in the business of being liked

A large part of the reason I keep deleting my social media accounts frequently is because of Murakami's quote- " If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking"¹. But the reason I keep coming back to the platforms is because it gets very lonely very fast when you're walking the solitary path. "కవి అనేవాడు గుంపుకి సరిగ్గా నాలుగడుల ముందుండాలి. మరీ ముందుకెళితె వాళ్ళేం మాట్లాడుతున్నారో వినబడదు, వారిలో కలిసి పోతే ఆ గోలలో పనికొచ్చే విషయం కనబడదు"² -Someone, imaginary or real

If external stimuli alter the biochemicals in my mind and that in turn immensely affects the way I⁵ act in the world, why don't all of us ingest chemicals that turn us into wonderful, happy people⁶ and the world would be a wonderful place⁷, because that's what all of us seem to want. A world with no suffering⁸, untimely death, disease or hunger. A world where all existence is in perfect harmony, the Rama Rajyam. Of course utopias are boring by definition but then a true utopia would have enough excitement to satiate adventurism without toppling the delicate balance⁹.

Yet I think humans are never happy with the world they live in no matter how perfect by "objective" standards. I've only read bits and pieces (duh) of Joseph Campbell but I've convinced myself into believing that every story is the same story¹⁰- a hero living in a society is forced to go into a dark world, confront the villain (and his fears), fight and defeat the evil lord, and come back with the treasure (knowledge) to claim the heroine, win accolades and share the treasure with the world. JBP banally¹¹ exposits it as imposing order on intimidating chaos, finding something useful¹² from seeming clutter and that is the story of every story.

What am I trying to say? Like quote, "If I could tell you what the film is about, why would I make it?" ¹⁴, the post is what is; the maze exists to preserve the gem and the gem is valuable only because the seeker deserves it for having reached it when others have given up. Social acceptance is the only truth^15,16.

I don't know what I've been blabbering about. But if I want to become at least an average writer/ filmmaker, I have to find ways to assimilate this unintelligible, chaotic stream of reality into already patterned models¹⁸. And I don't know how I'm going to do that, or if I even have the capacity to learn and present it. It is challenging because any half-ambitious maker wants to present previously unnoticed or un-mapable phenomenon and to do that is to precisely walk past the illuminated area, gain knowledge and remain "sane"¹⁹ enough to come back and communicate.

That will only happen²⁰ if I walk through doors my immediate society is discouraging me from entering, either because of fear or jealousy. And the biggest force blocking my path is the need to be liked, from which stems the need to be approved. To walk out of the group is to risk being talked about²¹- adulation and envy if successful, pity and condescension otherwise²².

To talk out is to attract unnecessary attention, to stay low is a provocation to the ego. What to do?

¹ A complementary quote is Nassim Taleb's, "Read nothing from the past one hundred years; eat no fruits from the past one thousand years; drink nothing from the past four thousand years (just wine and water); but talk to no ordinary man over forty." The paradox is obvious- To follow or not follow contemporary advice exhorting to follow only ancient advice. I could also get extremely pedantic about it and skim books I really am interested in because I discovered them via recommendation lists
² Herzog's distinction between accountant's truth and ecstatic truth^3
3 When I made Based on a True Story, I was obsessed with capturing the fidelity of unexciting reality. I suppose I didn't, and don't yet, have the imagination or courage to comment on the character's lives in a much larger sociocultural context, so had to make do with and emphasise, as if it was truly original or insightful⁴, on the "mundanity" of everyday being as if it was highly poetic. Of course, a part of me still argues that there is poetry in it a la Jarmusch's Paterson or Linklater's Boyhood
⁴ There is still someone inside me who thinks that doing what I'm doing, without making a conscious effort towards improvement, since all improvement is stipulated by the specific sociocultural context and therefore not necessarily helpful in the pursuit of capital 't' truth, is valuable, or at least inevitable in the sense that someone could and would learn from the notes I'm writing while walking towards the dead-end, in building this repository of human knowledge ("నేను సైతం ప్రపంచాగ్నికి సమిధనొక్కటి ఆహుతిచ్చాను"). That I suppose is the residue of a long-held belief that the universe is teleological
⁵ "consciousness is like being the CEO of a large corporation" -[purpotedly] Minsky
⁶ Is this what the marijuana loyalists are after?
⁷ "America, like any realised utopia, is boring" -Baudrillard
⁸ Like many things in life, this seems to be elastic too in the sense that as long as pain is part of the emotional pie, people will find more and more trivial ways to embrace suffering while also rationalising its utility
⁹ Our world?
¹⁰ Actually, I picked this up from Jordan B Peterson's podcasts which I was listening to reverentially early last year
¹¹ An easy argument is that it is banal because it's true and so time hasn't filtered it out but what if Lindy Effect is self-fulfilling and so any idea proposed first drives out all novel ideas only by the virtue of being first
¹² Useful¹³ again is so spacetime specific and obviously dependent on the state of mind of the person taking it in
¹³ "..words and signs can never fully summon forth what they mean, but can only be defined through appeal to additional words, from which they differ. Thus, meaning is forever 'deferred' or postponed through an endless chain of signifiers" -[Wikipedia] Derrida
¹⁴ I thought this was a Beckett quote when someone asked him about Godot but I'm unable to find a reference now
¹⁵ This comes from reading about the nature of money from Blockchain tutorials and David Graeber's ridiculously readable Debt
¹⁶ I'm about to go have dinner now and I'm trying to document as much as I can before that break because I'm afraid all that's supposed to come now will be lost forever if I take that detour^17
17 To put it more memorably, "हग के बजाओगे तो एक तरह से बजता हैं, बिना हग के तोह दूसरी तरह से" [non-sic], from Jaideep Varma's Leaving Home: The Longer Trip, which I can't be thankful enough for
¹⁸ If analogy is the core of cognition, then all narratives are maps of some sort
¹⁹ Sane, here, ofcourse means being able to understand and speak the language of the audience
²⁰ And here is the fundamental paradox in my nature. I'm fatalist enough to believe that things happen to me and I'm forced to respond a certain way, yet ambitious, and vain, enough to want to transcend that imposition of fate and 'create my destiny'
²¹ I suppose evolution has taught has to stay at the centre of the group, preferring individual low-risk, low-reward and transferring the duty of finding new knowledge (usually an asset) to other entities within the group without which the entire group may fail
²² "You'll worry less about what people think about you when you realize how seldom they do." -DFW

57 not out

I feel guilty all the time.

When I'm at work and not working; Also when I'm at work and working.

When I'm sitting on the train and staring vacantly out of the window, lost in half-imaginations; Also when I'm sitting on the train and reading a book.

When I'm trying to read through a hard, technical tome; Also when I'm reading an airport thriller.

Watching a boring, art film; Also when watching a mainstream "commercial" film.

When listening patiently on the ..

--

Sometimes I understand what is going on and am given convincing explanations so that I can feel better. Other times, I roll and scream, agitating at my inability to find mental peace or going meta and brooding over my desperate need for mental peace, shifting between views of Rocky-style strength of will and images of Malkovichian puppetry. The truth, as they say, is right in the middle, too pristine to be fathomed.

Life does not begin after I've achieved the answers. Life seems to be the search for answers. Or is it because I've shaped it that way. But have I ever shaped anything really, when this 'I' precisely was shaped by external forces. I have just started reading Dennett's From Bacteria to Bach and Back in the hope of finding a physical explanation for consciousness (just a fancy word for identity?). It seems to me that all search, physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual (whatever that means) is the search for freedom, is the search to transcend all limitation. Which is strangely understandable (that beautiful word, understand; What does it really mean?) because what I call myself is shaped by my limitations- I'm not anything beyond the limits of this area I can seemingly control (my body), I'm not anything I don't have atleast a passing knowledge of, I'm not someone who has not invested emotionally in this specific set of people (my family and friends), I'm not someone who knows what it is to be anything else except me.

It is frustrating to keep writing the same thing over and over again, running around in circles (or as Cixin Liu memorably put it, "Every era puts invisible shackles on those who have lived through it, and I can only dance in my chains."), making no linear progress. Is that the nature of reality, is it to realise and accept the lesson: to master this level, ostensibly playing the same thing over and over again but getting batter, smoother, savvier at it until I can finish the goal, only after which I can move onto the next level; Assuming there's something like that.

If an idiot is somebody who keeps repeating the same thing expecting a different result, is a genius somebody who keeps repeating the same thing believing that this will eventually lead to a different result (because although repetitions might not be changing anything in the external world but are subtly modifying his internal composition?). Belief, the f-word again: Is there no alternative to faith?

The ravenous hunger for knowledge and experience¹ (and subsequently documentation, theory, model-building, analogies etc. ) seems to stem from the impression that if we can get enough data, we can hold it hostage and extort meaning and purpose from the (currently) invisible masters of the universe. If the universe isn't teleological, I don't think we'd know what do to with our lives (or should I read the existentialists for answers who've already, reputedly, grappled with these questions).

"Aesthetics, if they even exist, are to be discovered only once a film has been completed." -Herzog

The above quote sort of makes sense, because otherwise how would you create something original or for that matter even end up creating if it becomes impossible to arrange the conceived idea in the physical world, but it also throws up a gamut of questions³.

How will I gain knowledge? About the world, about myself, about knowledge itself. And if that is what I should be seeking, or if there are any should be's in life.

