I have to embrace to remain an individual.

will in the world1

There is a beautiful, beguiling and somewhat dissatisfying line in అలా మొదలైంది when, on being asked how he'd know that he's met his soulmate, the mother tells the son- "నువ్వు డిసైడ్ అయినప్పుడు". కానీ డిసైడ్ అయ్యెదే ఎలా?, not just about the topic at hand but about anything at all. Its a question that's haunted me for over two decades and I've only recently managed to tame it though I don't know if that's a sign of maturity or resignation. 

The surprise Blue Mountains trip gave me enough focused meandering² time to think about and reach a conclusion about this whole question of what to do with one's life - atleast for the time being. The crux of the problem has been the taekwondo between everyday/ hour for itself vs embarking on (and more importantly, finishing) long-term projects. My brain has gotten quite good at finding good rationale for the other when I'm in one mode forcing me to abandon, and abandon again ad infinitum³. I won't get into elaborating on that tussle because 1. its exhausting to think about and, 2. isn't that all I've done across the lifetime of this blog?

The trigger for this phase transition has been the conversation I had with Sravani a couple of weeks ago about wanting to abandon my marathon plans because it was getting tough/ I wasn't making much progress/ well, why should I stick to something I decided many months ago when my present, current, in-your-face immediate self tells me to do something else. Instead of confronting my emotions that have to do with the shame and guilt of abandoning another thing, she coolly and logically pointed at something I somehow never saw- Living everyday for itself, as if it were your last, probably sounds nice and adventurous but it is neither true nor rational. For all days of your life there has been a tomorrow where you've had to pick up from the day before. So to not embark on long-term projects with a Hey, Who Knows attitude is going to leave you worse off on way more days than you'd like. It was so brutal and refreshing in that jump-into-cold-water fashion that I couldn't refute it. I probably would've had a easy escape response to emotional or metaphysical objections but had none for that dose of rationality. Damn, I'd been stumped on my home ground.

The other important bit has been hovering around me for about a year now, something I'd articulated with a lot of pain and struggle in థియరీ & ప్రాక్టీస్ - Theory & Practice, and that I grokked into yesterday while our drive back. It was a beautiful day and I've always sneered at people who obsessively take photos/ videos of their trips but thanks to the day night/ day night project I was less reluctant to start shooting. Which is when a weird truth hit me: that I was more focused on the road and the surroundings when I was looking through a phone screen than when I was allowing it to enter unmediated. So the entire notion of purer (for which I don't have an unvague definition) being better went out the window. I see atleast 2 reasons for that:

1. Like Gillian Flynn puts it in Gone Girl regarding those of us who grew up on tv, that is in essence is our reality and the real-reality only exists to provide raw material to tv/ internet/ other media. I see quite a great deal of truth in this statement. We are shaped and tuned by technologies we use and the more we use something, the more natural that feels⁴.

2. On the other hand, an explanation I was reading on Reddit yesterday seems plausible too- That reality is both too vast and fairly uniform across large chunks of time so when its compressed it gets more intense and so in our heads, when viewed through other media and not just our sense organs, gives more bang for the buck- seems more memorable and deeper. This explanation presupposes that the mind⁵ indeed resembles a computer and so the better the algorithm, the more space and time-efficient the processing and so the better the end result.

That's somewhat of a digression. What I felt at the moment though was that not only does it seem incredibly hard (impossible?) to not curate but also seems illogical to avoid curation⁶, if not obsessively then atleast semi-regularly. I don't know if we are capable of (or even if its desirable) collecting all sights and sounds and ideas and emotions objectively that we can at some later point use to create/ curate our artwork. The only way to go about it is to constantly keep creating (in this sense, theorising) and keep testing those hypothesis. Art is what happens as an effect, both intended and serendipituous, of the imposition of the will on the world⁷.

¹From Stephen Greenblatt's book which I haven't read yet but who's brilliant Tanner Lecture I highly recommend

²From the tagline of Raghuveer Kovuru's short-lived Stream magazine

³It's nothing many people before me haven't grappled with but I doubt if many have communicated it as charmingly and exasperatingly as Geoff Dyer

⁴The Convivial Society, Amusing Ourselves to Death, Capitalist Realism et al

⁵Can I use it interchangably with brain?

⁶"అసలు నరేటివ్ అంటేనే ఇంపొసిషన్. ఏం ఇంపోస్ చేయాలి అని నిర్ణయించేది రచయిత విజ్ఞత. కానీ నా గొడవంతా ఆ నిర్ణయం తీసుకోకుండా ఎలా తప్పించుకోవాలని."

⁷Just to be clear to myself this post right here isn't art. It is an unspooling of thoughts with minor editorial changes. Art is something else, something that's more about the world than about me. I think its also a skill I should develop- looking out as much as I look in.

బ్రతకటానికి బ్రతకటం

"Evolution is the greatest idea anyone has ever had" -Daniel C. Dennett

Generally the phrase "living for living's sake" is used in a rather derogatory tone, as if to say that a being's life purpose must be greater than "just living".

I've been reading a bit about evolution lately: KL Evans' Charlie Kaufman, Screenwriter (surprisingly fecund in more ways than one), half of Jerry A. Coyne's Why Evolution is True (accessible and fascinating) and am a quarter way through James Suzman's Work (astounding both in its intellectual scope and TIL moments) and a WhatsApp forward with this info¹. And it’s beginning to dawn on me that the imposition of particular ways of living to transcend over 'basic living' is, in the world I live in, rather misplaced.

I think I understand what people mean when they say 'just living'. In that connotation, it means to live to eat, sleep, procreate and stay alive as long as you can. The 'quality of life' doesn't matter. And I think I agree with it, especially having rallied against that kind of unremarkable living for years now. But I think that disdain comes from, atleast from me, being unable to grasp the giant strides humanity, the species, has taken over the past few millennia where people have exponentially gained more comfort and security that now they spend most of their day worrying about how to live their lives. It's an astounding achievement to so easily overlook.

If I'd been born, say, 10,000 years ago, a large chunk of my day, and consequently life, would've been spent in extremely trying circumstances. Staying alive and passing my genes on would have been the biggest achievement. You know, 'basic living'. And now such a life is frowned upon by many². Now we (have to) work on improving our lives and creating/ doing something of value for other beings. This could be something as primitive as gaining social status to something more sophisticated (there’s my value judgement) as advancing knowledge. There is definitely a qualitative difference between the two but by their design of being driven by the ends, they're similar.

In the chapter on fire, James Suzman reasons that once we'd learnt to tame fire, we could eat a larger variety of foods (thereby decreasing food-gathering time), did not have to spend nights worrying about carnivorous animals and spent nights gathered around a crackling fire developing social bonds and subsequently telling stories; We had more leisure. And yet, using Levi-Strauss' structural model, he argues that that, paradoxically, led to the creation of the concept of work. The earliest humans till then were purely biologically driven. Once they found it easy to find food, stay securely and procreate fairly easily, they realised that they were bored. They had time in their hands with nothing to do. And that probably led to the creation and evolution of culture, which then started an accelerated feedback loop³ where it became easier and easier to fulfill life's basic obligations and spend time doing more ‘fun’ stuff, and we had more and more time to fill. Ergo, you have art, and science, and all those wonderful things. And also consumerism and mid-life crises.

