Retrospection

There is a thought that comes naturally

And that’s to worry, worry and worry

 

Slouching in the past

Flitting through the present

For the brain is in a muddle

Sluggish to all life’s riddles

 

No more is the present a gift

Cause your mind's quite adrift

Busy creating a rift so wide

Forcing all relations to collide.

 

Then why we move to something so polluted

when it causes all sensibilities to become diluted?

Perhaps intoxication in that fabled drink

Causes self-pity to remain distinct

 

Learn from previous events they say

But with thoughts so bogged, we can only pray

For until will power is regained

We will never learn to live again.

 

The easiest thing at any moment

Is to consider the past and only lament

But the best solution is to be adamant

And wear your present as your favored garment

Change Hypocrisy

The questions I aim to put out are something along these lines

•           Are changes from generation to generation destined to happen at this rate?
•           But is the body able to cope with these changes?
•           What is happening to our culture then?
•           Does common sense always prevail these days?
•           Has the virus infected only select individuals?

Have you ever felt that you are increasingly being surrounded by Hypocrites? Perhaps you too are one. Don’t be alarmed cause you aren’t alone, this is the mania gripping all of us. As many of us say- “Easier said than done”.

The most recent example can be when people were baying like hounds when the anti-corruption movement came up. Thousands joined in but how many of them can actually say that they are corruption free. “Ok”, it is nearly impossible to be corrupt free these days because one is forced at some point to not toe the line when they have something to be done (considering all the corruption all over) , but still, how clean those people thronging the protests were themselves? The media too keep bawling about corruption, but it doesn’t mean that they are free of it themselves. We are asking for change without realizing that change needs to come from within first, this is where hypocrisy creeps in.

Forget about these major changes; let us think about those small changes occurring among us from generation to generation. People are becoming a lot more modern, but at what cost? Is the body able to cope to these changes? In general, the answer is a simple “No”. You might wonder “what is this guy talking about?” I am talking about small changes in lifestyles that are happening gradually but perhaps more so over the last one or 2 decades. This is leading to increased amount of stress levels, which is leading to lot more suicides and killings too. People have become very jumpy, and the phrase “on your toes” comes to my mind, but sadly that too has its limits after which we lose balance.

In this manic society, even culture is being sacrificed and lot of common sense too. No one is saying “no”; to adopting western ideas… but to what extent do we adopt them? Let me give you the latest example- Recently after a particular film was released, there was a hue and cry for adopting “Tomatina” festival into our lives, which was ridiculous considering the spiraling prices due to food shortage, increased consumption, etc over here. Luckily people with common sense in that respect decided to quash any such ideas. Our basic inner core varies for people from region to region, and our tendency is astonishingly begun to take in things from other cultures but only keeping the wrong things of our culture in mind. Hence the discrepancy in the so called clones.

Now I too am babbling about things outside my control, but I do realize with change within myself, things will get better. It doesn’t mean that we need to stop our demands, but we need to demand things of which we know we are clear and aware of.

Most of this writing might seem pertinent only to a particular region, but actually it is true all over the world with only the situations and events changing.

Crazed Stranger

We have all heard of small towns having a man commonly termed as a Town drunk (or village drunk in case of a village). Have people ever tried to get into those persons (or similar people) lives and find out what is it that makes them tick the way they do? I have… Just once… After that I decided not to try it again.

I come from a little known town so I wouldn’t want to delve into names. There was one such man abhorred and shunned by all. No one seemed to know who he was, or perhaps no one cared to know.  Most people would look with fear at him, children were pulled away from him whenever they moved close to him, and ladies passed him with fear stricken glances. Very rarely though did he approach people himself, many times he was heard screaming loudly in a voice even he might fail to recognize as his own (due to the lack of use of his voice box).

 I was a curious youngster and whenever I saw him I would pester anyone near to tell me as to whom he was. I would usually get one of 2 responses – either they don’t know or some said that he was thrown out of his house due to his raged drunkenness.