¹ This ofcourse includes poetry, abstract painting, music and the like. Art is how we create maps of our internal landscape, impose structure so that the conscious² can access it as per need
² As much as I don't understand the nature or working of my consciousness [Thoughts that I can choose to convert into physical action in comparison to the subconscious, thoughts I neither understand nor can control], I've noticed that I don't want to have to do with anything internal, feelings, ideas, states, unless they're shaped in a way I can atleast pretend to, or delude myself that I do, understand
³ A few from the top of my head: i. Why is it so important to make the film at any cost, even if you're betraying your ideals? ii. If you're not your unchangeable aesthetics/ ethics, then how is the film you're making really the film you want to be making? iii. Is it possible for a human to not give in to aesthetics (a stand-in for ideas tethered in this point of the spacetime) and then isn't it better to subscribe to it more consciously? iv. If the opposite of every rule for writing is also true, like Mark Tredinnick repeatedly insisted, then should I end up being the ping-ping ball, unable to claim surety of anything but still making a film from this, and about this, uncertainty v. Isn't Herzog's insistence on consciously not imposing aesthetics, a certain aesthetic in itself (oh! you post-modernist meta beauty)

^*As a chronic overexplainer and fetishiser-in-chief of myself, and currently in love with the idea of DFW's usage of footnotes to emulate the hyperlink (which ofcourse doesn't make sense in a blogpost except purely as style), the not out in the title is a reference to a scorecard reading at the end of the day in a test match.. Fighting, resisting, playing, still hanging in there

tripping on recursion

Hypotheses:

I'm told I'm made up of cells. Trillions of them. What I call my body is essentially their planet. Some also say that there is nothing beyond the body. So the voice that I identify as mine, that tells me these things, must also spring from a physical entity. But if I'm made up of, and only of, trillions of these tiny, presumably intelligent, things and yet I believe that something called I exists, where does that reside?

Do the cells belong to me? Where is this me? So there must be an extra-biological entity- atma? What is the atma made of then? Is it the body-version of a higher, more subtler dimension and needs to wear this physical body to participate in this world? But 1. why would my atma (me?) need to be in this world? 2. if I'm the atma, why wouldn't I have that knowledge with any surety? Why would I be conjecturing? Also if my atma is wearing this body, then, wouldn't the atma also just be inhabited by a subtler, higher-dimensioned something that'd be using my atma as its body in that dimension?

On the other hand, if the body is everything, then what I call I is not something separated from the physical component of my existence but an (illusion of) intelligence born from the complexity created by the trillions of self-interested interactions? In this Dawkinsian reality, my genes want to propagate and are forever haggling and trading in this bizarre marketplace. I am the Invisible Hand.

epiphany as a service

Last night I had an epiphany. I've been trying to set my life right for years now. Oh, the usual stuff- Be good at work, Maintain excellent relationships, Be knowledgeable of the workings of society, Be kind and generous, Stay Healthy, Make the world better. Summarily, "Live Well". And to this end I've attended lectures, read books, made notes from podcasts, had conversations with successful strangers, filled pages with thoughts and questions, practiced yoga, questioned, lamented. And quite a few other things which I'd do well by forgetting. And yet I've failed. Every single time.

The basis of living like this, according my learnings, is discipline, focus, dedication. Ofcourse I've questioned about why I have to live like this. Why I find those qualities important enough to change my lifestyle. I've never really gotten a convincing answer, not anything that stuck for more than a few days. And inevitably I fall back to my old ways- cursing, cribbing, self-pitying, demeaning myself for my inability to stick to anything- Even things I'd set out for myself to do. I see this as a weakness of the will and even after I've tried multiple mechanisms (to-do lists, agile methodology, yoga and meditation, inspirational mythologies), I've never grown strong enough to live better. A part of me is confounded by my lack of discipline, by the lack of willpower. How do you learn to be strong, brave, good, sincere?

You ask yourself why do you have to be and it seems like the best way to live life. These qualities seem important because lives of many a "successful" person seem to echo that. Someone who's work we deem important enough to learn tips from them on how to live so that we can have equally productive lives- This ideology right here is what I call the engineering mindset. That everything is made up of components and if you optimize all the components, you'll see an "improvement" in the performance of the whole.

A small list of what I mean when I talk about diving life into components:
1. Past, Present, Future
2. Friends, Enemies, Emperors, Slaves
3. Good, Bad, Ugly
4. Happiness, Suffering, Confusion(?)
5. Productive, Unproductive, Hopefully-Productive
6. Physical, Intellectual, Emotional, Spiritual
7. Lower, Here, Higher

They are axioms: Either because we've reached the end and they are the truth, or simply because we're unable to understand where they come from.

Assuming, everything is physics & biology, and that there's nothing beyond, it ignores the interactions between components and the generally fluctuating nature of human desire. So even if that methodology achieves what it initially set out to do, it doesn't really because the goalposts have moved. Quite soon, I'm trying to understand and map the nature of this infra layer. The entire structure of self-help is based on this premise that if you set these components right, inevitably the whole will be a success. This is classic engineering hubris.

Ofcourse, we take into account the factor that we don't have complete information and the conditions will change or infact the goal itself will change. So we devised Agile. Your product (goal) is ever evolving and always in the process of being made. There's an argument somewhere in the deeper recesses of my mind that maps Agile and Becoming Philosophy to the state of dissatisfaction and restlessness millennials are so accused of.

Engineering is the act of implementing knowledge to solve real-world problems. All life advice is basically recursion. And all life advice, unlike useful advice, takes the form of epiphany because in that instant everything seems to make sense. Unfortunately, enlightenment is equally short-lived.

life_advice (current_generation)
{
personal learnings from real-world experience * life_advice(current_generation - 1)
}

So when I'm trying to optimise my life, I might be helping myself but that's only incidental; What I'm really doing is contributing to the human species as a whole. If we live in a Darwinian world, then what is the point of my questioning and realization of this fact? It is either that 1. I'm an anomaly or 2. intermittently questioning assumptions is nature's built-in mechanism to detect and obliterate outdated information.

Point 1 does not really hold true for two reasons: 1. Everybody thinks they're different from the group, so I can't backup my claim of being different 2. I'd have to assume that human consciousness has branched away from nature and is now the most powerful force in the world; And unless consciousness is transcendental, and is there a good reason for it to be?, it is hard to believe we've done to nature what we're afraid AI will do to us.

Point 2 seems more real. But a lot of reading to do in that area- Darwin, Dennett, Dawkins, Complexity Theory, Hofstadter, Pinker's The Blank Slate, Nassim Taleb. (Are there any Indian philosophy books that discuss these topics. I'd love to read them.) So essentially what I'm trying to understand is Where my thoughts come from, and if I, whoever that is, can do something about it.

At this point though, I think life is not, or not just, an engineering problem. True, most daily 'problems' can be solved by adopting this mindset but by definition it means prescribing the ideal state and working towards it. Deciding on the ideal state is the result of agreeing upon a value structure and binding it to time to create realistic expectations, and unless I know where my values come from, if they're arbitrary or absolute, how can I go about acting with conviction on any action I undertake. Unless it just happens. Then, though, there's not much I can do about it anyway.

Between a god and a hard place: Being Raju in Kancharapalem

First published on Baradwaj Rangan sir's blog.

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Between a god and a hard place: Being Raju in Kancharapalem

“The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent” – Stanley Kubrick

A young boy falls in love with a girl, prays to his god to help him woo her. The god seemingly blesses him only later to burn his hopes. The boy questions his god, demands explanation for his suffering. When he does not get it, his unwitting actions destroy his family. Later, as a young man, now believing in a different god, he falls for a young woman. This time he prays but does not leave his fate to the mercy of the god. He does what he can while praying for god to help him in his quest. This time too, god does not bless him. He does not understand why god punishes him. But he does not feel betrayed now, he is an arrogant young man. If god does not make himself clear, he will not ask. He relinquishes this religion, this god too. A few years pass, he falls in love with another woman. He does not seek any god’s blessings this time, preferring the advice of friends and the courage gained from alcohol, but when the woman bows down infront of her god, he acquiesces. Again, the gods ignore him; Or deliberately torture him. This time, he does not bother to question or beg for mercy. He is used to it now. He grows old. One day, he accompanies a friend to a temple and when asked why he doesn’t pray, replies that he doesn’t need a god because his society takes care of him. Finally, it seems, he has made peace with the silence of god.

On one side, god does not console Raju. On the other side, as much as he professes his gratitude for his friends and social circle, he suffers because of the action of his society. God is only the silent spectator, it is the other humans who are the cause of his agony. As a child, it was the girl’s father, his patriarchy, that separated him from the girl he loved. As a young man, it was another father’s obsession with caste and fear of society’s jibes, that pushed the girl he loved, who loved him in return, to marry a stranger. As an adult, it was a group of self-proclaimed protectors of religion who drove his lover to death. Ironically, again it is the same society, with its homophobia and mockery of his bachelorhood, that coerces him into marriage. Individuals maybe honourable and generous but when they coalesce into a tribe, they crackdown ruthlessly on any member that threatens status quo.

That is the tragedy of Raju and most individuals like him. Those who choose, or are condemned, to be different have to make peace with being inferior citizens or be ostracised. Then they seek a higher power, questioning god to understand why they are cursed and beseeching for solace. They are met with silence of the almighty. Some, filled with resentment, make life as hard as possible for others. Some, though, swallow the bitterness and alchemize it into radiant goodness. Raju, for all his exasperation, is a true-blue existentialist.

standing on zero

My new hero is, or is it already was, Cory Doctorow. I don't remember how I rediscovered him sometime in the last few weeks though I've had a copy of Information Doesn't Want To Be Free in my reading list for years. Then I read his How I work interview and I realized I wanted to work like that. Be a self-driven, independent, scholar/ writer who knew a lot of things, learnt more everyday, communicated effectively on important matters, attend conferences and had public discussions. More than that, I too wanted to swim daily to cure my crippling backache. The clincher was seeing this photo of his workspace.