These ideas in my mind then struck bonds with what I'd read a few months ago: a part of Erich Fromm's Man in the age of Capitalist Society (meta-Social Studies if you will) and a brief introduction to Alistair MacIntyre's narrative being (from Michael Sandel's terrific, and very useful, Justice). And then it dawned on me, hopefully rightly, that once we got past physical compulsions, as a society we started creating subtler needs and aspirations for our members⁴. Both our physical, mental and spiritual environments took shape to find the least-resistant way for life to move forward⁵.

This is a non-teleological view of the universe which brings me to the starting point of this post- The point, in as much as there is, of life is to live. It's a question I've been grappling with for years and even though I've had similar epiphanies in the past, and by all evidence this will be short-lived as well, it seems both ludicrous to state it but also emancipating.

Having said all this, I must also say that I believe that all lives are not equal. I don't say this from a Social Darwinist stance but what I learnt from Sandel's chapters on Kant. I think Kant's articulation of, among other things, freedom is absolutely terrific. And because I found Sandel's example so accessible, I'll just use that:

Imagine you are walking on the road on a very hot afternoon. You are sweaty and tired when you come across a hoarding for Coka-Cola with splashy colours and a photograph of a really enticing cold bottle. You start salivating. Now, you could just walk across the street to a store and buy it. Every part of your body is craving for it. As you start to make your way, a small voice pops up in your head that reminds you that its not at all good for your health and that maybe you should drink water. You resist that thought. It becomes louder. You tell it that it's only this one time, it should be fine. It tells you that you'll feel worse once the hit wears off. You tell it to bugger off, you are free to do what you want and if you want to drink a cola, you will drink a cola.

Now, you might think that you are making a choice, expressing your freedom. But in reality, you are slave to your 'lower' biological urges and have been manipulated by a well-designed advertisement. On the other hand, when you resist that impulse, inspite of the fact that you are seemingly bound a 'virtuous' cause, you are experiencing a higher freedom. He makes the distinction between those two freedoms as heteronomy (following a more desire-driven impulse) vs autonomy (a more objective, reason-guided calling).

I don't generally end with advice but I'm compelled to give in case someone, especially a later version of me,  finds it useful:

1. Environments are important. Structures are stunningly useful and once instated can be hard to budge. (“We shape our buildings thereafter they shape us” -Winston Churchill) That’s why it’s so important to design our environment to (I don’t want to use the word optimise) give as much support as possible for our lives to blossom. Yes, there's a lot to unpack in that statement and I don't want to get into an argument about it now, but as a heuristic, its important to remember that our environments have a much bigger impact on our lives than we like to think. But are they deterministic? I don't think so, I think we still have 'elbow room'.
   
2. As you grow older, the plasticity of your brain decreases and you become more set in your ways. So old people literally have a hard time changing their ways. I don't know what I can do about it except try to keep it at bay for as long as possible. Apparently, as you grow older, your world narrows down because your brain makes the choice to protect your body⁶. Which is why being fit is so important.
   

The 'rightest' way to live is to keep finding what makes you feel deeply alive, I have a few broad markers for identifying that state but a lot of the knowledge is also experiential, and act accordingly. Admittedly, I'm a beginner student of evolution but in many ways, it has created more wonder and clarity within me than the bit of religious searching I've done over the years. 

--

I actually wrote most of this piece about a week ago but sat on it because I felt what came out was valuable and it would be best if I could 'work' on it further to shape it into a better form. A lot of thinking has happened this week (specifically around a startup idea, what I want to do with my life, and how do I work) and I think I'm not a very calculative/ rational person when it comes to living. The more I try to shape my life, bring it to order to improve it, the more I fail. I could be lazy, incompetent, undisciplined, and not as intelligent as I like to believe I am, but I find joy in reading and writing in this sort of messy way. I seek to find processes so that I can tap this 'joy of work' at will but it creates more anxiety than I like.

Bottomline, I don't really know what's the right thing to do. Thankfully, I seem to atleast identify some of the moments when I'm feeling really alive. Maybe life is like that, islands of joy in a sea of ennui, confusion, anxiety. Is it wrong/ right to want joy all the time?

¹ A few other resources that don't specifically deal with Biological/ Cultural Evolution also helped: Vinay Sitapati's Jugalbandi (a ripping yarn with many insights), Amit Varma's conversation with Krish Ashok (my tongue was salivating but not more than my mind), C Thi Ngyuen's Agency as Art

² Reminds me of Inkoroju vellipoindu from Amaravathi Kathalu and Bangaru Murugu. They 'simply lived' without worrying too much about the purpose of their lives

³ The bit on brain plasticity was a marvel. Unlike most other creatures which evolved to thrive in a certain environment, we learned to learn and so can adapt to/ dominate many environments quite easily

⁴ I don't know if we came up with it as much as life evolved in those ways. Like Yuval Noah Harari's pithy quote says, 'We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us.'

⁵ At this point I have a non-teleological view of the universe

⁶ I got this nugget from this absolutely terrific Airbnb experience that Anindo suggested

P.S- I should probably post the stuff I wrote as part of my BWW workshop. It seems ridiculous to 'hold' onto them to unleash more 'value' from them later. When did I become so transactional?

P.P.S- Maybe I won't become anything more than an occasional blogger? Maybe I don't have it in me to be a successful writer. Why is that so bad? Why am I so driven by that image of myself? Because I live in a society that tells me to use the talent I have, improve it via hard work and achieve success (material wealth, social recognition, attributable impact on society etc.)? Maybe that's not such a bad idea, but is it a particularly good one?

writing this post feels so good

Mary Cooper: Sweetheart, are you sick? 

Sheldon: I hope so, because if this is well, life isn’t worth living. 

-The Big Bang Theory 

 

I hope I'm having a mid-life crisis. Otherwise, there is no reason for me to mope around half-heartedly. I'm so bored, and I use that word fully understanding the privileged life I'm living. I spent years running a process in the back of my head that sought to find out anything more to life than its material aspects. Now, I just want to engage deeply with what's here and now.

 

I find it sometimes difficult to teach in an Art dept. in a research university. The disciplinary epistemology is, unsurprisingly, relentlessly Idealist, anti-intellectual, and theological, wrapped in the American presumption that self-actualization is the point of everything. 

-Benjamin H Bratton on Twitter

 

What is a good life? మంచిగ బతుకుడంటేంది? అదేదో లాబ్ల టెస్ట్ చేసి ఒక ఫార్ములా కనుక్కున్నంక దాన్ని అప్లై చేసుడు కాదు అనిపిస్తుంది ఈ మధ్య. I read a while ago that part of the problem with Humanities over the past few decades has been its reformulation as Social "Sciences". And as much as the practitioners can learn something from the Scientific approach, a different modality is required to assess the situations ((I have a problem using the word, er, problem when talking about many real-life events/ situations; Because they're not problems to be solved but happenings to see, understand, dance with, learn from etc.) it deals with. 