There was a time in my life when I was going through a rough phase, and found a lot of solace in his company as he would generally be quiet when someone around him (irrespective of the contrary accusations). Gradually, I found him as good company and felt an invisible connection form between us two. I used to get some things to eat. After some more time, I began to leave a bit for him on the ground near him before walking off, not looking back as to what he was doing, but was happy to see it gone the next day I would pass by him on my way to work. Finally, one day I drew some courage and asked him about his past life. Not expecting a reply, I wasn’t disappointed in anyway when I didn’t get one. Seeing that he remained a silent spectator, in the coming days I began to pour out my own problems to him, and it gave me a soothing feeling being with one who was ready to listen without saying a word of neither admonition nor argument.

Things went on like this for some time, and then as things got better I became more engrossed in my own personal and professional life and hence didn’t have much time for him. After 2 weeks of not having met him, I made up my mind to go and check as to how he is. I was shocked to see him sprawled on the pavement with a high fever. I immediately got him admitted into the hospital, but it was too late… He soon passed away after telling me the first two coherent lines I had ever heard from him. The doctor did give me a small pad, telling it had been written by that man for me. I was very surprised as I didn’t know that he would be able to write, and curious too as to what he would have written for me.

In it I read things which I will be briefing to you now. He had noticed me for quite a few days and had begun to write this quite early. He had been an educated man with a decent family background from a village about 120kms away. He was a hardworking person and hence had earned quite well. With many in his village and many relatives too being poor, he put in lot of time and money in their lives, caring for them as his own. Sadly for him, he began to realize that there was no return in that love and no appreciation from all those people that he cared so much for. Things started getting worse and worse, and he began to feel depressed. His 2 sons got married and they went away to nearby cities. His crops began to fail and hence he became poor. After a few years his wife passed, leaving him alone. His fellow villagers had no pity on him (despite the help that they had received earlier), and left him as he was, even his sons ignored him as they felt that they had been ignored (but they had been well taken care of with them getting whatever they had wanted) by the father due to his constant thought of others too. Forced to sell his house and farm, he was left with nothing and nowhere to go.

Finally, he trudged all the way to this town 20 years back in shame along with the hope of something better happening. Being hungry and weak, he arrived in the village poor, unshaven and weak to the bones. Hence, right from then on, he was ignored and shunned. With no money for medication and food, his suffering did not ease, with only some people giving left over drinks and food for him to take, hence leaving him if at all drunk. He was forced to scrape for food leftovers from garbage bins.  This continued for long until he met me, and after I was giving food, he began to feel strong.

That’s all was written in the pad of his, but the rest anyone can surmise. Have you wondered what he told me on his death bed was. It was just 2simple lines -

“I am neither a bad nor a mad man …,

I liked people a lot once but got no return”

Personality Crash Simplified

Have you noticed that one becomes much alike to the person they despise? The more they despise the one, the more alike they become. Now what brings about such a change? Can it make one totally different from what they actually were? Is it justified? Some people say that it’s not a change brought in because of the other, but its because that feeling always existed within all people, not just that individual… Could that be true?

Now considering the last point mentioned above, let us approach it from a different perspective, which arguably I stand by. And to those who do not agree with me even partially, I think they are in the wrong.  Now what is so special about what I am going to say? It’s just this, people change as per their surroundings, and such a change can only occur if they have gained knowledge of those surroundings. Humans like all other animals were born with the natural tendency to survive, as they became aware of what went on around them they began to evolve. Slowly, things have become much more globalised with various things and news spreading to all parts of the world. So, all this information gets shoved into individuals at an increasing rate these days due to increased proximity to other individuals and the information spread. What can the person do, with this much information flooding the brain? He begins to choose and make decisions based on what has been fed into him either directly or indirectly. That’s when things go awry.

Gone are those days when people used to live in communities independent of other communities and hence had a fixed style when dealing with situations. How does one then go about dealing with situations when they are aware of often contradictory reactions to that situation? That’s where things perhaps look to get random, but I’m certain that the reaction chosen also depends on the weight of information for each reaction that gets into the head from childhood. To make you understand more better, lets consider an example- if for situation 1, there are two reactions/ solutions Sol A and Sol B… If Sol A has been given lot more importance in some way or another, then the tendency will be to go with reaction Sol A.