The question that cropped up, again, is what do I want to do with my weekdays. On days when I'm obsessed, more than usual, with my own narrative from a third person POV, I appreciate the irony that for a person who publicly abhors work I spend a large part of my life trying to decide what work I'd like to be remembered for. I want to write about technology, the cyberpunk aesthetic, existential crises, end of civilization, historic grand narratives, truth, reality, agency. I also want to write about growing up in Hyderabad in the 90s, want to cover India's general election from the ground, make a refreshingly good masala film with excellent background score and colour splattered visuals. I want to write a serious book analysing and giving a map on the world now, and do a book tour. I want to learn, study, recite and teach classical telugu poetry. I want to learn urdu and memorize beautiful love poems. I want to write a book like Suitable Boy in Telugu set in the 1980s by reading newspapers and periodicals of the day to have a glimpse of how people lived.

I want to read, write, watch, make, listen, talk, taste, travel and learn. It used to be because I thought I could understand the world better and thus deal with it better. Now I'm not so ambitious, not so arrogant. I want to do all these things because they, while admittedly satiate my ego, expand my notions of what it means to be alive and what entails a good life. At this point, I think there is never a time when I'll have 'cracked' the puzzle of life. All knowledge, including Truth, seems spacetime bound. I don't want to transcend life anymore, even though fantasizing about my legacy from an imagined post-death perspective has become a habit really hard to break out of. I just want to soak into life, like slipping into a hot bath, and savour the effect.


Everything we know is an extreme, a stereotype of itself. Every colour in the spectrum can be the last in an arbitrary range. There is happiness beyond the happiest I've ever been, sorrow and despair beyond what I'll ever know. There are those who are worse than me in many things and many who will be better than me in everything. There is hunger and opulence, disgrace and adulation. Mind-boggling ignorance and crystal clear clarity. Gut-wrenching ugliness and breathtaking beauty. And I stand smack in the middle of this, between negative and positive infinities. I stand on zero. To live well is to never forget that.

Write to share, not to impress

How do some people enjoy working? The software corporate folks, and I only know what they have to say because I've spent most of my working life with them, call it play or fun and yet I think it is work they're doing. Maybe if it was Linus Torvalds that I met everyday when he was building Linux, I'd have believed the play part. Yes, that too might look like work to me (I have never understood how people spend their spare time writing software to build tools) but I can see what he means when he calls it fun. But when a colleague whom I'm working with, calls designing the database and writing scripts and building zeppelin notebooks fun, I'm totally lost. His actual words: "I'm doing pre-sales right now and I'd shoot myself in the face. I love doing this: writing code, building models; doing something of value". And I go, why the fuck can't I feel the same about my employer/ customer/ stakeholder. Is the reason for all my suffering? That I can't stand to think of anything other than my comfort and greed.

I've never done anything for anyone. Sure, I do stuff for the people I love if I know it'll make them happy. I help strangers a bit when I can. You know, the simple stuff, giving directions, helping with suitcases. When money becomes part of the transaction though, I can't stand it. If you love it so much, why do you do it for the money? It's not just money too. I've been a volunteer for causes that I feel deeply about and I think I do a very lousy job. I just turn up, no homework, no planning, no design. In my defence, that's how I live my life. From whim to action to retrospection to more whims. I've never been able to stick to anything in my life that involves conscious work and dedication. What is progress if not making a goal and walking towards it, correcting and learning on the way nevertheless but eventually trying to reach the preordained goal. I've never, ever been able to do that at a level that cannot be understood by a monkey. I can do the physical stuff but find it almost impossible to make my mind do something I want to. Though who this I is and why he can't control his mind I don't really know.

Last week, I went to an Actors and Filmmakers meetup. I've been dissatisfied with the software jobs that I've done and a part of me persistently tells me to move to find jobs as a writer in film, theatre, videogames etc. So I said, sure ,let me meet these people, get a couple of contacts and see if I have the chops to be hired without pay so that I could start off by working on weekends. But after having hearing them describe their lives and their problems, I realised that I didn't want to be a filmmaker. I have trouble writing and directing and I went there hoping I could learn the craft and find a discipline. My problems weren't monetary, they were artistic. These people, by their own words, were actors and writers who did the work they wanted to but were desperate for more opportunities, and thereby money. They claimed to be skilled at their craft and their problem was not of inspiration but that of existence. They weren't able to eke out a living. Comparatively, no matter how much I crib and cry at my sinful corporate job, I at the least am making good money (good enough for me to live a comfortable life, buy things I want, go to places without too much fuss and have the ability to take care of my loved ones). It was a real shocker, seeing all these talented people learning about Social Media Marketing and trying to find newer avenues on the internet to gain some popularity and money. Walking back home, quite shaken, I felt blessed for having a market-friendly degree. Hate my job as much as I could, I had the luxury of hating it from a warm and secure place.

Anyway, actually going there was a great thing because all these years, in my head, I thought becoming an artist meant freedom to pursue interests, ask important questions, have great conversations, and most importantly not be worried about expending mental energy for earning a living. To live like Montaigne, like the character who sings అవధిలేని ప్రతి అనుభూతికి ఆత్మానందమే పరమార్ధం. Of course I realize that people like that have their own set of problems, that great art comes out of overcoming great obstacles blah blah although that's a different discussion. So I'm having these thoughts and then it hit me that I don't want to be an artist as much as an aristocrat and it was a bit of a shock because I always considered myself to be left leaning. I thought I wanted work abolished; I now realize I want to be in a place where I don't want to do it. Of course I love these fancy gadgets, wonderful architecture, complex software platforms, access to excellent healthcare and education, and none of this would be possible without smart, dedicated people putting in efforts. For all my mockery of the working class, I see clearly now how I'm feeding off them. You leave me in a jungle for a day and I couldn't survive. I need the society for safety, pleasure, companionship, learning and yet I persistently mock the ones who grease its wheels albeit in an imperfect manner.

Freedom, the pedestrian connotation of it, is overrated. To be free from the surprises and shocks of life is to be dead. Real love is our inability to stop doing what we want to despite the innumerable obstacles we face. The stars align themselves in beautiful shapes every now and then. At all other times, it is love for the act that helps us swim through. To be a writer is not to complain about how life does not make it easy for me to write great things. To be a writer is to keep writing because I love writing. To write is not to write the one Truth after all the struggles. To write is to be in a constant, evolving relationship with life and using writing as a witness to that. Writing is not the panacea to all the problems in my life. It is the constant background music of my life, my companion with who I can have discussions and arguments at all times, and who helps me engage with life deeply.

a glorious walk back home at dusk

• Good evening, how are you today?
• I'm very good, thanks, how're you?
• I'm good.. So how would you like it
• Really short on the sides and back.. not so short on the top and front.
• Sure
• [Nodding at the posters of Sunil Shetty, Salman Khan, Akshay Kumar, Shah Rukh Khan, Hrithik Roshan, Shahid Kapoor] Do you watch Bollywood movies?
• Yeah man, I love Hindi movies.. Watch them a lot
• Cool.. Who's your favourite actor?
• In Hindi, or English?
• Hindi
• Aamir Khan.. 
• Yeah, Aamir's great
• ..and Akshay Kumar
• His comedy is excellent
• I watched that film recently.. Bahoobali.. It was awesome
• Yeah, it's a really good movie.. I'm actually from that place.. Baahubali was made in my language, it's called Telugu
• Yeah, Telegu.. I know.. I also watched that movie.. [snaps his fingers and stops cutting].. Er, the one in Chennai.. A lot of people go in trains
• Robo-?
• Yeah, Robot.. It was really great.. Indians spend a lot of money on movies.. [A news item comes up on TV about the separation of Bhutanese conjoined twins] That's great man.. That's great.. You have a lot of people in India?
• Yeah, we do.. But they're not Indian, I think they're Bhutanese
• Yeah
• Where are you from?
• Me.. I'm from Iran man
• Man, I love your films.. Kiarostami, Jafar Panahi, Majid Majidi.. Children of Heaven.. Panahi made a film called The Circle.. I love it
• Yeah.. and the music man
• I don't know about the music but I love your films.. Asghar Farhadi is Iranian right?
• Yeah, you know about him?
• Yeah, I love his Separation
• That's nice man
• Since when are you in Australia?
• Since 1985.. Like 35 years now
• Wow! You've only been in Sydney?
• Me?! No, I've lived in all places.. all over Australia
• What place do you like the most?
• I love Melbourne.. The weather is not good but it's a beautiful city.. I had a shop there but not much money.. So I moved here
• Yeah.. Can you make it shorter at the top?
• Yeah.. Sydney has 7 million people.. It's good.. It's like Mumbai.. I used to think Mumbai is the capital of India.. People think Sydney is the capital of Australia.. But it's only the financial capital
• Yeah
• So, you've been here long?
• No, just about two months now
• What do you do?
• I'm a software guy.. Lot of Indians are moving to Australia because of Software jobs
• But why? Tell me honestly, is it more money?
• Yeah, that's one part but more than that there's better lifestyle here.. India has too many people and too much pollution.. If you want more money, you're better off in America or England.. But people don't want to go to England anymore because of Trump
• Haha.. Donald Trump.. Really, why?
• [Indicating] Can you make it shorter at the top?.. Because he's made it harder for anyone to immigrate.. And people are not getting jobs.. Immigrants, Indians, Muslims..
• Yeah man
• [Nodding at the news about a Rugby match] Since I've been here, I've been trying to understand Rugby and Footy.. But there are so many types- NFL, NRL and all that and there are so many rules
• [Laughing] No worries, you'll get the hang of it.. When I came I didn't understand anything either
• Iran is so rich in culture.. [Holding the hair at the top] Ca-
• Yeah, I'll make it shorter.. 
• I've read translation of Rumi and Amir Khusrau
• Oh Khusrau yeah
• Urdu, the language spoken in South India, is based on Farsi
• Yeah man I know.. [rattling off words]Bos, Kam, Sapheyd, Haraam..
• [Laughing] Haraam.. Yeah, man.. 
• That's how I understand a little bit of Hindi movies
• [Getting up and looks at the hair in the rear mirror] Looks good, thanks
• [Reaches out a hand] Nathan.. It's actually *inaudible* but here everyone calls me Nathan
• Addy.. [Handing out a 50]
• Do you have a 20?
• Nope
• Sure, no problem.. [Giving back the change] Thanks.. See ya
• Sure.. Asalaam Vaalekum
• [Grinning] Vaalekum Asalam
• I'm from Hyderabad actually
• Oh! Yeah, it's a beautiful place
• Yeah, famous for Hyderabadi Biryani
• And Irani Chai
• Yeah.. It's beautiful.. And people speak Urdu there
• Yeah.. Hindus, Musilms, Sikhs live together there.. So nice
• India is like that.. Used to be like that I think
• Good day
• See ya

in the long run..