Anyway, back to my immediate situation. 

I don't know how many of you think about "How to live?", but I do; a lot. It's another matter that most of it is either short-lived or confined to the space within but I relish having conversations with, and around, that question. I did and, fortunately, still do. Because without that question being the central focus of my life, and it doesn't have to be like a formal problem that I need to solve but more like a guiding light, I don't think I'm doing much justice to being human (though it would be hubristic of me to assume that other types of being don't/ can't do it).

 

I want to stop hedging everything I do. I'm so risk averse that it inevitably pushes me into the 'mainstream' route despite knowing other options. It is evident in the way I speak/ write¹;, in how I deal with taking a stand, in how I take life decisions. I refuse to fully embrace my gut instinct. That quality in itself is not probably a bad thing, its better to be skeptical about my own claims to knowledge and clarity, but I've taken the game to the other extreme where I just follow what others insist on, probably for a good reason, probably not, and then whine about it later. I don't want to come out on the losing side. And its bizarre because I consciously refrain from framing life in those terms. 

 

Lose against who? Because I don't mind 'losing' in material terms as long as I make experiential/  narrative gains. I think there are two opponents:

    1. Posterity- This is a big deal for me. I don't want to grow old and looking back realise than I'd taken the wrong turn somewhere and ended up far from where I ought to have been. This presupposes the fact that our lives are teleological and that there's one correct way in which I can achieve self-actualization. Where I can transcend all doubt and regret. Even I know with some certainty that this is ludicrous. I'm always going to have regrets (which in itself is a function of my present state of mind than past events). And if not, and if the universe has a purpose for me, I needn't worry about taking the wrong turn because I will eventually be led to light. And anyway, its ridiculously hard to second guess the 'right' thing to do going forward not partly because right and wrong are posterior labels.

    2. Audience- "लोग क्या कहेंगे?" I have no idea who these bloody people are or why I want to impress them. Sravani is convinced I perform to an imaginary gallery inside my head and I think she maybe right. I'm always performing, giving imaginary interviews, humbly deflecting compliments, cherry-picking anecdotes to fill New Yorker type profiles. And it is this audience I'm most afraid of disappointing². This feeling probably comes from growing up with a sense of entitlement and while that may have given my more than a little intellectual confidence, it has also led me to believe that, and there's no unarrogant way to put this, I'm built for greater things than most people. Although, I don't seem to have the necessary ingredients needed to accomplish that.

Thus far we've covered the personal angle. Now, to a more social view.

I understand that we need first principles to guide us into living the good life. But I also know principles come from experience, are not sacred, and might sometimes have to be broken to do the right thing. If they are broken, we call the person lacking integrity and doing arbitrary things as a matter of convenience or malice. If they are not broken and things move downwards, we say the person lacks imagination and courage to go beyond prescription and do the right thing. This is as much true for running a constituency as much as its true for following a certain social script you get handed over to you for being born in a certain place at a certain time. 

Again in The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon talks about Münchhausen's Trilemma:

 

This is a classic example of Münchhausen's Trilemma: either the reason is predicated on a series of sub-reasons, leading to an infinite regression; or it tracks back to arbitrary axiomatic statements; or it's ultimately circular: i.e., I'm moving out because I'm moving out. 

-Sheldon Cooper

This is the problem with searching for prescriptions for How to Live. Because I've lost belief in the sacred, I can't believe in something for its own sake. But the moment it becomes more prosaic, it loses its sheen, and thereby, its power. Either way, I don't get the simplistic, one-size-fits-all mantra for life. To claim individual sovereignty is to strike a (Faustian?) bargain to carry the load of my actions and their outcomes. And yet, I also know that's not entirely feasibly, not just for reasons of practicality but also because we now see that the world is complexly interwoven and not only can we not really ascertain the outcomes of our actions but also that we're too powerless in the larger scale of things³.

I've meandered a bit here but its such a relief to be able to write, even if its just a bunch of convoluted thoughts. I want to meet interesting people, see different places and lifestyles, read gorgeous writing, do something meaningful; And document my experiences. I've come to the conclusion that there's no permanent panacea for dissatisfaction and confusion, and maybe that's not a bad thing, but in as much as I can navigate the world to increase a few aspects of being, I'd really like to work on it.

God, reading this post, I'm so thankful and relieved at being able to blog this. I'm probably never going to be a 'great' writer, and I don't know if I want to be, but as long as I can blog, regularly and honestly with atleast a modicum of grace, I don't want to ask for more.

¹ The fact my writing is so obfuscatory is because of my personality. (We could discuss later how the mask reveals more than it'd like to) 

    1. Because I don't want to 'tamper' with the high-quality thought process that's unspooling, I don't like to work on it. Maybe a part of it has also got to do with the fact that staring at it head on only reflects my incompetence and breaks the delusion of profound truth. 

    2. Because making a statement means being open to be held accountable to it later and though I make a point of saying I'm not afraid to be wrong, maybe I am. Or maybe its just intellectual honesty. Because only my doubt is experiential, most clarity seems borrowed and temporary.

In his poetic Physics in Seven Brief Lessons, Carlo Rovelli exalts doubt. I hope he knows how insidious it can be. And I also hope my doubt is more intellectual honesty than just cowardice and/ or laziness.

² Truth be told I'm also afraid of disappointing/ confronting many real people but in that case, atleast occasionally, my rebellious streak breaks out.

³ Could that be one of the reasons for the rise of spiritual gurus advocating individual action as the highest calling?

On growing up

I'm beginning to understand why it's so hard to grow up. Growing up means taking responsibility for your actions. Its about thinking through before you act and then standing your ground no matter what the consequences. And that's tough. Like DFW said in that convocation speech, its way easier to cede control to your subconscious persona and act on your default mode. It takes way more conscious effort, at every juncture in your life, to mould yourself and your life into something that is built on a foundation of principles. For all that's wrong with the universe, you have infinite control to change it, ever so slightly, into a world you want to inhabit. But that'd mean admitting you have free will, that you're not just a amalgamation of zillions of self-interested microorganisms. That you as an entity have power over your id, your fate, the gods. And I'm not sure if we can ever convince ourselves if we have freewill. Because not only is it easier to say we don't, but it also makes more sense. If you were born as a different person, at a different place, at a different time, and maybe in a different universe, wouldn't your principles and ideals be different. Then, doesn't it mean that the morals and virtues that you want to uphold are plain arbitrary? On the other hand, I could argue that since I was born here and now, and see some qualities and actions as worthy of honour and respect, I need to maintain them to be a better man myself.

Beneath all the layers of public guises and self-deceits lies a man who wants to be good. A strong man. An honest man. A man with integrity. A good man. The Chuck Lanes and Eddard Starks and James Donavans and Rahul Dravids are so idealized because they stand for something they believe in and do not let go even when a storms lashing at them. I also want to add Ivan Locke to that list. Yes, Tyrion is way more interesting but at the end of the day, he's a man who doesn't respect himself. He probably admires his own intelligence and is fond of his quick wit but would he trust Tyrion if he was somebody else? As much as I tell myself that I'm ruled by a power beyond my control, call it the subconscious or fate or just sheer bloody randomness, there's a part inside that refuses to believe it. That mocks me saying its an excuse I'm making to get away being half-good.