What 0makes a person go even perhaps to the wrong path, once again it’s the question of survival and information fed in. Therefore, a poor person with no food to eat will automatically tend to try to pinch some food if he has seen another individual do the same or is in dire need of it. Slowly, he becomes aware of the chances of getting away with it if he got away with it the first time, and gradually he becomes bold and even goes on a robbing spree (for things which are not required for actual survival), once again here to information is being fed into him (by his own mind) that he can rob and get away with it.

Coming back to my very first point, what actually makes a person become so alike the person he despises? The answer has already been clearly indicated above… Are you still wondering where the answer is? Let me explain that to you; when Person A despises Person B, then Person A naturally tends to think a lot about Person B. What does he think? He thinks about Person B’s actions over all time he has known him. What happens then? Unconsciously, person A is molding his thought process along the lines of that of Person B. Therefore, the two slowly start becoming alike in actions and then we see the likeness being directly dependent on the amount of thought pertinent to Person B (due to the increased importance).

For those of you wondering, “is there a possible solution?” Yes there surely is. We need to give less thought to the person or thing that might push you to become something you weren’t earlier.

Musings of a harassed kid

Have you felt the sinking feeling… one from which you find it impossible to come out from……… I have!!! I feel it everyday….

Reminders…

Replies….

Answers….

Questions….

Refreshes…..

Mails….

More refreshes….

This is what life has amounted to. But i dont blame that... Technology has developed a lot since what my parents and other elders say it was before I became alert to my surroundings. Now there is technology everywhere. So you can’t blame me for naturally moving towards technology due to my curiosity.  

This post too has become hard to write for me by myself, I am forced to rely a lot on spell checks with language dictionaries and repeated corrections. Soon our language will become too hard for even technology to comprehend, hence reversing the trend of earlier when humans found it hard to comprehend machine level language (though I find it hard to believe that ever such a time existed).

Now, I am moving away from my main topic, so hard to concentrate nowadays…

All things are done electronically and I am quite sure that all of you are familiar with this. Now let me get to the first point… aah… reminders… now what would my life be without them… I even need a reminder so as to remember to eat my food… these mobiles are great, no? just type in –eat and set reminder for 2pm, and the buzzer sounds so that I can turn my face away from the game I am playing) on my newest playstation) and fill my stomach. This is just one such case but I use it regularly (at least 6-8 times a day).

Over to the next few points, these are quite a few points but it governs my life nowadays, come on!!! I have some friends, and they need chatting or mailing to… I msg them or comment on their status, and wait for their reply… You know I have more than 200 friends on fb but my friend Arun has more than 500, I tried to compete with him but finally gave up… and though I send mails to some of them, social n/w sites is the shorter way and we can keep posting updates, I am already running to 246^th comment with my friend Praveen… I know what you are thinking… NAAA!!! He isn’t my best friend, I haven’t even met him… but he is a friend of my friend and he seemed funny…

I don’t understand the concept of meeting people when I can just chat with them, I have contact with friends even from kindergarten… so who are you to give me lectures?     I keep everyone happy b that, and not only that it saves me unnecessary time and energy in going all the way and meeting them. These old people… BAH!!! Just good in giving lectures and moaning. They say my weight is more, I am only 52 kgs (and 13 years old) but my friend Goutam from school is 75 :O!!!

Technology has its disadvantages though, I get so frustrated when the page doesn’t load or a message that a friend types doesn’t reach me immediately when we are chatting… I even broke my old PC because I got angry but my parents bought me a new one which is faster and can store more games, so at least it is better now… Thank God!!!

Hmmm… it’s getting hard for me to continue typing as I am used to short lines or words, so I am getting bugged writing. I don’t know why though I still have that odd feeling like things are not what it should be; ohkayy… coming!!! I got to go for my bath (my mom is calling)… it must be the constant bullying by all my elders…

--Signing off--

The Genius in Music (submitted to https://spillwords.com/)

It is not only verbally bound

But also consists of other wonderful sounds

Filled intermittently with silence

To Ease the listener to nonchalance

 

It makes the world come around

And leaves those who miss it feeling drowned.