I seem to have forgotten that I write. I write. I didn't say it like it's a verb, not like something I do. I said it like it's a noun. Like it's a thing that exists and there's nothing I do about it. It's a characteristic now, not an activity. Actually that's not entirely true. Writing is an effort, a habit, a pleasure, a trip, a pain. But I guess I've come to a stage in this half-heartedly done, badly executed, numbly pleasurable, constantly perplexing thing I call my life where if I can take a few things for granted, one of them is that I write. And I'm really grateful for that.

I just read Neal Stephenson's distinction between Beowulf writers and Dante writers. I think he hits a nerve there, making a distinction along of lines of attitude- if you seek approval of a certain section, be it the Nobel committee or the "mainstream" public that decides the NYTimes bestseller list, you have to toe the line, be respectful, understand the tradition and take it forward. On the other hand, if you just go ahead and do your own thing, you're free to follow your interests but you are judged far more harshly than if you play to their expectations. And humans are hardwired to seek social progress. We crave approval from our immediate society and I find it surprising to think what we're willing to forsake just to not turn our friends and family antagonistic. By we, ofcourse, I mean myself.

I like working with people. Strike that. I don't like working. I like doing things with people. I like the camaraderie, the opportunity to learn new things fast, to share a laugh and feel less lonely. I don't like doing things alone. It's not just that I need an audience but that when alone my brain drifts away until it comes in contact with something, anything, onto which it can latch onto and start an imaginary conversation with. I think I've gotten so addicted to consuming that I can't survive without constantly shoving something into my head. Also, and I think this applies to all those I see daily in the train glued to their phones, I've lost the ability to glean (create?) narratives from disintermediated real life. I know at no point is complete disintermediation possible, considering the fact that language, society, relationships, culture, tradition etc., give us the maps without which we'd be completely marooned on the island of solitude (or will it enable us to find the other (inner?) path to, er, where exactly?), but now I think we, the English speaking- Internet native- Hollywoodized- City dwelling- Fast Food eating-Information Economy consumers, live like, as Flynn put it, We are all working from the same dog-eared script. I have a feeling though that this monochromatic-ness has always been true in human societies all the time. That's why we've always had vagabonds, drifters, hitchickers, Supertramps. Just that now moving away from the physical confines of your comfort zone is not enough because most of our lives are spent inside our minds.

It's incredible how language shapes our perceptions of truth and reality. A phrase like searching for answers implies that they are up there and you can pluck them if you really set your mind to it. It's an arbitrary lens, as far as my experiential reality is concerned, and yet I've believed it is true, spending all my adult life dissecting everything for an epiphany. Wow, scary af.

I took a walk today at lunchtime around Wynyard. It was bustling with people- hurriedly crossing roads, languidly walking for lunch, rolling in the park while giggling into the cell phone, napping below the trees. It was beautiful. I love the internet. I think it's the awesomest thing ever. All the information in the world at the tip of my fingertips. Lately, though, its turned into a burden because it imposes the need to know, the need to achieve, to impress, to be ambitious, driven, imaginative, funny. As an extension, I feel very guilty when I'm consciosuly not doing one of those things. All that brand talk is getting to me. You know, the mentality that asks me to play the lead role in the drama of my own life. So it felt good to, if only for a few minutes, be a background actor in a much more expansive act.

All solace is temporary

ఇదే ఇంతే.. కానీ సరిగ్గా చూస్తే ఇదే ఎంతో

మన దినచర్యలో ఎన్ని పనులు జీవికి, ఎన్ని జీవితానికి? జీవికంటే survival కోసం చేసే చర్యలు, జీవితానికంటే దానికన్నా ఉన్నతమైన అనుభవాలు పొందటానికి చేసే పనులు. ఉదాహరణకు: జీవికోసం Soylent ఉంటే సరిపోతుందిట, జీవితం కోసం ఆవకాయ, ముద్ద పప్పు, గుత్తి వంకాయ, పచ్చి పులుసు వగైరా వగైరాలు కావాలి కదా. అదన్నమాట.

మన దైనిక జీవితానికీ జంతువుల దైనిక జీవితానికీ పెద్ద తేడాలేదు: అవీ రోజంతా ఆహారం కోసం వెంపర్లాడుతాయి, మనమూ రోజంతా ఆ గొడవలోనే గడుపుతున్నాము. ఆ ఆకలి జంతువుకైతే తిండి రూపం దాలుస్తుంది, శారీరిక సుఖ రూపం దాలుస్తుంది. మనం జంతువులకన్నా ఒక మెట్టు పైనున్నామని మనకి అహంకారం గనుక అవి కాక మనకి పరపతంటే ఆకలి. అందరూ నన్ను చూడాలి, నన్ను మెచ్చుకోవాలి, నా గురించి గొప్పలు చెప్పుకోవాలి, నేను పోయాక నన్ను తలుచుకుంటూ నా గురించి కథలు కథలుగా మాట్లాడుకోవాలి అనే ఆకలి.

నాకు బ్రతుకంటే ఆశ. నాకున్న అతి పెద్ద భయం: ఒక రోజు ఈ జీవితానికి నేను స్వస్తి చెప్పాల్సి వస్తుందని. అదేంటో గమ్మత్తు, మనం అడగకుండా ఇచ్చిన దాన్ని ఇచ్చినవాడు తిరిగి తీసేసుకుంటాడేమోనని భయం. నా మెదడుకి (మెదడుకా, మనసుకా? ఏమో.. రెంటిలో ఒకదానికైతే) తెలుసు ఏమీ తీసుకురాలేదు ఏమీ తీసుకెళ్ళమని, నాదెగ్గరున్న ఆస్తల్లా ఈ క్షణమేనని. కానీ నేను బ్రతికే విధానం ఈ నిజాన్ని గౌరవించటంలేదు. నా జీవితానికి మూలం అర్థం పరమార్థం తెలుసుకోవాలంటే ఇదే సమయం. చిన్న తనమంతా అల్లరిలో గడిచిపోయింది. వృద్ధాప్యం, ఉంటే, అలిసిన శరీరాన్నీ మెదడుని మనసునీ, కుదిపివేస్తున్న అసంతృప్తిని, యవ్వనంలో కొన్ని పనులు చేసినందుకు, కొన్ని చేయనందుకు పడుతున్న పశ్చాతాపాన్ని సముఝాయించుకోటానికే సరిపోతుంది.

అసలేంటిదంతా. నా జీవితానికి నేను బాధ్యత తీసుకోవాలి. ఎవరేమనుకున్నా, ఎవరేమన్నా నా శోధన నాది, వాటి ఫలితాలు పరిశీలించి మార్పులు చేర్పులు చేస్కొని నన్ను నేను ఉద్ధరించుకునే కర్తవ్యం నాది. దీనికి నాకు కావల్సినవి ధైర్యం, వినయం, ఓర్పు, బుద్ధి. ఆ ఓల్డ్-స్కూల్ విలువలు.

మరి ఇప్పుడు నేను ఇతరులేమనుకుంటారు అని ఆలోచిస్తూ బ్రతకటం ఏంటి. దానికర్థం అడ్డమైన వేషాలేయమని కాదు. మనిషికి కుతూహలం సహజ గుణం. నేను ఈ ప్రశ్నలు చాలా అడిగేది ఒకప్పుడు. కానీ ఎప్పుడూ దీక్షతో సమాధానాన్ని వెతుకలేదు. పొగరుగా ప్రశ్నలు వేయటం సెక్సీ గా ఉంటుంది, నిజంగా సమాధానాలు రాబట్టాలంటే ఓర్పు కావాలి, క్రమశిక్షణ కావాలి, మన మీద మనకి గౌరవం కలిగేలా మనం ప్రవర్తించాలి. ఇది తెలుసుకోటానికి ఇన్నేళ్ళు పట్టింది.

ఏదైనప్పటికీ జీవితం ఇలానే ఉంటుంది, రోజూ ఏదో అద్భుతం ఎప్పటికీ జరగదు. అలా జరిగితే అదీ అలవాటైపోతుంది. మనిషి మనస్తత్వమే అలాంటిది- ఏదో గొప్ప విషయం (అది మంచిదీ కావచ్చు, ఉపద్రవమూ కావచ్చు) ఈరోజు జరిగితే, అది ఎల్లూండికి పాతబడిపోతుంది. లేకుంటే ఈ శరీరము, ఆలోచించే మెదడు, ఇన్ని అద్భుతమైన విషయాలను చూసి విని రుచిచూసి పీల్చి స్పర్శించగల పంచేంద్రియాలు, అవసరమైనంత సంపాదించుకోగలగటానికి కాస్తో కూస్తో నేర్పు.. ఒక్క నిమిషం ఆలోచించండి, మనం ఈశ్వరుణ్ణి కోరుకోగలిగినా కూడా ఇంతకంటే గొప్ప కోరికలు కోరుకోగలమా? మనం అడగకుండానే అమ్మవారు ఇచ్చిందే, వీటిని పద్ధతిగా వాడుకుంటే, మనిషిలా బ్రతికితే ఇంతకు మించిన జన్మ ఉంటుందా.