As much as I keep saying I don't know, I actually do at some level. Saying I don't know is liberating, it gives us access to do things our better selves warn us against. Saying I don't care, is in its own way, freeing as well. It protects us from heartbreak and failure. In a culture where insouciance is celebrated and the passionate are taken for fools, which come to think of it might not be such a bad idea considering the kind of idiots who are most vocal, it is indeed a tough task to be righteous ( as far as you're concerned atleast ) all the time. From what I've divined about the 1950s America from the movies I've seen, young men were taught to be loyal, brave, patriotic and to keep a check on their emotions. In a word, to be men of duty. And that is more or less what the Art of Manliness advocates. Undoubtedly, it is a romantic notion of what a man should be but how can we continue living without working towards becoming something that we love and cherish. From the Prahaar-infused warrior-heroism imaginations of childhood, to the Roark-esque ideal of purely rational individualism, to the late teen dreams of living the writerly high life a la Garcia Marquez, to the recent Lebowski justified mixture of hedonism and indifference, the idea of who I want to be has kept changing. And just because I know it will change sometime in the future, it's not an excuse enough to not think and understand what I want to be now, from this point in life. And the answer, unequivocally, is to be a good man. A family man. A man of the society. A man committed and responsible. A man who can be entrusted with important tasks. A man who thinks before he says and sticks to his word. A man doing the best he can no matter what the circumstances. From a passionate man to a prudent man. Is it a compromise? It could be argued it is. But all of us, at most times, are compromising. If being a certain way because that's expected by the people who love you and who you love is a compromise, I guess that's okay. And trade-off is the only truth of life. You want something, you let something go. Is that a sacrifice? Only as much as shedding an avatar to get into the new one.

All this reminds me of Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being. There's character called Sabina who prefers to treat life with a certain lightness, irresponsibility if I may. Because order frightens her with its rigidity, she consorts to chaos. Because responsibility chains her up, she betrays all those who love her. And about halfway into the book, when she's in a time and a place where she's emancipated from her past and future, where's she's literally free to be anything again, she feels a void. And Kundera writes wonderfully about how a freedom with nothing to fight against, with nothing to fight for, is like an abyss. And though I'm not claiming any sort of enlightenment, considering how short my epiphanies usually last, I'm hoping this'll be a new direction. To try, for a few days atleast, to live a life less ruled by whim and more by ideals. To let the Super-ego draw the boundaries in which the Id can be unleashed. To be my own bloody man.

Zen in the art of living

The biggest problem we face as humans is that we get those things in life which we think we should. Well, that could be a huge problem, or a wonderful possibility. Think about it, really. Take a pause and think. Whatever you are today is simply because you chose to be this. Well, I understand when people say that I've been forced to do this but even then you chose what was best for you. Or what you thought was best for you. Is it better to hurt my father and standup for what I want to do or is it better to keep him happy, after all he's given me so much. Either way, good or the bad that it eventually turned out into, you chose it. Every moment in life, you have two possibilities in front of you, to do it or not to do it. Not infinite but just two. When you choose one option, you are confronted by the same question again the next moment. And a sum of all those decisions defines who are.

People are guilty of their crimes not because they realise what they've done but because feeling miserable is the best option they have. By repenting for their mistakes, they are cleansing themselves, erasing their bad karma. Which is a good thing by itself but its just that you don't want a lot of moments in life that you repent for. When people are obsessed with something, they want it as badly as they've ever wanted anything, be it a kid for a toy or a woman who wants to be a writer or a young man trying to live broke, if they truly, badly want it, if that one single thought permeates everything else their life is about, they'll get it. They'll find ways to get it. And Paulo Coelho is dead on in The Alchemist when he says, "If you truly want something, the entire universe conspires into getting it to you."

Well, that's a brilliant line, but the entire universe? Why would the entire universe come down to give you what you want? Because the entire universe is just you. Everything you see, you feel, you think, you taste is adulterated stuff. You let your prejudices and expectations, experiences and ideas affect it. And so, similarly, if you badly want something, you'll find ways to do it. I don't like my work but I'm compelled to do it because of my family situations. Bullshit, you are doing it because you are lazy to be doing something in earnest or too scared to find out what you want to do in life. I like her but my father will never agree. If you want her badly enough and if you don't want your father hurt, you sit down, talk, convince, coax, threaten. Whatever. I always believed that great love stories are the ones that end on a tragic note. What I failed to understand that ending on a tragic note did not make it a great love story. The love story failed because either of them didn't believe in their love, because they found it comfortable to down drinks than fight and face the consequences. You don't have to choose between people. If you have uttermost confidence in yourself and the belief in your vision, people'll respect you and eventually agree with you.

It's your life, if you don't respect it, if you don't stand by your decisions, if you are not confident enough of your abilities and aspirations, nobody's going to give a shit. Period. But its definitely not as easy to implement as it is to say. Do you think so? Remember when you were 8 years old and you wanted something bad. You asked for it, begged, pleaded but your parents said no. You promised them that you'd be a goddamned topper in the next exam just to get it. Did you top? If you are like me, chances are, you didn't. Because I couldn't maintain the same level of enthusiasm, energy and intensity when I first asked for it, neither did I completely believe in my abilities to be the topper nor did I work hard towards it. And all that is because I simply didn't care. Because I never fell in love with whatever I had asked for, it was just an infatuation and it blew away at the prospect of hard work.

But there have been a few moments, like you must have had too, when the passion for whatever I wanted totally flooded everything else, the longing so extreme that nothing else seemed to matter. Like when you are trying to figure out that tune looping in your head. Or when the writer's name is at the tip of your tongue but you just can't get it out. The effort which we put into it is tremendous; extraordinary; annoying at times. But we love doing it because we can see the satisfaction in bringing something out form the depths of memory, because it pleases us to know that we are capable of drilling deep in and persisting to get what we want. And I believe it also makes us proud because we've earned it. The destination might be a first rank, or an elusive tune or learning how to drive. It does not matter. The goal is just a motivating factor. We love the struggle we've put in because it takes our 100%. Because it demands our utmost attention, the force of our entire capabilities and it gives us a purpose. The destination does not matter, its the journey that exhilarates us.

And there's one more thing I want to talk about today. Its our fascination with imperfections. How many times have we heard the phrase, "Imperfections make us human". Maybe its true and pretty useful for somebody who's getting increasingly frustrated with not being able to attain perfection in whatever he is doing. But that does not mean we should stop at being imperfect. A beginner and an expert, both are imperfect, albeit in their own way. The way we strive, the path we choose to become perfect makes us who we are. So, I think it's high time we quit giving excuses. Procrastination, lack of inspiration, excuses of being busy or sheer indifference to our commitment are just various ways of saying we don't want what we think we want badly enough. Whenever we hear an inspiring talk, or read a story of an amputee who runs faster than a normal man, we are invigorated. We recast ourselves as the David against the Goliath of life's problems. But soon we are back in our rut. Not because we are lazy or incapable. And sometimes not even because we don't want something badly enough. But because we don't want to listen to ourselves, our heart or soul or spirit or whatever you want to call it. Its important to listen to the voice coming from deep down within because it best knows what we want. How can we know if its the true voice and not yet another fantasy? By working towards it. By paying heed to every wish that's coming from within and working towards it, by investing into it all that we have and by enjoying every moment for whatever it is.