 

It has no fixed illustrious figure

Nor follows any system, go figure

It pays no respect to social biases

As it is loved by all from varied classes

 

One needn’t be either telepathic or empathic

As emotions are sensed from the surrounding acoustic.

 

Overall, it is both a joy and a medicine

The mind reacts to it like the body does to oxygen.

Music is glory at its best

It doesn’t matter if you’re from east or west.

Barls Cabbage, his apprentice and his Time Machine – A Parody

No one knows about what really caused Barls Cabbage to originate the concept behind a programmable computer. Since such technology wasn’t available at that point of time, it makes the story even more mysterious.

It all started in the early 1820s when Barls felt that one couldn’t depend too much on human mind for calculations because of the high error rate. He wanted to device a machine that could reduce the errors for calculations. With that in mind, he began working on a machine in the basement of his house. With the loss of three from his family in the same year, he was seen as a depressed man moaning in solitude. The only thing that kept him going was the machine on which he was working on, with him putting all his time and effort into the machine, it comes as no surprise that he got extremely engrossed and the results didn’t matter to him anymore, with improvements continuously coming into the machine. Finally, around 1865, his machine was finally ready. The functionality though was totally different when compared to the initial goal of the machine. It didn’t perform normal expected mathematical calculations, instead it was a machine which bent the time continuum, in other words, it was a time machine.

This machine was kept hidden from all others, not even his youngest son Benry. Now, as it was time to test the machine. It was 2-3 years back that he had met Vules Jerne after a long time (their first meeting was when Vules was young about 22 years back), and they became very close friends. He decided to let Vules know about his invention too and hence Vules became his apprentice. Vules took lot of interest in the machine and helped Barls to complete the machine by 1862.

Barls decided to traverse the first journey alone. He did so and travelled to the past first as he wanted to check how the world was in 2500 BC around which the abacus was invented, after several trips he finally found out that it was invented in the year 2345 BC. By now, Vules was accompanying him in his journeys.

Barls finally decided to travel to the future, in what he hoped would actually lead to the actual machine he intended to design, a machine to program calculations. This was a tense moment, because he had expected going to the past to be actually possible as people could traverse in memory and remember what had happened before, but nobody could actually tell what would happen in the future. Being a non-believer in astrology certainly didn’t reduce his doubts. Fortunately, the first mission was successful, and so were a few more. Next, he and Vules moved towards the future 100 years in advance (year 1962 that is), and he achieved a success in first attempt. Here, he got to meet some scientists and became aware of his name having achieved a status in history; he soon realized that he had managed to initiate the first concepts behind building a programmable computer. After learning the basics behind the technology, which took a few years, he decided that he could try to learn more about the technology, so it would benefit his actual own generation. Meanwhile, unfortunately he contracted a bacterial disease and became quite unwell, Vules decided for his safety, in order for Barls not to get lost to the past, to go back.

It was year 1870 now; Barls was extremely unwell and soon passed away into the void. Not many questioned their disappearance for those years as they had informed all that they were going for a trip. Barls left the basic concepts in writing for his son Benry to take over and carry it into the future, which Benry did, culminating in six working difference engines based on his father’s designs.

Vules, did not come from the journey empty handed either, he learnt about various innovations, though he spent most of his time with Barls, during their travels those years in the future, he became aware of various technological changes in the future. Always being a lover of writing and sailing the seas, he learnt of various advancements in maritime technology. This information was used by Vules and put down in writing in the form of novels which all became world famous and read for centuries beyond partly thanks to the futuristic technologies covered and his brilliant writing.

Now, we are more than 100 years past since the great many ideas that came through. One might wonder what happened to that great invention - the Time Machine. It is believed that Vules Jerne destroyed the machine on Barls Cabbage request, since it could be put into wrong use if it fell into the wrong hands, and he didn’t want others to see the suffering that was in store in the future, which he had come across on one of his many journeys.