కవితల్లో రాసేది, ప్రవచనాల్లో చెప్పేది నిజమే అనిపిస్తోంది.. నువ్వు చీకట్లో భయంగా పరిగెడుతూ తడబడుతూ వెతుకున్న దీపం నీలోనే ఉంది. దాన్ని నిన్ను దహించే మంటగా మార్చుకుంటావో లేక వెలుగు ప్రసాదించి నిన్ను నీ గమ్యానికి చేర్చే వరంలా చూసుకుంటావో నీ చేతుల్లో ఉంది. సృష్టిని అర్థం చేయించగలిగే నిజం ఇంత సాధారణంగా ఉంటుందా ఏంటి అని నాకూ అనిపించేది. కానీ ఈ సంద్రంలోని లోతు ఎంతో.

ఇవే మాటలు చలా ఏళ్ళు నాకు ఎవడన్నా చెప్పుంటే చెప్పే వాడు వెర్రిముండాకొడుకు అనుకునే వాడిని. కానీ ఇపుడు ఇదే నిజం అనిపిస్తోంది, ఈ నిజం ధైర్యానిస్తోంది, శక్తినిస్తోంది, జ్ఞానార్జనకు ఎంతో ముఖ్యమైన వినయాన్ని గుర్తు చేస్తోంది. ఈ నిజం నాలో ఇంకాలి, ప్రతీ క్షణం సరిగ్గా బ్రతికేట్టు నా ప్రతి కణంలోనుండి పారాలి.

ఎవరికీ చెప్పేంత వాడిని కాను. కానీ ఒక విచారము- మనం ఎప్పుడు ఏది చేయాలో అది మన ముందే ఉంటుంది, ఇది చెయ్యి అని మన మనస్సు చెప్తూనే ఉంటుంది. అలా గుసగుసలాడే మనసు మాట వినబడేంత సున్నితత్వం అలవర్చుకోవటం మాత్రం మన కర్తవ్యం.

వందే గురు పరంపరాం.

--

I can't believe I wrote the above post. Glad I decided to sit on it for 10 days. Now as I read it, God, it feels awfully fake. Forget the content, even the voice doesn't sound like mine. It is too assured, too  confident of the speaker's theories. But I can honestly attest that when I wrote it, I had no intention of portraying anything like that in specific. I wrote like I always do, following the thoughts popping up.

In Woody Allen's brilliant Zelig, the protagonist feels such a constant need to agree with those who he's with, that he inadvertently turns into them. Thankfully, my condition is not that bad. Truth be told, I like being like that; Being able to converse with whoever I am with by sharing their worldview. Though to see that happen at the cost of my individuality (commendable from a Yogic perspective?) is unnerving.

Epiphany is a recurring motif in my adult life. Minor ones happen multiple times everyday. Major ones only slightly infrequently. Molecules in the universe rearrange themselves so that I clearly see the pattern amidst the chaos. I feel good, elated, confident. Glad. I create elegant theories, make plans on how to live from now, start walking towards the destination with firm, confident steps. Then reality intervenes and clarity evaporates. It leaves the residue of fantasy that, in the new light, looks ludicrously desperate.

On good days, I stay in the state of confusion. Irritated, subdued, tethered. On bad days, my mind comes up with a more outlandish theory on how to live that considers the feedback received from the previous theory as an important variable. Theory of Reflexivity gone awry, a feedback loop of feedback loops. All theories only seek data they need. Even metatheories.

--

I had a pleasant dream last evening. A cinematic analogy of what I feel when I face the blank page. I'm a 15 year old girl sitting in a classroom, madly deeply in love with a boy who's in the same class. The sunlight is warming my face, I'm feeling deliriously good about being alive, thinking about the boy. My stomach is tingling with the knowledge that he and I are separated only by a few feet. That I'm breathing in the air that is coming out of him. I tuck the hair falling out of my hair behind my ear. I absent-mindedly touch my earlobe, feeling womanhood in every inch of my body. I feel a maddening heat growing between my legs and so I lower my head, and turn it back slightly to the left so that I can see him. As his image courses through my being, my stomach does a somersault. I feel very nervous, very unsure but pleasure is gushing from every cell in my body.

When I sit in front of a blank page, I feel this. Love.

How do you like Pankaj Tripathi

I remember seeing Pankaj Tripathi for the first time in Gangs of Wasseypur as Sultan; How can I ever forget Nawaz's immortal rendition of "Sultan, M***", with that quiver in his voice, long before Arjun Reddy made the cuss word mainstream. Anyway, I noticed Tripathi in that film, and we know he was very good because if he was anything but he'd have gotten more popular with the thrashing he'd be received on social media for ruining a film that had Manoj Bajpai, Richcha Chaddha and Nawazuddan Siddiqui giving the performance of their lives. He shone brightly but, sadly, everyone else was more eye-catching. The next time I remember seeing him was in Masaan. I must've seen a couple of his other minor performances in the interim, because that was the period when I was truly obsessed with all movies coming from that UP-Bihar, and he is the sort of guy who inevitably is in those movies like Deepak Dobriyal or, during a short period, Pitobash Tripathy.

I was spellbound by his character in Masaan. I didn't like the movie very much but I fell in love with his character. Not just because he vocalized a dream I had since I was a kid, and which I later built on a 27 Down scenario, of just getting in and out of trains, traveling across India with no destination in mind - "Bas train mein chadhenge aur jahaan mann kiya utar jaayenge." - but also because he'd found the essence of what I think of when I think of a middle-aged male government employee from UP and found things in that stereotype to turn it into a living, throbbing being. Sadhya Ji doesn't seem like an easy character to inhabit and I was awestruck by the ease with which he played this gentle, romantic man who may have fought with life at some point but now has completely given up.

JM Coetzee, in his review of VS Naipaul's Half a life, writes that the thing Naipaul hates so much about the India psyche is the fatalistic view of life. The quintessential Indian man, according to him, does not want to take responsibility for his own betterment, does not dream because then he'd have to work towards it and to validate his inactions has invented the most convoluted of explanations in Hindu philosophies. I see some truth in that analysis and I see it manifest in Sathya Ji's character. He proclaims grand truths and poetic visions and yet he lives an unfulfilling life, timid and afraid of life itself. I realize that the previous statement is quite a turn from the earlier statement of him being a "gentle, romantic man" and it is because its hard to pin down his intentions or feelings. When you live long enough away from the core of your being, it becomes hard for you to really remember what it is like to be genuine. Sathya Ji could've had his reasons and maybe he did the noble thing by choosing to live with his father and stay unmarried but atleast part of it was fuelled by his fear and lethargy. The morality he follows is top-down, tradition-oriented, right simply because its socially approved.

It is a compliment to Tripathi's acting that he manages to turn this weakling into a character you care about, sympathise with, maybe even grudgingly admire. Then a few weeks ago I saw him in Barreily ki Barfi, and really was excited to see his performance, but he hardly had an inspiring moment. I really liked how Seema Pahwa infused a bit of charm in her equally small role but that film belonged to Rajkumar Rao. Man, what an actor! BR wrote that Tripathi was excellent in Gurgaon but I won't watch it because the trailer put me off. Talking of trailers though, Sriram Raghavan's Andhadhun's trailer is outstanding.

Off to more movies.

Owen Wilson is amazing

"I know you don't always like it, but I love it-it's my son's face". Man I love this line from Wonder. And Owen Wilson just kills it with his delivery. The way his voice drops to a whisper as the line ends, it feels the guy really, really, really means it. I think Wilson's a phenomenal person. Ofcourse, I don't know him but his sort of acting, where the personality of the actor shines through, can seem more genuine, and effortless, than highly crafted, dramatic acting who's famous exponents are folks like Daniel Day-Lewis and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Anyway, I wanna rewatch some of my favourite Wilson moments from Bottle Rocket (the banana suit sequence is hilarious and melancholic at the same time), The Darjeeling Limited ("I love you guys but I'm going to mace you in the face") and Marley and Me ("I want you to remember you're a great dog, Marley"). He can make cheesy lines like that from Marley and Me work and also convincingly do a Wed Anderson line; To be honest though, nobody does an Anderson line as good as Ralph Fiennes, not even Bill Murray. ("..get me a Courtesan au chocolat. If there's any money left, give it to the crippled shoeshine boy.")- And that pan of the camera.. Wham!!!