You want something, go get it. Everything else is an excuse.

the idea of enlightenment

Sadhguru, thank you. Mystic's Musings will probably be the book I'll look back to years from now and say emphatically that it changed my life. And I'm not done even halfway through. The kind of questions that it manages to rise are phenomenal. And answers to those questions in Sadhguru's wry, understated humour. The anecdotes he comes up with to answer a few questions are truly strokes of genius. Or maybe, those of the enlightened. When somebody asked Sadhguru, "What is the reason behind the creation of the universe?", he replied, "One day, God was bored and was playing marbles. A few marbles flew here and a few there, one became Earth, another became Sun.. Do you want me to continue? (laughs) Just because I've told you such a simple story, you think I'm joking. If I tell you a much more sophisticated story, you will believe me. Maybe, it'll be the truth. But what use will it be to you? It might satiate your curiosity, bring you solace for a while but that is not why I'm here. Your duty should be to find out why you are here. Why do you care why the universe was created?"

The utter simplicity of the last statement totally blew me away. True, without bothering to know myself completely, to comprehend and control myself completely, how will knowing answer to such a question will help me. It'll probably entertain me, but not enlighten me. Having done his Shambhavi Mahamudra four years ago, albeit just for a couple of weeks, I understand him a little more than a layman when he talks about various energy levels, more being there to life than the simple physical and emotional manifestations that we thing we are capable of and the core belief in what he's saying. I trust him. The way he describes love is fascinating. Love, or for that matter, anything in life should be liberating. When he talks Bhakthi Yoga, he talks boundless love. Loving the person so much so that you don't exist anymore. In one of his answers, he says that there are two ways to reach Shiva. One is becoming a zero infront of him, surrendering to him completely. Other, being the all encompassing one, being infinity, acquiring the ability to include everything in the universe within oneself. And then meet Shiva in equal terms. Nobody explained Moksha to me better.

More than the convincing manner which his answers inevitable take, more than his foolproof logic, what inspires me is the confidence he has in his methods. Describing his method as scientific appeals to the rational mind because a lot of people are not ready to take the leap if a Guru tells them, give your everything to God, and then you can reach him. According to him, it works, but none of us would be ready to go to phenomenal lengths, take extraordinary leaps just because of our faith in a master. We have not been conditioned like that. And so, we need to be convinced, cajoled, see results, pushed, probed and inspired. Sadhguru does all those things. When it comes to matters of faith, Sadhguru points to the example of Sadhus wandering naked in the freezing cold of the Himalayas. When Sadhguru once asked a group of Naked Sadhus what they were doing, freezing to death, they replied, "When we went to our Guru for answers, he told us to wander like this in the Himalayas for twelve years and then go back to him. Only then will he set us on our path to liberation." Sadhguru says that that is the intensity required by a man to attain spirituality. The intensity of their one question, "Why am I here?" is so strong that they are willing to forgo a life of comfort, security and stability to know the answer. The amount of intelligence, maturity and strength it takes to trust a man who promised to give them an answer years later is so huge that they don't need a Guru to be enlightened. Burning with such fervour, they'd find the answers themselves anyway.

His answers to the most complex of questions dealing with issues of family, ego, relationships etc. are so simple, so profound and sometimes a little too cruel, that we see how frivolous all the structures we have built around ourselves are anyway. The make-believe toy houses that we have created are turning so big that we are taking them a little too seriously. But the most enlightening thing I've encountered in the book so far is what I would call the Law of Opposites. Sadhguru says that until we've not the seen the worst, we won't know what the best is. Only a really hungry man can understand what it means to eat contentedly. Only a man deprived of sleep can truly nourish the experience of good sleep. And only a man who's dug deep enough within himself can find light at the end of the tunnel.

The idea of enlightenment seems so alluring, so simple, so graspable and yet so daunting. I sometimes think that if I got enlightened and stuff, wouldn't I miss out on everything in life. Skydiving, partying, Bungee-Jumping. And I just found the answer to that question. When somebody asked a similar question, Sadhguru replied, "Will you miss eating cockroach pickle? No? But somebody who's gotten used to it will miss it, right? You think you will miss all those things because you've cast them as priorities in your life. Shun everything away and make spirituality your only priority. See, where it'll take you." Loved it. I'm actually surprised that I didn't find him this enchanting four years ago. Maybe they're right after all; When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. Or like Sadhguru puts it, Make the longing intense enough and you'll find your Guru.

to stay inspired

"Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans."
- John Lennon

That line inspired me after a long time to move my lazy bum into action. Inspiration is the key to everything. And when people lack it, despite having everything else, what they're doing won't be a labour of love. I love the way Agassi's flabbergasted at Sampras' lack of emotion regarding tennis. Tennis to Sampras is a job. He does not need inspiration to do it well. What surprises Agassi more his lack of need for inspiration. But it feels true, somehow. That inspiration strikes only once in a while. What pulls us day in and day out, has us slog uncomplainingly and helps us grow is our diligence to the cause.

Preparation, perseverance, practice can be mundane.Regularity and consistency can be uninspiring. But they also can be reassuring. They're the traits of people, who like Zen monks, understand that repetition is a myth, that every moment is different. It is important to realise that the  greatest of edifices are not built overnight, but by capitalising on that one moment of inspiration, and to put brick over brick for years to attain the grand structure of our dreams.

It is refreshing to understand that you don't have to be inspired every moment to attain something spectacular. Or maybe, understanding this fact is inspiration enough.

the stallion of my dreams

I've always believed that knowledge is tangential. We learn something not because we want to learn it but as a derivative of something we are doing. Maybe that is why I've never truly understood the concept of modern education system. Children are told to study hard and study well so that they can live off it happily ever after. Get for themselves a lucrative career. Fortunately or otherwise, I've been pampered enough not to be forced to study. Right from my childhood, my family has never forced me into putting in so many hours on books before I went to sleep. They might've been saddened by my mediocre or sometimes even sub par performance, but they never let me know it. And thanks to that, I've always been a free spirit in pretty much everything I've ever chosen to do. No philosophy imbibed into me, no set of rules forced upon me. I've been told that somethings are good, some bad and some are to be done to be accepted by the society. And I've also been taught to respect the things I have because a lot of people in the world would love to trade places with me. I've tried respecting all that I've had at my disposal. Not always, maybe. But I try. I don't really like my job nor does it fill me with any kind of enthusiasm but I'm trying to meet its demands because I get paid to do it and money is important to me. Apart from that, since I've signed up for it, its some sort of a duty I have to perform. Dharma. And like Bujji mama told me, there's something to be learned everywhere. Even if you don't like the job, study it, understand it, see how it works. Maybe it'll help you somewhere, sometime in your life. I liked it. Thatha always taught me to read every scrap of paper I came across; Right from the pamphlet on the road to the make do packet the rice crispies seller makes. I don't really care if it ends up being useful but I like being informed. Well atleast, it comes off as a good show off on a dinner table.

So, basically, I've read what I wanted to. Done what I wanted to. Traveled where I wanted to. Learnt what I wanted to. If anything's ever prevented me from doing something, its my laziness or apprehension. And like Yann Martel once wrote to Stephen Harper, "Both of us know fear and slothfulness lead us nowhere. Great achievements only come through courage and hardwork." Its easier quoting inspiring stuff than following them. Anyway, back to the point. Thanks to that sort of an upbringing, now I can't get myself to do something I truly don't endorse. I can't take orders. I can be argued with, convinced, but cannot work on something just for the sake of it; Just because somebody's told me to do it. So, maybe, my way is not the right way. In search of knowledge in a wayward path. But I'm okay with it. Because I don't have anyone else to blame if I fail. Infact, I won't ever fail because I've never even raced. I've just been free running, the way the I want to, choosing my own path, my own obstacles and my ingenious ways of overcoming them. One day, I might hit upon a sudden realization that the conventional way is the right way. Maybe that will be my Eureka moment. And people might look at me and say, what a life wasted; He could've done so much instead of trying to reinvent the wheel. But I'll still be happy because I haven't blindly followed somebody else's ideologies. I've listened foremost to my instinct, respected my intuition and let my inherent spirit guide me. But I truly believe life is to be experimented with. All of us shouldn't be taught the same thing, the same way because we are not all the clones of each other.

Imagination is the most important virtue of them all. Let people dream. Let people understand. Let people carve their own paths. All of us are eventually heading towards the creator of cosmos. Why not dance and sing, and enjoy the journey while we are doing it. Why shouldn't we be allowed to fall, fail, get up and dance again. Ammamma tells me, every man should vouch for an ideology and live with it till his end. I don't really understand it. When I'm changing every moment, why should I do something just because it was decided by me when I was not what I' now. Maybe she's right. But I want to know it myself. Reinvent the wheel, maybe. What we truly ought to learn has already been imbibed in our DNA. Everything else is superfluous. And there's always destiny to set us on our right path. Maybe that is why I dream mostly of open fields, a hut, poetry and the woman of my life. I dream. I let my spirit guide me. I free the reins and I see where it takes me. The destination is unknown. But the journey is fun.

the dumbest species on the planet

Its been a long time since I've been this free. I'm not exactly relaxed because I have a 36 question Java Assignment to finish but work is still 18 or so hours away and I'm going to finish it sooner or later. No worries there. Reading The Hindu Literary Review has been one of the few things I've done regularly and somehow reading it now feels nostalgic. For all the good times passed by? I don't know. Listening to TheShruthiBox, opening windows of the blogs I follow, I feel, what's the right word, comfortable for being in my zone where I do not have to meet deadlines or compete with anyone just to keep a job. Not that job's been bad, its been more fun than I could've asked for but I wish the learning wasn't this formal. I'm a firm believer in the whole idea of Tangential Learning and I all my life have learned more when somebody wasn't looking over my shoulder.

Chomsky calls all of us Consumers. Its the best possible word to describe the urban population of this world. We work our asses off to sell products and make enough money to buy the products somebody else is scrapping his ass off to sell. Is this all worth it? I don't know. But I'd rather spend my time doing stuff I want to and not buy enough time and money to do all that I want to later. Maybe its impractical. Maybe I'm just a dreamer. Or maybe I'm just a lazy bum who just talks shit. All of them are partly true. But its not as easy as some people tell you it is. That if you really love something, you'll make time for it despite everything. I'm questioning the whole basis of the idea. Shouldn't we as humans, with tastes, emotions, hobbies and ideas spend most of our time doing what we want to do than curbing all those instincts and make more money which will eventually ruin our children.

Have you ever felt really happy for having bought a real good television or a toaster. Its when you watch great sport or when you devours every slice of a great toast that happiness engulfs you. The whole idea of ambition, higher pedestal, "what-will-become of you" and "you-will-repent-later" kills people. You are talking about me repenting later. Nobody gives a shit about me repenting now for not being able to do what I so want to spend my time doing. I don't want to be the greatest human mankind has ever seen. I don't even care about it. And like I hurt a lot of people last week when I said that I didn't give a shit about medals or degrees, they don't really matter to me. Maybe like my family points out, I'm naive and I don't really know how unkind the world can get and I understand their need to keep me protected but I want to know what I'm working for. Why I'm spending time doing what I'm doing. I like my job but I don't like the restrictions that come surrounding it. I want to learn the way I want to, what I want to and how I want to. And again, if I don't want to be anything, if I'm not ambitious to show the world what I'm worth, I want to be left alone. Like Rabbi points out, We are human beings. We don't have to become something, we can just be. And Coetzee's Michael K is a genius in disguise. Nothing bothers him. He's unperturbed. Sleeping wistfully for 20 hours everyday. Sure, I'm depending on the society for all my needs and wants and shouldn't I return all that I've taken. I agree. But I'm talking about the whole of humanity. Why the need to get faster, better, more efficient. We build airplanes that are safer, faster and more intelligent so that we can travel in them and work on airplanes to make them much more faster and safer. Why isn't anybody asking the fundamental questions. I was recently reading a Tim Harford article where he talks about Science growing by leaps and bounds every day that people having generic knowledge are an extinct species. For everything in life we have specialists. I'm talking about The Jack of all, Master of none species and I don't want to be a part of the mad race to comfort and happiness. How much money is enough money? What is security? And why, why are we so unhappy and tensed all the time. I've heard enough of finding happiness in whatever you are doing. I'm talking about finding happiness in doing what makes you happy.

People have always had responsibilities. The need to be a part of the society. And in one of Gladwell's books, he talks about a 18th century town in the United States, full of Italian population where people were devoid of disease. They had families and responsibilities too. And when he tried finding the reason for this, he found out they were devoid of disease because they were happy. They were people who had time for friends, families, could indulge in their passions, worked together, drank together, laughed at each other, did not have to follow an etiquette to please anybody, and yet like any human, they strove for happiness, personal perfection and knowledge. Maybe there lies the key. We don't really care about knowledge anymore. We are so busy answering the trivial questions that we don't care about the most important of questions. What about God? And life? And the reason for our existence? We don't know our collective history, the diversity of the world we live in, the power of the human mind and the secrets of our religions. We do not care about fate and our collective future. We are so proud being intelligent that wisdom has turned into an unused word. We are people obsessed with efficiency that we have developed tunnel visions.

Both theologically and Darwin-ically, our existence as a human is to evolve into something higher than what we've been in our past lives. But we live life like we're going to hang around here forever and the whole point of our lives is to buy, sell and curse. We live everyday like there will be time to live later on, bending down and slaving away, and by the time we look up to see if we've arrived, we're all alone, burning on our funeral pyre.

Genius under contruction

I've been quiet on the blogging front for a while now. Been writing lots of drafts but I don't seem to be getting enough motivation to sit down and spend time on the thoughts in my head.