Update from Oz

Australia is beautiful. In a different way from Italy. Italy was filled with astounding cultural sights, breathtaking natural views, amazing food and wonderful people. Australia, atleast going by what we've explored in Sydney so far, doesn't have many beautiful buildings or wonderful ethnic food. But I am in love with its vast expanses, beautiful skies, community culture (free library, large parks and grounds that are free for all, well-functioning public transport) and the idea of an adult life that ventures beyond work and immediate family. We've been here 10 days so far and most time has gone into staying at home hunched infront of the computer. Despite that, we've visited the Opera House, Royal Botanic Gardens, gone on a ferry ride to Watson's Bay and abandoned the highly touted walk from Coogee to Bondi. More than that though, I like walking on these everyday roads. The grounds are breathtakingly large and green, every county seems to have its own fitness and sports centre, and I spent a lot of time today evening just watching a Net practice in a nearby ground. I'm also continuously googling for meetups in Art, Literature and Film areas and though there aren't as many as Id've liked (I keep hearing Melbourne is the larger cultural and sports centre), there are quite a few. This place also makes me want to go out for a walk or a run and I feel like there's more freedom for an individual to do what he wants or wear what he wants without attracting as many stares as in India. It's funny because I always thought I wouldn't like living in foreign (read first world, western city) but I really seem to be enjoying the opportunities available for an individual to pursue interests and passions. The orderly life, unlike the unnecessarily glorified India's 'Ordered Chaos', leaves enough mental space to venture beyond worrying about work, commutation and saving money. We noticed it a lot in Italy too. People not worried about bank balances (although it could be argued that we were only tourist-observers and don't have a real idea of how everyday-lives work) but spending time and money to find happiness now- eating out, meeting friends, taking a run, indulging in passions, discussing finer things. Pay more taxes and let the government help you with medical and educational expenses as and when you need it and don't worry about saving up for the children. Liking it, liking it a lot.

discussing films

• We spent a good two hour discussing films: Dhiraj, Sandeep and I
• Pathaka trailer, Bhardwaj's previous films, Shahid Kapoor's strange career graph where his memorable roles are unfrequent and are interspersed with horrible film choices
• Manto and its phenomenal cast 
• Cast Away, Wilson and minimalist movie posters
• Scorsese and his dichotomy: Gangster Rock and Meditations on God
• The genius of Wes Anderson and his inimitable, literary sensibilities
• Kieslowski's Dekalog
• Shaun Carruth, Primer, Upstream Color, Predestination (which I wrongly called Proposition)
• Richard Linklater, Before Trilogy, Boyhood and how he makes films on the events that happen between the events other films are made of
• Ramu and how Shiva paved the way for Satya and Black Friday
• TVFs brilliant content- this, this and this
• Biswa Kalyan Rath's astounding standup and that 1 min episode of his in IIM that comes in Comicstaan S1E1
• Recommendations to watch Laakhon mein ek and Yeh meri family

music in gibberish

చెరగనిదే ఈ స్నేహ గీతం

తరగనిదే మనలో వేగం

సరిగమలే పలికేను గానం

ఉరికెనులే గమ్యమెరుగని పయనం

యే చోటవున్నా మనమేం చేస్తువున్నా

ఈ జ్ఞాపకాలే మది విడువనన్నదే

యే తీరమైనా మనకే దూరమౌనా

ఈ స్నేహబంధం ఇక కరగనన్నదే

I really like this song. I heard it for the first time maybe 8 years ago as the credits rolled for Nakama Planet Green's first(?) short film. If you remember that time, you can recollect that Telugu short films were a major fixation for students and recent graduates. A popular meme from a little later went like this:

Things you did-

2009- DSLR
2010- Guitar
2011- Shortfilm
2012- Standup comedy

For some reason it popped into my head a couple of days ago and I've been humming it since. The poetry is beautiful and though quite simplistic it has a certain naive idealism to it- A lack of cynicism and a belief in the future being atleast as good as the present.

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I like Vivek Sagar's music for Tharun Bhascker's films (haven't heard Yuddham Sharanam or Sammohanam yet). Like is probably not the right word, I find it so interesting that I choose to listen to it consciously. Usually I'm either paying attention to the lyrics or if its a beautiful melody, humming it absent-mindedly. With #Pellichoopulu, and especially with Ee Nagaraniki Emaindi, I find the music (and I use the word loosely) very captivating. There is so much happening here- a variety of sounds, titbits of sentences, different little sound structures coming together to mingle and separate, the main melody played as whimsical staccato and then abruptly changing into a very different tune. And despite all this cacophony, the whole thing still sounds good somehow. I find it impossible to hum at a later time but I find that the parts I love keep looping in my head (case in point, the part that starts with Niseedhi dhaarilona in Aagi Aagi). Until I learnt later in some interview that Raalu Poola is a new song that was specifically composed to make it feel the remix of an old one, I thought it was a remix. It does not feel sourced from one particular song as much as they'd somehow managed to capture the essence of whatever we think of when we think of an old Telugu song(that's composed sometime in the 50s) and then work on it until the song sounds like a remix of that one. Setting aside the fact that I don't like the song, I marvel at how they managed to pull it off. And the poetry of Tharun Bhascker's songs feels really fresh; Not always good but new nevertheless

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I think this sort of music suits the rhythms of Ee Nagaraniki. It is a strange film. I like it when I'm able to view the puppet strings dancing behind when I'm interacting with any art work and #Pellichoopulu didn't give me that chance. It felt too masterfully written, too neatly sealed. I loved it nonetheless but I can see that the maker is in control, working within the realm of his powers. When this overstretch happens, it becomes interesting to try and guess what exactly he's trying to reach.

A similar analogy can be made between Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel and Isle of Dogs. Grand Budapest is, as far as I'm concerned, a perfect film. Madhav garu once told me that as an editor, his primary job was to help the writer reduce the gap between what is in the head and what is being conveyed via the medium. With Grand Budapest, Anderson was in such control that the film seemed to be transcribed from inside his head. On the other hand, with the Isle of Dogs, Anderson's tone and narrative are frequently jarring and as much as it's frustrating when watching the film for the first time, thinking about it later gave me a better appreciation of what he was trying to convey and the ingenious devices he'd conceived to transfer those elusive feelings (in this case honour, duty, pathos, love, loyalty). I'm beginning to think that when a film is uneven, the moments that work make more impact than if it is uniformly brilliant. Like that wonderfully tracking shot of Akira leading the dog convoy while I won't hurt you plays in the background. Or the disarmingly honest way Nutmeg says, "Because he's a twelve year old boy, dogs love those".

It is an ironic twist of fate that reaching the summit diminishes the aura of the film. By falling short, that gap is filled by the admiring viewer and the film in the head is better, any day, than the one in the real world.

So, yeah, Ee Nagaraniki was unwieldy and stretched too thin but I fell for its charms. On the surface, both #Pellichoopulu and Ee Nagaraniki Emaindi have very straightforward, overabused storylines but while Pellichoopulu's genius was in world-building (It felt built and populated from the imagination of an idealistic township planner), Ee nagaraniki, while ostensibly reworking Rock On!! for the film industry, tried also to talk about growing up in the 90s and the famously millennial job dissatisfaction while also incorporating using Hyderabadi lingo. Tharun was trying to convey the pervading sense of unsureness within us, the lure of procrastination, the fear of walking away from the comfort zone, the inability to become a unified whole self. Yes, he fell short, but damn was he shooting for the stars.

I wish it'd come online soon. I want to watch it again.

want to blog more often

I ought to blog more often. Without the edges polished. Even if only to document thoughts and feelings. Even when I don't really have anything useful to say. Even when I worry about how all this inferior stuff will be perceived after I become a serious, successful artist. Even when I know atleast a few people are reading this. Even at the cost of "spending" important material that could later be converted to critically acclaimed pieces. To write without agenda, to write without self-consciousness, to write without the need to create an image or prove a point. To write and post it up here instead of carefully safeguarding thoughts and ideas in notebooks and Evernote.

I've never been a writer. I guess I'm now less enamoured with the title than I was a few years ago but the progression is something like this: earlier, I used to write. Then once I started thinking I was a writer, I almost stopped writing. Now I want to go back to enjoying the experience of just typing what's going in my head. It is so easy to get lost in labels. No wonder the past gets harder to break out of especially since we insist on holding it tighter and tighter. I created all these rules for myself, on how to be and behave based on what I was like at some point in the past, and soon forgot that they were just arbitrary. They need not be set in concrete. Imagination, knowledge, wisdom, intelligence, awareness, enlightenment, grace, culture. What do I really know about these words that I long for. God man did I create a prison.

I know I have backpain and I know doing Yoga regularly will cure it. I've been using that as a springboard to write my last few columns on the nature of discipline, well-being, freewill, karmic residues, societal obligation and other fancy terms. I pick quotes from celebrityland to build a fragile, delicate structure and then try to imbibe it into my being. Then while delicately poised on that, I try to build more elaborate structures that are impossible to maintain because of their weak foundations.

I just want to be free from this thick-walled, awkward fort I've built around myself and standing atop which I view the world. I want to be free from this unremitting need to identify the meta-narrative of my life, from feeling as though I'm the protagonist of this story. I talk about the ego, the thinking mind, postmodernism, alienation, spirituality, economics as if I know anything about anything. I don't really. I just seem to be making this up based on where I live in spacetime. There is nothing sacred about any of my opinions and god do I have many of them. Living is such a fluidic enterprise and I'm hellbent on building a cathedral on the surface of a mighty river.

Maybe I should swim around, read poetry, take a hike, savour the fruit, reduce someone's suffering if I can. Words and reason seem like a very small part of what it means to be alive. To function in other dimensions, I must be willing to unchain myself from one. I genuinely don't know what the previous sentence means.

I can only be honest and open; Luckily, now, I know what that means.

Transcending mental gluttony

My submission for the July edition of AZIndiaTimes.

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Transcending mental gluttony

I read a lot- The good, the bad and the ugly. I have tens of ebooks on my phone, multiple apps like Medium, Pocket and Feedly overflowing with bookmarked articles. I always carry a couple of books in my backpack and I’ve subscribed to so many of these recommendation/ aggregation services that my inbox is flowing with mails every morning. My two Terabyte hard disk is filled with cinema and music from across the world, collections spread across decades, that I haven’t seen even 5% of and I go on hoarding more content as soon as I come across something vaguely interesting. This got so bad that I stopped watching films, convincing myself that I can read about more films in the time it takes me to watch and experience one, and instead collect titbits of information and opinion from the cyberspace to appear erudite. I have abandoned more MOOCs than I can remember for topics ranging from Blockchain to Learning Mandarin, and Introduction to Gene Mapping to Writing Music like Mozart. Expectedly, instead of alleviating that sense of dumbness, this behaviour gives me immense stress and anxiety that there’s always more for me to read, watch, listen, learn. Not just is this stupid, wrong and insane, it’s also a disease.