Long discussions with Bujji Mama have resulted in me coming down from my exulted bubble and face reality. People won't give a shit if you don't prove them what you are worth. All the artistic blah-blah one side, if you want to be a part of the system and live on your own terms, you cannot be one among the crowd, yell and say nobody is listening to me. There's a reason people who've reached a certain level in life, are asked to step on stage and tell the world what they want to. And beyond this is the simple fact that without technical prowess never will yours be truly great art. Artistic genius is very fleeting. And if you want to shine in its glory, you have to be technically, mentally ready to face it. Einstein's e=mc^2 was genius, true, but then a lot of people must have already dreamed of traveling at the speed of light. Einstein had the ability to show the world what exactly his intuition told him. Now, that capability was unique. Messi might see a hole in the defense 40 yards off the post, but if he didn't practice day in and day out, he wouldn't be able to show the world that display of stunning art.

Producing glimpses of genius is no big deal. Like Einstein said, "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to fly, it'll live all its life thinking that it is stupid." When I first read One Hundred Years of Solitude, I thought Garcia Marquez was the most gifted writer of his generation. Only after I read of his struggle in Living to tell the tale, writing for more than 10 hours everyday despite not making enough money to buy food, did I realize the amount of diligent preparation that catapulted him into immortality. In fact, Malcolm Gladwell argues in his Outliers that when somebody studies the life of any genius, the most under appreciated trait is their discipline and hard work. He argues that any man who spends more than 10,000 hours truly practicing his art will be a master in it. I remember once having read that whenever JD Salinger was writing something and couldn't get the right word, he stopped wherever he was and painstakingly went through every word in the dictionary until he found what he was looking for.

All along I had been under the impression that talent was inherent. Maybe it is but it will take you only that far. When people praise Federer for his artistic imagination, they tend to forget that for that idea in his head to be translated to reality, he must have practiced that forehand slice millions of times until it reached clinical precision. Without technical know-how, no artist or athlete can do justice to his ideas or abilities. And if you're wondering why I always compare athletes to artists, it is because a great backhand is equivalent to an exceptional interlude.

That through ball, that cover drive, that ace, that maneuvre are so good to look at and so awe-inspiring precisely because they've been worked upon over and over again until they've reached perfection. It is only after turning up every morning to train, pushing every muscle until it can do no more but still pushing, that every cell in the body turns into a living entity, breathing, thinking, understanding and responding. And that is what we call artistic intuition.

This life is to be explored, to be pushed to the brink, to be experienced and to be loved and the only way to do it is by pushing yourself to the edge of your capabilities. I recently read somewhere that God has not given us this body to preserve it to the coffin. Any man in the coffin should be battered, spent and exalted.

The greenest of moist leaves at the fingertips

Honestly, what more does a man want? In one of his interviews, Tanikella Bharani talks about one of his friends who lives in his one acre farm and writes poetry. And there was this recent article in The Hindu about Lucky Ali, growing his own food and creating his music. And to top it all, Pico Iyer's masterpiece essay in the New York Times stirs up more than a few hearts.

"I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them. And work which one hopes may be of some use. Then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor. Such is my idea of happiness. And then, on top of all that, you for a mate, and children perhaps. What more can the heart of a man desire?"- Alexander Supertramp

Ignorant of the above quote, I almost said the same stuff to Kaushik a little while ago when we were returning from Bhavana Rao's sprawling house which triggered this post in the first place. And there's the immortal Holden line, "I'd just be the catcher in the Rye and all. I know it's crazy.." True, a man cannot change anything that does not directly affect him. One doesn't have to be a Gandhi to make the world a better place, one can just be an Hazare and make his village a fine one. The whole act of society well being might look a bit contrived at first but then can any man be able to eat well when his neighbour is starving? It's a selfish motive really, Nemo vir est qui mundum non reddat meliorem.

A small wooden house overlooking a lake, your friends your neighbours, an occasional movie with the family, dinner together, growing your own food, swimming in the lake every morning, watching test matches leisurely with friends, strumming a ballad to your loved one at sunset, helping people you can, taking your kids out hiking, writing poetry. You know, the usual stuff. And money, how would you make money like this? With your hands, carpentry, writing, mending stuff, inventing. The kind of lives our ancestors once lived. A life where breaking news is really breaking and where nobody'd give a shit if sensex drops by 2000 points.

Three hours after I saved this draft here, I come back a more exposed man. About the need for a social responsibility.

Let me talk about in the next posts, about the need for a social conscience.
But for now, adios.

Picture this.

The camera is placed to the extreme left end of the screen, on an empty highway, pointing straight at the sun; Emptiness. And as time passes on, the back of a man emerges, walking away from us, barefoot, holding a guitar onto his right shoulder, humming a tune to himself. Totally oblivious of the gaping viewers. He walks away into the sunset.

Think about it.

"Win the crowd, and you will win your freedom."

I do not want to be a narcissistic thick head but yes, I like talking about myself, giving a lot of importance to my ideas. Not all of them have to be "truly original" but you know, why take chances. Before anyone of you decide to leave thinking this is going to be such a waste of time, let me retrace my steps and tell you what I wanted to talk about. Not that this won't be a waste of time anyway but you know, either way, when you have to spend time somehow, why not do it reading to somebody else's attempt to be hailed the most-original-thinker-of-our-times. Done with the dose of bullshit; now let the drama begin.

How important is it for somebody, anybody, to sell himself? Okay, let me rephrase it, to market himself? I had read this amazing article on Dravid and the primordial difference between The Great One and The Intense One, as Rohit Brijnath put it, is basically sheer luck and how different their approaches to life and cricket are. But yes, marketing yourself for the mob is important too because that is going to make or break your myth; winning over the mob is all that is the difference between bland humanness and the glory of immortality. If there is a highest order of digression, this paragraph is it.

Okay, I need to get my sleep, so I'll illustrate to you what I've been thinking over without further ado. Let's say I'm the next greatest writer on the planet. And I have my small bunch of loyal followers who say things like, "There is a Marquez and now there is him." How I wish that were true. So, anyway, I don't market myself. I write my blog, a few of my friends read it and that's about it. And then there is somebody else who is not as good a writer as I am but knows all the right people, says all the right words and does all the right things. He gets covered by the media and he is the most popular Indian now after Shah Rukh Khan. Does it in anyway demean the status of the other writer and increase my nobility? Or is marketing yourself, telling the world that you exist and wish to be read also a part of being a successful somebody?

Is marketing beneath the nobility of art or is it an art unto itself? I don't really see what I'm trying to convey but the bottom line is that I want to know how true the adage is which says, Never seek popularity and it will seek you? Before a Kamal Hassan or an Aamir Khan made Saagara Sangamam/Akali Rajyam or Rang De Basanti/Taare Zameen Par, they made popcorn munching cinema. Is that the better thing to do or is sticking to the scholarly ideals of integrity and belief.

Hang on, isn't this the difference between a statesman like Dr. Manmohan Singh and a ruthless street-fighter of Narendra Modi. I have no idea what this was all about, but all that it ever was, it is here.