We do not talk - we bludgeon one another with facts and theories gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers, magazines and digests. -Henry Miller via Charlie Kaufman (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRfXcWT_oFs)

I suffer from mental gluttony, a condition where I can’t stop amassing as much mental food as I can because I’m worried I’ll live my life wrongly. This is the ideal of self-help stripped of its spirit, taken to its logical, nihilistic extreme. It is no wonder that until very recently, thanks to this extreme behaviour, I started to look down upon all forms of knowledge and mocked the idea of a free will. The noise in my head is too deafening for me to even acknowledge the presence of my own self. I feel like an addict, so intoxicated to one dimension of experience that consequently I am failing at every other aspect of being. Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with being culturally informed and seeking aesthetic stimulus. But to keep obsessively searching for it all the time, either in the hope that it will transform my life into being the best version of myself or in fear lest I live an ignorant and a half-life, is in itself a stunted life.

Read nothing from the past one hundred years; eat no fruits from the past one thousand years; drink nothing from the past four thousand years (just wine and water); but talk to no ordinary man over forty. -Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Self-improvement is probably a good ideal. We live in an age and society that celebrates it. Yet, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who understands what the words self or improvement really mean. Unless you have a very good explanation to believe otherwise, what you are chasing in your life are somebody else’s dreams. And that is the reality of all our lives. We live in the Century of the Self, a spacetime where it is imperative for a man to project the best, but also socially acceptable, image of the self and keep working at it lest someone in our social circle is working harder at it. Black Mirror is not dystopia, it is reality and unless we unplug and get our moorings right, we are going to end up being so lost in this abyss.

For my part, I went cold turkey last month. Deleted, unsubscribed, removed notifications. I don’t feel particularly stupid or lost though a pleasant side effect has been that frequently I find myself on a weekday afternoon with nothing to do for a few minutes. I just sit, empty-headed, craving stimulus but also aware of the junk-food nature of most content online. It’s a strange feeling: Freedom, is it, as opposed to compulsively consuming everything the zeitgeist hurls. Even now I can’t stop reading FIFA match reports or film reviews but the volume’s gone down so much.

What distinguishes human beings and animals, or, in other words, the essence of being human is the possibility to move from compulsiveness to consciousness. -Sadhguru

All of us want to live well. The first step in that is staying healthy- physically, mentally, emotionally. No matter how much you exercise, you cannot become healthy as long as you are compulsively consuming unhealthy food. Food that was made without love and grace, without mastery and devotion. The same holds true for everything we read, listen and watch. It's far easier said than done. Thirty days is time enough to see how well this experiment fares and I hope to bring a positive update in next month's column. Until then, good luck if you wish to join this club.

Chasing Enlightenment: Mission Aborted

My submission for the June edition of AZIndiaTimes.

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Chasing Enlightenment: Mission Aborted

“I’m not the body, I’m not the mind.” -Sadhguru

I was a big believer in Descartes’ concept of Mind-Body Dualism till recently. I thought, therefore I was seemed like the truth considering how much time I spent inside my head. My body never listened to me. I wasn’t smart, sexy, fit and that was because neither was I my body nor could I tell it what to do. But my mind, my mind was a different matter. It listened to me, it guided me, it gave me an external identity, it was me. Yet, more often than not, I acted on my mind’s beckoning; It was rarely the other way round. If my mind and I were the same, how would it matter anyway? But are we?

Since over a month now, I’ve been practicing Kriya Yoga. Diligently would be untrue but quite sincerely. I have also been reading/ listening to Yogis, mystics and monks hailing from the Indian traditions and I can see my worldview, and self-view, changing. That’s not very unusual. I’m quite malleable to philosophies, both deep and shallow, but what is different this time is that these words, unlike most others, are empowering me.

Who am I? Why am I alive? Is there a purpose to my life? What is the right thing to do? How do I find fulfillment? What is the nature of the world? Like so many others, I’ve always been surrounded by these questions. For all I know, others placed these questions in my head. Not getting easy answers frustrated me, made me cynical, an escapist and led me to explore alternative platforms of thought. Realising I’m not just my mind, though I tend to identify with it so closely, has removed the burden to find the right answer. I’m not so guilty of living, without intellectually understanding the underlying mechanisms of life and action, anymore.

Most of what happens in my head stays in there. Om Swami talks about four aspects of the mind: Mind, consciousness, intellect and ego. I’m still exploring these ideas, both intellectually through words and for the first time experientially via meditation and Yoga. I’m still a newbie, just getting my feet wet and I don’t want to make any inaccurate impression as to my exposure or knowledge of these things, but my everyday living has changed in a month. I still get unnecessarily irritated, afraid, lazy, confused. There hasn’t been much change in that. There has been, though, a change in the way I consciously perceive these things.

“There is no such thing as enlightenment” -UG Krishnamurti

God is not coming down to explain everything to me just because I get drunk and yell curses at the sky. He might not come even if I spend a life with monkish discipline and abstinence. When I choose the latter, though, I’m in control. I’ve had these thought experiments before: If you’re feeling free, is it because someone who’s controlling you from up there is driving that impression? I’ve travelled long enough in that land and I see only barrenness and suffering. So is running away from suffering the right way to live my life? Why does suffering exist then? Is god malevolent? Is seeing that there is no enlightenment real enlightenment? See, these arguments are endless. I thought I’d reach the bottom of the pile. Turns out I’m not been able to.

I’m beginning to realize I’m creating these monstrously contorted complications in my head and feeling miserable when I’m not able to untangle them. Life created me. I exist here and now. That’s the truth. Even if I’m a figment of someone’s imagination and I’m condemned to think the way I am, that does not take away from the fact that I’m here and now. The grace of life is always guiding me. To where, I don’t know. I’m not even sure if I’m right now capable of recognising and appreciating it. The core of my being is seeking expansive joy. For all my intellectual web spinning, I cannot deny that. Then why live in my head and die bitterly than live expansively and see where life takes me, whoever this me is.

Does it mean I turn into a hedonist? If it makes me happy, sure. The truth is that as much as I’d argue otherwise externally, in the heart of my hearts, I know what I ought to be doing. By denying myself that advice, I’m standing in my own way. I’ve always wanted to be right. That’s an intellectual pursuit. Doing the right thing for the sake of the ego. Seems like there’s no such way. I’m not even doing as much as being done by a chain of casualty.

I chased enlightenment because I thought it was the right thing to do, the cool thing to do, the easy thing to do. I sought the silver bullet (http://omswami.com/2018/04/enlightenment.html) because I believed it’d make living easier. It is not out there, it is not sometime in the future. To achieve success, it is said a person needs 3 things: Aim, Diligent Effort and the ability to Keep Going even when results are not encouraging. Am I willing to do that for enlightenment? Not really. If I had those qualities, I’d be using them to get better materially not seek an otherworldly truth. Enlightenment, so far for me atleast, has been an escapist notion.

“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.” -Rumi

My life is here and now. I want to be joyous. These are inescapable truths. Every other fanciful thought is because of a need to escape from reality because I’m not capable, physically, mentally, emotionally, energy-wise etc. for turning this moment into a wonderful experience. I must work towards who I want to be, what I want the world to be, what I want to feel. Karma is true in the simple sense that we live in a Cause-and-Effect based physical universe and to achieve something, I must do all that is required. Nothing can replace action- conscious or compulsive.

I sought enlightenment because I thought it might let me live my life by drifting above it. I’m now thinking what a waste of life that would be. I want to walk through the beautiful forest of life, fully conscious, using my body, mind, emotion and energies to savour every moment and keep walking, keep getting surprised, keep having interesting conversations, keep touching others deeply. Life created me, I trust it to guide me to where I ought to go. That sounds like a good way to live, doesn’t it.

Only Karma is real

My submission for the May edition of AZIndiaTimes. I've been doing a bit of meditation and reading, and those thoughts manifested into this post.

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Only Karma is real

Living so closely with machines, that are phenomenally good at one or two things but completely useless at other things, we’ve come to believe that a human being is also something like that. We choose specializations because they make us more certain of our opinions and biases. But we cannot confine ourselves to just that because we are more complex than that, way more ignorant of our real motivations, way more marvelously designed and built. Sadhguru says deep inside all of us have a longing for the infinite. Love, money, fame, power, happiness are some of the many manifestations of that feeling. We choose to work towards the thing that we are most deprived of with the belief that it would lead us to our salvation. Yet, even when we clearly see no matter how much we accumulate it isn’t enough, we don’t stop chasing. If only we could sit still (both mentally and physically), for even a moment, won’t all this confusion clear up and we will see ourselves and, as an extension, the world clearly.

“Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion” -Rumi

All this, of course, makes sense intellectually. We understand these things and at some level, deeper than where language and logic can reach, we know it to be true. Why does this not then turn into experiential reality? Yogis say it’s because of our Karmic residue. We are driven compulsively by effects of the stuff we did in the past (lives). That would raise two questions: 1. Why did we do “bad” things in the first place then? Were we built that way by a malevolent God? 2. If I’m forever tied to the effects of my previous actions, it’d get easier and easier for me to keep doing the wrong things and go deeper and deeper into the abyss. If there is no free will, because my current actions are decided by my previous ones, how can I change my life?

I’ve been grappling with these questions for years and I seem to have stumbled across some form of an answer. The first state of acceptance was to see that logic, and thereby language, are just one mode of thought. They’re wonderful tools and we’ve built so much in the world because of them but they are not powerful enough to help us understand our inner reality. Secondly, though I don’t know why we are here and if there is a God, I see that there are no “bad” things per se. I call an action bad if its effect leaves me with an unpleasant feeling now. By definition, that is time-constrained. A lot of my judgement depends on what mood I’m in right now; It tells less about the world than about me. The question of free will is just a parlour game because I can choose either option and still win an argument. It is not a contributor in making my life more joyous. A major, major reason for a lot of my problems with life is my romance with my mind, my weakness for intellectual tricks. The more complex theories I formulate to arrive at the conclusion that this is life, the more burdened I become. And it’s not even like the formulae are useful. Life never ceases to surprise me.