P.S: Like in Gladiator, is pleasing the crowd really a way to achieve artistic freedom?

all of life's gyaan, in one sexy tagline!

I slept for 4 hours today afternoon. So am not sleepy at all. And as jobless as I am, I was reading all those testimonials written to me. Surprising how things change. How people are not what they were and what they will be sometime later. Well, that's all of life's gyaan for you in one line. It sounds sexy doesn't it, Change is Permanent. But it so hard to actually accept it.

Phew! I don't know if I was exactly like those testimonials portrayed me. But I am really surprised at how much I seem to have changed. How my relationships with all those people who wrote me testimonials have changed and how I'm meeting new people. I will try being as diplomatic as I can when I'm handling this matter because I want no problems later on. Ok.

One thing so prevalent among all those testimonials is that I have let all of them down. If I was atleast half as good as they had portrayed me, I wouldn't have been in this position with them today-one of them is really pissed of with me, one is really hurt for being let down, one hates me now and doesn't want to talk to me and with one, I'm in a stalemate state where neither of us know where our relationship is going. Phew, all this change in about an year.

Well, this was bound to happen. Change is Permanent, ain't it? Infact, before I move on, I'd like to say something about that line there. The line itself is a paradox. If the line followed its own rule, in one way, it wouldn't be permanent because it is bound to change. But in another way, if something is permanent and it is unchanging, it is proving itself to be false. See, this is why a strong cup of tea at 12.30 in the morning is so very stimulating.

Anyways, as I was saying, I'm really surprised that so much has changed. Wait a sec, didn't I just say that all this was bound to happen. So, I suppose it can be safely deduced that all this was bound to happen and I, as ignorant as I was, didn't really want to see it coming. Whatever. But this is probably the most beautiful aspect of life. I know, I know. That all this sounds really good but when it actually happens to you, life is so very unfair. But having gone through all this, I can proudly say that I really learnt something from all this. And that if I have one more chance, I wouldn't repeat it.

See. That is why bad experiences are so much important as much are the good ones. That is why change is inevitable. If everything is going very well, you wouldn't let it stay as such, wanting some spice in life. And when nothing's going well, you would want to change it to lead a happy, better life. Weird life this.

And what is wrong with me? A year ago I wouldn't have been up at 1.15 in the morning, drinking tea and discussing life's intricacies. See, I have changed too. That's all for now. Think about it.

And yeah, before I leave, here's the promised not-so-original line, Change is Permanent, or is it?

who said heaven's above the clouds?

Today, I was coming back home from college and since it was a saturday, the bus was mostly empty. So, I slept on a seat with my head towards the window. I slept for quite some while and then I woke up annoyed with the suns rays falling straight on my face. But the moment I opened my eyes, all the anger and frustration vanished. I was spellbound by what was probably one of the best sights of my life.

It was a beautiful clear blue sky and the pearl white cumulus clouds were passing me at a great speed. Or rather, I was passing them. Having never been into cloud gazing, I for the first time realised how peaceful it was, looking at them drift away lazily. So for the rest of the journey, I tried deciphering them into various shapes and animals, probably mankind's oldest game.

I mean, I have always been intrigued by the skies and especially those TV shots where the shadow of a cloud is seamlessly passing over the mountains is one heckuva feeling. But when I accidentally stumbled across its sheer beauty, I was left marveling at God's genius. For a guy like me who is far too impatient to be cloud gazing, it turned out to be a lot of fun. I mean reading about Nimbus, Stratus, Cumulus and Cirrus in your Geography class is not even close to the feeling pervading in your soul when you see clouds(Cumulus being my favourite) drift past lazily with the perfect sky in the background.

I know you must be imagining it right now and wanting to gaze at them the next time you go out. Trust me, do it. Its a wonderful feeling.

In all our books and movies, we have this feeling that god's drift above the clouds in heaven. But I pity them. They should one day come down to earth and then look at the clouds. They wouldn't want to go back.

Die Virgin

Been in Bombay since the past 4 days. Having fun. Not in the photographic sense but catching up with old memories and in a cliched South Indian way, musing over the essence of live with a cup of coffee during dusk. Hmm, heaven.

Been thinking over a lot of aspects of life over the past few day. A strong dose of joblessness helps, you know. And everything going pretty bad in life, its high time I look back and get my life back on tracks. Just felt like sharing a few things with you today.

Life's really short mate and this is your one chance to live. So, live it. I know this is said so repeatedly that this might make you yawn but its true, ain't it? Like any hippie, saint or a philospher would put it, live your life but make sure you are still untouched. Have a third person view of your own life, and then you will stay level-headed and will respect and love your life more.

I know I am neither a hippie, nor a philospher nor a saint but my life's pretty screwed up too and I have learnt a few things looking back at my life and at others'. Do whatever you want to. But make sure you don't hurt others. Because you never know if you would have another chance to apologise. If not anything else, I have learnt this. Life's far too simple and straight. Just don't complicate it and get lost in the web.

Am I enlightened? I do not know. But I know that I'll try applying this philosophy from now. If you want to learn music, go learn it. If you want to transcend into higher levels of subconsciousness, do it. If you want to go see the world, go take the ride. What the heck are you waiting for? I am not asking you to turn into a loser quitting your duties, shunning away your responsibilities. Just make sure you enjoy living.

Go into the wild. Go climb mountains. Go pluck fruits from trees. Go write poetry. Go cuddle up with an animal. Go roll in the grasslands. Go enjoy every breathe you take in because it could well be your last.

And most importantly, stand by your friends and family during a crisis, forgive them for all their faults and tell them how much they mean to you. Then will you be remembered as the man who lived and taught others how to live.

Life hits at you pretty hard at times. She knows that you need constant remindings of your destiny. Of the purpose of your life. So, do not get pissed off with it and learn from it.

And yeah, I just got this line into my head.

Don't give life a chance to fuck you. Go fuck it instead. But hey, die virgin.

the smell of an old book and the smell of first shower on mud are incomparable...

Sitting outside your house, in the garden, on an evening when its pouring cats and dogs, just your feet getting drenched , the sweet smell of earth, a favourite novel in hand, a steaming cup of filter coffee beside you, Yesudas or BalaMuraliKrishna at their heavenly best and your love beside you, what else do you want from life...

Agar firdaus bar roo-e zameen ast,Hameen ast-o hameen ast-o hameen ast.
If there is a paradise on earth,this is it, this is it, this is it!

this is life at its leisurely best...and this is all we want in life...and peace of mind... phew, life really is a wonderful...its like that lovely chocolate cake with additional icing and we are 5 year old kids looking forward to relish it...but as we grow older, we, because of other inhibitions, forget enjoying it...life's always the same, its us who start treating it differently...

as someone said, small things matter, life's all about small things...its about eating pani-puri and mirchi bajji on a rainy evening, about playing football with kids on water-clogged streets, watch recorded CDs of someone's marriage in the family and laugh your heads off looking at yourself... no one knows how long we are going to live...so do everything you want to do and life Your life but also give equal importance to your family and their wishes and cherish all those little things...life is well and truly wonderful...wonderFULL :D