Where does all this gyaan come from now? How do I know this isn’t transient? These are questions that would have bugged me till about a month ago. Now, I don’t really worry about the expiry date of an idea nor am I enamoured by complex theories. The truth is here and now for me to see. All I need to ask is if I’m physically and mentally ready to see it?

If all this is so important and seemingly true, why doesn’t my mind know this instinctively, naturally? (Come to think of it, what is the guarantee that my mind isn’t playing another trick with this faux-epiphany? Can you see it- There’s no way I’m winning any argument with my mind. I should treat it like a very smart friend, not an all-knowing god.) All things that we consider natural now, brushing our teeth, driving a car, giving powerpoint presentations, are, when you think of it, the bizarrest things in the world. The mind treats all new ideas warily, as foreign intruders. Only if we give it enough time and explain it experientially, will it learn and adapt.

“People have fallen in love with words and lost the world. It’s time to regain it.” -Sadhguru

I know this sounds a lot like the New Age, quasi-spiritual conversations that we are surrounded by but I’m learning that the answers really are inside. We don’t need thousands of books or hundreds of hours learning a skill or watching innumerable Ted talks to learn how to live. All we need is the ability to sit quietly and listen.

yet another abandoned undertaking

Wrote this post sometime in the first week of March. I don't know what I was going to say and I think I abandoned it midway because it wasn't gelling into a unified whole; I'm posting this now because the part about celebrating the normal life has been with me for a few years and I think it finally semi-concretised into an explicable feeling.

As usual, Grant Snider does a much better, more beautiful job of conveying my feelings

For your consideration.

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We watched Lady Bird in a theatre today. It's been such a long while since I watched a film without worrying too much about the pros and cons of having to go to a theatre to watch it. Sravani really liked the trailer but I went because I have a soft corner for films like Frances Ha and The Squid and the Whale. The film reminded me of Juno and Boyhood. I enjoyed watching it for its warm fuzziness and essential good-naturedness. On thinking of it, I think it is also similar to Little Miss Sunshine though that film had exquisite dialogue.

Lady Bird is the coming-of-age dramedy of a high school girl in the US around 2002. The details are slightly new but all this has been done before. If anything, films like these make me nostalgic for films like these. And what exactly do I mean by "these" films? They're about normal people, doing normal shit, feeling normal desires and frustrations, wanting stuff you and I'd want in their place, their worlds small and complete. All they want are the things that they see others having, all purpose in their life is defined by the rituals their society has put into place. They have big-hearts but small minds. Even their imaginations are not free enough for them to seek the transcendental. These are petty people. These are people like you and I.

Not long ago, nobody wanted to see these stories. We wanted our heroes to be grand and greater than life. We wanted their journeys to be special that it warranted a narrative about them. Then something strange happened. With the rise of modernism, everyone could write their own stories and put them out. The individual with all his mundane, everyday experiences and micro-epiphanies was the star of his own life and it gave others the license to feel important living the normal lives they did. I also think that with the rise of handycams and their excessive usage to record individual milestones, especially in the US, for the first time celebrating a birthday, or going to the prom, or graduating high school became dramatic events in their own right. Their children then wanted to do all these things, and record them, because as far as they could see, it was the rite of passage to adulthood. So we started deifying the normal individual doing normal things and calling him the hero of the modern world.

A hero once had to do impossible feats to earn a mention in a bard's epics. Now all he/she had to do was toe the line a little out of conformity and he could earn a film of his own. I don't have concrete proof of this idea, and I'm not sure I have the motivation and perseverance to go seek it, but if it's important to me, I'll be forced to learn it sooner or later.

Pop culture has a huge impact on how a generation grows up and learns to measure itself upto. Because of films that have protagonists who are narcissistic, self-obsessed, and filmmakers who make their spiritual quest the only primary motivational arc, we probably live in a society that's so individual-centric. Again, art reflects all changes happening in the society too and so industrial age and enlightenment thinking are more deeper factors for us being in a position like this today. Ofcourse, its not all bad and there are upsides, primarily the fact that we are the most accepting and understanding of generations, but when a human becomes the most atomic and intelligent entity in societal structures, then the burden of existence eventually stops at his doorstep.

I watched Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri yesterday. It was good but no match to In Bruges or even to Seven Psychopaths. I know all films are different beasts and should be judged according to their own merits and flaws, but I want to embrace my inner Dionysis for a while after spending too much time with Apollo. Tim Parks' take on Three Billboards raised an interesting thought. We claim to want our films to be realistic, to deal with real people but we don't really. Not just because reality is a way too complex to be portrayed conclusively in any art but also because the reality we see is the image we project on the real reality. No filmmaker or writer, worth his salt anyway, can betray the way he sees the world. So when a filmmaker presents a film, watch it with the understanding that this is the way he wishes the world is. If you like it, good for you. If you don't, well you have a reason now to create art and impose your view of the world onto someone else.

To live like I eat

April column for AZIndiaTimes. I didn't file a copy for March. Also, I changed the title of my section from Kicking and Screaming to Ways of Being. Can't remember why.

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To live like I eat

I have grand visions. I make good plans. I start working on them with a bang. Eventually though, I fail to implement new habits for more than a few days and motivation fizzles out. A few days and many self-help blog posts later, I’m ready to give a new vision another shot. Only, I drop it halfway too. Ad infinitum. Eat, Plan, Fail, Repeat. Undoubtedly, my lack of will and discipline play a major role in the failure. This failure to execute plans is all-pervasive- Working out regularly or learning a new Programming language. Or with keeping a journal or vouching to travel more regularly etc.

“I ­always have to feel that I'm bunking off from something.” -Geoff Dyer

I’ve always been a procrastinator, a lazy bugger, an escapist, someone who hates the idea of work itself. A part of me tella that when I’m gone, it’ll be my work, even if only for a few years, that’ll prove the fact that I existed once. For me, posthumous remembrance is, or I’d like to believe it is, a big deal. And that makes this all the more conflicted- this battle between instant gratification, living perpetually in the moment, walking, on whim, towards whatever is now catching my attention and the voice that tells me that great things that people will look upto can only be built by delaying gratification in the service of working diligently towards a vision and overcoming innumerable hardships to arrive, at least ephemerally, at the summit of human excellence.

I’ve been taught, by my family, society, culture, that work is good. Least for what it gives us materially and more for how it gives purpose and meaning to our lives. Work need not necessarily mean paper-pushing tasks. To work is to, I’ve come to learn, embracing my best self to make the society a better place. And to do that I must work towards Physical, Mental and Spiritual fitness and that is where I’m falling short of my expectations. My life so far has been a series of failed attempts to becoming the best man society needs me to be. I know it very well because amidst all this hullabaloo, I feel like I haven’t left a mark on my own bloody life. Yet, I can vouch with sincerity that I started all that I have with clean intentions and a sincere mind.

Why am I so unsuccessful then? Is it because of my weak-willed disposition. Or maybe because my plans are wrong? Or because I’m choosing the wrong things while life is trying to nudge me towards my destiny? Everything I am in life today has been mostly because of chance. I always did what was safer and easiest do to which, more often than not, is going with the flow. My primary defence for that is that since I don’t know everything and I’m not really passionate about something to march to my own drum, so isn’t it safer all around just to do what everyone else is doing? Of course there were a few moments, very few, when I stood up to what I really thought was right but even then a part of me chose to take the risk because I wanted to be known as intelligent or courageous or a maverick; You know, all those wonderful qualities. That presents a really deep conundrum- I want to play safe, seek the protection of being in a group but simultaneously want to be seen, admired, be the centre of everyone’s attention- How is that possible?

“Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence” -David Foster Wallace

I had to solve that problem because it would be the platform on which everyone of my other decisions would play out. So to placate both sides of the argument, to be in this society that I grew up in and in which I had found comfort and solace but also to climb atop the dominance hierarchy, I decided, or my subconscious did, to strive for those things that my immediate society valued most. In my case, these happened to be Intelligence, Material Success, Artistic Temperament, Health, Control over Impulses etc. Since I’m not a master of any of those things, everyday I try to manipulate reality in such a way that I give off an impression of control. I, a person with such extreme spatio-temporal limitations, someone who has no clue how or why he’s here, is presumptuous enough to attempt to manipulate the universe so that it can give him temporary relief. I’m trying to win a game in which I’m one among infinite participants and whose rules I haven’t even begun understanding.

What then do I do? Live on whims and fancies? Blindly follow my impulses? Jump into the river and give in everything to life? Or do I try to impose order onto life, something that is born from a very limited understanding of effects and repercussions? Do I choose to uphold values which I either don’t know or completely understand? Why am I in this lose-lose situation? For every path walked, there will be an unlimited number of roads not taken? Which leads me to salvation, if at all that’s where I should be headed? I have been asking these questions for years now. Either I’m not growing or these are so central to my being that I confront them wherever I go. The confusion is amplified by the Web that’s filled with a cacophony of noises and most of them are trying to tell me how I ought to live.

My wife loves the idea of food. She has the ability to understand and enjoy really complex flavours while I spend most of my time savouring the most basic flavours. We try each others’ ice-creams occasionally but otherwise we’re happy to live and let live. Maybe that’s how I ought to live, like I eat. With freedom and personal preference. I don’t intellectualize what I eat; I don’t worry about how the future generations are going to judge me by what I choose to eat. Some like their guavas ripe, others don’t. Some like chocolate ice-cream, others prefer vanilla. There are no good or bad tastes. They just are. Well, why can’t I just be then? Do what I believe is right at that point, act and move on. Maybe, after all, I don’t have to measure up to someone else’s idea of best being.